Spy agencies brief people in power. We brief you. Each week we bring you one story that matters, and a few that don’t!

Your Brief for January 2, 2025: Stolen artworks, the improbable spy, Operation: Bullwinkle, the bald eagle and more!

News

New Glenn Booster Test

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, completed a test of its towering New Glenn rocket last Friday at Cape Canaveral. The dress rehearsal, also called a  “hot fire” test, saw the rocket’s seven booster engines ignite and fire for 24 seconds while remaining clamped to the launchpad. This was the final technical hurdle before its inaugural flight. No launch date has been officially announced, but an advisory suggests the rocket could take off as early as January 6. New Glenn will now return to the hangar, where technicians will install its payload—a prototype spacecraft called Blue Ring, designed to help move other satellites around in orbit.

Image Credit: Blue Origin

True Spies

Operation: Bullwinkle

Would you accept the price of failure? 

FBI agent Robert Wittman is on an undercover mission to retrieve a priceless Rembrandt stolen from Sweden's National Gallery. Finding the criminals is no easy task. It means descending into Europe's criminal underworld of violence, greed, and mystery in a high-stakes hunt to retrieve a priceless treasure. But Wittman was a special kind of Special Agent; during his long career with the FBI, he went undercover to recover millions of dollars worth of stolen art!

On a cold December evening in 2000, three individuals wielding guns entered the state museum in Stockholm to steal artwork. Their loud voices cut through the hushed atmosphere of Sweden’s National Museum as they ordered everybody onto the floor. Sirens wail into the cold evening outside, but the robbers take their time. They aren’t scared. The armed men walk down the gallery’s grand entrance steps and make their way to the water’s edge; their speedboat docked at the end of the museum pier. And, just like that, three paintings disappear into the night—two Renoirs, and a Rembrandt!

The total value of the heist was $42m, the largest art theft in Swedish national history. What happened to the cherished artworks? Join Robert Wittman in this week’s podcast selection, ‘Operation: Bullwinkle’ to find out!

Image Credit: Rembrandt/Self-portrait/Nationalmuseum

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Nature

The Bald Eagle

How did the bald eagle become America’s national bird?

President Joe Biden signed legislation on Christmas Eve officially recognizing the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) as the national bird of the United States, nearly 250 years after the bald eagle was first featured on the US Great Seal in 1782. A symbol now used by the State Department and printed on the dollar bill. Native to North America, the bald eagle was once nearly extinct due to hunting and pesticide use—the population plummeted to fewer than 500 nesting pairs by 1963. But the eagles have rebounded to numbers resembling their 19th-century populations thanks to conservation efforts and hunting bans.

Articles

The Improbable Spy

What happens if you are accused of spying?

Paul Whelan says he feels "abandoned" and betrayed by the US; having partially a 16-year sentence for espionage - charges he denies. With his tidy blue sweater and mild-mannered court protests, he seems more like a school teacher than a dangerous international spy - yet that is exactly what Moscow accuses him of being. The curious case of Michigan’s "improbable spy" began in 2018 when Russian agents charged into his hotel room at Moscow’s Metropol and pinned the former US Marine to the floor as he was getting ready for a friend’s wedding.

Whelan's next 18 months were spent in prison before his conviction in June 2000. The espionage trial was held almost entirely behind closed doors based on what the US ambassador to Moscow describes as ‘secret’ evidence. "Russia says it caught James Bond on a spy mission," Whelan said in court one day. "In reality, they abducted Mr. Bean on holiday." Discover more of Whelan’s story in this SPYSCAPE article.

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Science

Mapping A Brain

What animal does this brain belong to?

In October, hundreds of scientists used FlyWire AI, a collaborative online tool, to map every cell and connection in the brain of a fruit fly—creating the most detailed analysis of an adult animal’s brain ever produced! Despite being smaller than a pinhead, the fly brain contains 130,000 cells and 50 million connections. The collaborative mapping process revealed the tiny brain's ability to power behaviors like walking, hovering, and singing love songs—traits male fruit flies use to woo their mates. Could the brain map help us to better understand human brains?

Image Credit: Tyler Sloan and Amy Sterling/FlyWire/Princeton University

Puzzles

The Travle Puzzle

What countries or territories are between The Gambia and Morocco?

Test your cartography skills with Travle by plotting a route from one country to another, naming all the nations in between. A brain-teasing adventure for geography enthusiasts! Test your map skills, here.  Want another challenge? Puzzlemaker Freddie Cheng has crafted the crossword 'Let Me Guess' for you to solve, here.

Image Credit: Travle

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