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

5. Recruiting the Four Captains

five  Recruiting the Four Captains by the end of may 1942, Rodney Young had submitted a list of names to Amoss of people who had lived in the Eastern Mediterranean and knew its languages. Because the job required loyalty and a delicate balance of teamwork and self-reliance, he chose archaeologists he knew well, Americans whose linguistic abilities, ingenuity, integrity, and personalities ‹t the needs of the Greek Desk. His once and future colleagues hailed from three principal excavations: the Agora, the University of Cincinnati’s dig at Troy, and the University of Pennsylvania’s at Kourion, the only American expedition on Cyprus. All were WASPs, connected with the American School and elite Ivy League universities. The men were in their early thirties and scrambling to ‹nd the best way to serve their country, but each had a marriage deferment , so none had been drafted. At the top of Young’s list was James Henry Oliver, Jr. (‹gs. 2 and 3) who was already stringing for Meritt. A week after Young signed on to work for Amoss, he sounded out Oliver following the School’s managing committee meeting. Jim was a gangly, immaculately dressed New Yorker with prematurely thinning hair and an“Archaic smile”similar to the pursed-lip grins of early Greek statues. The Yale man had earned his doctorate in classics and archaeology and studied in Germany, Rome, and Athens, where he and Young had dug together for eight years at the Agora. Oliver had also worked in an oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt, where he had studied inscriptions on the walls of a Greek temple and learned some Egyptian Arabic and Berber. He taught history and epigraphy at Barnard College and had just 84 ‹nished the spring term. While deciphering Agora inscriptions at Leslie Shear’s country house in New Hampshire, he received Young’s offer. Young promised Oliver an important job with a “whiff of danger” that required his particular strengths and training. Not only would he engage in intellectually stimulating work, but also be with men he liked in an area he knew and loved. Oliver wished “to be absorbed in the war effort.” Although the U.S. Naval Reserve had offered him a post in Pensacola, the patriotic archaeologist was still looking for the right “pigeonhole.” Espionage and intelligence promised relief from routine and sounded glamorous and fashionable , especially compared to the infantry. Oliver’s Egyptian and Berber suited him best to Alexandria, which would handle traf‹c to and from Greece and work closely with Cairo.Young wanted someone he could count on with sound and mature judgment, who could share the responsibility for the Cairo hub. Oliver ‹t the bill; he was level-headed, careful, thorough, and detail oriented.Young valued his breadth of interests and infectious enthusiasm . Oliver’s interviewer described him as“intelligent, quite reserved, observant , accurate and very painstaking” with “a good deal of nervous energy.” His ›uency in Modern Greek,Italian,French,and German was also excellent training for cryptography.When Young proposed an assignment in the Near East, Oliver accepted forthwith and reported for duty on June 30.1 For Turkey, Young needed at least two agents: one in Istanbul and the other in Izmir. Istanbul was the center of Allied intelligence services in Turkey, and its agent had to cooperate with them and the Turks. He needed to know Greek and Turkish and have contacts in the city. He would be smuggling missions overland through Thrace to the guerrillas and oversea from the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Peninsula to northern Greek islands and the Thracian coast. Young chose Jerome Sperling. While earning his doctorate in archaeology at the University of Cincinnati with Carl Blegen, the slim, sandy-haired Greek scholar had dug at Troy, where he had acquired an unparalleled knowledge of the strategic straits by tramping through the Troad hunting for archaeological sites.After ‹ve seasons of digging , the athletic topographer could read and speak Turkish, Greek, German , French, and Italian. Moreover, he could read Ottoman Turkish in its Arabic script and had collaborated with Turks and coauthored a book in Turkish. He taught archaeology at Yale and had recently led a Yale expedition to southwestern Greece. In May, Young had casually inquired whether Sperling would consider going to the Near East. Although he was married Recruiting the Four Captains • 85 with two young sons, Sperling came to Washington to be...