"Created during World War II as a purely U.S. operation free of the perceived taint of European allies, the Pond existed for 13 years and was shrouded in secrecy for more than 50 years. It used sources that ranged from Nazi officials to Stalinists and, at one point, a French serial killer.
It operated under the cover of multinational corporations, including American Express, Chase National Bank and Philips, the Dutch-based electronic giant. One of its top agents was a female American journalist.
Created by U.S. military intelligence as a counterweight to the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, it functioned as a semiautonomous agency for the State Department after World War II and ended its days as a contractor for the CIA with links to J. Edgar Hoover's FBI."
SOURCE
"France had the guillotine and public executions. Public executions enshroud even the most dangerous criminal in a halo of heroism. Public executions incite the people; they give the enemy moral strength. The convict doesn't really die -- public executions leave the body to the relatives, they leave the last words, last will, and the exact date of death. Secret executions, in the basement, without the show, without official conviction, have an overwhelming effect on the enemy. The vast, merciless, omniscient machine grabs its victims and grinds them like a meat grinder. After the execution, there is no exact date of death, no last words, not corpses, not even the grave. Emptiness. The enemy is destroyed absolutely." Vladimir Zazubrin, in The Chip.
"For more than 50 years, a vast treasure trove containing the bulk of the Czech author's writing has been hidden away in 10 safety deposit boxes, tantalising Kafka enthusiasts around the world. Their hopes of unearthing a major literary find have come closer to fruition after Israel's supreme court ended a two-year legal tussle over the ownership of Kafka's estate by ordering that the boxes finally be opened. [...]
The saga of publishing Kafka's works is a long one, dating back to the author's death from tuberculosis in 1924.
Shortly before he died, Kafka entrusted his portfolio to Max Brod, his biographer and mentor, asking him to destroy its contents.
Ignoring his friend's wishes, Brod published some of the novels, such as The Trial and The Castle that were to propel Kafka into the pantheon of modern literary genius.
But he retained the bulk of the papers, taking them to Tel Aviv after fleeing the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and then leaving them to his secretary and, so rumour has it, lover, Ester Hoffe."
"Project Slammer, now partially declassified, was based on extensive prison interviews with some 30 former military and intelligence personnel who had been convicted of spying for Russia, China and other hostile powers during the Cold War, from the lowest enlisted men to senior CIA officers like Aldrich Ames. It sought to answer why they had violated the trust their agencies had bestowed on them.
[...] the authors of the highly classified Project Slammer report, delivered to CIA management on April 12, 1990, emphasized that behavioral changes were often associated with acts of espionage.
“The authors believe that if co-workers and bosses could be educated to intervene with a troubled employee early on, damaging espionage might be prevented.” [...]
The Project Slammer report said it was "not possible to determine whether employee assistance, private counseling or other therapeutic applications would have made a significant difference ..." But it pointed out that no traditional counterintelligence methods -- background investigations, lie detectors, surveillance -- worked either."
