George Blake, Last In Line Of Cold War Spies Who Betrayed Britain, Dies at 98

 Reuters reports that British spy and traitor George Blake as died.

LONDON/MOSCOW (Reuters) - George Blake, who died in Russia on Saturday at the age of 98, was the last in a line of British spies whose secret work for the Soviet Union humiliated the intelligence establishment when it was discovered at the height of the Cold War.course,

 Britain says he exposed the identities of hundreds of Western agents across Eastern Europe in the 1950s, some of whom were executed as a result of his treason.

His case was among the most notorious of the Cold War, alongside those of a separate ring of British double agents known as the Cambridge Five.

Unmasked as a Soviet spy in 1961, Blake was sentenced to 42 years in London’s Wormwood Scrubs prison. In a classic cloak-and-dagger story, he escaped in 1966 with the help of other inmates and two peace activists, and was smuggled out of Britain in a camper van. He made it through Western Europe undiscovered and crossed the Iron Curtain into East Berlin.

He spent the rest of his life in the Soviet Union and then Russia, where he was feted as a hero.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

George Blake, last in line of Cold War spies who betrayed Britain, dies at 98 | Reuters

You can also read my Washington Times On Crime column on George Blake via the below link:  

Paul Davis On Crime: Betrayal In Berlin: My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column On Steve Vogel's interview With Cold War Spy George Blake 

Cold War Spying In The Spy Capitol Of The World: My Washington Times Review Of 'Betrayal In Berlin'

The Washington Times ran published my review of Betrayal in Berlin:

As a teenager in the 1960s, I was a devoted reader of spy thrillers by Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Donald Hamilton, John le Carre and others. The spy thrillers led me to read about the Cold War and true espionage stories. 

Later, while serving in the U.S. Navy in Scotland in the mid-1970s, I went on leave and visited Berlin. As a student of espionage, I was drawn to Berlin, as the German city was the spy capital of the world at the time. I visited the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and the bars where criminals and spies gathered to drink, eat and swap secrets.

Steve Vogel’s “Betrayal in Berlin: The True Story of the Cold War’s Most Audacious Espionage Operation” took me back to Berlin, although the historical events of this story take place in 1955-56.

Mr. Vogel opens his book with what was known in intelligence lore as “Black Friday,” when the Soviets changed their cryptographic systems in 1948.

Since 1943, Mr. Vogel explains, the U.S. had been intercepting and decrypting secret Soviet radio communications, which gave American officials a comprehensive understanding of the Soviet military and intelligence agencies.

The U.S. Army Security Agency was producing valuable intelligence in a program call VENONA. VENONA exposed Soviet spies such as Klaus Fuchs, who gave up atomic secrets to the Soviets, and Donald Maclean, the first of the British Cambridge spy ring to be suspected. But then the Soviets stopped using UHF radio and began to communicate with Moscow via landlines.

American investigators believed it was a routine systems upgrade, but they later learned that VENONA had been betrayed by two Soviet spies. One was William Weisland, a Russian linguist working for the Army Security Agency. The second spy was Harold “Kim” Philby, a British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officer who was the liaison to the CIA and FBI in Washington.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/book-review-betrayal-in-berlin/ 

On This Day In History: Francis Scott Key Penned Star-Spangled Banner In 1814

As History.com notes, on this day in 1814 Francis Scott Key penned the Star-Spangled Banner from the deck of a British ship as the British attacked Baltimore.

You can read about the event and watch a video on this day in history via the below link:

 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/key-pens-star-spangled-banner?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-0913-09132016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=89900154&kx_EmailCampaignID=7119&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-0913-09132016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

Note: If you want to learn more about Key and the battle in the War of 1812 that inspired Key, you should read Steve Vogel's Through the Perilous Fight: Six Weeks That Saved the Nation.

9/11 Inside The Pentagon On PBS

With the 15th anniversary of the horrific terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon coming up this Sunday, I watched PBS' fine documentary on the attack on the Pentagon.

The program offers the sad and compelling recollections of survivors of the terrible attack, as well as commentary from Steve Vogel, a Washington Post reporter and author of The Pentagon: A History.

It was sad that good people were killed and injured, but it was also heartwarming to see and hear the heroic stories of the first responders and the Defense Department civilian and military people who pitched in to save lives.

You can watch the PBS special via the below link:

http://www.pbs.org/program/911-inside-pentagon/

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine piece on the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon via the below link:


http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2012/09/a-look-back-at-911-attack-on-pentagon.html

Remembering A Checkered Battle in The War Of 1812

John Timpane, who edited my first Philadelphia Inquirer piece back in 1999, offers an interesting piece in the Inquirer about the anniversary of the Battle of Bladensburg.

Was it a brave, last-ditch effort to defend the country? Or a humiliating military disaster, with U.S. forces taking to their heels before the bloody British?

Sunday is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Bladensburg, down in Maryland, in which an overwhelmingly volunteer American force stood between Washington and the most powerful army in the world.

We lost, of course. And that same day, the young capital in the miasmal swamp went up in flames.

Thus, the questions about one of the more puzzling battles in our history.

A pretty puzzling war, that War of 1812. Not that well-known. Maybe because, face it, it's one we didn't win.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20140824_Remembering_a_checkered_battle_in_the_War_of_1812.html

Note: I happen to being reading Steve Vogel's Through the Perilous Fight: Six Weeks That Saved The Nation, which covers the War of 1812 and how Francis Scott Key wrote what would become our National Anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner. This interesting book also offers a detailed account of the Battle of Bladensburg.

The battle was not our finest hour, but we later stopped the British from taking Baltimore and we went on to win the Battle of New Orleans.