BOOKS Brief for the Offense

In one capacity or another, Miles Copeland has been in or near the “intelligence community” since OSS days, and he draws amply and engagingly from firsthand knowledge. To explain what sort of people become “spies” (agents), for example, he doesn’t rely on psychological abstractions but tells us the stories of four Americans whose careers as Soviet agents have been used as case histories in CIA training courses. There is “ ‘Emily,’ an attractive but shy lady who, one spring evening in 1950, met a kindly, handsome man of about forty whom we may call ‘Foster.’ Emily was personal assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State.Foster didn’t want anything, not even sex, and he took-no interest whatever in Emily’s job. He seemed genuinely to enjoy Emily’s company, and he knew all sorts of cozy little restaurants.Foster, an officer of the USSR’s secret intelligence service, was putting Emily through what is known as ‘prerecruitment development.’ ” The second type is “the ‘Mickey’—the ‘walk-in’ spy who, because of special knowledge and experience was able to get in touch with a foreign intelligence service without being spotted.” Then the “Philby” (this type name taken from the British example)—“the long-term agent, recruited in his youth,” and finally, “the ‘Willie’—the spy who is actually working Tor one intelligence service but who, for at least part of his career, is led by his. ‘principal’ to believe he is working for another.”

Enriched and enlivened with such seasoning of specifics, Copeland’s easy, readable prose introduces us to the intricacies of espionage and counterespionage, “residents” and their “stations,” sneakies and screechies, drops and “special projects,” their intelligence apparatus and ours. We become acquainted with CIA’s most hidden cadres, such as the jovial Mother, Kingfish, the Fisherman, Jojo, and Lady Winder-mere. It is Mother who organized the Octopus system for the counterterrorist operation that he runs, and we sit with Mother in his office at Langley headquarters that “is fitted out as a spacious hunting lodge, with beams crossing a slanting ceiling and a well stocked bar.”

JB

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James Burnham

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In one capacity or another, Miles Copeland has been in or near the “intelligence community” since OSS days, and he draws amply and engagingly from firsthand knowledge. To explain what sort of people become “spies” (agents), for example, he doesn’t rely on psychological abstractions but tells us the stories of four Americans whose careers as Soviet agents have been used as case histories in CIA training courses. There is “ ‘Emily,’ an attractive but shy lady who, one spring evening in 1950, met a kindly, handsome man of about forty whom we may call ‘Foster.’ Emily was personal assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State.Foster didn’t want anything, not even sex, and he took-no interest whatever in Emily’s job. He seemed genuinely to enjoy Emily’s company, and he knew all sorts of cozy little restaurants.Foster, an officer of the USSR’s secret intelligence service, was putting Emily through what is known as ‘prerecruitment development.’ ” The second type is “the ‘Mickey’—the ‘walk-in’ spy who, because of special knowledge and experience was able to get in touch with a foreign intelligence service without being spotted.” Then the “Philby” (this type name taken from the British example)—“the long-term agent, recruited in his youth,” and finally, “the ‘Willie’—the spy who is actually working Tor one intelligence service but who, for at least part of his career, is led by his. ‘principal’ to believe he is working for another.”

Enriched and enlivened with such seasoning of specifics, Copeland’s easy, readable prose introduces us to the intricacies of espionage and counterespionage, “residents” and their “stations,” sneakies and screechies, drops and “special projects,” their intelligence apparatus and ours. We become acquainted with CIA’s most hidden cadres, such as the jovial Mother, Kingfish, the Fisherman, Jojo, and Lady Winder-mere. It is Mother who organized the Octopus system for the counterterrorist operation that he runs, and we sit with Mother in his office at Langley headquarters that “is fitted out as a spacious hunting lodge, with beams crossing a slanting ceiling and a well stocked bar.”