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Everybody loves Julia! The news about her CIA role has been out there for years. I've even heard Sara Moulton talk about it. So, this is nothing new.
Julia was just plain cool anyway you look at it. Even the famous Ackyroyd (sp) parody on the funny years of SNL was more a loving tribute than a cruel mocking. Julia gave us back fresh ingredients, taught us to love complex cuisine, and made it okay to have a glass of wine every now and then. Even in her later years, when she mostly stood there and observed while other cooks did the work, she always taught us something. She was just the Grand Old Lady of American food.
Her work for the OSS came at a time of high anxiety, while the West struggled with defining it's relationship to the Soviet Union and fought a surrogate war with both the USSR and the Chinese under Mao in Korea. Patriotism isn't bad by itself, blind patriotism is the problem. I doubt that Julia was ever blind about anything.
For myself, I miss her terribly, and I'm about as far from a girl as a human can get.
