FOIAWEAR — STEPHANIE CZECH RADER / Captain Czech Tee

FOIAWEAR / ARCHIVE SERIES 026

"[The OSS] gave me a gun, but I never carried a gun. I thought, 'What the heck was I gonna do with a dumb gun?'"

Stephanie Czech was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1915 to Polish immigrants, in a household that did not speak English. A high school teacher secretly submitted a Cornell application on her behalf; she won a full scholarship, became the first in her family to graduate college, and earned a degree in chemistry. When the war came she volunteered for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, was among the first officers commissioned at Fort Des Moines, and quickly made Captain — "Captain Czech" to her colleagues.

Her Polish and her Ivy League record caught the OSS's eye. In the fall of 1945 she was sent undercover to Soviet-dominated Poland — one of only two OSS representatives in the country — posing as a minor embassy clerk who spent her free time "searching for distant relatives." Those trips were cover for intelligence: Russian troop concentrations, the workings of the Polish and Soviet security services, and economic and political reporting.

She also ran as a courier, moving classified documents between Berlin and Warsaw. In January 1946 the Russians were waiting to arrest her on her return; she slipped the documents to a stranger in the crowd and told them to deliver the package to a safe address. Questioned at the border, she walked free. Nominated for the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star, she was denied both without explanation — until 2016, when, at her funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, the Army finally awarded her the Legion of Merit. She was 100 years old.

The artwork is a stylised tribute — her most valuable weapon was her wits, so the gun is crossed out. It is not a portrait.

This shirt is offered in both dark and light garment colours — the design in vivid red on Black, Graphite and Navy, and in a matching dark-ink print on Chalky Mint, Ivory and White.

The QR code on the front opens the CIA's article on Stephanie Czech Rader, the source for everything above: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/what-the-heck-was-i-gonna-do-with-a-dumb-gun-the-derring-do-of-stephanie-czech-rader/

Garment: Comfort Colors 1717 garment-dyed t-shirt. Heavyweight 6.1 oz/yd² (206.8 g/m²), 100% ring-spun US cotton, pre-shrunk, relaxed fit, double-needle stitched with no side seams and a sewn-in label. Sizes S–4XL. Printed on the front at 300 DPI; plain back. The main artwork prints at 10 × 10 in and the QR at 1.8 × 1.8 in.

Care: machine wash cold, inside out, with like colours. Tumble dry low. Do not iron directly on the printed area.

FOIAWEAR is an independent brand and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Central Intelligence Agency or the United States government.