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. Although he played with 5 major league teams from 1923 to 1939,   
   he was a very mediocre ball player. He was regarded as the brainiest   
   ballplayer of all time. In fact Casey Stengel once said: "That is the   
   strangest man ever to play baseball." When all the baseball stars went to   
   Japan, Moe Berg went with them and many people wondered why he went with "the   
   team" Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.   
       
   The answer was simple: Moe Berg was a Unites States spy working undercover   
   with the CIA.   
       
   Moe spoke 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.   
       
   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 at age four.   
       
   His father disapproved and never once watched his son play. In Barringer High   
   School, Moe learned Latin, Greek and French. Moe read at least 10 newspapers   
   every day.   
       
   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 Freedom - 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   
       
   Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest award to be awarded to civilians   
   during wartime)   
       
   Moe Berg's baseball card is the only card on display at the CIA Headquarters.     
       
   Regards,   
       
   Roger   
      
   --- D'Bridge 3.99   
    * Origin: NCS BBS - Houma, LoUiSiAna (1:3828/7)