This Grim and Savage Game ― Oss and the Beginning of U.S. Covert Operations in World War II

This is a true story of daring and adventure during World War II?with such unexpected players as Marlene Dietrich, who took part in the "musical warfare," and Julia Child, whose duties were clerical but who nonetheless felt she was "saving the world." To quote Tom Moon: "Anything that could hurt the enemy and aid the Allies was fair game. The rules of warfare were to be abolished for this organization." "This organization" was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered into existence five months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The eclectic group of specially skilled agents included scientists, professors, policemen, forgers, pickpockets-and a nineteen-year-old French-speaking draftee from Nebraska named Tom Moon. Their mission: to gather information and to carry out sabotage and guerrilla operations behind enemy lines any way they could, anywhere in the world. Here is a little-known but crucial aspect of the war effort, told as only an insider can.

Tom Moon was one of the youngest agents of the OSS during World War II. Today a businessman in Garden Grove, California, he is a frequent lecturer on the history of America's secret intelligence and security agencies.