In the early hours of New Year’s Eve 1969, in the small soft coal mining borough of Clarksville, Pennsylvania, longtime trade union insider Joseph “Jock” Yablonski and his wife and daughter were brutally murdered in their old stone farmhouse. Behind the assassination was the corrupt president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), Tony Boyle, who had long embezzled UMWA funds, silenced intra-union dissent, and served the interests of Big Coal companies --- and would do anything to maintain power. The most infamous crimes in the history of American labor unions, the Yablonski murders catalyzed the first successful rank-and-file takeover of a major labor union in modern US history.

Duncan Chaplin Lee was a Rhodes Scholar, patriot and descendent of one of America’s most distinguished families --- and possibly the best-placed mole ever to infiltrate U.S. intelligence operations. In A VERY PRINCIPLED BOY, intelligence expert and former CIA officer Mark A. Bradley traces the tangled roots of Lee’s betrayal and reveals his harrowing struggle to stay one step ahead of America’s spy hunters during and after World War II.