espionage - The Art of the Prank

The Man Who Won Normandy
by D. B. Grady
The Atlantic
July 6, 2012

Stephan Talty’s Agent Garbo sheds light on an amateur spy who saved the world.

Stephan Talty’s latest book is like a case study in how elegantly the Second World War scales down. Narrowing the focus seems only to reveal more about the war, and armored divisions and vainglorious generals soon appear incidental to the greater actions of common people in terrible times. There are some names uncertain to appear on a national census roster, much less in the footnotes of history. But in Agent Garbo, Talty pencils in one such name: Juan Pujol, a chicken farmer in Barcelona, who acted not for headlines or personal glory, but to make in some modest way a “contribution toward the good of humanity.”

His life has been reconstructed by Talty though interviews, declassified documents, and files from state archives. During the Spanish Civil War, Juan Pujol refused to take up arms, unwilling to spill the blood of fellow Spaniards. This refusal proved an early introduction to espionage, as he spent much of the war incognito or out of sight. He was a deserter, and was eventually caught and imprisoned. When he escaped, he hatched a plan to abscond to France. Ironically, it involved enlisting in the same Republican military he’d just been imprisoned for avoiding. This time, however, he lied about his age (claiming to be too old) and lied about his politics (claiming to be a radical). Once in uniform and on the front lines, he made a mad, successful dash for the Nationalist lines. He never fired a shot in the war. Continue reading “Agent Garbo: The Spy Who Hoaxed the Germans”

WikiLeaks: “Private Spies” Stratfor Helped Dow Chemical Monitor Bhopal Activists, The Yes Men
by Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
Democracy Now
February 28, 2012

Emails leaked by WikiLeaks from the private intelligence firm Stratfor reveal the chemical industrial giant Dow Chemical closely followed the work of activists around the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal chemical disaster, the 1984 gas leak that killed anywhere between 3,500 and 25,000 people. Of particular interest to Dow was the group, The Yes Men, the anti-corporate pranksters who pulled off a famous 2004 hoax that led the world to believe Dow had finally taken responsibility for the Bhopal tragedy. “With us, they were carefully paying attention to every move that we were making publicly, especially anything to do with Dow and Bhopal,” says Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men. “What surprised us in those emails, though, was that we would have assumed that Dow would be really concerned with the exact issue of Bhopal and Dow”™s responsibility, stuff that could directly impact their bottom line. But what S[t]ratfor seems to be really a bit obsessed with is whether we or other organizations are going to draw this into a bigger critique of corporate power.”

Tag: espionage

Agent Garbo: The Spy Who Hoaxed the Germans

No Andy, You’re Not Paranoid. They Really ARE Watching You!