Spying for America

People who were shocked a decade ago by Oliver North's testimony on "shredding parties" and shady arms deals will be electrified by details from the case of Aldrich Ames, the counterintelligence officer who betrayed CIA operatives in Russia and spied for the KGB (and its post-Cold War successor, the Russian SVR) for nine years before his arrest in 1994. With its new information on recent episodes in the U.S, Spying for America is a complete history of the nation's espionage. Author Nathan Miller tells the true stories of agents like John Honeyman, George Washington's Tory agent who gathered enemy intelligence along the backroads of New Jersey; and of Elizabeth Van Lew and Rose Greenhow, belles who spied during the Civil War.

Sometimes humorous, often disturbing, and always dramatic, Miller's history of American spying traces the growth of intelligence organizations, and the unfortunate pattern of officials all too tempted to use covert operations as shortcuts in resolving domestic and international problems.

"(A) fact-filled study of the people behind the 200-year-old American intelligence community.... A solid primer". -- Kirkus Reviews

"A stunning narrative that reads better than a novel". -- Charles W. Corddry, Baltimore Sun writer and panelist for Washington Week in Review