BY JESSE FINK | CITADEL | RELEASE DATE 21 MAY 2024
Review by: Former FBI Agent and Historian Ray Batvinis
Was he a spy? It is a question that Jesse Fink tackles in The Eagle in the Mirror, his recent biography of Charles Howard Ellis - "one of the most consequential figures in modern history" says the author.
"Dick, as Ellis was known to friends and colleagues, was born in 1895 to an impoverished couple living in Australia. Thrice wounded in World War I, he joined the British War Office working on Russian matters before starting a career with the secret Intelligence Service (Mi6) In 1923. Over the next forty years he crisscrossed the globe chasing alter Nazi and Russian secrets. His ever-expanding circle of friends included Sir William Stephenson, the so called "Man Called Intrepid, famed James Bond creator Ian Fleming, and a host of other high powered figures in the Anglo-American intelligence world. As Ellis's influence grew, awards and accolades followed together with whispered rumors of treason against the British crown. If true, his biographer claims, Dick Ellis's betrayal would have eclipsed any damage done to Western intelligence by Kim Philby, his notorious Ml6 colleague.
Fink, British born and Australian educated, is a sportswriter turned author with six books to his credit. Among them are Bon: The Lost Highway: (2017), a biography of AC/DC singer, Bon Scott, and a look at the life of international cocaine trafficker, Luis Navia, titled, Pure Narco (2020).
Questions about Ellis first surfaced in 1945, when Igor Gouzenko, a Russian military intelligence cipher clerk defected to Canadian authorities with a cache of data that contained the codename "Elli" for a Moscow agent inside MI6.
He next popped up on British radar in the 1960s when a special intelligence committee established to assess the fallout from Kim Philby's 1963 defection to Moscow led to Ellis’ interrogation. According to Spycatcher, a 1987 memoir written by retired British Security Service (MI5) officer Peter Wright, Ellis admitted to spying for Germany before World War Il in exchange for cash while steadfastly denying any wrongdoing with the Russians. This confession, if it does exist, has never been made public. It is also noteworthy that he receives no mention in MI5's official history nor is there any reference to an admission in Mi6's official history. Nonetheless, treachery accusations reinforced by prominent British spy writers like Nigel West, Chapman Pincher, and Philip Knightley continue to dog Ellis's reputation to this day.
Fink takes what he calls & forensic approach in his search for the truth about Ellis. A paucity of primary sources, however, forces him to rely on published material that touches on his Ml6 service. In doing so, the narrative sometimes appears labored and confusing lor the reader. He ends his investigation with a strong conclusion that I will leave to the reader to discover. The Eagle in the Mirror, nevertheless, remains an interesting read, but labeling Dick Ellis as one of the most consequential figures in modern history is, in the end, a bit over the top.
Dr. Raymond J. Batvinis is a historian and retired FBI agent who studies counterintelligence issues. His latest book, Agent Link: The Spy Erased from History, recounts the life of William Weisband, an American codebreaker who spied for the Russians at the dawn of the Cold War. Dr. Batvinis maintains the website fbistudies.com and can be contacted at rbatvinis@aol.com.