As Jennifer Lawrence portrays a Russian spy in the new film “Red Sparrow,” the very real Robert Mueller investigation is shedding light on Russian dirty tricks and espionage during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Please put these 10 facts under surveillance:
1. A CIA project in the 1960s called Acoustic Kitty tried to use a cat as a listening device to spy on the Soviets. A microphone was installed in a cat’s ear canal, with a radio transmitter in the base of its skull, and the feline was released near a meeting of two men in a park outside the Soviet compound in Washington. Any cat owner could have predicted failure: The feline wouldn’t behave as trained. The CIA abandoned the project after spending about $15 million.
2. The Chicago Police Department’s Red Squad, known for spying on political activists in the 1960s and ’70s, targeted such mainstream heroes as columnist Mike Royko, Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh and Bears running back Gale Sayers.
3. It is hard to measure America’s fascination with cloak-and-dagger stories, but one place to consider is Washington, D.C. In a target-rich environment with multiple world-class museums, the International Spy Museum is a major draw. Since opening in 2002, it has welcomed about 9 million visitors and currently sees about 600,000 annually. That eclipses some of the free Smithsonian museums, despite the spy museum’s $22.95 entrance fee.
4. James Stockdale, presidential candidate Ross Perot’s running mate in 1992, spent part of the Vietnam War as a prisoner at the so-called Hanoi Hilton. But Stockdale wasn’t just a POW — he was also a spy who communicated with U.S. intelligence through one of the oldest tricks in espionage: invisible ink. His wife sent the POW a photo of a woman bathing in the ocean along with a letter saying Stockdale’s mother-in-law was having a good “soak.” The woman pictured was not his mother-in-law, who hated to swim, so he knew something was up. Stockdale soaked the photo in urine and found a message saying that his wife’s letter could be used as a sort of carbon paper, allowing him to write invisible messages on his own letters back to her. Through that method, he was able to give U.S. intelligence the names of other POWs.
5. One of the most significant spies in American history went undetected for a century and a half. She was Peggy Shippen, wife of Benedict Arnold, the general who conspired to surrender West Point to the British. When the plot was exposed, Arnold fled to British-held New York City, leaving Shippen behind. The savvy Shippen acted as if she were driven mad by her husband’s treachery, convincing George Washington and Alexander Hamilton of her innocence. It took more than 140 years for the truth to come out when British Gen. Henry Clinton’s family sold his archives. Those papers left little doubt that Shippen was a full partner in the plot, and may even have been the mastermind.
6. Sun Tzu’s military masterpiece “The Art of War” gets around to talking spies in the final chapter. He describes five types, four of which are more familiar: the traditional agent, the double agent, the traitorous official and the traitorous citizen. The fifth type he calls, with good reason, doomed. These individuals are given false information and then led to believe they themselves have been betrayed. When they are captured, they give up their false information, which the enemy acts on to his peril. Furious, the enemy then executes the unwitting, doomed spy.
7. Belle Boyd was already well-known as a Confederate spy — and had already killed a Union soldier — when she was captured in 1864 aboard a blockade runner. But the Union captain who was her captor became her lover, and he let her escape. They reunited in England and got married, but he returned to the U.S. and was arrested, dying in prison. After the war, she returned, too, and appeared onstage as the “Cleopatra of the Secession.” While on tour in Wisconsin Dells, Wis., she died, and that’s where she was buried.
8. The worst-kept secret in espionage may well be the British Secret Intelligence Service itself. James Bond, the most famous fictional spy ever, made her majesty’s secret service a household phrase the world over, but the British government didn’t officially acknowledge the agency’s existence until 1994.
9. Automakers go to great lengths to hide new vehicle models during testing, so naturally auto spies go to great lengths to photograph them. They stake out remote desert locations and hide in bushes at test tracks to take a photo that makes good money on auto websites. There’s debate about whether it’s all a game intended to prime demand, but during the Cold War, Volkswagen opened its giant test track at Ehra-Lessien at least in part because it was near the East German border — and was therefore a no-fly zone.
10. During the Civil War, Jefferson Davis’ family in Richmond, Va., was served dinner by a black woman known as “Little Mary.” What Davis and his family didn’t know was that Mary Bowser, a free woman who could read and write, was memorizing documents on Davis’ desk and was passing information to another Union spy who delivered baked goods to the Davis home. The South’s first family began to suspect there was a leak, but Bowser fled before the Davises traced it to her. She reportedly tried to set their house on fire as she left but was unsuccessful.
Mark Jacob is the Tribune’s associate managing editor for metropolitan news. Stephan Benzkofer, a former weekend editor of the Tribune, is a freelance writer and editor.
Sources: “Spies: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Dirty Tricks and Double Dealing from Biblical Times to Today,” by Jay Robert Nash; “Beasts of War: The Militarization of Animals,” by Jared Eglan; “Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda,” by Robert Wallace and Harold Keith Melton; “Prisoners, Lovers, and Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to Al-Qaeda,” by Kristie Macrakis; “The Secret History of the American Revolution,” by Carl Van Doren; “Treacherous Beauty: Peggy Shippen, the Woman behind Benedict Arnold’s Plot to Betray America,” by Mark Jacob and Stephen H. Case; International Spy Museum; Smithsonian; Hutchins Center at Harvard; The Washington Post; The New York Times; British Secret Intelligence Service; The Guardian; Chicago Daily News; Chicago Tribune; USA Today; (London) Observer Review; civilwar.org; nps.gov; autoblog.com; topgear.com; theroot.com.
