11. Baseball player Moe Berg spied for the OSS and CIA
Contrary to popular belief, the baseball career of Moe Berg was over when the OSS approached him to work for them in Europe. Berg was a polyglot, having studied seven languages at Princeton University. Knowledge of languages was and remains a useful tool in spycraft. The OSS sent Berg on missions to Europe during World War II. He was used to obtaining information regarding partisan resistance groups in the Balkans. He was also dispatched to learn as much as possible from physicists and scientists about the state of the German nuclear research program. Berg made the determination on his own that the Germans were not close to building an atomic bomb after attending several lectures and talking with physicists.
After the war, the OSS was replaced by the CIA. Berg, who was Jewish, approached the CIA about working for them in Israel. He was turned down. In 1952, Berg was sent to Europe by the CIA with orders to learn all he could about the hydrogen bomb project underway in the Soviet Union. Berg traveled to Europe, interviewed those of his former contacts he could find, and returned to the United States. The CIA officer responsible for the operation claimed that Berg had nothing to report, and that the mission had been a failure and a waste of money. In 1955 the Soviets detonated their first thermonuclear device, a major event in the ongoing Cold War.