By Michael J. Sulick

Can you retain a secret?

Maybe you could, however the usa executive can't. because the start of the rustic, countries huge and small, from Russia and China to Ghana and Ecuador, have stolen the main important secrets and techniques of the U.S..

Written via Michael Sulick, former director of CIA's clandestine provider, Spying in the USA presents a background of greater than thirty espionage situations contained in the usa. those circumstances contain american citizens who spied opposed to their kingdom, spies from either the Union and Confederacy through the Civil struggle, and international brokers who ran operations on American soil. the various tales are ordinary, corresponding to these of Benedict Arnold and Julius Rosenberg, whereas others, notwithstanding much less popular, are both attention-grabbing.

From the yankee Revolution, during the Civil battle and international Wars, to the atomic age of the long island undertaking, Sulick info the lives of these who've betrayed America's secrets and techniques. In each one case he makes a speciality of the motivations that drove those members to secret agent, their entry and the secrets and techniques they betrayed, their tradecraft or recommendations for concealing their espionage, their publicity and punishment, and the wear and tear they eventually inflicted on America's nationwide safety.

Spying in America serves because the excellent creation to the early historical past of espionage in the US. Sulick's detailed event as a senior intelligence officer is obvious as he skillfully publications the reader via those situations of intrigue, deftly illustrating the evolution of yankee wisdom approximately espionage and the fitful improvement of yank counterespionage prime as much as the chilly War.

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Additional resources for Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War

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Lee’s information was also poorly sourced, and Bancroft, enraged by the accusation, was easily able to disprove the story. Lee’s allegation was thus dismissed as the grumblings of a misanthrope. Any suspicion of Bancroft was further dispelled when, ironically, Lee’s own secretary was exposed as a British agent. In response to French protests over the case, Lee was eventually recalled to America and Bancroft continued to spy without raising any further suspicion. ”13 Despite this, Bancroft’s spying had little impact, partly because the top British policymaker, King George III himself, was skeptical about the intelligence from his prize agent and refused to act on it.

15 He believed intelligence reports that touted British successes but distrusted those that reflected unfavorably on the Crown’s efforts or prospects. The king especially refused to believe that the French would challenge him by signing a treaty with his own colonies, so he dismissed Bancroft’s information as the drivel of a shady stock speculator. And the king was not the only ruler who disregarded intelligence that did not fit the preconceived notions of an overweening ego. Almost two centuries later, a Soviet spy in Japan, Richard Sorge, would receive solid information about a planned Nazi surprise attack against the Soviet Union.

Quoted by Wallace, Traitorous Hero. After more than two centuries, Benedict Arnold remains the most vilified spy and traitor in American history. He remains the highest-ranking American official, military or civilian, to betray his country. And his treachery went far beyond espionage. Besides passing military secrets, he was on the verge of enabling the British to capture West Point, a key American military base, at a critical juncture in the Revolutionary War. Considering the strategic importance of West Point to colonial defense, his betrayal, in modern terms, would have been equivalent to an American general handing over the Strategic Air Command to the Soviets during the Cold War.

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