Mequon’s Richard Cutler has written a book, "Counterspy," about his days as chief of counterespionage during World War II.

Milwaukeeans know Richard Cutler principally as an attorney. In his youth, he practiced for firms in New York, then until retirement, the local firm Quarles and Brady. Milwaukee and many surrounding suburbs owe their infrastructure, zoning and planning to Cutler’s expertise. He became the city attorney for Brookfield and served on the Fox Point Planning Commission for four decades. He represented Bud Selig when he brought the Brewers to Milwaukee, and, in the United States Supreme Court, helped defeat the state of Illinois in a suit against Milwaukee over polluting Lake Michigan.

Like the spy who came in from the cold, in 2004, Cutler published "Counterspy," a memoir of his days during World War II in counterespionage for the Office of Strategic Services. OSS became the War Department’s Strategic Services Unit and, eventually, the present day Central Intelligence Agency. Cutler reported to Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, former CIA directors, during the war when he was a 28-year-old, cracking smart graduate of Yale University with a bachelor of arts degree in economics and a law degree. He was sent to Europe in 1945 as a second lieutenant. Eventually his assignment was Berlin, his title: chief of counterespionage.

Spying is dangerous work, and in counterespionage the stakes are much higher. Cutler vetted German and Soviet spies to be double agents. Already fairly fluent in French and Spanish, he learned German on the run. And run he did. "I worked 100-hour weeks ’till basically I collapsed," he says. Sent to Switzerland for a few days of R&R, Cutler sustained his only physical injury in what he calls "The Battle of San Moritz." Skiing while talking with a Soviet refugee, Cutler racked up two painful green-stick fractures. He wasn’t down for long. He immediately returned to working in Germany, enduring constant fear for the safety of spies he had recruited and sent into harm’s way.

In a quirky twist of fate, fresh out of law school, Cutler had worked in the New York firm of William Donovan, known later as "Wild Bill" when he was a major general heading up OSS during the war. The Yale connection also links future Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to Cutler. Stewart was in the class ahead of Cutler.

"Counterspy" is rich in detailed descriptions of smuggling a spy past Soviet guards at a checkpoint, arranging decoys for arresting Soviet agents and of gunfire, clandestine meetings and men with code names like Zig-Zag or Moccasin. One of the most vivid chapters is his description of touring a shattered Berlin, including Hitler’s bunker. While the sophisticated Cutler makes no pretense of being the original James Bond, he does mention the names of beautiful women, French and otherwise.

The most important woman he came to know in Berlin was the lovely Elizabeth Fitzgerald from Milwaukee. Because of her French fluency, the 23-year-old Smith College graduate had been recruited by the American prosecution staff at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders. She came to translate documents. They met when she was on a fact-finding trip to Berlin and borrowed his jeep. In a gruff, very proud voice, Cutler says, "She was brilliant, and they didn’t use her talents exactly as they should." Perhaps, but Cutler knew a jewel when he saw one. They married in 1947 and moved to Milwaukee in 1949. They have three children and five grandsons.

With surefire understatement, Cutler says, "I’m a workaholic." From his home in Mequon, the octogenarian daily returns to his office on the 24th floor of the law firm on East Wisconsin Avenue. Through the years he’s also served at the discretion of former Govs. Vernon Thompson and Gaylord Nelson who appointed him to a variety of governmental posts and commissions.

Given the scope of Cutler’s experiences, the question must be asked: Is he optimistic about the future of mankind? Cutler describes his job in counterespionage as being "like a chess game where you must park your emotions." In response to the question, he seemed to try hard to park his. "I’m pessimistic now. I used to be a realist, but now I’m something of a catastrophist; yet, I know history goes in cycles."

People like Cutler who fought WWII to end all wars didn’t succeed completely, but they surely staved off that catastrophe. Cutler does not live as though he thinks the world will end tomorrow. He continues to play three sets of tennis daily; "doubles only," he adds quickly as if that were an apology.

He dotes on his grandsons and dishes out advice to them in person and in lengthy missives. A recent letter ended with this counsel, " … what starts slowly and sometimes stumbles can, after learning and many adjustments, end up well." He’s disciplined with his reading list: current issues of Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, The Economist, National Geographic and a "simply superb" new book about the Battle of Gettysburg.