Spy story

This accused spy had a fling with JFK and stole Hitler’s heart

Inga Arvad was John F. Kennedy’s great love — “Inga Binga,” the one woman with whom he could be himself, according to many who knew him.

But when Arvad was working in Berlin as a journalist in the mid-1930s, Adolf Hitler found her so fascinating that he invited her to the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, even hosting a lunch in her honor.

They weren’t the only ones charmed by her. When Arvad worked in Hollywood as a gossip columnist, male actors regularly declared her more beautiful than some of their leading ladies.

Even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was obsessed with Arvad, albeit for other reasons. Convinced the blonde was a Nazi spy who had infiltrated the highest ranks of American government through her job as a columnist for the Washington Times-Herald, he had her investigated for years.