Recent reads

You're stepping on my cloak and dagger, by Roger Hall. A humorous look at the recruitment and training of a WWII secret agent. The author was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to today's CIA, in 1943, and only participated in a couple of real missions late in the war. (Or at least, those are the only ones he tells us about.) Consequently there's relatively little actual blood and danger in the book, but a lot of satirical description of the military bureaucracy and the OSS's spy-training program, which included not only physical training in military technique and parachuting, but a continual series of psychological games designed to force the students to be constantly on the alert lest they betray their cover.

Some of the OSS's training techniques, as described by our author, sound less like well-planned professional training then seat-of-the-pants improvisation. Does today's CIA train its future agents by dropping into a strange city with an open-ended assignment to penetrate a sensitive target and retrieve something from inside it as proof of their success? Should it? This exercise proves to be quite dangerous for one of his classmates, who actually gets caught by counter-agents. The police, you see, know nothing of the OSS's Wild-West, sink-or-swim training methods. For all they know, he might actually be an enemy spy.

I got a chuckle out of recognizing some of the programs and places described. When the OSS's training program in cryptography was mentioned, I was reminded of a relative who served in a position involving cryptography during the war, and wondered if he went through a course of training similar to the one described. And then we have the following passage, as a group of spies-in-training travel to their next appointment:

If anyone was jittery, it wasn't in evidence on the way up. I had my hands full with Gordon and our ever-present blackjack game. Mitch and Ossian sat across the aisle creating a certain amount of consternation by carying on a heated discussion in German, which they both spoke fluently. Not content with the harvest of suspicious glares this reaped, they waited until the train was passing the Glenn L. Martin aircraft factories, a huge camouflaged plant area half an hour out of Baltimore. Then Ossian leaned across, and in a stage whisper which rattled the car, asked, "Hans, haff you gott de planz?"

The question was accompanied by a significant glance out the window. I was busy playing aces back to back at the time, but Gordon had the presence of mind to answer with a guttural "Ja."

I don't know precisely what effect this brief exchange had on the other passengers, but it was enough to make certain of our classmates hurriedly move to other parts of the train. (p. 88)

In 1943 or 1944, it's quite likely that Grand-dad B. was working away at his drop-hammer, banging aircraft parts out of sheet aluminum inside that plant, as the would-be spies rolled by making their jokes.

Given the kinds of jokes and excursions that the author and his classmates were able to get away with during their training, one can't help but wonder how the country could possibly have survived any widespread campaign of espionage and sabotage.

On the other hand, it's possible that the author's casual, jokey tone is at least partly disinformation intended to decieve 1957 readers about the actual capabilities and seriousness of American spycraft. Deception is, after all, the business of a spy!