Here's a bit of history that you may have never known...

When baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went on tour in baseball-crazy Japan in 1934, some fans wondered why a third-string catcher named Moe Berg was included.

The answer was simple: Berg was a US spy.

Speaking 15 languages - including Japanese - Moe Berg had two loves: baseball and spying.

In Tokyo, garbed in a kimono, Berg took flowers to the daughter of an American diplomat being treated in St. Luke's Hospital - the tallest building in the Japanese capital.

He never delivered the flowers. The ball-player ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key features: the harbor, military installations, railway yards, etc.

Eight years later, General Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg's films in planning his spectacular raid on Tokyo.

Catcher Moe Berg

Berg's father, Bernard Berg, a pharmacist in Newark, New Jersey, taught his son Hebrew and Yiddish. Moe, against his wishes, began playing baseball on the street aged four.

His father disapproved and never once watched his son play. In Barringer High School , Moe learned Latin, Greek and French.

He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton - having added Spanish, Italian, German and Sanskrit to his linguistic quiver.

During further studies at the Sorbonne, in Paris , and Columbia Law School , he picked up Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arabic, Portuguese and Hungarian - 15 languages in all, plus some regional dialects.

While playing baseball for Princeton University , Moe Berg would describe plays in Latin or Sanskrit.

Tito's partisans

During World War II, he was parachuted into Yugoslavia to assess the value to the war effort of the two groups of partisans there. He reported back that Marshall Tito's forces were widely supported by the people and Winston Churchill ordered all-out support for the Yugoslav underground fighter, rather than Mihajlovic's Serbians.

The parachute jump at age 41 undoubtedly was a challenge. But there was more to come in that same year.

Berg penetrated German-held Norway , met with members of the underground and located a secret heavy water plant - part of the Nazis' effort to build an atomic bomb.

His information guided the Royal Air Force in a bombing raid to destroy the plant.

The R.A.F. destroys the Norwegian heavy water plant targeted by Moe Berg.

There still remained the question of how far had the Nazis progressed in the race to build the first Atomic bomb. If the Nazis were successful, they would win the war. Berg (under the code name "Remus") was sent to Switzerland to hear leading German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Laureate, lecture and determine if the Nazis were close to building an A-bomb. Moe managed to slip past the SS guards at the auditorium, posing as a Swiss graduate student.
The spy carried in his pocket a pistol and a cyanide pill.
If the German indicated the Nazis were close to building a weapon, Berg was to shoot him - and then swallow the cyanide pill.

Moe, sitting in the front row, determined that the Germans were nowhere near their goal, so he complimented Heisenberg on his speech and walked him back to his hotel.

Werner Heisenberg - he blocked the Nazis from acquiring an atomic bomb.

Moe Berg's report was distributed to Britain's Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key figures in the team developing the Atomic Bomb. Roosevelt responded: "Give my regards to the catcher."

Most of Germany 's leading physicists had been Jewish and had fled the Nazis mainly to Britain and the United States . After the war, Moe Berg was awarded the Medal of Merit - America 's highest honor for a civilian in wartime. But Berg refused to accept, as he couldn't tell people about his exploits.
After his death, his sister accepted the Medal and it hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown ,
March 2,1902-----May 29, 1972
(end)

Very cool !


WOLVERINES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well yeah, but how were his stats at the plate? And how disappointed was the ambassadors daughter?;)

One hopes Moe was to try and escape before using the cyanide pill, otherwise why not just shoot himself with the pistol?

Things worked different back then... the greater good was more important. The cyanide pill was standard stuff.

Today we have Special forces that do special things... with special gadgets.
Regardless... these folks get the things done that need to be done.

They would truly qualify as:

It's easier to get a bullet out than replacing all the blood from a fast acting poison. Does not make a loud noise and easier to conceal.

God Bless them too! Operating undercover with the likes of Patrick (leaky) Leahy that got an agent killed by leaking data to a news source .
Then there is Kerry who constantly mentioned a name that Bolton was trying to get him not to mention. The agent's cover was blown.
Then all the of the White House that outed Seal Team six.

Some data you may not know: Leahy "inadvertently"(my big fat white ass!-RayNAiken) disclosed a top-secret communications intercept during a 1985 television interview. The intercept had made possible the capture of the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered a American citizen. But Leahy's leak cost the life of at least one Egyptian "asset" involved in the operation.

In July 1987, it was reported that Leahy leaked secret information about a 1986 covert operation planned by the Reagan administration to topple Libya's Moammar Gaddhafi. US intelligence officials stated that Leahy sent a written threat to expose the operation directly to then-CIA Director William Casey. Weeks later, news of the secret plan turned up in the Washington Post, causing it to be aborted.

He was later disgraced and thrown off the Senate Intelligence Committee. The son of a bitch should have been shot.

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John ... I really liked the Moe Berg story !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

seven million have signed up for o care! yay now grand maw can just take the pill when the gov denies her. yay gov !

Interesting contrast...

A story of a man that was brilliant by any measure, who risked his life and career more than once (several times) for his beliefs in freedom and his country...

and

A bunch of worthless leeches that live off others... by legislation.


While this is not a very good attitude... the idea of the latter taking a pill and no longer being a tax burden... well other than it violates lots of points of the founding documents... is not a bad idea... I would not vote for it, but if it happens... well...
Note I am not referring to folks who were forced onto OBcare... rather folks who had a choice and chose the lazy road.

You guys DID realize I was being sarcastic....right?

Moe was an outstanding American.
As for the cyanide, no one is digging a bullet out of your brain if you shoot yourself through the roof of your mouth and saving you for later interrogation. Just saying I would rather eat a bullet than some possibly long lasting cyanide that a lab rat who hasn't eaten one tells me will be quick and painless....and he already had the gun.

A few million signed up, But do thaY still think it's "free" Bet they ALL reneg on the payments.
BUCK OFAMA

KEEP YOUR WEAPONS CLEAN AND YOUR POWDER DRY GENTLEMEN !

THE END IS ANEAREN !

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ MOTHER F@&$%#'s

"Veritas , Aequitas"

FORNICATEUM !!!!!

WOLVERINES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!