“The Last Spy,” the riveting and thought-provoking biography by Katharina Otto-Bernstein of the then-centenarian CIA spymaster Peter Sichel, plays at the M.V. Film Center starting June 12. With immense honesty and a good dose of humor, Sichel lays bare his unedited history of the U.S. foreign intelligence service from an insider’s perspective. During the journey, Sichel unpacks the obscured roots of the conflicts that plague the world today, and the toll that espionage took on his personal life.
We meet Sichel descending in his house on one of those mechanical chair lifts, telling us he had been the head of the CIA in Berlin, worked for the organization in D.C., and ultimately ended up as chief of station in Hong Kong. We originally have no idea how modest this summary of his career will turn out to be.
Otto-Bernstein anchors us in Sichel’s early life, which includes a harrowing escape from Nazi Germany, internment in France until the family was released to run for their lives, dodging bullets from the oncoming Nazi invaders and starvation, and finally their journey to the U.S.
After experiencing significant anti-Semitism and witnessing parades by the American Nazi Party and the America First Movement, urging America to stay out of World War II, Sichel was overjoyed to volunteer for the Army when the U.S. declared war after Pearl Harbor.
Sichel was almost immediately singled out for the newly created Office of Strategic Services (OSS), America’s first clandestine intelligence service, and was taught to pick locks and kill with knives and with his bare hands. In 1942, he trained intelligence agents in Algiers to support resistance groups in France. Soon after, he was recruiting German prisoners of war to become spies for the Americans. At 22, Sichel was promoted to lead the OSS detachment of General Patton’s 7th Army. Patton’s deliberate disregard for Sichel’s intelligence led to dire consequences for American soldiers. Sichel told him not to enter the Ardennes Forest, because the German army was lurking. Patton called Sichel’s intelligence “shit.” A thousand casualties later, Sichel’s intelligence proved to be correct.
After visiting Dachau at the end of the war, Sichel was haunted by the wall of secrecy that had existed about the death camps. “It was known only to the people in charge,” he says. Sichel wanted to leave the agency, but OSS spymaster and future CIA Director Allan Dulles asked him to remain in Germany as the head of the OSS Peter Unit in Berlin. As he learned what the Russians were doing in East Germany and their absorption of many in Eastern Europe, Sichel was ultimately convinced to present his findings directly to the State Department, marking the beginning of the Cold War.
In clandestine circles, Sichel became known as the “Wunderkind.” In 1947, the OSS became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Sichel, now 25, served as station chief in Berlin. When tasked with building spy networks throughout East Germany, Sichel’s first efforts, which used former Nazis as agents, proved disastrous, as none of them got out alive. He speaks movingly of the price paid for learning from their mistakes.
The spy adventures continue through various twists and turns for many more years. Otto-Bernstein skillfully combines archival news and film footage to augment Sichel’s revealing account of how America’s actions during the Cold War and its aftermath negatively affected the world order, all in the name of fighting Communism. The story is complex and fascinating.
Never afraid to speak his mind, Sichel made enemies of those within, even as others admired his excellence. However, eventually, too disillusioned, he decided to leave the agency in 1960. He notes, “The CIA misjudged a lot of situations.” Asked why, he replies, “Because … you are living in a world of mirrors, and you don’t know what is and what isn’t true … You’re no longer able to think straight because you have lived in a protected world for so long that you don’t have any relationship to the society you live in, and it’s likely you’re burned out and no longer really creative.”
Sichel continued to take issue with U.S. actions. “We’ve never been in a foreign affairs situation where we weren’t happy to have enemies. Somehow, that competition of facing an enemy is in our nature. We are dealing with 20th–century mindsets that have not thought of our future and how things can change between nations. We’re not thinking of the underlying problems of poverty, disease, overpopulation, climate change, which today are much more important than getting the upper hand over somebody else.”
While “The Last Spy” was filmed primarily during the years leading up to 2024, before his passing in 2025 at the age of 102, Sichel’s wise observations eerily speak to us even more urgently today.
“The Last Spy” begins at the M.V. Film Center starting on June 12. For more information, visit mvfilmsociety.com.