Nathan Hale, reexamined

Meant to post on this a few days back:

A manuscript given to the Library of Congress may solve a mystery as old as the American Revolution: how the British caught and executed Nathan Hale for spying.

It turns out that Hale, considered by the CIA to be the first American executed for spying for his country, probably made some monumentally naive mistakes - chief among them trusting a stranger with the secret of his mission. . .

Details of Hale's capture have eluded historians, but library officials have new information from the manuscript, written during or soon after the Revolution by Consider Tiffany, a Connecticut storekeeper and British sympathizer. The document was donated to the library in 2000 by a descendant, G. Bradford Tiffany.

From the Guardian; also coverage in Newsday and elsewhere.

Posted by David on September 25, 2003 2:07 PM