![]() Morris "Mo" BergTrading PlacesI got my law degree and was admitted to the New York State bar in 1928. I joined the law firm of Satterlee and Canfield and guess what--I still kept playing for the White Sox! In 1931, after I got injured, the Sox traded me to the Cleveland Indians. My next trade was to the Washington Senators. Little did I know that everything I had done in my life had prepared me for an entirely different game. It wasn't so much the team I got traded to, it was the location of the team, Washington, that would change my life forever. Because I was a baseball player with an unusual list of talents, I was always being invited to embassy dinners and parties; quite soon I became very well known in this town. I played with the Senators until 1934; that same year I toured Japan with an American all-star baseball team. Our government asked me to make some films of Tokyo Harbor and some military installations while I was there. I was getting my first taste of intelligence gathering. I was hooked! I kept my hand in baseball, playing and coaching for the Boston Red Sox until 1941, but I wanted to do more with my life and contribute more to my country. I got another chance when I was asked to tour Latin America for the Office of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, an agency set up to counter (German, Italian, and Japanese) propaganda in Latin America. My natural ability in languages helped me to meet government officials, journalists, and businessmen, and I collected much useful information from these meetings. My really big break came in 1943 when I was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services as a civilian employee. My first assignment was a secret mission to Yugoslavia to assess the strength of the two rival leaders there, Draza Mihajlovic and Joseph Broz Tito. I reported that Tito was stronger, and I was right. General William Donovan, the head of the OSS, then placed me on the AZUSA project. This project looked at the enemy's progress in developing nuclear weapons. I interviewed scientists in Rome two days after the city was liberated by US troops to see how far the Italians had progressed in their research. I also entered German-occupied Norway as part of an Allied effort to find and destroy a heavy-water plant. I bluffed my way past Russian guards in Czechoslovakia by holding up a letter with a large red star on it--this "document" was actually a piece of oil company stationary. I traveled to Switzerland and found out from a visiting German scientist not only how far along the Germans were in developing their weapons of mass destruction, but also the location of the German scientists. This information came in handy after the fall of Germany; Allied forces found the scientists and took them to England before Soviet forces could find them. I also managed to learn how far the enemy had progressed in high-speed aeronautics and bacteriological warfare. Learning about these things also made me realize how fast our world was changing and that it would never be the same after the war. I stayed with the OSS until it was dissolved in 1945. Later, I served on the staff of NATO's (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Advisory Group for Aeronautical Research and Development. You never know what life is going to hold for you: one day you're a first baseman, next day a catcher; one day a Wall Street lawyer and next day a spy! Spying isn't always a career you prepare for, like playing professional baseball or being a lawyer. I guess that's what I liked about the OSS, so many different people with so many different backgrounds brought together into a profession with one common thread, their love of country. Hey, if you ever visit Cooperstown, NY, stop by my plaque and display at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Maybe I couldn't hit like Babe Ruth, but I spoke more languages than he did! Sources: O'Toole, G.J.A. Encyclopedia of American Intelligence and Espionage. New York and Oxford: Facts on File, 1988. |
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