About the Book
Spying in America presents a history of more than thirty espionage cases inside the United States. Written by Michael Sulick, former director of CIA's clandestine service, these cases include Americans who spied against their country, spies from both the Union and Confederacy during the Civil War, and foreign agents who ran operations on American soil. Some of the stories are familiar, such as those of Benedict Arnold and Julius Rosenberg, while others, though less well known, are equally fascinating. Sulick details the lives of those who have betrayed America's secrets, focusing on the motivations that drove these individuals to spy, their access and the secrets they betrayed, their tradecraft or techniques for concealing their espionage, their exposure and punishment, and the damage they ultimately inflicted on America's national security. Spying in America serves as the perfect introduction to the early history of espionage in America.
Book Synopsis
Can you keep a secret?
Maybe you can, but the United States government cannot. Since the birth of the country, nations large and small, from Russia and China to Ghana and Ecuador, have stolen the most precious secrets of the United States.
Written by Michael Sulick, former director of CIA's clandestine service, Spying in America presents a history of more than thirty espionage cases inside the United States. These cases include Americans who spied against their country, spies from both the Union and Confederacy during the Civil War, and foreign agents who ran operations on American soil. Some of the stories are familiar, such as those of Benedict Arnold and Julius Rosenberg, while others, though less well known, are equally fascinating.
From the American Revolution, through the Civil War and two World Wars, to the atomic age of the Manhattan Project, Sulick details the lives of those who have betrayed America's secrets. In each case he focuses on the motivations that drove these individuals to spy, their access and the secrets they betrayed, their tradecraft or techniques for concealing their espionage, their exposure and punishment, and the damage they ultimately inflicted on America's national security.
Spying in America serves as the perfect introduction to the early history of espionage in America. Sulick's unique experience as a senior intelligence officer is evident as he skillfully guides the reader through these cases of intrigue, deftly illustrating the evolution of American awareness about espionage and the fitful development of American counterespionage leading up to the Cold War.
Review Quotes
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.His simple style breezes the reader through one individual and era of American history after another. . . . These annals read like fiction, which plays into Sulick's 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. . . . Yet as Sulick proves with this broad work, foreign attempts at espionage have existed since the country's inception and will surely continue.
Sulick, the former chief of the CIA's counterintelligence branch, has written a remarkable account of those who betrayed their country and those who sought to apprehend themA vital addition to academic libraries as well as for readers interested in the early Cold War.
A fascinating read that is certain to captivate and entertain.
A study of history of spying and spy catching could be wonkish or overly political. This book is neither, thanks to Sulick's considerable storytelling skills and his background. . . . Anyone reading this fast-paced history of American spying won't need to rely on other volumes. This book stands convincingly on its own.
If you wanted to dip your toes into the wide world of spying, this is a good place to start.
Mr. Sulick's timely and valuable book, Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War, should have been required reading before those ladies and gentlemen [of the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee] ever sought national office, because in its succinct, well-written chapters, the author lays out a history few Americans know and some barely even suspect . . . Mr. Sulick's equally painstaking abilities as a historian have allowed him to produce a book that is unfailingly succinct but richly illustrated and well documented. He also brings his practical experience as an intelligence operator to a thought provoking concluding chapter.
Reading Michael Sulick on the subject [of espionage] is akin to taking a tour of London with the queen of England as your personal guide. The author comes with blue-ribbon credentials: he served in the CIA as an operations officer for 28 years, in positions including chief of counterintelligence and director of the National Clandestine Service.
Recognizing a gap in the subject literature, Sulick, a 28-year veteran of the CIA, including years overseeing its clandestine and counterintelligence departments, has written an informative collection of case studies, rather than a narrative history, reviewing some of the most important espionage activities against the United States and within its borders. He highlights the tradecraft of the spies, their access to secret information, American bureaucratic turf wars, and (in many cases very belated) counterespionage efforts. . . . What is most interesting are the motivations of citizens to betray their own country in contrast to those sent here to spy on us . . . The author certainly knows the subject inside and out. This is an easy-to-read introduction for interested laypersons or those taking beginning courses on the history of intelligence operations.
Sulick blends the historical record with his own intelligence expertise to create a nonfiction espionage thriller on par with the best of Ian Fleming and John Le Carre.
Sulick has provided an accessible book that is not only an entertaining read but which also can be a useful reference . . . . He has successfully illuminated the enduring essence of espionage and made a strong case that the United States needs always to be on guard.
Sure to become a seminal contribution to the scholarship of intelligence.
About the Author
Michael J. Sulick is a retired intelligence operations officer who worked for the CIA for twenty-eight years. He served as chief of CIA counterintelligence from 2002-4 and as director of the National Clandestine Service from 2007-10, where he was responsible for supervising the agency's covert collection operations and coordinating the espionage activities of the US intelligence community.
