On May 31, 2017, at 12:31 PM, Steve Kinney <admin@pilobilus.net> wrote:
On 05/26/2017 08:20 AM, John Newman wrote:
On May 25, 2017, at 2:28 AM, Steve Kinney <admin@pilobilus.net> wrote:
On 05/24/2017 08:44 PM, Razer wrote:
Ps. I wouldn't suppose a single one of you has ever actually read one of Fleming's books.
Only just all of them, even Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. :D
"Once is misfortune, twice is happenstance, three times is enemy action."
The first Bond flick was OK, but alas... Eon went the way of maximum marketing and before it was over with, selling the Playboy Lifestyle was the whole purpose of making Bond movies. If anyone here digs spy fiction at all, The Night Manager is well worth seeing: It takes a miniseries to tell a LeCarre story.
But none of the above is a patch on L. Fletcher Prouty's magnum opiate, The Secret Team.
:o)
I've actually never read Fleming, just sort of assumed it was way cheesy based on the movies?
I have read most of LeCarre's stuff and a few other spy genre guys like Len Deighton and Frederick Forsyth...
The Karla trilogy is the best, for my money.
Oops, I neglected to provide a link to The Secret Team. It is kind of hard to find. This is surprising (or not) considering that it is a very detailed history of the CIA from 1947 through 1972, the only text of its kind.
https://mega.nz/#!wC4CQAyC!IePufl0noDhv9AfpgpQb9EYQCrfVMtZCn7pi2wfOJPM
Cool, thanks! Fletcher (Prouty) lives ;) I actually have read large parts of this years ago. You can find it in a few spots on the net, including some HTML versions at various JFK assassination sites. It is really interesting, although much of Fletcher's reasoning (any information you think you have is probably disinformation) would almost make you wary of the ST book itself.. and the never really explained reason by which he somehow never had to sign away his ability to report on all this stuff seems bizarre, although I can imagine bureaucratic over sight being the simplest explanation. In any case, a totally fascinating work. I just reread the intro where he describes the book being essentially disappeared after publication by (presumably) CIA action, something that is no longer possible in the internet/Wikileaks age.
Page 230:
"It was necessary for the CIA to arrange for aircraft to enter the country quite frequently without the usual customs check that all military aircraft must undergo. In the earlier years the CIA would arrange directly or through State or Defense to have customs waive inspection of a plane with classified cargo or carrying a defector or on some other highly classified mission. Then, when such things had become more or less commonplace, the CIA would politely offer to provide a few men to work with the regular customs personnel to take the burden for such activity from them. This was the way it was put in the first place, and the customs office would gratefully accept the assistance. The CIA would go through all the necessary steps to get authorization for increasing the manpower allocations in the customs service by the number of men it planned to put there and then to make arrangements to reimburse the customs office for the payroll and other costs of the office.
This latter step would always be taken, because it would be best for the customs office to go through all of the normal motions of paying these men, including promoting them and paying for their travel or other usual expenses, so that their assignment would appear to be completely normal to all others in the office. Then, by special accounting procedures that would take place in the main office, the CIA would reimburse the Treasury Department for the money involved.
In the beginning this would all be done with elaborate open-handedness, even to the point where the new agency men would receive training and other prerequisites of the job. However, as the years passed, most of this procedure would be forgotten, and few would recall that those special assignments had even originated with the Agency. Accountants who had known how to transfer the funds would have been transferred themselves, and the Treasury Department might no longer bill for the costs involved. But the Agency men would stay on, their replacements would be carefully fitted into the manning tables, and few would even notice that they were there.
This has happened quite extensively in a great many places all throughout the Government. There are CIA men in the Federal Aviation Administration, in State, all over the DOD, and in most other offices where the CIA has wanted to place them. Few top officials, if any, would ever deny the Agency such a service; and as the appointive official departed, and his staffs came and went, the whole device would be lost with only the CIA remembering that they were still there.
Many of these people have reached positions of great responsibility. I believe that the most powerful and certainly the most useful agent the CIA has ever had operates in just such a capacity within another branch of the Government, and he has been there for so long that few have any idea that he is a long-term career agent of the CIA. Through his most excellent and skillful services, more CIA operations have been enabled to take place than can be laid at the feet of any other, more "legitimate" agent.
This was the plan and the wisdom of the Dulles idea from the beginning. On the basis of security he would place people in all areas of the Government, and then he would move them up and deeper into their cover jobs, until they began to take a very active part in the role of their own cover organizations. This is how the ST was born. Today, the role of the CIA is performed by an ad hoc organization that is much greater in size, strength, and resources than the CIA has ever been visualized to be.