From Newsday: June 7, 2014 7:14 PMBy TED PHILLIPS Vicki Jean Johnson’s parents never told her they came to Wading River to help fight the Nazis. The retired middle-school teacher knew her father, Donworth Drew Johnson, had been on the trail of America’s most wanted during his dozen years in the FBI. But it was a […]
By Joe Valiquette | Friday, Jun 6, 2014 | NBC4 New York | Link Since the end of World War II many stories have surfaced about the efforts of the United States and Great Britain to deceive the Germans and Japanese about Allied troop movements, invasion plans and atomic research. But only recently has the world […]
In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion, the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI is planning to unveil a plaque at the historic Benson house in Wading River, NY on Saturday, June 7, at 10:30 a.m. to finally widely publicize the building’s historic wartime roles, which included helping to deceive […]
Wading River retreat house was FBI disinformation operation in World War II Originally published: Newsday, May 31, 2014 By ROBERT E. KESSLER robert.kessler@newsday.com Article as it appeared in print: Newsday-Spies-Next-Door-1JUN14 (.pdf) These days, Benson House, located on a scenic, waterfront bluff 150 feet above Long Island Sound in Wading River, is a retreat house and office on the grounds of […]
You are cordially invited to a book lecture for Hoover’s Secret War against Axis Spies: FBI Counterespionage during World War II with author Raymond J. Batvinis Former Supervisory Special Agent, FBI Professor, The Institute of World Politics Tuesday, June 17 4:30 PM The Institute of World Politics 1521 16th Street NW Washington, DC 20036 Parking […]
My book was reviewed today in the Washington Times newspaper: BOOK REVIEW: ‘Hoover’s Secret War Against Axis Spies’ By Joseph Goulden Washington Times May 27, 2014 HOOVER’S SECRET WAR AGAINST AXIS SPIES: FBI COUNTERESPIONAGE DURING WORLD WAR II By Raymond J. Batvinis University Press of Kansas, $34.95, 334 pages An oft-told story in the annals […]
I wrote this article about the former Deputy Director of the FBI, Cartha “Deke” DeLoach, that appeared in the April 2014 issue of the Grapevine, published by the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI: Stories from the Historical Committee: Deke DeLoach (.pdf)
The blogger at GreatCharlie.com has posted a comprehensive review of my new book: Book Review: Raymond Batvinis, Hoover’s Secret War Against Axis Spies: FBI Counterespionage During World War II Outstanding spy novels tell exciting tales of spy rings, secret and double agents, surveillance, codes and ciphers, wiretaps, microdots, deception, disinformation, and even use of invisible […]
From April 14-17, 2014 I had the unique opportunity of attending an international history conference in England entitled “1944: Seventy Years On.” Sponsors included Global War Studies: The Journal for the Study of Warfare and Weapons, 11919-1945 together with the National Intelligence University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, both located in Washington, DC. The […]
The FBI has recently released two videos about the Glenn Shriver espionage case to alert other college students who are studying abroad to the possibility of being targeted for recruitment by a foreign intelligence service or entity. (FBI) Glenn Duffie Shriver seemed like an average college student—majoring in international relations at a college in Michigan […]
By Ray Batvinis First published in the December 2012 issue of The Grapevine, Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI At 7:55 on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, 22-year-old Dwayne Logan Eskridge was in the Honolulu FBI office, sitting alone at his radio transmitter in a gun vault—spinning dials, checking frequencies and tightening […]
By Ray Batvinis First published in May 2013 issue of The Grapevine, Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI One of the strangest cases in FBI history occurred 73 years ago this month when FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered Special Agent M. Clair Spear to chaperon Carl Norden as he sailed from New […]
Christopher Boyce’s 1985 testimony to Congress about security at government contractors and effectiveness of security awareness programs. This three-part video is from 1998 episodes of CI-TV with host David Major, retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent. Christopher Boyce had been an employee of a government contractor with a top secret security clearance and worked in a […]
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr talked about the book they wrote with Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press; May 26, 2009). Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, was given unprecedented access to Stalin-era KBG records that allowed him and his co-authors to present an unprecedented […]
For the past few months I have been doing some background reading for a book project that I’m considering. I just finished Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel’s Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy, the remarkable 1995 biography of Theodore Hall, the teenage Harvard physicist wunderkind working at Los Alamos, who gave […]
From a joint conference of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Georgetown University Center for Peace and Security Studies. Extracts from a November 1976 interview with James Angleton who retired in 1975 as the head of counterintelligence at the CIA.
Coming in April 2014 from University Press of Kansas: Hoover’s Secret War Against Axis Spies FBI Counterespionage During World War II By Raymond J. Batvinis April 2014 312 pages, 24 photographs, 6 x 9 Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-1952-8, $34.95 The world was at war, America precariously poised on the sidelines. But already a second secret […]
I was honored to be part of a recent event at the National Law Enforcement Museum in Washington, DC. The family of FBI Special Agent Thomas M. McDade was giving the museum copies of a diary McDade kept while in the Bureau during the years 1934 to 1938. One of the most memorable events of […]
New original source documents have been added at the end of the article, The Strange Wartime Odyssey of Louis C. Beck: ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS (in .pdf): 20 June 1940: Telegram to Secretary of State concerning evidence about Henry Antheil’s activities 22 June 1940: Telegram on Antheil case 23 June 1940: Telegram on Antheil case; Translation of a Letter to Antheil […]
Video footage of FBI Special Agents training with various firearms in the 1930s. Video has no sound; video is in color towards the end. If you know of someone in the video or know of more information about the training location or type of weapons, please contact me.
Check out all the videos on FBI Studies related to FBI history and espionage. Video Page
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