Thriller Writer Frederick Forsyth Set To Reveal He Was A British MI6 Spy

Some of the best British spy thriller writers were former intelligence officers, such as Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, John le Carre and Somerset Maugham.

Now Frederick Forsyth, the author of The Day of the Jackal and other great thrillers, may at last reveal that he is a member of that club.

Gordon Rayner at the British newspaper the Telegraph reports on this possible revelation in Frederick Forsyth's new book, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue.

He has long been lauded for the uncanny realism of his spy thrillers, and now Frederick Forsyth is set to reveal the secret of his insider knowledge: he was himself an agent for MI6.

Fans of the 76-year-old author had suspected he may have had brushes with the Secret Intelligence Service, as MI6 is formally known, and Forsyth is expected to confirm they were right when his autobiography is published in September.

As a journalist for the BBC and Reuters, Forsyth spent time based in Communist East Germany and in Africa, where he became close to key figures including Odumegwu Ojukwu, leader of the Nigerian breakaway state of Biafra.

He has admitted in the past that he often draws on his real-life experiences for the plots and action in his books; his experience of reporting on an attempt to assassinate the French president Charles de Gaulle gave him the idea for his first novel, The Day of the Jackal.

He has also admitted having friends in MI6. In his newspaper column Forsyth has referred to “taking lunch with a senior officer of from the Secret Intelligence Service” though he did not explain how they knew each other and he has never gone as far as revealing that he was recruited by them.

The title of his new book, The Outsider: My Life In Intrigue, provides a huge hint that he will use it to blow his own cover as a former spy, and it has become an open secret in the publishing world that he is about to do just that.   

... As a former RAF jet fighter pilot who spoke German and French like a local, and whose job took him behind the Iron Curtain and behind enemy lines in Africa, Forsyth would have been a natural choice for an approach by MI6.

He also lived like James Bond even without the help of Britain’s overseas spying agency.

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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11761972/Frederick-Forsyth-set-to-reveal-he-was-an-MI6-spy.html

Note: You can also read my Crime Beat column on Frederick Forsyth via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/09/on-crime-thrillers-frederick-forsyth.html

Review Of Jack Devine's CIA Memoir "Good Hunting"

Philip Mudd, a retired CIA officer, reviewed Jack Devine's CIA memoir Good Hunting for The Nation.

Nearly two decades into Jack Devine’s career at the CIA, he was tasked with what was then the agency’s largest-ever covert program: the effort to aid the ‘mujahedeen’ fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Should the agency take a huge risk by providing the Afghan fighters with sophisticated shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles? Mr Devine and his colleagues decided that the answer was yes.

He remembers walking into the CIA director’s office in 1986 with a report on the controversial introduction of hundreds of these Stingers. “Mr Director,” he recalls saying, “we had a tremendous breakthrough yesterday. We deployed the Stinger and we shot down three helicopters.” Director William Casey, a passionate Cold Warrior, responded: “Jack, this changes it all, doesn’t it?”

“Good Hunting,” Mr Devine’s memoir, is a refresher course on the breadth of America’s covert campaigns against the spread of Soviet influence and ideology, and Mr Devine’s 32-year career is a microcosm of the secret thrust and counterthrust that defined those years.

The son of a blue-collar, Irish-Catholic family from Philadelphia, Mr Devine began at the CIA in the 1960s after reading a book about the agency and sending in a handwritten request for employment. He rose through the ranks, ultimately overseeing the entirety of the agency’s clandestine operations in the mid-1990s.   

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

http://www.nation.com.pk/international/12-Jun-2014/secret-agent-man

I interviewed Philip Mudd, who was the former deputy director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, for Counterterrorism magazine. You can read the interview via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/a-q-with-philip-mudd-former-deputy.html