I’m a 21 year old student called Matthew Lyons in the final year of an illustration and animation course at Loughborough University in England.

Matthew has some amazing work at his blog, which I suggest you all go check out. But there are a few secret agent-y pieces that I thought I’d spotlight for you all here:

Soggy Get Away

Polar Employees (1966)

Dorothy

Welcome back to a weekly series at Mister8 and TheStasi.com, where we look at the autobiographies and essays of the world’s spymasters. Markus Wolf, my esteemed counterpart at TheStasi, is taking excerpts from Ion Pacepa’s Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, and I’m, as usual, looking at Allen Dulles’ The Craft of Intelligence, written in 1963. Dulles (1893-1969) had a long and storied career in intelligence, including a role as the first civilian director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Markus and I have been out of touch this week, and so I have no idea if our excerpts will align. Today I’ve chosen to look at the question of why someone would choose to be an agent (not an intelligence officer — note the distinction that Dulles draws). Allen Dulles lets us know in today’s quite political (and sort of one-sided…he doesn’t go into much detail about why a Westerner might betray their country) excerpt:

The intelligence officer engaged in covert intelligence collection described above is a career staff member of the intelligence service, an American citizen, on duty in a particular place, at home or abroad, acting on the instructions of his headquarters. He is a manager, a handler, a recruiter, also an on-the-spot evaluator of the product of his operatives. The man whom he locates, hires, trains and directs to collect information and whose work he judges is the agent. The agent, who may be of any nationality, may produce the information himself or he may have access to contacts and sources “in place” who supply him with information. His relationship with the intelligence service generally lasts as long as both parties find it satisfactory and rewarding.

If the staff intelligence officer succeeds in locating someone who is attractive to the intelligence service because of his knowledge or access to information, he must first ascertain on what basis the potential agent might be willing to work with him, or by what means he could be induced to do the job. If the agent offers his services, the intelligence officer does not have this problem, but he must still ascertain what brought the agent to him in order to understand him and handle him properly; he might, after all, have been sent by the opposition as a penetration.

As motives, ideological and patriotic convictions stand at the top of the list. The ideological volunteer, if he is sincere, is a man whose loyalty you need rarely question, as you must always question the loyalties of people who work chiefly for money or out of a desire for adventure and intrigue.

Actually, ideology is not hte most accurate word for what we are describing, but we use it for want of a better one. Few people go through the analytical process of proving to themselves abstractly that one system of government is better than another. Few work out an intellectual justification or rationalization for treason as did Klaus Fuchs, who claimed that he could take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown and still pass British secrets to the Soviet Union because “I used my Marxian philosophy to establish in my mind two separate compartments.” It is more likely that views and judgements will be based on feelings and on quite practical considerations. Officials in Communist bureaucracies who are not utterly blind to the workings of the state that employs them cannot fail to see that cynicism and power-grabbing prevail in high places and that teh people are daily being duped with Marxist slogans and distortions of the truth. Communism is a system which deals harshly with all but its fanatical adherents and those who have found a way to profit from it. Every Communist country is full of people who have suffered at the hands of the state or are close to someone who has. Many such people, with only a slight nudge, may be willing to engage in epsionage against a regime which they do not respect, against which they have grievances or about which they are disillusioned.

The man engaged in espionage on behalf of his own country is committing a patriotic act. The man who gives away or sells his own country’s secrets is committing treason. Today we frequently encounter another situation, in which it is usually unjust to speak of treason. The internal political conditions of the Communist nations, as was once the case in the Fascist nations, have caused thousands to flee their homelands, either to save their own lives or because of their vigorous disapproval of the government in power. If an escapee aids his hosts in the country of adoption against the country he has fled, he can hardly be said to be committing treason as that term is generally used.

The ideological agent today usually does not consider himself treasonable in the sense that he is betraying his countrymen. He is motivated primarily by a desire to see the downfall of a hated regime. Since the United States is not imperialistic and makes the distinction of opposing Communist regimes rather than peoples of those countries, there can be a basic agreement in the aims of the ideological agent and the intelligence services of free states.

The more idealistic agent of this type will not engage in espionage lightly. He may at the outset prefer to join some kind of underground movement, if there is one, or perhaps to engage in the political activities of exiles which aim directly at unseating the tyranny which dominates his country.

Wes Britton @ Spywise has spent the past few months assembling a series of best-of lists for the past decade of espionage fiction. It was actually a decade rich with quality movies, television, books, comics and video games, and this is reflected in the lengthy lists of high-caliber media that Wes has put together.

A number of the articles went live today, and Wes sent out the following announcement. Note that I have an installment coming soon (as soon as I finish putting it together!) on the best comics of the decade. I’ll let you know when that one goes live as well:

Spywise.net is delighted to announce the publication of four new articles, the first of our “Decade In Review” features discussing the best espionage-oriented projects released since 2000.

Without question, the Crown Jewels of this series can be found in our “Spies on Film” files:

A Decade in Review: The Best Spy Films, Part I (2000-2004)

A Decade in Review: The Best Spy Films, Part II (2004-2009)

The over 50 pages of insights, opinions, and analysis were written by an international cast of experts from the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and Japan. Craig Arthur, Wesley Britton, David Foster, Anders Frejdh, Amanda Ohlke, and Paul Rowlands each discuss movies you’d expect—the Bourne trilogy, Casino Royale — movies you likely never heard of, and likely some controversial choices.

Then, in the “Spies in History and Literature” files, you’ll find:

A Decade in Review: The Best Spy Literature, 2001-2009

A slightly different team, Craig Arthur, Wesley Britton, Mark T. Hooker, Amanda Ohlke, and Bill Raetz suggest the best spy books of this decade, both novels and non-fiction histories and biographies. Compare your choices with theirs and see if you have some catch-up to do! (Or perhaps some ideas about what we missed . . .)

Finally—for now—the last new article is in the “Spies on Television and Radio” files:

A Decade in Review: What We Brits Saw And What We Didn’t (2000-2009)

by Ian Dickerson

This very lively and personable essay is very different from the other overviews. Here, the longtime Honorary Secretary of “The Saint Club” shares his observations on what U.K. “telly” watchers got to see and why they missed some of the better shows we got in the states.

Coming soon: Wes Britton, Craig Arthur, and David Foster will present the “Top 10” TV programs we’ve seen since 2000. In addition, Armstrong Sabian is preparing his overview of the best spy comics and graphic novels of the decade. In the meantime, the film overviews alone should keep you busy—and hopefully find you matching your own perspectives with fellow fans and experts from around the globe. Let us know what you think—the articles are ready for you as PDF files at—

www.Spywise.net

P.S. The man who handled all the visuals for this series, Peter Lorenz, runs the “Illustrated 007 – The Art of James Bond” blog at–

http://illustrated007.blogspot.com/

Peter didn’t choose to plug himself in the articles, feeling his contributions didn’t match those of the writers. I disagree—he created a great banner, plugged in all the photos, and cleaned up the format. So here’s his bio as thanks for all his hard work:

Peter Lorenz is a veteran Bond collector specializing in 007 artwork from around the world. He lives in London with his wife Mia and constantly runs out of space for his collection.

“The Bagman’s Gambit” -- The Decemberists -- Picaresque -- 2005

On the lam from the law
On the steps of the capitol
You shot a plainclothes cop on the ten o’clock
And I saw momentarily
They flashed a photograph, it couldn’t be you
You’d been abused so horribly
But you were there in some anonymous room

And I recall that fall
I was working for the government
And in a bathroom stall off the National Mall
How we kissed so sweetly
How could I refuse a favor or two?
For a tryst in the greenery
I gave you documents and microfilm, too

And from my ten-floor tenement
Where once our bodies lay
How I long to hear you say
“No, they’ll never catch me now
No, they’ll never catch me
No, they cannot catch me now
We will escape somehow
Somehow”

It was late one night
I was awoken by the telephone
I heard a strangled cry on the end of the line
Purloined in Petrograd
They were suspicious of where your loyalties lay
So I paid off a bureaucrat
To convince your captors there to secret you away

And at the gate of the embassy
Our hands met through the bars
As your whisper stilled my heart
“No, they’ll never catch me now
No, they’ll never catch me
No, they cannot catch me now
We will escape somehow
Somehow”

And I dreamt one night
You were there in fours
Hands held high
In uniform

It was ten years on
When you resurfaced in a motorcar
With the wave of an arm
You were there and gone

Welcome back to a weekly series at Mister8 and TheStasi.com, where we look at the autobiographies and essays of the world’s spymasters, which we’re returning to after a short holiday hiatus. Markus Wolf, my counterpart at TheStasi, is taking excerpts from Ion Pacepa’s Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, and I’m looking at Allen Dulles’ The Craft of Intelligence, written in 1963. Dulles (1893-1969) had a long and storied career in intelligence, including a role as the first civilian director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Today’s excerpt deals with the tracking of illegal radio operators. It’s interesting to recognize how much the technology available to assets and officers has changed, and to wonder how much things like cellphones have affected the game. Over at the Stasi, Markus will be looking at the other side of secret communications — the disguising and placement of micro-transmitters.

Counterintelligence, like most branches of intelligence work, has many technical resources, and one among them has been responsible in the past for uncovering more concealed intelligence networks than any other single measure. This is the interception and locating of illegal radio transmitters, known as “direction-finding,” or D/Fing for short. It employs sensitive electronic which, when mounted on mobile receivers, in a car or truck, can track down the location of a radio signal by indicating whether the signal is getting stronger or weaker as a mobile receiver weaves around a city listening to what has already been identified as an illegal transmitter.

Every legal radio transmitter, commercial or amateur, in most countries today is licensed and registered. In this country the call signal and the exact location of the transmitter are on record with the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC monitors the air waves at all times as a law-enforcement procedure. This leads to the uncovering of enthusiastic “ham” radio operators who haven’t bothered to get a license. It also leads to the discovery of illegal agent transmitters. The latter are usually identifiable because their messages are enciphered and they do not use any call signal on record.

Monitoring of a suspicious signal may also reveal that the operator has some kind of fixed schedule for going on the air, and this almost unfailingly points to the fact that he is transmitting to a foreign headquarters by prearrangement. At this point the D/Fing process begins. The main difficulty of tracking is that the illegal operator stays on the air, for obvious reasons, only for very short periods. As the mobile D/F experts try to trace his signal across a large city on air waves crowded with other signals, he suddenly finishes, goes off the air, and there is nothing the D/Fers can do until he comes on again some days or weeks later. If the Soviets are behind the operation, the transmission schedule, while fixed, may follow a pattern that is not easy to spot. Also, the transmitting frequency may change from time to time. The only solution is for the D/F headquarters to listen for the suspicious signal all the time and keep after it. But here, too, the technicians have invented new improvements to foil and outwit each other. The latest is a high-speed method of transmission. The operator does not sit at his telegraph key sending as fast as he can. He prerecords his message on tape, then plays the tape over the air at breakneck speed, too fast for any ear to disentangle. His receiving station at home records the transmission and can replay it at a tempo which is intelligible. If the illegal operator is on the air for only twenty or thirty seconds, the D/Fers are not going to get very far in their attempt to pinpoint the physical location of the transmitter.

On the second day of Christmas, Judith Hand gave us two novels featuring Nova Blair, Codename: Dove.

On the third day of Christmas, we found ourselves in the presence of three French “hens” of the Bond series.

On the fourth day of Christmas, the calling Thunderbirds are go!

On the fifth day of Christmas, five Goldfinger scenes!

On the sixth day of Christmas, Roger Moore and Richard Burton were Wild Geese!

On the seventh day of Christmas, Derek Flint danced to Swan Lake.

On the eighth day of Christmas, maids weren’t milking, but killing!

On the ninth day of Christmas, Cyd Charisse was a lady dancing!

On the tenth day of Christmas, stuntman Wayne Michaels was a lord a’leapin’!

On the eleventh day of Christmas, Greg Pattillo piped some fantastic versions of spy tunes!

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Akira Tana provided drums for some great other spy covers!

And, on the thirteenth day, as a bonus, here’s the return of G. Emory Partridge in “The Gazebo in the Maze Affair”:

Akira Tana - Secret Agent Men

Selected tracks from a wonderful album by jazz drummer Akira Tana:

Secret Agent Man:

Mission Impossible:

Charade:

From Russia With Love: