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tions clear, or disobeyed instructions. It is a blow, and a very discouraging
one. We are a bunch of amateurs trying to do a professional job, and
though we can laugh at some slips our Allied cousins make, we permit
ruinous howlers to take place. If we expect results—production—we have
to get field representatives, and if they are to be effective, they must
“belong”—be natural, that is, have cover. And for that, effective and con-
tinually consistent measures have to be taken.’ Crawford went on to
question whether Washington was giving US diplomats abroad—and even
British intelligence in London—sufficient confidential warning of the
imminent arrival in their area of OSS agents, so that they were cleared in
advance and their cover was protected.^36
Hoff himself appears to have become so despondent that, according to
Dayton, he wanted to go back to America or ‘be dropped [parachuted]
into Vienna.’ He wrote to his wife, asking her to see about getting his job
back at Columbia University. Even so, he seems to have kept pace with his
own powerful work ethic. ‘He is doing an excellent job,’ wrote Dayton to
Crawford, ‘working hard and long ... I am more than fond of him person-
ally, and our teamwork couldn’t be happier. But if only this State business
could be cleared up one way or the other.’^37 In the field, Hoff ’s contacts
proved to be numerous and important. The Iraqi prime minister, Nuri as-
Said, and the Regent, Emir Abdulillah, were close friends of his, and Hoff
knew many other senior Iraqi politicians and officials. He is said to have
provided Steve Penrose with a running commentary on Iraqi political
affairs. Much later on, in April 1944, the USAAF’s decision to extend
their air raids on Berlin to include the afternoon hours apparently resulted
from a report received by Hoff from one of his Baghdad sources, a neutral
diplomat who had learnt that Berliners were managing to do their jobs
during the afternoon when there were no bombers overhead. Hoff was
specifically commended by the White House for obtaining this report.^38
Late in the war, Archie Roosevelt of G2 (US military intelligence)
encountered ‘Doc’ Hoff, who was, according to Roosevelt, liked by every-
one—a ‘jolly, rotund figure’ with a Viennese accent—widely known in
Baghdad society, including among Arab Baghdadi families.^39
Notwithstanding having his cover blown by the carelessness of others,
Hoff himself seems to have endangered it, not by indiscretion—he was
too wary for that—but by inconsistency, inventing his own cover legends
and then getting them muddled up. For example, having told some peo-
ple at AUB that he was hoping to start a graduate medical-research estab-
lishment in Baghdad with US funding and State Department sanction, he
OH SO SOCIAL