The Spy Who Couldn't Spell

September 19, 2016
Journalist Bhattacharjee skillfully touches all the bases in recounting the story of Brian Regan, who pilfered reams of top secret information from his job at the National Reconnaissance Office and offered to sell them to foreign governments. Regan stole more secrets than Edward Snowden would over a decade later, but few have heard of him because he was quickly caught and imprisoned. Bhattacharjee covers Regan’s unsatisfactory life. He was mired in debt and unpopular at the NRO. In 1999, after studying the techniques of other spies, Regan concocted a bizarre scheme. The result: in 2000 the Libyan consulate received three separate letters containing a sample of secret
documents and pages of codes that, when deciphered, described his offer. Sadly for Regan, an informant forwarded them to the FBI, who soon identified him through bad spelling and several clumsy errors. Regan’s arrest was straightforward. Far more difficult was recovering his immense buried cache of documents and other materials, because he had forgotten many of the complex codes needed to locate them. Readers may skim the explanations of Regan’s codes, but they will thoroughly enjoy this fast-moving account of a failed spy who, despite his incompetence, easily filched thousands of secrets. Agent: Lydia Wills, Lydia Wills.

September 15, 2016
The account of an eccentric would-be traitor who executed a large-scale heist of American military secrets.In his debut book, Science staff writer Bhattacharjee focuses on cryptographic science and the doggedness of investigators involved in the improbable story of Brian Regan, an embittered Air Force security specialist who decided to pad his retirement by offering classified intelligence to Libya. Although an informant contacted the FBI, Regan had constructed a complex scheme using encrypted ciphers to hide his identity. As the author notes, "Lifting that veil of anonymity was going to be a daunting task." Bhattacharjee reconstructs Regan's suburban childhood to discern the roots for his moral lapse; he notes Regan, suffering from dyslexia, was mocked by peers for appearing simultaneously dense and clever, a lifelong pattern persisting through his one-man conspiracy. The author offers a compellingly seedy portrait of Regan, motivated to contemplate treason due to debt, career stagnation, and marital malaise. "As long as he could get away with it, espionage was a legitimate answer to his troubles," the author concludes. Relying on extensive research and interviews, Bhattacharjee re-creates Regan's brazen acquisition of bulk intelligence and cinematically documents his pursuit by Steven Carr, a driven FBI agent, with exciting tradecraft set pieces of surveillance and covert entries. But the narrative's pace slackens halfway through, when Carr apprehends Regan in 2001 prior to an overseas trip to solicit Iraqi or Chinese spy agencies. The author focuses on the details of the government's aggressive prosecution as well as Regan's use of cryptography in his audacious fail-safe: he'd buried classified documents in various state parks. However, this negotiating tactic only hardened the government's resolve, in keeping with the post-9/11 national mood; ultimately, Regan was convicted of attempted espionage and received a life sentence. In exchange for consideration for his family, Regan helped retrieve his caches, resulting in dark comedy when he was initially unable to decipher his own cryptographic clues. A well-written, mostly engrossing tale of thwarted amateur treason underscoring the disturbing vulnerability of today's intelligence systems.

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Starred review from October 15, 2016

When FBI agent Steven Carr received a FedEx package from the New York field office, he didn't suspect its contents would consume his every thought and action. Via a confidential source at the Libyan consulate, Carr held a number of oddly coded letters written by someone claiming top-secret clearance with the CIA and offering gravely sensitive data about U.S. spy satellites, air defense, locations of Middle East underground bunkers, and more--for a hefty price. Journalist Bhattacharjee (staff writer, Science) writes of how, from December 2000 until shortly before 9/11 (and years after catching the perpetrator), Agent Carr's team, various intelligence analysts, and code-breakers spent hours unpuzzling seeming nonsense scripting the whereabouts of downloaded, printed caches hidden by one Brian Patrick Regan--a doltish, ill-socialized worker with the highly secretive National Reconnaissance Office. Regan's dyslexia, hence muddled spelling, might have forever obscured his identity. What distinguishes this real-world chronicle from similar others (James Bamford's The Shadow Factory; Glenn Greenwald's No Place To Hide) is the author's humane perspective. VERDICT Recommended for spycraft buffs and general enthusiasts of U.S. intelligence operations and psychosocial factors behind espionage.--William Grabowski, McMechen, WV

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2016
In his first book, Bhattacharjee, who writes for Science, the New York Times, and the Atlantic, will leave readers wondering whether classified information from the U.S. government is always vulnerable to being sold, for the right price. Before Edward Snowden's data breaching or Julian Assange's WikiLeaks, Brian Regan, a former American intelligence specialist, committed one of the most massive acts of espionage in American history, by selling U.S. classified and secret information to foreign governments. But, because Regan was arrested shortly before September 11, 2001, Bhattacharjee argues, his extraordinary story has never fully been told. Bhattacharjee now writes the true tale of the dyslexic man who became known as the spy who couldn't spell and the FBI special agent who, along with a team of experts, identified Regan's illegal activities, tracked his steps, and broke into his coded messages and letters (which were often riddled with misspellings). Readers interested in spy thrillers, cybercryptology, and the history of U.S. espionage will find this book to be both entertaining and helpful in understanding today's complex landscape of leaked classified information.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)