The Model Turned Spy Turned Countess

“Model, Countess, Author, Spy.” That was the headline of Aline Griffith’s New York Times obituary in 2017. She was 94 years old. That’s a long life, but if you look at all the outsized adventures she had, you wonder how she fit it all in. The truth is that many of the adventures she claimed to have as a glamorous American spy during World War II probably didn’t happen. She was prone to exaggeration in her many memoirs with titles like “The Spy Went Dancing” and “The Spy Wore Silk.” But she needn’t have exaggerated, says Larry Loftis. He’s researched World War II spycraft extensively and wrote a book about Aline Griffith called “The Princess Spy.”