The Dark Game

by Paul B. Janeczko

  INTRODUCTION

  Chapter 1 · Outspying the British

  George Washington and the Culper Spy Ring

  Benjamin Franklin

  Benedict Arnold

  Invisible Ink

  Chapter 2 · Spies in Blue and Gray

  Elizabeth Van Lew

  From Clotheslines to Balloons

  Rose O’Neale Greenhow

  African Americans

  Chapter 3 · Espionage Comes of Age in World War I

  Sabotage on U.S. Soil

  Mata Hari

  The Zimmermann Telegram

  Choctaw Code Talkers

  Chapter 4 · Espionage Gets Organized in World War II

  Virginia Hall

  Spy Gadgets and Gizmos

  Juan Pujol

  OSS Training

  Chapter 5 · Cold War Spies

  The Berlin Tunnel

  One-Time Pad

  The U-2 Spy Plane

  Eavesdropping in Moscow

  Chapter 6 · Moles in Our House

  Aldrich Ames

  Cyber Espionage

  Robert Hanssen

  Spy Satellites

  SOURCE NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS

  Whenever I visit schools to talk to students about my writing and my books, someone always asks this question: “Did you always want to be a writer?” Far from it. Being a writer was probably the furthest thing from my mind when I thought of what I wanted to be when I grew up. More than anything else, I wanted to be an FBI agent. Seriously.

  Looking back, it’s easy for me to understand why I found such a career so appealing. Nearly all that I read, outside of the usual stuff for school, was about crime and detection. I was a huge fan of the Hardy Boys. That was the life I wanted to lead, even though my father fixed televisions for his work and my brothers and I were more interested in playing baseball.

  Beyond the Hardy Boys books, I read whatever I could find on crime and detection in our town library or in the used bookshop that I regularly visited. I read about gangsters, like Al Capone and Legs Diamond, and about the federal agents who fought them, like Eliot Ness and the Untouchables. I read books like The FBI in Peace and War, Inside the FBI, and The FBI Story and marveled at the way they tracked down criminals and spies. But I didn’t stop with books on the FBI. I read books about the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. treasury agents to find out how they helped protect our country from saboteurs. If it was about espionage, I probably read it.

  My fascination with spies didn’t stop with my reading as a kid. As I grew up, I continued to feed my fascination with the espionage game and those who practiced it by reading novels by writers like Eric Ambler, John Buchan, and John LeCarré. Later I read spy tales by Robert Ludlum and Alan Furst. But I also followed the real-life spy dramas that were unfolding in the news, like ill-fated U.S. spy flights of the U-2 and the bugging of the American embassy in Moscow, both of which I include in this book.

  But I never knew anything about the history of spies in this country. I didn’t know that George Washington was instrumental in establishing an intelligence community in the colonies that played a huge role in winning the Revolutionary War. I knew nothing about the women who acted as spies during the Civil War. Nor did I know that the espionage establishment grew and changed as our country went to war, that it adapted to new technologies. And although I’d read a lot about espionage since the start of World War II, I knew only part of the story. The research I did to write this book filled in the gaps.

  Spying is a murky business: it’s not always easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys, you’re not always certain who is telling the truth, and those you call your friends might not be who you think they are. Indeed, the spy’s world can be a deadly place. Nonetheless, men and women continue to work in the shadows, trying to serve the government and citizens of their country.

  The other side of the spy story is the work of the counterintelligence agents who track down spies in a frantic effort to stop the damage they have done. In chapter 6 you can read about the CIA and FBI agents who gathered evidence against Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. These agents also work in the center of the spy game.

  Since you have picked up this book, I’m guessing that your interest in spies may run as deeply as mine. I wrote this book because I wanted to make available to young readers something of a history of spying as it affected the United States from the Revolutionary War through the Cold War and into the end of the twentieth century. The story continues, of course, with the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and beyond. But that is a subject for another book. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one.

  If ever there was a war that showed the importance of intelligence gathering, it was the American Revolution. When the colonies went to war to free themselves from the grip of King George III, they had no centralized government. Thus, they had no federal army, only local militias, and no central treasury with which to outfit and arm those militias. And, of course, they had no organized intelligence network. Despite all these shortcomings, the colonists defeated the mighty British Empire. How did that happen? Historians generally agree with British major George Beckwith, the head of British intelligence operations in America at the end of the war, who wrote, “Washington did not really outfight the British, he simply outspied us!”

  The colonies’ spy network developed slowly. First came organized resistance to British actions, in the form of secret societies called the Sons of Liberty — the first of which was formed in Boston in 1765. Branches of the Sons of Liberty were created in all the New England colonies, then in New York and South Carolina.

  As the political climate heated up, Samuel Adams wanted to get the word out across the colonies and so formed the first Committee of Correspondence in Boston in 1772. Soon, more than eighty communities in the Massachusetts colony had similar committees, and the idea spread down the East Coast. The Committees’ main purpose was to alert colonists to the latest actions of the British. They also organized express riders to deliver Patriot propaganda — material that could not be sent via the Crown’s official post offices — to rally colonists to the cause.

  The work of the Committees of Correspondence developed into the Committees of Safety around 1775. These committees carried the Patriot agenda a step closer to war. Their mission was military, including activating militia and confiscating British or Tory weapons and stores.

  Around the same time, in Samuel Adams’s hometown of Boston — often called the Cradle of Liberty — some local Patriots formed what many historians consider the first intelligence-gathering network in the colonies. The group was known as the mechanics because its members, including Paul Revere, were skilled laborers and artisans. The mechanics snooped on British activities and also sabotaged and stole British military equipment.

  Seven months after the war started on the common of Lexington, Massachusetts, the Second Continental Congress intensified its efforts to gather and manage intelligence. The group’s most significant decision came when it named George Washington as the director of the fledgling intelligence operation. So the man who would become the “father of our country” can also be considered the father of American espionage. For the remainder of the war, George Washington served the dual role of commander in chief of the rebel troops and director of espionage operations.

  During the early months of the war, things did not go well for the rebels. On August 20, 1776, 20,000 British troops under General William Howe arrived on Long Island to confront Washington’s troops. A week later, the rebels retreated and, under the cover of a thick night fog, evacuated by boat to Manhattan. Although Washington avoided almost certain capture, Howe was not willing to let him off the hook so easily. His redcoats landed at Manhat
tan’s Kip’s Point in September and pursued the rebel army until it was driven up Manhattan Island to Harlem Heights.

  With the British army controlling New York City, Washington knew the city would be teeming with redcoats, affording him no better place to gather military intelligence. He set out to establish a spy network in the city. He asked Major Benjamin Tallmadge of the 2nd Continental Light Dragoons to reorganize and improve the spy network in the New York City area. Using the code name of John Bolton, Tallmadge established a spy network that enjoyed tremendous success for the duration of the war.

  Washington instructed Tallmadge that each spy should gather as much useful intelligence as he could. Washington suggested that Tallmadge’s agents blend in with the local population, especially members of the British Army. Of course every spy was to pay particular attention to troop movements by land and sea. In addition, Washington wanted the spies to find out how many soldiers were in the city and where they were stationed. Also they were to report on the food, supplies, and fuel, and the “Health and Spirits of the Army, Navy, and City.” In other words, spies were charged with noticing everything that might assist the Continental army. A tall order!

  The main player in Tallmadge’s New York City spy ring was Abraham Woodhull of Setauket, Long Island. Under the code name of Samuel Culper, later changed to Samuel Culper Sr., Woodhull moved to New York City and began spying for the Patriots. A slight man who rarely spoke above a whisper, Woodhull visited markets and coffeehouses, keeping his eyes and ears open for any useful information.

  Woodhull lived in constant fear of being discovered. Of course, living in the same boardinghouse as British soldiers did nothing to put him at ease. On one spring night in 1779 as Woodhull sat hunched over his desk, writing a secret message in invisible ink, the door to his room flew open. In horror, the spy sprang from his chair and upset his desk, spilling the valuable ink. The intruders? Not, as he had feared, British soldiers sent to arrest him, but two women friends who wanted to surprise him!

  Woodhull’s fear of discovery grew. “I live in daily fear of death and destruction,” he wrote. “This added to my usual anxiety hath almost unmanned me.” In addition, he learned that his absence from his Long Island home was beginning to arouse suspicions. Apparently, someone had reported his prolonged absence to the British, and a detachment of Queen’s Rangers had ransacked his house. Woodhull decided to “work from home,” back on Long Island, but not before he found someone to take his place in the city.

  By the end of the month, Woodhull wrote Tallmadge to say that he had found his replacement: “a faithful friend and one of the first characters in the city to make it his business and keep his eyes upon every movement and assist me in all respects.” Woodhull was speaking of his friend Robert Townsend, the man who was to become Samuel Culper Jr.

  Good-looking and charming, Townsend had a number of advantages over Woodhull. For one thing, as a dry-goods merchant, he was able to make frequent deliveries from Manhattan to Long Island without raising suspicions of any observant Loyalist. His business also allowed him to write frequent letters, which provided excellent cover for sending and receiving invisible ink messages. In addition, Townsend’s father lived on Long Island — conveniently, about a dozen miles from Woodhull’s house in Setauket. Finally, the young spy had a flair for journalism and wrote occasional stories for the Royal Gazette, a favorite Tory newspaper. And as a journalist, he could mingle freely with the redcoats who visited New York City’s bars, theaters, and coffeehouses. Always happy to see a few kind words about themselves in the Gazette, British soldiers spoke freely to Culper Jr., unaware that they were aiding the enemy.

  With Townsend’s excellent cover and contacts, it wasn’t long before valuable military intelligence — including information about troop strength, deployment, and morale — was on its way to General Washington. When it was time to convey intelligence, Townsend used a courier — usually his customer Austin Roe — to carry the written reports to Culper Sr. on Long Island.

  Townsend rarely met Woodhull personally — that would be too risky. Like a lot of spies since then, the Culpers used what’s known as a dead drop. Here’s how theirs worked: When Roe arrived in Setauket, he went to Woodhull’s rear pasture, which Roe had rented for his cattle. At the pasture, Roe made a show of checking his cattle (to satisfy any curious neighbors) before slipping away to a far corner where a small box was buried. Roe placed his intelligence in the box and then returned to New York.

  Culper Sr. later took a leisurely stroll through his pastures to retrieve the information that Roe had left in the box. Safely back in his house, he looked out his window across Conscience Bay to the home of Anna Strong, who used laundry on her clothesline to signal Culper Sr. If Culper Sr. saw a black petticoat hanging from the line, he knew that Caleb Brewster, a rough and adventuresome Patriot, had arrived in his whaleboat and was waiting to carry any intelligence across the Devil’s Belt (now known as Long Island Sound) to Tallmadge in Connecticut. Woodhull would then count how many handkerchiefs were hanging on the line to determine which of six hidden coves Brewster was waiting in.

  At first, the Culpers sent their intelligence in a code concocted by Major Tallmadge. It was a simple code, but it served them well throughout the war. Tallmadge combed through Entick’s Dictionary until he came up with a list of about seven hundred words most likely to be needed in a Culper secret message. Then he assigned each word a number. For example, advise was 15, knowledge was 345, time was 633, and troops was 645. In addition to these common words, names of important people and places were also part of Tallmadge’s codebook.

  One of the letters that Culper Sr. sent shows how the code numbers were used:

  Every 356 [letter] is opened at the entrance of 727 [New York City], and every one is searched. They have some 345 [knowledge] of the route that our 356 [letters] take. . . . I intend to visit 727 [New York City] before long and think by the assistance of a 355 [lady] of my acquaintance, shall be able to outwit them all.

  This excerpt raises one of the most tantalizing mysteries of the American Revolution. You’ll notice in the last sentence that Culper mentions 355, the code number for lady. This number appears frequently in the Culpers’ letters and seems to refer to a specific woman who was an active member of their spy ring. But the facts about this mystery woman are scant. We know that she lived in New York. That Woodhull thought that she could “outwit them all” has led historians to believe that she was already involved in espionage before Robert Townsend met her. Historians also believe that she and Townsend had a son and that she was ultimately arrested by the British for her activities. There are no further clues about her identity in any correspondence or diary entries.

  In A Peculiar Service, author Corey Ford speculates about 355. He asks, “Did her social position enable her to gain access to highly classified British intelligence, some of it known only to the Commander-in-Chief and his aide?” In other words, was British Major John André — who was involved with Benedict Arnold and later hanged as a spy — captivated by 355’s charms and flirtations? After all, André did have a reputation for surrounding himself with women of intelligence and beauty.

  Ford hypothesizes that when Major André left with General Henry Clinton for North Carolina, 355 and Robert Townsend spent more time together and fell in love. But marriage would have been out of the question if they were both to continue their undercover work. Ford surmises that this conflict could account for Townsend’s abrupt announcement in April 1780 that he was leaving the Culper ring. Without Townsend’s leadership, the ring shut down.

  Not for long, though: Robert Townsend’s “retirement” lasted only about sixty days. He returned to his spy work as abruptly as he had left it and gave no explanation for his return. It could be that he felt guilt and remorse for abandoning his patriotic duty. It could likewise be that he and 355 had separated over their conflict and he hoped that working with the Culper ring would give him the chance to see her again. However, any joy he
might have felt reuniting with his love did not last long.

  In late October, 355 was arrested, along with Hercules Mulligan, another member of the Culper ring, on the charge of spying — the only members of the spy ring to ever be so accused. Mulligan ran a tailor shop frequented by British officers and regularly passed along to Washington bits of intelligence that he overheard in his shop. The genial Irish immigrant was able to talk his way out of the arrest, but not 355. The evidence against her was too strong. Benedict Arnold, newly arrived in the city, was convinced that she was involved in the uncovering of his plan to surrender West Point to the British. Accordingly, 355 was convicted of spying and condemned without a trial.

  Her arrest was shocking enough for Townsend, but he was crushed when he learned that the redcoats had locked up a “woman spy” on the HMS Jersey, the oldest of five waterlogged and squalid prison ships anchored in Wallabout Bay, on the Brooklyn side of the East River. The ship was nicknamed Hell, and the guards saw to it that the name was apt. Some sources report that nearly 12,000 prisoners perished on the jail ships.

  Ford imagines Robert Townsend, heartbroken, taking a nighttime walk to the end of Murray’s Wharf and staring into the darkness that concealed the Jersey. He could not visit 355, the woman who was carrying his child. He couldn’t even let it be known that he knew her, for fear of endangering the lives of the other members of the Culper operation. In Ford’s imagined scene, Townsend gives a final look in the direction of the prison ship, then walks back to his boardinghouse room, packs his bag, and leaves New York.

  Townsend was eventually able to rescue his son from the prison ship and lived with his sister in the country until he died at the age of eighty-four. And 355? Her bones were buried in a common grave for the prison ship victims. As Ford wrote, “355 remains as anonymous in death as she was in life, an American heroine without a name.”