Sarah Laskow

How does someone get away with helping a foreign adversary? Writer Sarah Laskow digs into the gonzo story of an American acquitted of spying for the Soviets—even after he confessed to it.

“Like every other business, clandestine operations have a budget and like every federal agency, that budget is examined by scores of government workers. But how do expenses work if you’re a spy, doing secret work?”

The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk was a bestselling book about sexual abuse in a convent, and it became one of the great literary frauds of the 19th century.