"
De Villiers has spent most of his life cultivating spies and diplomats, who seem to enjoy seeing themselves and their secrets transfigured into pop fiction (with their own names carefully disguised), and his books regularly contain information about terror plots, espionage and wars that has never appeared elsewhere. Other pop novelists, like John le Carré and Tom Clancy, may flavor their work with a few real-world scenarios and some spy lingo, but de Villiers’s books are ahead of the news and sometimes even ahead of events themselves." (SLNYT)
posted by Rustic Etruscan
on Jan 31, 2013 -
26 comments
"The six CIA officers were sweating. It was almost noon on a June day in the Middle Eastern capital, already in the 90s outside and even hotter inside the black sedan where the five men and one woman sat jammed in together. Sat and waited. They had flown in two days earlier for this mission: to break into the embassy of a South Asian country, steal that country’s secret codes and get out without leaving a trace. During months of planning, they had been assured by the local CIA station that the building would be empty at this hour except for one person—a member of the embassy’s diplomatic staff working secretly for the agency." [
The CIA Burglar Who Went Rogue]
posted by vidur
on Oct 9, 2012 -
25 comments
Christine Granville was, at least apocryphally, Winston Churchill's favourite spy. Born Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek, daughter of a charming but dissolute Polish aristocrat and a Jewish banking heiress, she was described in 1939 as "a flaming Polish patriot … expert skier and great adventuress".
So she was.
posted by Chrysostom
on Aug 10, 2012 -
7 comments
Before the CIA, there was the Pond -- a highly secret, unacknowledged, and semi-autonomous intelligence agency created by the US military in 1942 as an alternative to the OSS. According the Associated Press, "The organization counted among its exploits an attempt to negotiate the surrender of Germany with Hermann Goering, one of Adolf Hitler's top military leaders, more than six months before the war ended; an effort to enlist mobster Charles 'Lucky' Luciano in a plot to assassinate Italian dictator Benito Mussolini; identifying the location of the German heavy water plants doing atomic research in Norway; and providing advance information on Russia's first atomic bomb explosion." But the CIA says that its record was "largely one of
failure and impermanence."
posted by twirlip
on Aug 3, 2010 -
6 comments
For Graham Greene he was "unquestionably our best thriller writer". John le Carré once called him "the source on which we all draw". With the six novels he wrote in the years leading up to the second world war - five of which have just been reissued by Penguin Modern Classics - Eric Ambler revitalised the British thriller, rescuing the genre from the jingoistic clutches of third-rate imitators of John Buchan, and recasting it in a more realist, nuanced and leftishly intelligent - not to mention exciting - mould. -
The writing of Eric Ambler
posted by Artw
on Jun 6, 2009 -
14 comments
Wired: Obama Sides With Bush in Spy Case. "The Obama administration fell in line with the Bush administration Thursday when it urged a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a closely watched spy case weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants."
posted by blue_beetle
on Jan 23, 2009 -
86 comments
"Well behaved women rarely make history," said Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
Scandalous Women brings you the lives, loves, and sexual adventures of some of the most fascinating women who rocked the world. Like
Olimpia Maidalchini who managed to achieve something that no woman ever has, for the 11 years of her brother-in-law Innocent X's reign as pope, Olimpia was the real power at the Vatican; or
Elizabeth Armistead, wife of a cabinet minister, courtesan to many. Read the bios and follow the tales of nearly a hundred women of scandalous pursuit from
Mata Hari to
Typhoid Mary.
posted by netbros
on Jan 16, 2009 -
14 comments
There may be some among us who can imagine 20 days in captivity; perhaps a fraction of those can imagine a full year deprived of liberty and most human contact. But 20 years? Downey and Fecteau have consistently sought to downplay their period of imprisonment; and neither has done what arguably too many former CIA officers do these days with far less justification: write a book. Downey has said that such a book would contain "500 blank pages," and Fecteau says the whole experience could be summed up by the word "boring."
Extraordinary Fidelity: Two CIA Prisoners in China, 1952–73 [secure link] by Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA historian and a veteran intelligence analyst.
Time article about Downey and Fecteau from 1954.
posted by Kattullus
on May 3, 2007 -
26 comments
WANTED: The Limping Lady. The Gestapo's poster read
"She is one of the most valuable Allied agents in France and we must find and destroy her" but Virginia Hall, who used a prosthetic limb after losing a leg years before in a hunting accident, eluded them and saved countless Allied lives while working as a spy during WWII. Additional biographical information, as well as the biographies of other famous female spies, at
WWII Female Spies (which has many outgoing links to other great informational resources about female spies in WWII).
posted by amyms
on Feb 21, 2007 -
8 comments
Global Options, Inc. Have you been unfairly attacked by: the media? trial lawyers? disgruntled workers? terrorists? overzealous federal regulators? competitors? hackers? industrial spies? one-issue activists? extortionists? intellectual property thieves? or even the Russian mafia? Global Options has your back.
[warning: radar beeps.]
posted by panoptican
on Dec 4, 2005 -
19 comments
Why outing Plame mattered. If you wonder what's really at stake behind all the media buzz around the Fitzgerald indictments, read this lengthy and cogent analysis by
Stratfor's no-nonsense George Friedman. "Rove and Libby had top security clearances and were senior White House officials. It was their sworn duty, undertaken when they accepted their security clearance, to build a 'bodyguard of lies' -- in Churchill's phrase -- around the truth concerning U.S. intelligence capabilities... The minimal story -- that they talked about Plame with a reporter -- is the end of the matter."
posted by digaman
on Oct 18, 2005 -
89 comments
Has your local supplier of ninja stars dried up? Want to set your truck up with armor plating, oil slick, and caltrops but not sure where to go? Been wondering where to go to get something to eat the paint off your boss' Benz?
Well then!
Brandon Enterprises has
got you covered!
posted by kavasa
on Oct 12, 2004 -
4 comments
National Security Letters and John Doe --once only issued against suspected terrorists and spies, NSLs now can be used, thanks to the Patriot Act, against all and any of us. John Doe, the currently gagged owner of a small ISP was targeted for the political speech of his customers and is fighting, along with the ACLU and others.
More here (and more inside)
posted by amberglow
on May 30, 2004 -
20 comments
Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role by Saudi Spies If this article in the NY Times is accurate, then The Saudi request that the classified pages be made public, and the Bush refusal to do so, is a cooperative effort to keep the public from knowing the Saudi involvement rather than an attempt to protect intelligence methods etc as had been claimed by Bush. Ot, Bush is right (we won't know) and the Times wrong. Take your choice.
posted by Postroad
on Aug 2, 2003 -
13 comments
Robert Meeropol, the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, writes about his parents. I'm suprised nobody else posted about this yesterday--June 19th was the
50th anniversary of their execution for espionage.
The executions at Sing Sing on June 19, 1953, ended a sensational Cold War case that still symbolizes the years when McCarthyism held sway and the government's word was accepted more readily than today. It was the first execution of civilians for espionage in U.S. history and it reverberated into the issues of dissent, anti-Semitism and capital punishment.
Pete Seeger and others comment here; the Guardian
here. The
Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Trial (which features representations of the couple by Picasso, among others) notes that:
In August of 1993, members of the American Bar Association Section of Litigation re-enacted the 1951 trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. A moot trial was conducted with expertise and meticulous concern for accuracy. The unanimous verdict of the twelve jurors was "Not Guilty." This "trial" and its dramatic outcome was widely reported by the media - for one day only.
posted by jokeefe
on Jun 20, 2003 -
20 comments
Emma Peel could eat Buffy Summers for breakfast. An online encyclopedia dedicated to one of the best shows to come out of Britain,
The Avengers. It's also the best TV fansite I've ever seen, I think--comprehensive, well-designed, smart without being "inside" or academic, and free of fanboy attitude. Even if you've never watched the show, take some time to look around. [more inside]
posted by Prospero
on May 23, 2003 -
24 comments
Bug Bug Buggy - Electronic bugging devices have been found at offices used by French and German delegations at European Union headquarters in Brussels.
I think I can guess where fingers will get pointed....
posted by tomcosgrave
on Mar 19, 2003 -
11 comments
You've probably heard of the WWII
Navajo "code talkers" who managed to baffle crack Japanese cryptanalysts and were credited with enabling US success at Iwo Jima. Civil engineer, journalist and photographer
Philip Johnston was the determined mind behind the "windtalkers". The son of missionaries, Johnston grew up on a Navajo reservation and was one of only a handful of outsiders fluent in the Navajo language. A bit of his background is included
this article, and you can read a
complete history of his plan, view an archive of
photos by Johnston, and see copies of his
enlistment application letter to the Marine Corps commandant, as well as a
recommendation letter from the Commanding General. (more inside...)
posted by taz
on Jan 22, 2003 -
13 comments
An official Q&A with the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, alludes to some extremely scary/interesting tidbits-- the Office of Strategic Influence is still alive, John Poindexter can do anything he pleases with DARPA, we just might renew nuclear weapons testing.
Don't worry, though. Rummy sez: "Anyone who is concerned ought not be. Anyone with any concern ought to be able to sleep well tonight. Nothing terrible is going to happen."
posted by LimePi
on Nov 23, 2002 -
7 comments
"You will have heard, Dr Sir I doubt not long before this can have reached you that Sir W. Howe is gone from hence. The Rebels imagine that he is gone to the Eastward. By this time however he has filled Chesapeak bay with surprize and terror." - Sir Henry ClintonSpy Letters of the American Revolution is an excellent site offering such gems as a captured letter written from Rachel Revere to husband Paul, a message from a colonial scientist written in invisible ink, and Benedict Arnold's encrypted message to the British offering to surrender West Point for £20,000. The site includes photos of the documents, back-stories on each letter, profiles of the people involved, and descriptions of methodology, as well as a timeline and route map.
posted by taz
on Oct 31, 2002 -
8 comments
A fascinating Salon (Premium, alas)
article asks why we haven't heard more about the purported
Israeli art student spy ring. Depending on who you ask, there's either nothing *to* ask, or there's a cover-up of positively Oliver Stone-ian proportions underway. Riveting reading, whichever explanation you subscribe to.
posted by artifex
on May 8, 2002 -
20 comments
DEA leaked report on Israeli spy ring Leaked report with blacked out names and no title etc? Note that the spies, if such they are, were gathering info dealing with drug enforcement and not with American military. Is this good? No Bad? yes. But seemingly not bad enough to anything other than shipping them out. Israeli mb big on Ecstasy and DEA well aware of this (If I am, why wouldn't they?). pdf file
posted by Postroad
on Mar 23, 2002 -
7 comments
The Art of Espionage. The ongoing tale of the massive spy ring that the U.S. media won't talk about. "
The basis of the spy allegations is a 60-page document -- a compilation of field reports by Drug Enforcement Administration agents and other U.S. law enforcement officials."
posted by euphorb
on Mar 22, 2002 -
21 comments
U.S. Spy agencies say Gulf War pilot likely seized. A U.S. intelligence report on the case of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher provides the most complete explanation by the U.S. government on why the pilot probably was captured alive by Iraqis after ejecting from his F-18 in 1991. Interesting that this story comes out just as the U.S. is preparing to war on Iraq.
posted by Ty Webb
on Mar 15, 2002 -
26 comments
