Built for the Office of Strategic Services, this tiny “M.B.” camera—no larger than its namesake, a matchbox—could be hidden in a man’s hand and used to take a picture under the cloak of lighting a cigarette.

Spy Games

By Evan Thomas

The Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare by John Lisle

It was said that the acronym for the Office of Strategic Services, O.S.S., stood for “Oh So Social” because the ranks of America’s wartime spy service attracted playboys, dilettantes, and young men and women with last names such as Vanderbilt and DuPont. But the operatives of the O.S.S. included some cold-blooded assassins and mad scientists as well.

Most of their plots failed, which is perhaps just as well. The brutal realities of defeating genocidal Nazi Germany and rapacious imperial Japan called for extreme measures, including, ultimately, the atomic bomb. But most policymakers in Washington were at least ambivalent about their deadly decisions. The “cloak-and-dagger boys” of the O.S.S. seemed to relish devilry.