The former OSS headquarters on Observatory Hill in Washington. (N/A/OSS Society)

William “Wild Bill” Donovan was the wartime head of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency.

For a few former spies, it was one last mission: protecting the birthplace of the country’s modern intelligence apparatus from being bulldozed in Washington’s pell-mell development. This month, they pulled it off when a small cluster of Foggy Bottom buildings, where early agents

By Steve Hendrix The Washington Post 1-26-17

invented the pencil pistol and other tricks to bedevil Hitler, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Observatory Hill site not far from the Kennedy Center was the wartime headquarters of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, and had been slated for redevelopment as part of a State Department expansion.