The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War—A Tragedy in Three Acts

by Scott Anderson

While it may seem odd to an outsider, an intelligence agency is basically a specialized service provider, its clients being the various other governmental agencies to which it passes information; indeed, the modern-day CIA uses this precise terminology of “client” and “product” in describing its function. And just as with any other kind of service provider, an intelligence agency needs to furnish those products that its clients want or think they need, or suffer the consequences. In the summer of 1945, the information most desired by the OSS client base—both governmental agencies back in Washington, and the various American military formations in Germany—tended to be of very local and immediate concern: the status of the vaunted Nazi underground diehards known as the Werewolves; the hunt for fugitive war criminals; the movement of refugees.