“The dirty tricks department” tells the story, methods and men of the OSS, the Washington intelligence agency forerunner of the CIA
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BERLIN — Ad Adolf Hitlerwhich according to a Harvard psychological study had a “strong female component”, they wanted to put estrogen in his meals, so that his mustache would fall off, his voice would become shrill and above all his breasts would grow. A Führer with boobs would hardly have exerted his charisma on the Germans any longer. In Japan, they planned to introduce hundreds of foxes painted in radioactive phosphorescent paint, which would terrorize soldiers and civilians, favoring the American victory. Another plan envisaged that the country of Tenno was invaded by thousands of kamikaze bats, dropped from airplanes, under whose wings were fixed devices that would set fire to houses and wooden buildings.
They weren’t ideas for a movie script, nor the ramblings of a disturbed mind. But some of the projects conceived and in many cases tested by a special section of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIAcreated in 1942 to coordinate intelligence and intensify hybrid warfare against the Axis powers.
In the summer of that year, Stanley Lowell, a brilliant chemist known for his volcanic mind and passion for the strangest inventions, was summoned to Washington by William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the general Roosevelt had wanted to lead the new secret service. After making him wait for hours in a cell, Donovan entered and without introducing himself said to him: “You know Sherlock Holmes, of course. I need Professor Moriarty for my staff. I think she might be.”
For Lowell it was the meeting of life. From that moment he became head of a secret group, the Research & Development Branch, tasked with developing clandestine techniques and devices to deceive, terrorize, destabilize and destroy the enemy. Donovan would not be disappointed. In the nearly three years that she operated under Lowell’s leadership, the unit produced everything: silenced guns, invisible inks, pens that fired, explosives disguised as candy or lumps of coal, truth serums, devices to derail trains, poisoned pills with no smell or taste, compasses hidden in uniform buttons, briefcases that exploded when opened. Sound familiar? Yes. Lowell looks like the real-life version of Q, the tech-savvy wizard from the James Bond novels and movies. And indeed, in those years, the future creator of 007, Ian Fleming, worked for British intelligence, which was also engaged in unorthodox actions.
Not all projects were successful. Operation Fantasia, that of the luminescent foxes, was abandoned after a group of suitably painted canids were thrown into the Chesapeake Bay off Washington, but by the time they managed to get ashore the dye had almost all been washed away. The female hormone plan for Hitler made no headway, either. And it was abandoned Project Capricious, who wanted to spread anthrax among German troops in Spanish Morocco using flies. On the other hand, launched on Japan, a few dozen kamikaze bats survived and managed to set fire to some buildings and the control tower of an air base. But the majority died of the cold.
The story of Lowell’s unit is now being told by the American historian John Lisle, in a book that has just been released by St. Martin Press. «The Dirty Tricks Department», the Department of Dirty Tricks is the fascinating and documented reconstruction of a world of shadows, populated by double agents, heroes, weirdos and mad scientists, in that no-holds-barred fight against Nazism that was the Second World War. But it’s also a reflection on the moral dilemmas and darker legacies of those businesses. An example for all, it was the research on truth serum of the Lowell department that inspired in the 1950s the clandestine program of experiments Mk-Ultraone of the CIA’s most infamous projects, in which hundreds of prisoners, mentally ill and even unwitting citizens were subjected to serums, drugs such as LSD, sound and electromagnetic waves, torture techniques, to force their confessions through mind control.
The book is full of almost unbelievable anecdotes. Like when Donovan, to test the effectiveness of a silenced pistol, walked into the Oval Office where Roosevelt was dictating a letter and behind him fired 10 shots at a bag of sand he was carrying. The president didn’t notice a thing, only turning to him when he smelled gunpowder. Or that of Lowell, who during a presentation of his new gadgets to US military leaders casually threw a Hedy into the trash, a firecracker to create panic so called by Hedy Lamarr, an explosive actress and the first woman to act naked in a film. The device exploded with a deafening bang and all the generals fled.
March 15, 2023 (change March 15, 2023 | 23:59)
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