Born: 1913, United States
Died: 2011
Country most active: United States, International
Also known as: Cordelia Dodson
The following is republished from the Central Intelligence Agency. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
In March of 1938, 25-year old American student Cordelia Dodson was in Vienna, Austria pursuing graduate work in German language and literature. She happened to be attending the opera in the evening of March 11, 1938, when Hitler’s troops invaded Austria.
She knew right then and there that her world would change forever.
As Cordelia would later say of that time: “Things just happened so fast. All of our civilian rights, the police system, and certain protections that everyone took for granted were just gone. I learned to hate the Nazis from that time on. They were so arrogant, so merciless, rounding up anti-Nazis all over town. Their persecution of the Jews was inhuman. It was all too much.”
She returned to the States and continued her studies, graduating from Reed College in 1941.
As the US entered World War II, Cordelia joined the war effort after seeing the horror of the Nazis first hand. She accepted a job with US Military intelligence, translating and analyzing air order of battle at the Pentagon. When she requested a transfer overseas she was turned down, so she resigned and joined the OSS.
Shortly after joining the OSS, she was assigned first to London, England, and then Bern, Switzerland, where she worked with future CIA Director Allen Dulles.
Cordelia also served in the top secret X-2 group, doing counter-intelligence work as well as handling sensitive international monetary transactions—and tracing deposits of Nazi gold.
Constantly traveling between England, France and Switzerland, she flew on numerous dangerous secret night flights. On one flight she found herself escorting Swiss nationals with German prisoners of war on the plane.
“So many things I did at that time I did without thinking,” recalled Cordelia, years later. “I just didn’t have time to think about fear.”
But there was a silver lining to her exhausting back-and-forth travel. On one of her trips to Switzerland, she met her future husband, fellow OSS officer William J. Hood.
Following the war, the couple stayed in Vienna and joined the newly-formed CIA. Cordelia and William eventually divorced, but Cordelia remained with the Agency, working in various locations in Central and Western Europe, until her retirement in 1980.