“The McGonigal affair”: Fast living and foreign dealings: An FBI spy hunter's rise and fall
Fast living and foreign dealings: An FBI spy hunter's rise and fall posted at 11:37:38 UTC via deccanherald.com By the time he reached middle age, Charlie McGonigal was living a comfortable suburban life. He had married and raised two children in a tidy Maryland neighborhood near the Capital Beltway. He coached his co-workers on an office softball team and went to church on Sundays. In his den, he hung posters celebrating sports teams from his native Ohio; in his home office, a sign above a doorway announced in flowing script his devotion to his job. “I want to thank the Good Lord,” it read, “for making me a FBI Agent.” But Charles Franklin McGonigal was no ordinary agent. As the chief of counterintelligence for the FBI in New York, he was tasked with rooting out foreign efforts to steal vital national security and economic secrets in one of the world’s most fertile cities for spying. Apart from his outward image as a wholesome and responsible G-man, however, there was ano...