One was a historian and assistant to John Kennedy, another was the chef who first introduced French cuisine to American households, and a third was the father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.

In their every day lives they had nothing in common but Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Julia Childs and Miles Copeland shared a secret life - serving in an international spy ring at a time when Hitler was threatening the world.

Their work and that of thousands of other members of the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA, will be revealed today when previously classified files are opened by the National Archives in the USA. For the first time, the files identifiying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralised intelligence agency will be released and the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives exposed.

Members of the OSS, which was created by President Franklin Roosevelt in World War II to help fight Nazism, included historians, actors, lawyers and athletes. They created propoganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and encouraged resistance amongst foreign troops.

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In the service of the OSS, Julia Childs helped develop a shark repellent to ensure that sharks would not explode ordnance that was targeting U-boats, while Kermit Roosevelt, the son of President Thedodore Roosevelt, set up a militia of Inuit.

Others members of the service include Ernest Hemingway's son John, Arthur Goldberg, who went on to become a Supreme Court judge and President Roosevelt's other son, Quentin.

Most kept their work secret even from those closest to them. Walter Mess, who handled covert OSS operations in Poland and North Africa, said he only recently told his wife of 62 years about his OSS work. "I was told to keep my mouth shut," said Mr Mess, now 93.

The release of the files will reveal for the first time the workings of the agency, which was taken into the CIA after it was disbanded by President Harry S Truman in 1945. The CIA had resisted releasing the records for decades but former CIA director William Casey cleared the way for the transfer of millions of OSS documents to the National Archives when he took over the agency in 1981. The personnel files are the latest to be made public.

Before the formation of the OSS, the USA had no united intelligence gathering network. The different arms of the military were reluctant to share information and the code-breaking operation of the State Department was shut down in 1929 by Secretary of State Henry Stimson because "gentlemen don't read each others' mail."

The OSS helped arm, train and supply a number of resistance movements including Mae Tse Tung's Red Army in China and the Viet Minh in French Indochina. One of its greatest achievements during World War II was the penetration of Germany by its operatives. They were responsible for training German and Austrian civilians for missions inside Germany. Some of these agents included exiled communists, labour activies, Jewish refugees and anti-Nazi prisoners of war.

At the height of World War II, the OSS ran 12000 agents.

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