JOHN FREEMAN “JACK” HASEY (3 November 1916 - 9 May 2005) was an American captain in the French Foreign Legion during World War II and a senior operations officer with the CIA afterwards. Hasey was one of only four Americans, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, to have been named a Companion of the Ordre de la Libération, France’s highest World War II honor.
Born in Brockton, Massachusetts, he graduated from Columbia University and headed to France in 1936, where he intended to study at the Sorbonne, but instead became a salesman for the French jeweler Cartier.
When the Russo-Finnish War broke out in 1939, Hasey, along with other Americans, formed an ambulance unit, the Iroquois Ambulance Corps, and headed to the war front to help aid the Finns, for which he was later awarded the Liberty Cross. With the German invasion of Western Europe, he volunteered to join the Free French Forces led by General Charles de Gaulle. During fighting around Damascus, Syria on June 20, 1941, Hasey was critically wounded, and de Gaulle honoured him. After his recovery, Hasey became a liaison between de Gaulle and Eisenhower. In August 1943, he became an aide-de-camp on the staff of General Marie Pierre Koenig, remaining during his term as military Governor of Paris.
In 1950, he joined the CIA and worked in 17 countries until his retirement in 1974. In 1996, French President Jacques Chirac named him an officer in the Légion d’honneur. He died in 2005, aged 88.
JOSEPH FRANCIS DINNEEN (1897 - April 30, 1964) was an American author, lecturer and a former New England crime reporter for The Boston Globe. He began his newspaper career on the old Boston Record in 1919 after three years at Suffolk Law School. He is well known for his stories of the $1.2 million Brinks robbery in 1950. He is credited with writing six books, including Anatomy of a Crime, which was made into the movie, “Six Bridges to Cross.” He died in 1964, aged 67.
