Double Agent

The First Hero of World War II and How the FBI Outwitted and Destroyed a Nazi Spy Ring

By: Peter Duffy

Narrated by: George Newbern, Peter Duffy

Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

The never-before-told tale of the German American who spearheaded a covert mission to infiltrate New York’s Nazi underground in the days leading up to World War II - the most successful counterespionage operation in US history.

From the time Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933, German spies were active in New York. In 1937, a German national living in Queens stole the blueprints for the country's most precious secret, the Norden Bombsight, delivering them to the German military two years before World War II started in Europe and four years before the US joined the fight. When the FBI uncovered a ring of Nazi spies in the city, President Franklin Roosevelt formally declared J. Edgar Hoover as America's spymaster with responsibility for overseeing all investigations. As war began in Europe in 1939, a naturalized German- merican was recruited by the Nazis to set up a radio transmitter and collect messages from spies active in the city to send back to Nazi spymasters in Hamburg. This German American, William G. Sebold, approached the FBI and became the first double agent in the Bureau's history, the center of a 16-month investigation that led to the arrest of a colorful cast of 33 enemy agents, among them a South African adventurer with an exotic accent and a monocle and a Jewish femme fatale, Lilly Stein, who escaped Nazi Vienna by offering to seduce US military men into whispering secrets into her ear.

A riveting, meticulously researched, and fast-moving story, Double Agent details the largest and most important espionage bust in American history.

©2014 Peter Duffy. All rights reserved. (P)2014 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Nazi Spies in America 3 STARS~ not bad............

PLOT: the real stories about Nazi Spies in America.

the Germans prepared for WAR with the United States well before it was declared. in the late 1930s Nazi Germany was busy recruiting American Germans to spy for them. They used a combo of blackmail, national loyalty to the "father land" (GERMANY) and bribery. People in aircraft factories and munitions plants forked over the plans for many guns and even the legendary Norden Bomb Sight.... This is their story. William G. Sebold was born in Germany became a naturalized American Citizen. He became the means to capture many Nazis in America. We also see the growth of the FBI through Hoover. This is interesting and though a bit overly long it is full of the many "groups" of Spies located all over the USA. It tells HOW the Nazis recruited and gathered information. Much of this info was used to BASE the movies Confessions of a Nazi Spy and The House on 92nd Street. the ONLY thing that is a total shame is Sebold was not helped by the FBI after he was done spying and died in poverty and having mental illness with it. all very sad. Still a good way to view the many spies and how they functioned inside the USA before and during World War 2. 3 STARS...