The evolution of how we recruit and train spies—starting with the OSS in the 1940s—and our changing expectations of what the job entails and what motivates those who sign up:
I remember him saying something like: “This is the only thing in the Army that you can volunteer for and then get out of if you change your mind.” That’s because we had signed up for something illegal, even immoral, according to some people, he said.
It was called espionage. We were not going to be turned into spies, he explained, but “case officers” — the people who recruit foreigners to be spies. Put another way, he went on, we were going to persuade foreigners to be traitors, to steal their countries’ secrets. We were going to learn how to lie, steal, cheat to accomplish our mission, he said — and betray people who trusted us, if need be. Anyone who objected, he concluded, could walk out right now.
He looked around. One man got up and left. The rest of us, a little anxious, stayed put.
“What Makes a Perfect Spy Tick?” — Jeff Stein, Washington Post
See also: “The Journalist and the Spies.” — Dexter Filkins, New Yorker, Sept. 19, 2011
Chris Brown is performing at the Grammy Awards and it’s a big fuss! I had to remind myself why so I went and looked up this old newspaper from 2009.
kate beaton for president of my heart
Above: The underwater funeral procession scene from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916, dir. Stuart Paton), the first fictional undersea film.
Below: Diagram for the Williamson photosphere, which was used to shoot the film. The camera & cameraman were placed in the photosphere and lowered into the sea, remaining connected to the surface via a watertight tube.
(via)
Florence Bates escorts her guest out in The Brasher Doubloon (1947, dir. John Brahm), an adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The High Window (via)
Garth Ennis is doing a children’s book?
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
This, I gotta see.
Kick in some funds at the link, willya?
Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing, via The Trad
Know them. Love them.
Amen.
Straight up.
BTW, if you’ve never read any Elmore Leonard, START READING ELMORE LEONARD.
Ever heard of Justified? Based on an Elmore Leonard short story. What about the Quentin Tarantino movie Jackie Brown? Based on Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch. Get Shorty? Based on an Elmore Leonard book of the same name. Out Of Sight? Same.
The man is a national treasure, and an utter god with dialogue. Go into Barnes & Noble, purchase The Switch, and begin your education.
(Also Richard Price and George V. Higgins, but they deserve posts of their own.)
