The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell

This is one of the more fascinating non-fiction books that I have ever read. I finished it over the course of two days because it was hard to put down. Both the story and the writing kept me hooked.

This is both the story of the spy and the FBI agents who tracked him. In the late 1990s, disgruntled government employee Brian Regan hatches a convoluted plan to sell classified intelligence information to the Libyans and some other foreign governments. Except he misspelled Libya! Plus a lot of other words. Brian Regan has dyslexia and was picked on and bullied in school. He manages to get into the Air Force where he learns coding and cryptography. After service, he is hired by the clandestine National Reconnaissance Office. There, he has much too easy access to classified and top secret documents. As an adult, he continues to feel under appreciated and disliked by his coworkers. He is also in serious financial debt and his marriage and family life is stressful. He develops an incredibly elaborate scheme to steal and then hide thousands of pages of classified material. Luckily, his letter to the Libyan embassy is intercepted by the FBI. But his elaborate and detailed plan is also full of small errors and oversights. The FBI, lead by agent Steven Carr, quickly uncover the identity of the spy. Gathering the evidence and catching him is much less simple.

I found this book to be absolutely riveting. It reads like a novel, but it is a detailed and well researched piece of journalism. There is a good amount of background about Brian Regan, which helps you to understand his motivations, his psychology, and his ultimate undoing. The inside look into the work of the FBI is fascinating. If you enjoy spy stories, and even if you dont, this is an excellent book. I highly recommend this.

When it comes to spies in the US Intelligence Community, most have heard of Aldrich Ames and some have heard of Harold Nicholson. But I’m guessing few, if any, have heard of Brian Regan, who planned to sell thousands of classified documents to foreign governments.

Yudhijit Bhattacharjee does an exceptional job of bringing this story to life in exquisite detail in this well-researched and easily readable thriller. Bhattacharjee tells the story simultaneously from the perspectives of both Regan and lead FBI investigator Steven Carr, providing a gripping look at both the caper itself–and the myriad reasons why Regan decided to pursue traitorous activities–and the race against the clock to prevent Regan from accomplishing his goal.

Bhattacharjee makes this subject, which can be complex at times, extremely readable. My only minor complaints are that the author has the occasional tendency to engage in gratuitous editorializing, and that the book does not explore in enough depth the security measures that Regan had to face to maintain his security clearances.

In short, a great read for anyone interested in spies, spy hunts, codes, foreign policy, or the US Intelligence Community.

This book should have been called Mr. 80% or The Spy Who Constantly Sabotaged Himself With His Own Ineptitude. This book detailed the life of a man who was constantly made fun of and considered stupid by his peers throughout his life so he tries to get himself out of debt and get back at everyone by stealing Top Secret information from the NRO and Interlink to sell to other countries. It does go into all the research he did on past spies and his gift for encryption and breaking codes which was really interesting. Unfortunately he kept making thoughtless mistakes like leaving the Internet browser with embassy locations up on a public computer (and not clearing the browsing history) when he thought he was being followed by the FBI and leaving sticky notes with his name on them on the info he wanted to sell to foreign governments when he wanted to remain anonymous. This case should have made the government look at how easy it was to steal top secret government info and fix the loopholes in their security to prevent it from happening in the future but of course this did not happen.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Penguin’s First to Read Program with no requirement to review book.

Well written account of a true story. If this isn’t one, I expect the writer to come up with some bestsellers

The start was interesting and it kept my interest until the last 2 or three chapters. Then I skipped pages, read here and there.

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