Spies, Lies, and Hollywood

The Media and the spy game

Several TV shows and movies were very interesting and funny during the 60’s and 70’s, because of the way they portrayed the espionage business. My parent’s two favorite TV shows were I Spy and Get Smart. I Spy starred Robert Culp and Bill Cosby as traveling tennis stars that were actually spies. Get Smart had a large cast of wonderful actors including Don Adams (voice of Inspector Gadget), Barbara Feldon, Edward Platt, and Bernie Kopell (Doc on the Love Boat TV show). Get Smart was created by Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, The Producers) and Buck Henry (Catch-22, Heaven Can Wait). One of the additional writers was Pat McCormick (writer for Johnny Carson). Both of these TV shows stretched how the spy game was played and it was great to watch the twists and turns. Of course back then I did not know what my parents actually did, but they sure enjoyed the irony.

One year for Christmas, I asked for only one big present. It was something from a James Bond movie. It was this elaborate briefcase that had a lot of goodies inside. I dreamt of it and finally Christmas morning came, and sure enough I got it. Wow, it was the coolest toy ever. I can remember it like it was yesterday. The edge of briefcase had a hidden throwing knife that could be withdrawn from the briefcase while still shut and thrown across the room into the chest of some hapless KGB agent. Alas my poor brother was always a cheap substitute, but since I had no KGB agent near by, he would have to do. Next there was a trigger button on the handle of the briefcase that when actuated would fire plastic bullets out the side of the case. The case itself was bobby trapped, in case some diabolical criminal a.k.a. little brother attempted to open the case without permission. The trap was set with a little snap cap like that from a cap gun. If I did not throw the secret switch first before opening, then the cap would fire, the smell of gunpowder would fill the air, and ahhhhhhh, you knew that all was right with the world. Once inside the case, your eyes would bounce with joy. The briefcase contained all the basic spy stuff; Gun, codebook, and code wheel. But this was no ordinary gun. It was a 9MM German Lugar, with silencer, extended rifle barrel, wire frame rifle stock extender, scope, and orange plastic bullets. The silencer was the coolest. It could be attached to the pistol or to the extended rifle barrel. The codebook was basically a notepad with a bobby trap. It had a secret switch too, just like the briefcase. It used the same caps too, to explode on the curious. The code wheel was the most interesting of all the items in the case. I had been experimenting with codes and ciphers on paper for a while, but this code wheel did all the work for me. I simply set the code wheel to a secret setting, and then each letter of my message that I wanted to encrypt was dialed into the code wheel. Then I would look into this little window on the code wheel, and there would appear my cipher text. The codebook was where I wrote my plain text and the resulting cipher text. This code wheel device fascinated me, as I saw it as a huge time saver over paper ciphers done manually. And that is why I love computers, the time that they can save, theoretically that is. My Dad must have gotten a real kick out of buying me that James Bond briefcase and watching me play with it so intently. Little did I know that at the office he played with the real thing, including concealing weapons inside ordinary objects, and hiding miniaturized crypto devices. Just like my play briefcase only a little better.

This entry was posted on December 22, 2006 at 1:24 am and is filed under Virginia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.