When he set out to form a secret intelligence agency for President Roosevelt in 1941, “Wild Bill” Donovan made little effort to curb his own characteristic receptivity to the new, the different, and even the unorthodox. Completely in character, he took up with quick enthusiasm the novel idea that scholars—those dreamy inhabitants of ivory towers—would be ideal for the job. He believed that by searching through the Library of Congress and through the files of the many government agencies these men could uncover much of the information for which secret agents risked their lives. In a sense, he dedicated the Research and Analysis Branch of the wartime Office of Strategic Services to the task of making the romantic secret agent obsolete. Since then, more and more people have come to believe that research—and the social sciences—have at last found a home within the formal structure of government.