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Birch, John (28 May 1918–25 August 1945), Baptist missionary and military officer, was born John Morrison Birch in Landaur, India, the son of George S. Birch and Ethel Ellis Birch. Both parents were Methodist missionaries under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. George Birch was also an agricultural professor at Ewing Christian College, Allahabad, India, while Ethel Birch tutored English there and conducted women's Bible classes nearby. In 1920 the family returned to the United States. George Birch became a fruit farmer in Vineland, New Jersey, where John Birch first went to school. In 1930 the family, by then including seven children, moved to Rome, Georgia, where Birch attended high school. After graduating at the head of his class, he entered Mercer University; there, he deepened his religious convictions and evangelical passion and graduated magna cum laude in 1939. He completed a two-year course at the Bible Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, in one year and then left in July 1940 for China, sponsored by a World's Fundamentalist Baptist Missionary Fellowship....

Dulles, Allen Welsh (07 April 1893–29 January 1969), author and third director of the Central Intelligence Agency (1953-1961), author and third director of the Central Intelligence Agency (1953–1961), was born in Watertown, New York, the son of Presbyterian minister Allen Macy Dulles and Edith Foster. In 1914 Dulles graduated from Princeton University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After graduation he taught English in India for a year, circumnavigating the globe on his way back to the United States, where he returned to Princeton to complete an M.A. in international law. Joining the State Department’s Foreign Service in 1916, Dulles was assigned first to Vienna and then, when the First World War broke out, to Bern. In Bern he gained his first exposure to the world of espionage, for among his consular duties was the task of establishing contacts with Austro-Hungarian and Balkan factions known to be opposed to communism....

Helms, Richard McGarrah (30 March 1913–23 October 2002), U.S. intelligence director, was born in Saint Davids, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, the son of Herman Helms, a district manager for the Aluminum Company of America, and mother Marion McGarrah. His maternal grandfather, Gates McGarrah, was a leading international banker. Helms was educated at schools both in New Jersey and in Switzerland and Germany. As a young student in Europe, Helms became conversant in French and German. He returned to the United States to attend Williams College in Massachusetts where in 1935 he graduated magna cum laude, double‐majoring in English literature and history. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, he served as class president and as editor of the college newspaper and yearbook, and he was voted “most likely to succeed” and “most respected” by his undergraduate peers....