The Archaeologist Was a Spy: Sylvanus G. Morley and the Office of Naval Intelligence (review)

In their Preface to this book, Charles Harris and Louis Sadler argue that studies on the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) until now have been institutional histories focused on the headquarters in Washington, D.C. While this analytical approach is useful in providing the institutional framework, the authors note that it largely neglects the coverage of intelligence activities by agents out in the field. For this reason, they chose to examine in substantial detail the ONI service of one particular agent, Sylvanus Morley.

The eldest child of a professor and Vice President of Pennsylvania Military Academy, Sylvanus G. Morley was a civil engineering graduate who turned to archaeology as a profession. Earning a B.A. and M.A. in archaeology at Harvard by 1908—he would never receive a Ph.D. after alienating the University's wealthy patron Charles P. Bowditch—Morley began pursuing his life-long interest in the physical record of the Mayan civilization. This culminated in the 1946 publication of his classic book, The Ancient Maya. Patriotic by nature, he volunteered in March 1917 to become an agent for ONI, operating under cover of his professional work as an archaeologist. Naval Intelligence accepted his offer, and he was quickly commissioned an ensign in the Naval Coast Defense Reserve. Morley was assigned to Central America and tasked with searching for German U-boat bases that were rumored to have been established there, with hindering pro-German activities, and with setting up a ring of lower-level operatives to provide intelligence on suspicious activities taking place along the Central American coast.

The largest portion of this book is a detailed account of Morley's experiences as an ONI agent during the months of the United States's participation in World War I, based upon his extensive unpublished diaries and on his thorough intelligence reports to ONI. Along the way, in this well-researched book, the authors find room to discuss the activities of fellow archaeologists who at Morley's instigation also had been recruited by ONI for clandestine intelligence work in southern Mexico and Central America, including Samuel K. Lothrop and Herbert Joseph Spinden. By war's end, Sylvanus Morley had managed to travel almost 2,000 miles along the Atlantic littoral through major portions of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua in search of the elusive German bases. Though in the end Morley never found any enemy submarine facilities or supply points, this serves a useful purpose in revealing that much of the work of clandestine agents is dogged effort that never results in the major intelligence coups that seem to adorn spy thrillers.

Readers of this handsomely designed book will be rewarded with a fascinating look at the wartime travails of a man who was at once both a dedicated spy for the U.S. Navy and a renowned archaeologist.