Lots of people have been taken with the spy world — including WFB. He wrote lots of spy novels and often addressed the spy world in his non-fiction, too. For two years, upon graduation from college, he served in the CIA. (His boss was E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate infamy.) Lots of Yalies served in the CIA. In fact, a Yale professor, Robin Winks, wrote a book called “Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961.”
Espionage is a rich subject. I will count a few of the ways. It involves foreign policy. History. Adventures. Interesting personalities. Intellectual work. The human heart. Moral ambiguity. Languages and cultures. The fate of the world.
On the homepage today, I have a piece on the new spy museum in Washington, D.C. — it is a superb museum, a smart museum, a mind-challenging and -expanding museum. I end my piece with a little reflection on Vernon Walters.
When spy-world pros get together, they talk shop. I’m speaking of pros from all over the world, and all kinds of systems. They don’t get into right and wrong — the moral. They talk craft.
Yet there is a moral dimension. I don’t think intelligence is just a matter of Team X and Team Y (although it can be like that).
Anyway, back to Vernon Walters. He was an Army officer (lieutenant general), a diplomat, a spymaster (CIA) — many things. I got to know him a little, late in his life. But, long before, while I was in high school, I had read his memoirs, Silent Missions. Before I got to the first page, I was struck by the dedication: “To the brave men and women who have laid down their lives on the invisible battlefield that we might live free.”
I hope our best and brightest — some of them, many of them — are applying to the CIA. We need them, as we long have. And may they stay alive, living free along with the rest of us.