Rudyard Kipling's "Great Game": Kim, Spy Stories, and "The Spies March"
By Wesley Britton
In his 2004 review of Frederick P. Hitz' The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage, Alexander Hemon noted that Hitz was clearly aware of the seminal importance of Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901). After all, Hitz drew his title from the famous phrase usually associated with Kipling--"The Great Game." Then, Hemon's review included the very arguable claim that Kim was "the first modern spy novel" as it "uses espionage to go after something immeasurably bigger then the technicalities of collecting intelligence." Kipling's Kimball O’Hara, Hemon noted, "was part of the struggle for Central Asia between the Russian and British empires known as the Great Game." Merging a spiritual quest with espionage, the story of Kim is about a boy who "becomes a challa (pupil) to a Buddhist lama, which, after he is recruited [by the British Secret Service], becomes a perfect cover" for a spy mission.
Still, Hemon believed "Kim is really not primarily about spying. Kipling's book is about a whole set of issues crucial to the British colonial discourse, and the spying in it allows them to come into focus. The book is about becoming a perfect British subject, about the ways in which the (moral) project of "civilization" affects an individual psyche . . . Kim's quest is about accepting his responsibility toward the Empire and its subjects—Kim is about a white boy's burden." (Hemon)
Of course, this is but one interpretation of the novel seen through many critical lenses, sometimes praised as the first post-Colonial novel, sometimes blasted as Jingoist propaganda. But, being a book dealing with a variety of themes and motifs, and, in Hemon's view, "not really about spying," can Kim really be considered the first modern spy novel? While the claim for this honor has been given to many books--most frequently to John Buchan's 1915 The 39 Steps--occasional mentions of the Kipling story do occur in discussions of espionage literature. (note 1) For example, Bruce Schneier quoted an uncited review of Kim which allegedly claimed, "Kipling packed a great deal of information and concept into his stories, and in `Kim' we find The Great Game: espionage and spying. Within the first twenty pages we have authentication by something you have, denial of service, impersonation, stealth, masquerade, role- based authorization (with ad hoc authentication by something you know), eavesdropping, and trust based on data integrity. Later on we get contingency planning against theft and cryptography with key changes." Thus, Kipling can be viewed as a "security author." (Schneier)
So it seems worthwhile to explore Kim and determine its place--if any--in the genre of spy literature. At the same time, an overview of Kipling's short stories employing espionage show more early uses of "The Great Game." And a look at a 1911 Kipling poem, "The Spies March," may reveal, uniquely, that Kipling might have been the first to scribe spy verse.
A Spy Kid in India
The first question to answer is clearly--was Kim a spy novel at all, especially as the story has lengthy sections with no overt connections to spycraft? Despite critical views downplaying the undercover elements of the book, Ian Mackean's analysis points to the espionage plot as one of the two main threads running through the book. One is Kim's mentoring by a Buddhist monk on his own spiritual quest; this parallels another education for Kim who is singled out by Colonel Creighton for recruitment into the Secret Service.
This begins in Lahore where Mahbub Ali, a horse trader with the secret code name C25 1b, gave the 13-year-old Kim a cryptic message to deliver to a British officer in Umballa. As Mackean notes, "Kim takes to the 'Great Game' of spying like a duck to water." It suits his independent, inquisitive, adventurous personality perfectly, being a natural
development for the child who loved the 'game' of running secret missions across the rooftops of Lahore. As Kipling stated in Chapter One, "what he loved was the game for its own sake - the stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the crawl up a water-pipe . . . the headlong flight from housetop to housetop under cover of the hot dark." (Mackean) Not knowing that Mahbub was a member of the British Secret Service, Kim delivered the message as directed and then lay in the grass and watched and listened until he learned that his message meant that eight thousand men would go to war. Later, he learns of the mission's success when Mahbub tells him, "The game is well played. That war is done now and the evil we hope nipped before the flower, thanks to me and thee." (Mackean)
Kim is not involved with the Secret Service again until the final sentences of Chapter Eight when Mahbub instructs Kim on where to go for training, saying "Here begins the Great Game." Until that point, Kim traveled with the lama before finding a Irish regiment that removed the orphan from the holy man's care and sends him to a school for white children. There, he specialised in surveying and map-making, "essential skills for his future role as a spy." Thereafter, he is answerable to Colonel Creighton--rarely on stage--and agents Mahbub Ali, Babu, and Lurgan who trains him in the art and science of spying.
During his education, as Kim had grown up essentially a dark-skinned orphan in India, his identity was a fusion of East and West. So, in Mackean's view, the twin influences of the lama and the spymasters are equal forces in forging the boy's identity. "When his schooling is complete Kim's training as a spy under Creighton's associates continues, one of his teachers being the 'shaib' Lurgan . . . During his stay with Lurgan in Chapter 9, as well as practising the observation test now known as 'Kim's game', Kim is subjected to a psychological test in which Lurgan tries, through hypnotism, to make him believe that a broken jug has reconstituted itself." Kim resists Lurgan's attempts to manipulate his mind by silently reciting the mathematical tables he learned at school. "Kipling seems to be showing that much as Kim found the ordered regimented thinking of white men repellent at first, the mental discipline he has absorbed from his European schooling has given him an ability to keep control of his mind in a way that would not have been possible for a native. This ability, no doubt, would be vital if he were ever captured and interrogated by enemy spies." (Mackean)
So, on one hand, the lama instructs Kim in the Buddhist philosophy of renouncing attachments to earthly bonds. Likewise, "As a spy, Kim will also have to renounce ordinary life. He will lead a life of disguise and deception, never able to reveal his true motives to anyone . . . And just as the lama's mission will only be understood by a select few among Buddhist holy men, Kim's mission will only be understood by a select few among the British Secret
Service." (Mackean)
One episode not summarized by Mackean occurred in Chapter 11 after Kim leaves with the llama and encounters another agent, known only as E 23, on a train. The two spies recognize each other after seeing each other's identification amulets and, surprisingly, E 23 isn't surprised to discover a contact but 17 years old. Once Kim realizes E 23 has a message for him, he leans forward to hear the whispered report, "his heart nearly choking him. This was the Great Game with a vengeance." Carrying a secret letter, E 23 is in disguise, on the run as he's accused of murder. Strangely, it's the younger agent who aids the more experienced spy by helping him quickly prepare a new disguise that fools the local police.
Later, again on the road with the llama, Kim encounters Babu who assigns him to join his mission to intercept two foreign spies, one Russian, one French, who are operating in the Himalayas. Babu meets up with the spies and travels with them while Kim and the llama travel on the same route. After the two parties meet up, one of the spies tears the lama's diagram of the Buddhist universe, then strikes him in the face. Kim is provoked into fighting him. This leads to a mutiny of the foreign spies' coolies, which sends everyone off into different directions. As a result, Kim is able to find and hide the spies' secret documents. "Kim is instrumental, along with the Babu, in thwarting the foreign spies, their mission being particularly successful because the foreign spies never realize that Kim and the Babu are secret agents - as far as they know their expedition has been wrecked by a chance encounter with a holy man and his young disciple . . . This fight and Kim's triumph will be a coup for Kim which will surely secure his career as a spy." (Mackean)
"The Great Game" and "Mcguffins"
Clearly, much of Kim was very much a spy adventure. However, Mackean's observations indicating Kim had a future in espionage are questionable. In the final chapter, the llama and Mahbub Ali discuss Kim's future, and Mahbud leaves the boy with the llama who sees Kim as a likely teacher. The final paragraphs are of the llama talking to Kim about purifying him in the River of Life, not of "The Great Game."
But the question remains--does the use of espionage in a story with a wider palate drawing from historic, realistic settings mean it's a "modern spy novel"? And if so, can Kim be considered "first" due to its copyright date of 1901?
Of course, spy literature--at its best--is rarely a simple yarn about heroic figures who beat the odds behind enemy lines, in embassies during the Cold War, or infiltrating terrorist cells. To use John Le Carre's term, "The furniture of espionage" allowed writers like Le Carre' and Graham Greene to use spies to illustrate and dramatize wider themes. In the case of Kim, critics point to ideological concerns, notably in the novel's conclusion. "The novel’s end provides no clear answer for Kim or for the reader. Although in the last chapter Kim tells the lama, `I am not a Sahib, I am thy chela,' it seems obvious the great game has not released Kim." (Mahony) Citing Sara Suleri, J. Birjepatil wrote, "Kim's collaboration in the Great Game is emblematic of not so much an absence of conflict as the terrifying absence of choice in the operations of colonialism. Thus Kim's hybridity instead of serving as locus of conflict pragmatically becomes an instrument of the Great Game." (Birjepatil) And the Game, at least in the words of Babu, has no end. "When everyone is dead, The Great Game is finished, not before."
From another angle, "The learning curve in Kim also applies to the lama. He has been made to see that the spiritual life is indebted for its protection to the real world. His question: `What profit to kill men?' had received a sensible, down to earth answer: `Very little — as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers.'" Further, Sharad Kestar claims, "The thirteen year old street Arab is at seventeen wise beyond his years, and though he will join the `Great Game', the lama has not lost him. So too, the cares of the Raj will take their `turn' on the “Wheel of Things”. The impact of their machinations are only as the click of beads in a Buddhist rosary, and the prayers which see all, forgive all." (Kestar) In Kestar's view, "On India’s chequered board, Kim’s protagonists are pawns, and in the end their lives are games to be played out." Without the mystical dimensions, such views point to character elements in later spy stories from Somerset Maugham onward, that undercover operatives are less independent adventurers than pawns in wider vistas, the strings pulled by faraway bureaucrats and policy makers.
However, to view Kim O'Hara as anyone's pawn may be placing the character in a context of critical agendas more so than anything within the text. For one example, when Kim helps agent E 23 on the train, the llama warns him he has tossed a pebble that will ripple into many directions. This prophecy is fulfilled when the agent safely escapes to Delhi, an innocent man is pulled in for questioning by the authorities, and, when the train reaches Kim's last destination, "the last ripple of the stone Kim had helped to heave was lapping against the steps of a mosque in faraway Rome." Throughout the novel, once Kim has completed his formal education he acts instinctively, correctly, and is as likely to give advice to his supervisors as hear it. When Babu, for example, worries about ways to get the documents from the French and Russian spies, it's Kim who retorts, "There are more ways of getting to a sweetheart than butting down a wall."
One reason it's difficult to portray Kim as a pawn is that he is not caught up in affairs of the state nor is operating from any driven motives. In the view of Feroza Jussawalla, "Kim has no allegiance to the British, to Colonel Creighton or the war effort. He is simply in it for the adventure and fun. Kim was singled out as his mentors noted his "lust to go abroad," his willingness to risk his life to "discover news," and, as Largan tells him, "seek out "men who have done a foolishness against the state." Few, Largan believes, are good at this sort of work--Kim is a rare breed.
In literary terms, The orphan is akin to the "Clubland" heroes who enjoyed the sporting life of upper-class British gentlemen in the stories of Buchan, Dornford Yates, and Sapper. In stories where protagonists are "pawns," typically they are either innocent civilians pulled into nasty business against their will or are professional operatives who learn they've been duped by higher powers. This isn't the case for Kim and the adventurers of his era. He shares the same spirit as men like the colorful founder of the modern British Secret Service, Mansfield George Smith Cumming, who made the famous 1909 cheerful boast that espionage was “a capital sport!” This attitude was reflected in the words of the even more colorful secret agent, The Scarlet Pimpernel: "I've got a smack in the eye, and I've become engaged in sport. And what a sport! What a game." (Britton 8-9) This idea of spying and gamesmanship would be a recurring motif in, notably, the Bond novels where games of chance, golf, and working through mazes made sportsmanship a staple of British fiction and later television and films. In this light, Kim indeed reflected contemporary attitudes regarding "The Great Game."
Still, other works preceded Kim and vie for the claim of first modern spy novel. It's true, as Kingsley Amis put it, that realism wasn't yet the point for most spy stories at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. For him, the pre-007 spy genre began "with the almost completely free-lance status of a Bulldog Drummond" and William Le Queux's Duckworth Drew (Amis 2). Drew's early adventures were precursors to later adventures focused on new technology as when he encountered an "electronic eye," an Italian device that detonated mines (Amis 2). In addition, Le Queux's novel, The Great War in England in 1897 (1894 was an early example of literary speculations about an invasion of England. The Secret Service (1896) dealt with Jews in Russia, and England's Pearl (1899) was an early novel shifting British fears from the French to Germany. Despite the extremely minor literary contributions of these fanciful adventures, Le Queux can be seen as a logical predecessor to Tom Clancy and the sub-genre of "speculative fiction" that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s (Britton 9).
At the same time, fellow UK novelist A. E. W. Mason's The Courtship of Morrice Buckler (1896) also fared better with contemporary critics more so than in hindsight. One reviewer, then, claimed this book put Mason "in the forefront of cloak and dagger writers." (McCormick 134). More successful, in terms of output, was E. Phillips Oppenheim who produced 115 novels and 39 short story collections, many of which were Edwardian spy stories emphasizing gambling and secret diplomacy as in The Mysterious Mr. Sapine (1898). Praised by John Buchan as his "master in fiction," Oppenheim spiced up his tales with local color in major city settings as in Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo (1915). Oppenheim was also later lauded by Eric Ambler as one of the earliest outstanding writers of cloak and dagger stereotypes including "the black-velveted seductress, the British Secret Service numbskull hero, the omnipotent spymaster," and the appeal to the snobbery of readers of the era (McCormick 144).
So, nailing down just which book deserves the title of "first modern spy novel" must remain an open question, the answer depending on just how one defines "modern." Critics vary widely determining the characteristics demonstrating trends, contexts, eras, and trappings. Still, while admitting Kim is not primarily a spy novel, John Derbyshire observed that biographer Andrew Lycett "repeats the story, which I have heard elsewhere, that Kim is a cult book among spies; Allen Dulles, it is said, used to keep a copy beside his bed. I hope this is true--I mean, it would be nice to think that our intelligence operatives have such good literary taste." (Derbyshire) (note 2)
Kim certainly has one advantage over many of the titles and authors listed above as it is still in print, still read, and considered, if nothing else, a children's classic. But it seems clear Kipling deserves more credit for his many contributions to the genre that have been often overlooked by critics. For one matter, while it's now common practice to use the phrase, "The Great Game" as a virtual euphemism for espionage, before Kipling, the term had different connotations. The phrase, usually attributed to Arthur Conolly, was first used to describe the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British and the Tsarist Russian Empires for supremacy in Central Asia, specifically in Afghanistan. According to Wikipedia, "The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 a second, less intensive phase followed." (The Wikipedia entry includes a chronology of significant events during both periods.) "Thanks in part to Rudyard Kipling, mention of `The Great Game' conjured up images of dashing heroism in the Wilds of the Afghanistan Mountains. While this romanticism was certainly a part of the game, it was more often played by politicians in London and St. Petersburg than by adventurers in the steppe." ("Great Game"-Information)
As it happened, Kipling made another indirect contribution to espionage nomenclature. While his story of a talking locomotive, ".007" (1897) might have been a possible influence on Ian Fleming's children's story, Chitty, Chitty--Bang Bang, (this is but surmise), there's no likely connection between that fantasy and the code-number given James Bond. However, as reported in my Beyond Bond: Spies in Film and Fiction (2005), film director Alfred Hitchcock claimed seeds for his own spy projects, most notably his famous "McGuffins," came from the writings of Kipling. "Most of Kipling's stories," Hitchcock said in 1967, "were set in India and they dealt with the fighting between the natives and the British forces on the Afgan-Istan border. Many of them were spy stories and they were concerned with the efforts to steal the secret plans out of a fortress. The theft of secret documents was the original `McGuffin.'" (Truffaut and Scott 98) Beginning in the 1930s, Hitchcock made such McGuffins stables in his films, describing them as "the device, the gimmick . . . or the papers the spies are after." (98) Ironically, during the same decade, in 1937 Kim Philby--who reportedly was given the name "Kim" after the character in Kipling's novel--began his long career as a double-agent in British intelligence, setting up the foundations for the infamous "Cambridge Spy Ring." (Britton 29)
Short Stories
Interestingly, of the five published Kipling short stories with espionage tropes, none fully match the elements described by Hitchcock. Critical responses to them, to date, would seem to support editor Alan Furst's contention in his introduction to his 2003 The Book of Spies: An Anthology of Literary Espionage that there are apparently few classic spy short stories (Miller39). Instead, the book showed that the best espionage fiction seemed to be in full-length novels with developed and intertwining plot lines, complex characters, and situations requiring elements beyond what can be found in genres like detective or science-fiction stories. As Furst's collection relied on chapters from novels and few bona fide short stories so popular when Kipling and later figures such as Dornford Yates and Leslie Charteris contributed to magazines in the first half of the century, perhaps spy short fiction was not fairly addressed in the anthology. Putting literary merit aside, it still can be said that Kipling, after quasi-espionage stories by Doyle and Poe, and along with writers like E. Phillips Oppenheim, deserves acknowledgement as being among the earliest scribers of the secret agent short story genre.
For example, Kipling's first two spy stories were included in the collection, Life's Handicap (1891). According to John Radcliffe, "The Man Who Was" (1890) has "to do with a British officer who had been captured in Russia on an intelligence mission and escaped many years later." (Radcliffe) In notes on the story edited by John McGivering, the "story first Appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine of April 1890." Frederick Kinsey Peile adapted it for the stage and it was performed at Drury Lane in London in 1907. McGivering added, "This story reflects the powerful feeling, shared by soldiers and civilians in British India, that they faced a serious threat from Imperial Russia, which at that time was extending its power and influence south and east into Asia." ("New Reader") (note 3) Whether a direct influence or not, the story's title was also the first in a long series of "The Man Who . . . " spy books and films from G. K. Chesterson's The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) to Ewen Montagu's The Man Who Never Was (1953) to the two versions of Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much.
According to Douglas Kerr, “The Man Who Was” shows one side of the army, "the rituals and loyalty and gentlemanly self-restraint of regimental officers; "The Mutiny of the Mavericks" has a different focus (Kerr). John McGivering says the low regarded farce, also from Life's Handicap, deals with a secret Irish republican organisation, based in America, aiming to ferment mutiny against the British among Irish soldiers of the British army. "They send an agent, Mulcahy, who joins up in the 'Mavericks' and does all he can to stir up feeling against the authorities." The soldiers recognise Mulcahy for what he is, and reject his attempts to provoke a mutiny. Then, when they are sent into battle, the agent provocateur learns he has failed in his mission and will die either at the hands of the enemy or by his alleged comrades and is killed in the fight ("New Readers")
The third spy adventure, according to John Radcliffe, was "A Burgher of the Free State" which was first "published in the London Daily Express weekly from June 26 to July 4 1900 . . . It was not collected until the Sussex Edition which was published after Kipling's death in 1936. It has to do with South Africa at the time of the Boer War." (Radcliffe)
Due to the extensive use of naval details, Commander Alastair Wilson and Rear-Admiral P.W. Brock provided extensive notes regarding "The Bonds of Discipline" 1903) which appeared in a variety of publications. it seems that Kipling was working on it in November, 1899 and perhaps the story "was suggested by an actual incident, which received little publicity at the time and was not recorded for posterity." ("New Readers") In this comic tale, A French spy's cover is blown when he looks for secrets about a British ship. The captain decides to "bamboozle the Frenchman by putting on a show of total incompetence, and, loyally backed up by the crew, proceeds to put the plan into action for 24 hours. At the end of that time, the Frenchman is passed on to a providential collier, where he will have to work his passage. But he later reproduces all the
misleading actions to which he has been exposed as fact, and publishes them." According to Wilson:
"In some ways, the tale may be considered almost as one of Kipling’s tales of revenge. Nationally, our relations with France, at the time the tale was started
(1899), were strained, to say the least (the incident at Fashoda, in the Sudan, had occurred only the previous year). So, at one level, the tale is of Britannia pulling the wool over the eyes of the `Frogs.'" ("New Readers")
"The Spies March"
The last of Kipling's short stories with an espionage connection was "The Edge of the Evening" which appeared in 1913, collected in A Diversity of Creatures. In this comic yarn, an American millionaire tells a British friend about an evening when an enemy bi-plane unexpectedly lands at a country estate. After a shoot-out with various English gentlemen, two aviators are killed. The group learns the two fliers were spies and ponder how to avoid a court trial for the murder. After prolonged debate and a mock trial of themselves, they put the dead spies back in the plane, set it off, and it flies off to an unknown destination, presumably crashing in the channel. (note 4)
Two years earlier, Kipling published the much more serious "The Spies March," a unique poem often interpreted to be about the role of the spy in war. The eight stanza refrain first appeared in The Literary Pageant: A Charity Magazine issued July 12, 1911 in aid of Prince Francis of the Teck Memorial fund for Middlesex Hospital. Apparently, one inspiration for the poem was an "Extract from a private letter from Manchuria" as Kipling used the following as a motto for the poem:
“The outbreak is in full swing and our death-rate would sicken Napoleon . . . . Dr. M— died last week, and C— on Monday, but some more medicines are coming. . . We don’t seem to be able to check it at all . . . . Villages panicking badly . . . . In some places not a living soul . . . . But at any rate the experience gained may come in useful, so I am keeping my notes written up to date in case of accidents . . . Death is a queer chap to live with for steady company.”
According to Kipling expert John Radcliffe, why the writer used this note is not clear and, to date, few critics have commented on the poem. "It was written when Kipling was very conscious of the danger of war in Europe and the need to prepare for it, and - one assumes - to be alert to the possible infiltration of spies into England." (Radcliffe) Kipling librarian John Walker adds the poem was probably instigated by Sir John Bland-Sutton, Kipling's close friend and physician for many
years, who "was associated with Middlesex Hospital. Presumably at Bland Sutton's request, Kipling contributed `The Spies' March'" To the Literary Pageant (Walker). It was later collected in The Years Between (1919). The text reads:
The Spies’ March
THERE are no leaders to lead us to honour, and yet with out leaders we
sally, Each man reporting for duty alone, out of sight, out of reach, of his
fellow.There are no bugles to call the battalions, and yet without bugle we rally
>From the ends of the earth to the ends of the earth, to follow the Standard
of Yellow!
Fall in! O fall in! O fall in!
Not where the squadrons mass,
Not where the bayonets shine,
Not where the big shell shout as they pass
Over the firing-line;
Not where the wounded are,
Not’ where the nations die,
Killed in the cleanly game of war—
That is no place for a spy!
O Princes, Thrones and Powers, your work is less than ours—
Here is no place for a spy!
Trained to another use,
We march with colours furled,
Only concerned when Death breaks loose
On a front of half a world.
Only for General Death
The Yellow Flag may fly,
While we take post beneath—
That is the place for a spy.
Where Plague has spread his pinions over Nations and Dominions—
Then will be work for a spy!
The dropping shots begin,
The single funerals pass,
Our skirmishers run in,
The corpses dot the grass!
The howling towns stampede,
The tainted hamlets die.
Now it is war indeed—
Now there is room for a spy!
O Peoples, Kings and Lands, we are waiting your commands—
What is the work for a spy?
(Drums)—Fear is upon us, spy!
“Go where his pickets hide—
Unmask the shape they take,
Whether a gnat from the waterside,
Or a stinging fly in the brake,
Or filth of the crowded street,
Or a sick rat limping by,
Or a smear of spittle dried in the heat—
That is the work of a spy!
(Drums)—Death is upon us, spy!
“What does he next prepare?
Whence will he move to attack?—
By water, earth or air?—
How can we head him back?
Shall we starve him out if we burn
Or bury his food-supply?
Slip through his lines and learn—
That is work for a spy!
(Drums)—Get to your business, spy!
“Does he feint or strike in force?
Will he charge or ambuscade?
What is it checks his course?
Is he beaten or only delayed?
How long will the lull endure?
Is he retreating? Why?
Crawl to his camp and make sure—
That is the work for a spy!
(Drums)—Fetch us our answer, spy!
“Ride with him girth to girth
Wherever the Pale Horse wheels
Wait on his councils, ear to earth,
And say what the dust reveals.
For the smoke of our torment rolls
Where the burning thousands lie;
What do we care for men’s bodies or souls?
Bring us deliverance, spy!”
While the subject of "The Spies March" might seem, at first glance, about espionage, John Walker offers a different interpretation. "I think that this is one of the `layered' pieces he enjoyed so much. The Society of Epidemiologists (originally a wartime group, I think) adopted part of the poem as theirs, interpreting the spies as
those needed in the battle against disease. Remember, this was written for a hospital fund raising publication, and for the Middlesex, where epidemiology was a specialty. It is
fever, and not the fight." (Walker) To support this interpretation, in "Kipling and Medicine - Sanitation," Gillian Sheehan connected the extract from the letters heading the poem to Kipling's lifelong concern with proper sanitation (Sheehan). Putting the poem in this context, the stanzas clearly take on different meanings than commonly assumed. With this reading, espionage becomes metaphor giving readers a "layer" that was not the central theme of "The Spies March."
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"Famed Spectacular Adventure Story Filmed Against Authentic Backgrounds in Mystic India The Greatest Spy Thriller of Them All!"
(Tag line for 1951 film version of Kim)
Lest film buffs fear the movie adaptations of Kipling's spy stories have been slighted here, it's worth noting that on January 26, 1951, MGM released its lush on-location version of Kim giving top billing to screen swashbuckler, Errol Flynn. The actor played Mahbub Ali, the Red Beard, despite the relatively minor role played by the character in the novel. Dean Stockwell was Kim and Paul Lukas played the Lama, the latter to mixed reviews for his credibility in the part. Telescoping the novel, the plot focused on Kim disguising himself as an Indian to avoid school and indulge in some espionage for the British, via Errol Flynn's shady horse-trading. In 1984, a made-for-television movie headlined Peter O'Toole as the Lama and young Indian actor Ravi Sheth as Kim. Most reviewers found this version truer to the letter and spirit of the novel, albeit with an inserted sub-plot not in the novel involving a British soldier and his Indian wife.
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Notes
1. Robin W. Winks noted how the novels of Buchan established the template for subsequent spy fiction in his introduction to The collection of Buchan's The Four Adventures of Richard Hannay: The 39 Steps, Green Mantle, Mr. Standfast, The Three Hostages. (Boston: D. R. Godine. 1988). I developed the concepts in both Spy Television (2004) and Beyond Bond, listed below.
2. In an April 10, 2007 personal e-mail to this author, writer Ron Payne claims, "John Huston, with whom I used to correspond when he lived in Mexico, discussed 'the spy elements' in Kipling and how he wanted to work some of it into his original script of 'The Man Who Would Be King.' After all, he did have James Bond (Sean Connery) and Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) in the leads. Huston loved Kipling and considered himself a 'Kiplingesque hero,' as he really saw himself as a cross between 'Danny Dravot' and 'Peachy Carnahan.'
3. Notes, resources, and links for "The Man Who Was," "The Mutiny of the Mavericks," and "The Bonds of Discipline" are included at "The New Readers Guide" listed below.
4. According to Lisa Lewis in her "The Manuscript of Kim," Kipling abandoned another potential spy adventure. "Mother Maturin" was the story of an old Irish woman who
kept an opium den in Lahore but sent her daughter to be educated in England. She marries a Civilian and comes to live in Lahore - hence a story how Government
secrets came to be known in the Bazaar and vice versa. The character would be used in a film script, drafted by Kipling around 1920 together with an American film director, Randolph Lewis, to be called ‘The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows’. The film was never made, but in an attempt to drum up interest Lewis leaked its plot to the New York Times, who published a summary on 29 April 1923. See the full article at the "New Readers Guide" cited below.
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Sources
Amis, Kingsley. The James Bond Dossier. New York: New American Library. 1965.
Birjepatil, J. " Hybridity And History In Rudyard Kipling." Marlboro College.
www.marlboro.edu/~birje/home.html - 29k -
Britton, Wesley. Beyond Bond: Spies in Film and Fiction. Westport, CT: Praeger Pub. 2005.
Derbyshire, John. "Rudyard Kipling & The God of Things as They Are" New Criterion 18, no. 7 (March 2000): 5-13.
Hemon, Alexander. "The timely anxieties of spy literature." Slate magazine. Monday, June 14, 2004. http://www.slate.com/id/2102347
Jussawalla, Feroza. "(Re)reading Kim: Defining Kipling's Masterpiece as Postcolonial.1" Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies 5, no. 2 (fall 1998): 112-30.
Kerr, Douglas. "Life's Handicap." Literary Encyclopedia. June 6, 2003. www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3939 - 16k -
Keskar, Sharad. " Introduction." New Readers Guide. Feb 10 2004. http://www.kipling.org.uk/bookmart_fra.htm
Mackean, Ian. "Kim, by Rudyard Kipling. An analysis of the novel Kim." November 2001. www.literature-study-online.com/essays/kipling.html - 50k -
Mahony, Mary. “Critical Evaluation of Kim." Masterplots Classics. https://salempress.com/Store/pdfs/product_sheets/All_masterplots.pdf -
McCormick, Donald. Who's Who in Spy Fiction. New York: Taplinger. 1977.
"New Readers' Guide, The." The Kipling Library. http://www.kipling.org.uk/bookmart_fra.htm
Miller, Laura. "The Last Word: Smiley's People." New York Times Book Review. June 6, 2004. late edition, Section 7, Column 1: 39.
Radcliffe, John. E-mail to author, April 3, 2007
"Rudyard Kipling - Biography and Works." The Literature Network Alt+1
www.online-literature.com/authorsearch frame
Schneier, Bruce. "Schneier on Security: Rudyard Kipling As a Security Author." December 29, 2006. www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/rudyard_kipling.html -
Sheehan, Jillian. "Kipling and Medicine - Sanitation."
http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_med_sanitation.htm-
"The Great Game: Information from Answers.com."
www.answers.com/topic/the-great-game - 55k -
"The Great Game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game - 36k -
Truffaut, Francois with the collaboration of Helen G. Scott. Hitchcock. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967.
Walker, John. E-mail to author, April 26, 2007.
To see related articles, check out
WWW.WesleyBritton.com
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Radical Islam and the International Intelligence Summit 2007
Radical Islam and the International Intelligence Summit 2007: A Report
By
Helene Fragman Abramson
(with appendices)
Writer and researcher Helene Fragman Abramson spent two days at the International Intelligence Summit in St. Petersburg (March 4-7, 2007), "where I was invited to join Impossible Spy executive producer Harvey Chertok to honor the memory of both Eli and Maurice Cohen by providing historical context during the Q&A. I offer my kudos and deep-felt gratitude to Summit organizers Dr. Robert Katz and John Loftus for making the return of Eli’s remains from Syria to Israel a priority."
The following is Helene's recap of what she heard and learned at the summit. After her observations are appendices related to the conference.
---
"From the shores of Tripoli"
It seems not much has changed since Thomas Jefferson, according to Congressional meeting notes, was told by the Warlord of the Barbary Coast that “all nations who should not have acknowledged the authority [of the laws of the Prophet, Mohammed] were sinners, that it was their [Muslim] right and duty to make war upon [the sinners] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners.” As president, Jefferson took the Islamic leaders to task for piracy and hostage taking in 1805; U.S. Marine bombardments eventually forced them to abandon their ways.
Today, anyone who turns on a television in this post 9-11 era is aware of the dangers of radical Islam. Never before have so few posed such a grave danger to so many regardless of where we live. Yet we barely shudder when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad publicly calls for the destruction of Israel and the United States or when his close ally and beneficiary, Hizbollah leader Hassan Nazrallah, tells Washington Post reporter David Ignatius that there are no terms under which Islamic militants would agree to halt their suicide bombings.
As with hostage taking, such acts are a continueing part of U.S. international relations. But America’s failure to respond in kind to attacks on our own soil—our embassies are on American soil—according to former al Qaeda associate Dr. Tawfik Hamid, was a clear signal that radical Islamic terror tactics could be successful. During his keynote address at the Intelligence Summit, Hamid's observations on the motivation for suicide bombers included the idea that Americans have a short memory and no stomach for a long war while radical Muslims have eternity to rid the universe of non-believers. Every Muslim steeped in Koran knows killing an infidel can save him from the horrific hell-fires of the sinner, explained Dr. Hamid. (Hamid made his remarks despite a fatwah [Muslim religious edict] calling for his death.)
Gaps in Intelligence
The annual Intelligence Summit, hosted by the Intelligence and Homeland Security Education Center (IHEC) to offer a non-partisan forum for information exchange in the fight against terrorism, drew speakers with expertise ranging from biological warfare to international law to linguistics in the private, military, academic and intelligence sectors. Unfortunately, forums like these tend to attract the already-converted. The rest of us remain nonplussed and secure that our everyday lives and personal priorities take precedence—we hope.
Alas, “hope is not a strategy” according to Lieutenant General Thomas G. McInerney.
McInerney's summit address underscored Dr. Hamid’s message noting the need for success in Iraq is the turnkey if we are to convince the followers of radical Islam that America won’t pack up and go home before the job is done. The benefits of covert operations are not lost on the General who wants Iran to turn into the ‘most accident-prone place on the planet’. At least all seems well along the back channels. Just days after the summit, missing Iranian General Ali Rez Asghani turned up at a German NATO base with his family despite Gen. McInerney’s concerns about culling resources for covert endeavors in the face of both a lame-duck president and the effects of a less-than-informed public.
An "uninformed public" is but one of the issues cited for making the "War on Terrorism" difficult. Of course, the pundits of D.C. have long held the American populace as incapable of digesting more than a sound byte. It comes as no surprise that this Administration has been less than forthright, and the Bush team has much to be embarrassed about. First among them, of course, was the Iraqi initiative supposedly launched to locate WMDs but moving troops so slowly that Saddam Hussein could relocate them. According to a Belgium-based biological weapons development expert, the difference between a pharmaceutical research lab and a biological warfare manufacturing site is in the minute details, like the depth of a facility’s walls or the level of safety precautions in place, among others. Even those critical of the Iraqi invasion assert that having bio-warfare experts on the ground in Iraq would have made it far more difficult to elicit the current level of public anti-war support. More embarrassing still is that U.S. back channels ignored information that live weapons-grade bacteria were being transferred to Syria well before American forces arrived in Iraq.
It’s no wonder we couldn’t intercept them; we don’t understand Arabic. We have few reliable translators able to speak the local dialect. This poses a significant hurdle in gaining strategic intelligence for those in the field and serves to keep the majority of Americans ignorant as well.
Apparently lessons come hard: The 1979 American failure to have a single reliable translator during the takeover of the American Embassy in Teheran led us to disregard the warning from Israeli Intelligence in the days before the takeover as well as incapacitated our ability to quickly negotiate the release of American hostages there. Current hiring practices of our governmental agencies, according to Colonel Jerry Gordon, places such severe restrictions on the pool of available language resources that naturalized, patriotic Americans like Brigitte Gabrielle, a former Arabic World News anchor who speaks six dialects of Arabic along with Hebrew and English, are immediately rejected in favor of male Muslims of such questionable allegiance that several have been prosecuted for intentionally mistranslating in order to protect the Ummah (or Islamic community as a whole). He sees strategic objectives of this nation outweighed by bureaucracy and personal job security of government employees. Lack of awareness in the public sector means little is done to heighten accountability and fill the critical gaps.
Poor public awareness also provides cover for our government’s failure to acknowledge and respond to the dangers of now-nuclear but poverty-ridden North Korea and Kim Jong Il’s readiness to capitalize on it. Il, who now operates without international or public scrutiny, has few obstacles to selling arms to well-financed radical Muslim organizations. The diplomatic front is equally dismal in dealing with North Korea, according to former KGB Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Preobrazhensky, who said at the summit that asking Russian leader Vladimir Putin to join America in negotiating a solution to North Korea’s nuclear proliferation is ridiculous. He sees Putin and Il in bed for the long haul: North Korea’s border with the former USSR is completely unsecured and, although religion is banned in North Korea, Il recently erected a Russian Orthodox temple as homage to Putin.
In addition, intelligence efforts have long been stymied by an ill-informed, fragmented decision-making bureaucracy that, in the business jargon of the day, has no skin in the game. American ability to monitor activity in China is no exception. It is ironic that American auto manufacturers seem unable to produce a single interchangeable part for a car, while China, Syria and Iraq were able to secretly collaborate on and build a missile that, once assembled, is nuclear. Save for the missile bodies manufactured in Iraq before America stepped in, Syria is free to go on enriching uranium and China can continue making the warheads. Given the lucrative opportunities of the arms business, surely someone will soon fill the gap left by Iraq.
If any theme was clear throughout the summit, not only is the world a more dangerous place than it’s ever been but, left unchecked, America will be the last big battleground. Terror opportunities have indeed already landed on our shores. Most recently, last year John Loftus, IHEC President who formerly worked for the CIA and as an attorney for the Justice Department, prosecuted and won a case against Sami Al Arian for smuggling stolen cars out of Tampa Bay to be used as car bombs and fund Hamas terror activities.
Europe, with its massive Muslim population, has also long ignored the danger. One would think Europe would be more proactive given the history of the last century. Instead, radical Muslim attacks on citizens and the burning of cars and synagogues remain mostly unreported across the continent. Reliance on Arab oil and the incredible wealth oil has generated in Saudi Arabia has made us soft on the Saudi export of Wahabism, a radical form of Islam that ultimately results in terror. Squelching it demands policy set to condemn terror wherever it occurs whether it be in America, in Israel or in Europe.
The Future?
Dr. Louis Rene Beres, an international law professor at Purdue University, has a controversial and unpopular opinion within the academic world. “No country,”
he asserts, “is obligated to wait for annihilation.” He believes that anticipatory self-defense passes the litmus test of jurisprudence for a pre-emptive military response to threats like those from Iran’s Ahmadinejad, along with others who support, fund or harbor terror networks. Given the potential danger America faces, we’d be loath to let public opinion obfuscate the facts.
Putting it all together for this mother of four whose sons have never even owned a toy gun is a formidable task. Truth lies beyond labels: ‘on the right’ or ‘on the left’, them and us, liberal and conservative. To positively impact public policy ordinary Americans must step outside the comfort zone and reassess the world with wider eyes and more critical thinking.
Even if al Qaeda’s Dr. Hamid is only partially right, terror networks are growing and the danger is real. He says slowing their activities demands a powerful and direct blow in a language understood by the proliferators of terror—whether they are in Iran, Syria, North Korea, Gaza, the West Bank, Pakistan or elsewhere. Everyone agrees public opinion will be hard won; casualties and civilian deaths are likely regardless of whether we wage a war of arms or a war of words. Summit organizers and speakers say we must determine if we, as a nation, have the stomach to limit those casualties to the Arab Middle East, places former Israeli spokesman Ra’anan Gissin calls “Greenhouses of terror,” or, if we opt to wait for it on our trains, our bridges, our food supply, our backyards.
Courage to do the kind of self-examination that differentiates between hating radical Muslim promoters of terrorism and hating Muslims is essential, no matter how much the media tries to blur that line or academia brands us ‘unintelligent and biased’ in sorting it out. Finding reliable information outside the political agenda of this or any other Administration and reading between the lines might just be our saving grace and is a job no American can afford to outsource.
The world has surely changed since the Vietnam war was my dinner companion. Our perspective needs to shift as well. A terrorist who blows up a disco in Tel Aviv is no less a terrorist than one who hijacks and pilots a plane into the World Trade Center. Like Jefferson, we must take them to task. The question is “how?”
---
For more info, check the links listed at www.intelligencesummit.org.
The American Congress for Truth, spearheaded by Brigitte Gabriel, at
www.americancongressfortruth.com has an extensive list of domestic and international media links.
---
Copyright © 2007 by Helene Fragman Abramson. All rights reserved. The opinions of Ms. Abramson are her own and not necessarily those of SpyWise.net
---
Appendix I
In conjunction with the Intelligence Summit,a Secular Islam Summit was held at the same location with many of the same participants. On March 5, 2007, delegates to the Secular Islam conference released "THE ST. PETERSBURG DECLARATION" which reads:
We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not
between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.
We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.
We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.
We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.
We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called "Islamaphobia" in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason
or rights.
We call on the governments of the world to[:]
• reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostacy, in
accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights;
• eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women;
• protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence;
• reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims
; and
• foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation.
We demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy.
We enjoin academics and thinkers everywhere to embark on a fearless examination of the origins and sources of Islam, and to promulgate the ideals of free
scientific and spiritual inquiry through cross-cultural translation, publishing, and the mass media.
We say to Muslim believers: there is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine;
to Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha’is, and all members of non-Muslim faith communities: we stand with you as free and equal citizens;
and to nonbelievers: we defend your unqualified liberty to question and dissent.
Before any of us is a member of the Umma, the Body of Christ, or the Chosen People, we are all members of the community of conscience, the people who must
choose for themselves.
Endorsed by:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Magdi Allam
Mithal Al-Alusi
Shaker Al-Nabulsi
Nonie Darwish
Afhin Ellian
Tawfik Hamid
Shahriar Kabir
Hasan Mahmud
Wafa Sultan
Amir Taheri
Ibn Warraq
Manda Zand Ervin
Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi
---
Appendix II
Other reactions to the summit were posted at:
Politics And Islam: The first Secular Islam Summit was a success if for no other reason than it intimidated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the PR machine of militant Islam.
Posted 3/6/2007
Investor's Business Daily stock analysis and business news
Investors.com
ight Web Profile International Intelligence Summit
“About Intelligence Summit”
rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/3594 - 22k -
(Includes commentary on participants.)
Mapping Strategy: The International Intelligence Summit.
cartegic.typepad.com/mapping_strategy/2006/03/belated_review_.html - 46k -
(Comments by one presenter.)
Southpinellas: Intelligence conference draws criticism
www.sptimes.com/2007/03/06/Southpinellas/Intelligence_conferen.shtml - 33k -
(Criticizes motives and organization by summit leadership.)
By
Helene Fragman Abramson
(with appendices)
Writer and researcher Helene Fragman Abramson spent two days at the International Intelligence Summit in St. Petersburg (March 4-7, 2007), "where I was invited to join Impossible Spy executive producer Harvey Chertok to honor the memory of both Eli and Maurice Cohen by providing historical context during the Q&A. I offer my kudos and deep-felt gratitude to Summit organizers Dr. Robert Katz and John Loftus for making the return of Eli’s remains from Syria to Israel a priority."
The following is Helene's recap of what she heard and learned at the summit. After her observations are appendices related to the conference.
---
"From the shores of Tripoli"
It seems not much has changed since Thomas Jefferson, according to Congressional meeting notes, was told by the Warlord of the Barbary Coast that “all nations who should not have acknowledged the authority [of the laws of the Prophet, Mohammed] were sinners, that it was their [Muslim] right and duty to make war upon [the sinners] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners.” As president, Jefferson took the Islamic leaders to task for piracy and hostage taking in 1805; U.S. Marine bombardments eventually forced them to abandon their ways.
Today, anyone who turns on a television in this post 9-11 era is aware of the dangers of radical Islam. Never before have so few posed such a grave danger to so many regardless of where we live. Yet we barely shudder when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad publicly calls for the destruction of Israel and the United States or when his close ally and beneficiary, Hizbollah leader Hassan Nazrallah, tells Washington Post reporter David Ignatius that there are no terms under which Islamic militants would agree to halt their suicide bombings.
As with hostage taking, such acts are a continueing part of U.S. international relations. But America’s failure to respond in kind to attacks on our own soil—our embassies are on American soil—according to former al Qaeda associate Dr. Tawfik Hamid, was a clear signal that radical Islamic terror tactics could be successful. During his keynote address at the Intelligence Summit, Hamid's observations on the motivation for suicide bombers included the idea that Americans have a short memory and no stomach for a long war while radical Muslims have eternity to rid the universe of non-believers. Every Muslim steeped in Koran knows killing an infidel can save him from the horrific hell-fires of the sinner, explained Dr. Hamid. (Hamid made his remarks despite a fatwah [Muslim religious edict] calling for his death.)
Gaps in Intelligence
The annual Intelligence Summit, hosted by the Intelligence and Homeland Security Education Center (IHEC) to offer a non-partisan forum for information exchange in the fight against terrorism, drew speakers with expertise ranging from biological warfare to international law to linguistics in the private, military, academic and intelligence sectors. Unfortunately, forums like these tend to attract the already-converted. The rest of us remain nonplussed and secure that our everyday lives and personal priorities take precedence—we hope.
Alas, “hope is not a strategy” according to Lieutenant General Thomas G. McInerney.
McInerney's summit address underscored Dr. Hamid’s message noting the need for success in Iraq is the turnkey if we are to convince the followers of radical Islam that America won’t pack up and go home before the job is done. The benefits of covert operations are not lost on the General who wants Iran to turn into the ‘most accident-prone place on the planet’. At least all seems well along the back channels. Just days after the summit, missing Iranian General Ali Rez Asghani turned up at a German NATO base with his family despite Gen. McInerney’s concerns about culling resources for covert endeavors in the face of both a lame-duck president and the effects of a less-than-informed public.
An "uninformed public" is but one of the issues cited for making the "War on Terrorism" difficult. Of course, the pundits of D.C. have long held the American populace as incapable of digesting more than a sound byte. It comes as no surprise that this Administration has been less than forthright, and the Bush team has much to be embarrassed about. First among them, of course, was the Iraqi initiative supposedly launched to locate WMDs but moving troops so slowly that Saddam Hussein could relocate them. According to a Belgium-based biological weapons development expert, the difference between a pharmaceutical research lab and a biological warfare manufacturing site is in the minute details, like the depth of a facility’s walls or the level of safety precautions in place, among others. Even those critical of the Iraqi invasion assert that having bio-warfare experts on the ground in Iraq would have made it far more difficult to elicit the current level of public anti-war support. More embarrassing still is that U.S. back channels ignored information that live weapons-grade bacteria were being transferred to Syria well before American forces arrived in Iraq.
It’s no wonder we couldn’t intercept them; we don’t understand Arabic. We have few reliable translators able to speak the local dialect. This poses a significant hurdle in gaining strategic intelligence for those in the field and serves to keep the majority of Americans ignorant as well.
Apparently lessons come hard: The 1979 American failure to have a single reliable translator during the takeover of the American Embassy in Teheran led us to disregard the warning from Israeli Intelligence in the days before the takeover as well as incapacitated our ability to quickly negotiate the release of American hostages there. Current hiring practices of our governmental agencies, according to Colonel Jerry Gordon, places such severe restrictions on the pool of available language resources that naturalized, patriotic Americans like Brigitte Gabrielle, a former Arabic World News anchor who speaks six dialects of Arabic along with Hebrew and English, are immediately rejected in favor of male Muslims of such questionable allegiance that several have been prosecuted for intentionally mistranslating in order to protect the Ummah (or Islamic community as a whole). He sees strategic objectives of this nation outweighed by bureaucracy and personal job security of government employees. Lack of awareness in the public sector means little is done to heighten accountability and fill the critical gaps.
Poor public awareness also provides cover for our government’s failure to acknowledge and respond to the dangers of now-nuclear but poverty-ridden North Korea and Kim Jong Il’s readiness to capitalize on it. Il, who now operates without international or public scrutiny, has few obstacles to selling arms to well-financed radical Muslim organizations. The diplomatic front is equally dismal in dealing with North Korea, according to former KGB Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Preobrazhensky, who said at the summit that asking Russian leader Vladimir Putin to join America in negotiating a solution to North Korea’s nuclear proliferation is ridiculous. He sees Putin and Il in bed for the long haul: North Korea’s border with the former USSR is completely unsecured and, although religion is banned in North Korea, Il recently erected a Russian Orthodox temple as homage to Putin.
In addition, intelligence efforts have long been stymied by an ill-informed, fragmented decision-making bureaucracy that, in the business jargon of the day, has no skin in the game. American ability to monitor activity in China is no exception. It is ironic that American auto manufacturers seem unable to produce a single interchangeable part for a car, while China, Syria and Iraq were able to secretly collaborate on and build a missile that, once assembled, is nuclear. Save for the missile bodies manufactured in Iraq before America stepped in, Syria is free to go on enriching uranium and China can continue making the warheads. Given the lucrative opportunities of the arms business, surely someone will soon fill the gap left by Iraq.
If any theme was clear throughout the summit, not only is the world a more dangerous place than it’s ever been but, left unchecked, America will be the last big battleground. Terror opportunities have indeed already landed on our shores. Most recently, last year John Loftus, IHEC President who formerly worked for the CIA and as an attorney for the Justice Department, prosecuted and won a case against Sami Al Arian for smuggling stolen cars out of Tampa Bay to be used as car bombs and fund Hamas terror activities.
Europe, with its massive Muslim population, has also long ignored the danger. One would think Europe would be more proactive given the history of the last century. Instead, radical Muslim attacks on citizens and the burning of cars and synagogues remain mostly unreported across the continent. Reliance on Arab oil and the incredible wealth oil has generated in Saudi Arabia has made us soft on the Saudi export of Wahabism, a radical form of Islam that ultimately results in terror. Squelching it demands policy set to condemn terror wherever it occurs whether it be in America, in Israel or in Europe.
The Future?
Dr. Louis Rene Beres, an international law professor at Purdue University, has a controversial and unpopular opinion within the academic world. “No country,”
he asserts, “is obligated to wait for annihilation.” He believes that anticipatory self-defense passes the litmus test of jurisprudence for a pre-emptive military response to threats like those from Iran’s Ahmadinejad, along with others who support, fund or harbor terror networks. Given the potential danger America faces, we’d be loath to let public opinion obfuscate the facts.
Putting it all together for this mother of four whose sons have never even owned a toy gun is a formidable task. Truth lies beyond labels: ‘on the right’ or ‘on the left’, them and us, liberal and conservative. To positively impact public policy ordinary Americans must step outside the comfort zone and reassess the world with wider eyes and more critical thinking.
Even if al Qaeda’s Dr. Hamid is only partially right, terror networks are growing and the danger is real. He says slowing their activities demands a powerful and direct blow in a language understood by the proliferators of terror—whether they are in Iran, Syria, North Korea, Gaza, the West Bank, Pakistan or elsewhere. Everyone agrees public opinion will be hard won; casualties and civilian deaths are likely regardless of whether we wage a war of arms or a war of words. Summit organizers and speakers say we must determine if we, as a nation, have the stomach to limit those casualties to the Arab Middle East, places former Israeli spokesman Ra’anan Gissin calls “Greenhouses of terror,” or, if we opt to wait for it on our trains, our bridges, our food supply, our backyards.
Courage to do the kind of self-examination that differentiates between hating radical Muslim promoters of terrorism and hating Muslims is essential, no matter how much the media tries to blur that line or academia brands us ‘unintelligent and biased’ in sorting it out. Finding reliable information outside the political agenda of this or any other Administration and reading between the lines might just be our saving grace and is a job no American can afford to outsource.
The world has surely changed since the Vietnam war was my dinner companion. Our perspective needs to shift as well. A terrorist who blows up a disco in Tel Aviv is no less a terrorist than one who hijacks and pilots a plane into the World Trade Center. Like Jefferson, we must take them to task. The question is “how?”
---
For more info, check the links listed at www.intelligencesummit.org.
The American Congress for Truth, spearheaded by Brigitte Gabriel, at
www.americancongressfortruth.com has an extensive list of domestic and international media links.
---
Copyright © 2007 by Helene Fragman Abramson. All rights reserved. The opinions of Ms. Abramson are her own and not necessarily those of SpyWise.net
---
Appendix I
In conjunction with the Intelligence Summit,a Secular Islam Summit was held at the same location with many of the same participants. On March 5, 2007, delegates to the Secular Islam conference released "THE ST. PETERSBURG DECLARATION" which reads:
We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not
between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.
We affirm the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience. We believe in the equality of all human persons.
We insist upon the separation of religion from state and the observance of universal human rights.
We find traditions of liberty, rationality, and tolerance in the rich histories of pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. These values do not belong to the West or the East; they are the common moral heritage of humankind.
We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called "Islamaphobia" in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason
or rights.
We call on the governments of the world to[:]
• reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostacy, in
accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights;
• eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women;
• protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence;
• reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims
; and
• foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation.
We demand the release of Islam from its captivity to the totalitarian ambitions of power-hungry men and the rigid strictures of orthodoxy.
We enjoin academics and thinkers everywhere to embark on a fearless examination of the origins and sources of Islam, and to promulgate the ideals of free
scientific and spiritual inquiry through cross-cultural translation, publishing, and the mass media.
We say to Muslim believers: there is a noble future for Islam as a personal faith, not a political doctrine;
to Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha’is, and all members of non-Muslim faith communities: we stand with you as free and equal citizens;
and to nonbelievers: we defend your unqualified liberty to question and dissent.
Before any of us is a member of the Umma, the Body of Christ, or the Chosen People, we are all members of the community of conscience, the people who must
choose for themselves.
Endorsed by:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Magdi Allam
Mithal Al-Alusi
Shaker Al-Nabulsi
Nonie Darwish
Afhin Ellian
Tawfik Hamid
Shahriar Kabir
Hasan Mahmud
Wafa Sultan
Amir Taheri
Ibn Warraq
Manda Zand Ervin
Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi
---
Appendix II
Other reactions to the summit were posted at:
Politics And Islam: The first Secular Islam Summit was a success if for no other reason than it intimidated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the PR machine of militant Islam.
Posted 3/6/2007
Investor's Business Daily stock analysis and business news
Investors.com
ight Web Profile International Intelligence Summit
“About Intelligence Summit”
rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/3594 - 22k -
(Includes commentary on participants.)
Mapping Strategy: The International Intelligence Summit.
cartegic.typepad.com/mapping_strategy/2006/03/belated_review_.html - 46k -
(Comments by one presenter.)
Southpinellas: Intelligence conference draws criticism
www.sptimes.com/2007/03/06/Southpinellas/Intelligence_conferen.shtml - 33k -
(Criticizes motives and organization by summit leadership.)
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Spy Blogs and Online Files: An Annotated Directory
SPY BLOGS AND ONLINE FILES: AN ANNOTATED DIRECTORY
By Wesley Britton
spywise@verizon.net
I'm a frequent online searcher looking to uncover the latest news in the world of espionage . Often, I've found that, beyond established websites, nuggets of information are most often buried in avalanches of hits to blogs and forums that are essentially personal in purpose, opinionated without necessarily being informed, or often just nuts.
Over time, I collected a list of the most reliable places that are worth bookmarking as well as those of casual interest. In the main, the best reading comes from blogs, forums, and websites posting declassified documents, news stories, feeds from news services, and bulletins from organizations focused on a number of special interests. Blogs and forums that go beyond repeating what they find in international journals and periodicals also often contain perspectives and updates overlooked in mainstream media. Below is a directory of the best I've found to date along with notes on blogs more mysterious in their origins and purposes.
Note: Blogs and websites devoted to spy fiction and film tend to be very topic specific, that is they share material on one actor, author, TV series, and are easy to find with no need for listing here. I admit, I know of only one website that attempts to be interesting to readers, viewers, and news-hounds alike--and this is the place. If 007 is your thing, then a separate file
JAMES BOND ON THE WEB: AN ANNOTATED DIRECTORY
Is posted at this site. In addition, if your interest is Israeli intelligence, then check out--
THE MOSSAD: AN ANNOTATED DIRECTORY OF ONLINE SOURCES AND PRINT ARTICLES
I welcome notes and suggestions about sites that should be added to any of these files.
This directory is in alphabetical order. For most listings, I include descriptions taken from the source itself followed by my opinion of it. Additions will appear as addenda.
---
AboveTopSecret.livejournal.com
"Our areas of interest include the intelligence community (foreign and U.S.), espionage (including tradecraft, practices, and political ramifications), secrecy policy, the Freedom of Information Act, terrorism and counterterrorism, and conspiracy theory."
Postings tend to be of very high-quality and the site's archives and links include a long list of useful resources.
---
The Black Vault
www.bvalphaserver.com/content-21.html - 67k -
About The Black Vault Government Document Archive:
"For over 7 years, The Black Vault has striven to be the best source for U.S. Government documents online! Even the U.S. Government's databases, in some cases, are so hard to use -- many can not find use out of them. This is where The Black Vault is trying to help. With index categories and sub-categories, The Black Vault has put organization to an unorganized world -- Government Secrecy. Throughout The Black Vault's archive -- you will have access to well over 100,000 pages of material."
Essentially, this site is one of many collections of documents on CIA mind control experiments.
---
Center for the Study of Intelligence
https://www.cia.gov/redirects/ciaredirect.html - 6k -
The CIA page includes public information about the agency--including how to get hired. Among the many useful publications are the renowned "World Factbook," articles on the history of intelligence, and declassified issues of Studies in Intelligence.
cloaknet.blogspot.com
Eric Jackson says his blog provides "intelligence news for all of us. Disclaimers: We are not a government entity nor do we attempt to represent one. We do not
perform actual intelligence work, and have not acquired this information via spying. Info presented in this blog is for information and education, not
crime or action. If you choose to engage in spywork, be prepared for the consequences (detainment, incarceration, etc.). You are responsible for your own
actions."
Eric's most recent posts are reviews and discussions of spy equipment,methods,and books on these topics.
---
Congressional Research Service - Intelligence & Related Reports Archived by FAS
www.fas.org/sgp/crs/index.html - 5k -
Invaluable resource for reports, articles, links, and databases often correctly marked "Required Reading."
---
counterterrorismblog.org
" The first multi-expert blog dedicated solely to counterterrorism issues, serving as a gateway to the community for policymakers and serious researchers. Designed to provide realtime information about terrorism cases and policy developments."
With articles and postings by a group of distinguished contributing experts, the site also includes the CT Library, information about the Counterterrorism Foundation, lists of Websites & Centers, Syndicate, and Archives.
---
CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
http://mparent7777.blogspot.com/
and http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/
marc parent's blog has comments, responses, criticism, and both lively and angry discussions of policy and intelligence reports in the media. Various posters have varying levels of credibility, but this is a place representing what the Blogisphere is all about.
---
cryptome.org
In depth collection of articles on intelligence with a technological bent. One announcement:
"Donate $25 for a DVD of the Cryptome 10+-years archives of 39,000 files from June 1996 to December 2006 (~4.1 GB). Click Paypal or mail check/MO made
out to John Young, 251 West 89th Street, New York, NY 10024. Archives include all files of cryptome.org, cryptome2.org, jya.com, cartome.org, eyeball-series.org
and iraq-kill-maim.org. Cryptome offers with the Cryptome DVD an INSCOM DVD of about 18,000 pages of counter-intelligence dossiers declassified by the
US Army Information and Security Command, dating from 1945 to 1985. No additional contribution required -- $25 for both. The DVDs will be sent anywhere
worldwide without extra cost."
---
Early Warning - William Arkin's Blog
Posted at WashingtonPost.com
blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/
"Starting Sept. 14 [2005], Early Warning will report daily on the comings and goings of the national security community -- military, special ops, intelligence, homeland security -- part blog, part investigative journalism (a jog!). Here I can post documents, go into great detail, stick with a story when others have moved on, and introduce one that has escaped the mainstream media.
"My basic philosophy is that government is more incompetent than diabolical, that the military gets way too much of a free ride . . . and that official secrecy is the greatest threat citizens actually face today."
---
www.globalsecurity.org
An outstanding archive of articles on: Military, WMD, Intelligence, and Homeland Security. Under "Intelligence," categories include: Systems, Operations, Countries, Hot Documents, News, Reports, Policy, Budget, Congress, Imagery and Links.
---
Global Incident Map Displaying Terrorist Acts, Suspicious Activity, and General Terrorism News
www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php - 266k -
This group post terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity and automatically reloads every 240 seconds.
---
I am SPY
Espionage and theory of conspiracy news
http://www.spy.im
More conspiracy theory than espionage, this blogger posts news articles touching on a range of topics. Erratic.
---
Intelligence Community Enterprise Services - Operations Center
http://ra.intelink.gov/
Note: Access to this database is restricted. For those eligible--
DNI-U is the network infrastructure portion of the system formerly known as the Open Source Information System (OSIS). In mid 2006, the name OSIS which
referred to both the network and the content was retired. The network and content portions were decoupled. The network piece is now named DNI-U while the
content piece is named Intelink-U.
The DNI-U network is maintained by the DNI-CIO Intelligence Community Enterprise Services office (ICES). FOR ASSISTANCE PLEASE CONTACT:
Office of the Director of National Intelligence - CIO
Intelligence Community Enterprise Services - Operations Center
Phone: 1-301-688-1800
Email: accounts AT intelink.gov
---
Intelligence History - Dalhousie University Libraries
www.library.dal.ca/subjects/Intelligence.htm - 16k -
"This web page is designed to be useful for research in Intelligence history by students at Dalhousie University, specifically to `enhance student's understanding of national intelligence communities in Britain, Canada, Russia and the United States.'"
While not updated since 2003, the holdings in this collection partially include:
Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)
"ForeignRelations volumes contain documents from Presidential libraries, Departments of State and Defense, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, Agency for International Development, and other foreign affairs agencies as well as the private papers of individuals involved in formulating U.S. foreign policy . . . particularly those involved with intelligence activity and covert actions." Volumes from recent years are available online including 1945-1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment.
intel/index
"This latter volume is the result of a massive retrospective attempt to gather the archival record of the intelligence institutions and their relationships to the Department of State."
Intelligence Forum
"a forum dedicated to the scholarly study of intelligence, history, theory and practice. The
News & Notes section offers numerous links to diverse news media around the world."
The Literature of Intelligence: a Bibliography of materials, with Essays, Reviews, and Comments Compiled by a former CIA officer, useful for its geographic breakdown, including links to Canada, United Kingdom,and Russia.
The U.S. Intelligence Community
(from Columbia University)"an excellent academic website devoted to library resources available for research on U.S. agencies involved in intelligence activities. It includes links to actual documents as well as agency web sites."
Gulflink
"a searchable collection of declassified military and intelligence documents concerning Gulf War Illnesses; includes a useful Guide to Intelligence outlining the intelligence process from raw information sources to finished intelligence products."
Liquidmatrix Security Digest
http://www.liquidmatrix.org/blog
Specializes in internet security, but also post news related to internet and online spying.
---
Loyola Homepage on Strategic Intelligence
www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/intel.html - 78k -
Includes many documents and articles on military and economic espionage collected from print magazines, government agencies, institutes, and scholarly reports.
---
The Memory Hole
www.thememoryhole.org/ - 17k -
According to Russ Kick, "The Memory Hole exists to preserve and spread material that is in danger of being lost, is hard to find, or is not widely known . . . The emphasis is on material that exposes things that we're not supposed to know (or that we're supposed to forget)."
Recent notes indicate that Kick's postings may slow down as he's involved in other projects, but this remains a source to watch. Can subscribe to e-mail notifications of postings.
---
Metro Spirit national security blog: Don't Look Here!
http://augustans.blogspot.com/2007/02/dont-look-here.html
Apparently, the principal poster here is Corey Pein whose blog mixes news reports with lively commentary. Subjects include security at the NSA and political rants.
---
NARDIC Publications
www.hqda.army.mil/library/publications.htm - 72k -
The Pentagon Library has catalogues, bibliographies, online sources, databases,even an "Ask a Librarian" link. Also has news about events and speakersat the library.
---
The National Security Archive
Gelman Library, The George Washington University
nsarchiv@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
http//www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive. html
"The National Security Archive is a non-governmental research institute and library that collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, a public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information through the FOIA, and an indexer and publisher of the documents in books, microfische, and electronic formats.
"The National Security Archive was founded in 1985 by a group of journalists and scholars who had obtained documentation under the FOIA and sought a centralized
repository for these materials. Over the past twelve years, the Archive has become the world's largest non-governmental library of declassified documents."
In the main, this is one of many collections with CIA declassified documents about mind-control experiments.
---
Secrecy News Blog
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
Items from the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy are typically de-classified or cleared by military sources for public distribution. Also accessible through a link at Above Top Secret.livejournal.com.
---
Spy Blog - Watching Them, Watching Us
http://SpyBlog.org.uk
While I was unable to find out who's behind this one, browsing through the postings was quite interesting. Obviously, the focus is on British intelligence, and the blog is a mix of news items and reader responses.
---
terrorizethis.org
I was unable to find who established this or any clear mission for the blog. The postings are more political statements on a myriad of topics, some related to terrorism, many not.
---
thespyreport.livejournal.com
This blog is my own extension for this site (SpyWise.net), sharing news and views on all aspects of espionage from books to the media to news items gleaned from a variety of sources. Thespyreport has no political, ideological, or any such agenda but I do offer reviews of spy projects on which I do have an opinion. Naturally, I recommend it strongly!
---
Tom Heneghan Intelligence Briefing - MySpace Blog
www.myspace.com/tom_heneghan_intel
One endorsement at the blog claims:
"If you are not yet aware, be apprised that International Intelligence Expert, Tom Heneghan, has hundreds of highly credible sources inside American and
European Intelligence Agencies and INTERPOL, sources who are putting their very lives on the line, 24/7, for you and I and our loved ones to SAVE America
and the World from Traitors-Treason-Tyranny." --Mary Schneider, Court adjudicated Federal Whistleblower
Posts claim, among other things, that both Bush and Hillary Clinton use Mossad hit squads in the U.S. and that Heneghan himself has been a target. Apparently, among others, so was Sonny Bono. Ah ha.
---
www.whatreallyhappened.com
The purpose of this site is to "expose lies" and is thus a mix of information with short, speculative essays on topics in the categories of: 9/11, The "War on Terror," US Bankruptcy and Vote Fraud, Israel, Conspiracies, Cover-Ups, and Deceptions, and Assassinations.
For related articles on espionage, see
WWW.WesleyBritton.com
By Wesley Britton
spywise@verizon.net
I'm a frequent online searcher looking to uncover the latest news in the world of espionage . Often, I've found that, beyond established websites, nuggets of information are most often buried in avalanches of hits to blogs and forums that are essentially personal in purpose, opinionated without necessarily being informed, or often just nuts.
Over time, I collected a list of the most reliable places that are worth bookmarking as well as those of casual interest. In the main, the best reading comes from blogs, forums, and websites posting declassified documents, news stories, feeds from news services, and bulletins from organizations focused on a number of special interests. Blogs and forums that go beyond repeating what they find in international journals and periodicals also often contain perspectives and updates overlooked in mainstream media. Below is a directory of the best I've found to date along with notes on blogs more mysterious in their origins and purposes.
Note: Blogs and websites devoted to spy fiction and film tend to be very topic specific, that is they share material on one actor, author, TV series, and are easy to find with no need for listing here. I admit, I know of only one website that attempts to be interesting to readers, viewers, and news-hounds alike--and this is the place. If 007 is your thing, then a separate file
JAMES BOND ON THE WEB: AN ANNOTATED DIRECTORY
Is posted at this site. In addition, if your interest is Israeli intelligence, then check out--
THE MOSSAD: AN ANNOTATED DIRECTORY OF ONLINE SOURCES AND PRINT ARTICLES
I welcome notes and suggestions about sites that should be added to any of these files.
This directory is in alphabetical order. For most listings, I include descriptions taken from the source itself followed by my opinion of it. Additions will appear as addenda.
---
AboveTopSecret.livejournal.com
"Our areas of interest include the intelligence community (foreign and U.S.), espionage (including tradecraft, practices, and political ramifications), secrecy policy, the Freedom of Information Act, terrorism and counterterrorism, and conspiracy theory."
Postings tend to be of very high-quality and the site's archives and links include a long list of useful resources.
---
The Black Vault
www.bvalphaserver.com/content-21.html - 67k -
About The Black Vault Government Document Archive:
"For over 7 years, The Black Vault has striven to be the best source for U.S. Government documents online! Even the U.S. Government's databases, in some cases, are so hard to use -- many can not find use out of them. This is where The Black Vault is trying to help. With index categories and sub-categories, The Black Vault has put organization to an unorganized world -- Government Secrecy. Throughout The Black Vault's archive -- you will have access to well over 100,000 pages of material."
Essentially, this site is one of many collections of documents on CIA mind control experiments.
---
Center for the Study of Intelligence
https://www.cia.gov/redirects/ciaredirect.html - 6k -
The CIA page includes public information about the agency--including how to get hired. Among the many useful publications are the renowned "World Factbook," articles on the history of intelligence, and declassified issues of Studies in Intelligence.
cloaknet.blogspot.com
Eric Jackson says his blog provides "intelligence news for all of us. Disclaimers: We are not a government entity nor do we attempt to represent one. We do not
perform actual intelligence work, and have not acquired this information via spying. Info presented in this blog is for information and education, not
crime or action. If you choose to engage in spywork, be prepared for the consequences (detainment, incarceration, etc.). You are responsible for your own
actions."
Eric's most recent posts are reviews and discussions of spy equipment,methods,and books on these topics.
---
Congressional Research Service - Intelligence & Related Reports Archived by FAS
www.fas.org/sgp/crs/index.html - 5k -
Invaluable resource for reports, articles, links, and databases often correctly marked "Required Reading."
---
counterterrorismblog.org
" The first multi-expert blog dedicated solely to counterterrorism issues, serving as a gateway to the community for policymakers and serious researchers. Designed to provide realtime information about terrorism cases and policy developments."
With articles and postings by a group of distinguished contributing experts, the site also includes the CT Library, information about the Counterterrorism Foundation, lists of Websites & Centers, Syndicate, and Archives.
---
CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
http://mparent7777.blogspot.com/
and http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/
marc parent's blog has comments, responses, criticism, and both lively and angry discussions of policy and intelligence reports in the media. Various posters have varying levels of credibility, but this is a place representing what the Blogisphere is all about.
---
cryptome.org
In depth collection of articles on intelligence with a technological bent. One announcement:
"Donate $25 for a DVD of the Cryptome 10+-years archives of 39,000 files from June 1996 to December 2006 (~4.1 GB). Click Paypal or mail check/MO made
out to John Young, 251 West 89th Street, New York, NY 10024. Archives include all files of cryptome.org, cryptome2.org, jya.com, cartome.org, eyeball-series.org
and iraq-kill-maim.org. Cryptome offers with the Cryptome DVD an INSCOM DVD of about 18,000 pages of counter-intelligence dossiers declassified by the
US Army Information and Security Command, dating from 1945 to 1985. No additional contribution required -- $25 for both. The DVDs will be sent anywhere
worldwide without extra cost."
---
Early Warning - William Arkin's Blog
Posted at WashingtonPost.com
blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/
"Starting Sept. 14 [2005], Early Warning will report daily on the comings and goings of the national security community -- military, special ops, intelligence, homeland security -- part blog, part investigative journalism (a jog!). Here I can post documents, go into great detail, stick with a story when others have moved on, and introduce one that has escaped the mainstream media.
"My basic philosophy is that government is more incompetent than diabolical, that the military gets way too much of a free ride . . . and that official secrecy is the greatest threat citizens actually face today."
---
www.globalsecurity.org
An outstanding archive of articles on: Military, WMD, Intelligence, and Homeland Security. Under "Intelligence," categories include: Systems, Operations, Countries, Hot Documents, News, Reports, Policy, Budget, Congress, Imagery and Links.
---
Global Incident Map Displaying Terrorist Acts, Suspicious Activity, and General Terrorism News
www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php - 266k -
This group post terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity and automatically reloads every 240 seconds.
---
I am SPY
Espionage and theory of conspiracy news
http://www.spy.im
More conspiracy theory than espionage, this blogger posts news articles touching on a range of topics. Erratic.
---
Intelligence Community Enterprise Services - Operations Center
http://ra.intelink.gov/
Note: Access to this database is restricted. For those eligible--
DNI-U is the network infrastructure portion of the system formerly known as the Open Source Information System (OSIS). In mid 2006, the name OSIS which
referred to both the network and the content was retired. The network and content portions were decoupled. The network piece is now named DNI-U while the
content piece is named Intelink-U.
The DNI-U network is maintained by the DNI-CIO Intelligence Community Enterprise Services office (ICES). FOR ASSISTANCE PLEASE CONTACT:
Office of the Director of National Intelligence - CIO
Intelligence Community Enterprise Services - Operations Center
Phone: 1-301-688-1800
Email: accounts AT intelink.gov
---
Intelligence History - Dalhousie University Libraries
www.library.dal.ca/subjects/Intelligence.htm - 16k -
"This web page is designed to be useful for research in Intelligence history by students at Dalhousie University, specifically to `enhance student's understanding of national intelligence communities in Britain, Canada, Russia and the United States.'"
While not updated since 2003, the holdings in this collection partially include:
Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)
"ForeignRelations volumes contain documents from Presidential libraries, Departments of State and Defense, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, Agency for International Development, and other foreign affairs agencies as well as the private papers of individuals involved in formulating U.S. foreign policy . . . particularly those involved with intelligence activity and covert actions." Volumes from recent years are available online including 1945-1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment.
intel/index
"This latter volume is the result of a massive retrospective attempt to gather the archival record of the intelligence institutions and their relationships to the Department of State."
Intelligence Forum
"a forum dedicated to the scholarly study of intelligence, history, theory and practice. The
News & Notes section offers numerous links to diverse news media around the world."
The Literature of Intelligence: a Bibliography of materials, with Essays, Reviews, and Comments Compiled by a former CIA officer, useful for its geographic breakdown, including links to Canada, United Kingdom,and Russia.
The U.S. Intelligence Community
(from Columbia University)"an excellent academic website devoted to library resources available for research on U.S. agencies involved in intelligence activities. It includes links to actual documents as well as agency web sites."
Gulflink
"a searchable collection of declassified military and intelligence documents concerning Gulf War Illnesses; includes a useful Guide to Intelligence outlining the intelligence process from raw information sources to finished intelligence products."
Liquidmatrix Security Digest
http://www.liquidmatrix.org/blog
Specializes in internet security, but also post news related to internet and online spying.
---
Loyola Homepage on Strategic Intelligence
www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/intel.html - 78k -
Includes many documents and articles on military and economic espionage collected from print magazines, government agencies, institutes, and scholarly reports.
---
The Memory Hole
www.thememoryhole.org/ - 17k -
According to Russ Kick, "The Memory Hole exists to preserve and spread material that is in danger of being lost, is hard to find, or is not widely known . . . The emphasis is on material that exposes things that we're not supposed to know (or that we're supposed to forget)."
Recent notes indicate that Kick's postings may slow down as he's involved in other projects, but this remains a source to watch. Can subscribe to e-mail notifications of postings.
---
Metro Spirit national security blog: Don't Look Here!
http://augustans.blogspot.com/2007/02/dont-look-here.html
Apparently, the principal poster here is Corey Pein whose blog mixes news reports with lively commentary. Subjects include security at the NSA and political rants.
---
NARDIC Publications
www.hqda.army.mil/library/publications.htm - 72k -
The Pentagon Library has catalogues, bibliographies, online sources, databases,even an "Ask a Librarian" link. Also has news about events and speakersat the library.
---
The National Security Archive
Gelman Library, The George Washington University
nsarchiv@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
http//www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive. html
"The National Security Archive is a non-governmental research institute and library that collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, a public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information through the FOIA, and an indexer and publisher of the documents in books, microfische, and electronic formats.
"The National Security Archive was founded in 1985 by a group of journalists and scholars who had obtained documentation under the FOIA and sought a centralized
repository for these materials. Over the past twelve years, the Archive has become the world's largest non-governmental library of declassified documents."
In the main, this is one of many collections with CIA declassified documents about mind-control experiments.
---
Secrecy News Blog
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
Items from the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy are typically de-classified or cleared by military sources for public distribution. Also accessible through a link at Above Top Secret.livejournal.com.
---
Spy Blog - Watching Them, Watching Us
http://SpyBlog.org.uk
While I was unable to find out who's behind this one, browsing through the postings was quite interesting. Obviously, the focus is on British intelligence, and the blog is a mix of news items and reader responses.
---
terrorizethis.org
I was unable to find who established this or any clear mission for the blog. The postings are more political statements on a myriad of topics, some related to terrorism, many not.
---
thespyreport.livejournal.com
This blog is my own extension for this site (SpyWise.net), sharing news and views on all aspects of espionage from books to the media to news items gleaned from a variety of sources. Thespyreport has no political, ideological, or any such agenda but I do offer reviews of spy projects on which I do have an opinion. Naturally, I recommend it strongly!
---
Tom Heneghan Intelligence Briefing - MySpace Blog
www.myspace.com/tom_heneghan_intel
One endorsement at the blog claims:
"If you are not yet aware, be apprised that International Intelligence Expert, Tom Heneghan, has hundreds of highly credible sources inside American and
European Intelligence Agencies and INTERPOL, sources who are putting their very lives on the line, 24/7, for you and I and our loved ones to SAVE America
and the World from Traitors-Treason-Tyranny." --Mary Schneider, Court adjudicated Federal Whistleblower
Posts claim, among other things, that both Bush and Hillary Clinton use Mossad hit squads in the U.S. and that Heneghan himself has been a target. Apparently, among others, so was Sonny Bono. Ah ha.
---
www.whatreallyhappened.com
The purpose of this site is to "expose lies" and is thus a mix of information with short, speculative essays on topics in the categories of: 9/11, The "War on Terror," US Bankruptcy and Vote Fraud, Israel, Conspiracies, Cover-Ups, and Deceptions, and Assassinations.
For related articles on espionage, see
WWW.WesleyBritton.com
Before Munich: Black September on TV and Film
Before Munich: Black September on TV and Film
By Wesley Britton
On September 5, 1972, what became known as "Black Sunday" or the "Munich Olympic Massacre" took place when Eight Palestinian "Black September" terrorists seized eleven Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village in Munich, West Germany. In a bungled rescue attempt by West German authorities, nine of the hostages and five terrorists were killed. (note 1) In subsequent years, these events have been explored and dramatized in various media projects. The response to the tragedy by the Israeli government has also found its way into film scripts, most recently Steven Spielberg's December 2005 Munich.
The range of such projects has included simple exploitation to insightful explorations into the human motivations that say much about our responses to violence. On one extreme, during the 1970s, "Black September" became a group useful for fictional adventures as in Black Sunday (1977), a thriller so violent even its scriptwriter, Earnest Lehman, had to turn his head when viewing it in a theatre. True enough, Robert Shaw and Bruce Dern were graphic in this story about Palestinian terrorists plotting to blow up Americans at the Super Bowl. In this release, there was no pretense of capturing history, and the big-screen spectacle prefiguring 9/11 was unintentional prophecy no one then dreamed was possible. On a much smaller scale, The Olympic tragedy was rumored to have inspired ABC to shift its 1972 projected series, Assignment: Munich to Vienna. (note 2) Later, “Black September” was the title of one episode of Return of The Saint (1978) in which Simon Templar (Ian Ogilvy) aided the Israelis battling Palestinian terrorists. But the actual historical events have not been neglected on the small and large screen and some projects are of special interest.
One Day in September
Narrated by Michael Douglas, One Day in September was a 1999 Arthur Cohn documentary including promos, newscasts, and interviews with athletes and survivors of the actual 1972 tragedy. Directed by Kevin McDonald, this straight-forward production Focused on the hours leading up to the attack, what transpired at the Olympics, but said little about the aftermath which would become the subject of Munich.
To begin, the film makes clear these Olympics were of historical importance even before the terrorist took their hostages. As the 1972 games occurred just 30 miles from the site of the Dachau concentration camp, Israeli competitors were thrilled to march under the Star of David flag unfurled in Germany for the first time since World War II. For Germans, these games were intended to erase old memories as the Nazis had used the Olympics to promote their world vision. So hopefulness was, in the words of one participant, in "overdrive." For example, even though Israel and Lebanon were at war, their athletes were able to meet and compare competition results, illustrating what the Olympics are all about.
Without editorial comment, in One Day, we learn how such goodwill was destroyed. In the moments leading up to the attack, we get glimpses into the men whose lives were about to change from jubilant success to fearful captivity. We learn the Israeli team viewed a production of Fiddler on the Roof the evening of the takeover of their quarters. One of them had nearly missed the train from Holland to attend that night, and we hear the words of his girlfriend who described her last happy hours with him. Later, we would hear her memories as she saw her last view of her boyfriend on television, a gun at his head as he stood on the balcony in the Olympic village hours before his murder.
According to the film, it was the East German team who allowed the Black September group to sneak into the grounds to survey the apartment building where the Israelis were staying. The report showed how the terrorists first captured a coach who led the gunmen to the apartment where the wrestlers and weight-lifters were housed, the coach thinking they might have the best chance of fighting back. He was the first to die. Then, Black September demanded some 200 political prisoners be freed or the hostages would be killed.
One Day then focuses more on what happened around the captives rather then what transpired behind the doors of the Olympic village. Of course, during these hours, little was known about what happened in the apartments, the number of captives and captors not certain until much later. If the documentary is accurate, it quickly became apparent the West German government was ill-equipped to handle the situation. The Olympic committee, in turn, was reluctant to let the events altar the schedule. While American swimmer Mark Spitz, winner of seven Gold Medals was spirited away as he was Jewish, the games were not, at first, postponed or affected in any way. While international anger grew, the committee felt the hostage crisis had nothing to do with the games. One sad moment in the film is when cheering crowds respond to the games while negotiators try to get the terrorists to delay their deadline. Later scenes showed athletes swimming and sunning themselves in a pond not 200 yards from the apartment building. One observer described the attitude as "selfish and obscene."
Then the horror mounts--again, not seen in the violence by Black September--but by the authorities charged with dealing with them. While the Israeli government offered to send in a rescue team, the West German government said no. The Germans did send in an untrained team of snipers in a ploy to get the terrorists out in the open, all the while an astonishing amount of security information was being broadcast over television. Other blunders included only five marksman being set up at the airport where the hostages were taken by helicopter even though eight terrorists were involved. While four of the five snipers fired their guns, none hit their targets until it was too late and these shots were not coordinated. The security squad in the plane allegedly there to take the kidnappers and their hostages to Egypt voted to abandon their mission just seconds before the group arrived. The police had forgotten to order armored cars which were then caught in traffic and did not arrive in time. Two security officers were shot by snipers, mistaken for terrorists. To compound blunders of action, an official made the statement the events were unfortunate and would hopefully be forgotten in a few weeks.
Again, without commentary, the film noted the West German government of Willy Brandt apparently colluded with the terrorists to get the imprisoned members quickly out of Germany. According to an interview with one surviving terrorist, the Germans agreed to exchange the three terrorists for kidnapped Germans in what he claimed to be a set-up. Why else the haste the Germans went through to get his group out of Germany?
At film's end, few viewers would think justice, on any level, had taken place before or after September 5, 1972. Rather, one might wonder why Israel didn't close their German embassy in disgust. After viewing this account, who would blame Israeli intelligence for taking the actions detailed in Spielberg's film?
21 Hours in Munich
With a very different spin, many of these same events had been dramatized in the earlier Orion Pictures 21 Hours in Munich (1976), a re-creation filmed in the actual locations in West Germany. Like One Day, starring William Holden, Shirley Knight, and Franco Nero, the story begins with the hope of the games, the setting described as more "Hansel and Gretel than Hitler and Goebbels." In Edward Feldman's rather bare-bones production--Israelis, Germans, and Arabs all speaking with decidedly American accents--viewers do see different perspectives from One Day.
For one example, the Olympic committee is shown in a better light. Its spokesman said the games had been going on for centuries and no hoodlums should be permitted to molest them. In the script, the committee feared if the games were stopped, crowds would descend on the secure area, complicating security matters. Perhaps more notably, the lead Arab is portrayed sympathetically, saying he desires no harm to anyone but only wants his brothers freed. This point is repeated throughout the film, making the Palestinians as much victims as their hostages.
Whether by design or a lack of direction, 21 Hours is no tense drama. Much of the focus is the dialogue between the West German negotiator and the lead terrorist which implies the Black September group were attempting to escape peacefully but were betrayed by the Germans. In this version of events, the German negotiator led the kidnappers to believe they could execute their hostages in Egypt even though that government had rejected the German request to let the plane come to them. The Egyptian Prime Minister apparently knew the Germans merely wanted the crisis to move off their soil. Still, the production showed German law enforcement as far more efficient than shown in the documentary, the final blunders tragedies no one could have predicted. On its own, 21 Hours points fingers at West German authorities, but all else were victims, including the driven Black September gunmen. From this view, they were more guerilla fighters than members of what would become known as terrorism.
The Sword of Gideon
Moving to events after September 1972, the 1986 HBO production, The Sword of Gideon (based on the George Jonas book, Vengeance) is well-known as the inspiration for Spielberg's Munich. (note 3) Produced by Robert Lantos, like Munich, the events in the Olympic village are dispatched quickly in a pre-title sequence as the story is about the Israeli response to the murders and not what happened to set this revenge in motion.
While the cast included the likes of Steven Bauer, Robert Joy, Leslie Hope, Rod Steiger, Michael York, Leno Ventura, and Colleen Dewhurst, the acting is not on the same scale as Munich although we do learn more about the Israeli team than the later version of the same events. Many situations are better handled in Munich. For example, in the scenes when the unit encounters the French "honey trap" killer, Sword rushes through the episode with no glimpses into character reactions. We don't get the killer protesting her death saying her murder would be "a waste of talent." But we do see her termination in the light of one directive the team was given, that no innocent bystanders should be hurt. What if a gun is pulled? Then you're no longer a bystander, an idea that is the theme of the entire mission.
As with Munich, the hunters become the hunted but this idea is better developed in Sword. As the mission progresses, the killings have less and less connection to the events that inspired them. At the end of the second kill, they cry "For Munich"--the shooting of the French assassin is for themselves. The purpose of it all gradually dissipates in this comparatively stream-lined account.
Perhaps stream-lined is not the best term. The running time of both Sword and Munich is roughly the same, but the episodes in Sword are fewer but longer. The old warning that once you're in, you can't get out frames Sword with the lead agent being warned by his father in the opening scenes, and the long denouement is of this agent being unscrupulously pressured by his chief to continue the job--a rather different conclusion than in Munich with more global themes and less personal interconnections. In short, Sword ends up as the story of an agent too good to return to a normal life.
Munich
When Munich premiered in 2005, the film seemed a clear metaphor for current issues regarding Middle-Eastern themes. For example, the list of 11 names to be hunted down evoked the playing card deck of Iraqis sought by U.S. forces in the first months of that war. The theme of violence responded to with violence in an endless cycle certainly pointed to ongoing bloodshetting between Israel and groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Fatah. In one scene in Munich, a German tells the Israelis that the Palestinians have the long-term upper-hand as their population will swell over the next century. This monologue reminded me of a recent Atlantic Monthly article spelling out the same conclusion. The birthrate is apparently certain to be in the Arab's favor.
And images from the movie connected with themes from the past. The bom-maker, a former toy-maker, echoed Hitchcock’s 1936 Sabotage, especially the scene where a bomb maker worked on his craft surrounded by children's toys and ordinary laundry. In Munich, we see the bom-maker apparently blow himself up, a scene reminiscent of the Hitchcock project and the Joseph Conrad novel on which it was based where a young child is also exploded accidentally.
For those interested, each of the projects described above are available on DVD or video. (note 4) for those wanting to learn more about the background for Munich, I recommend One Day in September as a story that does not duplicate events in Munich but rather sets the stage for that project. It seems appropriate to remember what happened in 1972 and those who senselessly lost their lives in the early days of the Palestine/ Israeli conflict. Then, we didn't know what was to come. In hindsight, Black September were the first seeds of the blood to characterize the opening years of a new century.
Notes
1. For many more details about related films, see "Defining Terrorism: A Short History of Fact, Fiction, and Film" also posted at this website.
2. For more information, see my interview with Robert Conrad posted at this website.
3. For reviews of books dealing with Munich and its aftermath, see “The Mossad and Israeli Intelligence: An Annotated Bibliography (Books)” also posted at this website. Related movies are listed in “THE MOSSAD ON SCREEN: A FILMOGRAPHY.”
4. For those living in the Dallas, Texas area, One Day, 21 Hours, and Sword are available for rent at Starlight Video.
For related articles, see
WWW.WesleyBritton.com
By Wesley Britton
On September 5, 1972, what became known as "Black Sunday" or the "Munich Olympic Massacre" took place when Eight Palestinian "Black September" terrorists seized eleven Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village in Munich, West Germany. In a bungled rescue attempt by West German authorities, nine of the hostages and five terrorists were killed. (note 1) In subsequent years, these events have been explored and dramatized in various media projects. The response to the tragedy by the Israeli government has also found its way into film scripts, most recently Steven Spielberg's December 2005 Munich.
The range of such projects has included simple exploitation to insightful explorations into the human motivations that say much about our responses to violence. On one extreme, during the 1970s, "Black September" became a group useful for fictional adventures as in Black Sunday (1977), a thriller so violent even its scriptwriter, Earnest Lehman, had to turn his head when viewing it in a theatre. True enough, Robert Shaw and Bruce Dern were graphic in this story about Palestinian terrorists plotting to blow up Americans at the Super Bowl. In this release, there was no pretense of capturing history, and the big-screen spectacle prefiguring 9/11 was unintentional prophecy no one then dreamed was possible. On a much smaller scale, The Olympic tragedy was rumored to have inspired ABC to shift its 1972 projected series, Assignment: Munich to Vienna. (note 2) Later, “Black September” was the title of one episode of Return of The Saint (1978) in which Simon Templar (Ian Ogilvy) aided the Israelis battling Palestinian terrorists. But the actual historical events have not been neglected on the small and large screen and some projects are of special interest.
One Day in September
Narrated by Michael Douglas, One Day in September was a 1999 Arthur Cohn documentary including promos, newscasts, and interviews with athletes and survivors of the actual 1972 tragedy. Directed by Kevin McDonald, this straight-forward production Focused on the hours leading up to the attack, what transpired at the Olympics, but said little about the aftermath which would become the subject of Munich.
To begin, the film makes clear these Olympics were of historical importance even before the terrorist took their hostages. As the 1972 games occurred just 30 miles from the site of the Dachau concentration camp, Israeli competitors were thrilled to march under the Star of David flag unfurled in Germany for the first time since World War II. For Germans, these games were intended to erase old memories as the Nazis had used the Olympics to promote their world vision. So hopefulness was, in the words of one participant, in "overdrive." For example, even though Israel and Lebanon were at war, their athletes were able to meet and compare competition results, illustrating what the Olympics are all about.
Without editorial comment, in One Day, we learn how such goodwill was destroyed. In the moments leading up to the attack, we get glimpses into the men whose lives were about to change from jubilant success to fearful captivity. We learn the Israeli team viewed a production of Fiddler on the Roof the evening of the takeover of their quarters. One of them had nearly missed the train from Holland to attend that night, and we hear the words of his girlfriend who described her last happy hours with him. Later, we would hear her memories as she saw her last view of her boyfriend on television, a gun at his head as he stood on the balcony in the Olympic village hours before his murder.
According to the film, it was the East German team who allowed the Black September group to sneak into the grounds to survey the apartment building where the Israelis were staying. The report showed how the terrorists first captured a coach who led the gunmen to the apartment where the wrestlers and weight-lifters were housed, the coach thinking they might have the best chance of fighting back. He was the first to die. Then, Black September demanded some 200 political prisoners be freed or the hostages would be killed.
One Day then focuses more on what happened around the captives rather then what transpired behind the doors of the Olympic village. Of course, during these hours, little was known about what happened in the apartments, the number of captives and captors not certain until much later. If the documentary is accurate, it quickly became apparent the West German government was ill-equipped to handle the situation. The Olympic committee, in turn, was reluctant to let the events altar the schedule. While American swimmer Mark Spitz, winner of seven Gold Medals was spirited away as he was Jewish, the games were not, at first, postponed or affected in any way. While international anger grew, the committee felt the hostage crisis had nothing to do with the games. One sad moment in the film is when cheering crowds respond to the games while negotiators try to get the terrorists to delay their deadline. Later scenes showed athletes swimming and sunning themselves in a pond not 200 yards from the apartment building. One observer described the attitude as "selfish and obscene."
Then the horror mounts--again, not seen in the violence by Black September--but by the authorities charged with dealing with them. While the Israeli government offered to send in a rescue team, the West German government said no. The Germans did send in an untrained team of snipers in a ploy to get the terrorists out in the open, all the while an astonishing amount of security information was being broadcast over television. Other blunders included only five marksman being set up at the airport where the hostages were taken by helicopter even though eight terrorists were involved. While four of the five snipers fired their guns, none hit their targets until it was too late and these shots were not coordinated. The security squad in the plane allegedly there to take the kidnappers and their hostages to Egypt voted to abandon their mission just seconds before the group arrived. The police had forgotten to order armored cars which were then caught in traffic and did not arrive in time. Two security officers were shot by snipers, mistaken for terrorists. To compound blunders of action, an official made the statement the events were unfortunate and would hopefully be forgotten in a few weeks.
Again, without commentary, the film noted the West German government of Willy Brandt apparently colluded with the terrorists to get the imprisoned members quickly out of Germany. According to an interview with one surviving terrorist, the Germans agreed to exchange the three terrorists for kidnapped Germans in what he claimed to be a set-up. Why else the haste the Germans went through to get his group out of Germany?
At film's end, few viewers would think justice, on any level, had taken place before or after September 5, 1972. Rather, one might wonder why Israel didn't close their German embassy in disgust. After viewing this account, who would blame Israeli intelligence for taking the actions detailed in Spielberg's film?
21 Hours in Munich
With a very different spin, many of these same events had been dramatized in the earlier Orion Pictures 21 Hours in Munich (1976), a re-creation filmed in the actual locations in West Germany. Like One Day, starring William Holden, Shirley Knight, and Franco Nero, the story begins with the hope of the games, the setting described as more "Hansel and Gretel than Hitler and Goebbels." In Edward Feldman's rather bare-bones production--Israelis, Germans, and Arabs all speaking with decidedly American accents--viewers do see different perspectives from One Day.
For one example, the Olympic committee is shown in a better light. Its spokesman said the games had been going on for centuries and no hoodlums should be permitted to molest them. In the script, the committee feared if the games were stopped, crowds would descend on the secure area, complicating security matters. Perhaps more notably, the lead Arab is portrayed sympathetically, saying he desires no harm to anyone but only wants his brothers freed. This point is repeated throughout the film, making the Palestinians as much victims as their hostages.
Whether by design or a lack of direction, 21 Hours is no tense drama. Much of the focus is the dialogue between the West German negotiator and the lead terrorist which implies the Black September group were attempting to escape peacefully but were betrayed by the Germans. In this version of events, the German negotiator led the kidnappers to believe they could execute their hostages in Egypt even though that government had rejected the German request to let the plane come to them. The Egyptian Prime Minister apparently knew the Germans merely wanted the crisis to move off their soil. Still, the production showed German law enforcement as far more efficient than shown in the documentary, the final blunders tragedies no one could have predicted. On its own, 21 Hours points fingers at West German authorities, but all else were victims, including the driven Black September gunmen. From this view, they were more guerilla fighters than members of what would become known as terrorism.
The Sword of Gideon
Moving to events after September 1972, the 1986 HBO production, The Sword of Gideon (based on the George Jonas book, Vengeance) is well-known as the inspiration for Spielberg's Munich. (note 3) Produced by Robert Lantos, like Munich, the events in the Olympic village are dispatched quickly in a pre-title sequence as the story is about the Israeli response to the murders and not what happened to set this revenge in motion.
While the cast included the likes of Steven Bauer, Robert Joy, Leslie Hope, Rod Steiger, Michael York, Leno Ventura, and Colleen Dewhurst, the acting is not on the same scale as Munich although we do learn more about the Israeli team than the later version of the same events. Many situations are better handled in Munich. For example, in the scenes when the unit encounters the French "honey trap" killer, Sword rushes through the episode with no glimpses into character reactions. We don't get the killer protesting her death saying her murder would be "a waste of talent." But we do see her termination in the light of one directive the team was given, that no innocent bystanders should be hurt. What if a gun is pulled? Then you're no longer a bystander, an idea that is the theme of the entire mission.
As with Munich, the hunters become the hunted but this idea is better developed in Sword. As the mission progresses, the killings have less and less connection to the events that inspired them. At the end of the second kill, they cry "For Munich"--the shooting of the French assassin is for themselves. The purpose of it all gradually dissipates in this comparatively stream-lined account.
Perhaps stream-lined is not the best term. The running time of both Sword and Munich is roughly the same, but the episodes in Sword are fewer but longer. The old warning that once you're in, you can't get out frames Sword with the lead agent being warned by his father in the opening scenes, and the long denouement is of this agent being unscrupulously pressured by his chief to continue the job--a rather different conclusion than in Munich with more global themes and less personal interconnections. In short, Sword ends up as the story of an agent too good to return to a normal life.
Munich
When Munich premiered in 2005, the film seemed a clear metaphor for current issues regarding Middle-Eastern themes. For example, the list of 11 names to be hunted down evoked the playing card deck of Iraqis sought by U.S. forces in the first months of that war. The theme of violence responded to with violence in an endless cycle certainly pointed to ongoing bloodshetting between Israel and groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Fatah. In one scene in Munich, a German tells the Israelis that the Palestinians have the long-term upper-hand as their population will swell over the next century. This monologue reminded me of a recent Atlantic Monthly article spelling out the same conclusion. The birthrate is apparently certain to be in the Arab's favor.
And images from the movie connected with themes from the past. The bom-maker, a former toy-maker, echoed Hitchcock’s 1936 Sabotage, especially the scene where a bomb maker worked on his craft surrounded by children's toys and ordinary laundry. In Munich, we see the bom-maker apparently blow himself up, a scene reminiscent of the Hitchcock project and the Joseph Conrad novel on which it was based where a young child is also exploded accidentally.
For those interested, each of the projects described above are available on DVD or video. (note 4) for those wanting to learn more about the background for Munich, I recommend One Day in September as a story that does not duplicate events in Munich but rather sets the stage for that project. It seems appropriate to remember what happened in 1972 and those who senselessly lost their lives in the early days of the Palestine/ Israeli conflict. Then, we didn't know what was to come. In hindsight, Black September were the first seeds of the blood to characterize the opening years of a new century.
Notes
1. For many more details about related films, see "Defining Terrorism: A Short History of Fact, Fiction, and Film" also posted at this website.
2. For more information, see my interview with Robert Conrad posted at this website.
3. For reviews of books dealing with Munich and its aftermath, see “The Mossad and Israeli Intelligence: An Annotated Bibliography (Books)” also posted at this website. Related movies are listed in “THE MOSSAD ON SCREEN: A FILMOGRAPHY.”
4. For those living in the Dallas, Texas area, One Day, 21 Hours, and Sword are available for rent at Starlight Video.
For related articles, see
WWW.WesleyBritton.com
Friday, June 29, 2007
Sisters of Mata Hari
SISTERS OF MATA HARI: REVIEWS OF BOOKS ON LADY SPIES
Review: Yellen, Emily. Our Mother's War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II (2004); Moran, Lindsay. Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy (2005). Adapted from posts that first appeared at thespyreport.livejournal.com, various months, 2006.
By Wesley Britton
Did you know the first spy film series ever made featured a girl? In 1909 and 1910, the four very short "Girl Spy" movies starred forgotten silent film actress Jean Gauntiett as a Civil War heroine fighting on behalf of the Confederacy. In fact, during the first three decades of Hollywood, there were probably more lady spies than men in the days of Victorian melodramas. In those days, little girls fought the "Huns" during World War I and older heroines battled to save their fathers, lovers, and country at the risk of losing life, limb, and--worst of all--their virtue. (note 1)
All this was mostly wild fiction with little connection to any historical fact. For most of the 20th Century, the number of real Mati Haris in actual espionage was quite small. But according to Emily Yellen's 2004 Our Mother's War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II, lady spies contributed much to the war effort in the 1940s.
To be fair, the bulk of Yellen's lengthy overview of the roles of women during the war years doesn't focus on spies. Many detailed chapters explore female workers in industry, the government, racial dimensions, and nearly every aspect of life at home and abroad during this period. Yellen's overview of female agents is primarily in one chapter, "Behind Enemy Lines: Spies, Propaganda Workers, and Those Who Worked for the Enemy." First are the numbers. Out of 13,000 employees in the O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services), 4,000 were women. Most were file clerks and support staff--some very helpful in breaking codes-- in the overtly sexist organization, the predecessor to the CIA. Yellen described one Naval division devoted to code-breaking called OP 20G. By early 1944, 2,813 women worked for OP 20G, and 600 of them worked on the Top Secret program to break the famous German Enigma Code. Under the cover of working for the National Cash Register Co., these women were hired to build and keep the experimental machines going, 200 per shift for around the clock labors. They worked at a secret warehouse called "Sugar Hill" in Dayton, Ohio, but none knew for sure what they were working on. Some figured part of it out. Making wheels with 26 spokes was a clue. And the fact they were told if they said anything, they'd be shot was another.
Then Yellen provides a series of brief sketches of noted agents and operatives, and here is where readers can gain insights into what the real Sydney Bristos of their time were doing. Yellen believes the best of the lot was Virginia Hall who scoped out enemy movements, looked for good parachute drop sites, and helped create escape routes in France--all the while disguised as an elderly French woman. Code-named Diane, Hall was known as "The Limping Lady" because, in the middle of the 1930s, her left leg had been amputated from the knee down. The enemy knew what the thirty-something spy looked like, so disguises were needed. Posing as a stooped older woman was perfect for this unlikely agent. She was trained by the British S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive) as America was slow to put women into such roles. The Brits didn't see Hall or similar operatives as spies as they mainly organized networks rather than tried to get secret information.
Sexual escapades? Of course. Another American lady, Amy Pack, procured Navy codes from the Vichy embassy in Washington. At first, she was able to access confidential information during travels with her diplomat husband. Due to their unhappy marriage, she had a series of affairs and so uncovered Axis plans for North Africa from her lovers. Later, she pretended to be the daughter of one of her older amours, even helped by his wife, until the spouse found out the relationship was more than spycraft. The O.S.S. dispatched the wife off to Mexico telling her she was doing important intelligence work. But this was a ruse to keep her from blowing Amy's cover.
Some O.S.S. officers became celebrities. According to Yellen, former tennis star Alice Marble was recruited to go to Switzerland and spy on a former boyfriend. After a series of personal tragedies, Marble felt this would be her way to contribute to the war effort. So she slept with the enemy to find out about treasures Nazis were hoping to smuggle out along with their escape routes during the final months of the war. Like the later pair on television's I Spy, under the cover of tennis exhibition matches, she met her ex, photographed lists in his safe, and bolted out the front door, narrowly escaping.
Josephine Baker was another celebrity to help the cause, in this case an African-American singer-dancer who'd emigrated to Paris. She smuggled messages across Europe that were written in the margins of her sheet music in invisible ink. Notes about what she observed were said to have been hidden in her underwear. Julia McWilliams--later the famous "French Chef" Julia Childs--was rejected by the military for ordinary duty as she stood over six feet--no uniforms were made for such as she. She began work as a research assistant, then helped develop a shark repellent that kept Jaws and his brethren from prematurely exploding mines and ultimately bothering astronauts in splashed-down NASA spacecraft. For the O.S.S., she became an office worker, said there was nothing heroic about it, and that she did jobs men wouldn't. "It was all that was available for women," she said, but the job was the best opportunity to travel overseas. In the Far East, she met her future husband, Paul Childs, a fellow O.S.S. officer.
Elizabeth P. Macintosh was another American who served in the China/Burma/India theatre. A former journalist, she was sent out to provide morale busting propaganda among Japanese troops. This was "Black Propaganda"--lies, rumors, and innuendoes
supposedly coming from the enemy's own headquarters. ("White Propaganda," of course, was the truth dispensed from Allied channels.) One of Macintosh's operations was to alter postcards Allies had captured from Japanese soldiers. As they already had the censor's stamp on them, she cleverly had the messages changed to tell stories of defeat and poor morale and then smuggled them back into the enemy's mail delivery. Some of these operators paid the cost of covert work. Mildred Fishe Harnack was an American living in Germany who helped smuggle Jews out of the country. After providing intelligence to both the Americans and Russians, she was captured in 1942 and was the only woman executed by special order of Adolf Hitler.
Yellen also provides sketches of Mata Haris not always working for the Allies."The Red Spy Queen," Elizabeth Bently, was an American traitor who worked for the Soviet Union before and during WW II. She was one of the figures later sparking the McCarthy Era in the 1950s. She helped coordinate a large espionage ring in the U.S. against the Fascists for the KGB, but turned on them after World War II and reported to the FBI. Another traitor was Mildred Gillors, an American who served as a disc jockey for Hitler during the war. Known as "Axis Sally," she went into POW camps posing as a Red Cross worker and got captured Gis to record tape messages saying they were for the folks back home. Instead, she took the tapes and broadcast them, interjecting her own commentary that was invectives against President Roosevelt and Jews.
Later in her book, Yellen described the lives of women who didn't know what their husbands were doing in Chapter 11, "Inside the Secret City: Wives and WACS in Los Alamos." These were the wives of scientists and military personnel on the hidden mesa in New Mexico where the atomic bomb was created. Here, she describes the inadequate housing, provisions, mud, cold, dust, and isolation of a community sharply divided and mysterious. All the mail was routed to PO Box 1663--the only address listed on birth certificates issued at Los Alamos--a town that technically did not exist. Oddly, townspeople below wondered what was going on--are they making window wipers for submarines up there? So a covert mission was created. Women were sent into town to leak it was all about a new electronic rocket. They thought the natives would report the leaks to the military police. Surprisingly, no one cared. No reports were filed. So the electronic rocket mission was a failure in counter-espionage.
In this wide canvas, Yellen doesn't always provide in-depth background on various topics. For example, her chapter on movie actresses is surprisingly thin. She maintained that Hollywood movies of the era changed women from leisure, luxury-loving dolls into harder females showing they could take it on the chin alongside the boys, ready to do their bit for the war effort. Then again, she notes, the pin-up industry went into high gear during the war, with Hollywood's finest garter-belted legs and polished smiles on display in footlockers all over the globe. Betty Grable, the queen of the pin-ups, perhaps best represented the American ideal of womanhood--the sexy girl next door who was both alluring and accessible. But Yellen's short notes on moviedom don't support such claims, as there were ample examples of hard-bitten, determined women leads long before the propaganda films beginning after Pearl Harbor. Before then, Greta Garbo was Mata Hari in 1931, Marlene Dietrich was Dishonored in 1934, and Alfred Hitchcok began his use of independent leading ladies in The 39 Steps in 1935, to cite but a few. 2 On this topic, at least, it seems clear Yellen's focused research on the 1940s didn't include much digging into what came before.
Still, the book is a fine contribution to histories of the war years, adding much to a better understanding of the culture of this dramatic era. For espionage buffs, Yellen's short sketches might intrigue readers to look for more about these overlooked heroines of times past. Any female interested in what their mothers--or grandmothers--lived like during the 1940s, well, this book is indispensable.
---
"`I hope it's all worth it.' Emma had turned from me and was looking out toward the misty rain flicked street. `I mean, you would know. I am just counting on that fact. That you, and whoever it is you work for, that you guys know more than someone like me.' As it turned out, neither I nor the people I worked for knew any more than Emma. The myth of the all-knowing, omnipotent Central Intelligence Agency turned out to be just that, a myth. And it was shattered not just for all its employees but for all the Americans whom we failed in a single day."
(Lindsey Moran, Blowing My Cover, 2005)
Turning from World War Ii to the Cold War, if Lindsey Moran's Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy (2005) were ever to be filmed, it would most likely be destined for the Lifetime Channel with some title like "The Spy Who Couldn't Get A Date" or "Sleeping Alone for the CIA." While there are glimmers into actual undercover work with few revelations into areas not already widely known, Moran's autobiography is probably of most interest for any young woman pondering joining the CIA. It's not a world Sydney Bristo would recognize.
The memoir opens with Moran's early thoughts about becoming a spy, a mix of Bondish dreams and misgivings about what the job would actually be. After sharing her education and first attempts to join the CIA, Moran describes the training at "The Farm "and her learning her life would now be a series of lies to friends, family, and potential boyfriends. We pick up tidbits such as Mormons make for good recruits because of their squeaky-clean past and that the disguise experts, in her opinion, are over-hyped hairdressers.
Then, because of her previous time spent in Bulgaria as a student, Moran was assigned to that region where she learned her work would be boring and banal. She notes if the American taxpayer knew how much money was wasted on useless informants and exorbitant dinners at high-class restaurants, there'd be a revolt. Her job, like all case officers, wasn't to do any actual espionage but rather recruit natives to do the work through entrapment, appeals to patriotism, or, mainly, bribes. While she served in Macedonia during the period when Albanian rebels created unrest, we learn next to nothing about the political contexts of what was going on. We do get quick glimpses into embassy attacks and the unpopularity of Americans as the Macedonians resented the U.S. supporting the rush of Albanian refugees into their country. While the locals poison American cats as a protest, and we learn bands played in gloating refrains after 9/11, rarely is Lindsey in a life-or-death situation. And that only happened by misadventure as when three Macedonian soldiers mistake her on a bicycle for a unit of Albanian guerillas. More telling, she said while her superiors knew her assets and contacts were fruitless and pointless, she was told to keep running them as it was a "good career move." Sadly, this observation has turned out to be rather typical of her era in spycraft as has been explored in many books on the slide of the CIA during the 1990s.
More personal revelations crop up along the way as when Moran told of how having a foreign-born boyfriend endangered her original signing on for the agency, that her love-life was run by paperwork she had to fill out for every weekend retreat, and that simple intimacy was thwarted by her vague responses to men asking about her employment. With this as a backdrop, Moran resigned from the CIA in the wake of the Second Iraq War as she knew well it was a diversion from anything to do with any real war on terror and then found herself happy in a more normal life. To her credit, the tone of her book isn't the bitter, angry exposes published from the 1960s onward but rather reads like a look back at years of disappointment on every level. It's a human portrait, not an attempt to tell readers that undercover operations are dirty work. The CIA is shown as a sexist, lumbering bureaucracy which enjoyed the gamesmanship of the Cold War but completely inept In understanding how to deal with groups who despise U.S. interests on other grounds. On the other hand, it's difficult not to see her many passages on failed relationships as whining. From the get-go, she knew deception was part of the game and you'd think agents would expect rather intrusive interests in outside relationships. Again, little is new here, but this perspective might be eye-opening for those wondering just what CIA case officers actually do and what life might be like should a reader have their own fantasies about becoming an agent in the 21st century.
Notes
1. A number of these films are discussed in Chapter One, "When Spies Were Silent I: Leading Ladies and Victorian Melodramas (1898-1929)" from my Onscreen and Undercover: The Ultimate Book of Movie Espionage (Praeger, 2006). Chapter Five, "Fighting Hitler and His Heirs: Film Nazis from the 1930s to 2005" looks at movies including female characters.
In addition, among other sections, Chapter One, "THE 39 STEPS: Creating a Genre" from my 2005 Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film notes the neglected attention given to the important roles of independent women in early spy films.
See related articles at
http://www.wesleybritton.com/
Review: Yellen, Emily. Our Mother's War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II (2004); Moran, Lindsay. Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy (2005). Adapted from posts that first appeared at thespyreport.livejournal.com, various months, 2006.
By Wesley Britton
Did you know the first spy film series ever made featured a girl? In 1909 and 1910, the four very short "Girl Spy" movies starred forgotten silent film actress Jean Gauntiett as a Civil War heroine fighting on behalf of the Confederacy. In fact, during the first three decades of Hollywood, there were probably more lady spies than men in the days of Victorian melodramas. In those days, little girls fought the "Huns" during World War I and older heroines battled to save their fathers, lovers, and country at the risk of losing life, limb, and--worst of all--their virtue. (note 1)
All this was mostly wild fiction with little connection to any historical fact. For most of the 20th Century, the number of real Mati Haris in actual espionage was quite small. But according to Emily Yellen's 2004 Our Mother's War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II, lady spies contributed much to the war effort in the 1940s.
To be fair, the bulk of Yellen's lengthy overview of the roles of women during the war years doesn't focus on spies. Many detailed chapters explore female workers in industry, the government, racial dimensions, and nearly every aspect of life at home and abroad during this period. Yellen's overview of female agents is primarily in one chapter, "Behind Enemy Lines: Spies, Propaganda Workers, and Those Who Worked for the Enemy." First are the numbers. Out of 13,000 employees in the O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services), 4,000 were women. Most were file clerks and support staff--some very helpful in breaking codes-- in the overtly sexist organization, the predecessor to the CIA. Yellen described one Naval division devoted to code-breaking called OP 20G. By early 1944, 2,813 women worked for OP 20G, and 600 of them worked on the Top Secret program to break the famous German Enigma Code. Under the cover of working for the National Cash Register Co., these women were hired to build and keep the experimental machines going, 200 per shift for around the clock labors. They worked at a secret warehouse called "Sugar Hill" in Dayton, Ohio, but none knew for sure what they were working on. Some figured part of it out. Making wheels with 26 spokes was a clue. And the fact they were told if they said anything, they'd be shot was another.
Then Yellen provides a series of brief sketches of noted agents and operatives, and here is where readers can gain insights into what the real Sydney Bristos of their time were doing. Yellen believes the best of the lot was Virginia Hall who scoped out enemy movements, looked for good parachute drop sites, and helped create escape routes in France--all the while disguised as an elderly French woman. Code-named Diane, Hall was known as "The Limping Lady" because, in the middle of the 1930s, her left leg had been amputated from the knee down. The enemy knew what the thirty-something spy looked like, so disguises were needed. Posing as a stooped older woman was perfect for this unlikely agent. She was trained by the British S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive) as America was slow to put women into such roles. The Brits didn't see Hall or similar operatives as spies as they mainly organized networks rather than tried to get secret information.
Sexual escapades? Of course. Another American lady, Amy Pack, procured Navy codes from the Vichy embassy in Washington. At first, she was able to access confidential information during travels with her diplomat husband. Due to their unhappy marriage, she had a series of affairs and so uncovered Axis plans for North Africa from her lovers. Later, she pretended to be the daughter of one of her older amours, even helped by his wife, until the spouse found out the relationship was more than spycraft. The O.S.S. dispatched the wife off to Mexico telling her she was doing important intelligence work. But this was a ruse to keep her from blowing Amy's cover.
Some O.S.S. officers became celebrities. According to Yellen, former tennis star Alice Marble was recruited to go to Switzerland and spy on a former boyfriend. After a series of personal tragedies, Marble felt this would be her way to contribute to the war effort. So she slept with the enemy to find out about treasures Nazis were hoping to smuggle out along with their escape routes during the final months of the war. Like the later pair on television's I Spy, under the cover of tennis exhibition matches, she met her ex, photographed lists in his safe, and bolted out the front door, narrowly escaping.
Josephine Baker was another celebrity to help the cause, in this case an African-American singer-dancer who'd emigrated to Paris. She smuggled messages across Europe that were written in the margins of her sheet music in invisible ink. Notes about what she observed were said to have been hidden in her underwear. Julia McWilliams--later the famous "French Chef" Julia Childs--was rejected by the military for ordinary duty as she stood over six feet--no uniforms were made for such as she. She began work as a research assistant, then helped develop a shark repellent that kept Jaws and his brethren from prematurely exploding mines and ultimately bothering astronauts in splashed-down NASA spacecraft. For the O.S.S., she became an office worker, said there was nothing heroic about it, and that she did jobs men wouldn't. "It was all that was available for women," she said, but the job was the best opportunity to travel overseas. In the Far East, she met her future husband, Paul Childs, a fellow O.S.S. officer.
Elizabeth P. Macintosh was another American who served in the China/Burma/India theatre. A former journalist, she was sent out to provide morale busting propaganda among Japanese troops. This was "Black Propaganda"--lies, rumors, and innuendoes
supposedly coming from the enemy's own headquarters. ("White Propaganda," of course, was the truth dispensed from Allied channels.) One of Macintosh's operations was to alter postcards Allies had captured from Japanese soldiers. As they already had the censor's stamp on them, she cleverly had the messages changed to tell stories of defeat and poor morale and then smuggled them back into the enemy's mail delivery. Some of these operators paid the cost of covert work. Mildred Fishe Harnack was an American living in Germany who helped smuggle Jews out of the country. After providing intelligence to both the Americans and Russians, she was captured in 1942 and was the only woman executed by special order of Adolf Hitler.
Yellen also provides sketches of Mata Haris not always working for the Allies."The Red Spy Queen," Elizabeth Bently, was an American traitor who worked for the Soviet Union before and during WW II. She was one of the figures later sparking the McCarthy Era in the 1950s. She helped coordinate a large espionage ring in the U.S. against the Fascists for the KGB, but turned on them after World War II and reported to the FBI. Another traitor was Mildred Gillors, an American who served as a disc jockey for Hitler during the war. Known as "Axis Sally," she went into POW camps posing as a Red Cross worker and got captured Gis to record tape messages saying they were for the folks back home. Instead, she took the tapes and broadcast them, interjecting her own commentary that was invectives against President Roosevelt and Jews.
Later in her book, Yellen described the lives of women who didn't know what their husbands were doing in Chapter 11, "Inside the Secret City: Wives and WACS in Los Alamos." These were the wives of scientists and military personnel on the hidden mesa in New Mexico where the atomic bomb was created. Here, she describes the inadequate housing, provisions, mud, cold, dust, and isolation of a community sharply divided and mysterious. All the mail was routed to PO Box 1663--the only address listed on birth certificates issued at Los Alamos--a town that technically did not exist. Oddly, townspeople below wondered what was going on--are they making window wipers for submarines up there? So a covert mission was created. Women were sent into town to leak it was all about a new electronic rocket. They thought the natives would report the leaks to the military police. Surprisingly, no one cared. No reports were filed. So the electronic rocket mission was a failure in counter-espionage.
In this wide canvas, Yellen doesn't always provide in-depth background on various topics. For example, her chapter on movie actresses is surprisingly thin. She maintained that Hollywood movies of the era changed women from leisure, luxury-loving dolls into harder females showing they could take it on the chin alongside the boys, ready to do their bit for the war effort. Then again, she notes, the pin-up industry went into high gear during the war, with Hollywood's finest garter-belted legs and polished smiles on display in footlockers all over the globe. Betty Grable, the queen of the pin-ups, perhaps best represented the American ideal of womanhood--the sexy girl next door who was both alluring and accessible. But Yellen's short notes on moviedom don't support such claims, as there were ample examples of hard-bitten, determined women leads long before the propaganda films beginning after Pearl Harbor. Before then, Greta Garbo was Mata Hari in 1931, Marlene Dietrich was Dishonored in 1934, and Alfred Hitchcok began his use of independent leading ladies in The 39 Steps in 1935, to cite but a few. 2 On this topic, at least, it seems clear Yellen's focused research on the 1940s didn't include much digging into what came before.
Still, the book is a fine contribution to histories of the war years, adding much to a better understanding of the culture of this dramatic era. For espionage buffs, Yellen's short sketches might intrigue readers to look for more about these overlooked heroines of times past. Any female interested in what their mothers--or grandmothers--lived like during the 1940s, well, this book is indispensable.
---
"`I hope it's all worth it.' Emma had turned from me and was looking out toward the misty rain flicked street. `I mean, you would know. I am just counting on that fact. That you, and whoever it is you work for, that you guys know more than someone like me.' As it turned out, neither I nor the people I worked for knew any more than Emma. The myth of the all-knowing, omnipotent Central Intelligence Agency turned out to be just that, a myth. And it was shattered not just for all its employees but for all the Americans whom we failed in a single day."
(Lindsey Moran, Blowing My Cover, 2005)
Turning from World War Ii to the Cold War, if Lindsey Moran's Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy (2005) were ever to be filmed, it would most likely be destined for the Lifetime Channel with some title like "The Spy Who Couldn't Get A Date" or "Sleeping Alone for the CIA." While there are glimmers into actual undercover work with few revelations into areas not already widely known, Moran's autobiography is probably of most interest for any young woman pondering joining the CIA. It's not a world Sydney Bristo would recognize.
The memoir opens with Moran's early thoughts about becoming a spy, a mix of Bondish dreams and misgivings about what the job would actually be. After sharing her education and first attempts to join the CIA, Moran describes the training at "The Farm "and her learning her life would now be a series of lies to friends, family, and potential boyfriends. We pick up tidbits such as Mormons make for good recruits because of their squeaky-clean past and that the disguise experts, in her opinion, are over-hyped hairdressers.
Then, because of her previous time spent in Bulgaria as a student, Moran was assigned to that region where she learned her work would be boring and banal. She notes if the American taxpayer knew how much money was wasted on useless informants and exorbitant dinners at high-class restaurants, there'd be a revolt. Her job, like all case officers, wasn't to do any actual espionage but rather recruit natives to do the work through entrapment, appeals to patriotism, or, mainly, bribes. While she served in Macedonia during the period when Albanian rebels created unrest, we learn next to nothing about the political contexts of what was going on. We do get quick glimpses into embassy attacks and the unpopularity of Americans as the Macedonians resented the U.S. supporting the rush of Albanian refugees into their country. While the locals poison American cats as a protest, and we learn bands played in gloating refrains after 9/11, rarely is Lindsey in a life-or-death situation. And that only happened by misadventure as when three Macedonian soldiers mistake her on a bicycle for a unit of Albanian guerillas. More telling, she said while her superiors knew her assets and contacts were fruitless and pointless, she was told to keep running them as it was a "good career move." Sadly, this observation has turned out to be rather typical of her era in spycraft as has been explored in many books on the slide of the CIA during the 1990s.
More personal revelations crop up along the way as when Moran told of how having a foreign-born boyfriend endangered her original signing on for the agency, that her love-life was run by paperwork she had to fill out for every weekend retreat, and that simple intimacy was thwarted by her vague responses to men asking about her employment. With this as a backdrop, Moran resigned from the CIA in the wake of the Second Iraq War as she knew well it was a diversion from anything to do with any real war on terror and then found herself happy in a more normal life. To her credit, the tone of her book isn't the bitter, angry exposes published from the 1960s onward but rather reads like a look back at years of disappointment on every level. It's a human portrait, not an attempt to tell readers that undercover operations are dirty work. The CIA is shown as a sexist, lumbering bureaucracy which enjoyed the gamesmanship of the Cold War but completely inept In understanding how to deal with groups who despise U.S. interests on other grounds. On the other hand, it's difficult not to see her many passages on failed relationships as whining. From the get-go, she knew deception was part of the game and you'd think agents would expect rather intrusive interests in outside relationships. Again, little is new here, but this perspective might be eye-opening for those wondering just what CIA case officers actually do and what life might be like should a reader have their own fantasies about becoming an agent in the 21st century.
Notes
1. A number of these films are discussed in Chapter One, "When Spies Were Silent I: Leading Ladies and Victorian Melodramas (1898-1929)" from my Onscreen and Undercover: The Ultimate Book of Movie Espionage (Praeger, 2006). Chapter Five, "Fighting Hitler and His Heirs: Film Nazis from the 1930s to 2005" looks at movies including female characters.
In addition, among other sections, Chapter One, "THE 39 STEPS: Creating a Genre" from my 2005 Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film notes the neglected attention given to the important roles of independent women in early spy films.
See related articles at
http://www.wesleybritton.com/
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