Saturday, December 31, 2016
FBI: A Look Back At A Small Office with a Big Mission - The FBI’s World War II-Era Cover Company At Rockefeller Center
The FBI released the below piece:
Everyone knows that the
holiday season is well under way when the giant Christmas tree is lit at
Rockefeller Center in New York City. What is less well known, however, is the
connection between Rockefeller Center and the birth of America’s civilian foreign
intelligence efforts.
It was 1940 and the world had
plunged into war the previous summer. Although America remained neutral at that
time, it did not ignore the massive international threat, and an FBI
operation—small but critical to America’s response to that threat—was centered
in the heart of New York City in Rockefeller Center. It was called the
Importers and Exporters Service Company and operated out of room 4332 at 30
Rockefeller Center—the RCA Building—beginning in August 1940.
Importers and Exporters was
the Bureau’s first attempt to set up a long-term cover company for our covert
program, the Special Intelligence Service (SIS). The SIS was the United States’
first civilian foreign intelligence service and was less than a year old. Under
a 1940 agreement signed by the Army, Navy, and FBI and approved by President
Roosevelt, the FBI was given responsibility for “foreign intelligence work in
the Western Hemisphere.” This saw us gathering intelligence about espionage,
counterespionage, subversion, and sabotage concerns—especially about Nazi
activities—pertaining to civilians in South America, Central America, and the
Caribbean. We were to create an undercover force that would proactively protect
America’s security from threats in our international neighborhood. Given that
our past success was mostly in criminal matters, taking on this task would be a
steep learning experience.
To begin, we wanted to center
the operation away from traditional FBI facilities and wanted to anchor it in
commercial efforts, because they would provide the freedom of movement and
access our agents would need. Although it is not clear why the Bureau chose to
establish a presence at 30 Rock, it likely had something to do with the support
that Nelson Rockefeller had provided to President Roosevelt’s intelligence
work. Furthermore, on multiple occasions after the SIS’s creation, our
personnel were afforded cover by Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of the Coordinator
of Inter-American Affairs.
The RCA Building placed the
FBI within a hotbed of foreign activity, both allied and enemy. The
Rockefellers provided space in the same building at little or no cost to
British Security Coordination, an intelligence agency/liaison service. It also
hosted Italian, German, and Japanese tenants until the U.S. government detained
them as enemy aliens when America entered World War II. And the Soviet Union
had office space in the building as well.
Of course, the sign on the
door did not read “FBI/SIS—Spies Welcome.” Instead, the Importers and Exporters
Service Company—which never imported or exported anything—was supposed to be
completely unidentifiable with the Bureau and would provide “backstopping” or
cover identities, employment, and other necessary tools for our agents to
operate undercover. With these new identities, representatives of the company
were to travel throughout the hemisphere to collect intelligence and help to
disrupt the Axis threat.
It looked good on paper;
however, the plan took an unexpected turn because Bureau personnel had to fend
off daily advances from unsuspecting salesmen and other parties knocking on the
door wanting to do business with the new company. The FBI ended up shutting
down the Importers and Exporters business in June 1941, but we kept the office
itself open until November 1945, using it to quietly handle logistics for
deploying SIS personnel.
Although the Importers and
Exporters Service Company was a short-lived enterprise, its method of
operation, providing what is known as “non-official cover” in the spy business,
became crucial to the SIS’s intelligence activities and its subsequent
successes. Learning from its Importers and Exporters experience, the
Bureau—instead of maintaining one single cover company—enlisted the assistance
of accommodating U.S. companies that agreed to provide cover jobs for Bureau
personnel. (And in a boon for some of those companies, many of the individuals
who filled these positions worked so enthusiastically that they became nearly
indispensable to their cover employers.)
Thursday, December 29, 2016
‘The Man With The Poison Gun: A Cold War Spy Story’
Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Serhii Plokhy's The Man With the Poison Gun.
One of the longest-running bully-boy relationships in Europe is that of Russia and an oft-victimized Ukraine. Portions of Ukraine previously controlled by Poland were seized by the USSR as a spoil-of-war under the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, and retained in the post-war period.
But proud Ukrainian nationalists resisted Soviet rule, led by a fierce (if divided) resistance. The Soviets responded with massive troop deployments that killed an estimated 100,000 “bandits” from 1944-46. The leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Stepan Bandera, was driven into refuge in Munich, Germany, where he called for an independent state. In a show of strength, he also arranged the assassination of Yaroslav Halan, a pro-Soviet Ukrainian.
An outraged Joseph Stalin ordered retaliation. His chosen instrument to direct revenge was underling Nikita Khrushchev, then the party boss in Ukraine.
Thus began the transformation of Bogdan Stashinsky, a 19-year-old resident of a small village near Lviv, into one of the KGB’s deadliest assassins. His story is told in a gripping work by Serhii Plokhy that is rich in the tradecraft with which Stalin’s killers stalked opponents — as a matter of state policy. Mr. Plokhy, a professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard, has written extensively on the country.
Stashinsky fell into hands of a predecessor of the KGB through accident. Detained for avoiding a small train fare, he was given a choice: jail for him and family members, or the secret police. He was ordered to penetrate a resistance group and finger the man who killed Halan. He succeeded, but came under local suspicion as an informer. He was pulled out for extensive tradecraft training and routine spy assignments in West Germany.
Then came a quantum jump: Stashinsky was tasked with murdering Lev Rebet, a Bandera rival In exile politics. He was introduced to a sophisticated new weapon: “a metal cylinder, eight inches long and less than an inch in diameter.” The cylinder contained an ampoule with liquid. When the trigger was pressed, a striker set off by a gunpowder charge hit the ampoule with poison, spraying the face of the target. The poison caused immediate unconsciousness and swift death; it would evaporate without a trace.
You can read the rest of the review via the below link:
Top 10 Slangy Crime Novels: As Well As Masterful Exercises In Suspense And Social Realism, The Best Fiction In This Genre Is Also A Rich Repository Of Slang
Max Decharne at the British newspaper the Guardian offers a piece on the top ten "slangy" crime novels.
I've spent most of my adult life reading vintage crime novels. Often dismissed out of hand at the time they appeared, over the past century they have preserved a huge variety of slang. Not surprisingly, when researching my new book, Vulgar Tongues: An Alternative History of English Slang, it was these stories that provided the richest seam of words and phrases, initiating the reader into a world in which people order a drink by saying, “Break out another bottle of that bug spray,” or acknowledge someone’s black eye with the phrase, “Who’s been kissin’ your puss?”
Raymond Chandler famously credited Dashiell Hammett with giving murder “back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse … He put these people down on paper as they are, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.”
Hammett learned underworld slang at first hand, working as a detective for the Pinkerton agency; few other crime writers will have had the dubious pleasure of being beaten over the head with a house brick in an alley while tailing a suspect. However, the most influential jargon over the years has probably been the laconic asides of Chandler’s own Philip Marlowe – not bad for a writer educated at Dulwich College in Edwardian London.
... 7. Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler (1940)
“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.” Chandler’s exuberant follow-up to The Big Sleep, establishing the blueprint for the wisecracking, slightly shop-soiled private eye. People with guns say things like, “Stick up. Be very quiet and everything will be jake,” while invitations to the booze are made with the phrase, “Let’s you and me nibble one.”You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/28/top-10-slangy-novels
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
U.S. Navy Repeatedly Dismissed Evidence That ‘Fat Leonard’ Was Cheating The 7th Fleet
Craig Witlock at the Washington Post offers a piece on the U.S. Navy "Fat Leonard' bribery and fraud scandal.
For Fat Leonard, conning the U.S. Navy was a big piece of cake.
The Navy allowed the worst corruption scandal in its history to fester for several years by dismissing a flood of evidence that the rotund Asian defense contractor was cheating the service out of millions of dollars and bribing officers with booze, sex and lavish dinners, newly released documents show.
The Singapore-based contractor, Leonard Glenn Francis, found it especially easy to outwit the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), the renowned law enforcement agency that has inspired one of the longest-running cop shows on television.
Starting in 2006, in response to a multitude of fraud complaints, NCIS opened 27 separate investigations into Francis’s company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia. In each of those instances, however, NCIS closed the case after failing to dig up sufficient evidence to take action against the firm, according to hundreds of pages of law enforcement records obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act.
Known as Fat Leonard for his 350-pound physique, Francis held lucrative contracts to resupply U.S. warships and submarines in ports throughout Asia. He was also legendary within the Navy for throwing hedonistic parties, often with prostitutes, to entertain sailors.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/navy-repeatedly-dismissed-evidence-that-fat-leonard-was-cheating-the-7th-fleet/2016/12/27/0afb2738-c5ab-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html?utm_term=.c52f8ea0bde1
Stranger Than Fiction: 'The Man With the Poison Gun' Offers A Deadly Dose Of Reality
Lloyd Sachs at the Chicago Tribune offers a review of Serhii Plokhy's The Man With the Poison Gun.
"The Man With the Poison Gun," a nonfiction book that tells the unusual story of a KGB assassin during the Cold War, once might have fallen safely into the category of "stranger than fiction." But especially in light of recent events including the on-camera assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, the exploits of Bogdan Stashinsky feel eerily relevant today.
Stashinsky was a 19-year-old university student in Soviet-occupied Ukraine in 1950 when he was conscripted by Nikita Khrushchev's secret police. They knew that Stashinsky's family had ties to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which opposed the Soviet presence, and threatened to punish or kill his family members if he didn't inform on them and their friends.
After delivering the goods, Stashinsky became a paid employee of the secret police. Still telling himself he was playing ball with the Soviets to prevent harm to his family, he underwent extensive training in the espionage arts with the MGB, a precursor to the KGB (which was established in 1954). By 1957, when he received a newfangled poison gun, his self-image had undergone a serious overhaul to go with his new alias.
According to author Serhii Plokhy, a Harvard historian, Stashinsky's unusual exploits inspired Ian Fleming's 1965 James Bond novel, "The Man With the Golden Gun," which features a weapon that squirts liquid cyanide and leaves no trace. Plokhy is no Ian Fleming. His narrative skills are a bit stodgy. But this is one story that does a good job of telling itself.
You can read the rest of the review via the below link:http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/sc-man-with-the-poison-gun-serhii-plokhy-books-1228-20161224-story.html
Monday, December 26, 2016
Meet The Dyslexic Spy Who Almost Took Down The Feds
Joselin Kinder at the New York Post offers a piece on the dyslexic spy who couldn't spell.
When FBI special agent Steven Carr opened a package FedExed to him from the FBI’s New York office in December 2000, he assumed it would contain the typical inter-office issue. Instead, he found three letters that had been encrypted and mailed out to the Libyan consulate.
“I am a Middle East North African analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency,” the letter read. “I am willing to commit espionage against the US by providing your country with highly classified information.”
Carr then found items marked “CLASSIFIED SECRET” and “CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET” — mostly satellite images of Middle Eastern military operations. If Libya wanted more secrets, the spy wrote, it would have to take out an ad in the classified section of the Washington Post and pay $13 million.
“I will remain anonmus . . . I will be putting myself and my family at great risk,” one part read.
A US intelligence agency had a mole — and now the FBI had to figure out who he was. One detail stood out among the rest: He was a terrible speller.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:http://nypost.com/2016/12/25/meet-the-dyslexic-spy-who-almost-took-down-the-feds/
On This Day In History Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel Opens Flamingo Hotel
As History.com notes, on this day in 1946 New York mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel opened the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.
You can read about Siegel and the event via the below link:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bugsy-siegel-opens-flamingo-hotel?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1226-12262016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=128521484&kx_EmailCampaignID=8917&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1226-12262016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa
Sunday, December 25, 2016
'And It Came To Pass': Luke On The Birth Of Jesus
The New York Post offers the below on Christmas:
From the Gospel According to Luke,
Chapter 2, Verses 1 through 20:
Chapter 2, Verses 1 through 20:
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.
(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judæa, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David).
o be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
You can read the rest via the below link:
Saturday, December 24, 2016
Marine General Joe Dunford, The Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff, USO Troupe Arrive in Baghdad for Holiday with Troops
Jim Garamone at the DoD News offers the below piece:
BAGHDAD, Dec. 24, 2016 — Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived here today and brought a USO troupe to provide a taste of home during the holidays to deployed U.S. service members.
The troupe includes country music stars Kellie Pickler and her husband, Kyle Jacobs; chef Robert Irvine and his wife, wrestling superstar Gail Kim; and the Roastmaster General, comedian Jeff Ross.
For Pickler and Jacobs, this is their 11th USO trip, and the other members also are USO veterans.
Second USO Trip This Month
This is the second USO trip Dunford and his senior enlisted advisor, Army Command Sgt. Maj. John Troxell, have led this month, and it is the first chairman’s USO trip that arrives for the holidays.
“I thought it was important to be out there on the holiday itself,” the general said in a short interview prior to arriving. “All of the USO shows have great people, and we appreciate them going out, but for the folks that came out this time, they gave up their family time over the holidays. For them to do this is really special.”
Roughly 4,800 U.S. troops are in Iraq supporting Iraqi security forces as they take on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Over the past year, Iraqi forces – which include Kurdish peshmerga – have had notable successes, including the liberation of Beiji, Fallujah and Ramadi. In Syria, indigenous forces are driving on ISIL’s so-called capital of Raqqa.
And now the battle is on in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. U.S. forces, working with coalition allies, provide support, air power and advice to Iraqi formations, and the effort is succeeding, Dunford said.
Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, country music artist Kellie Pickler, and Pickler’s husband, country music songwriter Kyle Jacobs, speak between television and radio interviews at the National Press Club in Washington about their USO Tour to the Middle East to visit troops for the holidays, Dec. 23, 2016. DoD photo by Army Sgt. James K. McCann
Saying Thanks
The USO troupe is a way to say thanks to the service members and show them Americans remember and appreciate their sacrifices, the chairman said.
“During the holidays, everyone wants to be with their families,” Dunford said. “But there are families of blood – moms, dads, wives, husbands, kids – and there is the family that grows in units.
“If you are in a unit, that’s your family, too,” he continued. “If you can’t be with your blood family, the next best group of people to be with is your unit. It’s your family away from home.”
USO CEO and President J.D. Crouch II also is accompanying the troupe. He said he had no trouble getting performers for the holiday tour. “Kellie and Kyle immediately said yes,” he said. “They were on board from the start. Jeff, Robert and Gail also cleared their schedules in record time to be a part of this.”
Important Trip
Troxell said the troupe coming during the holidays is incredibly important, because service members are in tough places, superbly doing what needs to be done to further the campaign plan against ISIL.
A 1st Infantry Division soldier sings "Tough" with Kellie Pickler during a Dec. 24, 2016, Christmas Eve USO show at Union 3 in Baghdad, Iraq. Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, brought the show to Iraq to thank service members for their efforts and sacrifices during the holidays. DoD photo by Jim Garamone
“They are keeping America safe,” he added. “It’s a way to tell them that their service is appreciated. The chairman and I really wanted to come spend Christmas with those who are really getting after the defense of our country -- that’s those who are serving in harm’s way.”
Dunford and Troxell both have been in the shoes of the service members they are visiting, missing numerous Christmases with their families doing the nation’s business. Dunford said he has missed four or five Christmases at home just since 2001.
Troxell recalled the first Christmas he missed when he was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. “I left the house on the morning of 19 December 1989 and told my wife I would see her at noon to take her shopping,” he said. “I didn’t show back up until Jan. 11. I got alerted, marshaled, deployed, and parachuted into Panama City. That was the first one of many Christmases missed.”
Merry Christmas From James Bond (And John Barry & Louie Armstrong)
One may not think of a James Bond film as traditional holiday fare, but every Christmas season I watch On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
The film, which was released in December of 1969, has a Christmas setting and takes place in the snow-covered Swiss Alps.
The film, despite not having the great Sean Connery as Bond, is one the best in the series in my view.
The director of this fine film was Peter Hunt. Hunt, who edited the earlier Bond films, was faithful to Ian Fleming's novel, even going with the thriller's dark ending. Peter Hunt gave us a true Bond thriller.
You can watch a trailer of the film via the below link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVP2n_GcdlQ
And you can listen to John Barry's great love song sung by the late, jazz great Louie Armstrong via the below link:
Louis Armstrong - We Have All The Time in The World - 007 At Her Majesty' Secret Service (Lyrics) - YouTube
Merry Christmas from Bond, James Bond.
CIA, NSA Missed Warning Signs Of Snowden Betrayal
Veteran national security reporter Bill Gertz offers a piece at the Free Beacon on a congressional report on NSA leaker, spy and traitor Edward Snowden (seen in the above photo).
Both the CIA and National Security Agency missed warning signs that renegade contractor Edward Snowden was a disgruntled worker who would eventually steal 1.5 million secret documents, according to a congressional study made public Thursday.
Snowden, who fled to Moscow after publicizing some of the documents through left-wing journalists, also “has had, and continues to have contact with Russian intelligence services” and voiced admiration for China during his brief career at the CIA and then NSA.
A declassified and redacted report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that Snowden’s actions resulted in the Obama’s administration’s most damaging intelligence failure.
You can read he rest of the piece via the below link:http://freebeacon.com/national-security/cia-nsa-missed-warning-signs-snowden-betrayal/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=dab8b55c9d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_12_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-dab8b55c9d-45599609
You can also read an earlier post on Snowden via the below link:
http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/11/is-behavior-of-hero-whistleblower-or.html
My Crime Fiction: 'Twas A Crime Before Christmas'
As the Christmas season is upon us once again I thought I would offer a link to my short story Twas a Crime Before Christmas.
As a crime reporter and columnist, I was compelled to look into a report of a burglary of an unemployed construction worker on Christmas Eve in South Philadelphia.
The burglar or burglars broke into the home early on the morning of the 24th. They stole the family’s TV and other household goods. They also took a dozen or so wrapped gifts under the Christmas tree that were intended for the family’s two children.
I interviewed the victim, who was so devastated by the burglary that he could hardly speak. I also spoke to a detective who said he presently had no leads on the case but he planned to keep working it, and I spoke to a local priest who told me that the church was collecting donations for the poor family.
Lastly, I spoke to a man of great wisdom and experience. The jolly old fella was kind enough to pause during his special night out to talk to me about crime.
I interviewed Santa Claus as he was packing up his sleigh and getting ready to head off on his magical trip, bringing toys and goodies to good children around the world.
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow and the beard on his chin was white as snow. His eyes twinkled and his dimples were merry. His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. He looked like a candidate for a heart attack.
And he smoked. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth and the smoke encircled his head like a wreath (the Surgeon General would not approve). He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot (PETA would not approve) and his clothes were tarnished with ashes and soot (Mrs. Santa would not approve). With a lumpy sack over his shoulder, he looked like a homeless person.
You can read the rest of the story via the below link:
http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/12/my-crime-fiction-twas-crime-before.html
Merry Christmas.
Friday, December 23, 2016
The Spy Who Couldn't Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, An Unbreakable Code, And the FBI's Hunt For America's Stolen Secrets
Howard Schneider offers a review of Yudhijit Bhattacharjee's The Spy Who Couldn't Spell for the Wall Street Journal.
In December 2000 Steven Carr, a special agent in the FBI’s counterintelligence unit in Washington, D.C., received a parcel from the bureau’s New York City office. It contained stolen American military secrets that had been passed on to the New York FBI by an informant in the Libyan consulate. The secrets had been mailed to the consulate along with encrypted cover letters from an individual who, the bureau would conclude, clearly worked in an American intelligence organization. The letter-writer offered to supply Libya with more secrets in exchange for money. Carr was assigned the job of finding the anonymous renegade. Yudhijit Bhattacharjee’s “The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets” is an excellent, highly engrossing account of the search for a man who was cunning, avaricious—and a dreadful speller.
The FBI’s target turned out to be Brian Patrick Regan, a most improbable traitor: He was a former Air Force master sergeant whose last assignment before retiring from the military was at the National Reconnaissance Office, a secretive agency “responsible for managing the nation’s spy satellites.” Regan was born in 1962 and raised on Long Island by strict Irish Catholic parents. His life was troubled from an early age because he was dyslexic. His behavior and speech were peculiar, and even his “friends” mocked and harassed him. But he had a gift for “spatial intelligence” and a “knack for stealth” (as a teenager he burglarized a neighbor’s house). He also cultivated a desire to overcome his problems and make something of himself. When he was a high-school senior, he cheated on a military aptitude test and scored high enough to allow him to enlist in the Air Force. After basic training he was assigned to study signals intelligence and analysis, and notwithstanding his past shoddy schoolwork, he succeeded, working harder than he ever had to master his lessons. As an intelligence analyst, Mr. Bhattacharjee writes, he discovered that his disability was actually an advantage: Dyslexics’ “global view helps them make connections between disparate pieces of information and recognize patterns in data that might elude more linear thinkers.”
You can read the rest of the review via the below link:http://www.wsj.com/articles/treason-the-easy-way-1482446149
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Spies, Crooks, Terrorists And Jan Fedarcyk, The FBI's First Lady
In my previous post - http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2016/12/the-fbis-first-lady-my-q-with-jan.html - I offered my Counterterrorism magazine Q&A with Jan Fedarcyk, the former Assistant Director of the FBI's New York Office and author of Fidelity.
Below is an accompanying piece on Jan Fedarcyk:
Note: You can click on the above to enlarge.
The FBI's First Lady: My Q&A With Jan Fedarcyk, Former Assistant Director In Charge Of The FBI's New York Office And Author of 'Fidelity'
My Q&A with Jan Fedarcyk, the former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's New York Office and author of Fidelity, appears in the current issue of The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International.
You can read the piece below:
On This Day In History The Continental Congress Created A Continental Navy
As History.com notes, on this day in 1775 the Continental Congress created a Continental Navy in Philadelphia.
You can read about the event via the below link:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/continental-congress-creates-a-continental-navy?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1222-12222016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=126364523&kx_EmailCampaignID=8838&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1222-12222016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa%20&os_ehash=44@experian:de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa
Note: The above U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command photo is of a painting by W. Nowland Van Powell. The painting depicts Lieutenant John Paul Jones raising the "Grand Union" flag on the Alfred as the ship was commissioned in Philadelphia.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Ex-Navy SEALs And Intelligence Officers Helping Two Former Russian Spies
Veteran journalist Bryan Denson, author of The Spy's Son: The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and the Son He Trained To Spy for Russia, offers a piece in Newsweek on the efforts of former Navy SEALs and intelligence officers to aid two former Russian spies.
An unlikely group of Americans has come to the rescue of two Russian spies who defectedto the U.S. and gave troves of information to the CIA and FBI, only to be booted off the government payroll and stranded in Oregon with no jobs.
An ad hoc network of former special operations and intelligence officers, no fans of Russia’s spy network, has rallied behind Jan and Victorya Neumann, two former employees of the Federal Security Service, (a KGB spinoff known as the FSB). They are disappointed that the U.S. has failed to honor a system to pay and protect foreign spies who help America by spilling secrets about their homelands.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:http://www.newsweek.com/russian-spies-navy-seals-jan-neumann-victorya-neumann-cia-fbi-533188
You can also read my Q&A with Bryan Denson via the below link:
http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/11/my-q-with-bryan-denson-author-of-spys.html
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