Jane Wallis Burrell

Jane Wallis Burrell (September 22, 1911 – January 6, 1948) was an American intelligence officer during World War II and the early part of the Cold War. She studied in the US, Canada and France in the 1930s and traveled widely in Europe. Wallis Burrell later became a housewife before joining the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as a clerk in 1943. Her work in photographic analysis was commended and she was chosen to join the new X-2 Counter Espionage Branch. She transferred to London in December 1943 and followed the Sixth United States Army Group to France and Germany in the following years. Wallis Burrell's work with double agents helped to deceive German forces prior to the liberation of Brest, France.

After the German surrender she tracked down and interrogated Nazi officials and recovered counterfeit gold currency. She worked for the OSS's successor organizations, the Strategic Services Unit and the Central Intelligence Group before joining the Central Intelligence Agency on its establishment in September 1947. While flying back to Paris from Belgium on official business in January 1948 her plane crashed and she was killed, becoming the first CIA officer to be killed in the line of service.

Early life Jane O'Neil Wallis was born in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1911. She was the daughter of newspaper editor, writer and local politician James Harold Wallis. The family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1921 when Wallis became a speechwriter for Herbert Hoover, who was then United States Secretary of Commerce. Wallis graduated from Holton-Arms School, an all-girls school which was then located in Washington, D.C., in 1929.

Death and legacy Wallis Burrell joined the Central Intelligence Agency when it was established in September 1947. One of the US's wartime agents, George Spitz, was arrested in Belgium and accused of collaboration with the German occupiers. Wallis Burrell flew to Brussels to provide testimony that he had served the Allied war effort. She was returning to Paris on an Air France Douglas DC-3 aircraft on January 6, 1948, when it crashed while landing at Paris–Le Bourget Airport. The aircraft rolled onto its side and caught fire, killing 15 of the 16 people on board.

For security reasons the CIA downplayed Wallis Burrell's role; in releases made to the media she was described as a clerk or courier returning from vacation. Wallis Burrell was actually the first CIA officer to be killed in the line of service, just 110 days after the organization had been established. The CIA did not send a representative to her funeral, for which the Paris CIA station chief, Philip Horton, apologized to her father. Wallis Burrell was determined not to qualify for the CIA Memorial Wall as her death occurred on a commercial flight. After her death her parents established a memorial scholarship in her name at Smith College to help students spend a year studying in France, it continued until at least 2016. Wallis Burrell's work laid the foundation for the CIA's approach to anti-Soviet intelligence in the early Cold War, particularly in the recruitment and handling of spies.