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then told someone else with AUB connections that he was working in
typhus research and was hoping to open an agricultural school in Iraq.
Before long, these conflicting concoctions reached Cairo, prompting
Archie Crawford to observe: ‘Perhaps it would be well if Steve wrote him
a good strong letter to try and be consistent in his stories, not to tell too
much, etc. He is entirely too guileless to get away with lying at all success-
fully.’^40 Maybe Hoff ’s tendency to overlook the fact that his current nar-
rative was at odds with a previous one was simply due to distraction: ‘Steve
will remember the worries we had lest the good man would lose his stuffed
pocketbook because he is so absent-minded about his own personal
affairs,’ wrote Crawford.^41 Certainly, though he never seems to have
allowed the injustice of his situation to degrade his function as an agent,
Hoff spent his years of service in Iraq feeling stressed and demoralized by
the State Department’s refusal to move forward with the naturaliza-
tion process.
By January 1945, despite the prospect of the imminent recall of OSS
agents from the Middle East only months away, still no progress had been
made. Consequently, Lewis Leary felt that enough was enough: it was
time to intercede formally with Gordon Loud in Washington on behalf of
Hoff and his wife.^42 His suggestion was that Steve Penrose should consult
with OSS legal experts concerning Hoff ’s status and any pending legisla-
tion on special citizenship arrangements for people in Hoff ’s situation.
Leary had already promised Hoff ’s wife that Penrose would visit her state-
side to discuss things. He felt that it was an important morale problem,
and that OSS personnel had to feel confident about the service’s concern
with protecting their agents’ interests.^43 With matters still unresolved,
Hoff ’s morale seems nevertheless to have improved markedly as 1945
began, and the war’s end seemed tangibly near. The Tehran-based agent
Harold Lamb (TIMUR) noted during a visit to Baghdad that Hoff was in
fine spirits, full of energy and plans.^44 By contrast, Art Dayton seems to
have been showing signs of fatigue and declining morale, so much so that
there was even talk of separating him from his partner and allowing Hoff
to submit his reports direct to Cairo, circumventing Dayton’s normal edi-
torial function.^45 By mid-January, however, Dayton had anyway been
recalled to Washington, leaving his friend ‘Doc’ Hoff alone to run things
(or wind things down) in Baghdad.^46
Ultimately, after a few more years of teaching at Columbia, the Hoffs
returned permanently to Vienna in 1949, where ‘Doc’ Hoff lectured again
at his alma mater and occupied the university chair of psychiatry and neu-