National archives. Find the chief Service Branch which is a fancy way of saying i run the public side of the buildings. And to provide the welcoming remarks today. Im pleased you could join us in the room were participating on facebook or youtube and also those of you joining us on cspan today. Allan pinkerton, elizabeth and baker. The correspondent for newsweek and he has authored six books on military and intelligence including bestsellers into the commandos and critically acclaimed question of loyalty. James mcpherson described the book as a fast paced narrative of union intelligence operations in Eastern Theater with the fabrications that grew up. It is my honor to be here today and a pleasure to welcome back someone who spent countless hours if not months researching the holdings especially when it culminates with such a good narrative as this one. The section is a testament to the research conducted. You will find numerous. This narrative opens with chapters devoted to the agents and then provides the chronological approach from 1861 to 1865 with a final chapter culminating in the experience. Before we hear about the work id like to let you know about another program coming up next week to present a lecture on the cia and the post9 11 world to discuss how after 9 11 the cia transformed into a war fighting Intelligence Service to help attacks. Please welcome the archives. Without further ado please join me in welcoming Douglas Waller to the stage. [applause] he and his team spent countless hours with me helping me out. I dont think he could get from one part of the building to another without tackling me at one point. I spent a number of years at the archives researching my last four books not only trevor at mitch in the audience guided me through world war i records. They helped me out immensely with world war ii records Mary Mcdonald and john taylor were extremely helpful and retired from the civil war as an archivist i harassed him for information. Im a little intimidated here because i want a little truth in advertising your. Ive covered the cia for number of years and my last two historical biographies as mentioned were major intelligence figures during world war ii. The other one became cia directors. For my next book i decided to switch and write an ensemble biography of the union spies during the civil war. In the photographs that always puts me to sleep and on the battlefield where thousands die like picketts charge and if that happened it was like the world had ever seen. Things like the rifle can and must its good to deliver more accurate deadly fire and the railroad that could move supplies quickly to the front and a telegraph to connect the War Departments anfour departmed battlefields with rapid communications. This also solves the change in how the maneuver against each other instead of the old napoleonic tactics with soldie soldiers. They had loose order tactics without incurring these tremendous casualties. But the commanders quickly discovered with all of these new weapons and tactics they needed far more Accurate Information on where the enemy was ahead of us. He boiled down to four things before he started the battle. A number of troops is important information. The generals in command on the other side. They usually know how the other guy on the other side of the battle would react to certain situations. The fourth thing jackson wanted to know is the locatio note is e headquarters of the enemy commander. They certainly increase the odds of success and can stave off. The cloak and dagger sent spies intand the other to the tory. These secret operatives spoke the same language and knew the other side so they were not dropping him with a Foreign Language that they were not aware of. The new war technologies also offered a new type of spy back then it was reading the messages tapped out on the morse code each side suspected the other was tapping into what is transmitted so they were using fairly primitive codes. It was found to be a spy tool. I saw the reconnaissance used in this particular way by the union side, hydrogen gas filled balloons were sent high into the air as high as 1,000 feet to scope out the battlefield and incidentally they had little baskets spinning around. These were the forerunners we have today. They are using signals on morse code and aerial drone seen operating over afghanistan and in the middle east. To deliver an electrical charge in order to activate the camera. Great idea. They eventually rejected this proposal. For this book i decided to focus on three men and one woman who spied for the union. I did so for several reasons. I found union operatives to be far more interesting than the confederate counterparts. One was a failure and the other was a scoundrel so i had a good mix of characters here to deal with and also, movies often have durables outperforming with yankees and espionage but that wasnt the case. For most they get had a much me comprehensive and infected intelligence gathering operation in the confederates could ever feel. So by the end of the conflict, Ulysses Grant had a better idea of the forces then we would ha have. She is in the upper left. Friends believe he was gifted with unusual powers of observation born in scotland in 1819 as a young man he trained and ended up spending more time working as a labor agitator falling under the spell of the scottish revolutionaries. In 1842 he immigrated to america with his young wife ended up essentially in chicago he thought his parents had been atheists and as a detective he had a sixth sense to anticipate the activity. It was set deeply under the wide brow and very often his upper lip which he occasionally shaved. He was a master publicist and was shameless about airbrushing endeended in february of 1861 oe evil of the civil war, by then he had become somewhat famous as a private guy and launched a covert operation to sneak Abraham Lincoln in a railroad car for baltimore. The detective that happened to be investigating the threat at the time uncovered evidence that they wanted to assassinate the new president elect at a stopover at baltimore in order to keep them from being inaugurated in washington. The next spy is Lafayette Baker in the generals uniform. He was a handsome man, brown hair, fulllength beard and eyes that were almost hypnotic. He was 5 feet 10 inches tall. He was upset with roman history and he was an unsavory detective who creates the secret police force. The schooling taught him to read and write and for the next ten years he drifted from job to job with others in states and often having to flee the city after a gunfight with another man. He finally ended up in San Francisco by the mid1850s joining a Vigilante Committee and lynched the ones they both deserve the death penalty. When the civil war started, baker was back on the east coast rode into washington hoping to land a good paying job in the army. He was outraged when they captured fort sumter on apri april 14. Baker had no spy training beyond what he might have picked up that he was a fast talker and managed to talk Winfield Scott into giving him a job as a secret service agent. Scotts nickname he loved military and had no spy to speak of. The next is george sharp on the bottom left. His superiors considered him a natural military leader. He had a magnetic personality that made them want to follow him. And you can see he had a balding head and sad eyes and a droopy mustache that gave him a both a combat commander. In the pocket of his uniform he always kept a book of verses by his favorite poets that he had routinely read it to his men and they never objected. He was born in kingston new york a small town on the hudson river the son of a wealthy merchant who received the finest education you could have at that time. He graduated from Rutgers University and have a law degree from yale university. Before setting up this practicee as an attorney in kingston, he spent four years in europe studying french in paris and working as a secretary to the u. S. And vienna rome. When the war broke out he first commanded the company of the federal militiamen from the kingston area and let a voluntary infantryman as a colonel. It prepared him for the most important job he would have as the union armys preeminent spymaster. Now on the lower right that he was a child of privilege but in a very different setting. Elizabeths father was a hardware merchant and her mother was a highly educated socialite with a fashionable Church Hill Neighborhood with almost 600 bucks. Elizabeth developed an early empathy she saw being beaten on the streets was sent in philadelphia to be educated. They lectured her on the slavery and she returned to richmond with a featurette of human bondage. When her father died in 1843, elizabeth spent much of her sizable inheritance which was about 350,000 helping them lee north. She was a short woman whod been quite beautiful but when the civil war started, she was in her 40s, unmarried and considered by Richmond Society to be an old maid. She loved her state. She always spoke in a soft southern accent. She wore her hair and dark curls. It looks brown that you ca but e the tight curl. She had a thin nervous looking face with high cheekbones. She was almost always in the antebellum style and a bonnet. To the point she was decidedly feisty. They were with her own sense of right and wrong. Elizabeth acknowledged that made her life intensely sad and earnest as she put it. Yet when she thought it would help her have her way she could be flattering. She knew how to cultivate men to get what she wanted. It became makeshift jails and they brought them to the pows and the minister to the Union Soldiers who were wounded or ill. It made her a pariah in the cities and they publish dark warnings and she should be showing compassion. A clue club Clan Organization sent a note threatening to burn down the mansion but it this was a unionist who couldnt be intimidated. Soon they began heading up the capital of the confederacy. Honest abe lincoln didnt even like the name honest abe when it came to the arts of intrigue or subterfuge during his brush with military service in the 1832 black hawk war he spent several weeks in the unit and best buy co. That kerry about the reconnaissance operations. He often wrote newspaper columns under these aliases to attack opponents and he secretly bought a german monk which newspaper to print pieces that he thought were an important voting bloc in illinois. And during the race for the presidency, he was careful reader and a value greater of intelligence. Once in the white house, he ordered the generals got to deliver a daily Intelligence Report on the enemy and have freelancers send them information and their sympathizers. He provided his military commanders to accept new technologies for the aerial reconnaissance. He had no qualms about launching these covert operations into the south. He found the propaganda useful to undermine the border states that joined the confederacy. And to keep the one that remained in the union under his control. And lincoln could be ruthless when he thought he had to be for the writ of habeas corpus allowing them to shed his papers considered hostile to the administration. Clearly this was a president who knew how to keep a secret and how to operate. So, we will start with Allan Pinkerton he became the spymaster for the charismatic Young Napoleon as he was called the allimportant and the entire army. Mcclellan was the man that they had high hopes for defeating the south quickly into bringing this rebellion to a speedy end. But this Young Napoleon had a huge ego and even bigger complex he turned out to be better than organizing and training and creating the army then needed fighting with it. He brought about 20 employees to the chicago Detective Agency and recruited more from the army and thandother sources had said he s operating on 6,000 a month budget which was a lot of money back then. He used the cover name in all of his communications and worried about security she refused because by their initials. He used them in to infiltrate the social circles and recruited runaway slaves to collect information that infiltrated spies and he spent mcclellan reports on what they found and succeeded in breaking up the confederate espionage ring in washington. But he ended up in the military intelligence office. The detectives were accustomed slowly working cases until they had enough evidence to arrest a suspect and bring them to trial. They then violated the Cardinal Rule that will d they told themy wanted to hear what they needed to hear. They had to be scrupulous in ascending the accurate a sending the Accurate Information and have to be to develop the truths to the leaders. It became practically delusional and he peppered with lincoln with memos demanding more troops before they could move against the confederates. During the numbers that were lower mcclellan would likely have ignored it. By nature he was the commander winning on the battlefield. It only made them more timid. They also revered as mcclellan and at one point he even spied on lincoln from political intelligence he thought might be useful for the general. Lincoln soon realized they had a chronic case and he fired mcclellan in early november of 1862 after the battle. He followed this entr and resigs the potomac Army Intelligence chief and now to the necknext. Think of him as lincoln j. Edgar hoover i guess only with a couple of important differences, first baker didnt have much interaction as hoover did only with president s. Even though baker often bragged to others that which wasnt the case and second, baker was far more corrupt. He ended up working as a secret agent fo for edward stanton, a y ruthless secretary who became the star for internal security. They became detectives and more counter espionage and criminal investigations and actually collecting intelligence. Simple crime back then was considered a National Security threat for the union as espionage. So the secret Service Organizations often spend more time chasing smugglers, contractors and counterfeiters than they did on the cloak and dagger. They set up a headquarters in the building on pennsylvania avenue not too far from here near the capital. The ideal operatives are somebody that was a shrewd, courageous and couldnt be bribed but the men, many of them former california vigilantes with pistols hardly lived up to that standard. And then to maintain a firstclass hotel, a lot of cash in the pocket and riding around washington on top of the black stallion fit for general but he did so by using his expense account from the secret service and ingeniously finding ways to shake the money tree. For example those that were caught if the detectives were paid a bribe the biggest transmit failure came at the assassination of lincoln but uncovering threats was. Baker would like to brat back bragg but here to be mandated that is not the case met with John Wilkes Booth and with those accounts on eighth street in washington just nine blocks from bakers headquarters. By the calvary detachment and then with the other man in front now the third spy when general joseph took command of the potomac he summoned to the headquarters and was fluent in french. And wanted to translate a book and did it quickly so the general appointed the regimental to have a bland cover name with the bureau of information to be concealing the true intent. Although wellversed within the military he knew nothing about spying but he proved surprisingly adept and some of the correspondence he began to use the code name and all of them knew they were working for union espionage agency. Knows the infiltrated Enemy Territory while wearing uniforms caring thousands of dollars of confederate dollars for bribes. That then captured bags for exchange between major virginia and maryland and what amounted by propaganda one of the officers rigged a kite and with defeat. And also not shy about torture that he thought it was sometimes they were tied by their thumbs which they found painful for long periods. But more important with the spy agencies all sorts of intelligence coming into the army of the potomac and also the interrogation for deserters and prisoners for the air mounts and balloons it with that flag signal messages and then analyzed the flood of information highly accurate intelligence with the most comprehensive picture of the enemy they ever had. That sounds pretty obvious. That the intelligence was not done before sharp that was decades ahead of the time. So the leather bound 14 page booklets with that Accurate Information on the regiments for those divisions the estimate on the number of men of lees army was fought by only one quarter of 1 percent of the actual number that is truly remarkable. Sharps best agent those who everybody dismissed with their opinions moving quickly from war prisoners to organizing sophisticated capital that the security agents could never crack. And the spy network turning out an average of three reports per week and richmonds defenses and those movements between the confederates and shenandoah valley. And the morale of the residents. And those additions and then to pick from her garden for each celebrity. That was a nice touch at the breakfast table. Then was several dozen agents and careers each one carried a sheet to identify as a member of a network. Many were factory workers or storekeepers recruited. Others were africanamerican servicemen and then the Generals Office to provide those reports on the rental units. And on the Engineering Department with those rebel to face defenses and the intelligence summaries for the Union Generals she often goes by codename certainly referred to the documents and called our friends in richmond to play sensitive papers in their own intelligence at a bedside table to destroy the they quickly had to for other places in the mansion to be stored in the libraries that reach part of the way up to the mantle. And then with those secret cavities the ideal hiding places and could write letters to a fictitious and then with the north and the south but without innocuous family dipping her pen into a bottle of peer liquid and with a message to deliver and then to apply to the secret report other times they do not use that system posting directly to the union army. She would decipher her messages and then was just a small square sheet of paper that contained a chart to convert letters to code. And as a further security measure mentor her encrypted notes into several pieces sending each piece by a different courier on different routes to the federalist. Sometimes they put messages hit it in the basket full of real eggs with the paper patterns they had a Vegetable Farm near the county line just below the city that became the first of five stops along the james river and then to pick up instructions on the intelligence and george sharp would say whatever grant wanted from the capital they could provide that. This was the espionage triumph for the union and whatever else is on your mind i will take your questions. [applause] as a female actress and to the union troops. She was a workhorse. And then to mention the greenhouse. But that more propaganda value than the actual intelligence value. And as the primary workhorse for intelligence. Would prevent so sharpshooters from taking them down quick. Nothing did as a balloon rose up above the trees until the time i got to about 500 feet subject to sharpshooters so it was very risky but also and to hold the rope so then the bloom and often several cases it went off with the Union Generals who got a scare of their life. What kind of synergy did Mister Lincoln extract did they meet with him oneonone or did they meet frequently quick. Great question. And to know from his chicago days to lincoln was then lawyer for the railroad and have somewhat of an acquaintance and even the president got here so when as the president was informing his administration he said he wanted him to come to washington and then to offer himself he had no secret service. That they never came to a decision. And then to visit the white house. And other white house aides on how mcclellan was doing with the administration. And with that antietam battle to see what the reaction was. And lincoln knew what he was up to. And asked him the questions and to convey specific messages as the data had to get going but there were several letters to lincoln who was the abolitionist at one time proposed with outrage that blacks in the District Of Columbia being treated unfairly like in Southern Maryland that other than that very little dealings with lincoln i dont even know if lincoln even knew he got thousands of letters so the Intelligence Report those that got forwarded to washington very often and ended up at the War Department and on lincolns desk so he knew about sharp. Keyword interrogate our officers to get a sense of what conditions were like out there. Maybe he had been made aware that grant of course and greatly appreciated that after the war paid a visit and when union troops moved in, he ordered a contingent of the mansion so it would not be burned down. So those efforts were ridiculously impressive with those conditions so it seems a little odd to already be identified that the bad guy would do so much damage and get away with it. If there is anything else that you could share about that dynamic so she is still there after the war for go did you follow their careers after the war critics i would have to imagine this would come out. On the first question it was amazing with those confederate agents would just barge into the mansion to see what was going on. And neighbors she had become estranged from that there were strange men coming in and out of the mansion all hours of the night and they could not account for it. And at one point in with the cost on the street and can you help me then to say i am a loyal lady of the south but at one point there was an investigation by the Generals Office and the neighbors ratted on her and even the sisterinlaw who testified against her and they conducted a fairly lengthy investigation and concluded that basically was saved by southern sexism and concluded she spoke a little too freely about prounion sentiments she could not possibly not be doing any damage and the daughter of a wealthy merchant they finally concluded she was harmless and was giving information to the north. But what happened to her after the war, it happens an awful lot to spies in countries like during world war ii the spies become reviled and that is what happened. She kept secret and there are newspaper stories in the north grant appointed her to be the postmaster of richmond which is highly lucrative and politically important position but did not retain that job after grant left the presidency and then in the end she died nearly broke at churchill and run by the mansio mansion. When she died in 1900 she was born in this line buried in the cemetery that there were so many graves they could not bury people horizontally she did not even have a marker for her grave that eventually a group of massachusetts donors many of whom were relatives or pow or the Union Prisoners actually bought a granite marker gravestone for her putting it on her plot. Did the gentleman have a code or a backup plan of what to do or the people who would take over for them if caught clicks because i imagine they were valuable assets. The short answer is no. In fact one had huge heirs sending one of his agents for Timothy Webster to richmond who was a very versatile and courageous spy and sent him to richmond three or four times but that was one time too many and he was there too much and the cover was wearing thin and he caught rheumatic fever and was incapacitated in richmond and then the theory will authority started to zero in on him and then made a mistake as a spymaster he sent one guy on the staff to richmond to find out what had happened to webster and get the intelligence back to washington however price lewis was involved in Counter Intelligence work in washington which is hard for a spymaster to have somebody in counterintelligence and price lewis pointed this out is that i have arrested a lot of people in washington who have been deported or said to south to richmond surely one of them will see me and get caught it is a suicide mission. He said dont worry but sure enough when he went to richmond to try to find out what it happened to timothy he was arrested in somebody recognized him then they closed in on webster eventually they hung him and price lewis stayed in prison for a good bit of time for almost at the end of the war when they got about a prisoner exchange. Thank you for your presentation particularly psychological operations i believe also this was used through world war ii so this is a very advanced person. And then to set the template for cia operations and with those methods that they use its on a much more sophisticated level which is why the cia analytical reports for operations for Lessons Learned and sharp was well aware of the value of deserters particularly as the union army and closed in on richmond so the wine was very close together so it was easy to send agents across shorter distance to go to their jobs. There are several operations that he ran one defector is when the confederacy considered enlisting africanamericans as soldiers in the confederate army. Sharp proposed a covert operation to send black Union Officers in or the Union Soldiers that could be in the army to defect. Is constantly thinking about psychological operations or propaganda and with those innovations that were ignored by general meade who took over commander of the potomac. He had a very hostile relationship leaders dont like the spymasters because there could be tension in the relationship. Thank you very much. [applause] the book is called the moscow rules is the last of four books tony and i had written. I dont want the title to be misleading i did not write the rules or invent the rules all we did was put them down on paper. The moscow rules were understood by most officers headed to moscow to be the rules of the road and how you manage yourself on the street and it was a form of tradecraft if you follow the rules you would probably emerge from your assignment unscathed. If you broke the rules. All kinds of interesting things could happen to you. But the book opens on the first three pages but the scene outside of the American Embassy in moscow june 6th 2016 in the middle of the last president ial election when things were supposed to be set all the world was not at war. Get one american diplomat is on a Youtube Video you can see him getting out the taxi in front of the embassy into the main entrance and the shadow comes out of the guard shack just to the right of the screen and attacks the diplomat and just takes him down and starts beating him to a bloodied pulp. This is june 6, 2016. He got on top of our officer and was flailing away at him. Our officer clearly had taken some form of physical security lessons on his back he is slighting toward the electronic doors and you can see his hand to trigger the door open so they slighted the doors in the kgb guy continues to beat him and broke his clavicles. Our officer was evacuated medically out of moscow the next day and never went back. This is when the cold war is supposed to be over with relations are supposed to be normal. It was an interesting nexus that we added just to remind you what reality really is when youre on the streets out there. It is never a kind place to work. Is always hostile and aggressive if you are an american diplomat i am in the middle of the ambassadors most current book when he served and what he underwent as the American Ambassador in that country was amazing and his wife and his kids. So this is been going on forever and it continues to go on and it was a wonderful way to start our story. Thank you for joining this conversation. So tell us who is the intended audience and whats the biggest take away quick. When we were approaching