Julia Child, Secret Agent

Nick Gillespie | August 14, 2008

Super-chef Julia Child, who massively helped to cosmopolitanize American culture by introducing European cuisine in a non-threatening way via her TV shows and cookbooks, was a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA.

Details about Child's background as a government agent come into the public spotlight Thursday with the National Archives' release of more than 35,000 top-secret personnel files of World War II-era spies. The CIA held this information for decades.

The 750,000 documents identify the vast spy network managed by the Office of Strategic Services, which later became the CIA. President Franklin Roosevelt created the OSS, the country's first centralized intelligence operation.

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.

The OSS files offer details about other agents, including Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, major league catcher Moe Berg, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and film actor Sterling Hayden.

Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Kermit Roosevelt, son of President Theodore Roosevelt; and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.

A number of these folks had already been identified as operatives, but their personnel files are now available, due to actions taken in the early 1980s by former CIA director William Casey. The main takeaway, according to the AP: That the OSS was far more extensive than previously thought, with  something on the order of 24,000 employees, almost double the previous estimates of 13,000.

More here. 

Comments

Elemenope|8.14.08 @ 9:58AM|#

Kermit Roosevelt

Winner of the badass name award.

re: Julia Child and the OSS

Isn't this kind of old news? (Except for the details of her file, of course.)

Elemenope|8.14.08 @ 10:01AM|#

I once saw a very slickly made bumper sticker:

Republicans for Voldemort '04

Had me in stitches. Of course, this means that the Dems would put up Dolores Umbridge.

There was another:

Bush/Vader '04

Elemenope|8.14.08 @ 10:02AM|#

WTF, wrong thread. Sorry.

Episiarch|8.14.08 @ 10:06AM|#

I wanted to post a link to Dan Ackroyd's "you have to STUFF the chicken" SNL skit on Julia Child, but I can't find it on YouTube or Google Video. It's classic. This is the best I could do.

|8.14.08 @ 10:17AM|#

Nothing is better than the time she beat that monkfish to death with a rolling pin when it interrupted her. Gave me a life-long love of cooking. Here she is with her defeated foe.

Can't find a clip of it on the intertubes, though.

ed|8.14.08 @ 10:17AM|#

Very old news.

Episiarch|8.14.08 @ 10:18AM|#

Your link is bad, NutraSweet.

|8.14.08 @ 10:23AM|#

Dammit, why does it do that? Fuck.

Heir

|8.14.08 @ 10:33AM|#

I've heard this before, unless it's just my suppressed memories springing up again.

|8.14.08 @ 10:45AM|#

Recipes of a Dangerous Mind

Episiarch|8.14.08 @ 10:53AM|#

Now it's my link to Ackroyd, dude. The HTML is weak with this one.

|8.14.08 @ 11:12AM|#

I'm just done. I'm taking my IP address and going home.

Elemenope|8.14.08 @ 11:18AM|#

I'm taking my IP address and going home.

Take your MAC if you wish, but leave the IP address for someone more worthy. :)

|8.14.08 @ 11:45AM|#

RE: SNL sketch.

Julia loved that bit and would often show it when hosting private parties.

|8.14.08 @ 11:55AM|#

RE: SNL sketch.

Julia loved that bit and would often show it when hosting private parties.

People who can laugh at their own foibles are special.

Episiarch|8.14.08 @ 11:56AM|#

RE: SNL sketch.

Julia loved that bit and would often show it when hosting private parties.

People who can laugh at their own foibles are special.

She was probably drunk.

|8.14.08 @ 12:18PM|#

Now was she a blend-into-the-crowd-and-move-about-them-unnoticed kind of spy, or the kind that uses her feminine ways to tantalize secrets our of foreign agents?

And did she have kitchen tools that doubled as lasers, magnets, and weapons?

|8.14.08 @ 12:22PM|#

My grandfather was in the CIA while he was working for Ford Motor Co. in Chile and Argentina in the 50s and 60s.

I'm too hungry right now to make any further comment... off to print more lunchtime reading material...

|8.14.08 @ 1:09PM|#

Epi,

You prefer angry drunks to happy ones?

Seitz|8.14.08 @ 1:16PM|#

and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.

Stewart may get the fame, but Miles and Ian were far more important to the music industry and to modern music in general.

Robert Goodman|8.14.08 @ 1:43PM|#

My friend Nadine's father Fred Robiczeck was in the OSS and had great stories. The army on interviewing him and another candidate learned that they were fluent in German, so they were going to send them to Japan. They managed to persuade them to send them to Germany instead, duh.

Fred was an opera fan who had to commandeer Ricard Strauss's house for the occupation. Fred chewed out a general for leaving maps out in the open on the dining room table overnight. And Fred was a celebrated hero when he brought back to Ingelfingen some medieval records they thought were lost that he'd collected.

But Moe Berg? C'm'on, everybody knows about him. Cute book title on the subject: "The Catcher Was a Spy".

|8.14.08 @ 2:49PM|#

Here's the link to the SNL sketch. I happened to have a similar incident after donating platelets at the Red Cross this week. My brother-in-law thought of Aykroyd and I looked for a link to send to family members to embellish my tale.

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/the-french-chef/2712/

cgee|8.15.08 @ 12:20PM|#

SAVE THE LIVER!