This is a group of authors talking about accidental spies. It is moderated welcome to thf Congress National book festival. I am kevin butterfield, the director of the john include the center of the library of congress. The kludgy center works to bring scholars into residents who work at the collections of the library of congress for up to a year to write books like these and be a part of a national dialogue. Welcome to everyone joining us live on cspan today. We are proud to partner with cspan again this year. You will encounter a range of intriguing conversations on the range of the american spy craft to an event about how our eating choices define who we are. We will be hearing about climate change, the practice of interior design in black homes, what it means to be a latino in america. We hope you engage in the conversation, ask questions and joint writers for their signs. Our first panel today, accidental spies features john lyle, janet wallick and jeff gaetz. The debut book he will talk about today is the dirty tricks department. Janet is the author of 10 books, her latest is flirting with danger. Our moderator, jeff of cbs news, the host of the cbs news podcast, america changed forever. Lets welcome them to the stage. [applause] hello, hello, hello. I am not perky like you this morning. [laughter] i do not know how you do it. I wake up this morning for teatime. This is a little different. Forgive me if, you know, my mind starts wandering toward the golf course and i asked some ridiculous questions. That is when you come in. We want you to participate. Obviously, you are not going to get the opportunity to often to speak to the authors of these incredible books. I think the library of congress has done a great job of matching moderators with authors, because when i picked up the book, i was like, ok. Cia, i like that. This is write down my alley. It does not golf, but. [laughter] thanks for coming, janet and john. Appreciate your time. I loved your books. It reminded me of college, where i had to cram to study up, but i am ready. I am ready. Lets talk about the books. We are going to start with flirting with danger. I love the title. I love the book. In part because it talks about maryland and it talks about baltimore. [laughter] so, it was interesting to me. You have this heroin, right, this woman who decided when it wasnt the same for women to be spies, she wanted to be a spy and she was a pretty good spy. Tell us about marguerite harrison. Janet she was from maryland. In fact, she was an ace eighth generation american from a very prominent family in maryland. She was part of well, she was the daughter of the gilded age. Her father was a shipping tycoon. Her mother was a socialite hostess who wanted her daughter to marry for money and title. Jeff i want that for my daughters. [laughter] nothing wrong with that. Janet [laughter] well, marguerite was a rebel. She was not so keen on what her mother wanted. She did have a romance with a turkish bay. She did have very dual dinners with Winston Churchill dull dinners with Winston Churchill, who stepped on her toes when they went dancing. She did marry a handsome stockbroker from maryland, but he had more charm than money. She was madly in love with him, he her. She had one of the most lavish weddings ever held in maryland. This was i forgot to say she was born not long after the civil war in 1878. So, right after the wedding well, nine months after the wedding, they had a son. [laughter] i kept count. Jeff [laughter] janet they made it. [laughter] and, they had a wonderful society kind of life. You know, the country club dinners and the charity luncheons and the special dances and all of that. Jeff all right, so why did she want to be a spy . She seems to have a perfect life and existence. Why do that dangerous work . Janet she did. But, in 1915, her husband died very young. She was a widow at 37. She was very interested in world affairs. She had traveled as a child to europe every summer. She spoke five languages fluently. At the age of 10, she was the family translator in germany and france. That is pretty impressive. She has not traveled at all with her husband, she was at home taking care of the family. When her husband died, instead of going back to the family to live with her father or inlaws, she went out on her own, not a likely thing for Society Woman a Society Woman to do. She got a job at the baltimore as a assistant society editor. When the war broke out as a reporter when america joined the war as a reporter, she wanted to go to the front. No women were allowed at the front. So. She applied for a job as a spy. What else . [laughter] and, she applied first to Naval Intelligence because that is where the Intelligence Department was at the time. And they said, a woman . Not a chance. So, she applied to the army that was just setting up intelligence. There had not been a cia, and oss, none of that. The army sent an interviewer who talked to her and her german was so good that he was worried. [laughter] janet he said, how long did you live in germany . She said, i am in eighth generation american. I have always lived here. He thought jeff he thought she might be sympathetic to the nazi cause. Janet exactly, kaiser, we were in world war i. He wasnt sure she was synthetic. No, was not true. The head of military intelligence was a wonderful name of marlborough churchill, love it. Said, you are hired. She was the First American woman sent overseas. She was a spy in germany, and russia and the far east. And, hugely successful in her work. Jeff i kept thinking, james bond. Somebody needs to make a movie about marguerite harrison, unless there is already one out there. Is there . Janet no, no. [laughter] jeff once hollywood comes back from strike, we can make a proposal. Janet that is right. I have to say, the New York Times review which i think comes out tomorrow in the papers, called her George Smiley in a mink trail coat. [laughter] jeff [laughter] so, you mentioned oss, which brings me to johns book. For those of you who do not know , oss was one of the precursors to the cia. There were several different versions of that agency. Your book is the dirty tricks it caught my attention. Flirting with danger and dirty tricks. Tell me about, stanley level . Tell us about him. He is the driving character. John stanley is a chemist from around boston. He worked for much of his early life in a shoe and leather factory, nothing that would indicate he would get involved in intelligence agencies. When world war ii happened, especially after pearl harbor, he felt a patriotic fervor. He happened to run into carl compton, who at the time was the president of m. I. T. Carl compton knew stanley level and said, we need someone like you in washington, d. C. To help out. Lovell quit his job after that. In his papers in the archives, you can see his stated reason for leaving his job says war. He left his job, goes to washington, d. C. And becomes an aide first to benin for bush. If anyone has seen the recent movie often hyper oppenheimer , he makes a few appearances in there. Bush is from the northeast. He has a similar attitude of lovell. He recommends him to join the oss. The head of the oss at the time is William Donovan. Donovan is this war hero from world war i, the head of this organization now in charge of conducting espionage, conducting information campaigns and sabotaging the enemy abroad during world war ii. That is the main thing the oss is doing. Bush recommends lovell to donovan, donovan recruits lovell , we need you here. Here is how it happened. Stanley lovell gets a letter saying, meet me at this one building in bc he does not know who the letter is from. He shows up to this building, does not know why he is there or who he has meeting. He is led into this room that is barren. He waits for a couple of hours. All of a sudden, William Donovan comes in the room and has got a medal of honor on his lapel and says, Stanley Lovell, i need you to be the professor moriarty of the oss. Lovell is thinking to himself, moriarty is the bad guy. [laughter] lovell talks donovan through and donovan says, we need a scientist to create the disguises for our undercover agents. He recruits lovell to be that person. Lovell heads the research and Development Branch of the oss and does throughout the war, creating gadgets and disguises. Jeff what is interesting to is how he had to reorient his mind from doing good to being as people as possible. John that is one of the main arcs of the book. Stanley lovell is reluctant to get involved in this work in the first place. After donovan recruits him, a few weeks later, he goes to donovans house and says, i do not know if im cut out for this. I am a scientist. He felt this hippocratic obligation, science has created good things, agriculture and medicines. Now, i am going to use the knowledge i have gained in order to create weapons that are going to kill people. Donovan basically says, suck it up, we need someone to do this. This war is important, you are going to help us. Throughout this book, we see a level of development and arc in a character from someone who is reluctant to engage in this behavior to at the end of the work, Stanley Lovell is advocating for the United States to use things like chemical weapons in the pacific, biological weapons. It is a strange turn how he goes from reluctance he too advocating for the use of weapons for mass destruction. Jeff it is a dilemma, i think, for anyone who chooses that type of work. Of course, most people will not choose that type of work. But, what is coursing through both books is a sense of patriotism. From the characters in your book to characters in your book, and so, i am wondering as i listen to you describe the book, the research in both of these books is, to me, meticulous. How much time, janet, did that take . Janet well, it took me 30 years to find her. Jeff 30 years . Janet yes. I was doing research in 1993 in newcastle, england at the University Library for a book about gertrude bell, who was the chief creator of the rack after world war i for the british. All her papers were there. Thousands of letters and diaries and journals and so on. I came across a letter that she had written home to her father in 1924, saying that this extraordinary American Woman had come through town and she had invited her to dinner and had never had heard such tales from a woman and how this american had everybody under her spell. She invited her not once, but twice to two dinners. It was the same thing. I read this and i thought, an American Woman in baghdad in 1924, what was she doing there . She must have been a spy. This is the first thing that came to my mind. It stayed with me. I tried to find information about her. I could not. I worked wrote five books. Each time i finished a book, i looked for the next subject and i could not find anything. I hired a professional researcher. She found nothing. Finally, i was determined after the last book. I said, she can hide for me for just so long. I am going to find her. I wound up filing a request for information. Sure enough, her papers were in the National Archives right here in washington, in college park, maryland. That was fabulous, tedious, frustrating experience. You are constantly filling out forms and getting permissions and waiting hours and hours for papers to arrive. But, what i found in there was like gold. Jeff indeed. Janet it was classified papers. Jeff where did you find those classified papers just kidding. Janet [laughter] i did take home copies. Jeff i do not know where that came from. [laughter] do we name a special counsel . Just kidding. Did you go into that process thinking, ok, i want to look for a female spy, early 1900s, or did you know marguerite was the one you wanted to profile . Janet the little bit i read about her told me she was the one. Her whole viewpoint was as an internationalist. She really cared about world affairs. That is something that has always interested me. She was really smart. She was beautiful. She was charming because her governess told her, you can be intellectual if you want, but you will get much further being charming. Jeff [laughter] janet which, there is a lot of truth in that, i guess. And where she went and what she did, how she inserted herself into every level of society was fascinating. Jeff it really is, it really is. Stanley lovell is another one. He came essentially orphaned and found his way to cornell was at dartmouth then cornell . John yes. Jeff he really rose through modest means. And, he is not a household name. How did you find him . John yeah, he was orphaned from a young age. Both of his parents died young. He was raised essentially by his older sister, who put him through school. I found him through researching my dissertation. I went to school at the university of texas. I was working on scientists within the Intelligence Community. Through reading about that, i would come across this name, Stanley Lovell, he is the guy during world war ii who invented the kinds of things like glowing foxes and cyanide pills and all kinds of stuff. I was intrigued, but i was focusing on my dissertation. Every time i would go to the archives and we were talking backstage, we spent a lot of time in the National Archives every time i would go, do not tell my professors, but half the time i would work on my dissertation. The other half, in the back of my mind, i knew i was going to talk about Lovell Lovell stanley. I would pull out documents for my dissertation but also Stanley Lovell and do that on the side. I did that throughout grad school. Eventually, i finished school and decided, i am going to put the dissertation away and focus on another thing. Jeff i am going to hang out in the National Archives fulltime. [laughter] john for some people, it can be fun. That is the origin of how i found Stanley Lovell, i knew his name through researching scientists through the community. The story was almost too good for me not to follow up on. It kind of became most and obsessive thing. I just wanted to know more about who he was. I spent a lot of my time doing that. Jeff the book talks about there was one quote, when you work in tv, you hear things in soundbites. I have been in tv for 35 years now. One good sound bite in your book is when someone is talking about, oh, all you really need are seven properly trained men to do these dirty tricks. They can cripple a city, which is good information for a special report on. [laughter] who said that . And, was that the thinking at the time as they tried to get the oss up and running . John that was kind of the thinking, especially for Stanley Lovells branch within the oss. When Stanley Lovell was appointed to head this branch, he did not know what to do because the United States did not have the same pedigree and various warfare as someone like the british. The first thing lovell is go to does is go to england. How can we take some of those ideas and use them ourselves . For instance, one of the things Stanley Lovell recreates is something called a lipid mind, a minute you can put on the bottom of a ship so after a while, it will detonate and sink the ship. He got that from the british. When he is in england, that is when one of his british counterparts says this thing about, oh, you need seven welltrained men are able to destroy a city if you know the right places to attack. That is how Stanley Lovell got his ideas from the british. When he gets back to the United States, a lot of what he is doing is brainstorming. He does not have any direction. His idea is, we will throw stuff against the wall, see what sticks and what the soldiers and undercover saboteurs need abroad. They started creating devious inventions. Jeff your account takes place in the early 1900s world war i. Yours is really 1945, 1940 timeframe with the nazis, they spread across europe. The japanese bombed pearl harbor and roosevelt was looking for, well, they were looking for as much information as they could get on the enemy because the enemy well, britain is not an enemy, but they had their intelligence apparatus in place. The u. S. Did not. The fbi had been created, but in terms of intelligence gathering, which is, yeah, it is law enforcement, but a different kind of law enforcement. As nefarious as it sounds, sabotage and dirty tricks, that is the way things work. In the intelligence game. I wanted to ask you, janet, and do not forget i need you to ask questions, too. Ok . Im going to be asking for questions in the next couple of minutes. We want people to take away what do you want people to take away from the book . Janet how extraordinary a woman she was and how women can do extraordinary things. Nobody expected a woman to be able to do what marguerite did. In fact, from the time the war started and we were thinking about getting involved in it and we were worried about the the public was worried, who is going to earn a living for our families if our men are overseas . She went out and did jobs men only did, like at the ship building plants, streetcar conductors, and showed how women would just take over their husbands or fathers jobs and the world life would go on. Then, of course, she was one of the most important intelligence agents in world war i. So, yeah. We can do a lot. [laughter] jeff it was almost like the enemy did not see her coming. They were not expecting someone like her in that kind of job. All right, who has a question . Right there. Can you stand up . Oh, there is a mic. That was my fault. I should have told you there was a mic. [laughter] i am just curious. Was it as difficult to find out about marguerites personal life as it was her professional life . Did she have to leave her son behind . Were you able to find out that information, as well . It is just harrowing. Janet it was harder in a way to find out the personal information, because her daughter in law destroyed all of her letters home. That tells you a little bit