The National Archives has opened the books on the OSS, America's World War Two spying and sabotage agency.
On Thursday the Archives released 750,000 pages of records, including the intimate personnel files of future super-chef Julia Childs, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, screen star Sterling Hayden and Boston Red Sox catcher Moe Berg.
Child's file shows that in her OSS application, she included a note expressing regret she left an earlier department store job hastily because she did not get along with her boss, said William Cunliffe, an archivist who has worked extensively with the OSS records at the National Archives.
Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt; and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police, according to The Associated Press.
The OSS -- formally, the Office of Strategic Services -- recruited so many blue bloods and Ivy Leaguers that lesser Washington mortals cracked that its initials stood for "Oh, So Social." But in its short, six-year life span it spent a fraction of today's spy budgets with far better results, many critics say.
It's hard to imagine the CIA recruiting such worthies today -- without inciting congressional investigations and demands for Michael Hayden's scalp.
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