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Badger52 10-27-2019 20:17

Bureau of Spies
 
Just finished Bureau of Spies: The Secret Connections Between Espionage and Journalism in Washington, by Steven T. Usdin.

The center of this piece of history is the old National Press Club building in Washington, D.C. In the days before everyone worked at some service or paper (or from their kitchen table with a laptop in their bathrobe), this was the collection of offices - and a premier watering hole - where journalists from all over the world hung out.

The focus runs from the influence-peddling schemes all the way to full-blown espionage over the 80 yrs or so that it was really the hub of journalism in that city. Several specific periods are extensively covered and a couple worth noting are:

- the influencing of American isolationist attitudes and outright election meddling that was engaged in by the British before we formally entered the Second World War in an effort to continue to secure material aid, if not draw us outright into the war. (During this period there is a good illustration, if not flattering, of another side of Roosevelt that FDR-o-philes may not want to hear about regarding how he viewed other races & cultures vis a vis what to do with them after victory.)

- quite a bit of the Cold War era is compared - from both sides, thanks to former Soviet archives that have been accessed - and contrasted with what is now known from declassified Venona transcripts relating to the scale of Communist infiltration in a great many facets of American life.

It's not dry by any means and many of the characters involved are, quite simply, characters of the first order. A pretty good read, and decently end-noted.

Quotable, from the last paragraph in the Epilogue:

"At a time when lives are ruled, and more than occasionally ruined, by frictionless electronic exchanges of information, it is important to remember that the most advanced devices will never supplant the oldest and most important form of communication, talking face-to-face."

A final realization from yrs trly would be that politicians and governments have been the creators of, and victims of, fake news for a long, long time.

tom kelly 11-12-2019 15:22

"BUREAU OS SPIES"
 
A GOOD READ AND A VALUABLE TEACHING POINT.

tonyz 11-12-2019 20:43

Badger, thanks for the heads up and synopsis.

Uman 11-22-2019 23:09

Arnaud de Borchgrave started to ring the bell on it in 1983
 
Here he is on Johnny Carson in 1983 talking about the Soviet penetration of the media for disinformation operations. If the web site that cannot be mentioned is blocked then search Arnaud de Borchgrave on Johnny Carson, an amazing video

https://www.*******.com/watch?v=uXAF-bzsDVQ

He goes into it in his fiction book The Spike which is a great read. What does an editor do when he does not like your story, puts it on the spike on his desk to throw away at the end of the day, if he needs part of it to craft a story then he can find it easier on the spike than digging through the trash.

Google, Facebook, Twitter are all Spiking stories they do not like.


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