Heroic spy dies before being honored because McCain was sticking it to Shelby

WASHINGTON — While the presidential race and other elections dominated the headlines, the ongoing feud between Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) reached a new level.

In an attempt to stick it to Shelby, McCain held up a bill to honor veterans of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the modern CIA, with a Congressional Gold Medal. Among those whose service was slated to be honored was post-World War II spy Stephanie Rader. But Rader unfortunately passed away before McCain relented and allowed the bill honoring her service to pass.

Just after WWII, Rader obtained firsthand information on the Soviets in areas of Poland where literally no other American asset had access.

Here’s how The Daily Beast described one of her most famous missions in a lengthy profile piece published late last year:

The chief of mission in Berlin had classified documents he needed hand-delivered at once to the embassy in Warsaw. It wasn’t Rader’s job to know what was in the documents. But she knew that if the Soviets stopped her and found she was carrying classified U.S. government intelligence, they would immediately conclude she was a spy. Rader had already gotten word that the Soviets might have penetrated her cover. She’d been so cautious about her spy work that she refused to tell even her friends in Warsaw what she really did, fearful someone she trusted might be working for Moscow.

It had been like this for months in Poland: Rader, the only person for the essential job at hand, had to go where others couldn’t. Of the two OSS operatives in the country, she was the only one who spoke the language. Probably most of what U.S. intelligence knew about Soviet movements in Poland at the time came from Czech’s eyewitness reports and her network of sources. No wonder Berlin station thought she could handle this courier task.

But as she approached the checkpoint, and saw the Soviet security agents, Czech knew this could be her last mission.

She couldn’t run. They’d chase her. She couldn’t keep the documents hidden under her clothes. They’d find them. And when they did, Czech was certain she’d be bound for the gulag.

Czech kept walking toward the border crossing, her eyes on the Soviets agents. She calmly took out the papers, and turned to the man walking next to her, someone she was confident would alert no suspicion. “Take these,” she said, handing him the documents bound for Warsaw. She gave a name to whom they should be delivered.

As Rader feared, she was detained. But when the Soviets found no incriminating evidence, they had no grounds to keep her. She walked free, and as far as she knew, the secret papers that had nearly sealed her fate her were safely en route to the embassy.

For almost 70 years, Czech, now Rader, seems to have kept that story a secret. Along with this epilogue: Her senior OSS officers were so impressed with what one described as Czech’s “unusual coolness and clear thinking” that they recommended the War Department give her the Legion of Merit, a high honor that recognizes “exceptionally meritorious” work.

Rader never received that honor, and until her personnel file was declassified in 2008, very few people even knew of her clandestine exploits. Some of her family members and friends worked tirelessly to obtain for her the recognition she had deserved all those years. Senators Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) took up the cause and introduced a bill recognizing Rader and others whose service in the OSS had gone unrecognized for far too long.

But the bill was introduced in a committee chaired by Senator Shelby, apparently giving Senator McCain’s staff the impression it was his bill and offering them an opportunity to stick it to him.

McCain and Shelby have been feuding for years over everything from Russian rockets and Littoral Combat Ships to public park renovations and a study of flight patterns over Phoenix.

RELATED: John McCain really hates Alabama, but his attempts to screw the state keep failing

“McCain makes a lot of noise,” Shelby told Politico recently.

McCain at first denied putting a hold on the bill to honor OSS veterans, but then said the following day it was his office holding it up. “But I told my staff, lift the hold,” he said. “I don’t play those kind of games.”

Unfortunately “those kind of games” went on long enough that Rader passed away at the age of 100 without receiving the honor she has been due since she bravely conducted counterintelligence operations and evaded Soviet detection on the Polish countryside in the 1940s.