Colonel James L. Centner, USA (ret.) has had three concurrent careers. He served 30 years in the Army, retiring as a Colonel; 25 years as an adjunct professor of management; and, over 50 years as an executive in the armored limousine industry. Notably, he commanded a Counter Intelligence Detachment in Japan during the occupation, became the clearing house for information on presidential limousines.  He has travelled to over 100 countries serving Heads of State on five continents. James Centner is the author of Codename: Magpie: The Final Nazi Espionage Miss Against the U.S. in WW II.

According to the book description of Codename: Magpie: The Final Nazi Espionage Miss Against the U.S. in WW II, “The carefully researched and presented reconstruction of failed attempts by Nazi Intelligence to advance its cause of war during the Second World War. This history outlines the ultimately useless career of supposed spymaster Nikolaus Ritter. With his inept advances into the clandestine arts, readers will meet his protégés Erich Gimpel and William Curtis Colepaugh, true Nazi spies lurking in New York City.”

According to one reader of Codename: Magpie: The Final Nazi Espionage Miss Against the U.S. in WW II, “Although I am a peaceable old woman whose professional life was spent teaching English literature to college students, I have an interest in military history, especially accounts of the "good war", which shaped so much of the imagination of my generation. I have been reading with enjoyment an excellent account of a relatively unknown episode of that conflict: Codename: Magpie, by James L. Centner. Colonel Centner's encyclopedic knowledge of his subject, as well as his lively style combine to make an extremely entertaining story of the almost incredibly consistent failure of Germany's espionage and sabotage, especially in the effort to carry these out in the United States. It is sobering to reflect that World War II was won by great valor, sacrifice and determination, but also by the seemingly providential failures of the enemy, the results of that hubris, arrogance and folly that consistently underestimated his foes.”