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The famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Justice Arthur Goldberg of the Supreme Court and the Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world.

They 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 full secret was to come out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24.000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750.000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.

They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.

Some of those on the list have been identified previously as having worked for the OSS, but their personnel records never have been available before. Those records would show why they were hired, jobs they were assigned and perhaps even missions they pursued while working for the agency.

Among the more than 35.000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields - Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President John F. Kennedy ; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in "The Godfather" ; and Thomas Braden, an author whose "Eight Is Enough" book inspired the 1970s and early '80s television series.

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 Harry Truman disbanded it in 1945.

The CIA had resisted releasing OSS records for decades. But William Casey, the former CIA director and an OSS veteran, cleared the way for the transfer of millions of OSS documents to the National Archives when he took over the agency in 1981. The personnel files are the latest to be made public.

Source du texte : HERALD TRIBUNE