The CIA’s precursor agency enlisted Aunt Jemima to fight the Japanese in WWII
Aunt Jemima might be retired now, replaced as a brand name by Pearl Milling Company, but her legacy is one that helped sabotage Japanese efforts to conquer China in World…
This lady was the most wanted spy of WWII
Virginia Hall was born in 1906 in Baltimore, Maryland, to wealthy parents. As a young girl, she often felt like she didn’t fit in well. She enjoyed the fishing, hunting, and outdoor…
5 Old-Time celebrity favorites who wanted to join the OSS
When William “Wild Bill” Donovan created the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, he was looking to create a truly unique intelligence outfit whose ranks included the least suspicious group of spies, saboteurs, and strongmen who were …
The little-known stories of smokejumpers working with the CIA
The CIA had its eye on Tibet. The Buddhist nation of vast plateaus and mountain ranges in Central Asia was completely isolated from the rest of soci…
The strangest covert weapons American spies carried in WWII
The Office of Strategic Services was a joint intelligence and operations agency founded by the Americans during World War 2. It served as a precursor to the CIA and was…
OSS agents gave the Dalai Lama a Patek Phillipe watch from FDR during WWII
Even if you’re not a watch enthusiast, the brand name Patek Philippe probably rings a bell. Founded in 1839, Patek is part of the so-called Horological Holy Trinity of luxury…
One of the pioneers of the Navy SEALs lived almost a century
It’s not widely known that Marine Corps Raiders trained operatives for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. The forerunner to the CIA, the OSS would conduct clandestine resistance, sabotage, and intelligence-gathering operations al…
Binge-watch this: Netflix turns average citizens into top-notch British spies
Who doesn’t love to watch the latest James Bond movie and fantasize what it must be like to use high-tech gadgets, sneak into secret bases and be the ultimate agent with a “license to kill?” A recent Netflix binge-watching “Churchill’s Secret A…
A single map shows how crazy successful the OSS was in France
The Office of Strategic Services, the World War II-era agency that preceded the CIA and many special operations units, deployed teams into France for months starting just before D-Day. A map slide produced after the war showed just how insanely succ…