The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the precursor to the modern day C.I.A.
And yes, that Julia Child, then Julia McWilliams, once worked for them before becoming a household name. This has nothing to do with money other than to show just how meandering a life can be.
Our Lady of the Kitchen [Vanity Fair] – “The mirror was always in the drawer, the little handheld signal mirror, to use if one is lost. It was standard issue for Americans working in the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.), the dashing precursor to the C.I.A., active during World War II. In 2001, when Julia Child’s entire kitchen was relocated from her house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the first floor of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, in Washington, D.C., the rescue mirror went, too. It is displayed on a wall in the exhibit, forever near the kitchen drawer where she kept it—a leap of light, an SOS, symbolic of the point in her life when she was found.”