How George Washington really won the Revolution

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GEORGE WASHINGTON, SPYMASTER

By Thomas B. Allen

National Geographic, $16.95, 184 pages, illus.

REVIEWED BY JAMES SRODES

If you have a pre-teen you want to coax into serious reading, then "George Washington, Spymaster" will be a welcome gift. That is if you can bear to hand it over if you should dip into it yourself.

Much of the drama of the American Revolution saga lies in the fact that a collection of farmers, artisans, and laborers could take on the world's undisputed superpower of the day and win independence through a grueling, disaster-plagued war on our own home ground.

Initially ill-trained and laughably equipped, there was one area where Washington's Continental Army was superior. Author Thomas B. Allen quotes Major George Beckwith, the head of British intelligence operations at the end of the war: "Washington did not really outfight the British, he simply outspied us!"

In a time when intelligence and national security is front and center as a public issue, this book sets an important historical marker. Washington, and, it turns out, many of our Founding Fathers had a surprisingly sophisticated grasp of the craft of intelligence. By using their hard won insights into where the British were and what they intended to do, they preserved their ragged resources and used them to killing advantage.

To the point, much of what Washington did to get intelligence is trade craft as up to date as today's headlines. He put spies behind the lines, he used disinformation about his own plans, and he waged propaganda warfare against the redcoat troops and against the British people back home. There were codes and ciphers, dead drops, double agents and counterintelligence ops galore.