Cold+War+Espionage

Cold War Espionage *

“In espionage as I have depicted it, Western man sacrifices the individual to defend the individual's right against the collective.That is Western hypocrisy, and I condemned it because it took us too far into the Communist camp, and too near to the Communist's evaluation of the individual's place in society… The problem of the Cold War is that, as Auden once wrote, we haunt a ruined century. Behind the little flags we wave, there are old faces weeping, and children mutilated by the fatuous conflicts of preachers … there is no victory and no virtue in the Cold War, only a condition of human illness and political misery.” John le Carre //To Russia, with Greetings// (1966)

Top 10 real-life spy gadgets

**1. Poison-tipped umbrella** Probably the most infamous real-life spy gadget is the umbrella used by the Bulgarian secret services – with KGB help – to kill dissident writer and broadcaster Georgi Markov. KGB technicians converted the tip of an ordinary umbrella into a silenced gun that could fire a pellet containing a lethal dose of ricin. On September 7 1978, Markov felt himself being jabbed in the thigh as he walked across Waterloo Bridge. A man behind him apologised and stepped into a taxi. Markov died four days later. No arrests have ever been made. **2. Dart gun** It wasn’t just Soviet bloc spies who used such techniques, though. In a 1975 US Senate hearing on intelligence, CIA director William Colby handed the committee’s chairman a gun developed by his researchers. Equipped with a telescopic sight, it could accurately fire a tiny dart – tipped with shellfish toxin or cobra venom – up to 250 feet. Colby claimed that, as far as he knew, this and other weapons had never been used, but he couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility. **3. Compass buttons** During the war, the Special Operations Executive – ‘Churchill’s secret army’ – created a wealth of Q-like devices. One ingenious invention was magnetized trouser buttons, which were to be used for agent who became lost - if they were taken prisoner, for example. By cutting off the buttons and balancing them on each other, they turned into compasses. **4. Exploding briefcase** Another SOE invention was a briefcase designed to hold sensitive documents, but which would act as a booby trap for any enemy agent trying to open it the wrong way. If the right-hand lock was held down and simultaneously pushed to the right, the briefcase would click open safely; otherwise, the left-hand lock would ignite. **5. Exploding rats** If exploding briefcases weren’t enough, the SOE boffins created something even more outlandish to battle the Nazis – exploding rats. Developed in 1941, the devices used the skins of real rats, with fuses concealed inside. The idea was to use them to blow up German boilers, but they were quickly discovered and so never put into production. **6. Cigarette-case gun** In 1954, Soviet agent Nicolai Khokhlov was sent to Frankfurt to assassinate an anti-Communist leader. But Khokhlov had a last-minute attack of nerves and instead defected to the Americans. The Americans wasted no time in showing the world press the would-be assassin’s equipment, which included a gold cigarette case that concealed an electrically operated gun capable of firing cyanide-tipped bullets. In Ian Fleming’s novel From Russia With Love, fearsome assassin Red Grant tells his masters at SMERSH that they gave Khokhlov's job to the wrong man: “I wouldn’t have gone over to the Yanks.” **7. Hollowed-out lighter** In 1960, MI5 broke up a ring of KGB spies, at the centre of which were two Americans, Morris and Lona Cohen. The Cohens lived in a bungalow in Ruislip under cover as antiquarian booksellers Peter and Helen Kroger. But when MI5 searched the bungalow, they discovered an astonishing array of spy paraphernalia, including a cigarette lighter made by Ronson (the same brand as favoured by James Bond), inside which was hidden several one-time cipher pads. These were printed on cellulose nitrate and impregnated with zinc oxide so they would be easy to burn, thus destroying the evidence. But the Cohens weren’t quick enough, and they served eight years in prison. **8. Wallet document camera** Most intelligence agencies want to recruit people with access to top-secret material, but once recruited they still have to photograph the documents you’re after. If the security is too tight to remove documents from the premises, one way of doing this is to smuggle in a camera. During the Cold War, the KGB developed several disguised cameras, including one that looked just like a small leather pocket wallet – the edge of it was rolled against a document to expose the film. In the Sixties, signals intelligence technician Douglas Britten was blackmailed by the KGB into using one of these to photograph material at RAF Digby. But Britten was in turn photographed by MI5 at the Soviet Consulate in London, and when confronted pleaded guilty to treason. **9. Microphone in an olive** Also in the Sixties, American private detective Hal Lipset became famous when he demonstrated an unusual bugging device at a Senate subcommittee on surveillance: a miniature microphone hidden inside a (fake) olive. Perfect for placement inside a vodka Martini, the toothpick acted as an antenna. The range was short – about thirty feet – but Lipset’s show convinced the Senate to toughen the laws on recording people without their consent. **10. Rock bug** These days bugs can act as cameras, ‘reading’ digital documents and communicating in other ways. But however hi-tech espionage becomes, it seems intelligence agencies still can't resist gadgetry. In 2006, Russian television claimed it had footage of British embassy officials transmitting information via a receiver disguised as a rock in a Moscow street. The British government denied the claim.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6244754.ece
 * The Times Online - May 11th, 2009 **

* **'Spy vs. Spy' **

At the height of the Cold War, they first leapt from the pages of //MAD// Magazine: A white-garbed secret agent and a black-garbed secret agent locked in a mute, cartoon dance of mutual destruction. Today, 40 years later, the comic strip "Spy vs. Spy" remains one of //MAD's// longest-running and best-known features.

The Spies' creator, cartoonist Antonio Prohias, died in 1998. In his native Cuba in the 1950s, Prohias was an award-winning editorial cartoonist. After the revolution, his blistering caricatures drew Fidel Castro's wrath. So in May 1960, Prohias fled to New York City, where he worked in a clothing factory by day and honed his cartoons at night. Inspired by the polarization he saw in his homeland -- where anyone who was not a vocal Communist was dismissed as an infidel -- Prohias devised his black and white spies. He once described them as "two sinister men who do terrible things -- but to one another, and then nobody will make a fuss."  Though the Cold War that spawned them is a fading memory, the Spies’ blood feud persists. //MAD// editor Meglin says he originally intended to publish only a few strips -- but Prohias kept producing plot lines that were "so ingenious, I'd say, 'Okay, maybe a couple more. And maybe a couple more.'

"And 40 years later, maybe a couple more." http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2001/aug/spyvsspy/010830.spyvsspy.html