Carl Aldo Marzani (4 March 1912 – 11 December 1994) was an Italian-born American political activist with a series of careers as a volunteer soldier in the Spanish Civil War, organizer for the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), United States intelligence official, documentary filmmaker with an Academy Award nomination, author, and publisher. During World War II he served in the federal intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and later the U.S. Department of State. He picked the targets for the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, which took place on April 18, 1942. Marzani served nearly three years in prison for having concealed his former CPUSA membership when joining the US war effort in 1942. Background Carl Aldo Marzani was born on March 4, 1912, in Rome, Italy. The family immigrated to the United States in 1924 and settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Carl entered the first grade at the age of twelve, not knowing English. He graduated from high school in 1931 with a scholarship to Williams College. There, Marzani became a socialist and joined the League for Industrial Democracy. He began writing and became the editor of the school's literary magazine. In 1935, he graduated summa cum laude from Williams College with a BA in English. Marzani thereupon moved to New York. In 1936 he received a Moody fellowship to Oxford University. Career When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Marzani left Oxford to participate as a volunteer in the Spanish Republican Army. He served with the Durruti Column, a unit of the anarchist wing of the Republican forces, during late 1936 and early 1937. His advocacy of military discipline raised suspicion that he was a communist, and thereby an adversary of the anarchists in the Republican struggle. Slated for execution as a communist threat to the anarchist unit, he left for Barcelona. In Spain, Marzani was impressed by what he had seen of the communists, but not by the anarchists. In 1937 Marzani returned to Oxford and married Edith Eisner (stage name Edith Emerson). Then Abraham Lazarus brought him into the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), which Eisner joined with him. Marzani became CPGB's treasurer of the South Midlands district. Returning to university studies, he received a BA in Modern Greats, (Philosophy, Politics, Economics) from Oxford in June 1938. That summer, Marzani and his wife hitch-hiked around the world, visiting India, Indochina, China, Japan, and Europe. Through Communist