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The Ace of Spies and Other Significant Espionage Figures

Khalid Elhassan December 20, 2019 33 min

Detective - Mystery — Throughout history, spies have aroused mixed feelings of fear, loathing, and admiration. Mixed Matches

27. Saving West Point and Unmasking Benedict Arnold

A contemporary print depicting the hanging of John Andre. Wikimedia

One of Robert Townsend’s greatest coups resulted from the unwelcome, but as it turned out fortuitous, quartering of British officers in the Townsend family home in Oyster Bay. During the British stay, one of Townsend’s sisters overheard a visiting officer, John Andre – Benjamin Tallmadge’s British counterpart in charge of intelligence gathering – discussing the defection of a high-ranking American hero.

She passed that on to her brother, and from there it worked its way through the Culper Ring to Tallmadge. It eventually contributed to the unmasking of Benedict Arnold as a traitor. It came in the nick of the time, during the late stages of a plot to betray the important American fortifications at West Point to the British. John Andre was arrested and eventually hanged, and Arnold fled to the British.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.