The Secret War Against Hitler

During World War II, Casey, the late CIA director, was a staff officer in the Office of Strategic Services' London branch, in charge of sending agents behind enemy lines. The most interesting passages in this bland account describe the difficulty of getting the high command to pay attention to information gathered by those agents. Casey regrets that the OSS, forerunner of the CIA, was unable to exploit the political advantages of the failed putsch against Hitler on July 20, 1944; he also bemoans the tardy penetration of Germany by OSS agents. In his opinion, the OSS ``should have and could have'' exploded the myth of the Bavarian redoubt, the Alpine retreat from which Hitler supposedly expected to fight on indefinitely. Casey's summary of OSS activities from 1943 to the end of the war in Europe is disappointingly reticent.