Sylvanus Morley was the most influential Mayan archaeologist of his time. His career focused on the study of the most advanced native peoples in the Western Hemisphere, the magnificent pre-Columbian civilization of southern Mexico and Central America.
Lesser known is that he was arguably the greatest U.S. spy of World War I. For years it has been understood that Morley did something during the Great War for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). Morley’s biographer, Robert Brunhouse, writing in 1970, devoted a chapter to Morley as a “secret agent.” Based primarily on Morley’s circumspect diary and written before ONI’s World War 1 records were declassified, Brunhouse sketched the outline of Morley’s intelligence collection operations in Mexico and Central America.
Ironically, the Office of Naval Intelligence seems not to have heard of Sylvanus Morley. Not one word about him appears in retired Navy Captain Wyman H. Packard’s massive study, A Century of U.S. Naval Intelligence, published in 1996 by the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Naval Historical Center.
Why did ONI need Morley’s services? It all had to do with German submarines. Less than a year before the entry of the United States into the war, German submarines visited U.S. ports three times in not-so-subtle demonstrations to the U.S. Navy of the reach of their U-boat fleet—potentially a war-winning weapon. German submarines not only had ravaged Allied shipping, but conceivably could prevent the transport of U.S. troops and supplies to France. Given the traditional resentment of Latin American nations toward the United States, it seemed likely that the Germans were in the process of establishing secret submarine bases on the east coast of Central America and southern Mexico. They thus could menace the Panama Canal and the oil tankers out of Tampico, Mexico, that provided 60% of the Royal Navy’s fuel, and prey on U.S. shipping along the East Coast and in the Caribbean. Believing they had enough submarines to strangle Great Britain, the German high command decided to launch unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February 1917, which resulted in the United States severing diplomatic relations.
But the final breach did not occur until after 24 February, when the British government delivered a decoded copy of the so-called Zimmermann telegram to the United States. The telegram was sent to the Mexican government, offering an alliance with Germany in case of war with the United States; German Foreign Minister Alfred Zimmer- mann promised to assist Mexico in reacquiring Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Unfortunately for the Germans, the British Office of Naval Intelligence’s code-breaking unit cryptanalyzed the telegram, which then was sent to the Woodrow Wilson administration in Washington. The President immediately ordered the telegram leaked to the press, and although five weeks would pass before the United States declared war on Germany, the die was cast.
It was against this background that Sylvanus Morley approached the Office of Naval Intelligence in March 1917 in the comfortable precincts of Washington’s exclusive Cosmos Club. Morley submitted to fellow member Charles Alexander Sheldon, who just had signed on with ONI as a $l-per-year volunteer, a list of anthropologists with Mexican and Central American specialties who were prepared to become ONI secret agents, using their field research as cover. The individuals Morley recommended all spoke workmanlike Spanish and were acquainted with dozens of government officials and businessmen in the region.
ONI officials snapped up Morley’s offer. Morley was the principal figure among the volunteers. He did not look like the spy of today’s movies. A 5-foot-7-inch featherweight, he topped the scales at 105 pounds and was bespectacled to boot. But his remarkable energy made him unique. In 1917, Morley was a rising young archaeologist specializing in the Maya, whose civilization had encompassed much of the area that now concerned ONI. His undergraduate degree was in civil engineering, which provided him with useful mapping skills. At Harvard, he studied archaeology and received a master of arts degree before being employed as staff archaeologist at the School of American Archaeology in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Morley approached the Carnegie Institution in Washington, requesting funds to conduct research on Mayan ruins in Mexico and Central America. By 1914, against formidable competition, he was appointed a research associate of the institution.
Morley was playing in the big leagues of his profession, and during the next two years he led a succession of expeditions to Central America. Not only was he a brilliant archaeologist, he also had an incredible ability to ingratiate himself with almost any group. Whether an individual was president of a Central American country or a mule skinner, Morley’s enthusiasm and infectious personality seemed to overcome any problem he encountered, ranging from anti-U.S. sentiments to acquiring scarce tools for his archaeological digs. As one admiring archaeologist put it, Morley could charm a bird out of a bush.
He was an indefatigable researcher, allowing nothing to deter him from carrying out his research. He periodically suffered debilitating attacks of malaria, but would self- administer massive doses of quinine and in a matter of days be back at his desk. In 1916, Morley almost was killed when a squad of drunken Guatemalan soldiers attacked his expedition as it returned from an archaeological site in Guatemala. Mistakenly believing the U.S. archaeologists and their colleagues were Mexican revolutionaries, troops ambushed, shot, and killed the expedition guide and doctor. The incident traumatized Morley.
He had courage to bum, however, and eight months later he volunteered to go back into the jungles of Central America to serve his country. He recruited a group of archaeologists and anthropologists as ONI secret agents. Included were Dr. Herbert J. Spinden, a Harvard Ph.D. in archaeology who was a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City; Samuel J. Lothrop, another Harvard man working on his Ph.D., and his wife Rachel, the only female ONI secret agent who operated overseas during World War I; Dr. John Alden Mason, a University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. who was a curator at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago (now the Chicago Natural History Museum); and Dr. William Hubbs Mechling, another Harvard Ph.D. archaeologist. Mason and Mechling were assigned to southern Mexico, and Morley, Spinden, and the Lothrops covered Central America. In April 1917, all but the Lothrops (who were recruited shortly thereafter) were sworn in as ensigns in the Navy’s Coast Defense Reserve and sent south by steamship. Morley added artist John Held Jr. as cartog- rapher/assistant. (Held later become famous for his “doe eyed girl” cartoons, the virtual symbol of the 1920s, which appeared in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.) Before leaving Washington, Morley and his colleagues were given a mere two weeks of training, mainly in how to code and decode messages.
Morley arrived in Belize, British Honduras, in late April 1917. His first contribution as an ONI agent was to knock down a report from British intelligence that German reservists, working with Mexican troops, planned an attack on the colony. He noted this was the rainy season, which would make it extremely difficult to invade British Honduras from the Yucatan Peninsula. He also pointed out that the Maya of the region had an antipathy toward Mexicans and could be relied on to attack any soldiers who might attempt to assault their homeland. Finally, because he had led numerous expeditions in the region, Morley stated that it would be virtually impossible logistically to support a German/Mexican invasion. Morley was correct; the rumored invasion never materialized.
From British Honduras, Morley traveled to Guatemala, which had the largest German population in the region. In Guatemala City he recruited Lothrop, a personal friend, as an agent who would be assigned to cover Costa Rica. Immediately it became apparent to Morley that individual agents would have to be assigned to specific countries, with communications and funding handled through the Panama Canal Zone.
Morley encountered problems with U.S. diplomats who wanted nothing to do with secret agents. He reported that he was unable to obtain permission to send sealed reports in the diplomatic pouches. What made this particularly troublesome was the fact that not only were most of the diplomats he encountered hostile, but several legations leaked like sieves, with local nationals having access to the pouches and even code books. Traveling on muleback throughout the back country of Honduras, he and Held soon determined there was German propaganda but neither submarines nor secret radio stations in the region.
Morley and Held made preparations for a reconnaissance mission to El Salvador. Before they arrived, a massive earthquake leveled the capital. Their trip was something out of an adventure novel, but they managed to survive the aftershocks, arrived safely in San Salvador, and reported to the U.S. minister, Boaz Long, who was an old friend. Morley and Held offered to help assess the extent of the devastation, and Long accepted. Because El Salvador was the most anti-U.S. of the Central American nations, Morley suggested to his control that the United States should assist in relief efforts to strengthen U.S.-Salvadoran relations.
While in San Salvador, Morley received a coded telegram signed: DANIELS, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY. Long commented dryly in a telegram to the Department of State, “. . . respectfully suggest that future messages not be signed DANIELS, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, as they are liable to arouse suspicion.” Morley’s cover in El Salvador, through no fault of his, had become threadbare.
Back in Honduras, Morley, who had spent months at the Mayan ceremonial center of Copan, worked to strengthen his archaeological cover. In Tegucigalpa, he requested an interview with the minister of foreign relations to present his Carnegie Foundation credentials. Following a series of interviews with the foreign minister, Morley was twice ushered into the presence of President Francisco Bertrand, who consented to write him a letter of introduction. This proved enormously useful, because ONI ordered him to carry out an exhaustive survey of the north coast, looking for potential U-boat bases. The President’s missive proved magical in dealing with petty officialdom.
Morley and Held headed to the north coast of Honduras on muleback—a proverbial journey from hell. Between flea bites and a raging case of prickly heat, Morley would drench himself with whiskey at night to obtain relief. To compound his problems, he was struck by one of his perennial attacks of malaria. Fortunately, he was able to check into a United Fruit Company hospital at Tela. He quickly recovered and prepared to investigate the Honduran and Nicaraguan coasts—better known (for good reason) as the Mosquito Coast. To accomplish his mission, Morley rented a shallow-draft, yawl-rigged sailing vessel with a small auxiliary gasoline engine and a crew. In September, he and Held sailed east along the Honduran coast.
What Morley and Held essentially did was to sail into the mouth of every river (often running aground on bars) that emptied into the Atlantic. Morley laboriously measured how deep the water was in each river to determine whether a submarine could sail up the waterway. In addition, he investigated foreign nationals along the coast to identify any German sympathizers. He thus sought to identify individuals who might be involved in setting up supply bases for submarines. He found none, and by the end of their two-month voyage, Morley concluded it would be virtually impossible for a submarine to slip into a river on either the Honduran or Nicaraguan coasts.
When Morley and Held landed at La Ceiba, Honduras, they learned they were suspected of being spies. Morley went straight to the office of the provincial governor to present President Bertrand’s letter of introduction. He explained that he was a distinguished archaeologist and could not possibly be a spy. The governor was impressed with Morley’s explanation—and his President’s letter—and the spy charge vanished.
In only two months, Morley had established an intelligence network that ran from Bluefields, Nicaragua, to Belize, British Honduras. He had succeeded in spotting, assessing, and recruiting nine subagents to cover the coasts of Nicaragua, Honduras, and British Honduras—some 600 miles of coastland. They included his friend Dr. Thomas Gann, who not only was the principal medical officer for Belize but also was the chief intelligence officer for the British colony. It was unprecedented for Gann, a British subject, to be recruited as a salaried ONI secret agent. He thus wore two hats and assisted in the coordination of U.S./British intelligence collection in the region.
To fill out his network, Morley recruited an elite group that included four ranking United Fruit Company executives in Central America; the U.S. consul at Livingston, Guatemala; the manager of the Cuyamel Fruit Company in Honduras; two executives of the Mengel Mahogany Company in Nicaragua; and the principal U.S. importer in Ceiba, Honduras. He arranged for his agents to use United Fruit radio stations or telegraph outlets on the coast to inform ONI if German submarines made an appearance.
Back in Belize, Morley began searching for submarine bases along the east coast of southern Mexico. The governor of British Honduras loaned Morley not only his yacht, but also his intelligence officer (Gann) for two months to help survey the coast. Beginning in February 1918, Morley, Held, and Gann headed north along the coast of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. There they attended parties and played baseball with the provincial governor, General Octaviano Solis (who was quite taken by Morley and offered every assistance), methodically checked rivers and lagoons along the coast, and carried out archaeological investigations. By late February they were in Progreso en route to Merida (both on the Yucatan Peninsula), where Morley had old friends. There Morley demonstrated his capability as an agent of the first rank.
In only ten months, Morley had become a skilled intelligence operative and a first-rate analyst. By late April 1918, after continuing their survey of potential U-boat supply depots on the Mexican coast, Morley and Held had completed their reconnaissance and headed back to the United States on leave.
Morley was exhausted, and the ravages of malaria and myriad other tropical maladies had taken their toll. ONI headquarters awarded him 60 days’ leave and prepared paperwork for his promotion to lieutenant (junior grade). The director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Roger Welles, “urgently recommended” Morley’s promotion, pointing out that he had covered 2,000 miles of Mexican and Central American coastline and had operated in the interior of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, British Honduras, and the Mexican states of Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas. His promotion came through.
In September, Morley returned to Central America, but the war was winding down. ONI used his talents to report on political disputes in Central American countries—the last of which was El Salvador, where a bitter presidential election dispute erupted in violence. When the dust cleared in February 1919, Morley reported on who had won and why. But ONI was shutting down its networks in Mexico and Central America. Still, Morley spent four months touring the region before preparing a 20-page report for ONI on how to cover Central America in the postwar era. He suggested that for less than $22,000 annually, an ONI network with only three agents could cover all of Central America, with a case officer based in New Orleans. The report was apt, concise, and provocative, but funds were insufficient to put such a plan into operation. ONI decided it would be a more prudent use of funds to purchase Cadillacs for its naval attaches than to put secret agents in the field. With a note of thanks to his control in Washington, Morley signed his last report on 16 July 1919 and returned to archaeology.
It had been a grand adventure.
