The Invisible Spy

The untold WWII story of a former NFL player turned White House insider who worked with Churchill’s undercover agents in New York City to conduct the biggest foreign spy operation ever within the US, and inspired Ian Fleming's James Bond.

As a tough but smart Italian American kid, Ernest Cuneo played Ivy League football at Columbia University and was in the old Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise before becoming a city hall lawyer and “Brain Trust'' aide to President Roosevelt. While on the payroll of national radio columnist Walter Winchell, Cuneo mingled with the famous and powerful. But his status as a spy remained a secret, invisible, hiding in plain sight.

During this time, Cuneo began a close friendship with British spy Ian Fleming and would even inspire Fleming's James Bond novels. He also began a love affair with one of Churchill's agents at Rockefeller Center, Margaret Watson, and eventually helped the British launch a covert campaign against Nazi conspirators hidden in America, an espionage war unbeknownst to many.

Cuneo was America’s first WWII spy, and his transformation from a gridiron athlete into a high-stakes intelligence go-between and political influencer is one of the great untold stories of American espionage. From the bestselling author and producer of two hit TV series, Mafia Spies and Masters of Sex, Thomas Maier delves into the little-known tales behind the Rockefeller Center spy operation and the origins of American intelligence, with vivid insights about many top twentieth-century figures, including Churchill, FDR and later JFK.