Showing posts with label historical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label historical. Show all posts

Monday, January 22, 2024

Widow: Hugh Hefner Had ‘Little Spy Holes’ to Record Celebs

Crystal Hefner has revealed that her late husband, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, had camera peepholes in his bedroom and even in the foot of his bed
— where he says he recorded sexual encounters with celebrities and high-ranking politicians, apparently without their knowledge...

The revelation is part of Hefner’s upcoming tell-all book, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself, which is due out on January 23...

In the book, Hefner adds that Hef, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 91, claimed to have tapes of numerous A-list celebrities and “videos of wild orgies, also with celebrities and politicians and business leaders, some of whom were married.”... It has not been reported what Hef did with all those videos... more

Sunday, January 21, 2024

Excellent Video on Early Law Enforcement Spy Tech

On January 18th AWA Wireless Museum published this video. As per its description, “during Mike Murphy’s career he had the opportunity to be involved with the design of law enforcement surveillance radios, and he met some of the colorful personalities who pioneered these controversial technologies. In this presentation Mike tells the story of the people and companies that created surveillance devices that remained secret for decades, some of which still haven’t seen the light of day.”

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Spy History: When Furbys Caused National Security Fears

In the late 90s, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) banned Furbys on its premises over fears they could record and repeat top-secret information.


When it first hit toy stores in 1998, Furby was an immediate sensation. The animatronic furball would eventually be recognized by Time Magazine as one of “History’s Best Toys.” And just as it spiked in popularity among children looking for a new robotic friend, security officials were reportedly concerned over the robot’s potential to record top-secret information.

All such stories stemmed from reporting by The Washington Post. On Jan. 13, 1999, The Post published an article titled “A Toy Story of Hairy Espionagemore

Friday, November 3, 2023

Weekend Read: “Spymaster’s Prism: The Fight Against Russian Aggression”

November 1, 2023

I am pleased to announce that the paperback edition of my second book Spymaster’s Prism: The Fight Against Russian Aggression comes out today.

When the book was first published in the middle of the pandemic in 2021, there was only an emergent acknowledgement of the real threat posed by Russian "active measures" and espionage to Western interests. Though I devoted an entire section to Ukraine called "New Berlin", I could not have foretold how much the world would change only a year later, on 24 February 2022...

I hope that the release of the paperback of "Spymaster's Prism: The Fight Against Russian Aggression" will give you an opportunity to discover or revisit a thorough accounting of the Russian intelligence services relentless and unending campaign against the West and what we must continue to do to arrest it. Good Hunting! 

Monday, September 25, 2023

Disrupting Time: Industrial Combat, Espionage, and...

This week, Aaron Stark joins the show to discuss his new book Disrupting Time: Industrial Combat, Espionage, and the Downfall of a Great American Company, which chronicles an attempt by a foreign power to infiltrate, emulate, and eventually annihilate a great American company. 

In the late 19th century, watches were at the forefront of technological innovation, and the Waltham Watch Company made some of the finest watches in the world. Unlike their Swiss competitors, whose products were fancy, handcrafted works of art, the Watham company specialized in mass produced, affordable, and reliable watches for the masses. 

At an 1876 World’s Fair, they announced their arrival on the world’s stage, and the world took notice. The Swiss, in particular, took notice, and they took it by sending spies to steal the secrets of Waltham’s success. more

Thursday, July 20, 2023

The Tapes That Doomed Nixon’s Presidency (50th Anniversary)

Fifty years ago, on July 16, 1973, the country was rocked by the revelation that President Richard Nixon had been secretly recording his conversations in the White House. 

Pressed by Senate investigators, a Nixon aide, Alexander Butterfield, revealed that the president had installed an extensive taping system and that the machines had recorded “everything.” Butterfield’s words electrified the nation, watching live on TV...
Indeed, the tapes effectively doomed his presidency, giving prosecutors reams of evidence to sift through in the cascading Watergate scandal. Worse, they revealed a president speaking so coarsely that it embarrassed many Americans. It was a political disaster and a cautionary tale as well. Since then, no president has taped his official meetings. more  The 18.5 minute gap.

Thursday, June 8, 2023

Notable US Spies Fast Facts

Timeline Summaries* of Spies Who Failed

Aldrich Ames
1962 - Aldrich Ames, son of a CIA analyst, joins the agency as a low-level documents analyst. 

David Boone
1970-1991 - David Boone serves in the US Army as a signals intelligence analyst. During the late 1980s, he is assigned to the National Security Agency as a senior cryptologic traffic analyst. 

Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins
1996 - Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins makes visits to Russia to meet with their intelligence agents. He is given a code name and signs a settlement “attesting that he wanted to serve” them.

Noshir Gowadia
1968-1986 - Noshir Gowadia is employed by Northrop Grumman where he works on technology relating to the B-2 Spirit Bomber, aka the “Stealth” bomber.

Robert Hanssen
January 12, 1976 - Robert Hanssen joins the FBI.

Ana Montes
1984 - Ana Montes is recruited to spy for Cuba. She is never paid for her spying.

Walter Kendall Myers
1977 - Walter Kendall Myers begins working for the US State Department on contract, as an instructor.

Harold James Nicholson
1980 - Harold Nicholson joins the CIA after serving in the United States Army.

Ronald Pelton
1965-1979 - Ronald Pelton works for the National Security Agency, with top-level security clearance.

Earl Pitts
1983-1996 - Earl Edwin Pitts works at the FBI.

Jonathan Pollard
1979 - Pollard is hired to work at the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office. He had been rejected previously from employment at the CIA due to drug use. His specialty is North America and the Caribbean.

George Trofimoff
1969-1994 - George Trofimoff, a naturalized American citizen of Russian parentage, works as a civilian for the US Army at the Joint Interrogation Center in Nuremberg, Germany. He also attains the rank of colonel in the Army reserve.     *Complete timelines for each spy.
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And, one successful spy hero...
VA - The local FBI agent who cracked the notorious Walker spy ring in the 1980s has died. Robert "Bob" Hunter was the lead investigator in the 1985 arrest of master spy John Walker, who led what U.S. officials called the most damaging espionage case in American history. The Walker spy ring operated for nearly two decades, spanning five presidencies, stealing top-secret information from the Navy and selling it to the Soviet Union. In 1999, Hunter wrote a book about his experiences: "Spy Hunter: Inside the FBI Investigation of the Walker Espionage Case.more

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

White House Plumbers...

...A Delightfully Funny Retelling of the Watergate Scandal

The Watergate scandal is not exactly new territory for screenwriters. From the 1976 classic All the President’s Men to, just last year, the excellent Gaslit, the story of the bungled covert operations that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974 has been raked over time and time again.

So White House Plumbers, created by Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck – two writers who have previously worked on Veep and David Letterman’s 90s Late Show – needed to be pretty good to justify its existence. Thankfully, it was.

The five-episode comedy drama focuses on E Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and G Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux), ex CIA and FBI agents respectively, who were hired by Nixon’s White House to run a dirty tricks unit. more

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Australian Spy Camera Ads from the 1880's

Not very covert by today's standards, but interesting.

The Dog Cam... Send the dog into an area by himself, blow the dog whistle, dog wags tail connected to the shutter. Fingers crossed, you got the shot.

















The Pot Shot... or, The Detective Camera. Lens peeks through a buttonhole. The bull taking a shot at the photographer, taking a shot of the kangaroo is a bit of a non sequitur. 



The White House Plumbers, or The Buttcrack Buggers

This five-part limited series imagines the behind-the-scenes story of how Nixon’s political saboteurs, E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux), accidentally toppled the presidency they were zealously trying to protect… and their families along with it. 


Chronicling actions on the ground, this satirical drama begins in 1971 when the White House hires Hunt and Liddy, former CIA and FBI, respectively, to investigate the Pentagon Papers leak. After failing upward, the unlikely pair lands on the Committee to Re-Elect the President, plotting several unbelievable covert ops – including bugging the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex. Proving that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction, White House Plumbers sheds light on the lesser-known series of events that led to one of the greatest political scandals in American history.

From the producers of Succession and Veep...White House Plumbers comes to HBO Max on May 1, 2023. more

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Spy History: Evolution of Aerial Spying Over the Past 200 Years

Last month, the US government shot down a Chinese spy balloon floating near a South Carolina beach. 

The Pentagon said it was there gathering intelligence. China said it was doing civilian research. Regardless, it was nothing new.

Governments have been spying on each other for hundreds of years...Here's how surveillance from the sky has developed over the years...

The first record of aerial surveillance happened toward the end of the 18th century. During the Revolutionary War, the French successfully used hot air balloons to monitor combat during the Battle of Fleurus against Britain, Germany, and Holland. more

Monday, March 6, 2023

History: Early Anti-Eavesdropping / Wiretapping Invention

November 10, 1892...
Wiretapping telegraph lines was a known problem back then. Problem was... it was risky, detectable, and the tap always lead to the tapper. In some instances, all this could be circumvented by simply eavesdropping. If one could hear the telegraph clicking—and knew code—one could jot down the message, just like the telegraph employee.

This is how the problem was solved...


Friday, February 24, 2023

The Rest of the Story: US Government Has Been Dancing...

...Around UFOs for 75 Years

A legacy of hype, hysteria and fraud is undermining legitimate inquiry into those strange objects in the sky, whether you call them spy balloons, flying saucers or unidentified aerial phenomena...

...on June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a businessman and pilot, spotted nine objects flying at unfathomable speed near Mount Rainier in Washington.

Arnold dutifully reported these to aviation officials. When pressed to describe the movement of the curious craft, he likened it to “a saucer skipping across the water.” This initial report went out across the news wires. Bored reporters eager to make something of the story ran with it, inventing details along the way.

In a few days, journalists had turned Arnold’s movement metaphor into something more material: a “flying saucer.” Arnold complained to veteran journalist Edward Murrow that newspapers had “misunderstood and misquoted me,” but to no avail. The idea of a flying saucer immediately captured the nation’s imagination, sparking a flood of alleged sightings. more  (Klaatu would not approve.)

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Spy History: The "Detective Dictograph"

The General Acoustic Company in New York manufactured and sold the "Detective Dictograph" which they patented in 1907--only ten years after Marconi's first successful transatlantic radio transmission.

The "Detective Dictograph" was a neat suitcase with a complete covert electronic audio surveillance system, which included a special carbon microphone for concealment and a long cable to run to the suitcase where the operator would covertly monitor the audio on headphones in the next room.


Yes, people were electronically bugging other people over 100 years ago.




Sunday, February 12, 2023

Spy History: Life Imitates Art - The Shoe Bug

...The discovery of a “shoe bug” then prompted SY (US State Department - Division of Security) to modify its ACRs (Acoustic Conference Room)...
In 1969, Harry G. Barnes, Jr., Deputy Chief of Mission in Bucharest, Romania, called a classified conference, which met in the “bubble.” SY officer Lou Grob was monitoring the meeting from another room and heard the conversation. He immediately informed the Administration Officer (the RSO’s superior) that there was a bug in the ACR. After searching, they found something resembling Don Adams’s “shoe phone” from the 1960s television series Get Smart!--the bug was located in the heel of Barnes’s shoe. 

Barnes had had the butler take his shoes out to be modified, and someone had installed the bug in the process. After this incident, SY officers covered ACRs with Reynolds plastic wrap to reduce the radiation of low-power devices such as shoe bugs until the proper security modifications could be made. more  "Psst... Wanna buy some spy shoes? Click this."

Thursday, January 19, 2023

How IBM Trolled East German Spies

In the late 1960's IBM knew its technology was being smuggled into Communist block countries. One designer decided to sent a message etched into one of the circuit boards of the IBM 360 computer. Written in Russian, the message loosely translates to, "When do you want to stop to swipe. Own design is better."


Thanks to one of our readers... Hi Kevin,
Your latest post incorrectly states the name of the U.S. company whose semiconductor engineers put a hidden message in their computers for GDR's Stasi semiconductor spies to see. I said "DEC" in my email because that was the name of Digital Equipment Corporation--not IBM.

Also, the message wasn't "etched into one of the circuit boards of the IBM 360 computer", as you stated--it was microscopically etched onto the silicon die of a DEC memory chip that was used in DEC (not IBM) computers, and could only be seen after someone used acid to dissolve the chip packaging to expose the die for reverse-engineering. I thought all that would be clear to you from the video, so I didn't belabor it.

You might want to correct that info on your website.

Cheers,

Sunday, January 15, 2023

Videos About Spy Cameras

Berning Robot SC Electronic 35mm camera

Serial number 0-01486. Schneider Xenagon 30mm lens, for covert uses. This 35mm camera manufactured in the 1980s takes images 16x16mm in size on its own small diameter cassettes which allow 40 monochrome or 35 colour images to be taken (colour film being thicker than black and white, hence the different capacities). The camera has an interchangeable back, eliminating the need for rewinding film in camera. The camera uses a TTL metering system. The lens has a fixed f5.6 aperture, which allows shutter speeds to be set between 4 and 1/500 of a second. Manual settings are possible. Images can be shot at the rate of one frame every 1.5 seconds. The slowness of the motorised wind on minimises the noise of the camera operationally. Various shutter release mechanisms are known, both mechanical and electronic, including radio control. Mossad allegedly developed an infra-red pulse controlled shutter release. Purported to have been designed to the specifications of the Israeli intelligence service, the camera was intended for covert surveillance. Both its size being around the size of a cigarette packet and its silent operation make it very suitable. It was also certainly used by the East German STASI and other intelligence agencies. The size of the camera lends itself to use in a variety of concealments. Examples evidenced include Sony ‘Walkman’ cassette players, books and handbags. A high quality button frontage for the lens exists. This model comes with an adapted bag concealment, where the lens shoots through a decorative metal emblem on the side of the bag and the shutter is fired by a concealed button. and many more videos from spycamerasaurus, @spycamerasaurus3745

Sunday, December 18, 2022

Timothy Webster, Pinkerton Spy for the Union Army

In Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery, there is a headstone bearing the name, “Timothy Webster,” but the grave is empty
Webster is actually buried beneath a simple white marble stone in the township cemetery at Onarga, an Iroquois County village some 90 miles south of Chicago. 

The headstone in the Chicago cemetery is actually a memorial, part of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency’s burial plot for its deceased agents.

Timothy Webster died at the age of 40 in Richmond, Virginia, where he was hanged as a Union spy on April 29, 1862, by the Confederate government. He was the first spy executed by the Confederates during the Civil War. more


Sunday, September 25, 2022

Wiretapping and Eavesdropping Research Paper

EARLY RESTRICTIONS ON ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE

The Supreme Court first considered the constitutionality of wiretapping in the 1928 case of Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928). The Court ruled that governmental wiretapping of telephone conversations fell outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment. The Court based its conclusion upon a narrow, textual reading of the amendment. First, the Court found that words spoken into a telephone were not tangible things and thus could not be subjected to a search or seizure. Second, it reasoned that because wiretapping could be accomplished without a trespass, there was no physical invasion of property to justify invoking the Fourth Amendment. Finally, the Court assumed that one who uses the telephone ‘‘intends to project his voice to those quite outside.’’

The ruling in Olmstead was controversial. more

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

In The Listeners, Brian Hochman Details History of Eavesdropping (Book Review)

The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States
, by Brian Hochman, Harvard University Press, 368 pages, $33.67

America's first wiretapping conviction happened in 1864. A stockbroker named D.C. Williams had been tapping a telegraph line in California to get corporate information, which he used for advantageous stock trades. The law he broke had been passed two years earlier, making California the first state to regulate wiretapping.

The telephone had not been invented yet, and the transcontinental telegraph had only just been completed. The Golden State's legislators were ahead of the game. Ever since then, legislation dealing with electronic surveillance has been playing catch-up—both with the technology and with public sentiment. more