The Saga of Sock I

John Grombach, Frank Wisner and the Intelligence Southern Bloc

Over the past couple years, I’ve developed a fascination with two American Spy Viceroys from the 1940’s & 1950’s—Frank Gardiner Wisner and John V “Frenchy” Grombach. Both of them headed intelligence agencies you’ve probably never heard of; OSS veteran Wisner ran the Office of Policy Coordination, a sort of proto-CIA operations directorate in the days before CIA (and indeed went on to run CIA’s plans directorate), while Grombach ran the Army’s crown jewel intelligence organization called “The Pond”—an ultra secret Army shop set up by the the man the Army considered God’s own representative on earth, General George Catlett Marshall, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia and the Chief of Staff of the Army.