SECRET AGENTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100090041-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 22, 2011
• Sequence Number: 41
• Publication Date: June 7, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT. -? Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-0
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Frr'ncisco's stately St. Francis Hotel,
the group locked for all the world like
the alumni of an Ivy League club. Sleek
and elegant, in back tie or ball gowns,
they traded stories about their daring
younger days, tales which would have
seemed exaggerated i,i any other set-
ting. But these were not just rich old
grads on a spree; over the dais at the
gathering hung a gigantic photograph
of Maj. Gen. William J. "Wild Bill" Dono-
van. These were the veterans of the
Office of Strategic Services, the leg
endary World War II intelligence
unit commanded by Donovan. It was
officially established by President
Roosevelt 40 years ago this month.
Forerunner of the CIA, the OSS was
the first clandestine, intelligence agen-
cy the United States ever had-and
many still say the best. "We were all
young and crazy when we first started
the killing and the adventure," recalls
OSS veteran John Shaheen, 66, who
headed special projects in the war and
is now a millionaire oilman. "We were
Donovan's fair-haired boys. He got the
best guys he could-youngsters, old-
sters, gangsters, hoodlums and ath-
letes. He even recruited a few from
San Quenti i and Sing Sing."
As last month's sentimental reunion
of 350 alumni proved, the OSS recruit-
ed an astonishing lot. Donovan brought'
in lawyers, soldiers. Ivy League stu ",; '
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fathering in the ballroom of San
PEOPLE MAGAZINE.
7 JUNE 1982
dents, watercolor artists, file clerks
and enough Social Register types to
cause Washington's wartime wags to
joke that the agency's initials stood for
"Oh So Social." But the alumni of the
organization include some high-pow-
ered achievers as well. Among them:
former Supreme Court Justice Arthur
Goldberg, TV chef Julia Child, actor-
novelist Sterling Hayden, artist Dung
Kingman, fashion designer John Weitz,
travel writer Temple Fielding, diamond
merchant Bert Jolis, former Madison
Square Garden President Mike Burke,
the Countess of Romanones, former
CIA Director William Colby and present
top spook William Casey. "It was," said
OSS veteran and Cleveland depart-
ment store heiress Kay Halle, "the
greatest collection of brains ever gath-
ered under one roof."
America had considered spying un-
sporting since Benedict Arnold, but the
war persuaded FDR of the need for a
first-rate intelligence service. Starting
from scratch, Donovan grabbed his
agents wherever he could locate them.
Halle was recruited at a.Washington
cocktail party, Burke at a'friend's
house, Jolis in a cafe overlooking the
skating rink at Rockefeller Center. But
the training of these spies-to-be was
as demanding as their backgrounds
were patrician. The Countess of Ro-
manones (then Aline Griffith, 21, of
Pearl River, N.Y.) was taught how to
stab an enemy beneath the chin with
the point of a rolled-up newspaper.
James Jesus Angleton, later the CiA's
chief spyrrlaster, learned his trade on a
dry run in which he infiltrated the office
of the chairman of Western Electric.
Weitz remembers sitting through a 36-
hour-long examination in a tent amidst
a constant din of canned battle noise,
with an occasional tear gas grenade
tossed in, just to keep the budding
Bonds on their toes. Colby recalls a
more civilized and devious test: "After
a full day in the field, we were fed a
huge dinner and put next to a fire to
discuss some boring subject like the
future of German youth after the war,"
he says. "About half of the group fell
right to sleep. That was one way to see
who had stamina."
That quality was indispensable. In
1945 Colby parachuted into Nazi-occu-
pied Norway to blow up bridges and
railroad tracks-and was nearly killed
in the process. "The night we btew.up
the track, we snuck up to lay the .
charges, but the Germans noticed
something wrong and started shooting
at us," he recalls. "We pulled our
charges, jumped the fence and ran.
Thirty seconds later the track blew up..
We were lucky to survive."
Aline Griffith in 1945 found herself
outside Madrid in a speeding car with a
Nazi collaborator who was convinced
that she was about to expose him. The
Nazi decided. to strangle her. "I had
been taught very well how to roll, how
to defend myself," she remembers. "I
was able to open the door while we
were moving very fast, and I rolled out,
and wasn't hurt at all." (She subse-.
quently married the Spanish Count of
Romanones and settled in Madrid.)
John Singlaub, later sacked as the
U.S.. Army's commanding general in
South Korea in a policy squabble with
Jimmy Carter, parachuted into Nazi
France with two other agents for com-
pany. Later, joined by a few others,
they captured an airfield, used it
as a supply drop point, and finally
organized a Resistance unit that
hooked up with the American Army on
the Loire. "It was a slightly hazardous
situation," the then lieutenant modest-
ly allows. -
Most OSS adventures Sound like
outtakes from a James Bond movie,
but some veterans tell tales that could
find their way into a Mel Brooks spoof.
Temple Fielding smuggled a psycho-
logical weapon-a potion that dupli-
cated the smell of human excrement---
into German-occupied Yugoslavia.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/22 : CIA-RDP90-01208R000100090041-9