[1] Wallis Burrell applied for a US government position in 1941 and in 1943 moved to Washington, D.C., when her husband, who had joined the US Navy, was assigned to the Naval Air Station Anacostia.
In March 1943 Wallis Burrell was appointed a junior clerk in the recently established intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), on an annual salary of $1,440 (men in the same position earned $4,600).
[2][1] Wallis Burrell was assigned to the Pictoral Records Section, helping to analyze more than a million pre-war photographs of now-Nazi occupied Europe.
[6] As part of the Double-Cross System she operated a Spanish agent, Juan Frutos, and directed him to feed false information to the Nazis about troop positions ahead of the liberation of Brest.
[11] Part of her role was also as liaison with the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, who attempted to recover cultural works looted by the Nazis.
[12] The OSS was dissolved in October 1945 and only one in three overseas X-2 officers were selected to serve with the successor Strategic Services Unit (SSU), Wallis Burrell was one of these.
Wallis Burrell separated from her husband in January 1946; they had disagreed over her intention to return to Europe with the intelligence services, as he wanted to continue with the family business.
[12][1] For security reasons the CIA downplayed Wallis Burrell's role; in releases made to the media she was described as a clerk or courier returning from vacation.
[1] After her death her parents established a memorial scholarship in her name at Smith College to help students spend a year studying in France, it continued until at least 2016.
[1] Wallis Burrell's work laid the foundation for the CIA's approach to anti-Soviet intelligence in the early Cold War, particularly in the recruitment and handling of spies.