A Dead Spy, a Daughter's Questions and the C.I.A.
He was code-named “Carat,” and, for four years during World War II and after, he played the Great Game in the Middle East as an American spy. He died when his Army transport crashed near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1947 in what a press report called “one of Africa’s loneliest spots.”
In Lebanon, where he had been posted at the embassy, he worked undercover as a State Department cultural attaché. At home, in Massachusetts, he had an infant daughter who was six weeks old and whom he never met.
Now that daughter, Charlotte Dennett, is a 60-year-old woman, a journalist and self-taught lawyer living in Vermont. After a lifetime of mystery and wondering, she began, some 20 years ago, to scratch at a stubborn inner itch: Could there have been something more than accident behind her father’s death?
Her search for the truth has brought her into contact with government archivists, retired spooks and a ream of redacted papers from the C.I.A. — which suggests there may be secrets the agency still wants to keep. Earlier this month, after years of litigation, it brought her to a federal appeals court in New York.
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In Lebanon, where he had been posted at the embassy, he worked undercover as a State Department cultural attaché. At home, in Massachusetts, he had an infant daughter who was six weeks old and whom he never met.
Now that daughter, Charlotte Dennett, is a 60-year-old woman, a journalist and self-taught lawyer living in Vermont. After a lifetime of mystery and wondering, she began, some 20 years ago, to scratch at a stubborn inner itch: Could there have been something more than accident behind her father’s death?
Her search for the truth has brought her into contact with government archivists, retired spooks and a ream of redacted papers from the C.I.A. — which suggests there may be secrets the agency still wants to keep. Earlier this month, after years of litigation, it brought her to a federal appeals court in New York.