BOOK REVIEW: Spy Sites of New York City: A Guide to the Region’s Secret History
by H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace
Reviewed by Mitchell D. Silber
Cipher Brief Expert Mitchell D. Silber is the former director of intelligence analysis at the NYPD Intelligence Division and currently serves as the executive director of the Community Security Initiative, a joint program of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and UJA-Federation of New York.
Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, Istanbul…whether it is James Bond, Gabriel Allon, Jack Ryan or George Smiley the world of espionage always seems to be overseas in its fictional representations.
However, Spy Sites of New York City: A Guide to the Region’s Secret History, by H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace, shines a bright spotlight into the dark alleyways, subway tunnels and tenement buildings of New York, exposing a real-life secret history that few know, but deserves more attention and study.
I was the Director of Intelligence Analysis at the New York Police Department from 2005 to 2012, overseeing the collection and analysis of intelligence primarily directed at threats from al Qaeda and its fellow travelers in the greater New York City region. But even I was amazed to learn of the depth, diversity and deadly nature of the espionage history that Melton and Wallace have unearthed that spans almost two hundred and fifty years, from the Revolutionary War period to today.
Melton and Wallace organize their history effectively among eight different time periods and themes: The American Revolution; the American Civil War; World War I, Anarchists, Revolutionaries and Soviet Spies following the Great War, Nazi and Soviet spies during World War II, the early Cold War period, the late Cold War period and then finally, New Threats and Old Adversaries (1990-2019).
Espionage in New York City is always intimate. Nevertheless, I was shocked to learn that the very building in which I live was the residence of one of America’s “Twelve Apostles” – a key espionage network set up during World War II to prepare for the Allied invasion of Vichy French territories in North Africa.
There were many other highlights and golden nuggets of information that Melton and Wallace have discovered or illuminated. Hercules Mulligan, now famous thanks to the Broadway show, Hamilton, receives attention for his role in the famed Culper spy ring and his ability as a tailor to warn Washington about the British plans to attack Quebec based on their requests for winter clothes from Mulligan’s clothing shop.
The book is full of fascinating stories ranging from thwarted Civil War plots to engulf New York City in flames by the Confederacy, to the examination of hidden networks of German spies and saboteurs during World War I, and the hidden extensive network of German spies, saboteurs, their bordellos and efforts to intercept wireless communications. Imbedded in these anecdotes are the formative predecessors to the FBI, known initially as the Bureau of Investigation as well as an early star turn for the NYPD in the espionage world and even the predecessor organization for the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, which was hosted at the American Geographical Society’s headquarters on 156th Street and Broadway.
New York City’s role as a refuge from the war in Europe made it home to many key 20th century figures. For example, as the Great War came to a close, personalities ranging from Leon Trotsky, who used the Bronx as a refuge until the Czar abdicated in 1917 to Albert Einstein, who had an affair with a Soviet GRU intelligence officer in the 1930’s. Soviet assassins used the Hotel Pierrepoint in Brooklyn as an operational planning venue for Soviet assassins who ultimately tracked down Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940.
The beaux arts, luxurious St. Regis Hotel on 55th Street off of 5th Avenue served as a locus of activity in the city for General “Wild Bill” Donovan, America’s first official spymaster as head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS.) It was also a regular hangout for “A Man Called Intrepid,” William Stephenson, Britain’s chief intelligence officer based in the U.S., who maintained official offices at Rockefeller Center. Even Ian Fleming, who worked in British intelligence during the war, liked the location so much that used it in a James Bond book as the site for a Bond—CIA meeting.
Then of course, there is the Manhattan Project, America’s secret operation to build an atomic bomb that was originally housed at 270 Broadway as well as the Soviet operations to penetrate the American atomic program. The Automat at 38th and Broadway, was a key location for Julius Rosenberg’s Atomic Spy Ring to pass information to their Soviet handlers.
Dead drops in Manhattan parks, hollow nickels and brush pass sites became the norm in the city after the establishment of the United Nations in New York following the Second World War. Not even the American Museum of Natural History was spared a role in spy games between the U.S. and the Soviet Union as its cavernous passageways, multiple entrances and exits and elevators made it an ideal location for brush passes and exposing surveillance. A twenty-story residence in the Fieldston section of the Bronx was the home for many of the Soviet government officers stationed in New York with its rooftop antennas, specifically designed to intercept communications in the host country of the United States. Even Grant’s Tomb, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan was the location where one midnight in 1961, LT General Dimitri Polyakov agreed to work with U.S. intelligence against his homeland, the Soviet Union.
Once the Cold War ended, and Islamist threats came to predominate, once again the city and its reputation as a refuge for dissidents made it a hot spot for action. The Al Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn was Abdullah Azzam’s official representation in America, raising funds and encouraging American Muslims to join the Caravan and fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. And it was from this milieu and among the followers of the exiled Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman that the assassin of Rabbi Meir Kahane and the 1993 World Trade Center attacks emerged previewing what would be a long war in the shadows that would eventually result in the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001.
Hezbollah, Iran, ISIS, al Qaeda operatives have all been in the sites of both the New York City Police Department and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force since then, but without Melton and Wallace’s excellent history of espionage in New York City, one would miss the context of the previous two hundred plus years of fascinating spy history that the city has to offer.
Spy Sites of New York City earns a prestigious four out of four trench coats.
This book earns a prestigious four trench coats.
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