The Archaeologist was a Spy

Book excerpt: Sylvanus G Morley (1883-1948) is widely known as an influential Mayan archaeologist. This intriguing book shows that he was arguably the greatest American spy of World War I. Morley came to the attention of the Office of Naval Intelligence in 1916, when reports that German agents were establishing a Central American base for submarine warfare first surfaced. Morley's field research provided the ideal cover for reconnoitring throughout the region. He made several extended research/intelligence-gathering trips along the Caribbean coast of Central America starting in 1917 and forwarded detailed reports and maps to ONI. While he found no noteworthy German activity, his activities permit the authors of this book to reconstruct the way ONI identified, recruited, placed, and debriefed field agents, nearly 150 of whom, many with academic ties, were funnelling data to ONI by the close of World War I. In a final chapter, Sadler and Harris extend the story of academic participation in intelligence work through the 1930s into the founding of 'Wild Bill' Donovan's Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the beginning of World War II.