Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS

This volume tells the story of the women who worked with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States wartime intelligence agency, considered the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The OSS was formed in order to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States Armed Forces. The author, herself a veteran of sensitive OSS and CIA operations, draws on her own experiences and interviews with more than a hundred other OSS women to reveal some of the most tantalizing stories and best-kept secrets of the war in Europe and Asia. Along with famous names like Julia Child and Marlene Dietrich, readers will discover such intrepid agents as Amy "Cynthia" Thorpe, who seduced a Vichy official and stole naval codes from the French embassy; Virginia Hall, who earned a Distinguished Service Cross for her work with the French resistance running an underground railroad for downed fliers; and others who recruited double agents, pioneered propaganda and subversion techniques, and tracked the infamous Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny