When Altar Boys Get Bored–The TRW National Security Disaster

By Jay Holmes

In Santa Monica, California, in 1953, a recently “ex” FBI agent named Charles Boyce and his wife Noreen were blessed with the birth of their first child. They named their future altar boy Christopher. Noreen Boyce was a strict Catholic who avoided birth control, and eventually gave Christopher eight younger siblings. Charles Boyce had a successful career as a security expert in the aerospace industry, and even with nine children, the family enjoyed a life of affluence with a home in the fashionable Palo Verde community. Charles and Noreen Boyce were politically conservative and outspokenly patriotic. FBI agents and other law enforcement friends frequently visited their home. The successful parents doubtless had no idea that their oldest would one day betray their country.

Christopher Boyce
mug shot from US Marshals Service

Christopher Boyce attended a Catholic elementary school, where he flourished both academically and socially. He embraced Catholicism and was an enthusiastic altar boy at the local church. He made friends easily, and his best friend was a fellow altar boy by the name of Andrew Daulton Lee. Unlike the popular “A” student Boyce, Lee struggled to maintain a “C” average and was socially awkward, but they shared something important. Chris Boyce was known to be a daredevil, even in his elementary school days, and so was Andrew Dalton Lee.

On one occasion, Boyce’s love of risk-taking led to a fall from a forty-foot tree. Unfortunately, he landed in a pile of leaves on a muddy river bed and survived. He suffered two compressed disks in his back, but the injury did not dampen his love of thrill seeking.

As teenagers, Boyce and Lee took up the hobby of falconry. Boyce became fairly expert at it, hence his eventual name, “the Falcon.”

During high school, the two lost their enthusiasm for the Catholic Church and decided that they were no longer Christian. Boyce’s grades slipped, but he remained popular with his fellow students. Lee’s grades remained poor, and he replaced his love of church with a love of cocaine. Though he’d previous had trouble attracting female companionship, he was able to use marijuana and cocaine to obtain sex with cooperative girls. He thus obtained the nickname, “the Snowman.”

If we are to understand the eventual criminal misadventures of Boyce and Lee, a.k.a. the Falcon and the Snowman, we should consider the time in which they were raised. By the late 60s, the Viet Nam war was on the news every night, and in general, the major media networks took a dim view of the federal government’s atrocious mismanagement of that conflict. The great American Optimism of the 40s and 50s had been replaced with cynicism and a healthy mistrust of authority.

After Boyce and Lee graduated high school, Boyce started college, and Lee expanded his drug business. Lee did hold legitimate jobs on occasion, but the low wages and long hours held no appeal when the easy money of drug dealing was available. Besides, as the Snowman—a successful cocaine dealer—he held a certain place of importance in the same social circles of affluent youths who had never accepted him prior to his drug dealing career.

Chris Boyce floundered in college and dropped out. At his parents’ urging and support, he started college again and dropped out again, and again. Boyce was certainly smart enough for school, but he had no interest.

Boyce’s parents were worried about their bright son’s seemingly dull future. His father had a close friend who was the security director at TRW Corporation, so he asked that friend if he could help find a job for Chris. TRW hired Chris Boyce as a clerk in 1974.

TRW manufactured components for highly advanced Top Secret communications and reconnaissance satellites for the CIA and other federal agencies. Chris Boyce worked at a TRW facility that was equipped to receive and decode information from US satellites. Thanks to his dad’s influence, Boyce, with no post high school education, no legitimate experience, and no security screening, was given a security badge and access to classified documents at TRW.

To the average reader, this might seem outrageously careless of TRW. It was. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Boyce was soon given Top Secret clearances by the CIA and the NSA.

If a proper investigation had been done, and if anyone had bothered to analyze the results, Boyce’s lack of any track record and three successive drop outs from three different colleges would have indicated a glaring lack of maturity and reliability. However, Boyce did not even receive a lie-detector test, which, while not full proof, would likely have uncovered his drug history and the fact that his best friend was the local “Snowman.” Apparently, the simple lack of an arrest record and his father’s reputation were enough to propel Chris Boyce from an entry-level status to Top Secret access within a few months of his joining TRW.

Boyce was transferred to an even higher position in the “Black Vault” at TRW. This is where the company stored Top Secret Codes, and where incoming data from satellites were decoded. We now know that Boyce discovered a “party atmosphere” within the Black Vault team. Safe in the knowledge that visitors were not allowed in the vault, the Black Vault team was using a CIA shredding machine as a daiquiri mixer. It literally was a party.

After being promoted to the Black Vault team, Boyce began reading decoded messages that were supposedly being misrouted to TRW. These included diplomatic messages. Boyce claims that, in combination with his anger at the Viet Nam War, the content of some of the messages caused him to decide to turn against the US.

One series of messages that Boyce pointed to was supposed diplomatic traffic indicating that the US was plotting the downfall of the Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. According to Boyce, the US government was angry at Australia because they were “threatening to pull out of Viet Nam.” The US was, indeed, unhappy with Gough and his anti-American views, but Boyce’s story sounds like something that was fed to him in contingency planning by a Soviet KGB handler. Australia pulled its last combat forces out of Viet Nam in 1972, two years prior to Boyce’s joining TRW and beginning his career as a spy for the USSR. The US pulled out its last combat troops in Viet Nam in 1973. The “Australia” line in Boyce’s justifications of his betrayal makes no sense.

Chris Boyce’s motivations for betraying the US were likely far less noble than he claims. He copied and stole documents and codes from the Black Vault to sell them to the USSR. In a lapse of judgment, he decided to use his close friend Dalton Lee, “the Snowman,” as his go-between to communicate with the Soviets.

While drug dealers and all variety of criminals are often used in intelligence operations, they are not usually trusted with more than the minimal information they need for a particular task. They are never trusted to act as couriers. Boyce had read a couple of spy novels, but apparently not the right ones. Given Lee’s basic emotional insecurity and his drug use, he was a bad choice, but Lee was the one person who Boyce could trust in terms of personal loyalty.

The Snowman was thrilled with Boyce’s suggestion that they spy for the USSR, and he quickly agreed. Lee purchased spy novels for his training regimen and travelled to Mexico City to contact the Soviet Embassy. Thus began the espionage careers of the Falcon and the Snowman. Next Wednesday, we will consider how and what the Falcon and the Snowman delivered to the USSR, and what damage they did to America.

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FIRELANDS is out!

Piper Bayard’s dystopian thriller FIRELANDS is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. Soon available in paperback from Amazon. Check out what life will be like eighty years in the future, and how one young huntress befriends her worst enemy to take down a brutal dictator before he can exterminate her people.

Chinese Theft and Hacking in the News — Where Lies the Blame?

By Jay Holmes

Headlines this week are reporting the not-very-new “news” that China is—drumroll and sound track of gasping readers please—stealing US technology and hacking into classified US government computer systems. A secondary aspect of the story focuses on daily denials by China. So is China really stealing US technology? If it is, then what does it mean to us US taxpayers and consumers? What does it mean to our allies and their well-bled taxpayers and highly unemployed consumers?

Let’s first consider this “news” from the Chinese side of the issue.  Chinese denials are generally orated in monotone fashion by one highly placed spin doctor or another with even less acting skill than the average D.C. government mouthpiece. The denials, themselves, are always about as convincing as those issued by well-paid celebrity lawyers defending their highly privileged clients.

In China, as in Hollywood or D.C., reasonable observers start with the assumption that the spokesman is a well-practiced, lying crook. They then try to extract some grain of truth from the transparently nonsensical denials being issued. In the case of Chinese government spin doctors, the only truth available from them is the simple truth that they have no need to or intention of ever telling the truth about anything to anyone. They don’t have to. Or at least have never had to until recently.

Different cultures view truth-telling in different ways, and in the Chinese culture, telling the truth to the world at large is considered a form of severe naiveté bordering on mental illness. Add to that the fact that China has never had a government that answered to the Chinese people. As a result, in Chinese government culture, the rare and refined art of telling the truth is about as useful as space heaters in a Congolese home. In a Western context, one might imagine how weasel-like White House and Whitehall spokesmen would become if their masters and their masters’ masters never had to face the expense of another election campaign.

And yet there is one group of listeners that the Chinese find more complex and difficult to deal with—the world’s non-Chinese consumers. The Chinese have figured out that while the thoughts and opinions of their own well-policed prisoner-citizens can be easily dismissed or silenced, the image of the Chinese communist police state now matters to the Chinese oligarchy for financial reasons.

China makes trillions of dollars from Western consumers and Western corporations. As the image of the Chinese government rises and falls from the depths of the public opinion sewer, profits rise and fall. Western consumers buy cheap Chinese junk with the same enthusiasm that heroin addicts demonstrate in their methadone lines. But even with the severity of the West’s addiction to low-priced Chinese garbage, sales can and do rise and fall. A small movement in sales levels represents billions of dollars in lost revenue to the economic warlords that now run China.

What if a Chinese nouveau riche politician is considering buying another Caribbean island or US skyscraper, and his profits drop? What if he and his pals desperately need to rent some Western politicians to do their bidding, and the cash flow takes a dive? To those few people in China who are used to getting anything they want when they want it, that would be annoying. That threat of annoyance inspires Chinese devotion to keeping those revenue bumps from happening.

Predictably, the Chinese have recently switched from routinely denying that anyone in China ever would or could hack a computer, steal technology, or violate a patent, to doing the old “shoulder shrug” response. They are now saying “all governments hack other countries’ computers.” And, of course, they’re not quite right. Not all governments hack other countries’ computers. Only governments with the required resources do that. And furthermore, not all governments ignore patent violations. China does.

Now that we’ve had a laugh considering China’s denials, let’s consider the “hacking” from a Western perspective. China’s routine theft of US technology makes Western companies less competitive in the giant sludge pit that we call “the world market.” That means higher unemployment leading to higher tax rates to help the unemployed, which in turn makes the West still less competitive in the world marketplace.

As well as commercial technology, the Chinese hacking efforts also focus on US military secrets, including advanced weapons design. This means that China gets to develop their advanced weapons, such as their stealth fighter or their drones, without the expense of years of scientific research or the subsequent thousands of engineering hours that lead to lots of engineers having strokes and their employers eventually delivering a useful product. It also means that our weapons systems are less useful as deterrents to Chinese imperial aims.

In Maoist times, the Chinese military only needed to be well-enough equipped and trained to keep the Chinese people obedient to Mao. The most important characteristic of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army was obedience to Mao. The emphasis was not on developing a highly skilled, powerful military, but rather a highly obedient one.

In 1978, Viet Nam invaded Laos and Cambodia to overthrow their Chinese-backed governments. In 1979, after yearlong logistical preparations, China confidently invaded Viet Nam. After China’s logistical support for its invading army collapsed, they were forced to withdraw from Viet Nam.

The Chinese military leadership has wanted to do two things since that 1979 disaster. One, it has wanted to continue using its control of the Chinese military and Chinese military industries to acquire personal wealth. In this it has excelled fantastically. In the post-Maoist era they need not hide their profits. They don’t. Their second concern has been to become a more powerful military capable of conquering someone other than themselves. They needed science and technology to do that.

The Chinese suffered decades of “cultural revolution” that included purges of “intellectuals” that would have made even Stalin jealous. The problem with killing all those nasty, opinionated university types, though, is that nobody was left to develop technology. As a result, stealing science and technology became a huge imperative for the Chinese government in the post-Mao age.

Now that China has avoided the routine random slaughter of university professors for a few decades, they have a powerful and effective scientific/engineering community, but that community remains hamstrung by government agencies that are so corrupt that they make Western governments appear to be honest and efficient by comparison. So stealing technology and military secrets remains a priority for China. In fact, it remains a priority for all governments that have the ability to effectively spy.

It’s easy to get angry at the Chinese for being the thieving crooks that they are, but let’s be realistic a moment. The Chinese would give us the standard Chinese answer to that indignation. They would—and frequently do—laugh at us for being so stupid as to allow ourselves to get robbed. In this, they are right.

Most of the Western corporations that whine about the Chinese hacking their computer systems and stealing their technologies have factories in China manned by Chinese employees. While unemployment remains depressingly high in Western nations, these same Western corporations are building yet more factories in China.  Wondering where all your GM bailout cash went? It went to building factories and research centers in communist China. No need for the Chinese to steal GM’s technology. GM gives it to them on a silver platter. And YOU paid for that silver platter!

Whose job is it to secure US military secrets? Is that the job of the Chinese? I don’t think so. Hacking into US intelligence and military networks should not be a “crime.” It should be an impossibility. The fact that it can be done at all is a travesty. Basic compartmentalization to keep top-secret data off of internet systems would prevent that.

So while we listen to the not-so-new news reports about Chinese theft of US technologies and military secrets, we should perhaps not bother questioning China’s spin-doctors. Instead, we should be asking our own government and corporations why it’s happening in the first place.

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To receive our infrequent newsletters and notices of our book releases, click here on Bayard & Holmes Newsletter. We will not, under any circumstances, share your email with any foreign operatives, phone solicitors, or grasping DHS agents.

Amy Elizabeth Thorpe–The Booty Spy Who Could

By Jay Holmes

In our last post, The Spy Who Loved–Booty Spy Amy Elizabeth Thorpe, we looked at the early espionage escapades of Booty Spy Amy Elizabeth Thorpe. Renowned for conquering hearts and libidos, she was just getting warmed up at a time in her career when other booty spies would be moving on to desk jobs.

After the Nazis completed their conquest of France in June of 1940, the US remained neutral. Along with a few other Americans, Amy Elizabeth Thorpe did not remain neutral.

Mrs. Amy Elizabeth Thorpe Pack Brousse
image from madamebrousse.com

The Nazi-controlled Vichy French government, led by Marshal Philippe Pétain, was strongly anti-British while trying to maintain commerce with the US and other neutral nations. Most of the French military and government officials who were serving in French colonial positions and French embassies around the world remained in their positions and formed the collaborationist Vichy government. However, Pétain’s new government could not effectively realign the personal allegiances of all of its civil servants and military personnel overseas.  While officially those individuals remained loyal to the French government, many of them felt that they could best remain loyal to France by overtly or covertly opposing the Vichy administration. This created a sudden windfall of opportunities for the UK intelligence services and their sympathizers in the US. Amy Elizabeth Thorpe-Pack had the perfect set of talents to identify anti-Vichy French patriots and exploit their predicaments.

Amy, or “Cynthia” as she was now known to MI-6, didn’t waste any opportunities. Agent Cynthia took on the cover of an American journalist and directly contacted the Vichy embassy in Washington, D.C.  In May of 1941, she met the French Press Attaché Charles Brousse and quickly guessed that he was not an enthusiastic servant of the Vichy government. The fact that the forty-nine year old Brousse was married to his third wife and that he was a sophisticated “Don Juan” type did nothing to dissuade Cynthia. Brousse had met his match.

How long it took Brousse to realize that he was the pigeon rather than the hawk in his latest conquest is anyone’s guess. It didn’t matter. He was in love with Amy and not in love with the collaborationists that ran what was left of France. Brousse quickly began cooperating directly with Amy in her intelligence work against the Vichy government.

While outmaneuvering the Vichy government when it was so riddled with anti-Vichy French patriots might have been easy, Amy faced a more serious foe in Washington, D.C.—the FBI. FBI Director J Edgar Hoover took his orders from President Roosevelt, but on matters of foreign policy, Roosevelt and his cabinet members never trusted Hoover. Hoover was a staunch isolationist. He was aware that the US was operating a privately-funded, fast-growing intelligence war against Nazi Germany that was, at the time, without congressional approval, and he didn’t like it one bit. In particular, he didn’t like it that he wasn’t running the operations. Hoover considered the “new breed” of intelligence operatives to be a threat to his power in Washington, and he used the FBI to try to foil them.

Amy was bold in action. She simply moved into the same hotel where Charles Brousse and his wife lived and used good ‘field craft” to overcome FBI wire taps and surveillance without running afoul of Brousse’s spouse. By July of 1941, Amy was confident enough in her relationship with Brousse to request his help in obtaining the French naval cipher system without alerting the Vichy government. Brousse explained to Amy that the code system was tightly guarded, and that only two people had access to it. He explained that he was not in the confidence of the cipher clerk or his assistant, and that they were staunch Vichy loyalists. When Amy suggested a nighttime burglary to access and copy the ciphers, Brousse explained that it would be impossible because they were locked in a heavy safe each night, and the area was patrolled by an armed guard accompanied by a guard dog.

At this point, it became evident that President Roosevelt was aware of MI-6’s scheme to get the French codes. Bill Donovan, Roosevelt’s head of the fledgling US Office of Strategic Services provided Amy with a skilled safe cracker. Brousse informed the security guard that he would be using his office at night to have an extra-marital affair, and he gave the guard a small bribe to keep quiet. Amy and Charles started using the embassy for regular love making, and the guard got comfortable with the arrangement.

One night, they gave the watchman some spiked champagne, and the safe cracker went to work. After much effort, the OSS safe cracker eventually opened the safe, but there was not enough time to safely remove, copy, and replace the books. They had to suspend their attempt.

A second attempt with new safe information (and without the safe cracker) failed when Cynthia could not open the safe, even with the supposed combination.

On a subsequent night with the safe cracker in tow, they tried a third time. When Amy sensed that the guard had grown suspicious, and that he was approaching the office where they were supposedly in an act of love rather than an act of burglary, she quickly undressed and told Brousse to play along. Sure enough, the guard entered the office. Fortunately, they appeared to be doing something more natural and common than espionage, so the guard apologized and left. Amy, Brousse and the OSS safe cracker were then able to get the codes copied and properly placed back into the safe. We now know that the US and the UK were simultaneously running other operations to obtain the French naval and diplomatic codes. However, Amy at the very least verified the accuracy of the information.

Fortunately, the same code system was still in use during the US led invasion of Northwest Africa in November of 1942. The US and the UK were thus able to conduct their operations safe in the knowledge that the French Navy in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria would offer less than full resistance to the invasion. Most of the French in North Africa simply wanted to make enough noise to avoid further Nazi action against the French homeland.

After the US was attacked by Japan in December of 1941, the US declared war against Japan. In turn, Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy declared war on the US. Amy continued to work for both British MI-6 and the US OSS.

During an interview after the war, she was asked if, as a woman from such a respectable background, was she not ashamed of her “libertine” activities in her espionage efforts. Amy laughed and pointed out that both the US OSS and British MI-6 assured her that her efforts had saved the lives of thousands of allied soldiers and sailors and that, “Wars are not won by respectable methods.”

After the war, Amy’s nominal husband, Arthur Pack, committed suicide. Charles Brousse and his wife divorced, and Amy Thorpe married her one time “pigeon.” They lived in a castle in France, and by all accounts, the old spooks were genuinely in love and happily faithful to each other. In 1963, Amy Thorpe Brousse died of cancer. Charles Brousse died ten years later when his electric blanket short circuited and set the castle on fire.

It is rare for an agent employing “honey pot” methodology to last so long in the field after targeting even one high profile pigeon. Amy was not only successful with multiple high profile targets while working in dangerous areas like Poland and Czechoslovakia, she also eluded the FBI while conducting a major operation in Washington, D.C.—at the same time as being emotionally involved with the operation’s target. She was, in short, miraculous.

Much of Amy’s early work with MI-6 still remains hidden in the past. But from what we do know, she was, without doubt, one of the bravest and most productive allied agents of the World War Two era.

Proper Pistol Grips for Maximum Laughs

Jay Holmes and Piper Bayard

image by some guy named Achmed Putinovskya who keeps trying to follow us on Facebook

We’re off enjoying a good shoot after cleaning up our first spy thriller, APEX PREDATOR: THE LEOPARD OF CAIRO, for our editor. Since we can’t take you all with us, we wanted to share this hysterical video that explains proper real world methods of gripping your pistol. Enjoy!

All the best to all of you for a week of hanging with people who know what they’re doing.

Piper Bayard & Jay Holmes

The Original Bond–Ian Fleming

By Piper Bayard and Jay Holmes

In spite of last night’s Oscar snub of Skyfall, it is arguable that no Hollywood character has been more enduring or more popular over the decades than Bond. James Bond. Novelist Ian Fleming’s never shaken, never stirred superstar agent of Britain’s MI-6.

Watching the Bond movies would likely leave viewers thinking that Fleming was a novelist with a good imagination and little or no knowledge of the often grueling, sometimes tedious, and almost always dangerous work done by real life intelligence operatives. The lavish spending on equipment and accommodations and the hours spent tossing money around in posh casinos filled with apparently lonely, glamorous women would make average MI-6 employees chuckle to themselves. But Ian knew more about MI6 then he ever explained to the public.

Ian Fleming
fair use under US copyright law

Fleming came from a wealthy Scottish-English family that some sources say traces back to an Elizabethan intelligence operative, John Bond, whose motto was Non Sufficit Orbis, or, “The world is not enough”. Fleming grew up in posh private schools. After graduating from Eton College with some of the highest honors ever achieved by an Etonian, he entered Sandhurst Military Academy. Fleming found Sandhurst boring and tedious and left early, though on good terms with the staff.

He then traveled to the continent to study and perfect his abilities in French and German in preparation for applying to work in the British Foreign Office. The brilliant Fleming mysteriously failed the Foreign Office exam and did not opt to retest. He quickly found a position as a journalist with the Reuters news service and spent part of 1933 in Moscow.

In retrospect, his failure on the Foreign Office exam may have been arraigned by MI6 recruiters to keep him “clean” of association with the British Foreign Office in order to enable “deep cover” peace time work for the British intelligence community. On the eve of WWII, Ian accepted a reserve commission as a subaltern in Britain’s renowned Black Watch regiment. In 1939, Rear Admiral John Godfrey recruited Fleming to work in Naval intelligence.

In the snail’s pace promotion world of the British Navy, Fleming quickly rose to the rank of commander. His imagination served him well in naval intelligence. He commanded a very secretive, elite special intelligence force known “Assault Force 30.” Fleming selected men that he felt had the intelligence and sophistication to recognize valuable information that normal commandos might not notice.

Fleming also helped found the highly successful ”T Force” for the purpose of recovering Nazi technology from the collapsing Nazi empire at the end of the war. T Force was more successful than anyone imagined possible. Anyone but Fleming, that is.

In the last year of the war, T Force used intelligence from a variety of sources to locate and acquire valuable information on the latest NAZI inventions. The Nazis had developed several new weapons that they no longer had the industrial infrastructure to produce, or could not produce in significant numbers. The British and their allies profited tremendously from T Force’s acquisitions of the latest German developments in jet engines, rockets, chemistry, submarines and electronics.

Flemming never spoke of his war-time activities to outsiders. Some say that Assault Force 30′s heavy casualties when they were misused by allied commanders in the Normandy invasions had left him deeply affected. To strangers and journalists, Fleming always minimized his war experiences with vague stories of a paper pushing office life. However, enough information was pieced together over the years by curious investigators to know that the man who wrote the charming and fun James Bond series, as well as the children’s story, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, was a real life, deadly special agent and the leader of British naval intelligence’s most elite WWII group.

One charming story of Fleming is that he once heard about a party to celebrate the production of a Bond movie that he had not had a hand in. The party was allegedly held at a mansion in the Bahamas and attended by several British royals and other VIPs. Given the concentration of politicians, millionaires, and royals, the security effort for the party was massive and included troops of machine gun armed guards with guard dogs. The party was held on a large patio-pool area and adjoining lawn on a hill top overlooking the Atlantic. Fleming allegedly slipped his way through the security cordons, walked through the crowd, accepted a glass of champagne from a waiter, was noticed by a few of the movie people who knew him, and, as a murmur grew in the crowd, he stepped out of the light and vanished.

On August 12, 1964, Ian Lancaster Fleming died of a heart attack. He is interred next to his wife, Anne Fleming (1931-81), and their only child, Caspar Robert (1952-75), in the village of Sevenhampton, England near the Welsh border. His entertaining character, James Bond, lives on.

The 23 Bond films are not only fun and interesting, they are a photo album of the last fifty years of changing societal issues and attitudes toward war, space travel, feminism, realism in film, and exactly what constitutes a hero.

What are your favorite Bond films and why? Are there any you would like us to review?

The Fox Behind the Desert Fox: Hekmet Fahmy

By Jay Holmes*

On June 10, 1940, Italy declared war on Great Britain. At the time, Great Britain lacked the resources to invade Italy, and Italy had no intention of invading Great Britain. However, the two enemies, along with France, had large colonial holdings in North Africa. At the time, the Suez Canal in Egypt was critical for Great Britain to connect the British Isles, Gibraltar, and Egypt to its colonial holdings in India, Ceylon, and Burma. Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini was confident that his forces, along with his German allies, could deal a major blow against the British from their bases in Libya, and perhaps threaten the British Suez Canal.

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, image from the German Federal Archives

In general, the North African campaign of WWII is remembered as a series of battles. Great Britain dealt a decisive blow against the Italians in Libya. Germany sent reinforcements led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, aka the Desert Fox, who pushed the British back to the Egyptian border. Newly appointed British commander Field Marshall Montgomery led UK forces in a series of counterattacks. Those attacks were marginally assisted in the final phases by American landings in Morocco and Tunisia.

Conventional analysis of these battles emphasizes the skills of the opposing leaders. More in-depth descriptions also consider the logistical nightmares that both sides faced during the campaign. However, these assessments are based on well-researched analysis that was conducted without the benefit of certain classified information that was not released before 1970. When we consider the newer information, we learn that Erwin Rommel’s tactical genius and Bernard Montgomery’s inspiring leadership were heavily impacted by a variety of intelligence operations conducted by both sides.

Until July of 1942, Rommel, the Desert Fox, enjoyed a tremendous advantage over the British in the form of timely, detailed, and accurate intelligence about British dispositions, supplies, and intentions. This information came inadvertently from US General Bonner Fellers.

General Fellers was the US liaison with the British in North Africa. Over his objections, he was instructed to use the US diplomatic Black code to transmit messages to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Unfortunately, that code was stolen and copied by the Italians from the US Embassy in Italy in September of 1941, prior to the US entry into the war. As a result, Rommel’s staff read every word Fellers sent back to Washington before Washington read it. When Fellers was replaced in July of 1942, his replacement was permitted to switch his communications to US military cyphers. The Germans could no longer decipher the intercepted transmissions.

They turned to an Egyptian belly dancer for help. In the spring of 1942, a team of elite German commandos set out from Libya in US military vehicles captured from the British. Their goal was to infiltrate two Abwher agents, Johannes Eppler and his radio operator Hans Sandstede, into Egypt.

Eppler had a German mother and an Egyptian father and had spent most of his childhood in Alexandria and Cairo. He was well-trained and well-prepared for an operation in Egypt. After a grueling fifteen day trip through the desert, Eppler and Sandstede were dropped near the British Egyptian rail station at Asyut, Egypt.

The German spies made their way to Cairo where they used well forged documents and high quality counterfeit British cash to rent a house boat and set up operations. The crux of Eppler’s plans came down to one roll of the dice. He contacted an ex-girlfriend by the name of Hekmet Fahmy.

Hekmet Fahmy, image from bellydancemuseum.com

In 1942, Fahmy was the most popular belly dancer in Egypt. She had access to the best night clubs and parties attended by the elite of local British and Egyptian society. She was the most alluring female celebrity in that country and enjoyed popularity with dance fans across Europe. She was also trusted in the highest military and social circles. Fahmy recruited other popular belly dancers to assist Eppler, allowing him to operate one of the most successful honey traps of all time.

British officers and government officials mistakenly trusted Fahmy and foolishly revealed critical information. As Fahmy’s guests slept in her arms, Eppler searched their personal effects. By keeping track of which British officers from which regiments frequented the clubs, the Germans determined when particular units were being dispatched to the front.

In some cases, British officers and civilians revealed more detailed classified information that was then transmitted to Rommel’s headquarters. In effect, the Germans replaced an American general with an Egyptian belly dancer.

Thanks to the continued flow of high grade intelligence, the Desert Fox confounded British attacks with timely delaying actions and skillful withdrawals. Rommel’s tanks were outnumbered by now, but he could continually place them and their accompanying 77 millimeter anti-tank guns in ideal locations to deal with British movements.

After a few months of operations in Cairo, the British pushed back the Afrika Korps from El Alamein. Communications with Rommel’s headquarters became difficult. Eppler sought out the Egyptian Free Officer Corps, who were anti-British, to request assistance with passing information to Rommel. The young Egyptian officer who agreed to help was the future president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat.

In his 1957 book Revolt on the Nile, Sadat depicts Eppler and Sandstede as being too lazy and too concerned with their own pursuits of flesh. The depiction may have been unfair, as Eppler needed to appear to be a Scandinavian-American playboy in order to conduct his operations most effectively. If Eppler was in fact lazy, then we have to say that he was also fantastically lucky in his recruitment of Fahmy and his skillful use of her connections in gathering vital intelligence for the Desert Fox.

While Fahmy seduced British officers and Eppler fed their information to the Germans, the British simultaneously read and partially decrypted German military communications. They quickly became suspicious that German spies were succeeding in operations against them in Cairo. Either by managing too many local agents without insulation from themselves, or possibly because an Egyptian messenger was compromised, the British captured Eppler, Sandstede, and Fahmy.

With the defeat of the German intelligence operations in Cairo, combined with an increasing flow of Allied supplies and continued decryption of German military communications, the British were able to roll back Rommel across Africa. When the British captured 130,000 Germans in Tunisia in May of 1943, Rommel was on medical leave in Germany.

Rommel was tasked with organizing the German defenses on the French Atlantic Coast. However, he was implicated in a plot to kill Hitler. He committed suicide in exchange for his family being spared from persecution. The Nazis kept his betrayal of Hitler secret, announcing the Desert Fox had died of a heart attack. They gave Rommel a hero’s funeral.

Eppler and Sandstede were sentenced to death as spies, but Egyptian King Farouk intervened, and their sentences were commuted. They were released from prison after the war and Eppler became a successful construction engineer.

Fahmy was assumed to be an unwitting accomplice. She was sentenced to two and a half years in jail. She was unable to revive her career after her release, though she managed a few minor movie roles and invested her own money in a failed movie. The Egyptian Fox who did so much to aid the success of Desert Fox Field Marshal Erwin Rommel turned to Christianity for solace and spent long hours praying in church.

The North Africa campaign of WWII will always be remembered as a battle of supplies and opposing wits, and it was. But it was also a campaign greatly affected by the intelligence operations of both opponents, and for a while, the balance of it all was tipped by the weight of a single belly dancer.

Hekmet Fahmy in Rabab

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*‘Jay Holmes’, is an intelligence veteran of the Cold War and remains an anonymous member of the intelligence community. His writing partner, Piper Bayard, is the public face of their partnership.

You may contact them in blog comments, on Twitter at@piperbayard, on Facebook at Piper Bayard, or by email at piperbayard@yahoo.com. 

© 2013 Jay Holmes. All content on this page is protected by copyright. If you would like to use any part of this, please contact us at the above links to request permission.

Bayard, Holmes, Movie, No Popcorn — SKYFALL

SKYFALL Review

By Author Piper Bayard & Intelligence Operative Jay Holmes

SKYFALL marks the Golden Anniversary of the Bond series, and it’s raking in the serious gold—for good reason. In this 23^rd Bond film, M and MI-6 are under attack, and it’s up to 007 to track down and destroy the threat. He does it in style, proving once more that Bond truly is the master of resurrection.

Sam Mendes makes a brilliant directing debut with the series, showing he actually earned all of his Oscars and Tonys for other films over the years. Daniel Craig returns for the third time as Bond, along with Judi Dench playing M, and introducing Ben Whishaw and Naomi Harris as Q and Moneypenny, respectively.

Bayard:

From a thriller standpoint, SKYFALL has it all. Fast pace, nail-biting tension, creative chases, and explosions that will warm the heart of twenty-something pyrotechnics lovers. There’s even a tiny snafu that might have you wondering, “Which side was that?” But I suspect that will only end up making the movie more loved for being a bit flawed like the rest of us.

While cutting edge with a modern feel and new, young characters, SKYFALL still honors the classic qualities of Bond. It not only takes us for one more spin in 007’s iconic Aston Martin DB5, it treats us to colorful locales, mysterious people, and even exotic animals. Though I feel compelled to note those komodo dragons must be on a diet of digitally enhanced Twinkies and MLB steroids to get that big.

This 50^th Anniversary installment continues to develop the three-dimensional character brought to the fore with the Craig incarnation of the series, and we find out more details of Bond’s early life and home. Only one Bond behavior strikes me as being particularly out of character. He allows his MI-6 co-worker to shave him with an old-fashioned straight razor. A certain spook I know *glances down the page* can barely sit still for his wife of decades to cut his hair. He would rather suck broken glass through a straw up his nose than allow anyone near his throat with a sharp object.

Holmes:

It’s not easy to take an old, worn out basic story line like the “stolen master list” and make a watchable movie out of it after so many have tried and failed, but SKYFALL does it. The entire production is excellent, and this is a great addition to the Bond series.

As to the normal “spy flick” questions, here we go . . .

No, it’s not terribly realistic, but that’s fortunate. Who really wants to watch a bunch of guys in filthy, third world hovels passing long hours trying to get something done? SKYFALL is definitely unrealistic, and that’s why it’s superbly entertaining.

Can you use light sockets to make nail bombs? Yes. But not with the method employed in the movie. So all you middle school boys reading this can leave those light fixtures alone. You’ll only succeed in infuriating your parents without getting any real explosions.

The palm ID feature of Bond’s new Walther will thrill gun control nuts the world over. And yes. Tracking radios that size and smaller do work in the real world. The smallest model would be useless in an action flick because they would need a macro lens shot to show it.

There is a theme throughout SKYFALL of a rift between the old HUMINT (human intelligence) hands and the rest of the intelligence community. In the real world, there are plenty of old spooks. The problem with operatives getting good at the job is that organizations generally don’t want them to leave, and they don’t know how to leave, anyway. The idea that younger spooks see the older spooks and their methods as irrelevant is 99% false. Only politicians and whiny media types do that. I suspect this is just as true in MI-6 as it is in American intelligence organizations.

Now for the negatives. The script is a bit weak in a couple of places, but that’s about the only complaint I have.

The positives are many. The acting ranges from fair to excellent. The camera work and editing are great. I hope the editing crew and directors from BOURNE LEGACY see this movie so they can get an idea of how one might make a movie if one combines intention with talent.

The opening chase scene includes a “drive through the market chase” and a novel “top of the train” scene. I won’t ruin them for you. I’ll just say they are very well done, evidencing a good deal of time and effort.

The fighting and shooting scenes are articulate and reasonable. There were no magic weapons with infinite shots, and there were a couple of original touches I think viewers will enjoy.

In a return to earlier Bond style, SKYFALL delivers craftily woven levity. However, the sex was a notch lower than more traditional Bonds. Sorry guys. The producers skimped on their usual “legions of young woman in small bikinis” device, but there is still plenty of movie here.

The four years we waited for a new Bond film were well used by the entire production cast to create a movie that entertains without the viewer having to try too hard. They ALL got it right.

We highly recommend SKYFALL to anyone who enjoys action films. Few movies will ever achieve this level of production quality. Bravo to the Bond team!

We give SKYFALL a .357 magnum +P rating. This is our second highest rating, and it means we would actually pay prime time theater prices if we could stand the crowd. It only fails to achieve our highest rating, the .44 magnum, because we reserve that for films that might enlighten or inspire some of the viewers. You may not be enlightened or inspired by SKYFALL, but you will almost certainly be entertained.

Fallujah and Benghazi: A Tale of Two Cities

By Intelligence Operative Jay Holmes*

In our previous article, Intelligence Perspective on Benghazi, we looked at events in Benghazi that resulted from a minimalist approach to military security and response. However, Benghazi was not the first time in recent history when political fantasies held dear in the White House led to misjudging the character of our enemies and the nature of the military conflict.

Fallujah on November 10, 2004, image by US Marine Corps

In March of 2003, the US invaded Iraq. At least that’s how the mainstream media recorded it. In truth, the invasion started eight months earlier when the CIA and the US Joint Special Operations Command began operating in Iraq with several important goals. These goals included identifying Iraqi leaders who might be willing to turn against Saddam Hussein, organizing the Kurds against the growing Islamic radical groups in Kurdish areas, and locating Iraqi chemical warfare assets.

These goals were met economically and with low cost in American and Kurdish lives. Before the main invasion, the Kurdish rebels, with the help of a few dozen Americans, were able to locate and destroy an Ansar al-Islam terrorist base where Saddam was manufacturing Ricin chemical weapons near Sargat in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq.

On the morning of March 20, 2003, a coalition led by the US and the UK launched the main invasion known as the Iraq War. The stated purpose was to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s government. This invasion proceeded remarkably well in spite of Turkey’s last minute reversal on its agreement to allow the US 4th Infantry Division to enter Iraq via Turkey.

On April 9, Baghdad fell to advancing Coalition forces. The Coalition’s speedy advance against a vastly numerically superior army was partly due to its superior leadership, troops, and air support, and partly due to the rapidly deteriorated morale of the Iraqi troops.

After defeating the Iraqi military and deposing Saddam Hussein, the Coalition faced the question of how best to manage the post-Saddam Iraq. It remains unclear what, if anything, political leaders in the US and the UK envisioned for that task. What transpired was an attempt at minimal political forcefulness while waiting for something like “government” to occur in Iraq. It didn’t occur.

While the Coalition was happy to turn over the governing of Iraq to the Iraqis as quickly as possible, the Iraqis, mired in their age-old tribal and religious conflicts, were largely unwilling or unable to perform a reasonable imitation of a functioning government. Nine years later, they are still struggling with that same basic challenge.

On April 23, 2003, in response to intelligence indicating an increasing presence of armed Islamic militant insurgents in the area, the US coalition sent 700 troops from the US 82nd Airborne Division to take up positions in the city of Fallujah. The Coalition’s chief concern in this operation was avoiding Iraqi casualties and property damage, and the paratroopers operated under heavy limitations. As events unfolded in Fallujah in the following months, the concern for avoiding Iraqi casualties and property damage remained paramount in the minds of the Coalition’s civilian leadership.

The 82nd Airborne has proven its remarkable skills in warfare over the decades. Those skills do not include avoiding enemy bloodshed and property damage. In fact, not surprisingly, bloodshed and property damage are the primary skill sets of most of the world’s military units, including the 82nd Airborne.

I can’t help but wonder why the coalition didn’t send something other than combat units to Fallujah since they were apparently hoping for something other than combat to occur. Note to US politicians: If you want war, send the US military. If you want something else, don’t send the US Military.

It quickly became apparent to anyone observing the unfolding drama in Fallujah that many in the Coalition’s civilian leadership were reverting to the Viet Nam era concept, or rather gross misconception, of “non-violent warfare.” Apparently, some folks in London and D.C. thought they could magically will away a growing insurgent and terrorist presence in Fallujah. No one in our government has yet explained to me precisely what sort of magic was expected to occur, but whatever spells were cast, they did not have the desired effect.

Predictably, on June 28, 2003, while sitting in Fallujah and doing their best to “look friendly,” US troops attracted gunfire during a protest and returned fire. That’s what paratroopers do when they are fired on. They fire back. Seventeen Iraqis were killed, and 70 more were wounded. The paratroopers exercised restraint and didn’t kill the other 200 protestors. The 82nd Airborne was replaced by troops from the 101st Airborne and 3rd armored cavalry. In the aftermath, Fallujah became a rallying point for the anti-Coalition insurgents and their terrorist pals.

On June 30, an explosion occurred in Fallujah in a mosque occupied by a radical religious leader, Sheik Laith Kalil, and some of his bomb makers. The locals claimed the US had attacked an innocent mosque, but the explosion was self-inflicted by the bomb makers.

While the US forces in Fallujah continued to pursue their policy of “friendliness” as they waited for the new Iraqi “government” to take control of Fallujah, Islamic terrorists reinforced the city. On February 12, 2004, some of these Islamic terrorists, in conjunction with “friendly” Iraqi forces, attacked a US military convoy in Fallujah that included the US Theater Commander General John Abizaid. General Abizaid survived unscathed.

On February 23, the insurgents escalated their activity by attacking three Iraqi police stations and the mayor’s office.

In March, 2004, US politicians decided the best way to improve the situation in Fallujah was to withdraw troops. On March 31, insurgents attacked a US civilian convoy. They murdered four contractors from the Blackwater security firm. News agencies treated the US public to images of their burned bodies hanging from a bridge.

The public response to the news footage caused politicians to reassess their “love and peace” military tactics in Fallujah. Against the advice of the Marine commanders on the ground, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was ordered to take Fallujah.

On April 5, 2004, the outnumbered Marines entered the city in an attempt to ferret out approximately two dozen terrorists groups. Unfortunately, the US civilian leadership in Iraq and in Washington still stubbornly clung to its theory that warfare could best be waged by not hurting anyone. US leaders denied Marines most of the air support and artillery they requested on the grounds that too many civilians would be killed, and too much property damage would occur.

As the April operations in Fallujah commenced, an insurgent army led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadar felt confident enough to start his own uprising. Al-Sadar ordered his followers to ambush Coalition forces in various locations around Anbar province.

The US military had had many opportunities to kill or capture the insurgent Muqtada al-Sadar, but was ordered to leave him alone in keeping with the US strategy of avoiding the use of force as much as possible in Iraq. While the Marines chased terrorists around Fallujah, our “friends” in the “new” Iraqi security forces swapped sides and helped the insurgents.

As Iraqi casualties in Fallujah mounted, the Iraqi coalition government demanded that the US operation there be stopped. The US government bowed to the Iraqi Governing Council and ordered the Marines to withdraw to the perimeter of the city. The insurgents took that opportunity to resupply and reinforce while conducting hit-and-run raids against the now static Marines.

On May 1, 2004, the US optimistically decided to turn over the security of Fallujah to a newly formed and US equipped Iraqi Fallujah Brigade. The Brigade’s only accomplishment was to surrender its weapons to the insurgents when it deserted in September of 2004. At that point, the US had suffered 27 dead, and the Iraqis had lost approximately 400 insurgents and terrorists, and approximately 250 non-terrorist civilians.

By October of 2004, the interim government in Baghdad that had bemoaned the “illegal and immoral” US operations in Fallujah the previous spring was begging Coalition forces to “clean up Fallujah.”

In November, the Coalition sent a much larger force to Fallujah than they had in April. It included 10,000 American troops, 800 British troops, and 200 Iraqi troops of dubious quality and reliability.By that time, the insurgents numbered approximately 4,000 fighters, most of whom were from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, the Philippines, Kuwait, and Palestine. They had used the six month absence of Coalition forces to reinforce their positions and to plant thousands of booby traps around the city.

As the US Marines took positions outside of Fallujah on November 7, about 90% of the civilians in Fallujah evacuated the city. Many of the terrorist leaders, including Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, escaped with them.

On November 8, while British forces patrolled the surrounding area, the US Marines began attacking the city. Bloody fighting took place until December 23, costing the lives of 95 Americans and wounding 540 more. Four soldiers from the UK died, and ten were wounded. Iraqi soldiers counted eight dead and 43 wounded, along with approximately 800 Iraqi civilian deaths. The terrorists lost from 1500-2000 fighters, and around 1500 more were captured.

Then, the war took an amazing turn. The Bush Administration ordered the US military to release almost all of the captured insurgents and allow them to leave with their weapons.

To me, this was a watershed moment in the Iraqi war. It seemed insane to lose so many US and Coalition troops to simply let the cornered terrorists walk away. And with their weapons. At the time, the Iraqi Governing Council was pressuring the US and the UK to let the terrorists leave with their weapons in exchange for a promise of good behavior. This dovetailed well with the US and UK mindset of a “nice war,” and the US and the UK yielded.

We’ll never know how many more Americans, allies, and Iraqi civilians later died because 1,500 captured terrorists were allowed to go home armed to fight another day. To terrorists in Iraq and around the world who were following the events in Fallujah, it had to be a humorous and inspiring sight. To me and to other Americans, it was heart breaking and infuriating.

In my estimation, Fallujah unfolded as it did and Iraq became an enormously expensive problem because the US and the UK, though willing to pay the price in blood and treasure to defeat Saddam Hussein, declined to run the country we conquered long enough for it to actually become a nation. In my opinion, the US Bush Administration and the UK government led by Tony Blair allowed themselves to pursue a fantasy of Nice War. Because of our leadership’s pathological insistence on pretending the Iraqis were actually cooperating with us, we continued to pay a high price in blood and treasure until our final withdrawal from Iraq in December of 2011.

US Consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, image by Voice of America

When we compare the events in Fallujah in 2004 with the September 2012 events in Benghazi, we see many similarities born from the Nice War concept. In both cases, the US administrations allowed their political and sociological philosophies to cloud their judgment. In both cases, our presidents thought that force used could be minimized. But in both cases, to the detriment of the US forces on the ground, they underestimated what level of force was needed. We now know that in Benghazi, as in Fallujah, both presidents had sufficient information with which to make better decisions.

The dissimilarities are equally apparent. In Fallujah, the journalists were present in large numbers and were willing to report what they saw, though at times they were unable to understand what they were seeing. In Benghazi, the events occurred out of sight of the US media. In Fallujah, the Bush administration dealt frankly with the press. In Benghazi, the Obama administration lied to the press and to the American people and was caught, but for the most part, the press has been willing to ignore that.

It would be of great benefit to our national security if our current and future administrations learn from the mistakes in Fallujah and Benghazi. When politicians are unable or unwilling to look beyond their own political fantasies when making foreign policy and military decisions, more American lives and resources are tragically squandered. How willing and how well the Obama administration will learn the lessons from these two cities and embrace the realities of foreign relations remains to be seen.

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*‘Jay Holmes’, is an intelligence veteran of the Cold War and remains an anonymous member of the intelligence community. His writing partner, Piper Bayard, is the public face of their partnership.

You may contact them in blog comments, on Twitter at@piperbayard, on Facebook at Piper Bayard, or by email at piperbayard@yahoo.com. 

© 2012 Jay Holmes. All content on this page is protected by copyright. If you would like to use any part of this, please contact us at the above links to request permission.

The True Story of the D-Day Spies: Double Cross

By Intelligence Operative Jay Holmes*

DOUBLE CROSS addresses one of the more complex and important intelligence operations of World War Two. It explains how the UK’s MI-5 Counter Intelligence division quite effectively turned and managed German spies in an attempt to deceive Germany about the Allied plans for the invasion of Western Europe in 1944.

The first thing about this book that jumps out is its readability. Great Britain’s operation for running double agents involved many people and many details. The details can be tedious to consider, but without considering enough of them, these operations can’t be reasonably understood. MacIntyre has done a brilliant job of presenting enough details without making the book read like a boring bureaucratic report. I envy his ability to present such a complex and important piece of history in such a readable form.

Good history writers do good research—lots of it—and Ben MacIntyre certainly did his. But he did something else as well. He very skillfully analyzed the collected data and produced an accurate and clear interpretation of the facts. I’ve never met Ben MacIntyre, but if he was never a spook, he should have been one. For us.

In DOUBLE CROSS, McIntyre manages to present personalities from both sides of that terrible war in very human form. He demonstrates how imperfect people from diverse backgrounds working for MI-5 shared that one essential quality that any effective intelligence person must have. They shared a genuine commitment to their mission. In this case, their mission was to help defeat Nazi Germany. By most traditional standards, the agents would not appear to be “cut from the right cloth.” In some instances their handlers committed blunders in dealing with them. The book clearly shows the reasons why each of them might have failed miserably, as well as why they didn’t.

I had previously read and enjoyed a couple of MacIntyre’s books, but so far, this must be his masterpiece. I have no hesitation in giving this book a Five Star rating on the Five Star scale. It’s not a movie but I can’t help but assign our Bayard and Holmes “.44-Magnum” rating because I so rarely get to use that top assessment. Anyone with interest in World War Two or the world of intelligence operations, or who simply likes good action stories, should absolutely read this book. It’s purely a great book.

image from Bloomsbury.com

Bravo to Ben MacIntyre for staying awake and on course through so many hours of work reading thousands of pages of documents to get to the critical facts. Well done!

You can find DOUBLE CROSS, along with MacIntyre’s other books, at Ben MacIntyre: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle.

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*‘Jay Holmes’, is an intelligence veteran of the Cold War and remains an anonymous member of the intelligence community. His writing partner, Piper Bayard, is the public face of their partnership.

You may contact them in blog comments, on Twitter at@piperbayard, on Facebook at Piper Bayard, or by email at piperbayard@yahoo.com. 

© 2012 Jay Holmes. All content on this page is protected by copyright. If you would like to use any part of this, please contact us at the above links to request permission.

Bayard, Holmes, Movie, No Popcorn – ARGO

By Author Piper Bayard and Intelligence Operative Jay Holmes

ARGO movie poster

ARGO is a movie thriller based on Operation ARGO, a CIA undertaking lead by CIA employee Tony Mendez to rescue six US Embassy employees who avoided capture by the Iranian criminals who violated the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Ben Affleck directs and stars as Tony Mendez. He is supported by fellow stars Alan Arkin, John Goodman, and Bryon Kranston.

Bayard

George Clooney is one of the producers of this movie, and he makes his mark immediately. ARGO opens with an American apologist historical spin, implying Iran was a happy, thriving utopia right up until big, bad US came in to set up Shah Pahlavi and steal all of the oil. For an actual historical perspective of this time period rather than the fictional version George Clooney offers, see Iran’s Present is Iran’s Past – Part VI, Rise of the Ayatollahs.

Once past the first few historically offensive minutes, ARGO becomes an excellent movie that superbly conveys the intensity of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. In 1979, Americans were horrified at the unprecedented savagery of an attack on our diplomatic enclave. Even the ruthless Japanese Empire had not stooped so low during WWII. Across the country, we were united in front of the evening news, watching daily for something positive as the stress of the crisis and the brutal stories from friends and relatives who’d escaped became a constant background tension in our collective psyche as a nation.

image from ARGO movie

The escape of the six to Canada was a vital success for the West. It not only gave us hope through the long months of that untenable situation, but it renewed our faith in our good neighbors to the north, along with our other genuine allies. ARGO successfully captures the barbarity of the attack to Westerners and to decent Iranians, as well as the intensity of what the hostage crisis and the escape of the six meant to America.

One thing I appreciate most about ARGO is the sarcastic humor, which is expertly laced through the movie. There are some actual laugh-out-loud moments, usually thanks to Arkin and Goodman, that are just enough to prevent the dark subject matter from becoming overwhelming.

Overall, I thoroughly appreciated and enjoyed ARGO, and I would definitely recommend it.

Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez, image from ARGO movie

Holmes

I enjoyed the movie and I am glad I saw it. The story line does not completely follow reality and, fortunately, a few key players are left out of the movie version. Affleck was not attempting to produce a CIA training manual; he was trying to create a watchable movie and he succeeded. He and the producers can be forgiven, and in fact thanked, for not being completely accurate.

Before I give kudos to the folks who made the movie a success, I should take a moment to express my humble but heartfelt gratitude to then Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor and his wife Pat, Canadian Immigration Officer John Sheardown, the Government of Canada, the Embassy and Government of Sweden, and several other brave souls, including Iranians, who will remain unknown. Without their moral and physical courage, the movie would not have been made because the six Americans who escaped the attack on the US Embassy would likely not have survived.

image from US State Department, public domain

As for the movie version of what occurred, I congratulate Ben Affleck for a very good job of acting and directing. Ben, you DON’T look like Tony Mendez, and I’m sure that will help Tony keep his personal life peaceful.

Alan Arkin did what Alan Arkin always does. He’s believable and humorous. Arkin and John Goodman combine to add a great touch to the movie. They play a couple of Hollywood insiders who conspire to help the CIA pull off the unlikely mission. Their performances alone are enough reason to see this movie. To those who follow Hollywood, it might seem implausible that anyone from that world would ever help the CIA. But Hollywood did just that on both this and other occasions, proving not everyone there is a self-absorbed, ignorant degenerate. There are decent people there, as well.

John Goodman and Alan Arkin, image from ARGO movie

The acting was well done all the way through the movie, including those bearded bad guys and the screaming imbeciles in the streets. You might feel a need to cluster bomb them throughout the film, but that just proves they are doing a good job of acting. Leave your cluster bombs and any other heavy weapons at home, please.

The editors did a fine job of weaving in a bit of historical footage without causing the usual brain twist that we normally suffer when historical footage is inserted in a movie. The lighting, sound, and camera work were perfect.

If you want a historical documentary, this isn’t it, but it’s still close enough for the documentary seekers to watch since no good documentaries are available for the events depicted.

As a cranky old spook, it’s often difficult for me to sit through a “spook drama” but I enjoyed this film. Fellow Yankees fans should momentarily forgive the Red Sox fan Affleck his many sins, both real and imagined, and enjoy this tense thriller. I can’t promise that you will be thrilled, but you should be well entertained. However, reasonable and responsible parents should not bring children under twelve to have them frightened by this movie.

Tony Mendez and President Jimmy Carter, image from cia.gov

Holmes and I give ARGO a qualified .44 Magnum rating, which is our highest level of cinematic esteem. It won’t actually change your life unless you happen to experience some sort of spiritual epiphany while in the bathroom at the theater or with your significant other in a dark theater parking lot. But this movie can somewhat illuminate one’s historical perspective, and it can certainly entertain a wide audience.

Have fun at the theater, and don’t get caught being socially inappropriate in the parking lot.

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