Classical Spies: American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece

4. From Relief to Intelligence: Forging a “Grecian Formula”

four  From Relief to Intelligence: Forging a “Grecian Formula” after almost a month at sea, Young arrived in New York in early September and presented himself for registration, but the draft board examined and rejected him as 4F because of his wound. So he indexed Agora ‹nds with Frantz in Princeton and devoured the New York Times for news of Greece, but the bleak reports made him“want to play the ostrich and not think about it at all.” The British blockade had worsened Greece’s food shortage, and the Germans exacerbated it by sending wounded soldiers from the Russian front to recuperate in Greece. Refugees reaching Egypt claimed: “Hundreds of deaths from starvation have already occurred in Athens . . . and twenty to thirty cases of fainting in the streets from hunger . . . daily.” Joan Vanderpool described two-year-olds who weighed fewer than twenty pounds, and headlines screamed: “BABIES ARE STARVING.” In America, Spyros Skouras, the president of Greek War Relief, was trying to break the British blockade by shipping food via Turkey. Meanwhile in the mountains of Greece, a “cauldron of revolt” was simmering as Greek guerrillas banded together to ‹ght the Axis occupiers.1 Young read in the New York Times and Washington Post that Roosevelt had appointed William Donovan the coordinator of information (COI) in Washington. He would “collect and assemble data on ‘national security’ from the various governmental agencies and analyze and collate this material for the use of the President and other top of‹cials.” His organization 68 would also engage in “counter-espionage operations . . . sifting truth from misinformation.” Before this, the State Department and armed forces had had a monopoly on foreign intelligence. But now COI attracted an impressive intellectual cohort, including the president of Williams College, a Harvard professor, members of the Institute for Advanced Study, and Roosevelt ’s speechwriter, who produced radio news for occupied Europe. Later the Times backpedaled, claiming that Donovan was just“a liaison man, and not in actual command of intelligence,” which the State Department, War Department, the navy, and the Army Air Force handled.2 In fact, Donovan’s enigmatic title obscured his true mission—to create a top-secret global intelligence service for the United States in charge of secret intelligence gathering , special operations, counterespionage, sabotage, psychological and guerrilla warfare, and other subversive activities. Donovan’s ›edgling organization had to become operational immediately . To launch this immense covert undertaking, he drew on William Stevenson and the British Security Coordination, which had been operating for over a year in the United States and would be COI’s liaison with British intelligence. Donovan’s personal contacts in the law profession and the Fight for Freedom Committee walked into top jobs at COI. To ‹nd additional men, Donovan scoured the government’s “Roster of Scienti‹c and Specialized Personnel,” which noted American scholars’ geographic and linguistic expertise. Then he prowled the national research councils, such as the American Council of Learned Societies, and academia for individuals with area-studies skills. These he funneled to Washington for Secret Intelligence or Special Operations, identifying as of‹cer material anyone who could speak, read, and write foreign languages, especially if they had lived in the country whose language they spoke.3 Young surfaced as an authority on the Greek occupation. On October 28, 1941, the ‹rst anniversary of the Italian invasion of Greece, Young told his story publicly. He spoke at the Grand Central Palace, a cavernous exhibition hall in New York City and the largest army induction center in the country. Two weeks later Young addressed an audience in Newark, where, after relating his adventures as a volunteer ambulance driver, he spoke of his wound. “I was standing . . . at a ‹eld canteen serving the Greek ‹ghting forces when we sighted planes. We ›opped when the bombs started to fall. One of them landed 20 feet from where we were and a fragment struck me in the back.” No doubt stung by the army’s rejection, Young looked out on From Relief to Intelligence • 69 the comfortable Americans for whom the war was still far away and added, “In spite of what I went through if there was a boat leaving for Greece I would take it tomorrow.”4 In a letter circulated to American School alumni Young described Greece under the occupation. He declared that “the antiquities seem to be the only things in Greece which are to be protected...