Colonel Mashbir’s autobiography now available.

 

 

 

 

Besides being an exciting story, Colonel Mashbir’s 1953 autobiography I Was An American Spy is almost a textbook in the art of espionage and counter-espionage.

Colonel Mashbir (1891-1973) led an adventurous life – At the age of thirteen, he started his military career as a bugle boy in the Arizona Guard, in the still untamed Arizona Territory. During 1914-1916, he served under General Funston and General Pershing, and went on daring missions across the U.S./Mexican border during the Mexican Revolution; he even escorted Pancho Villa to a peace parley with General Pershing.

To protect U.S homeland security prior to and during World War One, Mashbir headed the U.S. Army’s Eastern Division section of counter-espionage where he eliminated an extensive domestic spy network.

In the early 1920s, while attached to the U.S. Embassy in Japan, Mashbir went on a perilous special mission into Russia and China, where he used his clever bluffing abilities to prevent a regional war.

When World War Two erupted, Colonel Mashbir became General MacArthur’s top intelligence advisor. He commanded a top secret, 4,600 member intelligence gathering organization called A.T.I.S. (Allied Translator and Interpreter Section) that dramatically shaped the successful war strategy in the Pacific.

Mashbir’s military career continued into the Atomic Age. As a pioneer of modern intelligence, Mashbir was one of the two men who prepared the first draft implementing directives for the creation of the CIA at the request of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This book presents the odyssey of an unsung hero and a cunning Master Spy, who engaged in covert diplomacy and dangerous missions to shape world events.