The Eagle in the Mirror

by Jesse Fink

Published by: Kensington

Imprint: Citadel

400 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in

ISBN: 9780806543680
On Sale: 05/21/2024
HISTORY / Military / World War II

$28.00 (USD)

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Part biography, part forensic jigsaw puzzle, part cold-case detective investigation, The Eagle in the Mirror is the astonishing untold story of Charles Howard “Dick” Ellis, the Australian-born British intelligence officer and master spy accused by some espionage experts of being the traitor of the century.

The longest serving spy for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Ellis came to New York at the beginning of World War II as deputy to William Stephenson at British Security Coordination (BSC) and helped set up for William Donovan the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), what would eventually evolve into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At one point in the 1940s he was considered one of the top three secret agents in MI6, controlling its activities “for half the world.”

Ellis allegedly received prior warning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and, through the conduit of Stephenson, relayed that warning to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After World War II, Ellis was awarded the the Legion of Merit by President Harry S. Truman.

But in the 1980s espionage writer Chapman Pincher and retired Security Service (MI5) intelligence officer Peter Wright posthumously accused Ellis of having operated as a “triple agent” for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

In 1965, while under interrogation in London, Ellis had allegedly made a confession that he had supplied information to the Nazis prior to the war. The scope of Ellis’s purported betrayal was considered even worse than notorious British traitor and double agent Kim Philby, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963.

However, Pincher’s and Wright’s accusations against Ellis have never been comprehensively proven. Was Ellis guilty or was an innocent man framed? Did he take the fall for someone else? Or had the intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia been fatally compromised by a “super-mole”?

Internationally bestselling author Jesse Fink unravels a gripping real-life international whodunit in this long-overdue biography of the unheralded Dick Ellis, one of the most consequential figures in modern history.

Jesse Fink is an internationally bestselling nonfiction author whose acclaimed biographies include The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC, Bon: The Last Highway, Pure Narco, and The Eagle in the Mirror. His books have been published in twenty countries and thirteen languages. Born in London and raised in Australia, he had a successful career as a book editor and print journalist before switching full time to writing books. He can be found online at JesseFinkBooks.com.

Praise for The Eagle in the Mirror

“A highly significant contribution to the literature of intelligence. . . . Fink has performed some extremely important research.” —Antony Percy, author of Misdefending the Realm: How MI5’s Incompetence Enabled Communist Subversion of Britain’s Institutions during the Nazi-Soviet Pact

“Jesse Fink’s passion to uncover the true story of Dick Ellis is an engaging journey through espionage in the post-WWI and WWII era. The highlight of the story for me was understanding just how much fear, deceit, and mystery were in the daily lives of British intelligence officers of the day.” —Ronald Drabkin, author of Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent Flying Ace Who Infiltrated Hollywood and Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor

“Very interesting indeed. With some real digging for information, Fink does a very good job of showing the inadequacies of certain writers and that there is little or no real evidence that Ellis was an agent either for the Nazis or the Soviets.” —Stephen Dorril, author of MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations and MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service

“Great tale of espionage. The Eagle in the Mirror is a successful rehabilitation of a master spy who was unfairly accused of being a double agent, and even a triple agent, at the service of Germany and the Soviet Union. . . . After a relentless investigation, Jesse Fink’s book does justice to Ellis.” —Taline Ter Minassian, author of Most Secret Agent of Empire: Reginald Teague-Jones, Master Spy of the Great Game

“Remarkable story. . . . If this book tells us anything, it is the difficulty of knowing the truth of anything in the world of the security services.” —Michael Sexton, Australian Book Review

“This engrossing book makes a powerful case for Ellis to be seen as a hero.” —Simon Caterson, The Australian

“Forensic and engrossing. The point of Fink’s work is to convincingly demolish various attacks on Ellis’s reputation, especially the self-serving accusations of treacherous dealings, first with the Nazis and then the Soviet Union, made by a phalanx of bitter, or simply gullible, ‘insiders.’ . . . It was all nonsense, if Fink is to be believed, and I think he can be. . . . Ellis, who died in 1975, was interrogated in 1966. Nothing of any substance was found. But the mere fact that he’d been questioned spawned an orgy of bestselling ‘exposes,’ penned for profit by men who had never felt at home with truth or loyalty. Fink’s comprehensive exoneration, while as complex as the subject demands, is written by a fellow who clearly values both.” —Pat Sheil, The Sydney Morning Herald

“Jesse Fink plays detective and uncovers the fascinating real story about Ellis. Highly readable.” —Jeff Popple, Canberra Daily

“An important book on a figure who deserves proper historical attention.” —Giles Scott-Smith, dean, Leiden University College, The Hague