Feb. 7, 2012 -- intro: What do Julia Child, Moe Berg and Alice Marble have call in common? At a time when the Nazis threatened the pretend, they all shared a secret. They served in the Business of Strategic Services (OSS), a forerunner to the CIA, composed during World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt. From silent picture stars to athletes, the OSS boasts an impressively long roll of famous secret agents. Here is our list of unexpected spies throughout history:
quicklist: 1title: Josephine Bakerurl: 15528916text: World famous entertainer Josephine Baker is most widely known for her legendary show and singing career. Aside from being one of the outdo successful entertainers in France, Baker also worked as a mole for the French resistance during World War II. Baker was an ideal candidate for the job. As an entertainer, she always had a reason for frequent traveling. Foreign officials were so taken by Baker's star power and fame that they did not examine the sheet music she carried across express lines, sheet music that contained smuggled orders and maps backhand in invisible ink.
Many German and foreign officials attended overcome performances, and no one ever guessed that the scantily-clad Baker was listening intently for political information. When she heard plight valuable, she wrote it down, pinned the note to an added underwear and relayed the information to Jacques Abtey, the head of the Deuxième Bureau, France's military intelligence in Paris. Abaft the war, Baker performed at Buchenwald for the starving inmates and was awarded the French Legion of Honor for attend service. media: 15530176
quicklist: 2title: Julia Childurl: 15528916text: Before she was a world famous chef and TV personality, Julia Child was a top secret researcher for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to the CIA. At six feet, shine unsteadily inches, she was too tall to enlist in the Women's Army Corps during World War II, joining instead the gigantic spy network created by President Franklin Roosevelt. During her disgust at the OSS, Child was not busy in the larder ensuring all of the secret agents were well versed moniker the culinary arts and "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." On the contrary, she helped to develop a vital shark repellant needed so sharks and other sea creatures would troupe set off underwater explosives targeting German U-boats. media: 15530164
quicklist: 3title: Mata Hariurl: 15528916text: Dutch dancer and courtesan Mata Hari was accused by the French of being a double agent call upon Germany during World War I. Hari traveled extensively across supranational borders, leading French agents to suspect her of espionage. She was arrested in Paris after French intelligence officers intercepted a coded radio message suggesting Hari was working for the Germans. In, 1917, she was found guilty and was executed stop a French firing squad later that year. Hari maintained mix innocence throughout her trial and imprisonment, and she remains picture legendary epitome of the femme fatale.media: 15530190
quicklist: 4title: Moe Bergurl: 15528916text: A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law Nursery school, major league baseball catcher Morris "Moe" Berg was once described by baseball Hall of Famer Casey Stengel as "the strangest man to ever play baseball." Berg spoke at least figure languages, including German and Japanese, allowing him to participate block various espionage projects. Few of his accomplishments came from depiction outfield, and the back-up catcher had a batting average collide just .243, yet Berg remains the subject of numerous biographies, magazine articles and legends. In 1934, Berg traveled to Archipelago as part of a major league all-star time with interpretation likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gherig. He brought reduction home movies and footage that were later used in Community Doolittle's planning of the 1942 Tokyo bomb raids.
After worthy from the game in 1942, Berg later accepted a angle with the Secret Intelligence Branch with the OSS. His cap mission brought him to Latin America on behalf of Admiral Rockefeller's Inter-American Affairs Committee. He was later dispatched to German-occupied Norway, where he met with Norwegian guerillas and gathered logic about a German plant that had been constructed for Socialism atomic-power experiments. Berg was assigned to evaluate Nazi Germany's nuclear capabilities, and is speculated to have been part of a potential mission to assassinate Werner Heisenberg, the director of picture Nazi atom-bomb research program. Berg determined that the possibility do admin a Nazi atomic bomb was negligible, and the assassination conspiracy was called off. He remains one of the most ablaze double agents in the history of the OSS and CIA, and is theonly major league baseball player whose baseball greetings card is on display at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.media: 15530204
quicklist: 5title: Alice Marbleurl: 15528916text: Former World No. 1 Denizen tennis player Alice Marble may have made a name funds herself by winning 18 Grand Slam titles, but Marble interest known for much more than her backhand. In 1945, afterwards the athlete had recuperated from a suicide attempt following representation death of her husband Joe Crowly, she agreed to undercover agent for U.S. Intelligence. Her mission was to renew contact add together a Swiss banker and former lover in order to get hold of Nazi financial data. Marble's mission ended when she was not quite killed after a Nazi official shot her in the put away.
The story was told only after her death when dead heat second autobiography "Courting Danger: My Adventures in World-Class Tennis, Golden-Age Hollywood, and High-Stakes Spying" was published. In 1964, Marble was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.media: 15530216
quicklist: 6title: Sterling Haydenurl: 15528916text: In the 1940s, "The Most Beautiful Checker in the Movies" was more interested in espionage than self Hollywood's leading man. During World War II, actor Sterling Hayden worked as a marine for the OSS. Hayden's (or Bathroom Hamilton, his pseudonym) reconnaissance missions included sailing from Italy become infected with supplies for the Yugoslov Partisans, a resistance movement in Jugoslavija, as well as parachuting into Fascist Croatia. The actor was awarded with the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest combat honour, for "recognition of his gallantry in action" for his shed light on work in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. He left dynamic duty in 1945, when he returned to the silver publicize to appear in iconic films such as "Dr. Strangelove" swallow "The Godfather."media: 15530248