[Paleopsych] CIA: The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage Reality of Espionage
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The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage Reality of Espionage
http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html
Intelligence in Recent Public Literature
The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage Reality of Espionage
By Frederick P. Hitz. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. 211 pages.
Reviewed by [4]Hayden B. Peake
_________________________________________________________________
For connoisseurs of intelligence fiction a few titles epitomize the
essence of the craft. Rudyard Kipling's Kim is perhaps the most well
known. John le Carré's The Spy Who Came In From the Cold has become an
icon of the anti-hero spy. Somewhat less familiar but equally
compelling works include Graham Greene's Human Factor, Erskine
Childers Riddle of the Sands, Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent, and
Somerset Maugham's Ashenden. But while entertained, most readers are
left wondering whether these books reflect the real world of spying.
In The Great Game, Fred Hitz, former operations officer, Agency
inspector general, and more recently a professor at Princeton
University, set out to answer that question. His approach is
straightforward: he compares issues discussed in these and other great
works of fiction--Ian Fleming and the like, excluded--with the
writings of Kim Philby and his My Silent War, Dewey Clarridge's A Spy
For All Seasons, Jerry Schecter's The Spy Who Saved The World, David
Murphy and Sergei Kondrashev's Battleground Berlin, and David Wise's
SPY, to name a few non-fiction books he included.
The 17 chapters in The Great Game deal with a variety of functional
espionage topics. For example, Hitz shows how agent recruitment in the
literary world is seen to follow the classic real world model of
spotting, contact, and development of potential agents by the
recruiting agency. To illustrate his point, he uses the case contained
in David Ignatius's book Agents of Influence, an account of agent
operations in the Middle East. The central character, case officer Tom
Rogers--"loosely modeled on a real CIA case officer killed in the
Beirut Embassy bombing in 1983" (p. 10)--cultivates the deputy chief
of Fatah intelligence. His intent is to get early warnings about
planned terrorist threats to US citizens in the region. Rogers
painstakingly develops a rapport with the prospective agent, called
PECOCK, who gradually becomes a source of this vital data. This
approach to recruitment, Hitz points out, is based on a very basic
principle of human behavior that operates when someone is trying to
get someone else to do something he might not otherwise
consider--people like to talk and often say more than they should
under the right conditions. Recruitment under these circumstances is
more cooperative than coercive, at least initially. In this particular
case, Ignatius shows how conflict can develop when CIA Headquarters
decides to place tighter control on the agent than the relationship,
as originally established, permits. The consequence is conflict
between the officer in the field, the agent, and Headquarters. And
while the story makes for good reading, Hitz uses it to make two
points. The first of these is that, when it comes to such
interpersonal issues, fiction can illustrate the basic human stresses
of espionage as well as non-fiction, but it doesn't capture "all the
ways in which a human spy can scheme, rationalize, justify, and alter
his behavior to perform his espionage mission."
The second point, which applies to both fiction and non-fiction, is
that the classical recruitment approach is largely theoretical. In the
real world, suggests Hitz, most CIA and KGB agents, at least during
the Cold War, were walk-ins--volunteers. The challenge for the case
officer in such an instance was whether the prospective agent should
be accepted. This changes the control aspect in favor of the receiving
agency, especially with agents who remain in place and supply secrets.
Hitz uses Bill Hood's MOLE, as one example of how most Cold War agents
came to work for the CIA. It tells the story of a Soviet intelligence
officer who became a CIA agent in 1953--a GRU major, Peter Popov,
stationed in Vienna. The CIA didn't notice him; he noticed them and
eventually dropped a letter into an American's car, thus beginning a
valuable relationship of many years. Popov was just the first of such
walk-ins who became valuable sources.[5]1
The Great Game does point out that some recruitment techniques are
encountered in both the real world and in fiction. Some coercive
techniques, sexual entrapment (the honeytrap), for example, fall in
this category. To make the point in the non-fiction world, Hitz uses
the case of Marine Corps Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, whose lover in Moscow
turned out to be a KGB asset (Swallow). A fictional coercive
counterpart is found in Eric Ambler's A Coffin for Dimitrios, in which
the target's gambling problems are used to gain his cooperation.
In other comparisons, Hitz argues that both fiction and non-fiction
can illuminate some issues equally well. In fact, some of the most
basic concerns that surface in espionage cases are in this
category-what motivates a person to become an agent and betray his
country; the complexities of counterintelligence (CI), the problem of
potential fabricators; spying on friendly countries, and the role of
assassination in intelligence operations, are just a few.
When it comes to motivation, Hitz finds le Carré's works most
impressive. Those are followed by Philby's autobiography, My Silent
War, and Graham Greene's Human Factor. In the non-fiction arena, David
Wise's treatment of Robert Hanssen and Miranda Carter's recent
biography of Anthony Blunt, are both good examples.[6]2
A cautionary note is worth considering. Hitz does not directly suggest
that fiction can be a source of learning the espionage business, and
this should not be inferred.
Readers of spy fiction often do not realize that CI is the theme of
most espionage books, with the mole and the double agent dominating
the topics. Hitz cites John le Carré's Smiley trilogy as excellent
examples and spends considerable space on the CI problems developed in
several non-fiction books about the Ames, Hanssen, and Edward Howard
cases to illustrate the complexities. CI is less of a problem for some
countries, Hitz suggests, and he quotes "Paul Redmond, America's
version of George Smiley--and a profane, brash, outspoken, caustic,
courageous one at that" [p. 62]--as saying that "Americans are just
too nice to do counterintelligence well."
With regard to assassination in the world of spy fiction, Hitz
describes the dilemma created when the British intelligence service,
as described by Graham Greene in The Human Factor, poisons a staff
member erroneously thought to be a KGB penetration. The issue
developed is not so much whether the death solved the immediate
problem but whether it is ever right. In the nonfiction world,
although the KGB under its legendary leader Lavrenty Beria once
employed this alternative, Hitz shows that today the method is
"emphatically not on among the Western intelligence services in
handling problems with their countrymen." (p. 115).
In the chapter titled "Sci-Fi," Hitz discusses the technology employed
by fictional characters, including the time-honored tradecraft
described in the George Smiley trilogy.[7]3 "None of this does justice
to the real world of espionage," he concludes (p. 129). And while
there is an element of truth here that becomes evident as Hitz
discusses the role of satellites and codebreaking in the Cold War era,
there is irony too when one considers that George Smiley's "time
honored tradecraft" is still in use, as Hitz's own account of the Ames
and Hanssen cases makes quite clear.
Throughout The Great Game Hitz provides a number of interesting
details. Unfortunately, some of them are contradictory or inaccurate.
For example, his asssertion on page 13 that "Sergeant Lonetree was
induced by the Soviet intelligence service to open the vaulted area of
the US embassy in Moscow to the Soviets for espionage purposes" is
contradicted on page 105, where he says it didn't happen "as
originally thought."[8]4 Of a somewhat lesser nature, Arnold Deutsch,
the man who recruited Kim Philby, was Austrian, not Hungarian; Philby
defected in 1963, not the "early 1950s" (p. 33); Ames was arrested on
21 not 22 February 1994 (p. 35); Larry Wu-Tai Chin was caught in the
1980s not the 1970s; and Greville Wynn was anything but "the unsung
hero of the Penkovskiy operations" (p. 94). It is also incorrect to
say that Robert Hanssen "alone selected the hiding places or 'dead
drops,' where he concealed the spy information he was providing them
and received the cash in payment" (p. 69). He did choose the first
one, but the KGB selected the rest, although he was asked to
approve.[9]5 Finally, the "first CIA intelligence chief in Moscow" was
not compromised in a honeytrap and sent home; it did happen to the
first intelligence officer sent to Moscow in connection with the Popov
case.
In answering his original question, Hitz concludes that, "no fictional
account adequately captures the remarkable twists and turns that a
genuine human spy goes through in pursuit of his mission of treachery
and betrayal" (p. 189). This is a remarkable position when it is
remembered that many of his academic colleagues hold the opposite
view.[10]6 They would do well to rethink their positions. On the other
hand, what he doesn't say is that no non-fiction account portrays all
the vicissitudes of the espionage world either, although some of the
recent studies of Cold War cases based on archival materials come
close. The Great Game shows the real value of fiction when it examines
the morality of espionage. Even when dealt with in the abstract, such
issues are worth thinking about before the fact, and fiction does that
well.
If precedence is an indicator, one thing seems certain. As long as the
Great Game continues, we can expect more fiction and non-fiction books
about this calling. As Kipling wrote, "When everyone is dead the Great
Game is finished. Not before."[11]7
______________________________________________________________________
Footnotes
[12]1. For the story of another walk-in, see Barry G. Royden,
"Tolkachev, A Worthy Successor to Penkovsky," Studies in Intelligence
47, no. 3: 5-33.
[13]2. David Wise, Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert
Hanssen Betrayed America (New York: Random House, 2002) and Miranda
Carter, Anthony Blunt: His Lives (New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, 2001).
[14]3. Although Smiley appeared briefly in The Spy Who Came In From
The Cold, the Smiley trilogy generally refers to Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier Spy (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1974); Smiley's People (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980); and The Honorable Schoolboy (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1977).
[15]4. See Pete Earley, Confessions of A Spy: The Real Story of
Aldrich Ames (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1997).
[16]5. See Wise.
[17]6. Wesley Wark, Espionage: Past, Present, Future? (Portland, Or:
Frank Cass, 1994).
[18]7. Rudyard Kipling, Kim (London: Macmillan, 1949).
_________________________________________________________________
[19]Hayden B. Peake manages the CIA's Historical Intelligence
Collection.
References
4. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#author
5. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#fn1
6. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#fn2
7. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#fn3
8. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#fn4
9. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#fn5
10. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#fn6
11. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#fn7
12. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#rfn1
13. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#rfn2
14. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#rfn3
15. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#rfn4
16. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#rfn5
17. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#rfn6
18. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#rfn7
19. http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no3/article08.html#rauthor
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