Kjellquist Blog

Michael Sulick’s American Spies  is the continuation of his history of American spies i.e. individuals who have spied on American. His previous book covered the period from the Revolutionary War to the beginning of the Cold War. His latest book, American Spies, covers the period from the Cold War to the present. Sulick undertook quite a challenge with this book. Simply the large number of spies requires more of a survey approach to this history. Sulick developed a flexible organization devoting a chapter to each of major spies of recent history. For the lesser spies he groups them by country, China and Cuba or timeframe. The result is a well organized easy reading narrative.

This approach also avoids extensive rehashing details of spies like Boyce/Lee, Walker, Ames and Hansen that have been covered in detail in individual books.

Sulick pulls no punches when it comes to failures of US counterintelligence activities. Though the counterintelligence failures to detect spies such as Walker, Ames or Hansen are well known, this book reinforces the decades long turf wars that prevented the CIA, NSA and FBI from working effectively together. All the agencies have suffered from an ego trip that blinded them from believing one of their own could be a traitor.

Beacuse of the long lasting implications to CIA counterintelligence, Sulick also includes a chapter on the devastating impact that the master spy hunter, James Angleton, had on the CIA. “The Angleton legacy would haunt the CIA and provoke a backlash that would irreparably damage the spy agency.”

In each case covered by Sulick he also provides a glimpse into the psyche and motivation of the spies. For many (or perhaps most) a primary motivation was money troubles and the quick fix by selling secrets. The most incredible parts of the money story are how easy it would have been to check the spies financial health and how little money was involved (in most cases) versus the consequences.

An interesting thread noted by Sulick in his discussion of the FBI spy, Robert Hanssen, is the relationship with his father. Benedict Arnold, John Walker, Clayton Lonetree, Rick Ames, and Robert Hansen all had abusive fathers that shaped their son’s treachery!

In summary, American Spies doesn’t provide major new revelations but it is an excellent concise survey of modern spying in America. His writing style is light and easy to read.

On Jun 5 2012 I had the opportunity to witness one the rarest of astronomical events, the transit of Venus across the sun. This event only occurs twice each century eight years apart. The Venus transit will not occur again for another 108 years! Fortunately for me I witnessed the transit from a field only a few miles away at the University of South Carolina – Aiken. However, I did share one aspect with 18th century astronomers – the fickle nature of cloud cover!

The early purpose of accurately measuring the Venus transit was to derive the distance between the earth and the sun. The transit uses the optical effect of parallax and some heavenly geometry. This distance is known as the Astronomical Unit and is the measure of relative distance for the entire solar system. Thus, knowing the AU accrately means unlocking distances to all the planets! However, even today, the Venus transit is helping us develop techniques necessary for exoplanet discovery.

In his book The Day the World DIscovered the Sun Mark Anderson takes us on mankind’s first big science project of a global scale.  This is the journey of three international teams to view the Venus transit in 1769 from the wilds of northern Norway, Baja Mexico and Tahiti. Maximum distance between observing points increasing the measurement accuracy. Anderson does an excellent job of portraying the hardships these teams faced including long sea voyages, waring European nations and disease that claim many of the team members. Despite all of the hardships, elementary navigation (clock-based longitude determination is decades away from common usage) and simple instruments; these teams achieved an accuracy of 99.8 percent the earth – sun distance (1 AU).

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Rose George’s latest book takes its title from the fact that 90% of ALL goods are transported by sea. In Ninety Percent of Everything, Ms George took as her task to illuminate this nearly invisible industry that we all depend on. In this engrossing book we get a glimpse of life aboard the Maersk Kendal out of the English port of Felixstowe bound for Singapore. I say glimpse because we really don’t get to know much of the crew but such is the nature of the transient merchant crew; where five nationalities of twenty men and one women (cook) comprise the current compliment.

The Kendal is a Korean-built container ship with 6,188 containers (“boxes” to the crew) on board. The Kendal is only about 5 years old.
Ms George describes the spartan life and facilities on the Kendal from the perspective of her status as a supernumerary.
However, Ninety Percent of Everything is no boring travelogue. Ms George does an excellent job of weaving in stories and background of other ships and episodes to illuminate a topic. For example, as the Kendal nears the International Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC) and the threat from Somali-based pirates, She digresses into the topic of piracy at some length. She meets with EU-NAVFOR personnel, visits the warship, Vasco de Gama, and describes the harrowing ransoming of the Marida Marguerite.
In other chapters, Ms George describes the efforts of the charitable seamen benevolent organizations to offer aid and comfort to seamen regardless of nationality. In another chapter Ms George describes the terrifying prospect of the ship sinking and being a drift in a lifeboat.
A theme that resonates through the book is the wretched conditions that any able seamen (AB) must endure. It seems the international waters is awash in unscrupulous ship owners, seamen agents, captains etc with the average seamen at the bottom and subject to every form of exploitation. Samuel Johnson summed up the life of an AB when he said “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”
In summary, though non-fiction, Ninety Percent of Everything is quite the page-turner and an excellent read.