In 1997 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with barely concealed reluctance, turned over an unusually large number of long-classified documents to the National Archives (NARA). The bulk of these papers had been accumulated in the last three years of World War II by the CIA's precursor organization, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), America's first spy agency. A promiscuous band of castaway career officers, freelance adventurers, and a few idealists led by a larger-than-life American hero called Wild Bill (General William J. Donovan) had compiled a record of high-minded derring-do but one that was far from unblemished. Such an assessment had already emerged from the main body of the agency's files declassified between 1975 and 1996, but not before the 1997 documents had been pulled from their folders for continued concealment from public scrutiny. Invoking a 1947 act of Congress shielding “sources and methods” of intelligence operations from disclosure, the heirs of the OSS had found a way to rebury anything that might reasonably claim the sources-and–methods exemption. There they would have moldered for an eternity had it not been for the passage of the anti-cover-up Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in 1998.

Pried loose from what one mainstream daily called the “white-knuckled grip” of the CIA, the secrets considered most precious seemed certain to cast new light on the wartime agency, but not luster. The sheer quantity of these withdrawn documents held out a promise of surprises.