Centrallized Intelligence, Circa 1940

What do Julia Child, Moe Berg, and many other soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, and reporters of the 1940s have in common?? They all served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.  The spy network of military and civilian operatives, known as the OSS, studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.

Personal files on the OSS members are going to be released this Thursday. The release of the OSS personnel files uncloaks one of the last secrets from the short-lived wartime intelligence agency, which for the most part later was folded into the CIA after President Truman disbanded it in 1945. All OSS members were told never to reveal their work with the secret agency, until now. It was previously thought that the OSS was a minor, small-scale agency that did minimally significant work. The documents to be released on Thursday may paint a different picture. They will reveal all of those who took part in the OSS and the missions that members embarked on.

It wasn’t just celebrities that joined this agency, many members of influential families were also part of this regime. Some of these people include Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in “The Godfather”; Thomas Braden, an author whose “Eight Is Enough” book inspired the 1970s television series; John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police. Who would’ve thought celebrities and some of the nation’s most important public figures would be part of a secret, centralized intelligence unit during what might be America’s most important war?