Books Set in North America: United States, Washington, D.C.

The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: The Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets, by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee (2016)

In 2000, an informant provided the FBI with a package that contained a sample of confidential documents and pages of codes that, once deciphered, indicated that the writer was offering to sell United States top secret documents.  A clue as to the identity of the letter’s writer was the fact that many words were misspelled.  After an exhaustive search, the FBI identified the writer as Brian P. Regan, a disgruntled security specialist with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), who, realizing that he wasn’t getting a promotion, decided to supplement his income by selling classified intelligence to foreign countries.  His first target was Libya, before moving on to Iraq and China.

The author explored Regan’s childhood.  He was from a working-class family and was a bit of an odd duck.  In school, he was often the butt of jokes.  He learned early on that cheating helped him move on with his life.  By cheating on the entrance exams, he enlisted in the military as a non-commissioned officer.  He had a talent for cracking codes, which landed him a job with the NRO.

After marrying and beginning a family, he soon found himself heavily in debt.  Hence, his scheme to sell America’s secrets to foreign powers.  For this amateur, this proved to be more difficult than he imagined.  He copied numerous top secret and confidential papers and buried them throughout federal properties.  He encrypted the location of these papers with a complex code.  These buried documents were to provide him with insurance in the event that he was ever caught.

Regan sent numerous coded letters to foreign powers with the offer to sell secrets, but none of his contact took his bait.

The author provided a brief history on code and encryption, dating back thousands of years.

This was a fascinating book and a true-life thriller.

Read:  January 13, 2023

4 Stars

Books Set in North America: United States

Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933 ~ 1934, by Bryan Burrough (2004)

In the late 1980s, the files on the activities of the early years of the FBI were released.  The author, while watching a documentary on the Barker Gang, became intrigued by the first spate of criminals deemed Public Enemies.  This book is the result of his interest.  He poured over FBI files and wrote this comprehensive look at the FBI’s pursuit of four groupings of criminal gangs that were active in the early 1930s ~ Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger and the Barker Gang.

Although the FBI had been in existence since 1908 (as the Bureau of Investigation), in the early years, the agents were forbidden to carry weapons.  The philosophy was that they were an investigative branch ~ the arrests were to be accomplished by the local jurisdictions.

This changed in the 1930s.  The Great Depression brought with it a new kind of criminal ~ bank robbers.  It was the deadly Kansas City massacre of a number of law men that changed the face of the FBI.  In June 1933, a criminal gang led by Vernon Miller set out to free fellow criminal, Frank Nash, who was in Federal custody and was being transported in Missouri.  Miller’s gang ambushed and opened fire on law officers, killing four.  Nash was killed in the ensuing gunfire.  This massacre got the attention of the J. Edgar Hoover. It has been speculated that Pretty Boy Floyd was involved in the massacre, but this has not definitively been proven.

The FBI had few trained agents, and none with any really experience with weapons and very limited jurisdiction.  At the time, robbing banks was not under the jurisdiction of the Feds.  The FBI had to work with local law enforcement officers, some of which were also ill-equip to handle major crimes, or were not willing to work with the federal officers.

This book shows the growing pains of the early years of the FBI.  Homer Cummings, the United States Attorney General, had to convince Congress to expand the power and authority of the FBI.  Soon after the Kansas City massacre, the FBI was training its agents to use weapons.  Some of their interrogation procedures, however, left much to be desired.

The book delves into the activities of Machine Gun Kelly, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and the Barker Gang.

Dillinger came from a middle-class background.  He was good looking and was known to jump over bank railings when he robbed banks.  He was exceedingly polite.  He captured the public’s attention and was seen as a Robin-Hood figure in robbing banks. It was not his aim to hurt anyone during his crime sprees.  When he was ultimately betrayed and killed outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago, he had achieved near national folk hero status.

During this same period of history, Bonnie and Clyde were ruthlessly crossing the country, leaving a bloody path in their wake.  During their lifetime, they were largely unknown, except for the locales of their robbing and killing.  The FBI sought the couple, but bungled their investigative efforts.  In the end, it was a posse of local law officers who ambushed the two criminals.

The author also followed the exploits of the Barker Gang.  Although Hoover publicized that the “brains” behind the Barker Gang was the criminal’s mother, Kate “Ma” Barker, the FBI files showed that she was actually more concerned with jigsaw puzzles and had little before-the-fact knowledge of the gang’s criminal activity.

The FBI had a tip that Dillinger and his gang were holed up in an inn called Little Bohemia in northern Wisconsin.  The FBI agents, still without expertize in weaponry, badly misjudged the situation. In the dark of night, in a raid lead by Melvin Purvis, came upon the inn.  The FBI, mistaking local patrons leaving the inn for the Dillinger gang, began a shootout, killing the innocent patrons.  One federal agent was also killed, but Dillinger slipped through their fingers.

Baby Face Nelson was one of the most brutal criminals during this era.  He seemed to delight in terrorizing and killing victims during his robberies.  Agents trailed him all across the country before he was finally killed in another shoot-out in Illinois.

By the end of the 1934, the FBI had gained its footing and overcome the fumbles of its earlier year and was well on its way to the power and prestige is has today.

A fascinating and very readable book.

Read: August 2, 2019

5 Stars

Books Set Globally: Dubai, America and Italy

The Flight Attendant, by Chris Bohjalian (2018)

The novel begins when Cassie Bowden, a flight attendant in her light 30s, awoke in a strange hotel room in Dubai next to the bloody body of Alex Sokolov. Cassie was a binge drinker who experienced frequent black-outs whenever she drank.  Upon seeing the dead Alex, she briefly wondered whether or not she killed him during one of her black-outs.  She tried to recall the events of the previous evening, but remembered only that she had dinner with Alex and returned with him to his hotel instead of the hotel where the other flight attendants were housed.  She vaguely recalled that a woman named Miranda joined them briefly in Alex’s hotel room.

Instead of contacting the authorities, she quickly dressed and returned to her hotel, discarding any potential evidence of the night along the way. Upon joining her flight crew, she began her series of lies.  Alex had been on the flight from New York to Dubai, which is where Cassie first met him. By the time the return flight arrived in New York, his body had been discovered, and because Alex was an American, the FBI wanted to interview the crew members on his original flight.

Cassie realized that she could be in legal trouble so contacts a lawyer recommended by the flight crew’s union.  When interviewed by the FBI, Cassie blurted out that she had spent the night with Alex, but lied saying that he had been alive when she left his room.  

Alex was a hedge fund manager, with ties to Russia.  Could there be more to his story that Cassie knew?  Why was the FBI so interested in Alex?  And what of Miranda?  What was her relationship with Alex?

This was a very quick read and entertaining until the last couple of chapters. The novel then went off the rails with a very bizarre ending that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Read: August 15, 2018

3.5 Stars

Books Set in the United States: Oklahoma

Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann (2017)

Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann recounts the calculated murders of members of the Osage tribe in the 1920s solely for their oil rights in Oklahoma.  By the 1890s, the Osage had been relegated to a rocky area in Oklahoma, basically deemed uninhabitable for the white families moving and settling west.  In the early 1890s, oil was discovered and, because the Osage owned the land, they quickly became very, very rich.  The United States Government determines that the Osage need white guardians to protect them and their money.  Many of the “guardians” however, actual use their status to deprive the Osage from their wealth.

By the 1920s, the Osage begin to die under mysterious circumstances.  The book focuses on Mollie Burkhard, a young Osage woman married to Ernest Burkhart, a white.  In 1921, Mollie’s sister, Anna, was found shot and killed and left in a ravine.  She was the second of Millie’s sister to die.  The first sister died of a “wasting” disease shortly before Anna’s death.  Then, Mollie mother died.  Within a year or two, Mollie’s remaining sister and husband were killed when their house was bombed.

Within 4 years, over 20 Osage were known to have been killed or died unnatural deaths.  There was no single method of the killings.  Local law enforcement was corrupt and offered little hope to the Osage.  Finally, the killings reach the attention of the United States government and the matter is handed over to the nascent agency that would later be known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, headed by a young J. Edgar Hoover.

Hoover desperately wanted a win, so he handed the case over to former Texas Ranger Tom White.  The book describes how Tom and his team laboriously searched through records and documents looking for clues.  What he finds was a truly cold and calculated scheme to steal the wealth from the Osage.

The author also provides insight into an era of US history that was not taught in my school growing up.

The book is a real page-turner.

Read:  May 28, 2017

5 Stars