Posted on 04/28/2022 12:35:28 AM PDT by DallasBiff
BINGO
I am sure that Burn Notice was a favorite of many families headed by spies. The movie True Lies got right that spies often have problems in private life in having to deceive friends and family about what they do for a living and the moral tension between being privately virtuous while immersed in and adept at the dishonest methods of spying.
Burn Notice got around that by having an approachable, chain-smoking Sharon Gless as Michael's mother and in the know as to the necessity of spy methods and what they requires of their practitioners. The starting point for quite a few episodes was Gless importuning, "Michael, I have a friend who needs your help." From there, it is a small step in imagination to, "Michael, we have a country who needs your help."
“Burn Notice” ... One of my favorite series. Every couple years I binge watch.
Love the Sharon Gless character, and Michael Weston. We named our cat after Fiona.
When we saw that Jeffry Donovan is the new guy on Series 21 of “Law And Order” on Peacock, we started to watch it. The first couple episodes were excellent. The next episode made a conservative talk show host the villain. The villains in the episode after that were a conservative black family who objected to their son’s homosexuality. The cops, including Donovan, completely ridiculed the conservative parents.
Burn Notice was the usual half-baked spy thriller fantasy.
If you want to watch something that is reasonably accurate in regard to espionage and tradecraft you have to go foreign. Watch the French TV series “The Bureau”. A series based on portraying the deep-cover (operating ‘under a legend’) officers (Which is NOT the normal Intel officer!) of the French foreign espionage service the DGSE. Even then it exaggerates storylines adds unrealistic subplots for dramatic effect. The first 3 years are the best. The next 2 seasons it moves further from “realism” to more typical “spy drama”. I think it’s on Netflix and you can buy it off Amazon.
True Lies was just flat out ludicrous!
True Lies got at least one thing right: the reaction of the wives of deep cover field agents on learning of what their husband's career was actually about. In the 1980's, the CIA and US military intel agencies became alarmed at the high rates of divorce and suicide among their retired spies. A program to inform the wives and children about the spy thing was then developed.
A friend of mine, John, had been a NOC agent for US military intelligence, with various foreign and domestic postings as a supposed businessman. His college sweetheart wife Sue put up with a lot: abrupt changes in her husband's business work, odd trips, poorly explained absences, and unusual friends and associates. Sue suspected infidelity and that her husband's business was tainted with fraud, but she buckled down and devoted herself to their two children.
When John retired from field work and settled back home as a small town businessman, his marriage to Sue began to unravel. Too many accumulated questions and doubts, and too much dodgy behavior from John over the years. When the intel counseling team came to town, John was pleased to think that his wife Sue was about to learn that instead of being a bad husband, John would be officially revealed as a patriot serving his country, even a James Bond type hero of sorts.
Not quite. Just like Jamie Leigh Curtis in True Lies, Sue was furious that John had put his wife and children in harm's way by being a spy. It took a lot of talk and some time before Sue was persuaded that the conventions of the spy game assured that John's family's was safe and off limits.
There is even a true True Lies kind of twist. Reconciled, John and Sue remained married, even finding renewed devotion and happiness in later years. Indeed, partly with some advice from me and a little help from John, Sue and her friends relentlessly dug into their local municipal government and found enough ethical misconduct and irregular accounting to force the resignation of almost all the elected officials and top staff. A reform mayor and new city council were soon elected.
There was some mumbling among the targets that they had been the victim of a CIA type coup, referring to John's intel background. What they could not accept was that the unfailingly polite Southern belle and her friends who had spent months poring over City records and asking simple questions were the true instrument of the reckoning that they suffered. I have never seen a more thorough political housecleaning.
I like how the series mixes the good, the bad and the worst and sorts them all out in the end. I know that doesn’t happen in real life.
They also show how people can get twisted by the things they do until they don’t even recognize themselves AND how bureaucracy will chew people up and spit them out to get objectives met. Hardly as glamorous as a James Bond film.
Yeah, the CIA screwed the pooch in Cuba and really needed some good PR. Too bad they’ve wasted it.
I don’t see how anyone can do what a spy does for long and maintain their sanity. Having to keep thoughts, emotions and personalities compartmentalized has to take a huge toll on them. Especially in their home lives. And the spouses of those spies, always wondering just what is going on and with who.
Sharon Gless was perfect. No angel herself, Maddie Westen was good for telling Michael what he didn’t want to hear. Gless played the part spectacularly.
I’ve loved Sharon Gless since Cagney and Lacey. She did a great job on Burn Notice.
As far as Law and Order.... it’s Wokewood, what did you expect?
From what I have read, self-confidence, resilience, and cleverness on command are the primary traits essential to being a good spy. Burn Notice got that right.
From what I have read, self-confidence, resilience, and cleverness on command are the primary traits essential to being a good spy. Burn Notice got that right.
I wonder how many recruits the CIA goes through to find, let’s say ten, people with the right character traits a successful spy needs, who also lack the weaknesses that make them too unstable for the job?
A thousand to get the ten?
And I imagine the failure rate in training is VERY high. So get your ten then how many of those will make the grade?
Two?
And of the two can they operate under cover for months and keep it all together?
I think good spies are born, not trained.
The training they get is akin to polishing the apple.
My favorite real life spy is Duško Popov.
He courted and bedded actresses and entertainers, double crossed the Abwehr (and used their own money to do it), tried to warn the US about Pearl Harbor, and was the best basis for Ian Fleming’s James Bond as Ian Fleming was his English handler.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du%C5%A1ko_Popov
What the CIA and military intel agencies are mostly looking to hire and train is case officers and field operatives. They have to be loyal and reliable elements in the intel bureaucracy, but also ready to manipulate and exploit others to do spying and betray their country. A sense of how to discern and use human weaknesses is a key skill.
Get recruitment and training wrong and you end up with intel agencies dominated by borderline sociopaths instead of honorable men skilled in patriotic treachery. The current thinking in psychology is that there is a strong genetic component to sociopathic traits, which are common and which environment and upbringing either suppress or develop.
Popov was quite a character, but more a double agent and defector than a classic spy, like Robert Hanssen, a senior FBI agent who voluntarily became a spy for the Soviets. Sadly, there are suspicions that US intel agencies are today badly compromised by Russian and Chinese spies.
I know that most spying is done by locals who turn on their own government for whatever reason. Unless they go looking for someone on the other side an operative has to make contact, earn trust, then get the local to actually turn over information.
I would make a terrible operative because my conscience would kill me knowing that I was setting someone up to lose their careers, or lives, just to get information for me. No matter that it may be crucial to my own country. I’m just not cut out for it. I don’t imagine most people are.
They’re not compromised, they’re owned.
Our current intelligence agencies are by now merely extensions of the Russian and CCP Intel agencies.
I spoke with a man who spent forty years in the FBI, retiring a decade ago. He was emphatic that the FBI was no longer to be trusted. And he said the number of people working in the intelligence agencies who were playing for the other side was unbelievable. All high ranking members are owned by others according to him.
Corruption is routine in those countries. So a target is selected, such as a key military figure. A seemingly Brit expatriate investment specialist, a former banker of anti-American views, is then insinuated into his circle of friends. Over a period of months and even years, for reasonable fees, he provides safe and secure money handling, moving funds from in country to accounts in Switzerland, Panama, Cayman Islands, or so on -- wherever you like. The practice is illegal but much in demand among Latin America's affluent classes.
Eventually, the target -- call him Colonel Sanchez -- asks for such help. He is politely declined, because, well, our spy posing as an anti-American Brit says he does not know Col. Sanchez at all. The good general then starts courting our spy in the Latin American way of intimate meals, small gifts, invitations to parties, and such. Gradually, our spy yields to his new friend and begins doing a professional and well-organized job of moving his money out of country.
Then, when the time is ripe, the boom is dropped on Sanchez and a select few others who have been compromised. It is politely and calmly explained in private that the funds Colonel Sanchez has invested are not really in secure accounts but are under the control of American intelligence. And here are pictures and video and audio of the Colonel's meetings with our spy, showing papers and mysterious packages being transferred.
The Colonel is then told that a package of this evidence will be leaked to a notorious muckraking opposition newspaper, which will then publish proof of the Colonel's treachery with an American spy, thereby ruining the Colonel and his family. The Colonel will end up a disgraced and broken man in prison.
Or, if the Colonel wants, he can begin to work for American intelligence helping counter Soviet and Marxist influence. If things go wrong and he is detected or ends up on the losing side in a hostile change of government, he and his family will be provided a safe new home in exile, with his savings to live on and a stipend as well.
Cruel and wicked? Of course, but consider that on the American plan the Colonel and his family end up safe and well-provided for. Yes, technically, the Colonel becomes a traitor, but his treachery is likely to be forever secret and America has no intention of causing harm to him or his country.
As nasty and squalid as such doings are, they are routine in spying and the game of nations. And being good at it is part of what has helped to keep us and our country safe.
China has effectively used cash to compromise our country's leadership. Not long ago, Peter Navarro described how he would repeatedly run into Chinese influence trying to block his work in the Trump administration. Perhaps a second Trump administration will be able to purge those people.
Corruption is routine in those countries. So a target is selected, such as a key military figure. A seemingly Brit expatriate investment specialist, a former banker of anti-American views, is then insinuated into his circle of friends. Over a period of months and even years, for reasonable fees, he provides safe and secure money handling, moving funds from in country to accounts in Switzerland, Panama, Cayman Islands, or so on -- wherever you like. The practice is illegal but much in demand among Latin America's affluent classes.
Eventually, the target -- call him Colonel Sanchez -- asks for such help. He is politely declined, because, well, our spy posing as an anti-American Brit says he does not know Col. Sanchez at all. The good general then starts courting our spy in the Latin American way of intimate meals, small gifts, invitations to parties, and such. Gradually, our spy yields to his new friend and begins doing a professional and well-organized job of moving his money out of country.
Then, when the time is ripe, the boom is dropped on Sanchez and a select few others who have been compromised. It is politely and calmly explained in private that the funds Colonel Sanchez has invested are not really in secure accounts but are under the control of American intelligence. And here are pictures and video and audio of the Colonel's meetings with our spy, showing papers and mysterious packages being transferred.
The Colonel is then told that a package of this evidence will be leaked to a notorious muckraking opposition newspaper, which will then publish proof of the Colonel's treachery with an American spy, thereby ruining the Colonel and his family. The Colonel will end up a disgraced and broken man in prison.
Or, if the Colonel wants, he can begin to work for American intelligence helping counter Soviet and Marxist influence. If things go wrong and he is detected or ends up on the losing side in a hostile change of government, he and his family will be provided a safe new home in exile, with his savings to live on and a stipend as well.
Cruel and wicked? Of course, but consider that on the American plan the Colonel and his family end up safe and well-provided for. Yes, technically, the Colonel becomes a traitor, but his treachery is likely to be forever secret and America has no intention of causing harm to him or his country.
As nasty and squalid as such doings are, they are routine in spying and the game of nations. And being good at it is part of what has helped to keep us and our country safe.
China has effectively used cash to compromise our country's leadership. Not long ago, Peter Navarro described how he would repeatedly run into Chinese influence trying to block his work in the Trump administration. Perhaps a second Trump administration will be able to purge those people.
One thing I’ve noticed about any country Spain colonized is rampant corruption. It seems the only two things they left behind were the language and the corruption.
But greed is universal. The poor Soviet Captain could see the forbidden items his superior had and want them for himself. The thing, I imagine, is to find out what motivates a person then put yourself in a position to supply what is wanted. Not a lot at first, but enough to whet the appetite. Better production brings better payoffs.
Unfortunately for us cash is king and China has been spending freely. I wonder just how many bureaucrats in DC are owned by the CCP?
I expect the CCP got good value since most democrats are True Believers.
“Fast Times at Ridgemont High” is the epitomie of the 80’s.
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Jackson Browne’s “Somebody’s Baby” will forever be cemented in my mind as ‘porn music’. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know why.
In the colonial era, the Spanish conception of the state was based on royal absolutism, with the state being the instrument of the king and an expression of his will. There was little to distinguish between the resources of the king and those of the state, except in a functional sense of there being a royal household account and accounts for various state activities.
If the king needed or wanted more for himself, he could simply move funds from state accounts into his household account or he could impose new taxes and fees on the public. And the king could request something special as a favor, like getting a royal bastard son married off into a wealthy family in return for a favor like a hereditary title and some form of tax exemption.
Moreover, as long as the king's interests, claims, and directives were not transgressed, subordinate officials and nobles governed in a similar manner.
Quite routinely, kings took bribes and gifts, and so did family and subordinates and hangers on in order to gain access to the king or get services and favors. In a sense, the entire system of royal rule relied on bribes and favors and kickbacks passed up and down. Do the sovereign a great service like win a battle or kill off or otherwise stick it to a rival and one justly expected money, tangible gifts, land, titles, or various concessions and favors in return.
For the public, the royal system meant that one had to pay bribes and deliver gifts to get anything done. Strip away the titles, palaces, fine clothes, and courtly manners and the entire system puts one in mind of rule by the Mafia. Sir Thomas Moore's refusal to take bribes and gifts as Chancellor was a striking departure. The popularity and respect he accrued in return was one of the reasons he became a trouble to King Henry and was eventually executed for heresy.
Recall Queen Elizabeth I's letter to William Cecil on making him Secretary of State on her accession made a striking instruction: "This judgement I have of you, that you will not be corrupted by any manner of gifts, and that you will be faithful to the State; and that without respect of any private will, you will give me the counsel you think best." It was contrary to how the royal system worked. No wonder that the canny Elizabeth was so successful. She knew the defects of the royal system and demanded that her prime minister be an exception.
When Spain's hold over its colonies lapsed due to Napoleon's invasion, the new post-colonial governments were established on the prevailing royalist legal and philosophical foundations. Whether elected in some manner or self-appointed, the new rulers of Spain's suddenly liberated colonies set themselves up with the powers and expectations of the royal system.
To be sure, most of the new post-colonial governments included or eventually embraced elections and an American style constitutional structure. But the culture and practices of Latin America's governments tolerated corruption as normal. And the pattern persists in contemporary Hispanic culture in the US, at least in the first generation.
By way of personal account, in 1987 in Tallahassee, at the inauguration of the first Hispanic Republican governor in Florida, I met and chatted with a prominent Cuban immigrant who was an official in the Miami-Dade GOP. We had friends in common and, with a bit too much to drink, he mistook me as someone who might matter and confided that even with all that he had done to elect the new governor, he had in mind only a modest and simple favor from him: award of the franchise in his county for the state lottery.
In effect, this Cuban immigrant who had been a member of Battista's secret police, still wore his ring of that office, and had CIA ties and a rep as a drug money launderer expected as a political favor to be cut in on Florida's lottery as if it was being run on the same lines as the Cuban lottery under Battista. Of course, he never got it, but likely got something else.
In later years I got to entertain an investigative reporter and then an assistant US attorney with my account -- and they confirmed that the former thug for Battista turned local GOP official had been repeatedly protected from prosecution due to intervention by the CIA.
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