Forget the watery drinks so often served up on the Washington gala circuit. At the OSS Society’s annual awards dinner Oct. 26, the cocktails will be overseen up by Colin Field, the head bartender at the Hotel Ritz who’s known as one of the world’s leading mixologists.

He’ll be there to lead a toast to the liberation of the Hotel Ritz in Paris at the end of World War II by Ernest Hemingway, Col. David Bruce, and members of the French Resistance.  According to the OSS Society, which celebrates the history of the CIA-forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services: “When they arrived at the Hotel Ritz shorty after the Nazis had fled the hotel, the manager asked Hemingway if there was anything he could do for them. Hemingway said: ‘How about 75 dry martinis?’”...