Michael J. Sulick

As usual, I received this book as part of a GoodReads drawing and despite that kind and generous consideration my opinions are candidly stated below.

The primary danger for any work on history is that the author will provide information with such force and determination that the result is as dry as a mouth full of crackers. Sulick's treatment of the history of espionage against the United States does not so suffer. His presentation of the topic is pleasingly broad, covering the long history show more of the country, but still provides enough specific detail about particular cases to inform and entertain.

The book is divided into five roughly chronological parts covering the Revolutionary War, Civil War, 1914-1945, 1930s and 1940s, and lastly the Russian spies around the development of the Atomic Bomb. While obviously there is some odd overlap the arrangement does make sense as later sections deal with specific programs within the government while overlapping in time frame with others.

Each part begins with an overview of espionage in the subject area or period in history and later sections within each part give specifics on individual spies. So a reader wishing for more of a brief reading could peruse the more global sections and skip those that relate to individual players for a briefer read. These are, at times, a bit redundant and of marginal usefulness.

In summary, the author does a wonderful job of taking a potentially dry topic and making hold the reader's attention. One is introduced to a few specific personages of spy fame but also given a sound overall understanding of why espionage works so well in America and entertaining insight on how the bumbling spies of yesteryear screw up and endanger themselves and their counterparts. A wonderful introduction to the real world of international espionage. show less

This is an exciting book that draws the reader quickly along and startlingly topical, up to date to the recent crop of traitorous trading of US secrets for cash or glory, Julian Assange and Manning (Bradley or Chelsea) are mentioned, and the publication date meant the author just missed Edward Snowden.

Sulick was the Director of the CIA Clandestine service and is an authoritive historian on the service and the cases he details contain true insight and amazing access. The book is written in a show more straightforward prose that engages the reader’s attention – in parts in reads like exciting fiction but all of it is researched and even approved by the CIA.

In his conclusion the author states that there is no need for America “to engage in Faustian bargains” for its security at the expense of civil liberties, both must be ensured. show less

Michael J. Sulick has written a concise primer on the men and women who have spied against the U.S. since the mid-1900s. It is compulsively readable too, as Sulick recounts a surprising number of stories. Some of those mentioned receive a paragraph or two of coverage, others several pages or full chapters. I was struck again and again by how many chose to turn to spying not for ideological reasons but out of mere financial greed or need. The ideologues were almost the exception, rather than show more the expected rule. Sulick is also refreshingly up front about the ways in which the intelligence community missed signs of possible espionage. Highly recommended for professional and armchair historians alike. show less

American Spies: Espionage against the United States from the Cold War to the Present by Michael J. Sulick

I was surprised and pleased to be one of the recipients of Michael J. Sulick’s American Spies: Espionage against the United States from the Cold War to the Present via the LibraryThing lottery. My interest in this topic is not random. My birth coincided almost exactly with the onset of the Cold War; my late husband served as a civilian intelligence officer assigned to Washington, DC; I show more remember as a young child being privy to impassioned adult discussions about the Rosenbergs; and I was living in Washington and reading the Washington Post when the ‘home boy’ espionage agents John Walker, Jonathan Pollard, Ronald Pelton, Aldrich Ames, and Robert Hansson were all over the headlines.

Michael Sulick is a retired CIA intelligence operations officer, the recipient of a Ph.D. in comparative literature from CUNY, and the author of an earlier book entitled Spying in America. American Spies, his 2013 work, is a companion volume to his first… and in light of the recent Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning news stories, it is a timely topic. In his introduction, Sulick writes, “the intent of this study is to examine the history of [the disbelief by Americans that fellow Americans choose to commit acts of espionage] through the stories of individual spies and to provide the reader with insights into the unique nature of espionage against America, its successes, failures, and consequences for national security.” In pursuing his objective, Sulick focuses upon a substantial number of acts of espionage, all of which were directed against the United States by citizens of the United States. These occurred between the late 1940s and early 2013. Not surprisingly, in most instances, it was the USSR that reaped the greatest harvest from these acts; in a few instances, however, other nations such as Cuba, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Israel, and China were the beneficiaries.

Sulick uses a chronological, case-by-case framework in order to introduce his reader to virtually all of the prominent and many, if not most, of the not-so-prominent American spies—several dozen in all—of the past sixty-plus years. In some instances his treatment is cursory; in others it is quite detailed. Looking at the two dozen or so spies in his ‘more prominent’ category, Sulick examines each person relative to his background and education, motivation for spying, access to classified materials, specific acts of espionage, apprehension, and punishment as well as the implications to national security of his/her crime. In retrospect, it is amazing, considering the extremely sensitive and damaging nature of so much of the information that was passed along to the Soviets during the Cold War, that a ‘hot war’ did not result, one in which the United States was left as the vanquished. One has to believe that the Soviets were not as bellicose as Americans were lead to believe.

The author provides his reader with a clear profile of the Cold War and early post-Cold War American spy. Although all of those individuals were not cut from exactly the same piece of cloth, there were a number of commonalities that ran across the group: 1. Greed, not ideology, was by far the most common spy motivator. That said many spies sold out for a relative pittance; only five of them achieved membership in the million dollar club. 2. Spies were, in almost all instances, employed either by a U.S. government agency, invariably one tied in some way to national security, or they were members, especially enlisted members, of the United States armed forces. 3. Many experienced troubled childhoods and, especially, unsatisfactory relationships with their fathers. 4. Many wrestled with financial difficulties; gambling proclivities were not uncommon. 5. Many experienced marital problems, often exacerbated by alcohol abuse, 6. Most received a prison sentence not commensurate with the seriousness of the crime. Often the government cut deals so as to avoid embarrassing public trials, protect counterintelligence agents, and/or extract useful information from the accused. No American found guilty of espionage during the Cold War or post-Cold War, except for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (whose crime pre-dated the Cold War), has been executed. 7. Most Americans found guilty of espionage have not or will not have died during incarceration.

Most of the chapters in American Spies present past history —albeit interesting— in which many of the political dynamics and much of the technology was different than it is today. The Soviet Union was America’s primary adversary then; now it is not. For these reasons, some prospective readers may push this work aside, believing it to be irrelevant and outdated. For even those persons, however, the book has a message. In the final chapters, in a section entitled “Espionage in the New Millennium,” Sulick addresses several very serious, post-9/11 issues that relate to national security today…and by extension espionage. These are nuclear terrorism, chemical terrorism, and, cyber-theft, all of which pose great dangers to the American populace. We as Americans have legitimate reason to be frightened and in the years to come it is not Russia about whom we should be mindful but rather China. This book in part is a wake-up call!

American Spies is informative, seemingly thorough, thought-provoking, and engaging. It is both a catalogue of sorts of American spies and their acts of espionage, and a succinct, yet well-executed, sixty-year history of the United States that coincides with the period in which those crimes occurred. Sulick, despite his ties to the higher rungs of the American intelligence community, is candid in acknowledging both past weaknesses and failures within that community as well as the egregiously inadequate security, both in the civilian agencies and in the military… all of which greatly contributed to the success of Americans spying against America. Were he not, his book would be seriously flawed. show less