Moe Berg 1902-1972

A Major League baseball player for fifteen seasons, Moe Berg has been called "quite possibly the best educated man ever to play in the majors." He graduated from Princeton University, (where he played shortstop), studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and earned a law degree from Columbia University. Berg played in the Major Leagues for fifteen seasons and was picked for a 1934 Major League All-Star team that traveled to Japan. While in Tokyo, Berg, who spoke Japanese, slipped away and took covert movies of the skyline, harbor, and munitions facilities. The movies are presumed to have been used to plan U.S. bombing raids over Tokyo in 1942. Berg's playing career ended in 1939 and after America entered World War II he began working for the OSS, the predecessor agency of the CIA, helping to arrange for the capture of several prominent German scientists reportedly developing an atomic bomb. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom for his espionage work in 1946 but refused to accept it.