I stumbled on Hoch totally by fortuitous accident. Hoch, who died in 2008, was a prolific short story writer with several series to his credit. PerhapI stumbled on Hoch totally by fortuitous accident. Hoch, who died in 2008, was a prolific short story writer with several series to his credit. Perhaps the most famous involves Nick Velvet, a thief who specializes in stealing very odd, often worthless things. For example, why steal three letters (only a certain three) from a building sign and do it while being watched by the police; or, why steal all the water from a certain swimming pool on a certain day, or a rare tiger from a zoo. He accepts only a huge flat fee for his work. Velvet has to be a detective as well as a thief in order to suss out the reasons behind the peculiar requests. He does, and sometimes it requires turning tables on his employer.
This volume also contains stories about Rand, the spy master. Like Velvet, Rand needs to play detective often to figure out the motives behind people’s actions.
I’m hooked and intend to read all the 950 stories. They’re charming. ...more
OK, I realize Downing is just setting this book up as the first in a new series. I read his "station" series, Zoo Station, etc. and enjoyed them. TheyOK, I realize Downing is just setting this book up as the first in a new series. I read his "station" series, Zoo Station, etc. and enjoyed them. They were all set in events related to WW II. This one places Jack McColl, a British spy, before WWI, with lots of historical background related to the Germans, the Irish seeking to kick the British from their Island, and the British trying to protect their Empire. Things get really complicated for McColl when he falls in love with a journalist whose brother is working with the Irish. McColl survives several assassination attempts, and it's all murky. Moves from Asia to the U.S. to Mexico, to the U.K.
I had this audiobook set up to listen through Alexa and it was fine for that as I need not pay too much attention while making the bed, cleaning up, doing chores, etc. Well read, but not as good as the aforementioned series. Don't know if I'll continue with this series or not. Too many other better books to read/listen to. ...more
I picked up this book for $1.00 at Dollar Tree. It was worth forty times that. It was extraordinary. I had a terrible time putting it down. Terrific bI picked up this book for $1.00 at Dollar Tree. It was worth forty times that. It was extraordinary. I had a terrible time putting it down. Terrific blend of mystery, investigation, spy and war story.
The Valley was a long ribbon of ever narrowing gorge leading to the Pakistan border. The furthest outpost from the FOB Omaha was known as Vega and was manned by a platoon under almost constant fire. It was supplied weekly and Lt. Black, relegated to administrative desk duties for some as yet unspecified violation of Army tradition or protocol, has been randomly assigned to investigate a case of a warning shot that had killed a farmer's goat. Black is universally despised by the rest of the troops. His commander, Lt. Colonel Gayley wasn't a bad commander, as things went. He was classic army and Black's description is priceless:
True, the beating bureaucratic heart of the Army had a slobbering crush on officers like Gayley. Somewhere in a lab at West Point his instructors had mixed him in a bowl. whipping into him the precise proportions of accountability. flawless attention to detail. chipper optimism, and bold cooperativeness. folding in a hardy tolerance for paperwork and a relentless professional ambition, with a dash of tanned physical perfection for flavor. They had tried and failed many times before, but when they poured Gayley into the mold and pulled him from the oven, they saw what they'd made and cried, 'That's it!' its' then hugged one another and drank reasonable amounts of sparkling cider to celebrate. He was a little of everything and a little of nothing. He yelled at the right people, didn't yell at the wrong people, didn't fail in his duties, didn't cause surprises or embarrassments. He was just so.
When Black arrives at Vega, he's met with hostility. The soldiers know Black doesn't have a clue what they go through almost on a daily basis. He thinks the 5-16 is bullshit. They know it's bullshit Just the day before his arrival, a new soldier had lagged just a few feet behind his squad on patrol in the fog and disappeared, to reappear the next day, ball-less, intestines hanging out, tied to a tree in front of the outpost, and alive. But he didn't cry out because he knew anyone who came to help would be shot by snipers in the hills overlooking their post. And they know the villagers they are there to help participate and help the Taliban. Shades of Vietnam. It's all so fucked up.
But.... so they all think.
Note: The attack on COP Vega bears a striking resemblance to a real event, the attack on COP Keating in 2009. Renehan has referred to it as well as Jake Tapper's book a bout COP Keating. (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...) or Red Platoon by a Medal of Honor winner who was there. (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...)
One of the most overlooked parts of the Muller report is the detailed information the FBI, et al., collected on Russian interference in the 2016 elec One of the most overlooked parts of the Muller report is the detailed information the FBI, et al., collected on Russian interference in the 2016 election. They determined the names and location of the GRU officers and cyberspies who conducted the operation, what they did and how they did it. It was an extraordinary piece of sleuthing. Cyberspies places all this in historical context.
This book has something for everyone: history, spying, and interesting characters. While he argues that "hacking" using technology has a long history dating back millennia, he chose to begin with the cutting of German cables on the ocean floor during WW I. Leaping-frogging rather quickly he then begins with the use of computers (people, those who computed) and especially Flowers and Turing who respectively understood the larger picture and how "valves" (vacuum tubes in American) could be used binarily to process data. Along the way, he tries to answer questions of what cyber spying is, how such developed and its impact in today’s world politically, economically, and in the intelligence communities. An ambitious goal indeed.i.e.
There are two key components to the world of spies: attribution, i.e. can you trace back a decision or instruction to its source; and integrity, the accuracy of the data, for getting just one component of a message wrong could mean sending a missile to the wrong target. Scrambling a message so it can't be read by the unauthorized is an inherent part of spycraft and technology has made all of that both easier and more difficult at the same time. “Few outside the intelligence world understand the extent to which spies in the US and Britain perceive technology as an existential threat to their work,” Corera writes. “An arms race is on between spy services to exploit technology. Only those who adapt will survive.”
Spying has more than just military significance. The Russians and others have taken economic espionage to a new level. Collecting information peripherally is important. The author provides an example of Russian trolling for information about a particular executive whom the intelligence services had determined was gay but not out of the closet. “The hackers then sent him an email from a gay rights organization which they suspected he would open since it looked as if it was sent to him, but in fact held malware,” Corera writes. “They then counted on the fact that, even if the executive did suspect it was malware, he would not be willing to go to his company’s IT department or security team for fear it would reveal his sexuality. This is classic, high level, targeted Russian espionage.”
There's intelligence and then there's information. Spying in common parlance conjures up images of dangerous men with guns in tuxedos in scary situations who can leap tall buildings in a single jump. Or the silent bureaucratic types of Le Carre. The author has a wonderful metaphor for the difference in how spying is done by different countries. Let's say you want to find out what kind of sand is on a particular beach in some foreign country. The UK would send a submarine with divers in wet suits (bow ties and suits underneath) to surreptitiously retrieve a sample of sand from the beach. The Americans would use technology to and fly satellites, drones, and planes over the area to take lots of pictures. The Chinese would send tourists to the country to have a good time, visit the beaches, and then shake out their towels when they got home.
It's a comprehensive look at how spying developed, including the misconceptions about what spying is and its development over time into not just military purposes uses but economic, as well. Corera includes a detailed history and an examination of how cyber spying was affected by the revelations of the collection of data by government agencies by Snowden, and suggestions on what the future of cyber spying and offensive actions may hold for us. It's organized in a logical chronological way and intricate cyber threats and attacks are explained clearly.
The scale of cyber espionage has evolved way beyond the wildest dreams of a former Stasi officer who noted their maximum capability was to tap forty lines at once. Now, given that almost all of the world’s internet traffic flows at some time or another through the United States, the NSA, with its sweeping authority and collection devices, has access to everything. Worried about public encryption keys, they sweep up and store ALL of the telephone traffic in the U.S. and many other places arguing they don’t listen to the content but merely search the metadata attached to digital traffic. And since even analog conversations get converted to digital at some point, that’s everything. Metadata is easy to search and often more revealing than content.
In their search to build an even larger haystack (you can’t find the needle without the haystack) they even resorted to techniques even aside from the famous clipper chip debacle. In one instance, discovered by Kaspersky Labs, they arranged to have malware hidden into DVDs that were given to participants of hacker and security conferences attended by analysts from all around the world that contained records and presentations of the conference. This gave them worldwide access to computers run by the most sensitive personnel.
Snowden’s revelations of the NSA’s spying capabilities had less affect on national security than it did on business. It’s hard to maintain a global outreach and increase your revenue if it becomes widely known that anything you do using the company’s products will become NSA fodder. Zuckerberg, in particular, was furious after the revelations, complaining to Obama that his business model was being hurt. Screw national security; you’re hurting our business, was the message.
1984 doesn’t even remotely compare to today’s capabilities.
Some reviewers have complained that a weakness of the book is its specialization and detail; that's what I liked. Unfortunately, the world changes so fast that more recent events are obviously not included. Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg fills that gap and should also be read. Overall a fascinating glimpse at the evolution of the new cyber world.
N.B. Years ago I read Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage (1990) (how the author tracked down a spy ring because he wanted to know how and why 75 cents of computer time was unaccounted for.) Stoll is highlighted for his work in this book. Stoll also wrote (in 1996) a prescient view of the problems inherent in the Internet: Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway . For a truly prescient view of the problems with interconnectivity written in 1955, see a SF masterpiece by Thomas Ryan, The Adolescence of P-1
Ironically, Gellman was not the first choice for Snowden to use as a conduit for the extraordinary information he had gleaned from the NSA related to their surveillance of U.S.citizens. Glenn Greenwald had ignored Snowden's tentative approach, all cloaked with great secrecy, of course. Gellman's description of the techniques he used to hide what he was doing was fascinating by itself.
What did Snowden reveal? The NSA's stated goal is to collect and process everything, all communications. They have a huge volume problem. They try to filter out the junk and ignore the spam, but sophisticated opposition has realized that spam can be used to hide messages. They look for anything with lists, address books connected to individual accounts, to build sophisticated social network analysis. A lot of digital traffic moves through the United States making the NSA's job easier. Even a phone call from Spain to Colombia may be routed through the U.S. Fears of Chinese dominance through Huawei may be justified. The NSA has legal coercive powers to force communications entities to turn over anything they ask for. So if they are denied access in the U.S., they simply go to one of the social network technologies centers in another country and get it from there. General Hayden former NSA Director justified the sweeping collection of data by saying that "you can't find a needle in a haystack without the haystack." But just as it would be useful to search every house on the block to find something doesn't mean you should be allowed to do it.
Gellman insists that Snowden's revelations did more good than harm but he cocedes that some harm may have been done. The Communications system is so complicated and intertwined that Snowden insists that many processes the NSA had in place change and don't work any more simply based on changes to the communications infrastructure that had nothing to do with Snowden. Firmware gets updated, hardware and software changed, so much of their success must rely on mistakes made by others and the capabilities are constantly being changed.
Perhaps an irony of Snowdon's actions is that he revealed how poor the NSA was at keeping its own secrets. We have learned since that the NSA "lost" many very sophisticated hacking tools, which were later used to wreck substantial damage around the world when modified slightly by malicious hackers. Another irony is that some of the NSA's biggest defenders and Snowden's antagonists have done a 360 since Trump and his tyrannical postures have been revealed. Government can't be trusted and the president has no interest in any legal restraints on his power. Jim Clapper who originally wanted Gellman arrested now questions whether there are enough restraints in place to prevent abuse. The Internet is far more secure than it was before the revelations and even some national security types and James Comey said to the author that Snowden did more good than harm.
Gellman met many times with Snowden and the section on their relationship is fascinating. How they communicated, how trust changed and morphed. Snowden is a man of very strong principles and a zealot, perhaps overly confident in his own rightness. An autodidact, he's very well and widely read so discussions would range over many areas. Ultimately, Snowden got stuck in Moscow because the U.S. canceled his passport hoping to keep him in Hong Kong but he was already on a plane intending to transfer in Moscow for elswhere, but when they landed the authorities said he could not leave because his passport was no longer valid.
Gellman suffered no legal consequences for publishing the Snowden material, and in an interview on Lawfare, Gellman makes the distinction between espionage and reporting. The spy seeks out information that he wants to keep secret and to use that information to harm his adversary. The journalist, on the other hand seeks to make the information public to encourage debate as to whether his society wants to approve and continue certain actions. That kind of debate is essential in a free and democratic society.
Much of the distrust for government stems from Watergate and Vietnam during which it became clear that government was lying to the public to prevent them from know what their government was doing. Snowden's revelations have not assuaged that distrust. ...more
This is the fifth Gerlis spy novel I have read. I liked all of them. They have interesting characters and sound historical grounding in real events. TThis is the fifth Gerlis spy novel I have read. I liked all of them. They have interesting characters and sound historical grounding in real events. This one follows Richard Prince, a British detective enlisted to collect information in Germany about the V-1 and V-2 rockets. It's the first in a new series. Now on to the second....more
At the end of the war, Berlin was a mess. Children wandered the streets, people were starving, and anything could be had for a cigarette. Add to the mAt the end of the war, Berlin was a mess. Children wandered the streets, people were starving, and anything could be had for a cigarette. Add to the mix thousands of soldiers, all of them bored, and you have a recipe for depredation. "‘The ruins turned us all into rats … The self can be pretty vile if let off the leash.’ All those feral children. All that hunger and starvation. It must have been a feeding frenzy for someone like Blackburn. He wouldn’t have been alone either. Men like that recognized each other, hunted in packs, and protected each other. . . It was like stepping into hell. The problem is, some men like hell."
Some of those predators were officers and they turned a lodge into a true den of iniquity, some of them preying on children. But someone else was writing down the names of the worst, and many of those same men went on to high-level careers in government. Throw in those who want to sabotage the glasnost talks about reducing nuclear weapons and you have a rather incendiary mix.
Major Tom Fox is sent to Berlin to bring back a former defector. It was to be a simple mission. He has none of the above information, but soon it's apparent that someone wants the defector dead and Tom, too. But, most of all they want the memoirs the defector had been supposedly writing as he had the list of names. Fox is caught in a vice but has no idea who's turning the screws. When his children is kidnapped to coerce his cooperation, things get desperate.
This book will suck you into it as it races to the conclusion. I have already ordered Grimwood's other book. Superior spy novel. ...more
A common definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over while expecting different results each time. That is a good definition of IsraelA common definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over while expecting different results each time. That is a good definition of Israeli-Arab relations. Katz, enamored of the Israeli armed forces, writes hagiographically about the Israeli strike on the Syrian nuclear plant in 2007. Justification for this act of war was the assumption that a nuclear power plant -- Israel has several in addition to nuclear weapons -- could only be used to create the material for nuclear weapons, the presence of which Israel assumed could only be an existential threat to their country. **
There is an assumption that some countries act responsibly when it comes to nuclear weapons and others are not. Israel, while never admitting publicly it has nuclear weapons, clearly does, yet cannot seem to understand why that knowledge would not encourage hostile neighbors to want the same. Another assumption is that democracies will always act more sensibly than authoritarian governments. Recent events in the United States reveal just how fragile that assumption is. It's an assumption Plato warned about a millennia ago when he foresaw the seeds of its own destruction built into democratic governments.
Israel has determined (at least the more recent governments) that countries in the Middle East will not (except for itself) be permitted to have nuclear weapons nor nuclear power plants that might be used to create the seeds of a nuclear weapons program. They see it as an existential threat. Then again, they see almost everything they don't like as an existential threat.
From his extensive interviews with the decision-makers, advisers and planners — American and Israeli — Katz, the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, has written a gripping story of the Sept. 6, 2007 destruction of a secret, nearly completed al-Kabar nuclear reactor in Syria. knowledge of which was confirmed only in March of 2018. The Syrian strike at al-Kabar was not the first time the Israelis felt compelled to act. On June 7, 1981, the IAF destroyed a nuclear reactor in Osirak, Iraq, which was, at the time, a nation ruled by Saddam Hussein, another dictator willing to use chemical weapons.
A fascinating portion of the book is devoted to the discussions within the Bush administration on the proper response to the intelligence that had been shared by Israel about the construction of a reactor in Syria. It was the hawks (Cheney et al) v diplomats (Rice eta al.) each with valid concerns and suspecting different outcomes. What was the possibility of a wider war? What would be the reaction of the Russians? Would this help or hurt the Iranians? Was the intelligence legitimate. It was an example of how government should work, but often doesn't.
Cheney, ever the hawk and advocate of preemptive strikes, whatever the issue, was alone in thinking the U.S. should bomb the site. Everyone else in the Cabinet thought otherwise. The Iraq war, begun on faulty intelligence, was not going well and the feeling was that each administration gets just one war; trying to conduct two would lead to disaster. A more nuanced role proposed by a few was that the facility should be destroyed, but better that Israel should do the bombing. It would reinforce the view that Israel had rebounded from the Lebanese debacle and help issue a warning that Israel could handle its own affairs and protection and was not the minor stepchild of the U.S.
The author claims at the end of the book that it was less about the strike than decision-making. That's certainly true. But what a messy process, indeed, influenced less by reality than perceptions, ideology, religion, and politics.
**It was just learned that Syria fired a missile that landed perilously close to an Israeli nuclear plant in April 2021. Israeli responded with a retaliatory strike. Agence France has reported that Israel is suspected to have between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons. [https://www.france24.com/en/middle-ea...] ...more
Singer and Friedman argue that cyber knowledge needs to be a requirement in schools. All the kids are now in cyberspace yet there is little formal eduSinger and Friedman argue that cyber knowledge needs to be a requirement in schools. All the kids are now in cyberspace yet there is little formal education about the insecurity of simple passwords, the importance of OS updates, and problems inherent in social networking as a mechanism to reveal personal information. Most common password="password" and the 2nd most common is "123456". Common words are easily hack-able. One high level executive told his IT people he only wanted a one letter password, that he was too busy to be bothered to type in a long one. By the end of the day he had labelled himself to everyone in the corporation as a really stupid person and one who didn't care about security.
With complexity comes vulnerability. BMW had designed a high tech car and when authorities in Paris couldn't figure out why only a certain new model of BMW was being stolen they reviewed CCTV cameras and discovered how the thieves could hack into the car's software, unlock the doors, reprogram a blank key and just drive off, all in the pace of five minutes. Terrorists use social networking to get their word out and often with the unwilling connivance of the West. One terrorist cell was using a web hosting company located in Texas to promote their campaign. The hosting company had sixteen million web pages, had not seen the offending pages, and did nothing until someone happened to point out to them what they were doing.
Humans are often the weak link in the chain. In a famous "candy drop" attack, malevolent actors left flash drives around a military base. Sure enough, a soldier picked one up and inserted it in his machine to see what was on it. It took the Army 14 months to clean up the damage to all its machines. People will often just give out their passwords to official sounding individuals who may or may not be really who they say they are. In another example, some soldiers in Iraq took pictures inside their helicopters and posted them to a picture website. There was nothing classified in the pictures but each picture contained locational information in the meta-data and terrorist were able to destroy the helicopters in a mortar attack by knowing their exact location. Emails, pictures, virtually everything that moves on the Internet has meta-data attached to it and just a routine search of social sites can reveal all sorts of information about people they would rather not have known
Just defining what is or is not an attack can be problematic. The authors identify several types. What the response should be may depend on the severity or the result. Often even experts can't agree on what constitutes an attack. How about denial of service attacks. If it simply interferes with gamers ability to finish a game it's not as serious as preventing banks from interacting with their customers or delivering a utility. Is stealing someone's identity in a confidentiality attack just as serious as stealing the plans of a new fighter jet? In one war game sponsored by the U.S. the opposition team changed the shipping labels on shipments intended for troops and they received toilet paper instead of ammunition and MREs.
NSA surveillance practices have caused tension throughout the world. In one instance, the Dutch, were about to refuse any access to cloud services in the Netherlands to U.S. companies. Some foreign countries have now begun to institutionalize the Internet as a basic human right. Authoritarian regimes, on the other hand, see internet freedom as a threat to their governments. Censorship is seen as a tool for stability. In Thailand it's against the law to defame the monarch; in Britain it's a hobby. Cultural differences abound. Internet governance is still up for grabs.
A really interesting book, aimed at the informed layperson. The problem with books of such currency is that they really lack timelessness because of the speed with which the technology changes so the reader has to assume the possibilities have advanced far beyond what the author has explained....more
This is an excellent book, a very readable, veritable page-turner that details in clear, understandable terms, the technology, bureaucratic in-fightinThis is an excellent book, a very readable, veritable page-turner that details in clear, understandable terms, the technology, bureaucratic in-fighting, and events that have led us to where we are today, on the cusp of a revolution in surveillance, intelligence, and warfare.
It's almost a truism that generals fight the last war instead of the present one. That is certainly obvious from reading Kaplan's very disturbing history of cyber vulnerabilities in the United States. In spite of the efforts of numerous people in the CIA and NSA to alert the Defense establishment to their vulnerabilities, top ranking officers, for whatever reason, ignored the warnings or even misused the information they were given by the intelligence people or failed to take advantage of that information.
For example, during the first Iraq war, General Shwarzkopf was provided with the locations of the fiber optic switching locations that carried all the traffic between Saddam's headquarters and his army in Kuwait. Schwarzkopf was happy to bomb those installations, but when the transmission were replaced with microwave towers he bombed those, too, against the advice of the intelligence types who knew that microwave transmission were easily monitored via satellite and available for information harvesting.
Generally, the military establishment was very skeptical of charges their networks were insecure. Ironically, it was a movie, War Games, that motivated not just hundreds of hackers but also Ronald Reagan, who, after bringing in experts who assured him all that was possible, began a campaign to analyze networks. Repeatedly, the military had to be shown just how insecure the networks were. There was the inevitable overreaction by the NSA who wanted to install a chip (the Clipper chip) in every computer in the country that would monitor transmissions and provide a backdoor for the intelligence community to monitor everything. That failed, but thanks to Snowden, we know that it wasn't needed and the NSA is basically collecting every phone and message transmission in the U.S. close to 2 billion per day.
There was always tension between the NSA and technologists side and civilians. The NSA wanted "zero days" (holes open for exploitation in software) left open so they could exploit them, while those holes could be used by foreign governments and malicious hackers to wreck havoc on the civilian population: good for national security, bad for individuals. When Bush was elected in 2000, all the work of Richard Clarke and George Tenet was thrown out the window. Bush wanted nothing to do with Clinton initiatives or people so their warnings about Al Qaida were dismissed. Cheney and Bush were more interested in threats from Russia and Iran so they could build their missile defense system.
In the panic following 9/11, bureaucratic in-fighting for control of the money that was being thrown at terrorism went into overdrive. Verisign (the company that controls domain and registration web names) had analyzed web traffic and discovered that 80% of all the internet traffic in the world flowed through one of two major distribution points in the United States. The NSA realized that was a goldmine for information gathering and with the help of Mitch McConnell pushed through features of the Patriot Act that eventually permitted the NSA to "store" (collecting information on U.S. citizens without a warrant was illegal) virtually all the internet traffic in the world. The ramifications were enormous. If for example, an American citizen were to have phoned a number anywhere in the world that "might" have had terrorist connections, the NSA could go to a FISA court (all in secret) to get a warrant to track other calls plus calls made by others this person might have called and calls those people made, looking for "connections". Before you know it, that one call, which might even have been accidental, would result in collecting relationships of millions of Americans, thus completely subverting the prohibition against surveilling Americans.
One can only wonder at the immense power granted numerous federal agencies by the Patriot Act, which permits so much to be done in secret. When I was director of a college library, we were very concerned by one feature that pertained to libraries. The FBI could walk into the library, demand to see the patron records of anyone, and it was a federal crime not just to refuse, but also even to mention to anyone that they had asked for it. Fortunately, the library community designed its software to delete any trace of books that had been checked out. Having read Kaplan's book, I suspect now they wouldn't bother to ask as they have the capability to examine all the metadata of all the internet and phone traffic anywhere in the world.
One can only wonder how Trump, were he smart enough, might use such incredible power. Then again, if I were he, I would be very afraid of what those same agencies might have on him. J. Edgar Hoover is salivating in his grave
Alex Gerlis has become a favorite writer of mine for spy novels, one who ranks right there with LeCarre. I won't attempt to reprise the plot, which, aAlex Gerlis has become a favorite writer of mine for spy novels, one who ranks right there with LeCarre. I won't attempt to reprise the plot, which, as in all good spy novels is convoluted and opaque. It has MI6, MI5, the BfV, Stasi, KGB, the Baader-Meinhof gang, Nazis, East Berlin, and assorted embassies, all nicely intertwined into a story with a very satisfactory ending.
There are also some delectable quotes. For example, "He became a Marxist, which is not an uncommon occurrence with the English middle class – one of our English agents told me it’s what happens to them in between losing their virginity and getting a mortgage." and in a satisfying snippet of cynicism, "‘You – we – are most fortunate,’ said the Assistant Director, ‘these days the press and indeed the public attribute any act of apparently political violence in West Germany to the Red Army Faction or the Baader-Meinhof Group, whatever one calls them. The West German press and their counterparts over here have already decided that what happened in Cologne and Bonn yesterday were acts of terrorism carried out by the Red Army Faction."
You may think the book gets off to a slow start, but rest assured everything will be nicely tied together. ...more
I've been reading a lot of heavy stuff lately (reviews to follow eventually ) and some law review articles in preparation for a presentation on John BI've been reading a lot of heavy stuff lately (reviews to follow eventually ) and some law review articles in preparation for a presentation on John Bingham and the 14th Amendment, so it's always nice to find something well-put together that doesn't insult the intelligence, but nicely engages. Kevin Wignall's To Die in Vienna is of the spy-like genre, a favorite of mine, and it fit the bill nicely.
Freddie is a surveillance expert who has been tasked with watching the activities of a Chinese national in Vienna. He has come to know Cheng's habits intimately, but one day he returns home early to find his apartment being trashed and he barely escapes with his life just managing to kill his attacker with a steam iron. His boss is clearly terrified then he is also killed and Freddie realizes it's time to hide. So he does in the place least likely to be suspected and in plain sight.
Things get complicated as they usually do, and Freddie's determined not to kill anyone, the reason for which is gradually determined. Freddie also happens to have numerous skills that he had preferred to leave unused and hidden.
Good story that moves forward nicely. I will read more Wignall. ...more
We are introduced first to Nate, a relatively new CIA operative in Moscow, who manages to elude a random counter-intelligence sweep while meeting withWe are introduced first to Nate, a relatively new CIA operative in Moscow, who manages to elude a random counter-intelligence sweep while meeting with a very high level Russian source. Then comes Vanya, uncle to Dominika, chief of the counter-intelligence agency, devoid of any ethic other than devotion to his country who enlists (quasi blackmails) Dominika who sees the world in assorted colors - literally - into the SVR and for training at the Kon Institute (prostitutki school - I leave what that is to your imagination)in order to seduce Nate whom he had suspected as the contact for the mole in his government. Nate has been moved to Finland as punishment for almost getting his source revealed.
Then it gets tricky as each tries to recruit the other. I will not reveal too much more except to suggest that two agents known to each other with the same handler, one of whom is a highly placed Soviet Mole, the other one in the U.S. and each side engaged in vigorous mole hunting. It makes for fun reading.
Why the author included recipes at the end of each chapter is totally beyond me, however. I look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy. It will be interesting to see whether the movie makes a mash out of the book....more
Edgar is back (I really don't like him much) in this excellent spy novel that takes place in Vienna during the forties. Not much to say in addition toEdgar is back (I really don't like him much) in this excellent spy novel that takes place in Vienna during the forties. Not much to say in addition to my comments about the other two books in the series (only loosely can they be called a series; only in the sense some of the characters are the same.) I hope Gerlis writes more. They are quite good....more
Another of those must reads after watching the eponymous movie. I have this need to always find out what really happened, i.e., what verity there mighAnother of those must reads after watching the eponymous movie. I have this need to always find out what really happened, i.e., what verity there might be in the dramatic film version compared to real life. Some background reading revealed that John A. Walker’s achievements were monumental. The Soviets could read our communications but not break the code until Walker gave them the code cards. But that was only half of the puzzle. The North Korean hijacking of the Pueblo in 1968 gave them the machine (whether that was the intent of the hijacking remains an interesting speculation.) Why the U.S. didn’t change all its codes after the hijacking baffles me, but they didn’t, and the Soviets could read all the U.S. military traffic until 1980 when the system was changed. That was millions of coded messages. “K-mart store has better security than the U.S. Navy,” John told the author in one of his interviews.
This is the extraordinary story of John Walker who, as a Navy warrant officer, passed vital secrets to the Russians, not out of any political conviction, but purely for the money. He successfully enlisted his friends and relatives in his operation. This went on for more than twenty years. And he would never have been caught except John’s maltreatment of his wife. In fact, the FBI initially discounted Barbara’s revelations much as they ignored the information they had on the 9/11 attackers. John soon realized their ineptitude. “I began to realize that the FBI is not like it is on television. You see, the FBI doesn’t really do any investigating. It doesn’t know how to investigate. The FBI is not powerful at all because its agents are really just bureaucrats and they have the same inherent ineptitude of all government bureaucrats. All they do is spend their days waiting for some snitch to call them and turn someone in. That’s how they operate, and I was beginning to sense that.”
I have always said that the danger to an institution is more likely to come from within (this applies to computer facilities and well as American society - especially with Trump now on the loose.) Of course, that is the danger inherent in trust and it’s virtually impossible to live in a society devoid of trust so the balance between trust and openness and self-protection is a delicate one. “Perhaps it is time for intelligence experts to rethink this central concept of attitudinal loyalty, this idea that Americans don’t betray their country to foreign powers the way that Europeans are perceived to do quite regularly. We trust our citizens to an extent that is almost unknown in history and unheard of in most other countries. This is as it should be. However, we live in a society where money is no longer a mere commodity, but a sacrament. Money is power, possessions, persona, sex, and status.”
audiobook that tells the story of a disgruntled U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst who used his cipher skills to almost pull off an incredible intel audiobook that tells the story of a disgruntled U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst who used his cipher skills to almost pull off an incredible intelligence theft and attempted sale of classified documents. The author discusses the spy’s background and details the tedious work of the FBI in tracking him down. It was an intelligence agency’s nightmare: having a mole in your own agency.
The FBI received a package containing several letters in a sophisticated cipher but when deciphered were marked by numerous misspellings. Those errors proved to be Brian Regan’s undoing. The FBI agent who doggedly pursued him was Steven Carr, and the methods used to track him are straight out of the best espionage/police procedural novels. Regan was a retired Air Force Master Sergeant whose dyslexia and ineptitude with social skills made him an almost perfect spy and he was viewed as the least likely person to be involved in such a scheme. One of eight children, he had been bullied and mistreated most of his childhood, considered stupid by most of his teachers because of his dyslexia. Steven Carr, his FBI antagonist, was a devout Catholic who considered his mission to track down Regan as a spiritual assignment.
Once they had identified their suspect, the FBI had to build a case, and here another of the ironies appeared. The agent who broke Regan’s ciphers had a disability himself, one that prevented him from doing arithmetic functions and math, a form of dyscalculia. He was really good at word problems but doing straight arithmetic and polynomial functions was very difficult. He was superb, however at pattern recognition and was discovered while taking a class from a postal inspector who told the clasExcellents to ignore some codes because they are insoluble. He took it as a challenge and deciphered the codes during class. First, though, to get into the FBI he had to get a college degree and it was only with the help of a very understanding math instructor (probably at a community college) that he managed to pass the math requirement.
Something I have emphasized over and over to my friends is to never, ever, ever, put anything into a digital document or email you don’t want the world to see. In spite of Regan’s having formatted his HD and deleted documents, they were, of course, all recoverable, including multiple versions of letters he had written. (The only way to truly protect yourself -- short of using a hammer to smash and fire to melt -- is to use a program that writes over your HD with multiple passes using gibberish.)
I love books about codes and ciphers so I liked the sections where Bhattacharjee discusses Regan’s system in some detail. Others may prefer the human aspects of the characters. For me it was a perfect mix and a very enjoyable book, difficult to put down. What was astonishing was how easy it was for Regan to steal highly classified material. Then again government has a tendency to over-classify material which perhaps leads people to be careless with the stuff. That he was discovered at all was a fluke, and the letters deciphered only because the letters happened to be delivered at the same time.
All spy stories should be this devious. Lt. Quinn, having been returned to England following his ship being boBest spy novel I have ever read. Ever.
All spy stories should be this devious. Lt. Quinn, having been returned to England following his ship being bombed into oblivion off Crete, falls in love with one of his nurses. Unbeknownst to him she is a German spy in deep cover, but the spymasters in Bletchley Park know it and are manipulating their relationship so they can turn her into a double agent without her, or his, knowledge. “He has no idea whatsoever who she is. He is unaware of what is going on. Thinks this beautiful Frenchwoman who is two years older than him has fallen in love with him. He is like the cat that has found the cream, gallons of the stuff, in fact.” The idea is to feed her all sorts of false information leading to an assumption that the real invasion of the continent will take place at Pas de Calais and not Normandy which they want the Germans to believe is just a diversion. Then she is sent to France.
Not only is it a terrific spy novel, but a good love story, as well and nicely set in an historical context. You will begin to question good and evil and whether the end can ever justify the means....more
Henry is on his way back to Switzerland from Britain. It’s 1939 and he’s stopped at the border before getting on his flight. Edgar, a member of the BrHenry is on his way back to Switzerland from Britain. It’s 1939 and he’s stopped at the border before getting on his flight. Edgar, a member of the British Secret Service then blackmails him into spying for them. After some training he’s sent back to Switzerland through France where he is to wait for more instructions. In France, however, Henry circuitously and surreptitiously sneaks away briefly to meet with his Russian handlers. Turns out he’s a Russian spy and his handlers now think they control a double agent. But then we learn the British are fully aware of Henry’s relationship with the Russians. Add a Jewish woman and her daughter hiding from the Gestapo and the plot thickens beyond stew.
# 4 in the John Russell series. At the end of volume 3 in this excellent series, Russell had escaped to Sweden and Effi had returned to Berlin, hiding# 4 in the John Russell series. At the end of volume 3 in this excellent series, Russell had escaped to Sweden and Effi had returned to Berlin, hiding in plain sight disguised as an old woman by using her make-up and acting skills. Germany had just declared war on America and the Gestapo sought both of them. Fast forward to April, 1945. Paul, John’s son, is sixty miles from Berlin on the eastern front as part of a Panzerfaust unit as the eastern front shrinks, Effi is surviving but also working to help refugees escape, and Russell is in Moscow hoping to enter Berlin with the Russian troops to find Effi.
Downing follows the travails of John (struggling to get back to Berlin to find Effie), Effie (hiding from the Gestapo as she helps refugees escape the city), and Paul (trying to stay alive as his unit is pushed back to Berlin) as each tries to survive the war in the inferno that 1945 Berlin had become. And Downing vividly describes that hell.
I won’t risk spoiling anything about the plot. Let it be enough to say this series is excellent, but please read them in order.
NB: Re the Kindle edition. The book switches perspectives regularly, e.g., from Russell to Effi to Paul and back, and there is often no transition in the Kindle edition, it’s just the next paragraph, no space, no chapter, no nothing. That needs to be fixed. On the other hand, I see there are new editions out and mine is an older one, so perhaps that has been fixed. ...more
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