Cold War Pop Culture: Dirty Spy Wars

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Agent Double A

During the Cold War the American public had an endless appetite for information and entertainment about the menace from the Soviet secret services.  Nazi spies had never really lived up to their promise and the Nazi regime had been rapidly snuffed out of existence, but Soviet spies were everywhere, or so it seemed, and they showed no sign of going away.  Publishers, especially of mass market paperbacks, rushed to satisfy this demand.

Credit: International Spy Museum

Judging purely by the tone of titles, it could sometimes be hard to tell the difference between the fiction (Don’t Betray Me and The Devious Defector) and the non-fiction (Crime without Punishment and Elizabeth Bentley’s Out of Bondage).  The fiction could be quite lurid both in language and in subject matter. W. J. Saber’s 1967 novel The Devious Defector starts out with a Bulwer-Lyttonesque line: “The wind howled along the Fredreichstrasse, driving the snow before it in streaks of white knives.”  Saber’s editors apparently never noticed that he had managed to misname one of the most famous streets in Berlin.  Mickey Spillane’s 1951 novel, One Lonely Night, had Mike Hammer going under cover to combat Communists supported by Soviet intelligence who are bent on taking over the United States.  Sitting through a Party meeting, our hero engages in revenge fantasies:

Gladow spoke. The aides spoke. Then the General spoke. He pulled his tux jacket down when he rose and glared at the audience. I had to sit there and listen to it. It was propaganda right off the latest Moscow cable and it turned me inside out. I wanted to feel the butt of an M-1 against my shoulder pointing at those bastards up there on the rostrum and feel the pleasant impact as it spit slugs into their guts. 

The non-fiction could be equally lurid.  Matt Cvetic was the author of a series of articles in the Saturday Evening Post entitled “I Was a Communist for the FBI” which later became a radio serial and a movie.  In his book The Big Decision: The Story of Matt Cvetic, Counterspy (1959), quoted Comrade Leon, an American Communist leader as saying in a Party meeting, “when the Communist Revolution starts in the United States, I’m sure as hell going to enjoy torturing and butchering the clergy and tossing their bodies into the Ohio River.”  Guenther Reinhardt recounted an incident from his service as a member of the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps in which he was forced by naïve superiors to return to Soviet custody—and sure torture and execution—a Russian intelligence officer who had defected to the American zone.  The Russian Captain keeps trying to escape so that he can be shot while escaping, but he is repeatedly thwarted: “Two CIC agents and one of the Constabulary sergeants jumped on him.  The [Russian] Captain threw them all off shouting ‘kill me, kill me.’…It took five men to hold him and a blackjack to subdue him.”

Credit: Michael Barson Collection

Both the heroes and the villains of these works deal in moral absolutes.  They believe that when fighting an absolutely evil enemy, any measure is justifiable.   Even Mike Hammer, one of the American good guys feels this way.  At one point in One Lonely Night he strips a woman naked and whips her because he believes she is a Communist.  Ironically, he later comes across a good American woman stripped naked and being beaten by the Communists.  (The book’s cover art alludes to this scene.)  This violation of female American flesh enrages him so much that he shoots everyone in sight.  In the middle of his rampage, he has an epiphany: “I was the evil that opposed other evil, leaving the good and the meek in the middle to live and inherit the earth.”

Hammer’s view may have seemed extreme, but it was different only in tone from the words of a major government report on the future of American intelligence written in 1954 by a commission headed by World War II hero General Jimmy Doolittle:

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever costs. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the US is to survive, longstanding American concepts of “fair play” must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated means than those used against us.

Many characters—fictional and otherwise—were willing to make moral compromises in order to defeat the Soviet enemy who was even worse.  In 1963, however, John LeCarre, came out with one of the greatest spy novels of all time, The Spy Who Came in from The Cold, which cried a loud “a pox on both your houses!”  LeCarre, himself a veteran of British intelligence, drew a sharp distinction between the free West and the enslaved East, but he saw no moral distinction between their intelligence services.  For him, espionage was inherently a debasing activity.

Credit: Michael Barson Collection

LeCarre would probably have been appalled at the thought that espionage was meanwhile, becoming a matter for children seeking career options.  The contents of the 1953 Real Book About Spies may have been thrilling: Nathan Hale, “The Young Saboteurs of the Churchill Club,” “Klaus Fuchs and the Atom Bomb Spies,” and more.  However, the book’s dust jacket art conveyed a decidedly different message, portraying earnest-looking but friendly men (almost all men) in gray suits, and the hats that were de rigeur at the time, apparently walking to the office.

Ironically, this cover is probably more truthful about the real nature of the intelligence business. Spillane, Cvetic, Doolittle and LeCarre notwithstanding, in the United States it had become the realm of company men laboring in large bureaucracies.

By Mark Stout and Michael Barson

Posted in A Well-Read Spy, Ask A Spy, History, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cold War Pop Culture: Combating Commies

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Agent Double A

The Cold War was a period of fear in the United States.  Not only did the threat of nuclear war loom over the country but there was a feeling that Communist subversives could be anywhere.  During the first half of the Cold War in particular, there were “reds under the bed.”

In fact, so fervid was the anti-Communist imagination that is seemed the very cosmos itself was under threat.  Saturn Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine ran a non-fiction article about the alarming prospect of a “Red Flag over the Moon.”  “The Man in the Moon will be broadcasting down to Earth every day—in Russian.  That’s the way it’s probably going to be,” the article warned.  The only solution was that “rocket men must speak out and name their objective boldly and clearly.  We want the moon!  We want it now, and we want it for the free world!”

The transition from Joseph Stalin to the arguably less menacing Nikita Khrushchev as leader of the Soviet Union and the head of the international Communist movement did little to diminish concern among anti-Communists.  The publishers of even a relatively sober book such as The Many Faces of Communism (1962) found it advantageous to use cover art portraying Khrushchev as looking alternately demonically cheerful and apoplectically enraged.  

In the face of this alarming threat, there was a class of people who made it their purpose in life to eradicate Communism and its twin threats of subversion and espionage.  Many of these anti-Communists were themselves refugees and converts from left-wing politics.  Others were professional spy hunters and law enforcement personnel.  Some were driven to make whole careers out of combating the Communist menace.  They often found themselves derided as “professional anti-communists,” the implication being that by hyping the threat, they lined their own pockets by ensuring further speaking engagements and book contracts.

One such professional anti-communist was Jacob Spolansky who had come to the US from the Ukraine during the early 20th century.  During World War I he spied on radicals in Chicago for the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division.  In 1919, he started a 30 year career working for the FBI hunting members of the International Workers of the World (so-called “Wobblies”) and communists before retiring and writing his gripping memoirs, The Communist Trail in America which came out in 1951, wrapped in a bold red dust jacket.  

Many anti-Communists feared that the tide of history might be running in favor of the Communists if for no other reason than the Communists were steadily infiltrating the American educational system, corrupting American youth who would be the next generation of American leaders.

An organization which made it its mission to battle communists was the National Council for American Education (NCAE), launched in 1948.  The NCAE first made a splash with its 1949 opus Red-Ucators at Harvard which it followed with How Red is the Little Red Schoolhouse?  The cover of its 1953 book Communist-Socialist Propaganda in American Schools portrayed American schools caught in a Bolshevik web.  In essence it was an attack on the National Education Association, the teachers’ union, and its alleged inculcation of Communist values.  The author of this work was Verne P. Kaub, the NCAE’s head of research.  A Wisconsin newspaperman and religious activist, he had flirted with leftist politics himself, being for a time a member of the Socialist Party of Michigan, before making an ideological U-turn.  Before joining the NCAE he had combated communism in the Congregational Church and then in the Tennessee Valley Authority.  

The U.S. Government itself was on the case, of course.  In particular, the FBI was there to protect the American people and subversion and espionage.  The FBI did this by, among other things, infiltrating groups all across American society, ranging from the PTA to the civil rights movement to ensure that Communists were not taking them over from within.  Hoover himself wrote (ghostwrote, more likely), three books including the 1958 Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It, the 1962 A Study of Communism which sold an amazing 125,000 copies in hardcover and the 1969 J. Edgar Hoover on Communism.

Hoover was not the only one blowing Hoover’s horn.  There were a great many unquestioning, even hagiographic treatments of the Bureau and of J. Edgar Hoover in the popular media, as well.  Even comic books such as Calling All Boys and Treasure Chest promoted Hoover and his communist hunting efforts.  He was also a favored cover model for magazines such as True Detective and the National Police Gazette.  True Detective offered its readers “A Day with J. Edgar Hoover,” while the National Police Gazette, in article by a former aide to the Chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (known as HUAC) said that Hoover could be proud of his enemies, “especially the members of the criminal Communist conspiracy, together with their pseudo-liberal allies and dupes.”  For instance, on August 27, 1952 the front cover of People Today plugged the story “The Smear against the FBI,” just above a banner urging readers to turn to an article about “America’s Sexiest Dancers.”  This article defended Hoover and the FBI against its detractors by arguing that the Bureau was suffering from a backlash against its own publicity which had “over-glorified and over-glamorized” the Bureau and its Director.

Meanwhile, a spy war was going on across the world and in the pages of American popular literature…

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Cold War Pop Culture: Our Communist Frenemies

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Agent Double A

The United States and the Soviet Union spent years locked in ideological conflict as each side sought to subvert the other and spies from both sides tried to penetrate the others’ halls of power.  This war was not fought solely behind closed doors in the FBI, the CIA, and the KGB.

This three part blog series will illustrate how these issues played in the American magazines, books, pamphlets, and movies of the day.  Except as otherwise noted, the illustrations come from the pop culture collection of Michael Barson, the author of more than a dozen books, including Red Scared: The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture, Teenage Confidential: An Illustrated History of the American Teen, True West: An Illustrated Guide to the Heyday of the Western and Agonizing Love: The Golden Era of Romance Comics.

The United States and the Soviet Union were not always locked in a Cold War.
In fact, in the 1930s the Communist Party operated quite openly in the United States.  This was a period when capitalism wasn’t looking too good: the Great Depression was gripping the world and fascist regimes were rising in Europe.  Though not particularly popular across the broader American society, the communists attracted a sizeable following particularly among workers, members of oppressed minority groups, and some of the intelligentsia and their literature, such as The Communist circulated freely.

Then, during World War II, the Soviets were our allies in fighting and crushing Nazi Germany.  Joseph Stalin became the friendly “Uncle Joe” and books such as Ambassador Joseph Davies’ Mission to Moscow appeared lauding the Soviet Union, its economic and social progress, and its contribution to the war effort.  Mission to Moscow was not only a bestselling book, with some 700,000 copies sold, but it also became a Hollywood motion picture.

One commercially successful movie that argued for close relations between the United States and the Soviet Union was Song of Russia, a 1944 film in which Robert Taylor plays  an American conductor who is touring the USSR and who falls for and marries a Russian girl whom he realizes is “just like an American girl.” Their romance is interrupted by the Nazi invasion and Peters helps set his wife’s town on fire to deny it to the Nazi invaders.  The film ends with the message that “We are soldiers, side by side, in this fight for all humanity.”

That was precisely the picture stirringly portrayed on the cover of Time Magazine on May 14, 1945.

Things were about to change drastically, however.  In 1946, Soviet military intelligence code clerk Igor Gouzenko defected in Canada and publicly discussed the extent of Soviet espionage in North America.  Then in 1948, Elizabeth Bentley, an American communist who had left the party in 1945 and told the FBI everything she knew, went public with her claims about the oppressive atmosphere within the Party and the espionage committed by American communists on behalf of the USSR.

Around the same time, American intelligence started being able to read encrypted cables sent during the war by Soviet intelligence officers in the United States, a project that ultimately became known as VENONA.  In this way, the Government gained hard but extremely secret evidence confirming and expanding on the claims made by Gouzenko, Bentley, and others.  Propelled by these and other alarming developments, the ground shifted and the Government began vigorously pursuing Communists, particularly those in positions of trust.

Some of the accused Americans were convicted of espionage and related crimes or of violating the Smith Act.  Most famously, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg went to the electric chair for their role in selling the atom bomb secret to the Soviets.  Others merely had their reputations dragged through the mud.  Many of the people who came under scrutiny did have communist connections; some actually were guilty of espionage.  Others however, fell into neither category.  Whatever their fate, few went quietly.

The National Police Gazette even imagined the Rosenbergs’ ghosts plaguing the country. Other people, like Owen Lattimore, a professor of Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University whom Senator Joseph McCarthy once accused of being “the top Russian espionage agent in the United States,” fought back in the court of public opinion.

As they watched parade of accused government officials, professors, movie stars, and just plain folks across their TV screens and newspaper headlines, many Americans across the country became concerned that a senseless witch hunt was under way.
Not privy to the VENONA secrets and rightly suspicious of the methods of Senator Joseph McCarthy, some Americans argued that the threat of Soviet espionage was a phantasm, a hoax perpetrated on the American people by the FBI, McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee and others.

It wasn’t clear to the American public at the time, but the Government’s continuing counteroffensive against the Communists had pretty much broken the back of the Communist Party in America by the mid-to-late 1950s.  The Party continued sputtering along—indeed it still exists today—but it was increasingly irrelevant to real American life and in doctrinaire fashion it continued pumping out turgid prose about the merits of the Soviet Union…books that nobody read.

Part One of a Three Part Series
By Mark Stout and Michael Barson

Posted in A Well-Read Spy, History, In The News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Americans

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Agent Double A

 The Americans debuted on FX on January 30, and I’ve got to say that I quite liked it.  Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell play “Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings,” two officers from the Soviet KGB who have been sent to the United States as “illegals”—very long-term deep cover operatives.  When the show starts in 1981, the first year of the Reagan Administration, Phillip and Elizabeth have been here 16 years.

The Soviet KGB really did run this sort of operation and the Russian SVR continues to do so, as we were reminded in June 2010 with the arrest of the ten Russian illegals.  And illegals don’t just come to the United States.  Germany has recently put a husband and wife team of alleged illegals on trial.  There is another aspect of the show that rings true: Phillip has started to go native.  He observes that everything seems “brighter” here in the United States, and he openly toys with the idea of defecting to the United States.  This is a real problem that the illegals program faced, at least during the Cold War.  Sometimes illegals would find the United States or whatever western country to which they were posted more inviting than the oppressive and drab communist country from whence they came.  In fact, the International Spy Museum contains spy gear from one illegal who thought better of his work and defected to Canada in the 1960s.

Other bits of realistic tradecraft include the use of dead drops and Phillip’s false flag recruitment of a junior FBI employee.  Mind you, I’m not sure an illegal would ever do that, but it’s a real intelligence tactic.

What’s not so realistic, of course, is the shoot ’em up aspects of The Americans.  In reality, illegals try to keep a low profile.  But then, this is television; it’s supposed to be entertaining.  I can forgive that.

If you want to dig deeper…Kevin Costner’s 1987 film No Way Out is another filmic treatment of the illegals program.  For non-fiction books, you can do no better than Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin’s The Sword and the Shield.  (Mitrokhin was KGB archivist who took thousands of pages of notes on KGB files and brought them out to the West after the Soviet Union collapsed.)  For first person accounts, try Alexander Kouzminov’s Biological Espionage: Special Operations of the Soviet and Russian Foreign Intelligence Services in the West or Vladimir Kuzichkin’s Inside the KGB: My Life in Soviet Espionage.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

How Realistic is Argo?

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Agent Double A

When it comes to spy fiction, the question inevitably gets asked “how realistic is it?” A leading scholar of intelligence, Professor Wesley Wark, has said that one can discern two different types of realism. The first type of realism involves getting the technical details (names of offices, technical capabilities of weapons, locations, etc.) right. The second type of realism gets at whether the fictional work grapples with issues that real intelligence professionals must actually deal with. With this typology in place one can start categorizing works. Tom Clancy novels do well in the first category. John LeCarre novels do well in the latter. Jason Bourne does well in neither.

With that as background, I’d like to comment in particular on Argo. Lesley Copeland, a friend and fellow intelligence scholar, has described Argo as a film that “might be called a ‘true- feeling’ account.” Put another way, Argo is pretty good with regard to first standard of realism but even better on the second. Hence, I quite agree with Ms. Copeland when she says notes that Argo is “a film CIA historians should approve of.”

Certainly the opening sequence which gives historical background including the CIA-MI-6 coup in Iran in 1953 and the brutality of the Iranian regime is laudable from a historian’s point of view. However, Copeland highlights two other points that I think are right on the money. The film shows exfiltration experts demonstrating heroism quite of a different nature from that shown by the gun-slinging spies of so many other films (Bourne, Bond…) This gets at a serious point: intelligence officers are just normal people and the drama in most intelligence operations (when there is any at all) is internal, not external (deriving from explosions and gunplay, for instance).

This of course, is a potential problem for filmmakers. It’s difficult to show internal angst, at least if one also wants to sell lots of theater tickets. Of course, it can sometimes be done. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, mostly managed to create intense drama that plays out inside the characters but not in physical action. Screenwriter Chris Terrio and Director Ben Affleck, however, chose to go in a different direction. It is quite true that in real life the day of the exfiltration went off almost perfectly.

Tony Mendez – Real-life CIA agent and ARGO inspiration

However, that doesn’t mean that Tony Mendez, the six “houseguests” and the Canadians weren’t feeling extreme tension at the time. Ben Affleck has been much criticized for externalizing this tension and turning it into a giant chase culminating on the airport runway that made visible and visceral to the audience what the protagonists were feeling. Maybe they could have chosen a better way of doing this, but it is a reasonable solution, in my opinion.

Ms. Copeland also notes that Argo illustrates “America’s often under-valued relationship with its allies,” in this case the Canadians. She’s quite right. Too few spy films reflect the fact that intelligence involves international cooperation nearly as much as it involves unilateral action.

Six rescued U.S. diplomats w/President Carter (Credit: White House)

Ironically, this simple fact has caused some of the most visceral objections to Argo. Comment threads under Canadian online reviews often seem to devolve into Canadians complaining that once again the Americans give themselves exclusive credit for something remarkable and heroic. Some Canadians even say that they know that the CIA was not involved in the operation because they saw a 1981 made-for-television movie that showed it that way. These Canadian comments are met with equally jingoistic comments from Americans alleging that the rescue was a CIA show from beginning to end and that the Canadians did nothing more than in effect operate a hotel. (In fairness, the Canadian critique has been echoed by many Americans in as well.) It is alarming to note the persistence of demonstrably false beliefs even 15 years after the facts were first declassified.

The reality, of course, is that both countries did remarkable things to secure and then rescue the six “houseguests” and several people from both countries put themselves at risk to bring the exfiltration to a successful conclusion. Viewers can reasonably disagree on which country deserves more credit, but no informed observer can disagree with the general point that there is more than enough credit to go around. In this connection it is worth thinking about what is not in the movie, jettisoned for the sake of time and simplicity. To begin with, the recently deceased John Sheardown, a Canadian consular officer, who actually housed four of the six Americans, is nowhere to be seen;nor is his wife. The fact that the Canadians collected important intelligence in support of the operation—a fact brought out by Robert Wright in his book Our Man in Tehran—is also not mentioned. On the American side, “Julio,” a CIA officer who went into Tehran with Tony Mendez does not appear in the movie. An American veteran of the OSS—(Charlie Beckwith of Delta Force fame calls him “Bob”)—who reportedly worked in Tehran in this period, is only briefly alluded to in the film. Finally, the six houseguests themselves did an excellent job by carrying off their roles with aplomb. Mendez’s memoirs make clear that this was not always the case with exfiltrations.

In summary, I think Argo is a fine film and the sort of spy film that real intelligence officers should want the public to see. The “Best Picture” of 2012? That, I leave to the Academy.

Posted in History, In The News, SPY at The Movies, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Two Notable Passings

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Agent Double A

The Washington Post of January 2 contained news of two notable passings that I thought I’d bring to your attention.

First, Jeanne Vertefeuille, died on December 29, 2012 at age 80. Her passing was marked with just a simple death notice. This modesty belies her importance. She and fellow CIA officer Sandy Grimes were the lead analysts at the CIA who determined that of all the various suspects, it was Aldrich Ames who was selling America’s secrets to Moscow.

Ames Mole Hunt Team (Vertefeuille – center)

Their book, Circle of Treason: A CIA Account of Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed, just came out in November. Jeanne, sadly, is gone but if you wish to meet Sandy Grimes and hear her speak about her work with Jeanne you can at 6:30PM on January 23 at the International Spy Museum.

Second, the Post had an obituary for John Sheardown, a man little known to Americans, but to whom we owe a great debt. After radical students took over the US Embassy in Iran in 1979, six American diplomats sought refuge with the Canadians.

John Sheardown – ARGO

This is a famous story now thanks to Ben Affleck’s recent movie, Argo. The movie shows the six American “house guests” staying at the home of Canadian Ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor. In fact, only two of them stayed with Taylor, the other four stayed at the house of Canadian diplomat John Sheardown. Sadly, Sheardown was written out of Argo. He passed away on December 30, 2012 at the age of 88.

Sheardown may be an obscure name to most Americans but if you want to hear an interview with two Americans who most definitely recall him fondly, you can listen to our two-part podcast with Mark and Cora Lijek, two of the diplomats whom he helped save. (Part 1 and Part 2)

For further reading on this story, try Tony Mendez’s book Argo, which is written primarily from the CIA’s perspective; Robert Wright’s Our Man in Tehran, written primarily from a Canadian perspective; or Mark Lijek’s new The Houseguests: A Memoir of Canadian Courage and CIA Sorcery.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Intelligence is a Team Sport

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Agent Double A

The Washington Post ran a remarkable article on December 10 about “Maya,” as we now know the CIA targeter who played the central role in finding Bin Laden.  Her big insight was to analyze Bin Laden’s courier networks, rather than, say, the background scenery and ambient noise in his videos. The Post described her as a ‘difficult personality’ whom the Agency had recently passed over for promotion from GS-13 to GS-14 (basically promotion from mid-grade to senior mid-grade).  The article was pretty unambiguous in describing her as a jerk.

Jessica Chastain stars as “Maya” in the new film Zero Dark Thirty about the decade-long hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Credit: WAPO

Her big transgression, the Post reports this way:

This spring, she was among a handful of employees given the agency’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal, its highest honor except for those recognizing people who have come under direct fire. But when dozens of others were given lesser awards, the female officer lashed out. “She hit ‘reply all’” to an e-mail announcement of the awards, a second former CIA official said. The thrust of her message, the former official said, was: “You guys tried to obstruct me. You fought me. Only I deserve the award.”

Wow.

Now, let’s just stipulate that we’d all be happier if there were fewer jerks in our lives. That said, being a jerk is not incompatible with being a good intelligence officer.  One wag even observed in the Post article that if the CIA got rid of all its jerks, there would be no National Clandestine Service.

The key thing is not so much whether your colleagues like you but whether they are willing to work with you and whether you are willing to work with them.  One brilliant analyst with whom I worked for several years exemplifies what I’m saying.  Let’s call him Bill. I recall a meeting one day when Bill called together a number of analysts to get feedback on a draft paper he had written.  When I made a suggestion that I thought I was pretty important, Bill merely looked at me with a sneer and made a noise which I recall as “pah!”  I was pretty angry.  But…he had asked for input from his colleagues and when his next draft came out, he’d taken my suggestion.  Bill regularly gave me conniption fits, but I’d work with him again in a heartbeat because he was smart and he knew that intelligence is a team sport.

Back to Maya.  It is only fair to note that we haven’t heard her side of the story, and, if she’s smart, we never will.  But, if the facts are as they are reported, then maybe having to wait another year for a promotion may be good for her.  It might help her learn that intelligence is not all about meeeeeeeeeeeee.

Posted in In The News, Intellegence Briefing, SPY at The Movies, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The International Spy Museum’s Top Ten Sexiest Spies

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Agent 0

Our next list outlines some of the notoriously sexy spies of all time – male and female. We’ve included this in our crash course in espionage because all new agents need to be aware of the dangers of extra-seductive operatives. As Johnny Rivers once said, a pretty face can hide an evil mind.

Valerie Plame

These are two dangerous blondes!
Image courtesy of politico.com

1. Valerie Plame –

This glamorous blonde worked for the CIA until Robert Novak, of the Washington Post, blew her cover in 2006. As a result, Vice President Cheney’s aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted of obstruction of justice for allowing her cover to be leaked to journalists. Novels written by Plame and her husband were adapted into a film, Fair Game, starring Naomi Watts. If a brilliant and beautiful covert operative doesn’t make you love America, we don’t know what does, and for that, she makes the list.

Barbara Lauwers

Just look at that irresistible smile…
Image courtesy of boston.com

2. Barbara Lauwers –

As the brains behind psychological warfare campaigns to break Axis morale, this American cutie created and circulated the “League of Lonely War Women” letter among German troops to make them believe their wives at home were leaning towards infidelity. Babs earns a spot on the countdown for psyching out the Nazis and looking good while doing it.

Dimitri Bystrolyotov

A scholar AND a gentleman.

3. Dimitri Bystrolyotov –

Dmitri Bystrolyotov was a man out of the movies: dashingly handsome and fluent in many languages, he was a sailor, artist, doctor, lawyer, and artist.  He was also a spy for Stalin’s Soviet Union.  By seducing women, including a French diplomat, the wife of a British official, and a Gestapo officer, he was able to deliver many secrets back to his masters in Moscow.  His espionage career came to an end in 1938 when Stalin sent him to the Gulag.

Vladimir Putin

No caption is worthy of this downright sexy photo.
Image courtesy of tumblr.com

 

4. Vladimir Putin –

Though we know him better as Russia’s current president, Vlad started in the KGB, managing spies in East Berlin before his promotion to director. Whether it’s suiting up to fix Russia’s economy or fishing shirtless, this comrade makes our list for having a license to thrill.

Krystyna Skarbek

The original Bond girl
Image courtesy of tumblr.com

 

 

 

 

5. Krystyna Skarbek –

This British beauty, a British Special Operations Executive, earned Churchill’s favor by strategizing numerous intelligence and sabotage missions in Nazi Poland and France. Supposedly, Ian Fleming based his character, Vesper Lynd, on Skarbek. There’s nothing sexier than being the inspiration for the original Bond girl.

 

Violette Szabo

Our motto around the Museum: Don’t mess with Texas, or Violette Szabo.
Image courtesy of warfaremagazine.co.uk

 

 

6. Violette Szabo –

Szabo helped organize the French Resistance during WWII. She even parachuted behind enemy lines for sabatoge missions. Though she was eventually captured, tortured and killed by the Nazis, she never gave up any information. We honor this brave beauty for never being a damsel in distress.

 

 

 

Heath Ledger as Casanova

The more handsome of the two Casanovas
Image courtesy of movieposterdb.com

 

7. Casanova –

Although infamous as a lover, poet, and conman, he was also a spy for both Venetian and French courts, using his charm and powers of seduction to procure valuable information from gamblers, courtesans, and criminals. He was portrayed onscreen by none other than Heath Ledger. This Renaissance spy makes the list for mixing work and pleasure.

 

 

 

Russian Illegal

Too bad she’s not coming State-side anytime soon, or we’d ask her on a date!
Image courtesy of biography.com

8. Anna Kushchenko Chapman –

This knock-out Russian national married into British citizenship before moving to NYC to start an international real estate company. Yeah, right. The deep-cover Russian intelligence agent is best known for her arrest as a Russian illegal – and all the suggestive photo shoots that followed. She recently rocked a runway in her home country flanked by two male models dressed as secret agents. She gets a spot on our list for using her blown cover to kick off a steamy modeling career.

Josephine Baker

She’s bad and she knows it.
Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

 

9. Josephine Baker –

Already a famous singer and dancer, this provocative performer secretly aided the French Resistance during WWII by slipping across German borders with secret messages written in invisible ink on her sheet music. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her service when the war ended. This siren could certainly carry a tune to save her life – and countless others as well.

 

 

Mata-Hari

Patrick Swayze had nothing on this dirty dancer.
Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

 

10. Mata Hari –

This exotic dancer from the Netherlands was accused by French intelligence of being a German double agent during WWI. Though she wasn’t the most effective spy, she was certainly one of the sexiest, even blowing kisses to the firing squad at her execution.

 

 

There you have it, agents. Beware of those sultry, seductive operatives that will do anything to get the job done. Even if it means breaking a heart or two.

 

That’s all the intel for now. More to follow soon. Over and out.

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Top Ten Spy Books According to Our Resident Spy, Peter Earnest

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Agent 0

Good morning, agents. Before you head into the field, it’s imperative that you review the following documents as assigned by our resident spy, Peter Earnest. This list represents a comprehensive guide to trade craft and past missions that will help you on your future assignments.

Happy spying.

1. The Agency: the Rise and Decline of the CIA by John Ranelagh

This is a comprehensive look at the history of the CIA. Inside you’ll find stories on its dealings with presidents, Congress, and the KGB. Ranelagh also addresses pivotal moments in the Agency’s history, many of which occurred during the Cold War. We recommend our agents read this book to gain a better understanding of the CIA’s past and the events that shaped it into one of the most powerful intelligence organizations in the world.

2. For the President’s Eyes Only by Christopher Andrew

For the President's Eyes Only

For the President’s Eyes Only…till now.

This book presents a deep analysis of the relationship between each American president and his respective I.C. It outlines not only the change of administrations, but also their effects on the intelligence services during the transitions. Every agent needs to understand proper protocol when presenting classified information to the Commander in Chief.

3. Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy by Mark Lowenthal

This could serve as the go-to textbook on espionage trade craft.  Inside you’ll find briefings on US counterintelligence and covert actions. Easy enough for new agents to understand, this broad overview of intel practices will appeal to experienced operatives, also.

4. Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev

New recruits should undertake this reading as part of their training against the KGB – it outlines the notes of Russian journalist Alexander Vassiliev, who had access to their operational files during the 1930s and 1940s. This book of biographical sketches gives an intimate look into the hearts and minds of US agents’ Russian counterparts.

5. A Spy for All Seasons by Duane Claridge

This piece will give fledgling agents a look at what a long-term career in the Agency will resemble. Claridge embarked on 30-year journey at the Agency where he oversaw important events such as the Iran-Contra affair and the creation of the Counterterrorism Center (CTC).

6. The Art of Intelligence by Henry Crumpton

This modern account of Henry Crumpton’s career in the CIA, especially his time spent in Afghanistan, illustrates a spy’s job in today’s context. The Art of Intelligence uses Crumpton’s experience to illustrate the importance of efficient counterintelligence officers. After reading this, agents will understand the importance of building strong relationships with their sources.  

7. Spycraft by Keith Melton & Bob Wallace

What’s a spy without his gadgets? Gadgets, whether they are hi-tech or lo-tech, are vital to accomplishing any covert operation. Spycraft takes a look at the different devices and techniques that have aided espionage throughout the centuries and continue to assist agents in completing their assignments worldwide.

8. Nightmover by David Wise

Nightmover

The fancy car finally caught up to him.

Every intelligence agency fears being breached. Nightmover chronicles the case of Aldrich Ames, one of the deadliest moles in history, as he divulged sensitive information to the KGB that led to the deaths of numerous CIA sources. This case study is a must read for all agents – both a lesson and a warning.

9. The Spy Who Saved the World by Jerold Schechter

This book is for anyone who underestimates the importance of intelligence. The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the tensest moments of the Cold War, and the outcome could have been very different if Co. Penkovsky, subject of The Spy Who Saved the World, had not shared critical technical information about the Soviet missile program. Close call.

10. A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, and the Price He Paid to Save His Country by Ben Weiser

No espionage crash-course is complete without a human interest story. Weiser’s account of Polish colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, who betrayed the Soviet-controlled Polish government to the CIA in 1981, outlines not only Kuklinski’s life of subterfuge but raises the question of whether he was a traitor or a patriot.

Reading these books is the next step to becoming an expert operative and celebrating our 10th anniversary (intel indicates there might be cupcakes on the 19th).

That’s all for now, agents. More intel to follow. Over and out.

Also, be sure to check out our Spy Store to see if any of these titles are available.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Top Ten Spy Gadgets at the Spy Museum

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Agent 0

What are spies without their gadgets? Here’s the Spy Museum’s top ten picks for coolest spy gear. Don’t leave HQ without them.

10. Lipstick pistol – Issued by KGB, circa 1965

The lipstick pistol, used by KGB operatives during the Cold War, is a 4.5 mm, single shot weapon. It delivered the ultimate “kiss of death.”

pistol disguised as lipstick

What color red are you using? It really brings out your eyes.

9. Shoe with heel transmitter – Used by Romanian Secret Service (Securitate), 1960s–1970s

Operatives would obtain an American diplomat’s shoes, and outfit them with a hidden microphone and transmitter, thus enabling them to monitor the conversations of the unsuspecting target. While most shoes only smell, these shoes can also hear.

Radio bug in Shoe

Can you hear me now?

8. Coat with buttonhole camera – Issued by KGB, circa 1970

This hidden camera was concealed in an ordinary looking coat. The lens, tucked behind the right middle button, is perfectly positioned for photographing unsuspecting people. To take a picture, the wearer of the coat would squeeze a shutter cable hidden in the coat pocket. It was widely used in the Soviet Union, Europe, and North America. Talk about a fashion statement.

Coat with hidden camera

The latest from the Paris runways

7. Pigeon camera – circa 1910

Some pigeons doubled as spies—reconnaissance pigeons like these World War I birds carried cameras to photograph enemy activity. That’s what you call a bird’s eye view.

Camera Pigeon

Smile!

6. Tree stump listening device – early 1970s

U.S. intelligence placed a bug in a wooded area near Moscow to eavesdrop on radar and communications signals of a nearby Soviet missile system.  The intercepted signals were stored and then transmitted to a satellite passing overhead. If a spy falls in the forest, does he make a sound?

Tree Stump Bug

Oleg, you will not believe what I just found!

5. Steineck wristwatch camera – Germany, circa 1949

An agent would carefully aim the camera while pretending to check the time —not an easy feat since there was no viewfinder. Pressing a button on the watch snapped the photo. Gives new meaning to the term “watching you.”

Wristwatch camera

It’s picture time.

4. Hollow coin – Issued by KGB, 1950s -1990s

Hollow coins easily concealed microfilm and microdots. They were opened by inserting a needle into a tiny hole in the front of the coin. One Soviet operative accidentally lost his hollow coin and it ended up in the hands of a Brooklyn delivery boy. Needless to say, it was a bad tip.

Coins that are hollow

Definitely not legal tender for any debt, public or private.

3. Minox camera – Germany, circa 1969-1975

John Walker used a Minox C camera to secretly photograph documents for the KGB.  He used the camera so often that it eventually wore out. At the time, it was the smallest camera in existence.

Minox Camera

Precursor to the SLR

2. Enigma machine – Germany, circa 1940

Originally designed to encode business communications, the Germans adapted the Enigma cipher machine for use in World War II. The machine linked a keyboard to a series of rotors using electric current. The rotors transposed each keystroke multiple times generating millions of possible combinations.  The message was then sent in Morse code. The Allies eventually cracked cracked it. Good thing there was no such thing as “autocorrect” back then.

Code machine

The code is unbreakable? Challenge accepted.

1. Ring gun – France, 19th century

This lethal device held six 5mm bullets. It had the nickname, “Le Petite Protector,” meaning “the small protector” in French. Talk about a trigger finger.

Gun Ring

A true “blood diamond”

Every successful agent is going to need an array of gadgets to help them accomplish their assignments. These ten won’t let you down.

That’s all the intel for now. More to follow.

Posted in Top Ten, Uncategorized | 7 Comments