Julia Child - WW II Secret Agent

According to this Associated Press article in the Washington Post, the National Archives released, for the first time, over 35,000 personnel files of employees who worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during WW II.  The OSS was the first national level intelligence agency of the United States.  It's hard to believe, but Julia Child's file was among them.  I have the feeling however, the article title (and my post title) are misleading.  All of these 35,000 personnel were not a part of a "vast spy network."  Most were probably administrative personnel who were in the background doing those ordinary jobs necessary to keep a government agency running.  Calling all of these people spies is like calling every employee of the CIA a spy or every employee of the FBI a Special Agent - it's just not true.  If you think about it, back then every organizational process needed scores of people to manage all of the administrative functions from resourcing, to personnel, to communications and many others.  Of course all of these processes generated tons of paper requiring a big work force to move it. This had not changed very much...while the government today is completely networked and automated, we still somehow create more paper than most would believe possible - I guess this is just what the federal government does.

The release of these documents also creates a valuable genealogy resource for some people.  It sounds like they include some good descriptive information.

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