George Smiley, the dour, fictional British master spy of John le Carre`s novels, once declared, ”Spying is forever.”
”When the day comes that there are no more enemies in the world, the governments will invent some for us,” Smiley continued, in a remark that inspired March World Press Review`s cover-story package, ”Spying Comes in From the Cold War.”
World Press Review is a nifty digest of foreign publications, available for $24.97 a year via 200 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016. This month`s cover relies on Germany`s Der Spiegel magazine, France`s Le Figaro newspaper and the Jerusalem Post and underscores Der Spiegel`s sense that, ”The shadow warriors are now finding that a pall has been cast over their reason for being.”
It chronicles growing tension between budget cutters and secret service bosses worldwide; debates over human intelligence (spies) versus electronic intelligence; calls for greater economic espionage to help a nation`s business sector; the fear of longtime undercover agents that the end of communism in Eastern Europe will blow covers; and how some former East bloc agents may practice blackmail against spies stranded elsewhere.
The package is especially good on the mixed bag for spooks in Eastern Europe, ranging from the essential maintenance of repressive spy networks in Bulgaria and Romania to emasculation of Czechoslovakia`s secret service, the StB. It also underscores how the end of the Cold War won`t mean much to old frictions and spying in the Middle East.
Included is an interview by the conservative, Paris-based Le Figaro with Markus Wolf, former East German secret-police chief. He outlines whom his best sources were in West Germany (”a host of people in middle-level posts … a secretary or an archivist with access to top-secret files”) and his means of compromising high-ranking officials in other nations.
Then there`s the inevitable query, ”Who has the best intelligence service in the world?”
”Probably the British-because I know the least about their operations,” responds Wolf. ”I had good personal contacts with British spies Kim Philby and George Blake after they went over to the East. I have great admiration for them. The CIA possesses enormous resources, but what I was able to learn about the British is much more impressive.”
Which might make Smiley smile.
Quickly: The March 10 issue of The Advocate, the gay and lesbian weekly, explores ”Vanity Fairies” in a look at the many influential gays at, and the gay estethic permeating, Conde Nast magazines, including Vanity Fair, Vogue and HG. . . . Time, bashed in 1989 for not running a story on the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications, doesn`t leave anything to chance in the March 2 issue, going overboard with three pages on the booting of Nick Nicholas, No. 2 executive at Time Warner Inc. but a fellow most readers have probably never heard of. . . . Feb. 17 Publishers Weekly declares that the
”sports book boom of the `80s has gone bust,” though it doesn`t make clear why. But the bible of book publishing itself gets whacked in March Chronicles, via the Rockford Institute, in a shrill attack on the weekly`s Sept. 27, 1991, ”open letter” to President Bush on American education. Chronicles calls most publishers ”second-rate businessmen and third-rate intellects” who ”have done more to subvert and destroy standards of taste, literacy and intelligence than any other institution.” Calm down, guys. . . . In March Mirabella, Jane Birnbaum notes how health experts missed the boat in not foreseeing outbreaks of tuberculosis and hepatitis B across the U.S. . . . In March 9 Nation, free-lancer Cynthia Cotts discloses that pharmaceutical, beer and hard-booze firms are the prime financial backers of the long-standing public-service ads, from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, against illegal drugs. She`s good on how those ads, such as the one with the fried egg (”This is your brain on drugs”), by omission back the booze, tobacco and pill industries whose own ads are critical to the health of advertising firms and media that donate time to the campaign. … Forget Mario Cuomo and start a write-in campaign for Hillary Clinton: In the March 5 New York Review of Books, Garry Wills analyzes legal writings and speeches of the lawyer-feminist and finds, especially on tough elements in the area of children`s rights, a genuinely innovative thinker.
