DOUBLE EAGLE

Charles McCarry ( June 14th, 1930 - February 26th, 2019 ) was born in Pittsfield ( Massachusetts, United States ). He began his writing career in the United States Army as a correspondent for Stars and Stripes. Afterwards, in the 1950's, serving as a speechwriter in the early Administration of President Dwight David Eisenhower ( 1890 - 1969 ) ; a typical McCarry item was the 1953 Labor Day Proclamation, which read, in part, ’ Free American labor has won for itself the enjoyment of a standard of living unmatched in history. The contemporary world knows no comparison with it. There is only brutal contrast to it. To this, there is no more pitiful and dramatic testimony than the food which this free people has been able to send to feed hundreds of thousands suffering the peculiar torments of the proletarian paradise of Eastern Germany. ’
In the late 1950's, he accepted a post with the C.I.A. for whom he traveled the globe as a deep cover operative - his son, Nathan McCarry, C.E.O. of Pluribus International Corporation, in 2014 described his father's work for the C.I.A. as ’ trying for the family. ’ He left the C.I.A., in 1967, becoming a writer of spy novels. Charles McCarry rarely spoke or wrote directly about those years, saying simply :

" For a decade at the height of the Cold War, I worked abroad under cover as an intelligence agent. "

In the mid - to - late 1970's, several books by former C.I.A. operatives helped trigger and fuel what became known as the United States Senate Church Committee hearings that resulted in legislation limiting the power and secrecy of the C.I.A. Charles McCarry had been ’ outed ’ - publicly identified as a secret C.I.A. operative - in 1975, but was never called to testify. He was editor - at - large for National Geographic and contributed pieces to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Saturday Evening Post and other national publications. In an essay published by The Washington Post, he says that :

’ For a writer in America, going out to dinner is like living as an American in Europe : Total strangers think they can say anything they like to you. ’

Charles McCarry died in Fairfax County ( Virginia, United States ), at the age of 88.
He had many books and publications ( fictions, novels and non - fictions ) to his credit : The Paul Christopher series ( 10 books, 1973 - 2007 ), The Great Southwest ( 1980 ), Inner Circles : How America Changed the World : a Memoir ( with Alexander Haig, 1992 ), Lucky Bastard ( 1999 ), The Shanghai Factor ( 2013 ), The Mulberry Bush ( 2015 ).
( source : Wikipedia )