Buy the book at the book sale shop. Politics and prose, a local shop in washington d. C. Is selling the books and we want to find out what youre reading. Amare, in california, youre on book tv. What are you reading . Whats on your list . Good morning, how are you doing this morning . Im reading please, go ahead. Im writing the gettysburg address by Martin Johnson how the gettysburg they wrote the gettysburg address over and over again. Its pretty fun and i enjoy it. Who is the author again . Martin p. Johnson. Thank you, sir for calling in. Ray in glendale, arizona. Hi, peter. I just happened to switch over from washington journal. What im reading right now is a book called troubled refuge, struggles for newly freed folks in the civil war and i just finished master, slave, husband, wife, and excellent book on the same subject. Right, which we covered on book tv. Can you tell me, ray, how often you read books . How many you have going at once and you get through a book a week or what . Oh, i go to the library quite often, just down the block from my house and i pick up any i look through the new books first and then right now besides that one i have rebel yell, which is the biography of jackson and for fun, latest from christopher wright, kind of all over the map. Ray, thanks for spending a few minutes from us. Lets work in caroline in raleigh, north carolina. Good morning to you. What are you reading . Good morning. A pleasure to speak with you and i wish i was there at the book festival. I am currently reading actually my book club here in raleigh, we are reading Toni Morrisons the bluest eye. And what do you think . And well, were just getting into it and i cant believe that i have never had a chance to read it before. And so far its just been so profound and just very interesting to the forward of the book where she mentions that shes not sure that the book did what it was what she intended it to do in the sense that she wanted people to be beyond touched, she wanted people to be moved and i think literally a call to action with that book. So far so good. Caroline, thanks for being with us and just a reminder, raleigh is only four hours from washington so you can come up to the National Book fair any year you want. Well, were going to go now to the first author discussion of the day. And this is a group of authors talking about accidental spies. Its moderated by jeff of cbs. Here it is. Our coverage of the 2023 library of congress National Book festival continues now. Welcome to the library of congress National Book festival. Im Kevin Butterfield at the sponsor of the festival, and were helping to bring most beloved here. And they work up to a year to write books like these and to be a part of the national dialog. Welcome to everyone who is joining us now on cspan today. We are proud to partner again with cspan this year. Youll encounter a range of conversations from the history of american spy craft, the first program, to our eating choices define who we are, and well hear about climate change, practice of interior designs in black homes and what it means to be latino in america and join our writers at their signing. The accidental spy, jonathan is a historian of science and book hell talk about is the dirty trick department. Janet is the author of 10 books flirting with danger, social light spy. And our moderator, the most of the cbs news podcast, america changed forever. Lets welcome them to the stage. [applause] hello, hello, hello. Im not perky like you this morning. [laughter] i dont know how you do it. Ill wake up this early for a tee time, but this is a little different for me. Forgive me if, you know, my mind starts wandering toward the golf course and i ask some ridiculous questions and thats when you come in, you know . We want you to participate, obviously, youre not going to get this opportunity too 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 books, i was like, okay, spy craft, cia, i like that. This is right down my alley. I mean, its not golf, but. Thanks for coming, janet and john, appreciate your time. I loved your books. Thank you. It was sort of reminded me of college where i had to cram to study up, but im ready. Okay. [laughter] im ready. Lets talk about the books, start with flirting with danger, i love the title and i love the book, in part because it takes talks about maryland and baltimore, not baltimore, baldmore. And its interesting and then you have this heroine, right, this woman who decided when it wasnt the thing for women to be spies, she wanted to be a spy. And she was a pretty good spy. Tell us about marguerite harrison. She was from maryland and in fact, she was an 8th generation american from a very prominent family in maryland and she was part of well, she was a daughter of the gilded age. Her father was a shipping tycoon and her mother was a social light hostess who wanted her daughter to marry for money and for title. I want that for my daughter. [laughter] nothing wrong with that. Well, marguerite was a rebel so she wasnt so keen on what her mother wanted. She did have a romance with a turkish, and did have dull dinners with Winston Churchill who stepped on her toes when they went dancing and she did marry a handsome stockbroker from maryland, but he had more charm than money. And she was madly in love with him. He with her, and she had one of the most lavish weddings ever held in maryland and 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. I did count. I kept count. [laughter] they made it. [laughter] and they had a wonderful society kind of life, you know, the country club dinners and the charity luncheons and special dances. Why would she want to be a spy, janet . She seems to have a perfect life and existence and why do that . 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. Thats pretty impressive. She hasnt traveled at all with her husband, she was at home taking care of the family. When her just died, instead of going back to the family to live with her father or her inlaws, she went out on her own. Not a likely thing for a Society Woman to do. She got a job at the sun as assistant society editor. When the war broke out as a reporter. When america joined the war as a reporter and 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 thats 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 getting setting up intelligence. There hadnt been a cia, oss, none of that and the army sent an interviewer who talked to her and her german was so good, that he was worried. [laughter] he said, how long did you live in germany . And she said im an 8th generation of american. Ive only lived here. He thought that she might be sympathetic to the cause to the kaiser. Were in world war i. And he was sure she was sympathetic. No, that wasnt true. So the head of military intelligence with a wonderful name of marlboro churchill, love it. Said you are hired. And she was the First American woman sent overseas and she was a spy in germany and in russia and the far east. So and hugely successful in her work. I kept thinking james bond. Somebody needs to make a movie about marguerite harris, unless theres already one out there. Is there . No. Any laughter once hollywood comes back from strike we can make a proposal. Thats 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 trench coat. [laughter] wow. So you mention oss, which brings me to the book and for those of you dont know, oss was one of the precursers of the cia. There were several different versions of that agency. Your book is the dirty Tricks Department, like that one, too, flirting with danger and dirty Tricks Department. Tell us about stanley is it lovell. Yes. He is the driving character. Hes the main character. Stanley is a chemist from around boston. He worked for much of his early life in just a shoe and leather factory, nothing that he would indicate that he would get involved in intelligence agencies. When world war ii happened, especially after pearl harbor, he needed to do something for his country and happened to run into one day, carl compton, at the time the president of mit. And he he knew lovell. Youre a businessman and chemist, we someone like you. And the stated reason for leaving his job, he says war. And he left the job and goes to washington d. C. And hes an assistant to veneever bush. Hes from the northeast, has a similar attitude as Stanley Lovell. And recommends Stanley Lovell to join the oss. And the head of that is donovan, a war hero from world war i. Head of conducting espionage, and kind of the main thing that theyre doing. Donovan recruits lovell, we need you here. Here is how it happens. Stanley lovell gets a letter saying let me at this one building in d. C. He doesnt know who its from. He shows up at the building and doesnt know why hes there and why theyre meeting. Hes led into a room thats barren. And waits for a couple of hours. And William Donovan comes into the room and he walks in, i need you to be the professor moriarty of the oss. And he knows that thats the bad guy. Donovan says we need a scientist for the gadgets, and special objects for our agents. And heads up the research and department, thats what he does throughout the bar, creating gadgets and disguises. I thought it was interesting, too, how he had to reorient his mind from doing good to being as evil as possible. Well, thats 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, i dont know if im cut out by this, im a science. Its created good things, agriculture that feeds people and medicines that keep people well. Now im going to use the knowledge ive gained to create weapons that are iffing to kill people . Donovan basically said, the war is important, youre going to help us. Throughout the book we see the development, arc as a character reluctant to engage in this behavior, at the end. Stanley lovell is advocating to use things like truth construction on prisoners of war. Or chemical weapons, the use of biological weapons. Its strange he goes to the advocacy. And its a dilemma for anyone who chooses that type of work. Most will not choose that court of work. What is coursing through both books is a sense of patriotism in the characters in your book. To the characters in your book. So, im wondering, you know, 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 . Well, it took me 30 years. 30 years . Yes, i was doing research in 1993 in new castle, england at the library gertrude bell, world war i for the british. All of her pains were there, thousands of letters and diaries and colonels, so on. And i came across a letter that she had written home to her father in 1924 saying that this extraordinary American Woman who come through town and invited her to dinner and shed never had heard such tales from a woman and how this american just had everybody under her spell. And she invited her not once, but twice to two dinners, it was the same thing. And i read this and i saw it, an American Woman in baghdad in 1924. What was she doing there . She must have been a spy, thats the first thing that came to my mind, and it stayed with me. I tried to find information about her, i couldnt. I wrote five books each time i finished a book i would look for the section subject as we always do and i couldnt find anything. I hired a professional researcher and she found nothing. Finally, i was determined after the last book and i said, she can hide from me for just so long. She may be a spy, but im going to find her. And i wound up filing an foia request, freedom of information act and sure enough her papers were here in washington, college park, maryland and that was a fabulous, tedious, frustrating experience because its youre constantly filling out forms and getting permission and waiting hours and hours for papers to arrive, but what i found in there was like cold. So it was classified paints. Some of people from where did you find the classified papers . Just kidding. [laughter] i did take home copies. I dont know where that came from. What did you do with them . Should we name a special counsel . Just kidding. Did you go into that process thinking, okay, i want to look for a female spy, early 1900s or did you know marguerite was the one that you wanted . The little bit that i read about her told me that shes the one. And she was her whole viewpoint was as an internationalist. She really cared about world affairs. And thats something thats always interested me. She was really smart. She was beautiful. She was, well, charming because her governest told her, you can be intellectual if you want, but much further being charming. Which theres a lot of truth, i guess, in that. And where she went and what she did, how she inserted herself. Every level of society was fascinating. It really is. Really is. And stanley lovely is another one. Essentially orphaned, and he found his way to cornell. Was it. Yeah, graduated from cornell. So he really rose from really modest means and hes not household and how did you find him . His parents died young. He was raised by his older soldier, a seem seamstress and put him through school. My dissertation from university of texas and working on scientists within the Intelligence Community and through reading about that, i kind of would come across this name Stanley Lovell. Hes the guy burg world war ii who invented kind of things like glowing foxes, cyanide pills. Awas focusing on my dissertation. Every time i went back to the na archives. Half the time working on my dissertation and the other part, some day im going to write about Stanley Lovell. So i pulled some of that throughout the side. I did that through grad school ap i finished school, im going to put the dissertation away. Im going to hang out in the National Archives fulltime. For some people it can be begun. So thats the origin, i guess how the story was almost too good for me not to follow up. I couldnt help myself. It almost became an obsessive thing, ied wanted to find out who he was. Theres one quote, another, when you work in tv and you hear things in sound bites. At tv for 30 years now and when people talk about that, thats a good sound bite. A sound bite. And one good sound bite in your book is when someone is talking about, oh, all you read need are seven properly trained men to essentially do these dirty tricks. They can cripple a city, which thats good information for a special report. [laughter]. Who said that, and was that the thinking at that time as they tried to get poss up in running . And thats one for Stanley Lovell. When he was appointed he didnt know what to do. The United States didnt have the same pred agree in nefarious war yunld does. And hes sent to learn what have you done in the past and how can we take those ideas and use thome ourselves. One of the things that stanley recreates, an limpid mine, and row away and after a while it will detonate the sink the ship. He got that from the british. When he was seven well trained men are able to destroy a city and thats where they came from. He gets original ideas from the british and a lot of what hes doing is brain storming. His idea, well throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks and see what the soldiers and undercover saboteurs need from abroad. Your account takes place in the early 1900s or world war i. Yours a really 1945, 1940 time frame with the nazis, they spread across europe. The japanese bombed pearl harbor. And they were looking as much as they could do from the enemy. Britain was not the enemy, but they had the intelligence apparatus in place. The fbi had been created, but in terms of intelligence gathering, which is, yeah, its Law Enforcement, but its a different kind of Law Enforcement and as nefarious as it sounds, you know, sabotage and dirty tricks, thats the way i think so this work in the intelligence game. And so, i wanted to ask you, janet, dont forget, i need you to ask questions, too, okay . So, im going to be asking for questions in the next couple of minutes. What do you want people to take away from the book . How extraordinary a woman that she was and how women can do extraordinary things. Nobody expected a woman to be able to do what marguerite did. 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 the family if and she went out and did jobs men only did, ship building plants and street car conductors and showed how women would just take over their husbands or their fathers jobs and the life would go on and then of course, she was one of the most important intelligence agents in world war i. Yeah, we can do a lot. It was almost like the enemy, ee the enemy didnt see her coming. Sure werent. Werent expecting someone like her in that spot. All right, who has a question . Right there. My question is can you stand up . Oh theres a mic. That was my fault, i should have told you there was a mic. [laughter] im just curious, was it as difficult to find out about marguerites personal life as her professional life . Did she have to leave her son hyped . Were you able to find out that information as well because its just harrowing. It was harder in a way to find out the personal information because her daughterinlaw destroyed all of her letters home. That tells you a little bit about her relationship with her daughterinlaw. [laughter] and