Lunch with Thomas Maier, "The Invisible Spy"

When
March 28, 2025
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Location
Temple Israel of Greater Miami - Wolfson Auditorium, 137 NE 19th St, Miami, FL 33132
Spaces left
191

Registration

Educator / Student – $45.00
This is intended for our educational outreach program. Please contact us for approval and the discount code.
General Admission – $70.00
Non-members are welcome to attend one event per full season.

Members, please use the email address we have on file. You may also log in and purchase tickets via your account profile.

The Invisible Spy

Churchill's Rockefeller Center Spy Ring and America’s First Secret Agent of World War II

The untold WWII story of a former NFL player turned White House insider who worked with Churchill’s undercover agents in New York City to conduct the biggest foreign spy operation ever within the US, and inspired Ian Fleming's James Bond, for fans of Ben Macintyre and Erik Larson.

As a tough but smart Italian American kid, Ernest Cuneo played Ivy League football at Columbia University and was in the old Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise before becoming a city hall lawyer and “Brain Trust'' aide to President Roosevelt. He was on the payroll of national radio columnist Walter Winchell and mingled with the famous and powerful. But his status as a spy remained a secret, hiding in plain sight.

During this time, Cuneo began a close friendship with British spy Ian Fleming and helped inspire Fleming's James Bond novels. He also began a love affair with one of Churchill's agents at Rockefeller Center—Margaret Watson, a beautiful Canadian woman with a photographic memory ideal for spycraft. In one nighttime attack, Watson was nearly smothered to death by a Nazi assassin inside her women’s dormitory near Rockefeller Center. Cuneo’s transformation from a gridiron athlete into a high-stakes intelligence go-between and political influencer is one of the great untold stories of American espionage. He has remained “invisible” in the public eye—until now, with this unveiled look into his life.

From the bestselling author and producer of two hit TV series, Mafia Spies and Masters of Sex, Thomas Maier delves into the little-known tales behind the Rockefeller Center spy operation and the origins of American intelligence. The Invisible Spy weaves Cuneo’s remarkable personal story with vivid insights about many top twentieth-century figures, including Churchill, FDR and later JFK. Full of action and fascinating characters, this untold history reveals how Cuneo, as America's first WWII spy, helped the British launch a covert campaign against Nazi conspirators hidden in America, an espionage war unbeknownst to many.

Thomas Maier is an award-winning author and investigative journalist for Newsday in New York. He previously worked at the Chicago Sun-Times.

He won the 2002 ICIJ Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting for his investigation into the plight of America’s immigrant workers. He has also twice won the Society for Professional Journalists' Sigma Award. In 2022, he won the Columbia Journalism School Alumni Award, a NY Emmy and the New York Press Club Award for the third year in a row.

He has written six books, including "Mafia Spies" now being made into a six-part documentary by Paramount Global. His biography, "Masters of Sex", about researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson, was the basis for an Emmy-winning television series by Showtime, which ran from 2013-16 and was a Golden Globe best drama nominee.

Maier’s other books include "The Kennedys: America’s Emerald Kings", "When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys" and "Dr. Spock: An American Life", named a “Notable Book of the Year” by The New York Times and the subject of a BBC/A&E Biography documentary. In 1994, Maier’s book, "Newhouse", won the Frank Luther Mott Award by the National Honor Society in Journalism and Mass Communication as best media book of the year.

He worked on ICIJ's award-winning Skin and Bones project, which investigated the international trade in human body parts. He has also won several national and regional honors, including the national Society of Professional Journalists’ top reporting prize in 1987 for an exposé on police and Columbia University’s John M. Patterson Prize for a TV documentary on organized crime.

Photo credit: Usually can find on publisher's site or author's site

Publisher: HarperCollins

Guests: Non-members are welcome to attend one luncheon per season. Members may bring with them an unlimited number of non-member guests, as long as the guests, individually, abide by the above Non-member Guest policy.
Registration: Pre-registration is required.
Payment: Pre-payment is required.
Cancellation Policy: Refunds will not be allowed for cancellations received after registration closes, and no-shows.

Created Feb 8, 2025

Miami, Florida USA