Sylvanus Griswold Morley lived the life of a pulp-fiction hero:
Sylvanus Griswold Morley (June 7, 1883–September 2, 1948) was an American archaeologist, epigrapher and Mayanist scholar who made significant contributions towards the study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early 20th century. He is particularly noted for his extensive excavations of the Maya site of Chichen Itza, whose scholarly investigations he commenced. He also published several large compilations and treatises on Maya hieroglyphic writing, and wrote popular accounts on the Maya for a general audience.
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Morley graduated from Harvard in 1908. The next six years he spent travelling through Central America and Mexico, engaged in fieldwork with the School of American Archaeology.This period coincided with the First World War, and Morley’s activities in the region now appear to have been largely a cover for the gathering of intelligence and reporting on the movements of German operatives in the region, which might have been of interest to the U.S. Government. According to recent investigations, Morley was one of several ONI operatives working in the region under the guise of conducting scholarly research. Their mission was to search out evidence for pro-German and anti-American agitation in the Mexico-Central American region, and to look for secret German submarine bases (which turned out to be non-existent). The cover of an archaeologist provided Morley with a ready excuse to be travelling the countryside armed with photographic equipment. Several times Morley needed to convince suspicious soldiers of his bona fides, and was almost unmasked on occasion.
Morley was to produce extensive analyses (he filed over 10,000 pages of reports) on many issues and observations of the region, including detailed coastline charting and identifying political and social attitudes that could be seen to be “threatening” to U.S. interests. Some of these reports bordered on economic spying, relaying the activities of the local competitors and opponents of large U.S. companies present in the region, such as the United Fruit Company and International Harvester.
As the output of his later work was to prove, Morley was also a genuine scholar and archaeologist with an abiding interest in the region.