cover image Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War

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

Michael J. Sulick. Georgetown Univ., $26.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-58901-926-3

As a former CIA chief of counterintelligence and director of the National Clandestine Service, Sulick offers glimpses into the motivations, operations, and mistakes of both individuals and nations in this examination of 30 acts of espionage. He analyzes each according to six fundamental elements: motivation, access, tradecraft, exposure, punishment, and resultant damage. In Sulick%E2%80%99s view all instances of espionage are bound by "money, ego, revenge, romance, simple thrills, ideological sympathy, and dual loyalties." His simple style breezes the reader through one individual and era of American history after another, from the truth about Benedict Arnold%E2%80%99s burden on the British crown, to how a German spook accidentally left a valuable briefcase on the New York subway. These annals read like fiction, which plays into Sulick%E2%80%99s statement that, due to our unique geographical location and emphasis on individual liberties, Americans possess a disbelief that the threat of espionage exists within our borders as well as an unwillingness to sacrifice said liberties to undermine or counter these threats. Yet as Sulick proves with this broad work, foreign attempts at espionage have existed since the country%E2%80%99s inception and will surely continue. (Nov.)