opinion

Opinion: 'Advertiser' columnist speculated on NSA 'espionage' in 1969 novel

Andy Tully's column "Capitol Fare," ran in the pages of the Montgomery Advertiser for many years. His 1969 book "The Super Spies" was sensationalist and promised to give readers “the inside story of NSA, America's biggest, most secret, most powerful spy agency.” NSA, of course, is the National Security Agency, as much a mystery to most Americans in 1969 as in 2018. NSA was America’s Super Spies, according to Tully.

A longtime Washingtonian, Tully, who died in 1993, and his wife Molly shared their Palisades home with me on many occasions. When Tully took ill, I lived in his studio and it was an experience I’ll never forget. I wrote at Tully’s desk consulting his books, files and awards from federal agencies.

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Tully had many successful books on Washington and he gave readers what they wanted. His newspaper columns were more traditional thought, but his books on Washington, if not critical successes, were popular bestsellers.

“Up to now the workings of America’s super spy agencies have been known only to the highest government officials,” goes the promotional copy for the book, where Tully is described as “one of Washington’s most knowledgeable journalists [who] has penetrated the inner sanctum of American espionage.” Who could turn away from this book?

"The Super Spies" is, frankly, dated reading nearly 50 years later with its speculation on the Vietnam War, Red China and Russia. Chapters on “Saucers with Ears,” “So Many Spies, “Espionage by Gadget” and “Eavesdropping on the Kremlin,” are, at once, dated and timely. Given U.S. political affairs circa 2018, these chapter titles may evoke old and new suspicions.

Editor's note: Andy Tully was Scripps Howard White House Correspondent under three presidents: Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy, after which he wrote a nationally syndicated column from 1962 to 1987.

In a chapter on “The Defectors,” Tully tells readers why so many men, circa 1969, defect to Russia. “[T]he talents of women … [who] enrich Soviet society and make Soviet women more desirable as mates.”

Tully said, I believe, Soviet women are hardworking, contribute economically and, I believe, they like male defectors. Perhaps this information lured former NSA contractor and Wiki-Leaker Edward Snowden to Moscow. Perhaps not.

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As a thorough journalist, I consulted a colleague who is a Russian female, translator and language instructor in Washington, D.C. She stated Russian women flee to other countries due to the lack of eligible men. Fifty years and the dissolution of the Soviet Union may have changed the mating defection dynamics of Tully’s “inner sanctum of American espionage.”

In the main, "The Super Spies" is entertaining information, of a sort, on how government agencies perform their mission protecting U.S. intelligence and infrastructure. Its style, as mentioned, is sensational and, at times, simplistic à l'extrème, much like Tully’s journalism.



Time Magazine called "The Super Spies" "provocative and detailed." Tully claimed the NSA was "more secret, more powerful than the CIA." He had earlier written: "CIA: The Inside Story."

The important thing about "The Super Spies" is Americans read it in 1969, for decades since, and perhaps dozens of others like it, and public opinion became set on sensationalist claims of government intelligence gathering, foreign affairs, spying, Russian women, and geopolitical relations. Tully’s “most knowledgeable” assessment of NSA operations, if I dare analyze him, is, circa 1969, they amounted to skullduggery, or underhanded dealings.

The news from 2018 might cause some readers to reflect on Tully and comment that skullduggery today is not only “espionage by gadget,” but mysterious Soviet women, scandalous dossiers, thousands of deleted emails, dueling Congressional memos, and Tweets Galore.

Editor note's: In April 1945, Tully was one of three Americans to witness the Russian "liberation" of Berlin and sent the first eyewitness accounts of that battle.

Auburn graduate Jim Patterson is a member of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and a life member of the American Foreign Service Association.