Just want to give everyone a heads up on a TV series that started on AMC yesterday. It's called "Turn" and chronicles the evolution and exploits of the Culper spy ring that served George Washington on Long Island. The TV series is based on "Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring" by Alexander Rose. The book came out in 2006, but I haven't read it yet. I just watched the first episode of the series on the internet. (I'm too cheap to spring for cable, still relying on an a big antenna in the attic to get digital broadcast.) I enjoyed it very much and plan on watching the series religiously along with "Vikings." on the History Channel. I'm definitely going to read the book, as well.
If you liked Colonel Lang's trilogy, you will probably like this series and book. BTW, when is the "Strike the Tent" trilogy going to be made into a series or, better yet, a movie trilogy?
http://www.amazon.com/Washingtons-Spies-Story-Americas-First/dp/0553383299/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
http://www.amctv.com/shows/turn
TTG
Colonel, thanks for the viewing tip.
Recently watched 3-part BBC documentary “Vikings, Who Were They?”, on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEovUTqCoXY
Enjoyed it.
ALL
I thought “Turn” was an excellent production and quite even handed. As for a production of STT, I am waiting for someone with money to show up for that purpose. pl
Thanks Pirouz for the link!
Colonel Lang,
I particularly enjoyed the “recruitment” in “Turn”.
Variation of that scenario have been played out in
many struggles over the past 5,000 years.
Nightsticker
USMC 1965-1972
FBI 1972-1996
nightsticker
It looked very real to me. pl
cool, thanks
Thanks for the tip, I’ll check it out. If you haven’t read The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper, it’s about one of Washington’s spies. It was written by a New Yorker who lived in the generation after the revolution. Cooper can be little pious at times, but the descriptions of Westchester County during Revolutionary times are worth the read. It was also one of the first American literary works to become a worldwide bestseller.
Nightsticker,
That continuity and connection to the past is a large part of what drew me to practicing the craft. I also enjoyed the recruitment and found it very realistic. Maintaing cover, testing assets, using impersonal communications, secret writing, using couriers, these were all still parts of the craft I practiced in the 90s. It’s much like sailing. I find a comforting connection in the wooden spars, the cotton sails and the creek of a leathered oar in the thole pins. That’s how we talk with our ancestors.
TTG:
“…a comforting connection in the wooden spars, the cotton sails and the creek of a leathered oar in the thole pins. That’s how we talk with our ancestors…”
An astonishing statement which clearly delineates for me at least the chasm that stands between us; one the one side a man who finds something worthy in his ancestors to be reminded of and on the other a man who thinks that his ancestors – for centuries – had dropped the ball, as it where.
And then of course one has to wonder if such nasty animals like camels can be romanticized like wooden sail boats.
Truly 2 different worlds ….
Dr. Makkinejad,
My (paternal) grandfather fought against the Brits in WW I. He was taken prisoner by the Arabs of Lawrence, interned, and managed to escape with the assistance of a camel, and, subsequently, a boat. He made it back to Turkish lines and was promptly sent to another front. My family will always have soft spot for Camelus dromedarius. They can move like ghosts when they want.
Ishmael Zechariah
P.s: I am trying to prepare something for SST on the current issues on Turkey, but it is tedious work.
Babak, I don’t know your heritage but… for sure camels, smart horses, and the severity of the desert can be romanticized. Camel riding is a pure joy. Surviving dealing with camels is a triumph. The grit to live and thrive in geography that is less than generous is a triumph. Speaking of romantic notions what’s not to like?
Jill
You miss my point; my view of my ancestors is that they have largely been failures.
I suppose some one like Col. Lawrence might have found the bedu life romantic and appealing. But I think the bedu was a beggar at Life’s Feast for centuries until TTG’s ancestors showed up and gave him money for something that he was not aware that he had and would not know what to do with it had it been aware of it either.
TTG,
Indeed.
I think I was subconsciously recruited into the Great Game as a young child growing up in England [my father was assigned to Grosvenor Square for several years]. The first 3 books I recall reading were (1) Wind in the Willows (2) Kim and (3) Blackadder. I still have the now rather dog-eared copies! All 3 have a heavy dose of secret work/adventure/the young coming of age/Good against Evil. I still think that is what I want to do when I grow up.
Nightsticker
USMC 1965-1972
FBI 1972-1996
I would not presume to tell you how to feel about your ancestors. On the other hand, could you kindly keep camels out of this? My grandmother always maintained that “our” camel behaved more honorably than the (Muslim) Bedouin who captured and sold my grandfather to the (infidel) Brits for bounty. I take serious exception to the entire camel folk being called “nasty”.
Ishmael Zechariah
A sad and small glass is half empty view of it. Human beings, apparently and reputedly all stemming from one ancestor have managed to spread around the planet cleverly tho not always foresightedly exploiting every resource and obstacle they found on their ways. So far.
If we don’t kill ourselves or our habitat, we may reach the stars, or manage Noah’s lifespan within a few generations. Given how nutty we are, I’m fairly impressed.
Dr. M, it is just real obvious that you aren’t even a little bit Irish! When ignorance, supersitition, prediliction to violence, and bull-headed meaness rounds out the definition (as it does for the Irish side of my people) you’re supposed to exercise stubborn pride, twisted humor, and as far as the rest of the world goes…
Well to hell with them if they can’t take a joke.
Have you ever ridden a camel? It is laugh out loud fun. I loved my Arabian horse more than many of the people I considered close. He had better character, more kindness and more generosity than many of the people I’ve known. There was nothing average about my old lad. I am indebted to those “beggars at Life’s Feast” for developing one of the finest things on earth. It is not the everyday dirt and dreariness that make a people but the occasional flash of breathtaking beauty.
There are scholarly and academic arguments to make but they are not the things that rule the heart.
Jill
Babak, Ishmael, Charles I, and Jill,
“But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.”
These words are from Robert Ardrey’s “African Genesis” published in 1961. I first read them in high school under the tutelage of the Jesuits. At the time, I still wanted to be a Maryknoll missionary priest. I found Ardrey’s ideas to be exhilarating. I wrote this passage down and kept it to this day. I guess you can say I’m a glass half full kind of guy. Babak, I gather you focus more on the empty half of the glass. As Jill said, it’s pretty obvious that you aren’t even a little bit Irish. I don’t know whether it’s two different worlds, as you say, or just different personalities.
ALL: Reading Tom Mangold’s 1991 COLD WARRIOR-James Jesus Angleton-The CIA’s Mater Spy hunter! 403 pp with index and footnotes. Publisher Simom & Shuster. ISBN 0-671-71224-1 British Library.
So far in the book Angeleton has been duped by his friend Kim Philby! And defector Russian Major Anatoliy Golitsyn, KGB! The latter Ukrianian BTW!
Thoughts?
And did you notice in all the Boston Strong press as the marathon approaches the FBI now blaming the Russians for not telling US more about the main perp two years before the event?
You can be as grateful as you like to the Bedu but it was Bedu’s wife/daughter/sister who often died at childbed; it was bedu’s children that died of childhood diseases and it was bedu and his entire clan that were subject to a harsh environment that beat the hell out of them.
You belong to the dominant civilization on Earth; bedu did not.
Bedu ceased to be a beggar not through his own efforts or the efforts of his ancestors riding camels, he owes everything he has to the ancestors of TTG who circumnavigated the world, developed entirely new sciences, and created the dominant civilization on Earth -which – spread a feast of which the Bedu could partake.
TTG:
US & UK were never conquered.
So your ancestors were not beaten down by the Mongols or self-destructed like the Safavids.
Your ancestors created an entirely new way of existence that has led to the Modern World.
You can commune with your ancestors sailing your boat and admire their handiwork.
Not I.
The more important thing is who controls the glass; whether is half-full or half-empty is a distinction without merit.
Don’t hesitate to read The Spy by James Fennimore Cooper, either. I can’t say any more without spoiling it.
Babak Makkinejad,
It may have escaped your notice, but rather a lot of the ancestors of TTG, as also of Charles I, came from Lithuania. People in the Baltics did have a few mildly awkward encounters with Russians – although of course their most unpleasant experiences came at the hands of one of Mikhail Saakashvili’s compatriots.
But then again, there were a small number of people – obviously a tiny minority – in the Baltics, as in the Ukraine, who collaborated with some not particularly pleasant Germans.
As regards the United States, it is indeed an open question whether, fundamentally, it is a place whose actions on the international states are largely dominated by the aspirations and obsessions of the ‘insulted and injured’ of Europe.
In parts of the country – Virginia, for example – the original culture was quite different. As English landownership was based on primogeniture – as I think also Spanish – adventurous younger sons had every reason to seek out opportunities.
A bizarre result was that the kind of kinship-based society one saw in Kent before the English Civil War was replicated in Virginia. An eccentric Confederate polemicist, George FitzHugh, understood this. How many others have?
Babak Makkinejad,
As a result of having written in haste, I failed properly to proof-read my comment before posting it. My apologies.
The third paragraph should read:
‘As regards the United States, it is indeed an open question whether, fundamentally, it is a place whose actions on the international stage [not states] are largely dominated by the aspirations and obsessions of the ‘insulted and injured’ of Europe.
Baback Makkinejad,
“US & UK were never conquered.”
Interestingly, yesterday April 9th, was an anniversary of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia which marked the beginning of the conquest,occupation and armed terror against the Southern states. Stafford County VA did not recover until the 1930s.
Deo Vindice,
Nightsticker
USMC 1965-1972
FBI 1972 -1996
Many years ago, I listened to a conversation in which Greeks were discussing going back to their native villages for this or that festival.
I found that astonishing – why go back to the village, the epitome of prejudice, narrow-mindedness, backwardness when there was the metropole, with all its gaiety and freedom?
Village does not held no romantic or warm fuzzy connotations for me.
Muslim culture has been, since its inception – largely urban and urbane. Village was never where the action was – so to speak – in Muslim world.
A friend with deep experience in India once commented that a Japanese POW Camp was preferable to living in an Indian Village.
The Greeks’ comments revealed a similar chasm to me as TTG’s comments.
A different historical experience which affects the psyche and the world view of the individual.
Such chasms that are burnt – if you will – in the individuals historical soul are deeper, in my view, than being unable to appreciate Lee of Jefferson for example.
Alexander Rose’s book is well worth the read.
Nonetheless that my ancestors turned sand into glass is impressive to me. Every tyrant and civilization comes and goes, but we still dig up old relics that still edify and amaze those who come after, if they have the imagination for it.
Hear hear!
JJA and Golitsyn, the wilderness of mirrors, can’t recall what the last review verdict of Golitsyn’s allegiance was, but just now I now Recall the name Vitaly Yuschenko.
WRC, for long and winding road go to the very beginning, read the old OGPU and NKVd defector books, and carry on from there. Clifford Kiracoffe wrote one in french with a colleague.I spent almost my entire time not drinking at law school reading this old stuff. You’ll come across one by Stepan Bandera’s assassin, Oleg Kalugin will pop up, eventually you’ll work your way up[ to the Mitrokhin Archive and finally you’ll even be driven to read Pavel Sudoplatov’s doorstopper trying to unravel it all.
I enjoyed every page of it, can’t recall who won, who lied, they’re all dead now.
Nightsticker,
Living in Michigan I can tell you plenty of people here think Southerners were conquered – and we ancestors, by blood or choice, should act like we still are.
TTG,
I have to read this book. I had not heard of Ardrey. What a magnificent quote. Thanks.
Ishmael Zechariah
A quibble.
Thanks Charles I!
IZ I read Ardrey’s books as they were published and they were formative in my view of mankind. His books are, of course, detested by the anthropologist collectivity. pl
Colonel Lang,
I have ordered two of his books. Am looking forward to reading them.
On another topic the erdogan regime has arrested and jailed a major in the Turkish Gendarmerie who had tried to inspect a convoy of 18 wheelers carrying materiel to the Syrian rebels. The charge is “spying”. The “rat line” is alive and well, but it might not make a significant difference any more. The situation is changing daily. I should have a report with a bit of analysis within a week.
Ishmael Zechariah