BOOK REVIEW: Lincoln’s Spies
By Douglas Waller
Reviewed by Michael Sulick
Michael Sulick was the director of CIA’s National Clandestine Service. He also served as Chief of Counterintelligence and Chief of the Central Eurasia Division where he was responsible for intelligence collection operations and foreign liaison relationships in Russia, Eastern Europe and the former republics of the Soviet Union.
Legendary CIA director Allen Dulles once commented that "there was probably more espionage in one year in any medieval Italian city than in the four-year war of secession." Dulles' judgment may be harsh, but Lincoln's Spies details the many problems that plagued intelligence collection on both sides, slow communications, turf battles, bureaucratic snafus and inexperience. At the same time, Douglas Waller's study does illustrate that Union espionage efforts were occasionally marked by flashes of ingenuity, daring and successful exploitation of the enemy's prejudices to gather useful information.
Lincoln's Spies focuses on four central figures in Union intelligence: Allan Pinkerton, Lafayette Baker, George Sharpe and Elizabeth Van Lew. The four central figures are well chosen –- two of them highlight the accomplishments of Union intelligence, while the other two reflect its serious shortcomings.
General George McClellan, Lincoln's commander early in the war, enlisted Pinkerton as his intelligence chief. Pinkerton, founder of America's first national detective agency, was tasked with collecting intelligence on the Confederates and combating rampant espionage in Washington. Pinkerton introduced new techniques in law enforcement and counterintelligence that helped him counter rebel spying, among them infiltrating his targets and surveillance.
Despite these innovations, Pinkerton botched the arrest of a leading rebel spy and later committed a more tragic blunder by dispatching two of his agents, their identities known to southerners in Richmond, to discover the whereabouts of his ace spy, Timothy Webster. As a result of this egregious tradecraft error, Webster, seriously ill and bed-ridden, was compromised. The two agents along with Webster's fellow female operative were imprisoned and Webster was hanged.
Pinkerton largely failed in collecting intelligence on the enemy. McClellan, an overly cautious commander, constantly resisted engagement with the enemy, insisting his forces were far outnumbered by the rebels. Pinkerton reinforced his commander's reluctance with grossly inflated estimates of enemy troop strength (Waller provides convincing examples of these estimates and their impact on McClellan's strategy, especially the opportunities missed). At one point, an exasperated Lincoln sarcastically asked “if McClellan doesn’t plan to use the army, I would like to borrow it." Pinkerton's conclusions represented an early example of flawed analysis that would haunt American intelligence in the future.
In the fractured world of Civil War intelligence, Pinkerton's unit was rivaled by another Union organization to root out subversives that was run by Lafayette Baker, an utterly corrupt and shadowy dilettante. While Baker discovered some Confederate sympathizers, his largely ineffective spy catching activities marked a dark chapter in American history. Baker rounded up hundreds of suspects and detained them on flimsy evidence, ignored due process and harshly interrogated his prisoners. In the process he identified no major rebel spy. His oppressive measures were a precursor of other eras in American history when the pursuit of spies and subversives justified political persecution.
Aside from his oppressive measures, Baker was an unabashed fraudster whose numerous swindles are detailed in Lincoln's Spies. Baker was also a notorious liar who embellished his so-called "achievements" to win the favor of his political masters. As noted in one post-war Congressional report, "it is doubtful Baker has in any one thing told the truth, even by accident."
After the war, Baker and Pinkerton wrote memoirs of their intelligence careers, both laced throughout with exaggerations and fabrications. The other two central figures of Waller's book did not –- though theirs would have been based on true accomplishments.
George Sharpe, a lawyer from New York, spent the early years of the war heading a regiment of his state's militia. In 1863 he was tabbed to head the Union's intelligence effort, and his Bureau of Military Information became the nation's first organized military intelligence service. As Waller notes, Sharpe's combat experience enabled him to understand Union commanders' intelligence needs and the requirement for expeditious communication in fast-moving battle situations. Moreover, Sharpe was the pioneer of modern "all source" intelligence, collating and analyzing reports from a broad spectrum of sources ranging from air balloon reconnaissance to tidbits from deserters and runaway slaves. Among the many strong points in Lincoln's Spies is Waller's analysis of the role of intelligence obtained by Sharpe's sources in critical battles.
Sharpe eventually established contact with the fourth central figure in Lincoln's Spies, Elizabeth Van Lew. Unlike the other three, she was not an intelligence chief. Van Lew, a member of Richmond high society, lived in the Confederate capital throughout the war, and her peers were aware of her Union loyalties and abolitionist views. Despite this, Van Lew succeeded in running the most prolific and secure network of sources in the war that proved especially crucial in the final campaign to seize the capital. Confederates, blinded by their preconceptions, could not believe a respectable Richmond lady capable of espionage. Van Lew not only exploited this prejudice but, as Waller describes in detail, she also employed elaborate tradecraft measures to protect her network, among them compartmentation, secret writing, and concealment devices.
Lincoln's Spies is about more than its title suggests –- his extremely well researched book is not only a study of the four key figures but also a comprehensive study of Union and Confederate espionage and a landmark contribution to both Civil War literature and American intelligence history.
This book earns a prestigious four out of four trench coats.
Editor’s note:Douglas Waller is also the author of Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage and Disciples: The World War II Missions of the CIA Directors Who Fought for Wild Bill Donovan
Michael Sulick has written two books on espionage against the United States, Spying in America: Espionage From the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War and American Spies: Espionage Against the United States from the Cold War to the Present, both published by Georgetown University Press.
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