Spy Stuff: Spies at Comic Con?

Hmmm, were there spies at Comic Con this year? No, I’m actually not talking about Stephen Grant visiting a comic-con in HEROES AND VILLAINS. Instead, this is about spy talk during a panel at this year’s San Diego Comic Con.

As reported by Vice.com: “We’re at an after party for may seem like an unusual panel for San Diego Comic Con: ‘Spy and Espionage Tech: Evolution and Storytelling.’ While two blocks away, convention goers lined up around the corner to get into a joint Variety/YouTube Originals party, Hanson and his fellow panelists—a cybersecurity contractor, a former CIA disguise master, and the amateur DNA analyst credited with cracking the Golden State Killer case—mingled with members of Dent the Future, a club that put on the event.”

Cool.

Check out the full article here.

Spy Stuff: Excuse Me, How Many Spies Are in Washington, D.C.?

It’s not surprising to read that Washington, D.C., is a high-target city for international spies. But the number tossed out in an articlepublished by WTOP.com might makes some eyes pop.

Consider the following from this article (the full piece is well worth reading, by the way):

     According to the International Spy Museum in D.C., an educational and historical center of U.S. intelligence documentation and artifacts, there are “more than 10,000 spies in Washington.”

     While there may be some quibbling about the actual numbers, the FBI agrees with the premise.

     “It’s unprecedented — the threat from our foreign adversaries, specifically China on the economic espionage and the espionage front,” said Brian Dugan, Assistant Special Agent in Charge for Counterintelligence with the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

- Ray Keating

Spy Stuff: JFK, the CIA and the Bay of Pigs

History.com has published an interesting piece on what went wrong with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.

One of the most interesting points:

When the plan, codenamed Operation Zapata, was presented to John F. Kennedy just weeks after he took the oath of office, the newly inaugurated president ultimately gave it his approval. Jim Rasenberger, author of The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, doesn’t believe that military planners pressured the new president into making a decision against his better judgment. “I think Kennedy knew very well what he was getting into, but he was in a tough place,” he says.

Read the entire article here.

- Ray Keating

Spy Stuff: Edinburgh Spy Week

Did you know that in Edninburgh, Scotland, something occurs each year called “Edinburgh Spy Week”? Well, I didn’t until I was just looking at some recent email I saved. 

According to an article in The Herald, “It was a talk by a modern day spy novelist, who just happened to be former head of MI5, that inspired Edinburgh Spy Week, the week-long event organised by three dedicated academics at the University of Edinburgh, that examines not only spy fiction but the history of spying, real life espionage and how the genre has seen crossover with detective and science fiction.” 

This year’s Spy Week ran from April 5 to April 12.

There’s more information at http://www.spyweek.ed.ac.uk. As explained on the website:

“Edinburgh Spy Week focuses on espionage literature, history and film and the ways in which secrecy and spying run through our history and culture. We bring together creative practitioners and academic researchers to talk about books, films and ideas in public and accessible ways.  Spy Week is organised by the English Literature and Film Studies departments at the University of Edinburgh and we work with other cultural bodies in Edinburgh to bring the very best of contemporary spy fact and fiction to the city.”

- Ray Keating 

Spy Stuff: Spying on the Soviet Embassy in West Germany

An interesting article from RealLife.com offers a glimpse at CIA operations targeted at the Soviet Embassy in West Germany during the late 1960s.

I particularly found the following points interesting:

The declassified document describes the embassy as a potentially target-rich environment: 89 Soviets were assigned to the diplomatic facility in some form, and an estimated 60 percent of those were suspected to be connected to Soviet intelligence.

And there’s this:

    For Project CATOPHAT, the CIA was working with 12 assets “selected from American, German and third-country nationals in witting contact with target personnel to whom they have natural access.”

    A helpful Annex that comes with the declassified documents describes the assets: from a husband and wife couple who happen to live next to a suspected KGB officer, to an Austrian-born American medical school dropout who spied on his neighbors. 

    Another asset, a French citizen, was apparently “recruited” on a trip to Moscow by Soviet intelligence officers who were apparently unaware he was already working for the West. The Soviets wanted the Frenchman, in turn, to get himself recruited by the Americans.

Read the entire article here.

- Ray Keating

Spy Stuff: Slave Becomes a Spy for the Continental Army in Revolutionary War

History.com serves up the fascinating story of James Armistead, who was a slave in Virginia, became a spy for the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, and played a crucial part in the American victory at the Battle of Yorktown.

It is noted in the article:

Posing as a runaway slave, Armistead quickly infiltrated British forces via Arnold’s camp. While at first he took on menial tasks, his vast knowledge of the terrain—a trait that wouldn't seem suspicious for a local runaway slave—was useful to both Arnold and Cornwallis for British intelligence during the war. So they assigned him the task of spying on the colonies.
 Armistead’s work as a double agent made traveling between the camps easier, as he didn't stand out as a peculiar presence by either side. It also made collecting information on British forces less dangerous—as long as he wasn’t caught.
 It was a dangerous tightrope act for Armistead: He supplied Lafayette with information on the British through handwritten notes delivered to other spies, meanwhile feeding Cornwallis and his company inaccuracies.

Read the entire article and what eventually happened to James Armistead.

- Ray Keating