▲ 127 points
back
40 comments
Love the soft-pedaling of who precisely she was working on behalf of in 1936 Spain, a "pro-communist" govt. So she worked on freeing fascist aristocrats. Awesome.
Liberals are better than fascists are better than communists are better than anarchists. Such is the order of the world as it is imposed.
tongue-in-cheek
"Liberals" in the meaning above is purposefully left undefined.
Liberal ideals and principles can and often are ignored, see Occupy Wallstreet/2008-Financial crisis, if it suites the existing power holders. In short, could modify from liberals to "power of oppression".
For sure. The only difference between a fascist and a liberal despot is that the fascist is proud of their violence while the liberal dissimulates it and belittles and destroys those who point it out. The same is true for the state communists. Disagree with Stalin? Revisionist. Etc. Even in anarchism there are people who will use the ideology in a purely instrumental way to justify or hide their use of violence.
Ideology is a smokescreen for power.
Yeah that was extremely underhanded. Really set the tone for the whole piece, for me.
I don't support breathless hagiography in any of its forms, but in fairness a lot of the article is just about how she was technically good at espionage, regardless of who she was spying for.
> So she worked on freeing fascist aristocrats.
Better fascists than communists.
Why?
As someone who thinks of himself as liberal and is sympathetic to leftist ideals, because communists suck.
It's hard to define fascism, what countries were fascist besides Fascist Germany,Italy, Spain? Other then Fascist/Nazi Germany (was Indonesia fascist when the military killed near a million "communists"?) I'm not sure any lived up to the horrors that occurred w/ several communist countries including USSR(Million+ killed in mass repression, tens of millions died in famine partially caused by malice), China (same maybe a few more deaths), Cambodia(2 million/20% dead), North Korea(decades of virtual slavery and repression), etc. Most of the communist countries mostly killed their own citizens and to some extent said it as being for their own good and to some extent believed that.
"Communist" states that may or may not be near "communism" as a pure ideology have a very bad track record.
Although I'm not sure how apparent this was in the 30s.
> what countries were fascist besides Fascist Germany,Italy, Spain?
Portugal [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estado_Novo_%28Portugal%29
> Although I'm not sure how apparent this was in the 30s.
I think in the 30s one could have said, 'fascists have killed their thousands, but communists have killed their millions' (the Holodomor was '32-'33). Even Western fellow-travellers would had to have admitted hundreds of thousands of Russian bishops, priests, monks & nuns — 85,000 in 1937[1], during the Spanish Civil War.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR_anti-religious_campaign_%...
Also Venezuela
Interestingly, her Wikipedia page, mentions that a lot of things article credits her for was found as incorrect.
Having run across seducers of secrets in really life, they were always up front about what they were after, and find it hard to believe those who fell into Betty's trap didn't know what they were doing.
As such, a deep respect for her, since there's only so many times you play with fire before you get burned.
Realistically how do you become a spy?
Far as I can tell, the intelligence community is a fork in the road on the career path to diplomat. You study languages, public policy, international relations, etc. You get State Department / vague US gov (National Security Language Institute - Youth) scholarships to fly to the middle east and learn languages over your summers. You do internships in college with State and think tanks. It goes from there. (This is probably more for analysts than field agents).
Of course, actual physical badassery is carried out by special operations divisions of the armed forces - you get there by being a really good soldier, sailor, marine, or airman.
The intelligence services do just have regular job boards, college recruiting, etc. too. And then there's private intelligence firms, which have some overlap with journalism (i.e. Stratfor and Reuters both sell intelligence services in addition to their publications).
Robert Baer's book Fear No Evil has an account of his selection and training as a field officer in the CIA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_No_Evil_(Baer_book)
Also, on the MI6 side of things Paddy Ashdown went from the Royal Marines to the SBS then to MI6 - he doesn't go into detail in his autobiography about what he did in MI6 but he does describe how he was approached and what his "cover story" was - a diplomat for the UK at the UN in Geneva.
The positions they need to fill are unique enough that they will find you if you're a candidate.
I was courted pretty heavily by CSIS[1] & the CSE[2] in Canada coming out of school (Waterloo), I assume because of my language profile and degrees in CS & cryptography.
Being recruited for a semi-covert program is a really interesting experience. I still can't (and would not!) talk about most of it, but was really close to signing on.
1: https://www.csis.gc.ca/bts/role-en.php 2: https://www.cse-cst.gc.ca/en/about-apropos
Those skills you cite are presumably very handy back in the office, but in the field? CS and cryptography would seem of limited usefulness when trying to get someone to tell you state secrets. However you have experience on this area and I have none.
A friend of mine, an professor of religion in North Carolina, told me that if you "have languages", meaning that if you speak multiple languages, "you will get a phone call."
According to this link[0] there are more multilingual people in the world, than monolingual. So that's at least 3 billion people who "will get a phone call".
[0] http://www.cal.org/content/download/1803/19986/file/AGlobalP...
Probably if you're fluent in multiple languages particularly useful for spies at the moment, rather then getting by in Spanish.
However, far fewer of them are Americans....
The point being that in US multilingual is less frequent.
Seems to me that the more usual way human intelligence works is that handlers work with informants, and actual direct undercover work is pretty rare. The relationship between handlers and informants is sometimes mercenary (i.e. paying them), sometimes coercive (perhaps blackmail), sometimes ideological but ultimately always instrumental.
The people taking the biggest risks are usually defectors (a kinder word for traitors) of some kind.
You don't contact them. They contact you.
Like the earlier poster said, you need a high profile career where you are able to signal intelligence, mental toughness, and your political and patriotic leanings.
Journalism leads to all sorts of amazing career opportunities (if you want to think of it that way). A lot of journalists are actually doing lobbying for some special interest or the other.
In the university math department I heard this joke:
Q: How do you get a job with the NSA?
A: You call your mom and ask for an application form.
If only the NSA was that clever.
No reason not to contact them, but yes, they actively recruit too.
I remember seeing a booth for the NSA at the Supercomputing conference a few years ago on the show floor.
The floor was full of huge expensive noisy booths from big corporations, universities and other government agencies. In contrast the NSA booth was the most basic booth on the floor. There was a simple printed sign in standard Helvetica font, same as used on all the cheap booths, with the agency's name (no logo), one guy in a suit sitting behind a bare table, and one chair in front of the table for visitors. Nothing else. The sheer minimalism of it made it impressive. I wanted to take a picture but, well, you know...
What do you mean by "spy"? All the three letter agencies actively recruit on university campuses (as in job fairs). Some of those hired that way will undoubtedly end up in undercover positions.
Outside of official positions, have skills or access they need and either contact them or respond favorably when they contact you.
Become a journalist or enter the armed forces.
The armed forces route makes sense. Could you elaborate examples regarding the journalist path?
Journalists and spies have same core skill: get information out of people. A good journalist already has a chance of getting hired as a spook just on that basis. Press passes also get people in various countries and places someone claiming to be a spy wouldn't be allowed in. So, many journalists did work for CIA etc. The CIA also creates news organizations to serve its propaganda and provide cover as journalists for spooks. Very common. I'm sure MI6 does similar stuff with journalists but I have no data.
Famous example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
Putting aside most journalists are not spy material, investigative journalist are basically spies - they're actively watched and recruited too.
During WW2, 22 journalists in America were spying for the Soviets; by profession, this was second only to engineers.
Today, given the heavy surveillance of investigative journalist, they basically have to use the same trade craft that a spy would use to maintain operational security.
Looks like she found in MI6 the justification to a life of affairs.
In any other job or social position, her temperament could have destroyed her life. It seems miraculous that she found her calling.
I suppose. From the article, it's noted that she abandoned her young child for her "life." I don't have respect for people like this, though it's certainly their "right."
Her life or her husbands? And as cold as it was, some allied soldiers lived because of this.