The CIA celebrates its 75th anniversary this month, a thrilling era that began on Sept. 18, 1947 under President Harry S. Truman. To mark the occasion, SPYSCAPE has an exclusive interview with ex-spymaster Douglas London on the art of intelligence. We also relive the Agency’s successes and a few of its more sensational scandals before unwinding with the top spy movies selected by CIA officers exclusively for SPYSCAPE.
Spymaster secrets
CIA spymaster Douglas London spent 34 years running foreign agents in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa while trying not to get pulled down in the vicious undertow of shark-infested waters. SPYSCAPE speaks exclusively to London about his fascinating memoir The Recruiter and what it’s like to steal state secrets and run terrorist spies.
SPYSCAPE’s CIA Spy Missions podcast recounts the Agency’s most nerve-wracking stories of double agents and dangerous friendships told by real-life CIA officers. Ride shotgun as the CIA tracks Osama bin Laden, drop into the pressure-cooker of post-revolutionary Libya, and go behind the Iron Curtain with clandestine officer James Olson on a mission to Moscow.
Get a FREE copy of a hot new killer thriller, spy story, or crime novel every Monday with a special Story Mondays ticket to SPYSCAPE HQ. Next Monday it's The Recruiter by Douglas London. This revealing memoir from a 34-year veteran of the CIA who worked as a case officer and recruiter of foreign agents before and after 9/11 provides an invaluable perspective on the state of modern spy craft, how the CIA has developed, and how it must continue to evolve - don't miss your FREE copy when you experience SPYSCAPE HQ next Monday.
Before CIA officers operate in the fast lane, they practice their spy tradecraft at the Farm, the ultra-secret military base where the spies master Bourne-style skills from shooting M4s to parachuting, speed boating, and handling motorbikes. It's not all about spooking and sleuthing, however. Could you make the grade?
CIA spy E. Howard Hunt was a one-man wrecking ball from the botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba to the Watergate break-in that torpedoed Nixon’s presidency. In the midst of the Cold War, the CIA tasked Hunt with another sensitive mission - to boost the Agency’s tarnished reputation by writing James Bond copycat novels about an American 007 and his romantic trysts. What could possibly go wrong?
As the CIA grew in strength and numbers, so too did another phenomenon - the spy swap. In 1962, the Agency helped arrange the exchange of spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers for Soviet KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel on Germany’s Glienicke Bridge, famously recounted in Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies. It was a heated exchange in a bitter Cold War and it opened the door to some unusual trade-offs.
Which spy movies do CIA officers watch when they’re off the clock? We found out! SPYSCAPE went straight to the top, asking intelligence pros trained by the CIA to rate their favorite and most realistic spy movies. You’ll be surprised by what the world’s most inquiring minds stream to blow off steam!
