Declassified: 50 Top-Secret Documents That Changed History
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Reviews for Declassified
30 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5However important the issues, the documents themselves were usually not that interesting or important - or at least not the parts that are shown. I also found the constant jumping around in history to be difficult to follow. Documents closely related are in different chapters.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Declassified is a useful introduction to the world of espionage. In reviewing 50 notable secret documents, most of the high points of spying and cryptographic history are covered.Each segment describes a document (often with a photograph), and places it within the larger political or military context. These descriptions, while keeping generally to a few pages, do an adequate job of providing the greater significance.Ultimately, this book is best for occasional perusal, as each segment keeps ones interest. However, the lack of an overarching narrative limits its usefulness.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very interesting book about the world of espionage, spys and spying. There is something for multiple interests from how George Washington used fake battle plans, how a hollow nickle was used to transmit secret information, to various Cold War activities and more recent events. The book was well written with each section about a document and its implications being brief (often about 4 pages). This is especially good if you don't have a large block of time to devote to reading. I found myself not reading reading the book straight through from cover to cover, but jumping about the book reading the various sections out of order. Suprisingly, I found even topics (or a document) which seemed uninteresting proved to be quite the opposite, and often gave insight or shead a whole new light on this secretive world. The book is well illustrated with pictures of the documents and some of the people involved. A really good book to read, both fascinating and eye opening.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Overall quite interesting book. I would have like to have seen more detail on each document. I did like the breakdown of the book into related document types. It would have been nice for the author to include a Biblography for each document so you could delve deeper into the background of the document if you so desired.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5"Declassified" is arranged in 50 sections, each addressing a formerly secret document that is now available to the public. The documents range from a 1588 letter from a spy to Sir Francis Walsingham detailing the Spanish plans for the Armada to the August 2001 Presidential Daily Brief titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US."Each section is but a few pages long and can be digested in a few minutes, making the book ideal for commuter or bathroom reading. It is competently written in a straightforward, if unremarkable, nonfiction style.The research appears to be solid, but rather basic. There is little here that can't be found on Wikipedia or countless other, readily available sources. Those knowledgeable in the history of espionage will find little that is new, but dabblers and the mildly curious will find it interesting.The book lacks footnotes, making it unusable as a reference source as its assertions cannot be verified, although it does include an extensive bibliography of both print and online sources.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book was a page-turner for me. It takes what might seem to be boring historical documents and explains their significance. It is not a long work: I blasted through it in one sitting. Sometimes the "little stories" help us understand political affairs more than big ones.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book examines 50 documents which "changed history." Two or three pages are devoted to each document--some are documents which I have read whole books on. The prose is National Georgraphic prose, and I could not get too caught up by the book, though some of the entries are of highly interesting or disturbing documents.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mr. Allen has written an interesting book. He briefly discusses 50 of the most important/prominent espionage stories in history. The only issue I have with the book is the discussion of each story often seemed too brief. Most sections only contained three or four pages, giving only the briefest glimpse of the incident. In spite of this, the book works well as an introduction to espionage. The title is somewhat misleading, while the book attaches some type of document to each of the 50 incidents, in many of the cases the document is only of minor importance. Additionally several of the incidents involve documents that are not what the average person would consider “declassified”.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5“War is older than history,” the author, Thomas B. Allen, reminds his readers, and within every raging conflict, vivid in epic poetry and chronicles, is a secret war the actions of which often are not written about. Fortunately for historians and novelists, however, (if unfortunate for spies and intelligence analysts) documents are created in the pursuit of war planning and operations, that eventually do come to light, intentioned or not. Allen’s Declassified: 50 Top-Secret Documents that Changed History (Washington, DC: National Geographic, May 2008, $26 Hardcover) is a compilation ranging from the sixteenth-century Spanish Armada against England to an 8 August 2001 routine President’s Daily Brief which discussed the possibility of an attack on the United States by Al-Qa’ida in retaliation for US missile strikes on terrorist training facilities in Afghanistan in 1998, which attack occurred on 11 September. Each topic is arranged first, with a facsimile of the document or a page there from; secondly, discussion of its background: how it came to be created, encoded, decoded, hidden, transmitted, exposed, etc., and the machinations of the handlers of such, the spies (or “intelligencer” as Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s, principal spy was called); and thirdly, with a succinct summary of the impact of the document’s information on the course of history. In the case of Catholic Spain’s King Philip II, plans to invade Protestant England, devised in 1586 were copied, presumably by a valet employed by the Spanish admiralty, whose brother worked for Walsingham’s intelligencer, Anthony Standen, an English Catholic in exile from England and with access to Spain’s Catholic elite. A letter from Standen to Walsingham included detailed plans (ships, company, equipment, routes) of the armada. England, with such fore knowledge, in July 1588, set ablaze eight “Hell Burners”, old ships loaded with tar and gun powder, amidst the 130-ship Spanish Armada, scattering it in the English Channel and thwarting the attack. The outcome of this battle, Allen informs us, was the end of Spain’s anti-Protestant crusade, a weakening of Papal influence, and the growth of English sea power with Britannia ruling the waves to mid-twentieth century. Some documents included in Declassified will be familiar to us. One is the encrypted letter of Continental Army Major General Benedict Arnold to British Major Andre that proposed turning the garrison overlooking a strategic bend in the Hudson River – West Point – to the British, which if it succeeded, would have divided General Washington’s forces and broken the Continental Army’s major line of communication, north-south.Another document familiar to us is the 1917 telegram, sent by the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmerman to the German Ambassador to the United States, who was to relay it to the German envoy in Mexico. The telegram was sent this way to minimize British access to it (Britain had been at war with Germany since 1914) and the Americans were told its contents had to do with a peace offering. Unencrypted, the Zimmerman Telegram so-called, begins: “We [Germany] intend to begin unrestricted submarine warfare on the first of February [1917] . . . .” It also proposed an alliance between Germany and Mexico. By March 1917, President Wilson, recently re-elected to office on a platform that included the policy of remaining neutral with regard to the war then raging in Europe, released the telegram to the public, which became outraged at Germany. In April, the U.S. Congress declared war on Imperial Germany. Allen has included several declassified documents that provide examples of the complexities of espionage and counter espionage and the operations of double agents, those who work for one intelligence agency while in secret actually work against it in the service of another, enemy agency. One such is a set of dispatches from Confederate President Jefferson Davis to a Confederate sabotage operation in Canada. The information gathered was intended to influence the outcome of the re-election of Union President Abraham Lincoln. Double agent Richard Montgomery, who couriered secret dispatches for Davis, actually was working for Lincoln’s Assistant Secretary of War, Charles Dana. To keep the Confederates from catching on, Montgomery at one point was intercepted by Union forces, imprisoned, and even fired upon and wounded.Another is the memorandum for record by the handler of British Double-Cross agent Nathalie Sergueiew, born in Russia, raised in France, and a journalist in Nazi Germany. During her transfer from Nazi Germany to England, ‘Treasure’ (her code name) learned that her dog Frisson, which she had to leave behind, had not been smuggled out of Germany as promised by her British handlers. In her anger, Treasure told MI5 that her Nazi handlers had given her a secret signal that if transmitted by Morse code would reveal that she was sending under duress. This was three weeks before the impending launch of the Allied invasion of Europe. Although Allied intelligence feared the worst, it turned out that Treasure had not compromised the Double-Cross system the purpose of which was the intricate deception plan for D-Day 6 June 1944. The array of Allen’s declassified documents is varied and extensive, to include four of my favorites: •Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt’s 1898 cable to Admiral George Dewey ordering preparation for offensive action in the Philippine Islands in the event war is declared against Spain following the destruction of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor. TR’s boss, President McKinley, at the time was interested in maintaining peaceful relations with Spain!•The Sykes-Picot Agreement (May 1916) that established British and French “priority of right of enterprise” in the Middle East while unbeknownst to T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) who was leading the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The map annexed to this agreement did not show an Arab ‘state’ and when the secret agreement was exposed (by Russia’s revolutionary leader, Lenin) in 1917; Arab distrust of the West was sewn.•FDR’s letter to his Secretary of State authorizing US ships for the British fleet, August 1940, just a month before the start of the Battle of Britain. •The legacy of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg’s photocopies of pages from a classified report on US involvement in the war in Southeast Asia, published in the New York Times (1971), and which eventually led to the Nixon administration’s involvement in the Watergate break in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters (1972) and to the resignation of President Nixon (August 1974). Declassified is an informative, researched account of the murky waters of stealth, intrigue, deception, disinformation, and the business of establishing that essential “bodyguard of lies” around precious truth, to quote Allen’s quote of Winston Churchill. I look forward to its sequel.
Book preview
Declassified - Thomas B. Allen
DECLASSIFIED
ALSO BY THOMAS B. ALLEN
George Washington, Spymaster
CO-AUTHORED WITH NORMAN POLMAR
Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage
Merchants of Treason
DECLASSIFIED
50 Top-Secret Documents That Changed History
Thomas B. Allen
Foreword by Peter Earnest,
Executive Director, International Spy Museum
Copyright © 2008 The House on F Street, LLC.
All rights reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without written permission from the publisher is prohibited.
ISBN: 978-1-4262-0342-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.
Founded in 1888, the National Geographic Society is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations in the world. It reaches more than 285 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, and its four other magazines; the National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; radio programs; films; books; videos and DVDs; maps; and interactive media. National Geographic has funded more than 8,000 scientific research projects and supports an education program combating geographic illiteracy.
For more information, please call 1-800-NGS LINE (647-5463) or write to the following address:
National Geographic Society
1145 17th Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036-4688 U.S.A.
Visit us online at www.nationalgeographic.com/books
The publisher, author, and the International Spy Museum disclaim any liability from harm or injury that may result from the use of any of the information presented herein. This book is intended for entertainment and informational purposes only, and the techniques and information described in the book are not intended nor should be used in ways that are injurious to others, illegal, or violate the privacy or property rights of other persons.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1. SECRETS OF WAR
SPYING ON THE ARMADA
WASHINGTON FINDS A SPY
BENEDICT ARNOLD BECOMES A SPY
THE LADY IS A SPY
A GOLDEN EXPORT TO CANADA
T.R. REMEMBERS THE MAINE
A TELEGRAM’S SPECIAL DELIVERY
THE MAN WHO STARTED A WAR
EAVESDROPPING ON ROOSEVELT AND CHURCHILL
PLANNING THE FINAL SOLUTION
SEEKING JUSTICE FOR SABOTEURS
STALIN APPROVES A WAR
THE PENTAGON PAPERS’ LEGACY
16 TROUBLESOME WORDS
2. DOUBLE AGENTS, TURNCOATS, AND TRAITORS
CAPTAIN HENRY’S $50,000 LETTERS
LINCOLN’S DOUBLE AGENT
WHOSE ACE OF SPIES?
THE DOUBLE AGENT’S DOG
THE SPY IN THE TUNNEL
THE PUMPKIN PAPERS
3. COUNTERINTELLIGENCE: SPY VS. SPY
THE KNIGHT WAS A SPY
THE MILLION-DOCUMENT SPY
THE SOVIETS’ KEY MAN
THE SPY DROVE A JAGUAR
THE FBI MOLE
4. A BODYGUARD OF LIES
GEORGE WASHINGTON’S LIES
THE TRICK THAT WON MIDWAY
THE STAR OF DOUBLE-CROSS
A DIVERSIONARY MANEUVER
MINCEMEAT SWALLOWED WHOLE
BROADCASTING BELIEVABLE LIES
THE GAME AGAINST ENGLAND
5. ESPIONAGE ACCIDENTS
LEE’S LOST ORDER
PAPERS FROM A CORPSE
THE HOLLOW NICKEL
6. IN DEFENSE OF THE REALM
THE BEER BARREL LETTERS
A MAP FOR THE MIDEAST
AN AMBASSADOR’S DOUBTS
SECRET NOTES AT YALTA
A PACKAGE IN THE SNOW
7. THE SECRET STATE
A SECRET REQUEST TO CONGRESS
AN ENDURING LIE
THE DREYFUS AFFAIR
THE FBI AND TROTSKY
TAP, TAP, TAP
BOMBS OF A NEW TYPE
THE MAGIC MESSAGES
THE GOLDEN AGE OF SOVIET ESPIONAGE
THE FAMILY JEWELS
FOR THE PRESIDENT’S EYES ONLY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SELECTED INTERNET SITES
ILLUSTRATIONS CREDITS
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
If These Documents Could Talk
THERE IS A SPECIAL EXCITEMENT IN DISCOVERING HIDDEN WORLDS, whether revealed on a hazardous trek through dense jungles or discovered after scholarly research into dusty archives. The archaeologist coming unexpectedly upon ancient ruins changes forever our view of the world, or rather, shows that world to us through new eyes. So, too, the lone scholar culling through dimly lit stacks and sealed archives has a similar experience, uncovering hidden words that have been buried under layers of fragmentary information, falsehoods, and in some cases outright deception.
Documents and records in themselves, of course, are but words on paper, but they serve as windows into the principal actors, policies, and machinations that have played a role in revolutions, wars, assassinations, and other momentous events that changed the course of history.
One of the International Spy Museum’s prized artifacts is a letter from General George Washington to one Nathanial Sackett with instructions for him to form an espionage network in British-occupied New York City. Always fascinating to visitors, the letter bears silent testimony to Washington’s keen interest in timely and accurate intelligence from firsthand sources. That and his employment of classic espionage tradecraft and covert deception led later generations of intelligence officers to consider him the Father of American Intelligence.
Serving in the Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency for 36 years, I dealt firsthand with highly classified and sensitive files and records. On one occasion, I signed the approval for the first collection of declassified records of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA’s predecessor, to be transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration for eventual release to the public. These were secrets of wartime covert operations that had been under seal for over 40 years.
Later in the CIA, I was responsible for a roomful of records bearing on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Agency sources all over the world had been tasked for any information in any way relating to that traumatic event. These records too would eventually be brought to light. On each occasion, I sensed that blanks in the historical record would finally be filled.
In 1994 Benjamin Weiser, then a reporter with the Washington Post, sent Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates a request for special permission for me to research the top secret records of the CIA’s most secret and productive source in Poland during critical years of the Cold War, 1972-1981. The source was Col. Ryszard Kuklinski who served on the Polish General Staff and who secretly volunteered to act as a source for American intelligence. That research served as the narrative basis for Weiser’s book, A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, and the Price He Paid to Save His Country.
Kuklinski provided his agency handlers with over 40,000 top secret documents on the Soviet-run Warsaw Pact and early warnings of Polish government plans to impose martial law and to facilitate Soviet military entry into Poland. Kuklinski’s timely intelligence led the Carter administration to warn the Soviets against invading Poland—a major setback for the USSR at the height of the Cold War.
In Declassified, Tom Allen, a respected writer of American history, describes 50 documents and records that were either classified
or whose origins were shrouded in mystery and deceit. They range widely: Spain’s top secret plans to launch a naval armada against England obtained by Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to Elizabeth I; the captured encrypted message of Dr. Benjamin Church, a prominent American revolutionary, which exposed him as a spy for the British; Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold’s secret message to the British offering to sell American secrets and change sides; and, finally, the secret letter FBI turncoat Special Agent Robert Hanssen sent to Soviet Intelligence offering to spy for them—which he successfully did for almost 20 years!
But more than simply listing and describing these fascinating documents, Allen gives us a context, a picture of the world and times in which they were created and in which they were to play a pivotal role. He takes us behind the scenes and enables us to see and understand those times more clearly.
As you read these documents—some declassified by governments, others that have come to light via more circuitous routes—recall and reflect on the headline-making events they affected. Consider the dark secrets they concealed until the passage of time brought them to light. Would history’s course have run differently had their secrets been uncovered earlier? And what secrets still lie buried that could alter the course of our own times?
–PETER EARNEST, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL SPY MUSEUM
ONE
Secrets of War
WAR IS OLDER THAN HISTORY. BATTLE AXES OF POLISHED STONE EMERGED IN LATE Neolithic culture, and the arms of war have appeared in every society since, escalating from cavemen’s weapons of personal destruction to nations’ weapons of mass destruction. Savage fights evolved into nation-versus-nation wars. Concealed within every war is a secret war whose actions may never be chronicled. Because of the lack of documents, historians who write about battlefield wars often ignore the secret wars. In times of peace, secrets still hide, resisting history’s attempts to ferret them out. But eventually, sometimes decades after the end of war, documents do emerge, disclosing the hidden roots of celebrated victories and defeats.
Spying, the secret servant of war, is there when the war is being planned, when the war is being fought, and even when the war ends and peace negotiations are beginning. This has been true for a long time. According to the Bible, when powerful Philistine lords were planning war against the Israelites, they recruited beautiful and seductive Delilah and told her to spy on Samson, an Israelite hero: Coax him, and find out what makes his strength so great, and how we may overpower him…and we will give you each eleven hundred pieces of silver.
Elsewhere in the Bible, Moses picks a man from each of the 12 tribes and sends them on a mission into the Promised Land of Canaan. He gives them explicit orders to see whether the Canaanites are strong or weak, few or many
and whether they live in tents, or in strong holds.
In another ancient theater of war, the Chinese empire of the sixth century B.C., no less than five kinds of spies were working for the emperor. Local agents
spied on their own people. Enemy officials who provided intelligence to the emperor were known as inward spies.
Enemy spies working for the emperor were called converted spies
(today, they’re called double agents
). Surviving spies
managed to bring back intelligence after burrowing deeply into the enemy’s hoard of secrets (today, moles
). Finally, there were the doomed spies,
agents who were deliberately exposed by the emperor’s own spies so that enemy counterintelligence operatives would be deceived into believing that they had caught real spies.
Our knowledge about those varied spies comes from Sun Tzu, a Chinese military strategist who wrote The Art of War in the sixth century B.C. To Sun Tzu, the most vital weapon of war was intelligence. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear a hundred battles,
he wrote. If you know yourself and not the enemy, for every victory you will suffer a defeat. If you know neither yourself nor the enemy, you are a fool and will meet defeat in every battle.
Sir Francis Walsingham, the brilliant spymaster who worked his wonders for Queen Elizabeth I from 1573 to 1590, did not have the benefit of Sun Tzu’s advice. The Art of War remained unknown outside the East until the late 18th century, after it had been translated by Jean Joseph Marie Amiot, a French Jesuit missionary in China. But Walsingham would understand one of Sun Tzu’s basic beliefs: A hundred ounces of silver spent for information may save ten thousand spent on war.
Walsingham said it more succinctly: Knowledge is never too dear.
Secrets, especially secrets of war, are priceless—and expensive. Spying is often costly, and that cost has usually been one of the major secrets in the secret world of espionage. The espionage-is-expensive warning has been repeated down the centuries by spymasters, especially in times of war. Spymasters, unlike most other government officials, do not have to publicly reveal just how expensive their dark arts happen to be.
The amount of money the United States spends each year on intelligence has long been a secret. But the U.S. Government revealed in October 1997 that the total annual budget for the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community was $26.6 billion. And with the Iraq War came demands for more spying. The budget for fiscal year 2007 was revealed to be $43.5 billion.
The letter from Anthony Standen to Sir Francis Walsingham, imparting information on the plans for the Spanish Armada.
Spying on the Armada
CREATED: MARCH 1586
SUBJECT: FORMATION
OF THE SPANISH ARMADA
1
For the dual mission of protecting Queen Elizabeth I and her realm, Sir Francis Walsingham formed a network of intelligencers,
as he called his agents, in merchant communities and even in royal courts throughout Europe. His official title was principal secretary
to the queen. Unofficially, he was her spymaster. After Spain and England began an undeclared war in 1585, Walsingham focused his spying on Spain. In 1587, Walsingham believed from reports he received that King Philip II of Spain was planning to invade England. Walsingham told one of his best agents, Anthony Standen, to show diligence in intelligence
about Spain. Standen, an English Catholic in exile at a time when Catholics were considered potential traitors in England, used his religion to penetrate the inner circle of Catholic Spain.
Philip II had an efficient spy service, which worked closely with the Vatican’s far-flung network, and he was well aware that he was constantly being spied upon by agents working for several governments. He firmly ordered his ambassador in Paris to handle secret matters…by word of mouth, without writing them down.
But Standen was not deterred.
Standen’s secret communications included a letter sent to Walsingham, using one of the spymaster’s servants as a cutout. (A cutout enables a spymaster to contact an agent without meeting directly with the agent.) Standen, using the cover name Pompeo Pellegrini, enciphers some words in this report (shown on page 16), which says that he has learned from an ambassador that four galleys, additions to the planned Armada, have been sent to Spain from Genoa.
Standen also recruited a spy—still unidentified—who in March 1586 copied an admiral’s detailed plan for the Armada, listing the ships, material, and men needed for the invasion. The spy who produced this invaluable document probably was a valet in the admiral’s house; the valet’s brother worked for Standen. The spy carried the copied document to Madrid, where he gave it to an ambassador who sent it on to Florence, Italy, where Standen picked it up and sent it on to Walsingham in London, in a classic example of espionage networking.
Analysis of the admiral’s plan showed that it would be some time before the Armada ships could be assembled and properly manned. Elizabeth had more time than she had expected to prepare for invasion.
Spain’s counterintelligence was also at work. In January 1588, Spain’s highly placed spy, Sir Edward Stafford, the British ambassador in Paris sent a dispatch to Elizabeth saying that the Spanish Armada had been disbanded. But Elizabeth, primarily through Walsingham’s network, was getting a constant stream of intelligence showing that Spain was still planning to launch a mighty fleet. An intercepted letter from an Italian merchant revealed that troops were being mustered for an invasion; enclosed with the letter was a copy of a papal promise of an indulgence for anyone who aided in the crusade
against Protestant England. Diplomats’ dispatches, often unencrypted, traveled by couriers, who could be bribed or threatened. From such intercepted dispatches Elizabeth’s wily advisers could piece together what became known as Philip’s Grand Strategy: the conquest of England.
In July 1588, the Armada—a fleet of more than 130 ships—sailed into the English Channel and waited off Calais for the troop barges that would be escorted to the invasion beaches. On the night of July 28, an English fleet set adrift eight Hell Burners,
old ships loaded with tar, firewood, and gunpowder. In a fiery panic, Spanish ships cut their anchor cables and headed to sea, breaking up their tight, crescent-shaped defensive array. Next day, the English fleet struck, sinking three ships and running four others aground.
A sudden change of wind blew the Armada beyond the range of English guns. Then the wind whipped into a gale, dashing some ships against rocky shores and driving the fleet northward. Storms kept battering the dwindling fleet as the ships fought the winds up the eastern coast of England, then around Scotland and down Ireland’s western coast. Only about half of the ships that had sailed off found their way back to Spain.
Spies, guns, and storms had defeated the Armada. Anthony Standen returned to England from exile in 1593. By then, Walsingham was dead. Enmeshed in religious and royal intrigue, Standen no longer had a patron. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London for ten months and drifted out of spy history.
Impact on History: Standen’s spying and Walsingham’s skillful handling of intelligence gave Elizabeth and her strategists invaluable knowledge, enabling Britain to thwart Spain’s invasion plans. The defeat of the Armada ended the anti-Protestant crusade of King Philip II of Spain and weakened the political power of the pope. Victory over the Armada launched a British navy that would eventually rule the waves.
The letter, addressed to Major Cane On His Magisty’s Sarvice,
that eventually revealed to General George Washington that a trusted patriot—Dr. Benjamin Church—was acting as a spy for the British.
Washington Finds a Spy
CREATED: JULY 1775
SUBJECT: REVOLUTIONARY WAR—
THE EXPOSURE OF A RESPECTED
PATRIOT AS A BRITISH SPY
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One day in July 1775, a young woman called on her former boyfriend, a baker in Newport, Rhode Island. To his surprise, she handed him a letter and asked him to deliver it to the captain of His Majesty’s ship Rose. The Royal Navy frigate, on patrol off Newport, was part of the British land and sea force deployed to put down the American Revolution. Only three months before, the revolution had become a shooting war when American militiamen and British redcoats had clashed at Lexington and Concord.
The baker put the letter away and forgot about it. In September he received a letter from the woman, who sharply reminded him that he had not kept his promise. The baker, now finally suspicious, took the letter to a Patriot official, who saw to it that the baker was escorted to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Gen. George Washington, newly commissioned commander in chief of the Continental Army, was shown the letter, which was obviously a message in cipher. (In a cipher, each letter is replaced with another letter. In a code, each word or phrase is replaced with another character or set of characters taken from a codebook.)
Washington gave the letter to the Reverend Samuel West,