When perusing the National Archives, Special Forces Green Beret Jacek Waliszewski stumbled across a book that was written in 1946 but was never published. The book is about the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the agency that preceded the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). And while there have been several books about the OSS in the years since the end of World War II, the one he found was written by an actual secret agent just prior to the dissolving of the OSS. The contents of the book were re-classified by the CIA, after it was formed, and kept hidden in the archives since then.
Once all documents involving OSS were de-classified in the 1980s, more stories started coming out about them. But this original memoir, written by Joseph S. Kosky as told by an actual, former agent named Steven Bizic, stayed in the archives, and never saw publication until Waliszewski was able to obtain a copy. Through some painstaking transcription, Waliszewski was able to go through and clean up the grammar and some language, but still kept the story intact as it was originally told.
“Code Name: Spike” goes behind the scenes of the OSS and explores the formation of the agency, and how active and involved it was during World War II. The book explores a secret mission that Bizic and others embarked on in 1944 in Southern Europe. Bizic typed out all his notes on a typewriter and even clandestinely took pictures of the events occurring. Some of the insights the book reveals damning information about certain people, including those who would later become high-ranking generals in Macedonia.
“I’m holding this memoir and I’m like, ‘I think this could reasonably be– 1946 was when it was originally coming out – one of, if not, the first memoirs of the OSS.’ Here I am, holding an OSS memoir, written in 1946, one year before the CIA was created, and I’m like, ‘This memoir shouldn’t exist, because these weren’t written until the 1980s. But it does exist, and I’m holding it.’”
Waliszewski is coming to the end of a 20-year career with the Green Berets, and reading this memoir, originally named “Pokret,” allowed him to reflect on his job and the reasoning behind his duties.
“As a Green Beret, my job is to go ‘behind enemy lines’ or work with resistance. It turns out, 80 years earlier, he wrote word for word how to do it and that he was doing it. Now me, at the tail end of my career, I get to reflect all the way back in time through this memoir and see why I was trained to do the things I was supposed to do.”
You can listen to the full interview by downloading the podcast above, or you can watch the interview in video form below.
To learn more about the book, be sure to visit the official website. And if you pre-order a copy now until June 5th, Waliszewski will sign it and have it delivered in advance of the June 23rd release date. You can also find out more about Waliszewski and the other books he has written by visiting his official website.
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Jacek Waliszewski | Uncovering the First Post-War OSS Memoir