December 22, 2006 by admin.

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 The edge of briefcase had a hidden throwing knife that could be withdrawn from the briefcase while still shut and thrown across the room into the chest of some hapless KGB agent.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.

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December 21, 2006 by admin.

Mom, Dad, I hate shots

When the Agency prepared an agent and his family to move to a “hostile” land, one of the first things to happen is a series of inoculations a.k.a. shots. As I recall, these shots were so toxic that a person could not handle all of them at once. The shots actually infected us with a little bit of the disease that we were trying not to get. This way our bodies built up immunities in case we came in contact with a full fledged case of the running crud, or whatever the shots were for.

So a few months before our first trip overseas, we loaded up the Rambler station wagon and drove to Langley Virginia from Fairfax Virginia. We check in with the guards at the gate, and then parked. As a family we walk into this great big lobby, with white pillars and a marble looking floor with some very impressive symbols on it. The giant eagle in the middle of this seal just fascinates me, and I stopped my Dad, and said, “What is that on the floor?” He did not answer and hustles the family down a corridor, to the section where the nurses are giving shots. We get our shots and we exited the building with no explanation. My curiosity was killing me, but the answers never came. One day when I was home from college, my mother happen to mention that it was funny how I was giving Dad fits over the seal in the floor of the lobby of CIA headquarters. Well I almost dropped my teeth. After all those years, my mother accidentally solved a mystery that plagued me for years but then forgotten. Sometime after we visited the CIA headquarters a few times for shots, the Agency got wise and starting having dependants (spouses and children) go to the State Department buildings for shots. It seems like they were blowing their own cover with dependants that did not need to know, like me! My poor Dad always had to fend off my barrage of questions. I was a pest, because I knew something was up and could not figure it out.

In case you were wondering, when we went to Laos, we had the full compliment of shots. I believe every shot known to man. Here is the partial list as I remember it: Diphtheria, Typhoid, Typhus, Cholera, Plague I and II, and several others for good measure. I recall the worst one being the Gamma Globulin shot. The nurse would have me stand at the edge of the examination table and hold on. She would then ask me to lower my pants as to expose one hip. The shot was kept in a refrigerator until the last moment and then a horse size needle was attached and then jammed into the hip. The nurses were all military nurses, so their tender loving care was all gone by that time in their career. They were use to giving shots in a great big assembly line. Slam, bang, thank you Mama. For about a week or so after the shot, I would have this great big ugly knot and bruise on my hip. We had to have to two Gamma Globulins before going to Laos. I still have nightmares about that needle. We also took Malaria pills every week in Laos, or at least we were supposed to, but that is another story.

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