A Nationwide Soccer League participant. A lawyer to Twentieth-century media celebrities. A Washington insider. And an American spy who helped orchestrate one of many largest international espionage operations ever carried out in the US.
Ernest Cuneo — a determine in American historical past who has, till now, largely flown beneath the radar — embodied all these personas.
“The Invisible Spy,” a brand new ebook by investigative journalist and ICIJ member Thomas Maier, tells Cuneo’s story for the primary time, revealing the lifetime of one of the vital highly effective spies of the World Conflict II period.
A longtime reporter for Newsday, Maier twice received the Nationwide Society of Skilled Journalists’ Sigma Award — as soon as for his work on Pores and skin & Bone, an ICIJ investigation inspecting the profitable worldwide marketplace for recycling corpses into medical implants. He additionally received ICIJ’s Daniel Pearl Award in 2002 for his investigative work on immigrant office deaths. Since then, Maier has produced the Emmy-winning TV collection “Masters of Intercourse” and the 2024 docuseries “Mafia Spies,” each tailored from his nonfiction books.
ICIJ spoke with Maier about his newest ebook — set to launch on March 25 — on a number of the energy gamers of World Conflict II, and why audiences and researchers alike proceed to gravitate towards the topic of espionage.
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
Are you able to inform me a bit in regards to the genesis of this new ebook? The place did your pursuits in Cuneo and this portion of historical past start?
Ten years in the past, I wrote a ebook in regards to the Churchills and the Kennedys known as “When Lions Roar,” and in doing that ebook, I grew to become conscious that there had been a gaggle of spies that had been put up on the thirty sixth flooring of Rockefeller Middle by Churchill, just about proper after he took energy as prime minister. On a private notice, Rockefeller Middle is a spot the place lots of good issues have occurred to me each personally and profession clever. I truly proposed to my spouse, Joyce, in 1983 beneath the Christmas tree of the Rockefeller Middle.
It wasn’t till I knew about Ernest Cuneo that I noticed a thread, if you’ll, that went by a lot of completely different spy instances wherein Cuneo was both instantly concerned or not directly concerned by advantage of his very influential place inside the authorities. And so I spotted that Cuneo was, in right this moment’s parlance, a “Deep State determine.” I imply, he was an individual who was very a lot concerned within the intelligence providers as they have been within the early days of espionage for the US. However he was additionally concerned politically. He was additionally the counsel, the lawyer for 2 of the highest media personalities, particularly, Walter Winchell.
This isn’t like my different biographies which were targeted on “nice males” like Winston Churchill. This was any person that no person actually knew about, and Cuneo intentionally tried to maintain his anonymity. In order that problem of doing a ebook, not about an amazing man, however an individual who wished to be an nameless man — an invisible spy — to attempt to inform that biography was, to me, a extremely intriguing problem.
What have been you in a position to glean all through the method of your analysis on Cuneo’s persona?
Nicely, he was an Italian American fellow from New Jersey who went to Columbia College. [He] was very conscious, again 100 years in the past within the Nineteen Thirties, of being an Italian American and realizing that the higher rungs of energy on this nation, it was nonetheless primarily the realm of white Anglo Saxon Protestants. So I believed that was attention-grabbing, his outsider perspective.
There have been articles within the New York Occasions about him being a outstanding wrestler, and he was additionally a soccer participant at Columbia, after which he performed within the NFL. For some time, he was very a lot enchanted with the concept of fame. However as he matured, he realized that he was way more efficient being nameless or by being invisible, by being within the background.
Why do you suppose Cuneo has eluded extra intensive retrospection of his life prior to now?
Like a number of individuals of his technology or people who have been concerned in spying, it was some extent of honor, nevertheless it was additionally some extent of the regulation not to discuss espionage. When you have been a British spy, there was the Official Secrets and techniques Act. Even inside the US, the place there was somewhat bit extra freedom, it was some extent of honor that you just didn’t speak about this stuff. For Ian Fleming, the way in which for him to sort of recreate and relive his experiences as a spy in World Conflict II was the creation of James Bond. He did it fictionally. In reality, On line casino Royale, as I describe in my ebook, has a few scenes that got here proper out of Fleming’s personal experiences that have been modified round for issues of fiction.
You have been telling me a bit about Fleming turning his personal experiences into the Bond novels. I’m questioning if you happen to can inform me a bit about Cuneo and Fleming’s relationship, and extra broadly, share your ideas on our enduring fascination with espionage as a subject.
They have been sort of opposites. Cuneo was an Italian American from the New York space. Cuneo was a really completely different man than Fleming. Fleming was extra acerbic. He had a sardonic humorousness, however they each appreciated girls. They each appreciated to exit for drinks. They each have been intrigued by this thrilling expertise of being spies throughout essentially the most formative time interval of their entire technology: World Conflict II.
The second query, why are we so fascinated with espionage? Nicely, human beings have at all times been intrigued by secrets and techniques, by heroics within the shadows. The concept there are deep state figures who may very well be individuals who assist save us from risks that we’re not conscious of.
This ebook was a chance to sort of discover the origins of American espionage, and do it by the realm, not of some well-known politician, however by the eyes and the experiences of a person in the course of all of this. A person who was a fixer, who was a lawyer, who was an advocate, a person who would place plant tales in a number of the high media retailers of his time to offer his spin on tales.
He was invisible, and he realized that the important thing to his effectiveness, his affect with individuals, was that anonymity.
