n the spring of 1943, while the outcome of World War II hung in the balance, the U. S. Office of Strategic Servicesforerunner to the CIAcommissioned Walter Langer, a Boston-based psychoanalyst, to develop a "psychological profile" of Adolf Hitler. As Langer later recalled, this was the first time the U. S. government had attempted to psychoanalyze a world leader in order to determine "the things that make him tick."