Female spy finally honored for post-WWII work

Stephanie Czech Rader did important undercover espionage work during the years immediately after WWII in Soviet-dominated Poland. She took significant risks. But for decades, no one knew she had worked for the organization that predated the CIA.

Last week, Rader finally received the medal denied her 70 years before.

During a funeral service at Arlington National Cemetery, Rader received full military honors and was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit for “exceptionally meritorious” service. Rader, a resident of Alexandria, Va., and a native of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., died Jan. 21 at the age of 100.

Born to Polish immigrants, Rader showed academic promise in school, winning a full scholarship to Cornell University where she graduated in 1937 with a degree in Chemistry, according to an obituary in The Washington Post. She joined the Women’s Auxiliary Corps in 1942 and received an officer’s commission.

Rader’s Ivy League credentials and her fluent Polish caught the attention of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). She was trained as a spy and officially assigned as a clerk at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw in the fall of 1945. But her real assignment was to report on Soviet troop movements.

Her Polish language skills and mannerisms allowed her to travel freely throughout postwar Poland, and she often went about the country unaccompanied under the pretense of searching for news of family members, according to The Post. She brought back “considerable” intelligence, not only on Soviet troop movements but information on Polish security forces as well as economic and political data.

During one assignment as a courier between Berlin and Warsaw, she was almost captured at the border with sensitive documents but was able to pass them to another traveler just as she approached the checkpoint. Although never arrested, she was subjected to intensified surveillance for the remainder of her tour of duty.

When her superiors offered her a gun for protection, she refused it.

“What was I going to do with a dumb gun?” according to Charles Pinck, president of The OSS Society in Falls Church.

“Like many of those who served so heroically in the OSS, she was never properly recognized for her heroism,” Pinck told The Post. “When the OSS personnel records were declassified in 2008, we learned that she had been nominated for the Legion of Merit. She never received it.”

The OSS Society began to lobby for her to receive the award, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., also advocated for her. The Army announced last month that Rader would get the award posthumously.

Rader’s husband of 57 years, William S. Rader, was a decorated WWII bombing commander who retired as an Air Force brigadier general and himself received the Legion of Merit. He died in 2003.

Although Rader maintained decades of silence about her exploits, she did receive public accolades several years prior to her death, according to The Post obituary. In 2012, the OSS Society named her the inaugural recipient of its Virginia Hall Award, after the intrepid spy who helped Resistance fighters during WWII.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.