{"id":8912,"date":"2012-02-09T19:10:15","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T03:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=8912"},"modified":"2012-12-02T20:31:01","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T04:31:01","slug":"former-major-league-baseball-player-moe-berg-was-once-a-secret-agent-in-the-predecessor-to-the-cia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2012\/02\/former-major-league-baseball-player-moe-berg-was-once-a-secret-agent-in-the-predecessor-to-the-cia\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Major League Baseball Player Moe Berg was Once a Secret Agent in the Predecessor to the CIA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today I found out<\/a> former MLB player Moe Berg was once a secret agent in the predecessor to the CIA.<\/p>\n

Morris “Moe” Berg was originally recruited to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA, in August of 1943 when he was 41 years old and had been retired from baseball for about four years.\u00a0 At the time of his recruitment, he had been working for the Office of Internal-American Affairs, stationed primarily in South America, with his job being to monitor the physical fitness levels of U.S. troops there.\u00a0 The OSS recruited him primarily for his ability to fluently speak multiple languages with little to no accent.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Among the languages he spoke were: German, Italian, French, Spanish, Japanese, Greek, Russian, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Latin, among others.<\/p>\n

At first, Berg served primarily as an operations officer, but was soon recruited into the Secret Intelligence division of the OSS.\u00a0 In this position, Berg was often parachuted behind enemy lines to fulfill his various missions, such as evaluating which resistant groups were most effective and providing them aid through the OSS.\u00a0 For instance, he was once dropped into occupied Norway where he established contact with Norwegian guerrilla fighters.\u00a0 While there, he helped them destroy a German facility that was attempting to build an atomic bomb.\u00a0 He was also sent to the Soviet Union on a few intelligence gathering missions.<\/p>\n

Another interesting mission, which was his last with the OSS, Project Larson, was one where he was trained in nuclear physics in order that he could pose as a Swiss physicist.\u00a0 During this mission, he was tasked with trying to convince various top European physicists and engineers to move to the United States, as well as try to buddy up to them in order to gather information.\u00a0 Principle among his information gathering goals was to learn everything he could about certain key German physicists, such as Carl Friedrich von Weizs\u00e4cker and Werner Heisenberg, the head of Germany’s atomic-bomb project.\u00a0 The U.S. particularly wanted information on how far along Germany was in the development of a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n

Nearing the end of this mission in 1944, he was sent to a lecture given by Heisenberg in Switzerland.\u00a0 At this lecture, he was to determine from it if Germany was close to being able to create a nuclear bomb.\u00a0 If after Heisenberg’s lecture, Berg felt the Germans were close, he had instructions to murder Heisenberg and if he wasn’t able to escape after the assassination, to take a cyanide pill to avoid being interrogated.\u00a0 Lucky for Heisenberg (and possibly for Berg), he didn’t think the Germans were close and so didn’t attempt to kill him.\u00a0 Although, one would think most would come up with that assessment if the price of concluding they were close was then to have to murder someone and possibly commit suicide after.\u00a0 Berg continued traveling around Europe gathering information for another four months before returning to the U.S. and resigning from the OSS.<\/p>\n

Six years later, after turning down two offers to coach for the White Sox and Red Sox (the latter team which he had already once helped coach for two years), Berg attempted to join the CIA, particularly wanting to be sent to Israel, as he was Jewish, but his request was denied.\u00a0 However, a year later the CIA did hire him, wanting him to reestablish contact with various acquaintances of his in Europe in order to gather information for the U.S. on the Soviet Union, particularly on their nuclear program.\u00a0 Berg accepted this mission, but supposedly ultimately did nothing but take the $10,000 offered, providing no information to the CIA and he was subsequently let go after two years.<\/p>\n

Previous to becoming an agent for the OSS, it is thought by some of his biographers that Berg may have already been involved in spying for the U.S., though he always denied this.\u00a0 For instance, while still a baseball player, he was invited to join with Major League Baseball All Stars, such as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, to travel to Japan (Berg’s second such trip to Japan, the first of which he stayed behind after the other players left and spent a couple months traveling around Japan, China, Siam, India, Egypt and Berlin, among other countries).\u00a0 What makes his selection for this second trip to Japan even more curious is that Berg was a mediocre player and all the rest invited were All-Stars.<\/p>\n

Further, while in Japan this second time, Berg bluffed his way into the tallest building in Tokyo, a hospital, and managed to sneak onto the roof.\u00a0 He had a motion picture camera hidden with him and he managed to get shots of all of Tokyo, which were later given to the U.S. government.\u00a0 Particularly, these shots were later used by the U.S. when planning bombing raids on Tokyo during WWII.\u00a0 Once again, after the other players left to return to the U.S., he stayed behind and this time traveled to the Philippines, Korea, and Moscow.\u00a0 He also conspicuously traveled around a lot to other countries in the off-seasons, such as spending one off-season in Paris as an academic student, instead of working on his hitting, as he was supposed to be doing.\u00a0 All this has given rise to rumors that he had been actively spying for the U.S. long before he retired, though, again, he always denied this claim and there is very little direct evidence other than taking film of Tokyo, which he may have just been doing on his own. Further, Berg later stated he only offered the footage he had taken of Tokyo to the U.S. after he was hired on with the OSS and they had not previously known about it.\u00a0 So it is probable he simple just liked to travel and really wasn’t spying for the United States before being hired by the OSS.<\/p>\n

Bonus<\/span> Facts:<\/p>\n