Word: oss
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Amid the furor over Ronald Pelton's betrayal, the OSS veterans gathered for a festive 25th annual banquet that provided a mite of moral support to Administration efforts to bolster the nation's intelligence apparatus. The banqueters warmly applauded when Reagan pledged to do just that, and nobody there had any trouble seconding the President's praise of CIA Director William Casey as "one of the heroes of America's fight for freedom." After all, Bill Casey was one of them; from the OSS office in London, he had helped direct the deployment of agents behind enemy lines. Still...
Romance? Aline Griffith, 63, recruited into the OSS while in college and ; sent to Spain as a code clerk, wound up marrying a Spanish grandee to become the Countess of Romanones. Festooned with diamonds and emeralds, she smiled knowingly as she reminisced: "I hate to say it, but war is fun." High times? Eugene Sherman was 19 and en route to a guerrilla base 100 miles from Canton when Yale-trained Psychologist William Morgan, an OSS major, intercepted him. Sherman remembers that the two repaired to a restaurant and drank much too much at a party that ended when Morgan...
Long after the dinner, the talks, the toasts and the showing of a remarkably evocative old OSS propaganda film, the old-timers lingered on. Some hobbled about, silently inspecting familiar faces; some gathered about Angleton or Casey, eager for touches of familiarity and recognition. Gray- haired women in long gowns and heavy jewelry flirted roguishly with comrades from long...
...abundance of lore about the OSS has long since surfaced: how Lawyer Bill Donovan, a heroic World War I officer, jury-rigged the intelligence agency President Franklin Roosevelt wanted by recruiting an elite of socialites (Polo Player Raymond Guest), millionaires (Paul Mellon), intellectuals (Archibald Macleish), journalists (Stewart Alsop) and performers (Sterling Hayden). How the OSS got to be twitted as "Oh-So-Social." How it nurtured such future CIA leaders as Richard Helms, Angleton and Casey...
...years since the war, innumerable stories of operations and individual heroism (as well as some blunders) have found a way into print. Yet many old-timers reunited last week agreed with the sentiment of James Murphy, 81, OSS chief of counterintelligence. Said he: "The true facts of our accomplishments were never fully disclosed and explained." Georgetown University Professor Ray Cline, who went on from the OSS to become a CIA deputy director, said much the same, adding, "We want to get it all down before...