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December 29th, 2009 in American History by Paul Davis
Crazy Joe Gallo was not a typical mob guy.
Criminals in general, and Cosa Nostra organized crime members in particular, are a clannish breed. They do not normally socialize outside of their crime circles, as they have serious trust issues.
But not Crazy Joe Gallo. He publicly hobnobbed with counterculture musicians, poets and artists in Greenwich Village during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. The 5’ 6’ tall Gallo reportedly wrote poetry, painted and read existential philosophy. He yearned to be a poet – albeit one that shakes down local businesses.
Along with his older brother Larry and younger brother Albert, known as “Kid Twist,” Joe Gallo ran a particularly vicious crew of Brooklyn extortionists and murderers who were connected to the Profaci crime family.
Life published photos of the Gallo crew; a collection of oddball criminals called Peanuts, Pete the Greek, Tarzan, Louie Cadillac, Mondo the Midget, Vinnie the Sicilian, Roy Roy, the Worm, Big Lollypop, Little Lollypop and Ali Baba, the Egyptian knife thrower. Jimmy Breslin’s satirical novel, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, brilliantly captured the colorful and violent gang.
Now we also have Tom Folsom’s nonfiction book on Joe Gallo, The Mad Ones: Crazy Joe Gallo and the Revolution at the Edge of the Underworld (Weinstein Books).
Larry was the brains of the Gallos, Folsom informs us, but Crazy Joe was the character. The Gallo brothers were reputedly the hit men who killed mob boss Albert “the Mad Hatter”Anastasia in 1957 as he sat in a barber chair in Manhattan. They also killed “Frankie Shots” Abbatemarco, a major mob bookmaker in 1959.
The brothers believed themselves to be under-rewarded so they took on the boss, Joe Profaci. Newspaper and magazine reporters wrote numerous pieces about the Gallo- Profaci mob war.
In 1961 Gallo went to prison for threatening a store owner within earshot of New York City detectives. Profaci died and Joe Colombo took over the crime organization. He settled the beef with the Gallos by promoting Larry.
When Joe Gallo came out of prison in 1969, he resumed his fight for leadership of the organization, only this time with Joe Colombo.
Breslin’s The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight came out in 1969 and the film, staring Jerry Orbach as a character based on Gallo, came out in 1971. Gallo disliked the book and film as he believed it made him out to be a clownish hoodlum.
Gallo invited actor Orbach to dinner. They became friends and the Orbachs’ introduced Gallo to their successful entertainer friends. They embraced Gallo as their celebrity chic gangster. Gallo’s enormous ego was stroked by the entertainers.
Colombo was gunned down in 1971 at an Italian-American rally, reputedly on orders from Gallo. Gallo in turn was murdered on April 7, 1972. He was shot by gunmen as he celebrated his 43rd birthday at Umberto’s Clam House on Mulberry’s Street in Manhattan.
Gallo’s shooting death made for a good newspaper story then and it makes for a dramatic end to Folsom’s book today.
Paul Davis also writes an espionage blog for GreatHistory.com. His web site can be viewed here. He can be reached at pauldavisoncrime@aol.com
American History, crime, famous people
December 11th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
Below is part three of my interview with Ben Macintyre, author of Agent ZigZag:
Davis: You describe the 1967 film about Eddie Chapman, Triple Cross, in your book as a rather poor film that bore only a superficial relation to the truth.
Macintyre: I think it tried to turn Chapman into a James Bond character, which he was not, and missed the opportunity to make a really interesting and challenging film about the nature of heroism. It was essentially propaganda, in my view.
Davis: I thought it was a good thriller, if poor history. The cast – Christopher Plummer, Yul Brynner, Gert Frobe and others – were very good, in my view. Frobe portrayed Auric Goldfinger in the film Goldfinger and Triple Cross‘ director, Terence Young, as you know, directed the first two Bond films and the fourth in the series.
Macintyre: The film was entirely inaccurate, and despite some very good actors, I found the acting very wooden.
Davis: As you wrote a book, For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond, do you find it curious that Young knew both Chapman and Fleming?
Macintyre: I think there is a direct link between Chapman and the film version of Bond, in the sense that Connery modeled his performance on Young, who in turn modeled his own image on his former friend and flatmate, Eddie Chapman.
Davis: In part, yes, but I see more of Fleming’s Bond from the novels in the early films. Did Fleming know Chapman?
Macintyre: Not as far as I know.
Davis: Have you received any offers to make a film based on your book?
Macintyre: The film rights have been bought by New Line (Warner Bros.) with Tom Hank’s production company Playtone as co-producer. The first script has now been completed.
Davis: What actor would you like see portray Chapman?
Macintyre: The actor I would dearly love to play Chapman is James McAvoy. He is not only a brilliant actor, and British, but he has that callow, slightly dodgy expression, while being extremely good-looking. That would fit Chapman perfectly.
Davis: How, and why, should we remember Chapman?
Macintyre: As both an example and warning: he was a very bad man who managed, for one very brief period of his life, to find the inner mettle to do something very good indeed.
Davis: Are you working on a new book?
Macintyre: Yes, another wartime espionage and deception story, coming out next year. I cannot say any more, as it is under wraps!
Davis: I read and enjoy your Times column online. Does being a columnist for a major British newspaper that maintains historical archives help you in your research of books on historical people?
Macintyre: I have found the Times archive hugely useful for all my books, but these archives are now full digitized and accessible to the public, so working for the Times does not really give the advantage it once did!
Davis: I truly enjoyed Agent ZigZag and I look forward to reading your new book as well.
Read parts one and two of the interview.
Paul Davis also writes an American crime blog for GreatHistory.com. You can visit Paul Davis’ web site here . You can reach him at pauldavisoncrime@comcast.net
espionage, Military History, World War II, writers
December 1st, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
In my last espionage blog, I began my interview with Ben Macintyre, a writer-at-large and associate editor of the London Times, who wrote a fascinating book about Eddie Chapman: crook, philanderer and double agent in World War II.
Wanted by the police for a safecracking job in Scotland prior to the start of World War II, Chapman fled to the Island of Jersey. The Nazis captured Jersey in 1939 and imprisoned Chapman. An accomplished con man as well as a safecracker, Chapman convinced the Abwehr, the German foreign intelligence service, that he would make a fine spy for them.
The Abwehr trained Chapman in wireless radio, codes, explosives and other spy tradecraft. Chapman parachuted back into Great Britain in 1941 with orders to destroy an airplane factory.
Once on the ground, Chapman quickly turned himself in to MI5, the British Security Service. For the rest of the war, Chapman operated as a double agent. He ended the war with a German Iron Cross and a British pardon for his pre-war crimes.
Ben Macintyre’s Agent ZigZag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love and Betrayal tells the amazing story of Chapman’s double life as a Nazi spy and British agent.
Below is part two of my interview:
Davis: How did you research your book? Did you interview people who knew Chapman?
Macintyre: The research material was a combination of documentary material from the files, interviews with living associates and relatives of Chapman, memoirs, diaries, photographs and other sources.
Davis: Did you receive cooperation from the British Security Services when you were researching the book?
Macintyre: Yes, principally from MI5, which even provided an additional, missing file just before publication. For a secretive organization, the Security Service could not have been more open.
Davis: Do you believe Chapman was treated poorly by the British Government after the war?
Macintyre: In some ways, yes. He certainly thought so. On the other hand, he had manipulated his handlers thoroughly, and escaping prosecution for his many crimes was probably reward enough. He was never going to get a medal, however much he thought he deserved one.
Davis: You also wrote another book,  The Napoleon of Crime, a book about Adam Worth, the criminal that Conan Doyle modeled Sherlock Holmes’ nemeses Professor Moriarty on. Do criminals and con men make good subjects for books?
Macintyre: I certainly seem to be attracted, as subjects, to these people who live on the fringes of society. I find I am far more interested in the unknown and the uncertain than the great and the good: and people like Chapman, who managed to be great and very bad at the same time.
Davis: Although their characters and actions are certainly interesting, criminals do lie and cheat for a living. Did you have any difficulties separating Chapman’s boasts and lies from the truth?
Macintyre: Yes: he wrote an autobiography that was largely fiction, and maintained many of his own myths until his death.
More of my interview with Ben Macintyre in my next blog.
Paul Davis’s web site can be read here He can be reached at pauldavisoncrime@comcast.net
espionage, Military History, World War II
November 25th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
I first became aware of Eddie Chapman when I saw the movie Triple Cross in 1967 when I was a teenager anda James Bond fan. I saw the film as Terence Young, the director of the first two Bond films, helmed this movie about a true-life spy in World War II.
Although Christopher Plummer portrayed Chapman as a crook and Bond-like character, the real Chapman, I would later discover, was a bit more complicated.
Chapman was imprisoned by the Nazis after they captured the Channel Island of Jersey in 1939. A safecracker and con man, he convinced his captors that he would spy for them against the British.
He was trained in spy tradecraft and then dropped by parachute into England, where he promptly contacted British Intelligence. His double game began.
Chapman would go on to be awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans and pardoned for his past crimes by the British.
Ben Macintyre’s Agent ZigZag: The True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love and Betrayal (Harmony Books), is a well- written and researched book that shines a light on Chapman’s character and his incredible actions during the war.
I contacted Macintyre, a writer-at-large and associate editor of the London Times, and interviewed him about his book.
Davis: Why did you write a book about Eddie Chapman?
Macintyre: I wrote the book for, essentially, three reasons: the obituary we published in The Times when Chapman died in 1996 intrigued me: it seemed that the obituary writer really did not believe all the things Chapman had claimed about his life, and that if I could find out the truth, it would be fascinating. I began collecting material on Chapman from that point on. Then, in 2002, there was a change of philosophy in MI5 about the release of secret material, and gradually the files on Agent Zigzag began to be released to the National Archives. The final reason was that I became utterly obsessed by Chapman, who seemed to me to be a character unlike any I had come across before: entirely dishonest, resolutely selfish, opportunistic and manipulative, but also charming, generous and astonishingly brave.
Davis: What did he accomplish as a double agent? Did his spying greatly aid the war effort?
Macintyre: In practical terms, Chapman’s main achievement was in diverting the pilotless V1 bombs that Hitler unleashed on London in the last stages of the war, by sending messages indicating false positions for the impact of the bombs. By convincing the Germans that the bombs were overshooting, the plan was to persuade them to shorten the range, thus ensuring that the bombs fell in under- or unpopulated areas. It was extraordinarily successful. He also extracted a great deal of money from the Abwehr, provided MI5 with a complete picture of how the enemy espionage machine worked and general helped to convince the Abwehr that it had a fully functioning spy network in Britain, when it had nothing of the sort.
More of the interview with Ben Macintyre in my next blog.
Paul Davis also writes an American crime blog for GreatHistory.com.
Paul Davis’ web site can be accessed here He can reached at pauldavisoncrime@comcast.net.
espionage, famous people, World War II
November 9th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
“I’ve been called many things since the foiled break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex, including a criminal mastermind, a bungling burglar, and even a bad spy novelist,” E. Howard Hunt wrote in the introduction to his book American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate & Beyond (Wiley).
“I don’t know which accusation hurts most,” Hunt continued. “Two are outrageous overstatements and one is a matter of opinion. Need I explain which is which? Whatever the case, none of them describes the whole man, and all disregard over two decades of service to the United States, first as a sailor in World War II, then as an OSS (Office of Strategic Services) operative, segueing into many years as a CIA agent.”
Hunt lead an interesting life before, during and after the Watergate incident. His book reads like a thriller when he tells of his stint in the Navy in World War II and his time in the OSS and the CIA, which is not surprising, considering that as a sideline to his CIA career, he was a prolific writer of spy and crime thrillers.
Hunt writes about his involvement in the CIA-engineered coup in Guatemala in 1954 and the less successful Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. He also disputes the allegations by conspiracy-buffs that he was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.
After he retired from the CIA he went to work for the Nixon White House as a  member of the “Plumbers” team. The team was tasked with stopping the many leaks to the press and performing a number of political dirty tricks.
Hunt spends a good portion of the book describing his role in the Watergate break-in. He tells what led up to it, how they planned it, what happened when they were discovered and the aftermath.
Although Hunt was a war veteran and a long-serving government employee who had never been convicted of a crime, he was slammed hard. His wife died in a plane crash at the time, so sending Hunt to prison for 33 months effectively made his children orphans.
The Watergate break-in ruined a good number of lives and forced President Richard M. Nixon to resign. He too might have gone to prison had President Ford not pardoned him.
In my view, Nixon’s resignation, along with the Conngressional War Powers Act, emboldened the North Vietnamese to invade South Vietnam in 1975.
American combat troops were gone and the Communists knew that without Nixon, Americans troops would not return to Vietnam and the Americans would not mount a bombing campaign to halt the Communist invasion.
Watergate was a minor break-in that had major consequences.
Hunt is somewhat unrepentant, believing to the end that he was working for the country’s good. He failed to see that neither he nor the president are above the law.
In American Spy, Hunt, who died at 88 in 2007, described his life and offers a whole man – before, during and after Watergate.
Paul Davis also writes about American crime. His web site is here . He can be reached at pauldavisoncrime@comcast.net.
American History, espionage, Military History
October 21st, 2009 in American History by Paul Davis
In Martin Scorsese’s great crime film Casino, Joe Pesci plays a vicious mob enforcer and hit man in Las Vegas who reports to the “bosses back home,” as Pesci’s character describes them in the film’s voice-over narration.
The bosses are portrayed in the film as a group of elderly and infirm men who hang around eating, playing cards and collecting money from their criminal underlings.
Pesci’s character, based on a very real gangster named Anthony “Tony Ant” Spilotro, is brutally murdered, along with his brother Michael, in a mid-west cornfield in the film. Their murder, along with several other murders, were ordered by the bosses back home. Back home is Chicago, home of the criminal organization known as “the Outfit.”
Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob (Chicago Review Press) covers the Spilotro murders and much more in this revealing look at organized crime. The book, written by Chicago Tribune reporter Jeff Coen, covers the trial of the Outfit bosses in 2007.
“The scale of the case was unprecedented, for the first time naming the Chicago Outfit itself as a criminal enterprise under federal anti-racketeering laws and alleging a conspiracy that was born with Al Capone and flourished from the 1960s forward,” Coen wrote in his book. “The case included fourteen defendants, eighteen murders, and decades of bookmaking, loan sharking, extortion, and violence.”
The investigation of the Outfit began in 1998 when the FBI received a letter from Frank Calabrese, Jr., son of one of the Outfit’s most violent bosses, Frank Calabrese, Sr.
Due to a sour relationship with his father, the son told the FBI that he was willing to wear a wire and gather evidence against his father while they were incarcerated together. The father enjoyed explaining how the Outfit worked to his son. He also allowed his son to observe how he conducted business from the prison yard.
The FBI was later able to turn Nicholas Calabrese, a hit man for his brother Frank Calabrese Sr., into the key witness against the Outfit bosses.
The FBI called the seven-year investigation “Operation Family Secrets.” According the FBI, the list of those charged read like a “Who’s Who” of the Chicago mob.
After several mobsters pleaded guilty, the remaining five defendants were Frank Calabrese, Sr., James “Jimmy Light” Marcello, the reputed boss of the Outfit, Joey “the Clown,” Lombardo, a tough, old-school mob boss, Anthony “Twan” Doyle, a former Chicago police officer accused of leaking information to Frank Calabrese Sr., and Outfit enforcer Paul “the Indian” Schiro.
In September of 2007 the jury convicted the five men on broad conspiracy charges.
Jeff Coen does a fine job of covering the trial, and he offers vivid descriptions of the defendants, the witnesses and the victims. He also offers a good portrait of the defense attorneys and the prosecutors, who were as colorful as the gangsters.
Reading the book makes you feel like you are sitting in the courtroom. This is a very good true crime book.
Paul Davis also writes about espionage for GreatHistory.com. You can reach him via his web site here or at his e-mail address: pauldavisoncrime@comcast.net.
American History
September 17th, 2009 in American History by Paul Davis
In parts one and two of this series I wrote about George Anastasia’s Mob Files: Mobsters, Molls and Murder (Camino), The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter’s book on the Philadelphia-South Jersey La Cosa Nostra organized crime family.
The book is a collection of his newspaper coverage of what Anastasia calls the most dysfunctional crime family in the country. These street-level stories offer drama, comedy and tragedy that few fiction writers can match.
Anastasia interviewed mob guys’ wives, girlfriends and female criminal accomplices who are or were attracted to the life-style, the money and the notoriety of the mob world.
“Forget the movies,” the wife of the imprisoned mob underboss told Anastasia. “Forget the glamour and hype.”
She told the reporter that the mob life is no way to live, as you will inevitably end up in one of two places, jail or the cemetery.
Anastasia also tells the story of a young couple who were indistinguishable from other young couples living in suburbia in the mid-1990’s, yet this mob hit man and his former go-go dancer wife were involved in the bloody power struggle that left bodies strewn across South Philadelphia.
The couple, who are now in the witness protection program, told the reporter an incredible story. The hit man confessed to being involved in a number of mob murder conspiracies and to being the trigger man in the murder of a rival of then-mob boss John Stanfa.
Although she was not formally charged, authorities say the wife was implicated in a bizarre plot to poison rivals of Stanfa by placing cyanide in the drinks of the mob guys as they partied at Philly nightclubs. Like many of the mob’s outlandish plots, this one was never carried out.
Anastasia also wrote about plots and counterplots as the young South Philly “corner boys” took on the Sicilian-born Stanfa.
“They included ambushes that fizzled, car bombs that failed to go off, drive-by shootings that missed their targets and one point-blank shotgun assassination attempt that was botched when the weapon failed to discharge,” Anastasia writes in the book.
“Some of this is so crazy it would be funny if people weren’t getting killed,” Anastasia quotes then-Philadelphia Police chief inspector Richard Zappile.
Anastasia had access to the many hours of federal recordings of mob guys as they discussed crime, tradition and philosophy. The conversations shine a light on the thinking and actions of organized crime members.
“La Cosa Nostra is a beautiful way of life if we respect it,” a mob philosopher said to another mob guy as the FBI were listening in and recording the conversation.
“The way it’s supposed to be,” he added. “It’s not an instrument to make money.”
Yet, as Anastasia noted in his book, making money was the dominate topic of conversation heard in the many FBI-recorded conversations.
Anastasia wrote that the mob’s demise was due to its indiscriminate use of violence and lack of self-discipline, a lack of leadership, a loss of mob-style “family values,” narcotics and the sophisticated and coordinated investigations of the mob by federal, state and local law enforcement.
Paul Davis, who is a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, also writes an espionage blog for Greathistory.com. His web site address is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/and his e-mail address is pauldavisoncrime@comcast.net.
American History, crime
August 24th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
In my last two espionage blogs I wrote about Pham Xuan An (1927-2006), a Time correspondent and Viet Cong spy who befriended American and South Vietnamese military, government and journalist power brokers during the Vietnam War.
I thought that Larry Berman’s Perfect Spy was a fawning and uncritical look at An, but found Thomas A. Bass’ The Spy Who Loved Us: The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An’s Dangerous Game to be a more balanced book.
Bass wrote that An’s intelligence reports were read by the top North Vietnamese leaders General Giap and Ho Chi Minh.
“We are now in the United States’ War Room!” Giap and Minh are reported to have said, rubbing their hands with glee.
That An was a good spy should not be surprising, as we helped train him. Prior to traveling to America to study journalism, An worked for the legendary General Edward Lansdale. Lansdale, an Air Force officer attached to the CIA, was an expert on counterinsurgency and was one of the most knowledgeable Americans about Vietnam. Lansdale and his crack  team instructed An in psychological warfare and intelligence tradecraft.
An went on to betray Lansdale and many other American and Vietnamese friends. An also betrayed his journalist colleagues, yet many of them continue to admire him.
“I began to suspect that I had fallen into the same trap as An’s former colleagues,” Bass wrote in his book. “They had swapped ignorance for willful ignorance and remained charmed to the end by An’s smiling presence.”
Not all of his colleagues felt that way. Beverly Ann Deepe, a reporter with The New York Herald Tribune, was angered at An’s betrayal and Murray Cant, the chief of correspondents for Time, called him an SOB and said he’d like to kill him.
Zalin Grant, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, journalist and author of Over the Beach: The Air War in Vietnam and Facing the Phoenix: The CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam, wrote that he thought An was a communist hero, but not an American hero.
When an excerpt from Bass’s book appeared in The New Yorker in 2005 and quoted journalists singing An’s praises, Grant wrote a letter to the magazine editor.
“It was one thing to have been against the Vietnam War – many of us were,” Grant wrote. “But quite another to express unconditional admiration for a man who spent a large part of his life pretending to be a journalist while helping to kill Americans.”
Joseph Goulden, in his Washington Times review of Berman’s book on An, wrote that a thought kept crossing his mind as he read the book.
“Would the journalists who now praise An as a patriot be equally forgiving of a colleague who turned out to be working for the CIA at the same time he was reporting on the war?” Goulden asked. “Think about it,” he added.
This is Part III of a three-part series. Read Part II and Part I.
Paul Davis also writes an American Crime blog for GreatHistory.com. His web site is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/ and his e-mail address is daviswrite@aol.com.
espionage, Military History
August 21st, 2009 in American History by Paul Davis
In 1976 The Philadelphia Inquirer sent reporter George Anastasia to Atlantic City to cover the beginning of the casino gambling era in the state. In addition to reporting on what he calls the “unique form of urban renewal” brought about by the building of casinos in an economically depressed city, Anastasia was also told to keep an eye on the Philadelphia mob.
The debate in Atlantic City prior to the approved referendum over casinos included the fear that legalized gambling would bring in organized crime. But, as Anastasia notes in his book, Mob Files: Mobsters, Molls and Murder (Camino Books), the mob was already there.
Anastasia, a veteran crime reporter and author of several good books on organized crime, such as Blood and Honor and The Last Gangster, has complied some of his best and most interesting newspaper and magazine pieces on the mob in this book.
The son of Sicilian immigrants who settled in South Philadelphia, Anastasia began to cover Philly’s La Cosa Nostra crime family more and more after the 1980 shooting death of Philly mob boss Angelo Bruno.
Bruno ran a quiet, highly efficient organization that controlled crime in Philadelphia and South Jersey. Bruno’s murder set off a  mob war that left bodies in the street and grabbed the public attention. Anastasia writes that Bruno’s death was a seminal event in the demise of the Philadelphia crime family.
The mob became Anastasia’s “beat” in the 1990’s. He tells a remarkable story about a mob guy who complained to a young woman who worked with the reporter. The complaint was that Anastasia always took the government’s side in his reporting. Anastasia told the woman to have the mob guy give him a call. He did.
Anastasia began juxtaposing the comments of an “underworld source” alongside those of law enforcement’s in his pieces. The mob guy loved it and more mobsters started calling, including Joey Merlino, who rose to be the reputed underboss of the mob.
The mob guys after Bruno were not like Mafioso of old, who kept low profiles befitting members of a secret criminal society. Anastasia reports that the new breed were South Philly “corner boys.” They were third-generation Italian-Americans, the sons and nephews of the previous generation of mobsters. They were loyal to each other but not to a centuries-old tradition of crime.
They were media-savvy and they liked the publicity. When Merlino was asked by a journalist about a reported $500,000 contract out on his life, Merlino shrugged and said “Give me the half million and I’ll shoot myself.”
I’m part Italian and a former corner boy raised in South Philly a decade ahead of most of these new mob guys. I can attest that very few Italian-Americans are involved in organized crime, but I believe that Anastasia’s coverage of those who are, is first-rate.
His mob stories are brutal, tragic and funny. They read like Philly’s equivalent to the New York hoods in Scorsese’s great film, Goodfellas.
More on the Philly Mob Files in my next blog.
Paul Davis also writes an espionage blog for GreatHistory.com. His website is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/.
American History, crime
August 5th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
In my last espionage blog I wrote about Pham Xuan An (1927-2006), a Time correspondent and “friend” to American and South Vietnamese military and government officials and journalists during the Vietnam War who was later revealed to have been a top Viet Cong spy.
I thought Larry Berman’s Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent (Smithsonian Books) was an uncritical and loving look at the spy. The book was biased, I believe, by Berman’s left-wing, anti-war views.
Thomas Bass’ The Spy Who Loved Us: The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An’s Dangerous Game (Public Affairs) is a bit more balanced.
Like Berman, Bass interviewed An in Vietnam before the spy died. Bass writes that when An was working for Reuters in the 1960s: “He was the irrepressible man about town who knew everything about everybody and was seen everywhere, in all the city’s best restaurants and cafes, chatting and joking with everyone from generals and ambassadors down to the local cyclo drivers and dance hall girls. An established himself as the go-to man for newly arrived Americans who needed a tip. He was always generous with is advice and stories, always a good source of local color. The news reports filed out of Vietnam that started with an anecdote provided by An must number in the thousands.”
Bass notes that although An rarely claimed to have done anything more during the war than observe and analyze events, there were times that he “reached behind the curtain to adjust the scene.”
One example was the battle of Ap Bac in 1963, where the Viet Cong at battalion strength defeated the South Vietnamese, who were supported by American air and artillery. Bass writes that two Viet Cong soldiers received North Vietnamese military exploit medals for the victorious battle. One was the commander of the communist forces. The other was An, who devised the winning strategy.
An also helped plan the Tet Offensive in 1968, in which eighty thousand communists troops simultaneously attacked targets in South Vietnam. The communists briefly held the city of Hue, but the popular uprising the communists planned on didn’t happen and the overall attack was a military defeat.
Bass notes that the communists lost more than half of their troops in the south and perhaps a quarter of the North Vietnamese Army regular forces from the north.
“The offensive destroyed the Vietcong as a fighting force,” An admitted to Bass. “Then the United States introduced the Phoenix Program, which was extremely effective in assassinating thousands of Vietnamese communists and neutralizing the opposition in the south.”
But despite the military failure, Tet was considered to be a success for the communists as the fighting viewed on TV and the negative reports by anti-war journalists eroded the American public’s confidence in the war. Tet provided the communists with a major psychological victory.
More on An in my next blog.
Paul Davis also writes an American Crime blog for GreatHistory.com. His web site is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/and his e-mail address is daviswrite@aol.com.
espionage, Military History
July 13th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
While serving as an 18-year-old sailor aboard an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War I witnessed a bevy of journalists coming aboard as the warship was anchored in Da Nang Harbor in South Vietnam.
I worked in the USS Kitty Hawk’s communications division, and we were told to keep the journalists clear of our top secret areas. As I planned to major in journalism in college after leaving the Navy, I was interested in our visitors from the major newspapers, TV networks and Time magazine.
I don’t recall Pham Xuan An, a Time correspondent at the time, being one of the journalists who came aboard that day. Which was good – as we later discovered that An was a spy for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese communists.
In the annals of modern espionage, Pham Xuan An (1927-2006) ranks as a top spy. During the Vietnam War, An befriended, guided and advised journalists and American and South Vietnamese military and government officials. He obtained vital intelligence from his many “friends” and passed it on to the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.
Larry Berman, a professor of political science at the University of California who opposed American involvement in Vietnam, was chosen by An to be his American biographer. Berman interviewed An in Vietnam before the spy died. His book is called Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent (Smithsonian Books).
This book is a gushing, loving and uncritical view of the spy. It ought to be called Perfect Spy, Prefect Fools. Like many of the reporters An befriended during the war, Berman’s left-wing, anti-war views cloud his judgment of An.
An was by all accounts a likeable, earnest, humble and helpful friend to all those he came into contact with. Just like any good con artist – or spy.
A spy since 1952, An was sent to study journalism in the United States as part of his training and cover story – or “legend,” as they say in the trade. With his American friends and his insights into all things Vietnamese, An took jobs with Reuters, The Christian Science Monitor and then Time. For the elite of the American press corps, An was the go-to guy.
An’s critical intelligence aided the communists throughout the war, especially during two key battles: the 1963 assault on Ap Bac and the 1968 Tet Offensive. Countless South Vietnamese and American soldiers died in these bloody battles thanks in large part to An.
Even today An’s journalist friends refuse to believe that he misled, used or betrayed them. “Who in our egotistical trade would admit to being a dupe, conscious or otherwise?” Joseph Goulden wrote in his review of Berman’s book in The Washington Times.
Goulden also noted that Arnaud de Borchgrave, a Newsweek correspondent during the war, disagreed with his colleagues and accused An of spreading disinformation to American officals and journalists.
More on Pham Xuan An in my next blog.
Paul Davis also writes about American crime for GreatHistory.com.  His web site is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/ and his e-mail address is daviswrite@aol.com.
espionage, Military History
July 8th, 2009 in American History by Paul Davis
In my last American crime blog, I wrote about John Dillinger, as the Michael Mann film about him, Public Enemies, is in the theaters.
Dillinger was paroled in 1933. With his gang Dillinger began robbing small stores, businesses and banks. He was later arrested and jailed. While Dillinger was in jail, Harry Pierpont and his crew broke out of prison. Pierpont and the gang then broke Dillinger out of jail, killing the sheriff in front of his wife during the break-out.
Dillinger, a natural leader, led the gang as they robbed more than 30 banks in only a few months. Dillinger and members of his gang were arrested in Arizona and he was transferred to a jail in Indiana. Legend has it that Dillinger broke out of jail with a gun carved from a block of wood, but in fact a bribed official gave him a gun.
The escape made headlines and Dillinger’s reputation. He became the most wanted man in the country and the FBI, under agents Samuel P. Cowley and Marvin Purvis, hunted him and his gang across several states.
As the Dillinger gang was hiding out at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin, Purvis and the FBI moved in. There was a full-scale shootout, but Dillinger and five others managed to escape through a back window before the FBI could surround the lodge.
Dillinger later had plastic surgery on his face to alter his looks and he moved in with a young woman named Polly Hamilton in Chicago. Hamilton had a roommate named Anna Sage. Sage, who was facing deportation to Romania, discovered who Hamilton’s friend was. In exchange for dropping the deportation proceedings, she offered to assist the FBI in capturing Dillinger.
Purvis accepted the deal and Sage told him that Dillinger plans to take her and Hamilton to the movies at the Biograph or the Marbro Theater the following day.
Although legend identifies Sage as “The Lady in Red,” she actually wore an orange dress in order to be recognized.
On Sunday, July 22, 1934, Purvis saw Sage enter the Biograph with a man and another woman. The film was Manhattan Melodrama starring Clark Gable.
Purvis and his fellow agents waited until the film ended and the trio came back outside. He lit a cigar to let the other agents know it was Dillinger. According to the FBI, Dillinger reached for his gun and the agents opened fire. Five agents fired five shots and four bullets hit Dillinger. He collapsed and died on the street.
Burrough wrote that people who met Dillinger remembered him for years afterward – “the courtesy, the easy wink, the whiff of manly joie de vivre.”
Burrough also wrote that Dillinger craved respect. He wanted to be the type of outlaw people admired. Many people today still regard Dillinger as a modern-day Robin Hood.
Others, me included, see Dillinger as a murderer and armed robber who terrorized countless innocent people during his short-lived crime spree.
You can read more about the film Public Enemies in Jay Wertz’s GreatHistory piece, “Public Enemies: The Lore and Lure of 20th Century Outlaws.”
Paul Davis also writes an espionage blog for GreatHistory. His website is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com. Click here to read Part I of his “Due Dillinger” article.
American History, crime, famous people
July 1st, 2009 in American History by Paul Davis
“John Herbert Dillinger is America’s classic bankrobber,” wrote Jay Robert Nash in his excellent book, Bloodletters and Bad Men: A Narrative Encyclopedia of American Criminals From the Pilgrims to the Present.
“No other criminal ever approached his exploits and reputation,” Nash wrote. “Within the space of twelve months Dillinger robbed more banks and stole more money than Jesse James did in the sixteen years he was at large. It took the combined forces of five states and the FBI to pressure his operations to a halt.”
According to the FBI, Dillinger and his gang killed ten men and wounded seven others. They robbed banks, police arsenals and staged three jail breaks. They killed a sheriff during one jail break and wounded two guards in another. They also killed a police officer during a robbery and killed a detective who stopped Dillinger’s car.
With the release of Public Enemies, a Michael Mann film starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger and Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent who hunted him, a look back at the notorious criminal’s life is in order.
Mann’s film is based on the book Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, by Bryan Burrough. I wrote about the book in a two-part series for GreatHistory. Click here to read Part I and II.
Burrough’s book covered the years of 1933 and 1934, the years of the Depression-era’s bank robbers’ crime spree and the birth of the FBI. The book chronicles the crooks and the lawmen who hunted them. Mann, however, chose to concentrate his film only on Dillinger, his girlfriend Evelyn “Billie” Frechette and Purvis.
Dillinger was the most famous, or infamous, of the Depression-era criminals. He was born in 1903 in Indianapolis. His mother died in 1907 and he was raised by a 15-year-old sister. Unlike other Depression-era criminals, Dillinger was not poor. He was born into a middle-class family.
After graduating high school, Dillinger was uprooted by his grocer father, a stern disciplinarian, who purchased a farm and moved the family to Indiana. Dillinger refused to work the farm and found a job in Indianapolis.
In 1923 Dillinger stole a car and then joined the Navy to avoid arrest. He later deserted and returned to Indiana. Hanging around poolrooms in 1924 he and another crook planned the robbery of a grocer. The grocer was bludgeoned and Dillinger pulled out a pistol, but the grocer knocked it away as it fired. The robbers then ran off. Dillinger, 21 at the time, ended up in Indiana State Reformatory with a severe 10 to 20 year sentence.
He was later transferred to Michigan City Penitentiary where he met the men who would shape his criminal life, Homer Van Meter and Harry Pierpont. Pierpont, who worked with the legendary “Baron,” Herman K. Mann, taught Dillinger the Baron’s technique for robbing banks. The education was offered in return for Dillinger’s promise to break Pierpont and his gang out of prison after he was released.
More on Dillinger in my next blog.
Paul Davis also writes an espionage blog for GreatHistory. His website is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
For more information on Dillinger, Purvis and their contemporaries, see Public Enemies and Keystone Cops on HistoryNet.
American History, crime
June 17th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
As a student of military history I have long been interested in Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), so I attended the press preview of the Napoleon Exhibition at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia last month.
The exhibit is hailed as one of the largest private collections of Napoleon memorabilia in the world. The collector, Pierre-Jean Chalencon, said he has been interested in Napoleon for more than 30 years. He said he saw him as the first modern European leader – a truly self-made man who rose to the seat of power without the aid of the royal lineage that had been required in France and across the continent for hundreds of years.
“The pieces in the exhibition have been selected not only for their great beauty and rarity, but also because they allow us to see into the heart of this extraordinary man,” Chalencon explained. “While a giant of history in the model of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Charlemagne, he was also very human. He had great loves and was driven by his dreams for a better world, but was, at times, blind to the betrayal of others and the victim of his flawed vision.”
The exhibition is organized into twelve sections that trace Napoleon’s life: The Rise to Power, The Egyptian Campaign, First Consul, The Coronation, The Emperor’s Family, The Imperial Court, Art and the Emperor, Napoleon at War, The Road to Defeat, The Final Exile, Death of the Emperor, and Legend.
The exhibit offers some of the most famous paintings of Napoleon by noted artists of the time, as well as busts of him. Also on display are the sword that proclaimed Napoleon Emperor, his camp bed from the battle of Wagram and his personal map of the French Empire at its zenith in 1812.
The exhibition also offers one Napoleon’s signature hats. He wore this summer hat during the battle at Essling in 1809. Napoleon wore his hat “broadside on,” the sides parallel with his shoulders, so in battle he could be distinguished from his officers, who wore their hats “fore-and-aft.”
“Napoleon is one of history’s most iconic political figures; this exhibition sheds light on his fascinating life,” said National Constitution Center President and Chief Executive Officer, Linda E. Johnson. “It also conveys how the destinies of France and America intersected from the time of the American Revolution to Napoleon’s reign.”
Napoleon is considered by many historians to be one of the greatest military commanders in history, yet he remains controversial due to his ruthless sacrifice of hundred of thousands of soldiers in bloody battles. Despite his flaws, or perhaps because of them, Napoleon remains one of history’s fascinating characters.
The Napoleon exhibit will run in Philadelphia through September 7, 2009. The Constitution Center is the sixth stop on the Napoleon exhibition’s North American Tour. The tour continues on to the Muzeo in Anaheim, California and then to the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis, Missouri.
Paul Davis writes about crime and espionage for GreatHistory.com. His web site is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
History Traveler, Military History
June 12th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
“During the long Cold War from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s, one of the most bitterly fought campaigns was between the intelligence agencies on both sides,” wrote Jon Woronoff in the editor’s forward to the Historical Dictionary of Cold War Counterintelligence (Scarecrow Press).
“The Americans and the British, with their allies and friends, did everything they could to infiltrate and undermine the Soviet empire, and the Soviets not only responded in kind but went considerably further through their own agencies and those of satellite countries,” Woronoff explained. “Thus counterintelligence was more important than ever before and spies, double agents, moles, and defectors proliferated, while infiltration and disinformation became arts.”
This interesting book offers a chronology of major events and provides concise entries on counterintelligence agencies, their directors, and many of the agents, moles and defectors. There are also entries explaining terminology and techniques, a bibliography and hundreds of cross-referenced entries on the organizations, operations, events, and personalities that influenced counterintelligence during the Cold War.
“This book sheds a much-needed light on the struggle that helped tip the balance between East and West and shaped the world we live in today,” Woronoff wrote.
The book is number six in the series of historical dictionaries of intelligence and counterintelligence, following British Intelligence, United States Intelligence, Israeli Intelligence and Russian and Soviet Intelligence.
The book’s author is Nigel West, whose written more than 20 books on intelligence and espionage. West is the European Editor of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence and teaches the history of postwar intelligence at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies in Alexandria, VA. He has written two earlier books in the series: Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence and Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence.
West wrote in the introduction to this book that four separate but related events made it possible to compile this reference book. The first event was the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the second event is the greater freedom of the participants in the Cold War, on both sides, to discuss their covert roles.
The third event was the declassification of the VENONA messages in 1995, which West calls the “holy grail of Western counterintelligence.”
“The intercepts, dating back to 1940, were studied for 37 years by analysts preoccupied with the interconnected complexities of Soviet espionage, its personalities, operations, tradecraft and techniques,” West explained.
West went on to state that while the messages were undergoing declassification at the National Security Agency in 1995, the identity of a Soviet spy was uncovered, proving the potency of the material and the need for greater study.
The fourth and final event was the astonishing material made available by Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB archivist who defected to the England in 1992. He brought with him notes he had copied from the KGB archives for more than 20 years.
This book should be in the library of every student of espionage.
Paul Davis also writes an American crime blog for GreatHistory.com. Â His website is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
authors, Cold War, espionage, Military History
May 25th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
With May being National Military Recognition Month, I revisited Robin Moore’s classic war novel The Green Berets (Skyhorse Publishing) in my last blog.
Writing the forward to the 2007 edition of the book, Major General Thomas R. Csrnko noted that there were many accounts of the Green Berets by historians, scholars and writers. He stated that bystanders watching the men in action barely scratch the surface.
“Robin Moore is not a bystander,” Csrnko wrote. “He is the first and only civilian to have the unique understanding of the men of the Special Forces because he was granted the opportunity to complete a year of Special Forces training by a leader now known as the ‘Father of the Modern Green Berets,’ Lieutenant General William P. Yarborough.”
Csrnko wrote that Yarborough credited Robin Moore with making the term “Green Beret” a household word both among his fellow Americans and around the world.
Moore’s fact-based novel reads like a thriller. Moore offers stories of Green Berets defending remote outposts against overwhelming odds. He also tells of a lone Green Beret who “went native” and lived and fought alongside the Meo tribesmen in Laos against the communist Pathet Lao.
Moore also tells the tale of how the Green Berets recruited a beautiful Vietnamese woman whose parents had been slaughtered by the Viet Cong. Using her as bait, they captured a Viet Cong Colonel in a daring snatch operation. The novel is part adventure, part history.
Moore went on to write another classic book, the true crime story, The French Connection, as well as other books, but he often returned to the Green Berets. With coauthor Michael Lennon, Moore wrote The Wars of the Green Berets: Amazing Stories From Vietnam to the Present (Skyhorse Publishing), and even with advancing age and illness, Moore traveled to Afghanistan and Iraq and wrote The Hunt for bin Laden (Random House), and Hunting Down Saddam (St. Martin’s Press).
Moore’s books shine a light on the battles fought by the Special Forces in Vietnam and elsewhere and how their special skills, training and insight into counterinsurgency won them friends as well as the respect of their enemies.
“Forty-odd years after the publication of Berets and the Warner release of John Wayne’s movie, the worst fears of the 1960s and early 1970s Pentagon have become reality,” Moore wrote in his introduction of the 2007 edition of the book.
“Special Forces has become a branch of the U.S Army like artillery, signal corps, engineers, and infantry, among others,” Moore continued. “And, as the reader will discover, the final chapter of this revised edition is a short biographical sketch of former Green Beret, General Henry Hugh Shelton, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest post in the U.S. military.”
Today, thanks in part to Robin Moore’s book, U.S. Army Special Forces and other U.S. Special Operations units are in the forefront of the war on terrorism.
Paul Davis, who served on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War, also writes an American Crime blog for GreatHistory.com. Davis’ web site is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
Military History
May 14th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
I recently spoke to a retired Green Beret about his early influences and why he chose to spent most of his life training foreign soldiers and performing combat and espionage operations in several wars overseas.
Like me, he came of age during the Vietnam War, and he served several tours of duty in Vietnam during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like me, he said he was heavily influenced by Robin Moore’s The Green Berets.  Â
As May is National Military Appreciation Month – I wanted to look back at Moore’s classic novel of combat, espionage, intrigue and heroism.
 The novel was based on his true experiences with the Green Berets in the early 1960s in Vietnam. Moore’s book, along with the hit song Moore co-wrote with Barry Sadler, The Ballad of the Green Berets, and the John Wayne film based on Moore’s book, influenced scores of young men who went on to become Green Berets or served in the military in other capacities.
In the 2007 updated edition of The Green Berets (Skyhorse Publishing), Moore wrote that it was heartening to hear men tell him that they read the book in high school and then decided to become a Green Beret. Moore said his reaction was to state, “Then I have not lived in vain.”
Moore also knew what he called “the equally discordant experience” of having women tell him that their son read the book, joined Special Forces, and was killed in action.
In addition to inspiring future Green Berets, Moore also inspired many young aspiring writers who went on to cover the military. I was one.Â
Moore died last year at the age of 82 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, which is home to Fort Campbell and the U.S. Army’s 5th Special Operations Group. He was born Robert L. Moore, Jr. in Massachusetts in 1925. At 19 Moore served in the Army Air Corps as a nose-gunner on a B-17 bomber during WWII.
He attended Harvard University after the war, graduating in 1949. While a student at Harvard, Moore wrote a series of articles on post-war Europe for The Boston Globe. Although he initially worked for his father, a co-founder of the Sheraton hotel chain, Moore left to become a writer.
After publishing a book on Cuba, Moore wanted to write about the then-little known Green Berets. At age 37 Moore graduated from the U.S. Army’s airborne school and the Special Warfare Center – the first and only writer to do so. He arrived in Vietnam on January 6, 1964 and spent six months with the Green Berets.
Moore said he planned the book to be a factual account based on personal experience and firsthand knowledge, but he later decided that there were disadvantages to a straight reportorial approach. Although he said his stories were based on fact, he offered his tales of the Green Berets in the form of fiction.
More on Robin Moore and the Green Berets in my next blog.
Paul Davis, who served on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War, also writes an American Crime blog for GreatHistory.com. Check out his website. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
authors, Military History
May 5th, 2009 in American History by Paul Davis
I read that director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, who teamed up  to make the classic crime films Goodfellas, Casino and Mean Streets, are returning to the scene of organized crime in an upcoming film.
Scorsese and De Niro are planning to make a film based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses (Steerforth Press). The book, written by former prosecutor Charles Brant, is based on four years of taped interviews of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a Philadelphia native, Teamster union official and self-confessed hit man for La Cosa Nostra.
With the urging of his daughters, the elderly and ill Sheeran visited a Monsignor in Philadelphia and received absolution, which allowed him to be buried in a Catholic church when he died. After visiting the Monsignor, Sheeran agreed to make another “confession” by talking to Brant. Sheeran admitted to committing several murders, including the murder and dismembering of his close friend, former Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa.
“I heard you paint houses,” was the first thing Hoffa said to Sheeran when they met. “Painting houses” is a criminal euphemism for murder, suggesting the blood that is sprayed on walls when a man is shot and killed.
Some of the story takes place in South Philadelphia, where I live, and according to Sheeran, his first “hit” was ordered in a South Philly restaurant by Philadelphia mob boss Angelo Bruno. Bruno simply told Sheeran, “You gotta do what you gotta do.”
Sheeran was a World War II veteran, truck driver and a small-time crook, who went on to work alongside Hoffa in the International Teamsters. He also committed murder for his Padrone, Russell Bufalino, the mob boss of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Sheeran offers an inside-story of Hoffa’s battles with the union, the mob and the law. The law won and Hoffa was sent to prison. After Hoffa was pardoned he tried to regain control of the union, which ultimately led to his murder by mob bosses who controlled the union. According to Sheeran, Bufalino ordered the murder.
Sheeran told Brant he regretted killing his friend and resorted to drinking heavily afterwards. Although he was long a suspect, he was never arrested for Hoffa’s murder. He died in 2003.
Hoffa’s murder has been a mystery that has fueled conspiracy buffs for decades. This book answers many questions, but the problem with I Heard You Paint Houses, and many other true crime books, is they are based primarily on the word of a criminal.
And considering that criminals steal, cheat, kill, and lie for a living, one should be skeptical. Sheeran may very well have killed Hoffa, but he only offers scant hearsay evidence that Hoffa paid off President Nixon for his pardon, and that the mob killed President Kennedy.
But having said that, I found the book to be a good crime story and a compelling tale of betrayal and redemption. These are themes that interest Scorsese, so I’m looking forward to the film.
Paul Davis also writes an espionage blog for GreatHistory.com. Davis’ web site is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
america, crime, movies
April 29th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
In my last blog, I wrote about John Walker, a Navy radioman who spied for the Soviets for 18 years during the Cold War.
In his autobiography, My Life as a Spy: One of America’s Most Notorious Spies Finally Tells His Story (Prometheus Books), Walker recounts his life like it’s an adventure story rather than a tragedy. He damaged national security, destroyed his family, and in my view, he caused the deaths of American servicemen in Vietnam.
Walker was a well-rated sailor who rose quickly up the enlisted ranks to become a warrant officer. He claims his dismal marriage to an alcoholic wife and a mistrust of the U.S. government led him to steal secrets and sell them to the Soviets. He later drew his son, brother and best friend into a life of espionage and betrayal.
In 1985, “The Year of the Spy,” his ex-wife reported him to the FBI and he was arrested in a Maryland motel after making a “dead-drop” of classified documents at a nearby roadside.
Walker made a deal with the government in which he testified against his friend, Navy chief petty officer Jerry Whitworth (whom he earlier recruited to spy for him), and he agreed to reveal what he gave the Soviets in exchange for a lesser sentence for his son.
On November 6, 1986, John Walker was sentenced to two life terms plus ten years to be served concurrently. His son was sentenced to 25 years.
The book is interesting in a perverse way, but one should keep in mind that Walker is a habitual liar. He is also proud of his criminal deeds. At one point in the book, he grins to himself and thinks “If they only knew.”
Walker states that he didn’t like the James Bond movies, finding them to be Hollywood fantasies, but then he states he thought of Bond when he was with a blonde only hours after a secret meeting with the KGB.
He claims to have written the book for his children, but in the book he often brags of female conquests. He says he was concerned for his children and tried to protect them from his abusive wife, but he talked his son into committing espionage, and talked him right into federal prison. He also attempted to draw his daughter into the spy ring.
Walker sees himself as a glamorous spy, but he was in fact merely a sneak thief. He stole classified documents and sold them to the Soviets in order to live a more prosperous lifestyle.
The book will interest students of espionage and history, but it ought to be read along with other books on Walker; such as former FBI agent Robert Hunter’s Spy Hunter: Inside the FBI Investigation of the Walker Espionage Case (Naval Institute Press), and journalist Pete Earley’s Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring ( Bantam).
Paul Davis also writes an American Crime blog for GreatHistory.com. Check out Davis’ web site. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com
espionage, Military History
April 22nd, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
John Walker may very well be the most damaging of all the Cold War spies.
The retired Navy warrant officer was arrested in 1985, the year known as “The Year of the Spy,” because of the number of spy arrests that year.
Walker was arrested for selling classified information to the Soviet Union for 18 years. Walker was known in the trade as a “walk-in,” as he began his life as a spy by entering the Soviet embassy in Washington D.C. and offering his services. He later recruited his best friend, his brother and his son to join in his spy ring.
Walker gave away the keys to the kingdom of naval communications: key cards used for enciphering messages and encryption devices. The U.S. Navy estimates that more than one million classified military and intelligence agency messages were compromised by Walker. The Soviets were able to read vital American communications during a time of war. Had the U.S. gone to nuclear war with the Soviet Union, Walker’s security breech would have had been catastrophic.
I have a particular interest in the Walker spy case; I served as a young seaman in the communications division aboard the USS Kitty Hawk when the aircraft carrier conducted combat operations off the coast of Vietnam in 1970-1971. The Kitty Hawk served as the flag ship for Task Force 77, so we handled highly classified war traffic for the 7th Fleet, the in-country military commands, the CIA, and other alphabet intelligence agencies. Little did we know that much of what we took great pains to protect was already blown by Walker.
It is my view — a view shared by many others who served in the military — that Walker’s espionage led to the death of many American sailors, soldiers, airman and marines during the Vietnam War.
Despite personal animosity, I was curious to read Walker’s autobiography: My Life As a Spy: One of America’s Most Notorious Spies Finally Tells His Story (Prometheus Books).
The book is of interest primarily as a case study of a spy, read in conjunction with other books on Walker. In his book Walker cites his reasons for spying as (a) to bring about an improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations with a view towards reducing the prospect of war, (b) his disgust with U.S. government deception, the Cold War fraud and covert misadventures, (c) adventure, and (d) the psychological pressure of a failed marriage.
He fails to mention greed or his enormous ego; two prime motives for espionage that are much closer to the truth. Now serving a life sentence in federal prison, Walker has written a self-serving book, a book that is pure spin.
We had another name for it when I was in the Navy.
More about Walker in Part II next week.
Paul Davis also writes an American Crime blog for GreatHistory.com. Davis’ web site is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
espionage, Military History
April 6th, 2009 in American History by Paul Davis
In February Philadelphia buried a 25-year-old police officer killed in the line of duty. Officer John Pawlowski’s accused killer was apprehended and is now on trial.
Another 25-year-old Philadelphia officer was murdered in 1981, and many continue to seek justice for Daniel Faulkner.
The widow of Danny Faulkner has written a book called Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Loss, Pain and Injustice (Lyons Press). In her book, which is co-authored by Philadelphia Inquirer columnist and talk radio host Michael A. Smerconish, Maureen Faulkner recounts her long fight to counter what she regards as a worldwide, celebrity-driven campaign to overturn the conviction and death sentence of the man who murdered her husband, Mumia Abu Jamal.
On December 9, 1981 Faulkner was shot and killed after stopping Jamal’s brother. Jamal, a former radio reporter, was driving a cab when he saw his brother and Faulkner. According to witnesses, Jamal and Faulkner traded shots. Jamal survived with a chest wound and was arrested with his revolver lying at his feet.
Jamal was tried and convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1983. Support for Jamal, a former Black Panther and supporter of the radical group MOVE, has risen steadily among death-penalty opponents, celebrities and leftist groups as his legal appeals slide slowly through the justice system.
Jamal wrote a book called Live From Death Row, and he has become the world’s most famous Death Row inmate. His photo on posters lags only slightly behind Che Guevara in popularity.
From her side, Faulkner offers a story of her typical upbringing as an Irish Catholic girl from a blue collar neighborhood, her happy and short marriage to Danny, and her pain and suffering as the Jamal case lingers on.
“A cop is murdered by a man he never knew while patrolling the streets in the ordinary course of his duties. Period. End of story. An unfortunate yet simple tale,” Maureen Faulkner writes in her book.
“Or so it should have been. Instead, this ostensibly uncomplicated scenario has been subjected to more manipulation than any other murder in the United States. Without foundation, it has been transformed into a sensational saga of persecution and injustice that has attracted support from, among others, a large group of Hollywood sympathizers, the City of Paris, and even John Street, now Mayor of Philadelphia.”
Both Jamal and his brother have never given a full account of the night of the murder; Jamal has never denied killing Faulkner; and Jamal was disruptive and abusive during his trial. Yet many still proclaim his innocence and offer uncritical support.
Maureen Faulkner has remained faithful to her husband’s memory, and to justice. She has shown bravery equal to that of the police officers who patrol the mean streets of America’s cities.
She believes, as I do, that cop killers should receive a swift sentence of death for their crime. Maureen Faulkner believes that police officers need and deserve that protection.
Paul Davis also writes an American crime blog for Great History. Visit his Web site. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
america, crime
March 31st, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
In my last two espionage blogs, I presented the first and second parts of my three-part interview with Bernard Cornwell, the author of the Sharpe series and other historical fiction. Here is part three.
Davis: What was The Duke of Wellington truly like, and how significant were his accomplishments?
Cornwelll: He’s brilliant. He’s intelligent. He’s a snob. He’s cold to his men and he had no small talk, but they were extremely loyal to him because they knew he did his best to preserve their lives, unlike Napoleon. Wellington had an uncanny ability to spot ground, and he had a feel for what was on the other side of the hill. He stays calm in battle. He’s cautious, but capable of sudden flamboyant movements, such as the attack at Salamanca.
In the end he’s the only general who was capable of defeating Napoleon, albeit a close run thing. So, with Admiral Nelson, he’s the begetter of Europe in the 19th Century.
Davis: You admire Wellington, clearly, and you offer a fine portrait of him in the Sharpe series, but what do you think of Napoleon?
Cornwell: I don’t like the man. He was so careless with his men’s lives. He said scornfully “What are a million men to me?” Napoleon was one of those generals, a bit like Patton, who really didn’t care how many of his men got killed as long as he got his victory. He was a very ruthless man. He wanted to be the next Alexander the Great. He also had extraordinary charm and he was a fascinating man. He was a dangerous man because he was in love with war. Wellington was never in love with war. He didn’t like war. War had to be fought, you had to do it well, you had to win, but it was not by itself a good thing. For Napoleon war was a good thing, an exciting thing. I think that was the difference between them.
Davis: Are you fond of the Sharpe TV series and how do you feel about Sean Bean’s portrayal of Richard Sharpe?
Cornwell: I love both.
Davis: You’ve said that you’re not a historian, you’re a storyteller, a novelist, but how accurate are the major historical events in your novels?
Cornwell: I try to make them as accurate as possible, but the story takes precedence, so I do change things, but I confess my sins in the Historical Note at the book’s end. The obvious example is Sharpe’s Company. No British soldier got through the breaches at Badajoz – the feint escalade on the castle worked, against all odds – but the drama of that awful night was in the breeches. And so Sharpe had to be there, and if Sharpe is there he will get through the breach. So I changed reality for fiction, but I confessed afterwards.
Davis: Lastly, do you plan to write more about Sharpe?
Cornwell: Definitely.
Paul Davis also writes an American crime blog for Great History. Visit his Web site. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
espionage, Military History, writers
March 18th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
In my last espionage blog I began a three-part interview with Bernard Cornwell, the author of the Sharpe series and other historical novels. We discussed Richard Sharpe, a British army officer up from the ranks in the in the Napoleonic era. Here is part 2.
Davis: Espionage plays an important part in your series, as you have Sharpe undertake intelligence and espionage missions for Major Michael Hogan, an exploring officer. What was an exploring officer and what role did Hogan play for Wellington in your novels?
Cornwell: The exploring officers were just that – officers who, mounted on very good horses, rode behind enemy lines to explore their dispositions. They wore uniforms so that, if captured, they could not be considered as spies. Colquhoun Grant was the most famous, of course, but Wellington had several. Hogan really is not an exploring officer; he’s based more on George Scovell. Read The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Codes by Mark Urban. Hogan probably had more responsibility than Scovell. If Wellington didn’t have a Hogan, he should have, so I invented him.
My favorite tale of Colquhoun Grant is that after his capture, the French refused to parole him. He escaped their custody and fled to Paris where he lived for three months, openly wearing his British uniform! When asked what uniform it was, he replied that it was the United States Army! He got away with it too.
Davis: Why do you often pull Sharpe from the battlefield and send him on intelligence missions?
Cornwell: I tell adventure stories and espionage offers plenty of scope for betrayal, murder and mayhem.
Davis: Your books have so many vivid characters in addition to Sharpe. I particularly like your villain Sgt. Hakeswill. He was a great character.
Cornwell: It was a stupid thing to kill him off.
Davis: During the Napoleonic era the British were very good at spying, were they not?
Cornwell: The British ran a very sophisticated secret service that stretched right across Europe, quite apart from Wellington’s military intelligence.
Davis: Did it help Wellington that the French were hated by the Spanish and the Portuguese and they provided him intelligence?
Cornwell: Definitely, the entire population was on his side. If anything there was simply too much intelligence coming in.
Davis: How important was intelligence to Wellington and his successes?
Cornwell: Huge! He had spies throughout occupied Spain. The partisans brought him captured dispatches, often still blood-stained, and he had sources inside France. The intelligence network was amazing, and it has never been adequately described. There was a tailor who worked at Irun, the town through which all French troops passed on their way to the war. The tailor worked on his doorstep, counted every man, horse and gun that passed his house, which was on the main road, and within days his reports were in Wellington’s hands. Wellington probably knew more about the French than they did themselves.
Part III of this interview will be in my next blog.
Paul Davis also writes an American crime blog. Visit his Web site. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
espionage, Military History, writers
March 8th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
I was introduced to Bernard Cornwell’s Napoleonic-era, fictional British soldier Richard Sharpe when PBS aired the British TV series Sharpe’s Rifles in America many years ago. I watched the series again a few years ago on BBC America, and I went out and bought one of the books and read it. I was hooked. I’ve now read the entire series and a few of Cornwell’s other books as well.
As espionage plays a significant part in the series and Sharpe often plays the role of spy and counter-spy, I contacted the author and spoke to him. Below is part one of my Q & A with Bernard Cornwell.
Davis: Richard Sharpe is a rogue, but he is also honorable and heroic. Can you describe Sharpe?
Cornwell: Basically, Sharpe is a villain, but he’s on our side. Obviously, the genesis of Sharpe was Hornblower (C.S. Forester’s fictional naval hero). I’ve always loved the Hornblower stories. I was looking for an interesting name like Hornblower but I couldn’t find one, so I named him after my rugby hero. The name stuck. I wanted him to come up from the ranks because that would give him problems, although many officers came up through the ranks. The idea that British officers were aristocrats is complete rubbish. You had to buy your commission and most were what we would call middle class.
Davis: Was Sharpe based on a real person in history?
Cornwell: Not at all, though his promotions are based on a real guy – Trooper Ellery, a cavalryman, obviously, who rose from trooper to lieutenant colonel in the same time span as Sharpe.
Davis: What compelled you to write a series about the Napoleonic Wars, the Duke of Wellington and a fictional light infantry officer up from the ranks?
Cornwell: The need to make money! I was a producer in television and I’d immigrated to the States because of a blonde – I’m still married to her – and the U.S. Government in its wisdom refused me a green card, so I airily told Judy “I’ll write a book.” I always knew that I wanted to write a “Hornblower-on-land” series. It struck me as strange back in 1979 that a couple of writers were doing really well with Napoleonic naval series in C.S. Forester’s wake, but no one was writing about the army. It struck me as a gap on the bookshelf. I’d long had a fascination with Wellington and his army, so the fit was natural.
Davis: Do you feel that espionage and intelligence is a vital aspect of warfare and does espionage play a significant role your other series of books as well?
Cornwell: Yes, maybe the most important. Espionage is an integral part of warfare, so yes, it plays a significant role in my other books.
Read more of the Bernard Cornwell Q & A in my next two blogs.
Click here to read Part II.
Paul Davis also writes an American crime blog. Visit his website. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
books, espionage, history
February 23rd, 2009 in American History by Paul Davis
In my first American Crime blog I wrote about Bryan Burrough’s book Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI and the upcoming Michael Mann film based on the book.
Burrough writes about Herman K. Lamm, who pioneered the casing of banks: observing bank guards, alarms and tellers. He also gave specific roles to gang members, such as the lookout, the getaway driver, the lobby man and the vault man. Lamm also devised the first “gits,” or getaway maps and plans.
Lamm was killed in a shoot-out in 1930, but two of his men taught John Dillinger his system in an Indiana prison.
Burrough states that three innovations of the age aided the bank robbers in the 1930s: the Thompson submachine gun, introduced after WWI, which outgunned the local lawmen; the new automobile models with reliable, powerful V-8 engines, which allowed the outlaws to outrun the local lawmen; and the interstate highway, which lawmen could not use beyond their local jurisdiction. Bank robbery was not yet a federal crime.
Burrough makes the point that after the crime surge of the 1920s, symbolized by Chicago gangster Al Capone, there began a public debate over the need for a federal police force. The rise of kidnappings and bank robberies fueled the debate, as did the “Kansas City Massacre,” where, in an attempt to free a criminal cohort in federal custody in front of Union Railway Station, gang members opened up on FBI agents and local lawmen.
An FBI agent was killed, along with two Kansas City detectives and an Oklahoma police chief, as well as the prisoner they were trying to rescue. The hunt for the Kansas City killers, the Dillinger manhunt, Machine Gun Kelly’s kidnapping of Charles Urschel and the Barker-Karpis gang’s kidnappings of Edward Bremer and William Hamm, are all well covered in Burrough’s book.
Burrough also recounts the many failings of Melvin Purvis, whom the press of the day loved, and he writes about FBI Inspector Samuel P. Cowley, who although not as well known as Purvis, was placed over Purvis by J. Edgar Hoover. Cowley, a desk man who failed to qualify on the pistol range, would go on to shoot it out with Baby Face Nelson, both of them later dying from the gunfire exchange.
The hunt for the public enemies of the 1930s made a star of Hoover, and although he later greatly abused his authority, I believe he should be credited for creating one of the world’s most efficient law enforcement agencies. He also helped to diminish the “Robin Hood” image of vicious, murdering criminals.
But having said that, I’m thankful that Bryan Burrough has written a fact-based book that shatters the many myths about this fascinating period of history. I hope the upcoming film will be equally as good as the book.
This is Part II of a two-part series. To read Part I, click here.
Paul Davis also writes an espionage blog for GreatHistory.com. Visit his web site.
america, crime, history
February 21st, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
Larry Wu-Tai Chin was but one of the many spies uncovered in 1985, which was dubbed “The Year of the Spy.” But Chin’s damaging, long-term penetration of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) makes him a standout case in espionage history.
Chin was the CIA’s top Chinese linguist, and unbeknown to his bosses at CIA, he was also China’s top spy for more than 30 years.
Chin’s reports were read by the top Chinese leaders: Mao Zedong, Zhou Inlay and Deng Xiaoping. He reported to China throughout the pivotal events of the Cold War including the Korean and Vietnam wars, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and President Nixon’s groundbreaking visit to China.
Chin was uncovered when a Chinese intelligence official in Beijing decided to become a spy for the CIA. He informed his CIA handler that China had a spy, or mole, within the CIA. He didn’t know the spy’s name, but he gave the CIA a physical description and other background information. The CIA passed the information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1983, and the FBI began a three-year investigation that ultimately led to the arrest and conviction of Chin.
Tod Hoffman’s The Spy Within: Larry Chin and China’s Penetration of the CIA (Steerforth Press) tells of the FBI’s hunt for the Chinese spy. Hoffman, an eight-year veteran of the China desk of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, interviewed the key players in the case, and he gained access to previously unreleased documents. Hoffman also provides an overview of other espionage cases and Cold War history in the book.
Chin was born and educated in Beijing. At the urging of a Chinese communist agent in 1944, he used his language skills to find work with the Americans in order to spy on them. He first penetrated the U.S. military, then the State Department, and finally the CIA. Along the way he became a U.S. citizen and acquired a top security clearance.
Ideology and loyalty to China may have initially persuaded Chin to spy on America, but he would later accept cash payments for his spying. Chin used the money to buy real estate and to finance his lavish lifestyle of women and gambling.
At his trial, Chin admitted passing on information to the Chinese while America was at war with the Vietcong and North Vietnam, but he claimed he wanted to help America and China become friends rather than enemies. The jury rejected his spin, and he was found guilty of all charges. He received a sentence of 133 years in prison and a 3.3 million-dollar fine.
Chin committed suicide in county jail by placing a plastic trash bag over his head and securing it around his neck with a shoelace.
Chin is the only known Chinese penetration agent, and he is the longest-surviving penetration agent in the history of espionage.
Paul Davis also writes an American Crime blog for GreatHistory.com. Davis can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com. Visit his website here.
espionage
February 16th, 2009 in American History by Paul Davis
I happened to come across photos on the Internet of Johnny Depp portraying bank robber John Dillinger and Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis, the famous FBI agent who pursued Dillinger and the other bank robbers during the 1930s. The two fine actors lead the cast in an upcoming film called Public Enemies.
The film, directed by veteran crime film director Michael Mann, is based on Bryan Burrough’s excellent book Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34. I read the book with some relish a few years ago, as I’ve long been interested in the depression-era criminals and the early history of the FBI.
Like Truman Capote, who once said that if he had studied medicine with the same intensity that he had studied crime, he could have been a brain surgeon, I’ve long been a student of crime. I grew up watching cops and robbers on TV and in the movies, and I became an avid reader of crime fiction as well as crime history. As a writer I’ve covered crime for newspapers, magazines and Internet publications. In this blog I’ll write about crime in American history.
The names of criminals like John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie & Clyde are better known than most presidents’ names. Unfortunately what most people know about these criminals they’ve learned primarily from the movies. While movies can be entertaining, most of them are historically inaccurate. The movies have also glamorized the criminals.
The movies also gave us a somewhat whitewashed version of the early FBI’s role in capturing and killing the Depression-era gangsters. In films such as Jimmy Cagney’s G-Men and James Stewart’s The FBI Story we see a sanitized FBI and the stories that J. Edgar Hoover, the first and long-serving director of the FBI, wanted the public to see. (I love the two films anyway, as they are good dramas.)
Burrough’s book gives us the true story of the early FBI and the sordid story of the rural bank robbers and kidnappers that captured the public’s imagination in the 1930s, and to some extent, still does today.
After four years of research and access to FBI records made available only in the 1980s, Burrough was able to give readers a thorough, unsanitized account of the FBI’s “War on Crime” against the famous criminals.
As Burrough explains in the book, bank robbers were known as “Yeggmen,” or “Yeggs.” One influential Yegg who is not as well known as Dillinger, was Herman K. Lamm, a former German army officer known as “The Baron.” Burrough offers a brief history of Lamm, who devised the bank robbery system later used by the Dillinger gang.
You can read more on the public enemies of the 1930s and the FBI in my next blog.
Paul Davis also writes an espionage blog for GreatHistory.com. Visit his web site.
america, crime, history
February 10th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
Craig Cabell, the author of Ian Fleming’s Secret War (Pen & Sword Books), said Ian Fleming wanted to see action but Rear Admiral Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence, would not allow him, as Fleming was his right-hand man, almost a confidant, and he could not fall into enemy hands.
“Fleming understood that he was desk bound,” Cabell said. “But with 30 Assault Unit (30 AU), his brain child, he could be their man at base, filtering intelligence to them, administrating the returns and sticking up for them when they were criticized. They would do much good on his behalf.”
“Godfrey was the model for “M” Cabell said. “M and Godfrey served aboard the same Royal Navy ship and enjoyed the same wine. And Lt. Cdr. Patrick Dalzel-Job was the real inspiration for Bond; well, at least partly.”
According to Dalzel-Job’s obit in The Guardian, “He could ski backwards, navigate a midget submarine and undertake the riskiest parachute jumps. His WWII exploits are the epitome of derring-do behind enemy lines … and like Bond, he sometimes defied authority.”
In my view, Fleming created Bond with 30 AU commandos like Dalzel-Job and secret agents like Sidney Reilly in mind, but he also added what he called his own “quirks and characteristics” to the character.
Cabell said that 30 AU, a crack intelligence-gathering commando group, recovered enemy documentation and equipment, took prisoners, interrogated them, and then got the information home.
“The 30 AU discovered much intelligence about U-boats, locations of German Naval bases around the world, radar and codes and, most importantly-as far as I’m concerned-the locations and filtering of intelligence concerning V rocket sites, which must have assisted Operations Crossbow, Big Ben and Paperclip in a major way,” Cabell said.
The unit was not popular with everyone, including General George S. Patton, the commander of the U.S. Third Army, who called them “Limey gangsters” after they blew a bank as part of one operation.
“30 AU looked like a bunch of rebels and Patton wasn’t very happy with that,” Cabell said. “The fact that they didn’t wear their helmets annoyed him to hell. The 30 AU veterans I met were very proud of that quote.”
“I loved the veterans and I feel proud to have met them,” Cabell continued. “They were very proud of Fleming’s input into the unit and gave him credit for providing them with the very best equipment. They said that he looked after them even though it was only the officers that met him.”
Cabell said that Fleming’s service gave him a solid intelligence background, which he later used in his thrillers. Cabell said that there are isolated incidents in all the early books, especially Moonraker, where Fleming wrote about the original V rockets and a 30 AU connection.
Cabell’s book is a must for Fleming aficionados, and for students of espionage.
This is Part II of a two-part series. Read Part I.
Vist Paul Davis’ Web site. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
espionage, writers
February 10th, 2009 in Military History by Paul Davis
Ian Fleming often told friends that he planned to write “the spy story to end all spy stories.” Fleming went on to create the world’s best-known fictional secret agent, James Bond.
I was first introduced to Bond at a South Philadelphia movie theater in 1963. I was 11 when I saw Sean Connery’s first portrayal of Bond in Dr. No, and the film inspired me to read Fleming’s novels. I’ve been a Fleming aficionado ever since.
I’m certainly not alone. According to a recent Conde Nast survey, since the first thriller, Casino Royale, was published in 1953, Bond has generated nearly $14 billion from the books, movies and video games, making Bond one of the most lucrative fictional characters in history.
The Bond novels and films also inspired the spy mania throughout the 1960s, generating a great influx of spy films, novels, TV programs, toys and gadgets, as well as sparking a public interest in the true world of espionage.
In addition to my enjoyment of fictional spies as a teenager, I also became an avid student of espionage. I enlisted in the U.S. Navy at 17 and performed security work as a young sailor and later as a Defense Department civilian employee. I’ve also covered espionage for newspapers, magazine and Internet publications.
As the current Bond film, Quantum of Solace, is breaking box office records, I thought my first piece here should cover Fleming’s WWII experiences.
I read John Pearson and Andrew Lycett’s biographies of Fleming and discovered that he led an interesting life as a thriller writer, a journalist, and as a naval intelligence officer in WWII.
In additional to working on operations, taking covert trips around the world, and liaison work with British and American intelligence agencies, Royal Navy Commander Fleming was also instrumental in the creation of a crack team of naval intelligence-gathering commandos called the 30 Assault Unit.
Craig Cabell, a British journalist and author who has previously written books on Frederick Forsyth and Dennis Wheatly, used recently released documents, private papers and interviews to present a clearer picture of Fleming’s service in Ian Fleming’s Secret War (Pen & Sword Books).
Cabell writes that Fleming was at the center of wartime events and met key figures like Sir William Stephenson and General William Donovan. I contacted Cabell and asked him about Fleming’s service.
“Fleming was the Personal Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, Real Admiral John Godfrey; but he managed to do a little more than just his day job,” Cabell told me. “He got in early enough in the morning to do all his basic admin duties and worked late into the evening. Fleming’s formation of 30 Assault Unit was a major contribution, and I feel that Fleming had more than a passing knowledge of Hess’s infamous flight to the UK.”
Read Part II on Fleming in my next espionage blog.
Visit Paul Davis’ Web site. He can be reached at daviswrite@aol.com.
espionage, writers
