The first Cold War spy died in the USA

In the United States, former intelligence officer Irving Isaacson, who called himself “the first spy of the Cold War,” died at the age of 102. Isaacson died March 28 at a hospice facility in Auburn, Maine, his family said.

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A graduate of Harvard Law School, on the eve of World War II, Isaacson volunteered for the US National Guard. He was sent to the UK, where he attracted the attention of the leadership of the Office of Strategic Services (Office of Strategic Services, OSS), the first United States Intelligence Service, the predecessor of the CIA. Soon, by order of the OSS, Isaacson was abandoned in the Netherlands to assist the resistance movement, writes NewsRu.com

According to his son, Mark Isaacson, Irving loved working for the OSS: “He was attracted to the adventure, the lack of strict rules and the opportunity to act on his own.”

After the end of the war, Isaacson went on his own initiative to East Germany to “spy on the Soviets” with his friend, Staff Sergeant Fred Sweetgall. Sweetgall spoke several languages ​​fluently, including Russian.

Friends wandered through Eastern Europe, drank vodka and collected information about the movements of Soviet troops, fraternizing with Russian officers, writes Portland Press Herald. Their reports were often on the table of US President Harry Truman.

Decades later, Isaacson wrote and published a book of his memoirs about this period, Memoirs of an Amateur Spy. In this book, he called himself “the first spy of the Cold War.”

In 1945, in Leipzig, Irving met his future wife, Jutka (Judith) Magyar, a Hungarian Jew who miraculously survived Auschwitz and was later transferred to the Hessisch-Lichtenau labor camp in Germany. “She was tall and beautiful. He was short, strong and handsome. They were married in the bombed Nuremberg City Hall on December 24, 1945,” recalls Irving and Judith’s family.

In the late forties, Irving returned to Lewiston, Alabama, where he joined his father, Peter Isaacson, in the law firm of Brann and Isaacson. This company still exists today.

Isaacson was involved in commercial and corporate law for 65 years. He spent his free time in the forge workshop, working on metal, until, at the age of 95, he felt that the hammer became heavy for him.

The couple raised three children; grandchildren and great-grandchildren grew up in Irving and Judith's house. When asked how long they had been married, the couple always answered: “Not for long.” Judith died in 2015, aged 90. Isaacson's daughter, Ilona Bell, said her father attributed his longevity to three main reasons: he never worried unnecessarily, he never complained about anything, and he loved strength training. According to his daughter, Irving “disdained public opinion and people with pretensions.”

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