Robert G. Folsom

No spy drama has ever matched The Sandbaggers, which featured a tiny, covert intelligence unit based in London during the Cold War. The show that the New York Times called the “best spy series in television history” was the vision of Ian MacKintosh, who was among the first writers to present espionage realistically-as a sordid series of political struggles, double crosses, and personality clashes. The Life and Mysterious Death of Ian MacKintosh provides a behind-the-scenes look at the show that forever changed the spy genre. Readers will also gain insight into the enigmatic and accomplished MacKintosh. A Royal Navy lieutenant commander, he spent part of his service at the Admiralty’s Department of Naval Intelligence, once one of the world’s ranking espionage operations. He retired early and penned thirteen books and a number of television series, including the classic Warship. A leading authority on aircraft, MacKintosh was also one of the youngest recipients of the Member of the Order of the British Empire, an honor one step below knighthood, for his still-classified exploits. His disappearance without a trace on July 7, 1979-nineteen days before his thirty-ninth birthday-while flying with two companions over the Gulf of Alaska (which happened to be teeming with Soviet submarines and other spycraft) remains a mystery, as the British government declined to investigate the incident. Robert Folsom takes readers inside the world of The Sandbaggers and Ian MacKintosh, whose ultimate fate is a plot twist worthy of his own trailblazing creations.

As the first chief of the Special Intelligence Unit at the Treasury Department, Elmer L. Irey accomplished what J. Edgar Hoover wouldn't and Eliot Ness couldn't. From the 1920s through the 1940s, he headed the investigations that led to the prosecution of the ruthless, murderous bosses who ruled American cities without fear of the law. Irey's takedown of Al Capone is still the landmark law enforcement achievement in U. S. history. Those whom Irey and his branch brought to justice reads like a Who's Who of mid-twentieth-century crime and crooked politics: Boss Tom Pendergast in Kansas City, the Huey Long gang in Louisiana, Enoch "Nucky" Johnson in Atlantic City, Morris Kleinman of Cleveland's Mayfield Road gang, and Leon Gleckman, the "Al Capone of St. Paul. The Irey-led investigation also resulted in the prosecution of businessman and publisher Moses L. Annenberg, a cagey racketeer who was once one of the nation's wealthiest figures. Leading his own investigation into the emergence of America's criminal underworld, Robert G. Folsom successfully places Irey in his rightful place as the twentieth century's greatest law enforcement figure. It was shortly after the era of Prohibition—with its rampant corruption, organized crime, and compromised officials—that Irey truly made his mark. While Attorney General Homer Cummings sent Hoover and the G-Men after bank robbers, Irey and his T-Men were cracking down on New York racketeers such as Waxey Gordon and Dutch Schultz, who amassed more illegal cash in one week than celebrity bandits like John Dillinger stole during their entire careers. Irey's work with Manhattan D. A. Tom Dewey—including the use of investigative accountants–led to the imprisonment of Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the Mafia's boss of bosses. A few years later, the Irey-led investigation of the Hollywood stagehands' union extortion plot would result in the first-ever takedown of a Mafia-aligned group—fifty years before U. S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani went after the Mafia's Five Families. In its detailed coverage of Irey and his hard-won battles against crime, The Money Trail reveals how the forces of good can overtake the corrupt.