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The Spy with a Limp The woman who retired from the CIA in 1966 could have been anyone’s favorite grandmother. She was, in fact, one of history’s most successful agents. Born in Baltimore, Virginia Hall studied languages and worked in the U.S. embassy in Warsaw, Poland.  Despite losing her left leg after a hunting accident, she joined the British Special Operations Executive during World War II and was sent to France to establish a spy network in Vichy. This she managed, also helping prisoners of war to escape. Pursued by the Nazis, she escaped by foot over the Pyrenees Mountains to Spain.

Virginia Hall of Special Operations Branch receiving the Distinguished Service Cross from General Donovan, September 1945.

 Virginia then joined “Wild Bill” Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services as a radio operator and returned to France. Told that the Nazi’s brutal secret police force, the Gestapo, was determined to find the “woman with the limp,” she taught herself to walk without one. At night, she trained and led French resistance forces in guerrilla warfare and sabotage, coordinating air-drops for the D-Day invasion of France on June 6, 1944.  In 1945, Virginia became the only woman civilian to be awarded America’s Distinguished Service Cross. After the war, she became one of the CIA’s first female operations officers, serving her country for another two decades.

T he N ational C ounterterrorism C enter

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