Kenneth A. Daigler

George Washington’s Secret Six

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This one came to me as a gift. If I had known it was published before Spies, Patriots, and Traitors, I would have read and reviewed it first.

Review: George Washington’s Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution, Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger, 2013.51jjYdZGXJL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_

This is a popular history – no footnotes but a brief bibliography and index – and it’s tightly focused on the Culper Spy Ring operating in British occupied New York City. It covers much the same territory as Chapter Nine, “American Intelligence Activities Reach Maturity” of Kenneth A. Daigler’s Spies, Patriots, and Traitors. It even relies on the same histories of the Culper Spy Ring as Daigler: John Edwin Bakeless’s Turncoats, Traitors, and Heroes (1998), John A. Nagy’s Invisible Ink: Spycraft in the American Revolution (2010), and Morton Pennypacker’s General Washington’s Spies (1939).

That focus allows a couple of things missing from Daigler’s account: an in-depth profile of the six spies (well, five actually because the identity of No. 355, as she was known to Washington, is not definitively known), a greater sense of what it was like to live in occupied New York, and quotes from the correspondence of the spy ring.

Kilmeade and Yaeger, to make the story more vivid, provide dialogue at certain points based on written documents. Continue reading →

Spies, Patriots, and Traitors

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No, no I’m not guilty that it took me almost five years to review this book which I got through LibraryThing.

Review: Spies, Patriots, and Traitors: American Intelligence in the Revolutionary War, Kenneth A. Daigler, 2014.Daigler_RGB_72dpi

There seemed to be a bunch of books about intelligence operations conducted by the insurgents of the American Revolution in the last 15 years. Most, though, concentrate on George Washington’s work as America’s first spymaster. Daigler’s book, as a cover blurb by historian Steven Spiry says, is “the most comprehensive book yet on American intelligence activities in the War of Independence.”

Daigler is an ex-CIA case officer and senior manager of intelligence operations. The book came out of a pamphlet he wrote in his CIA days to remind foreign intelligence liaison officers that, while America now has sophisticated photo and electronic intelligence capabilities, it also has a history in more traditional spycraft. Daigler brings not only an historian’s eye to the book, but his own professional evaluation of the operations in this book.

It’s also a readable book. This is an academic book that rewards reading cover to cover. Daigler doesn’t repeat himself much chapter to chapter unlike, say, the authors you find in an Oxford University Press books. He fully sources his book, presents his story roughly chronologically, and has some wry asides on the eternal truths of intelligence operations. That includes the intimate relationship between agent and case officer – the need to provide specific instructions and sometimes sooth frayed nerves, express the appreciation of the consumer of the intelligence, and bolster moral so that the agent will continue to put his life at risk for more information. Continue reading →