Editing American International Underwriters Corporation (section)

==Constantine Report Claims (2009)==
OSS Origins: During World War II, Starr directly collaborated with [[William "Wild Bill" Donovan]], the chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Together, they formed a special "insurance intelligence unit" within the OSS. This unit leveraged Starr's extensive international network, particularly his connections in China and his Shanghai newspaper, to gather vital wartime intelligence on Axis powers (Nazi Germany and Japan).

The intelligence gathered was practical and directly supported covert operations: "They knew which factories to burn, which bridges to blow up, which cargo ships could be sunk in good conscience. They had pothole counts for roads used for invasion and head counts for city blocks marked for incineration. They weren't just secret agents. They were secret insurance agents." This collaboration highlights how Starr's international insurance operations provided a valuable cover and intelligence network for the nascent U.S. intelligence community.

After World War II, Starr continued these connections by hiring OSS captain Duncan Lee, a lawyer, who became the long-term general counsel for AIG. This maintained a direct link between AIG's leadership and the intelligence community. its operations in sensitive geopolitical regions (e.g., post-war Japan and Germany, then later China after its reopening to Western businesses), and the continued presence of intelligence-connected individuals like Maurice "Hank" Greenberg (who had close ties to CIA Director William Casey and Henry Kissinger) at the helm of AIG (which encompasses AIU) suggest an ongoing intelligence-adjacent role.

The Constantine Report, citing a 2000 Los Angeles Times article by Mark Fritz, asserts that AIG’s founder, Cornelius Vander Starr, was involved with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA’s World War II predecessor. During the war, Starr’s insurance operations supported OSS covert activities by providing intelligence on strategic targets. Fritz writes, “Starr sent insurance agents into Asia and Europe even before the bombs stopped falling and built what eventually became AIG, which today has its world headquarters in the same downtown New York building where the an OSS unit toiled in the deepest secrecy” (Constantine Report, 2009,). The article suggests that Starr’s agents gathered data on infrastructure (e.g., factories, bridges, roads) useful for OSS sabotage and invasion planning.