LOST SON

A complex tale of espionage and betrayal against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

Billy Reilly was a loner who, while his friends were playing sports and video games, was learning languages and reading advanced books. Not long after 9/11, he announced his conversion to Islam, which was no mere contrarianism. He then set about learning Arabic and other languages, including Russian—which made him an attractive subject for the intelligence community, especially since he’d been appearing in supposed terrorist chat rooms. Wall Street Journal national security reporter Forrest, who has been covering this story for years, chronicles how Reilly traveled to Russia in 2015, where, in theory, he was going to accompany a humanitarian relief mission to the insurgent Donbas region. Instead, Forrest hazards, he might have been feeding information to a U.S. agency. But which one? The FBI—an agent of which showed up at Reilly’s home one day even as he was across the ocean—denied knowing about him, saying it was the CIA’s purview, with one agent saying, “The FBI doesn’t give a shit about Ukraine and Russia.” The CIA professed plausible deniability. Following his diligent investigation, Forrest eventually learned that Reilly was killed somewhere on the front, presumably by Russian state intelligence. Even as the FBI denied knowledge, the agency’s third-in-command asked to speak off the record, leading Forrest to conclude that Reilly’s case “was dangerous enough for the Bureau’s third-highest official to have it top of mind.” No definitive answer emerges from these pages despite the dogged research on the parts of Reilly’s family, private investigators, politicians, the intelligence agencies, and Forrest himself. The lesson to draw is to warn any smart young person without moorings to stay away from the government’s hollow promises, which soon turn, as Forrest so capably shows, to denial.

An intriguing, somber study of the manipulation of a single person in the context of big events.