George Washington’s Secret Spy War: The Making of America’s First Spymaster

Drawing on Washington’s correspondence and diary, the late Nagy (Dr. Benjamin Church, Spy), an American Revolution specialist, follows Washington from his participation in the French and Indian Wars, where he cut his teeth in the ways of espionage, to his great deception in the American Revolution that secured colonial victory. Having learned in his 1758 campaign in Ohio that “there is nothing more necessary than good intelligence to frustrate a designing enemy,” Washington used several methods with great success to deceive his enemy in almost every military encounter in which he engaged. He created false troop information; he standardized the means by which his spies gathered information; he and his forces regularly intercepted and read mail; and he used invisible ink in his letters to his own leaders, who had various ways of making the ink visible. According to Nagy, Washington’s greatest tool was the “Deception Battle Plan”: Washington fooled the British into thinking that he would attack the British front line in New York City when instead he moved his troops to Virginia, attacking the British rear flank and securing Cornwallis’s surrender and American victory. Nagy’s fast-paced chronicle reveals a little-known side of America’s Revolutionary War hero. Photos. Agent: Don Fehr, Trident Media. (Oct.)