join us whether you are here for participating through facebook or youtube, those of you joining us on c-span today. he discusses his most recent book, secret, he describes the union agents. as a correspondent for the new york times. he has offered six military and intelligence includingud bestsellers.a he describes this book is a fast-paced unit intelligence operation in the eastern part of the civil war. in fabrications that grew up around that. it's my honor to be here today. it's my honor to be here. especially when that resource culminates with a good narrative as this one. the note section is a testament to the research conducted here, you find numerous citations. i'm slightly biased to my favorite part of the book found in the acknowledgment, you will find the unsound heroes of history books. [laughter] is narrative as each of the four agents, chronological approach to the civil war each year from 1861 to 1865. the final chapter. i'd like to let you know that there's another program coming out next week on tuesday, august 13 at noon. to help prevent terrorist attacks. visit our website@archives.gov for more information about upcoming national archives programs and activities without further ado, please join me in welcoming doug to the stage. [applause] >> thank you. one thing i want to mention, is one of the franchise players here in the civil war history. he and hisis team spent countles hours with me, helping me out. i don't think he could get from one part of the building to the other without this information. i spent a number of years at the archives researching my last book, kind of a frequent flyer. he guided me through world war one records in that area. the manager in the national archives, they helped me out immensely with world war ii records. michael cusick is here, retired. i harassed him for information. the historians here, a lot of civil war experts here, i want a little truth in advertising to start. i'm not a civil war historian. i don't even play one on tv. i covered the cia for a number of years my last two biographies as mentioned, were made during world war ii. one focus on ahead of franklin roosevelt. the other one was on four key tournament who became cia directors. my next book, i decided to switch wars and write an ensemble biography of fort union of the union spies. i'm proud i made the switch. when we think of the civil war, we have this image of the imposing stiff in matthew brady photographs. then thousands of those charges. that all happened but what also happened on this conflict was a revolution in war fighting technology like the world had never seen. it's like rival canon, it could deliver more accurate longer ranges. enter railroad that could move supplies to the front. the telegraph that could connect generals on the battlefield with communications. this is a war that also saw change in how armies maneuver against each other. instead of the old napoleonic tactics where soldiers packed tightly together, military leaders on both sides started on the attacks that they could used to win. our commanders quickly discovered that with all these new weapons and tactics they needed, far more accurate information on where the enemy looked ahead of them. stonewall jackson weather down to four things that he wanted to know before they started about.l number one, position of the enemy. very important piece of information. number two, the number of troops you faced and their movements. also very important. number three, the general and command on the other side, their diversion and regiment, brigades. a good many of these and southern generals, they usually have the other guy on the other side of the battle to react to certain situations. the other think jackson wanted to know washe the location of te headquarters of the enemy commander. these were important pieces of information. they didn't necessarily guarantee a commander victory but they certainly increased odds for success they could savor off the fee. you could discover beneath the surface, that's between the north and south a revolution in military intelligence and how enemies spite on each other. that's what i found fascinating as i dug more deeply into the subject. each side sent scores of spies on the other side to reveal secrets. this made easier because these operatives in language in fact culture, they were dropping into a foreign country with a foreign language like they did in world war two. civil war spies have an even easier time not being noticed by the enemy. it wasn't too difficult to fake a southern accent accent. the signal intelligence became important in this work. back then it was reading the enemy's messages that were tappeded out on the areas of our lives from a tall mountain. each side so the other was tapping into the other transmits. they were fairly transmitted codes. as soon found to be useful by 12. we saw areas where they used in this work, particularly by the union side, hydrogen gas% high into the air, 1000 feet. there's poor air and little baskets swinging or spinning around. these were the forerunners spy satellites we have today. this was considered pretty high tech, they committed communicated the observations by shouting to the ground or tapping out messages in morse code to a soldier down below. an inventor even proposed a century and a half later, it would be called an aerial drone. a battery operated camera attached to a small balloon would be set up to a soldier who would give an electrical charge to activate it. great idea. an officer eventually rejected this proposal. they kept the cameras stable enough of their. for this book, i decided to focus on three men, one woman who spite for the union. i did so for several reasons. i found operatives to be far more interesting than the confederate counterparts. two of my spies were heroes in this work. one was a failure in the other was a scoundrel. i have a pretty good mix of characters to deal with. they often have the rebels, but that wasn't the case. for most of the civil war, the yankees had a much more comprehensive interceptions intelligence operations.de by the end of the conflict, he had a better idea of the forces. the spies were the subject here. george sharp and elizabeth, he's up there on the upper left there. friends believe he was gifted with unusual powers ups observation. he is on in 1819, he trained to be cooper but he extended more time as a labor agitator under the spell of status revolutionary. in 1842, they immigrated to america with his young wife and ended up eventually in chicago where he founded a agency in the 1850s and became highly successful. he hated slavery and became an abolitionist. he thought his parents were atheist and he considered himself atheist as well. he owned a sixth sent to anticipate criminal before it happened. he refused to ever be worn down by adversity but he could be a tiresome guy who rained employees and relatives on honesty or integrity and courage. there's a tyrant at home, completely dominating his wife. deeply under her wide brow, heavy beard covered his face.wh he was a master publicist and shamus about airbrushing his image. in february fof 1861, on the evf the civil war, he had become somewhat famous by then. abraham lincoln unnoticed in a railroad car through baltimore. the detective who happened to be investigating to a rail line at the time, uncovered evidence and wanted to assassinate the new president-elect. our next spy is raffia, he's there to the right. he was a handsome man, he had brown hair and piercing gray eyes that were almost vacant really kind of boring to you. this 5-foot, 10 inches tall, 180 pounds. his agile, almost cap like in his quick movements. he was seemingly restless. he is obsessed with history, his idol became eugene who was this unsavory detective who helped create france's police force. he was prone to lie about himself and he had the heart according to one profile done on him. born in 1825, fed up with the inseparably securing curative, they ran away from his initiative home in his late teens, educated largely unmedicated but he was taught to read and write. he drifted from job to job through a dozen states, after going for with another man. confirming ended up in san francisco by the 50s. joining a vigilante committee that had criminals in that city. the civil war started, baker on the east coast road into washingtonyi, hoping to land a good paying job in the army, he was outraged when april 13 in 1961. he managed to talk to the commander into giving him a job as a secret service agent. scott had no spy to speak of and he figured he didn't have anything to lose by hiring baker. our next is george sharp, the bottom left over there. his superiors considered him a natural military leader. he had a magnetic personality that many wanted to follow. he had sad eyes and a droopy mustache. the breast pocket of hisis uniform, he had a small book of verses by his favorite poets that he read to his men. he was born in new york, a small town on the hudson river. he received the finest education he would have about time. he graduated from the university with honors and had a law degree from yale.e. he practices an attorney, he spent four years in europe and worked as a secretary to the u.s. and rome. when war broke out, he first commanded militia men from the kingston area and then volunteer infantry regiment as a colonel. it all prepared him for the most important job he was had in the union army ever as a spy agent. elizabeth on the floor right, was a childshe too of privilege. elizabeth's father was a wealthy rich man, her mother was a socializer.ted almost 600 books. elizabeth developed an early view for slaves, she taught them be on the streets and sent them to philadelphia to be educated. she was lectured on the abolitionist slavery. she returned to richmond with even more peers ortu hatred to human bondage. when her father died, she spent much of her inheritance which was about 350,000 in today's money. the family works equally paying the salaries to those who remained in her mansion. she called other slaves on the market to set them free. she was a short woman who had been quite beautiful in her youth but when the civil war started, she was in her 40s and unmarried and considered to be an old maid. she loved her state. she always spoke ofrn her soft southern accent. the love would be tested in the years to come. she wore her dark blond hair and tight curls. he looks brown here but you can see her tight curls. she had a thin nervous looking face with high cheekbones, pointed nose and sparkling blue eyes. she was almost always in style with the black dresses, you see her there. she had a pint bonnet tight under her chin. she was clever to almost unearthly, a friend said. she was feisty. she could be scalding in attempt for people. elizabeth acknowledged that it made her life intensely sad, as she put it. when she said it would help her, she could be flattering. she knew how tova work capable n to get what she wanted. many of them have filthy tobacco habits. elizabeth let them bring books and administer to the union soldiers who were wounded or ill. it made her a piranha in her city. newspapers published dark warnings that she should be showing compassion for shoulders, not the hated yankees. an organization sent her a menacing note, threatening to burn down her mansion. this was a woman, a union and not intimidated. she had a large and powerful styrene in the confederate area. it is an important character in this story, abraham lincoln. honest abe was the image of political campaign creator. he preferred to be called mr. lincoln. he was one of the least experienced men in presidency but he was in the dark arts of trade. during the military service in 1832 black hawk war, he spent several weeks in the independent spy company. he often wrote newspaper columns under aliases. he secretly brought a german newspaper so the voting block and during the race for presidency, he was a careful reader and evaluator in political intelligence. general scott into daily intelligence reports, he had three grantors all over the country sent revelation on the rubble. he prodded his commanders to accept new technologies. he had no qualms about launching risky operations into the south. he found propaganda a useful tool to undermine the border state to join the confederacy and keep the ones that remain under his control. they allowed the arbitrary and shut newspapers down. clearly, this was our president who knew how to keep a secret and knew how to operate in secret. he became the spy master for generalhe george, young napoleo, commander of all important army and at first, the entire army. he was a man who had high hopes for defeating the south quickly. this young napoleon had a huge ego, and even bigger complex. he turned out to be better at organizing and trading in army that he did at fighting with it. he brought about 22 washington from the chicago detectives, he recruited more from the army and other sources and soon was operating on $6500 a month budget which is a lot of money back then. he used the cover name, bj allen and paul hip his communications. he refused the finance officers the names of the operatives. he recruited them to collect information. infiltrated spies, he spent lengthy intelligence reports on what the spies found and succeeded in apag confederate aa in washington. he ended up being in the military intelligence officer, they had no military training or experience but needed to effectively evaluate intelligence on men in the army. they were basically amateurs of war. the detectives were slowly working places until they had enough evidence to arrest the suspect and bring in a trap. military intelligence corruption had to move far more quickly than that. he had the cardinal rule for intelligence officer. he told him what the general wanted to hear. not what his boss needed to hear. that's a big difference and it's a big deal. spy masters, the good one thought is, have to be unbiased. you have to be scrupulous in accurate information. happy to help uncomfortable truths to their leaders. he was convinced they faced always outnumbered them. he became delusional about it and tethered lincoln with demanding more troops before they move against confederates. instead of setting it straight, he fed him wildly inaccurate intelligence reports that intentionally inflated the number of troops that the general faced. he reported more accurate confederate numbers that he would have ignored him. hers he had a fear of losing. his intelligence reports only made him more timid. the detective also revered him and he even spied on lincoln for political. he thought it might be useful for his journal.ig he fired him in november. she resigned the intelligence chief. now to our next, like hoover, only a couple of important differences. even though they go off and like others think they were tight, and second, they were far more corrupt. he ended up working secret agent from a very efficient and ruthless, a work secretary who became internal security. the operation group eventually to some early full-time detectives gave more espionage and criminal investigation and selecting intelligence. simple crime back then was considered a national security threat is great for the union. secret service n a organizations like bakers often spent more time chasing smugglers, contractors and counterfeiters than they did on this. they set uprt as headquarters in two-story brick building not too far from here near the capital. a plaque hung on his office declaring death. kind of corporate was somebody who was crude, courageous and couldn't be bribed. as men, many of them former california vigilantes scaled with knives and pistols, hardly lived up to that standard. it was his own sting operations. he led them into maryland to break up rebel, he carried mail and merchandise to the south. he enjoyed interrogating suspects. for example, tapping on a woman's breast to see if he heard this sound, it would indicate she concealed contraband from the south. i'm not making this up. [laughter] one time he suspected confederate spies but soon reports and complaints began accumulating that baker and his detectives were abusing their authority. they became notorious for routinely seizing suspects and jailing them for weeks. there were only about $7 a day. staying on first class, a lot of cash always in his pocket and riding around washington dressed in on top of her expensivefrcr lifestyle and fit for a general. he did so by an expense account for the secret service and by finding ways to shake theus mony tree. for example, they had been caught and released in one of his detectives. baker's biggest intelligence came with the assassination of abraham lincoln. guarding the president of the u.s. was not specifically bakers responsibly. baker liked to brag that there was no agent in washington that he didn't know about. there was clearly not the case. he frequently gathered with a boardinghouse on eighth street in washington, just nine blocks of baker's headquarters. baker redeemed himself on his detectives accompanied, baker was outraged when he had general fighting took command of the army in january 1963. he was fluent in french. chaptered it quickly. this conveniently concealed his true intent. sharp had seen combat and was in the military, the information the army needed, he knew nothing about spies when he took the job. he proved surprisingly this work. in some of his correspondence, he used the name colonel and many of his informants, he never knew they were working for the union espionage agency. sharp eventually had a force of some 70 agents. many of whom infiltrated territory wearing those uniforms and confederate dollars for bribes. they set up a large letter opening operation. his men captured bags full of confederate mail exchange between virginia and maryland in the context for where the rebels were moving. one of sharp's officers to drop over enemy lines offering money to defeat. they proved successful with those. sharp also wasn't shy about using torture to get the truth, sometimes they were by thumbs which they found particularly painful when it was applied fori long periods. more important, sharp was spy agenciesfo today are all sorts f intelligence. sharp now raked in all the intelligence. not only reports from spies but also the report from the interrogation of deserters in prisoners. from signal officers and enemy messages at the dispatchers. sharp's officers analyzed all this flood of information and produced commanders highly accurate intelligence with the most comprehensive picture of the enemy that they've ever had. it sounds pretty obvious when a spy agency, and the intelligence. the information was a major ration for the decades ahead of him's time. he produced 14 page booklet that armed commanders to carry in her coat pocket for information on regiment, brigade andnd divisios in the late forces. the estimate on the number of men in the army was off by only one quarter of 1% of the actual number we had. that is truly remarkable. sharp's best agent became elizabeth's first one. the one who everyone dismisses, they were quickly from prisoners to organizing sophisticated spy ring in the w capital confederae security agents were never able to crack. despite network eventually turned out an average of three a week sharp. they covered a lot of subjects. the defendants, the condition of the army, and for shenandoah valley. the morale of the residence. along with the messages were also present additional newspapers plus arose she picked from her garden. it's kind of a nice touch.. churchill became an aspiring, she had several thousand dozen agencies, each one had them identified as a member. it was kind of interesting. operatives were farmers and storekeepers or factory workers she recorded. others were african-americans servant who worked for dan or other unionists. spies also include confederate and general's office to provide strength report on rebel unionst she had a mole in the engineering department. intelligent summaries and the under union journals, sharp mentioned her by her name. she often went by the codename, simply referred to government documents as our lady enrichment and our ring was called our friendsr enrichment. at night in her mansion, she had agent reports and intelligent notes. if she needed to quickly destroy them, she could more quickly hide them like a library. they could be stored in the rosters of the library's iron fireplace that reached part of the way up to the mantle. two with secret cavities in th them, they were hiding places for material. elizabeth had several ways to write messages to her union hampers. she could write letters to a fictitious uncle, signed as elijah a jones and sent through the regular mayor, is between the north and south. she would dip her pen into a bottle of clear liquid in right out in invisible ink the real message she wanted to deliver. union officer on the other end would apply and he would read the secret report. other times, she had careers delivering reports directly to the union army. she's hyper turf messages using a simple key that officers provided. there is a small piece of paper that contained a chart that converted letters. elizabeth kept that folded up tightly. as a security measure, they often tore her encrypted notes into several pieces and sent each piece by a different career on different routes to the federals. her family servant who acted as couriers sometimes put messages in scraped out egg p shells hidn in a basket with real eggs or among paper patterns that seamstresses carried. the family had a vegetable farm near the richmond county line just below the city. that farm became the first of five stops on a winding road along the james river where couriers could drop off messages for the yankees or pick up instructions on intelligence he needed. george would later post that whatever grant wanted in thero y of information from the capital, it could be provided. it was truly remarkable. any questions, comments or anything on your mind? [applause] if you have a question, come to one of these microphones. >> could you talk about chrisman? >> -- actress who female used to get information from confederate and union troops. >> i didn't follow her. she's a workhorse and she produced a lot and spying for the confederates that i briefly mentioned, the confederates spying in washington, a lot of spies on the confederate side were propaganda for actual intelligence.. they were a workforce or intelligence. >> what prevented sharpshooters from taking down -- >> good question. nothing did. as a balloon rose up against the trees, it was dangerous working in them. until i got to about 500 feet, they were sharp shooting cap there. it was very risky getting up there. also very risky was the wind could blow thels wind, the balln in the wrong direction. there something on the ground holding a rope so the balloon didn't go anywhere. in several cases, it went off in union journals, it was a scare. >> what kind of energy did mr. lincoln extract from this group? did he meet with all of them frequently together? >> this different situation. alan in the chicago days, lincoln had been off boyer for railroad there. they had somewhat of a acquaintance there. and he put him through baltimore and got here on the operation. as the president was reforming his administration, he wrote him and said he wanted to come to washington and forming a secret service. he sent a letter directly inside would offer his help. lincoln had no secret service. he never came to a decision. after that, occasionally he would visit the white house basically to get information out of lincoln and other white house aides on how he was doing with the administration. he wanted to scope out lincoln to see what the reaction was in the white house. interestingly, lincoln knew what he was up to.ew he turned the tables on him unwittingly and asked a lot of questions. he conveyed specific messages and wanted to get back to him and get moving. he wrote several letters to lincoln, at one time, he was outraged that the district of columbia would be treated unfairly and southern maryland. he wanted to crack down on that. other than that, hery had very little dealings with lincoln. i don't even know iff lincoln knew, i don't know how much attention he paid to that. sharp's intelligence reports that many of them needed or granted, they went forth to washington very often and ended up at the war department so he knew about sharp. lincoln would interrogate officers visiting washington just to get a sense of what conditions were like out there. i don't know whether he knew lou, he made him aware of our lady enrichment, grant knew exactly what he was up too and greatly appreciated it. when the troops moved in, he ordered a contingent to encircle and lose it so it wouldn't be burned down. >> bent news efforts were impressive considering themp conditions. it seems a little odd that someone already identified as a bad guy would do so much damage and get away with it. if there's anything else you could share about that dynamic, also so she's still there after the war, did you follow their careers or anything after the work? i would imagine some of this would, in the native would be restless. >> the first question, it was amazing she got away with it. the confederate agents frequently would barge into her mansion and see what was going on. neighbors would report that there were strange men coming in-and-out of the mansion at all hours of the night. at one time, somebody met her on the street and said, i've got important information. can you help me? that was immediately sniffed out that it was a confederate agen agents. there was an investigation at one time by the general's office, neighbors ratted on her and even her sister-in-law who was a rabid secessionist testified against her. they conducted a fairly lengthy investigation of her. they eventually concluded that she was in southern texas back then. they concluded that this lady spoke a little too freely about prounion sentiments but don't they all talk that way? she couldn't possibly be doing any damage to the union. not a respected member of the community or daughter of a wealthy merchant. so that hit her. even throughout the investigation when they finally concluded she was harmless, she was still supplying information to the north. in terms of what happened to her after the war it happens all awful lot to spies in countries in world war ii that the american concord, the spies become their own society. she kept secret or intelligence work for as long as she could but there were newspaper stories about her health for union for prisoners. that made her deeply and popul popular, very alone. they appointed to be postmaster, which is a highly lucrative and politically important position but she didn't retain that job after grant left the presidency. in the end, she died nearly broke at turtle. kids would run five the mansion and taunt her, yell things at her. when she. died, she was buried t the cemetery vertically because there were so many graves in the cemetery, they didn't have room to bury people horizontally. she didn't have a marker for her grave. eventually a group of donors, many off whom had been pows in the union present that she helped, but her gravestone and put it on her locked in the cemetery. >> great movie. >> yes. >> the other gentlemen, did they have a code or what they would have to do, did they have backup people would take over for them if they were caught? i imagine they were quite valuable assets and obviously a plan in place for that i would imagine. >> the short answer is no. he sent one of his agents operatives to richmond was very versatilee and a courageous spy. he sent him to richmond about three to four times. he caught the fever and was incapacitated enrichment. authorities started zeroing in on him. he made a huge mistake as ad sy master, he spent, he sent a guy named bryce lewis to richmond to find out what happened at webster and get his intelligence back to washington. he had been involved in counterespionage work in washington, which was a mistake spy master to have somebody counter intelligence work. bryce lewis went south and said i arrested a lot of people in washington who have been deported or sent south to richmond. surely one of them, it would o e suicide mission. sure enough, when price lewis went to richmond to find out what happened to timothy, he was elected. somebody recognized him. they finally closed in on webster, eventually hung webster and bryce lewis stayed in the present for a good amount of time until the end of the war. there's a huge intelligent there. >> thank you. psychological operations, they were affected or injured, the history of world war two. it could be used to this day. this is a very -- tells mark. >> he set the template for cia operations that you see today. they allowed the sources and methods they used, you can see the agency out of more sophisticated level. that explains why there are cia analytical's and the operations for lessons learned and sharp was well aware of the value of deserters, particularly as the union army is encircled and enclosed and on. the lines were very close together. there were several operations he ran to try and convince them. one of them was when the confederacy considered at the end enlisting african-americans as soldiers in the confederate army. they proposed an operation to send black unit officers in, convince these soldiers in the army. he's constantly thinking about psychological operations or even collect these propaganda operations. >> unfortunately a lot of generations were ignored by general george, who took over the commander of the army. he had a very hostile relationship with sharp. it happens not very often, leaders don't like the spy masters. they can bring tension in the relationship. thank you very much. [applause] >> book tv continues now on c-span2. television for serious readers. >> we don't do many children's books on book tv but we are going to feature yours. why do you think we are going to talk about your bookmarks. >> it's perfect for children, it's been for children but also high political

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