VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, [2], 3, 4, 5, 6 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 23:03:34 06/06/02 Thu
Author: Chgo
Subject: A spy get-together this week at the CIA.

Too bad I can't copy the images that accompanied this article in print: Marlene Dietrich in her military uniform, Julia Child resting on a bunk bed, and several others. The article, in the response below, looks at how the CIA is trying to use the more successful parts of its history to inspire the confused present. This week's gathering is part of the effort.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[> "Pride cloaked in a storied past." (r) -- Chgo, 23:12:18 06/06/02 Thu

Pride cloaked in a storied past
--------------------
CIA looks for a morale boost in forerunner agency's 60th anniversary

By Michael Kilian
Washington Bureau
June 6, 2002

LANGLEY, Va. -- There is the story of one-legged spy and guerrilla fighter Virginia Hall, who spent two long tours in Nazi-occupied France. She became the only civilian woman in the war to receive the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second-highest medal.

There is also the less inspiring story of the hilariously unsuccessful Bat Bomb--a live bat with an incendiary bomb attached, designed for firebomb raids against Tokyo--a would-be intelligence device that might have sprung from the mind of James Bond's movie friend Q.

And don't forget baseball player Moe Berg, chef Julia Child and actress Marlene Dietrich, all vets of the Office of Strategic Services, the fabled forerunner of the CIA.

Berg, a catcher for the White Sox, among other teams, assumed the role of a Swiss scientist to spy on Hitler during the war. Child was more an office worker than an operative, but she got her culinary start working up a recipe for shark repellent. Dietrich was part of the OSS' propaganda arm.

Beset by a troubled present, the CIA this week is turning its attention back to a more glorious and heroic past, when its forerunner organization played a vital role in defeating Germany and Japan in World War II.

More than 500 OSS veterans, some of them in their 90s, will join current intelligence workers behind the barbed-wire fences of the CIA complex here to take part in a three-day commemorative event this week celebrating the 60th anniversary of the old agency's creation.

While the CIA is engaged in finger-pointing with the FBI over intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks--and its leaders are being summoned before closed-door congressional inquiries on the matter--reliving the exploits of the past is viewed as a morale and motivation booster for CIA staff.

"People are going to be energized by the kinds of things the OSS did," said Woodrow Kuhns, acting director of the agency's Center for the Study of Intelligence.

Celebrations in secret

Proceedings begin Thursday evening at the agency's Langley headquarters, when CIA Director George Tenet and other intelligence dignitaries are scheduled to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony honoring the 116 OSS members killed in World War II.

A closed reception after the ceremony will be limited to the OSS veterans, family members and CIA staff, as the former secret agents haven't lost their reluctance to come out into the open.

"After all this time, many of them are still reluctant to talk about what they did," said Deputy CIA Historian Michael Warner, author of "The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency," a history of the organization published for the anniversary.

On Friday, OSS veterans will join present-day intelligence experts and the news media in panel discussions on how the OSS succeeded--and sometimes failed--as well as the lessons that might be derived by those engaged in anti-terrorism intelligence efforts today.

"Afghanistan would have been Donovan's kind of war," said Warner, alluding to Gen. William "Wild Bill" Donovan, the New York lawyer and World War I Medal of Honor winner who created the OSS in collaboration with his former law school classmate, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A statue of Donovan, who led the OSS throughout its existence, graces the OSS Memorial in the CIA headquarters lobby, where Thursday's service will be held.

Established as the nation's first full-blown intelligence agency on June 13, 1942, just six months after Pearl Harbor was attacked, the largely civilian OSS went on to spy and sabotage behind German lines, assist in major decisions on strategic bombing, and invent a mind-spinning array of secret agent weapons and tools.

Its smaller involvement in the Pacific war against Japan included running guerrilla armies in Southeast Asia and finding ways to tie up divisions of Japanese soldiers with useless garrison duty in Thailand.

The OSS was disbanded in October 1945. Two years later, it was reborn as the Central Intelligence Agency, under provisions of the 1947 National Security Act.

Many of its wartime commando functions have been assumed by the U.S. Army Special Forces, Navy SEALS and other unconventional warfare units that evolved from the OSS' wartime Special Operations Branch.

Former Central Intelligence Directors Allen Dulles, William Colby and William Casey are among the OSS veterans who flourished in the Cold War-era CIA.

A gallery of gadgetry

Also hidden behind the barbed wire at Langley, and closed to the public, is a special exhibition on the OSS that opens Thursday under the auspices of the CIA Museum.

The largest collection of OSS artifacts ever assembled, "it's a place to get a sense of mission and get charged up," said museum curator Toni Hiley.

The exhibition displays ingenious devices on the order of a uniform button that opens to reveal a tiny compass, playing cards that reveal maps when soaked in water, brass-knuckle knives, suitcase radios and a $1.72 "Liberator" pistol, one of those used in great numbers behind enemy lines in France, the Philippines and China.

"It was called `Liberator´ because you used it to shoot an enemy and liberate his better weapon for your own use," said Hiley.

There is also one of the old agency's top-of-the-line .22-caliber pistols with silencer, the latter another OSS invention.

Hiley said Donovan took one of the first models to the White House to show FDR, along with a bag filled with sand. Finding Roosevelt on the telephone, she said, Donovan fired the pistol into the bag until the magazine was empty, but the president didn't notice.

"When Roosevelt got off the phone, Donovan set the bag and the still hot, smoking pistol on his desk," Hiley said. "Roosevelt is supposed to have replied, `Donovan, you´re the only wild-eyed Republican I would have let in here with a weapon.´"

The OSS gave FDR a silencer-equipped .22, but staffers had to take it back because the weapon was top secret.
The agency's "Bat Bomb" was a secret they needn't have kept. According to Hiley, it amounted to a live bat with an incendiary bomb attached. The idea was that bats flew under the eaves of house and building roofs, where the bomb would be most effective.

According to the plan, thousands of bomb-carrying bats were to be released during a normal bombing run. But temperatures at the bombing altitudes were extremely low.

"And in cold weather, bats go to sleep," said Hiley. "When they tested the Bat Bombs in the Southwest, the bats went to sleep and didn't wake up until it was too late to complete their mission."

Copyright (c) 2002, Chicago Tribune


[ Edit | View ]

[> Re: the confused present: Section One is starting to look ... sensible. -- trish lyn, 14:18:53 06/07/02 Fri


[ Edit | View ]

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-5
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.