Confederate dirty laundry: spies and slaves
The Civil War was a spy’s dream come true. With a porous border between the Union and the Confederacy, and little way to distinguish between friend and foe, spies were everywhere. Both sides used ciphers. Both tapped telegraph wires. Stories of aristocratic schmoozing abound so much that James Bond would be jealous of all the [...]
Posted by Rob Crotty on February 11, 2011, under - Civil War, - Spies and Espionage.
Tags: civil war, Confederate Army, Dabney, General Joseph Hooker, Richard, spies, Union Army
Comments: 2
The OSS and the Dalai Lama
In the summer of 1942, the Allies’ war against Japan was in dire straits. China was constantly battling the occupying Japanese forces in its homeland, supplied by India via the Burma Road. Then Japan severed that supply artery. Planes were flown over the Himalayan mountains, but their payloads were too little, and too many pilots [...]
Posted by Rob Crotty on February 8, 2011, under - Exploration, - Spies and Espionage, - World War II, Rare Videos.
Tags: american history, Brooke Dolan, CIA history, dalai lama, Ilia Tolstoy, Ilya Tolstoy, National archives and records administration, national archives blog, Office of Strategic Services, OSS, prologue blog, spy history, tibet, world war 2, ww2
Comments: 5
Green Bay Packer, Detroit Lion, or US President?
These days, the average NFL player receives about $1.2 million a year, not a bad paycheck for throwing around the old pigskin. After all, that’s three times what the President makes (though he does get free limo rides), and plenty more than your average blogger does (sigh). But in 1935, playing football wasn’t the glitzy [...]
Posted by Rob Crotty on February 2, 2011, under - Presidents, Myth or History.
Tags: $110 bucks, Detroit Lion, football, Gerald Ford Presidential Library, Navy, Packers, President Ford, Steelers, Superbowl, White House, Yale
Comments: 1
The must-have Christmas gift of 1776
In 1864, Savannah, Georgia, was offered to Abraham Lincoln as a Christmas present. But in 1776, George Washington delivered one of the greatest gifts in American history: the United States. Winter was a bad season for Washington. His Continental Army had been driven out of New York, and then it was driven out of New [...]
Posted by Rob Crotty on December 23, 2010, under - Revolutionary War.
Comments: 2
The CIA’s catalog of covert conundrums
In 1992, George Washington University’s “National Security Archive” submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), soliciting information from the Central Intelligence Agency. Their request was inspired by a 1973 memorandum issued from then-CIA Director James R. Schlesinger, who requested that all CIA employees, past or present, “report to me immediately on any activities now going [...]
Posted by Rob Crotty on December 23, 2010, under - Cold War, - Spies and Espionage, - The 1960s.
Comments: none