Tag: spying

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys

- Ann Leave a comment

guest post by Noel H

Bucharest, the capitol of Romania, 1989. Christian Florescu is a discontented teenager living under the harsh and oppressive dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu where there is little food, little hope for a future, and 1 of every 50 people is an informer ready to turn you in for the slightest infraction. He dreams of becoming a writer, but his country has rules against free speech; a person could be imprisoned, tortured, even killed for speaking their mind in I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys.

Christian’s discontentment turns to dread when he is approached by the Securitate, Romania’s secret government spy ring, and is forced to become the thing he despises most: an informer. Unwilling to become a traitor to his own people, Christian resolves to use the Securitate against themselves and be a double agent. As clever as he is, he soon learns there is so much more to this pervasive web of deception than he could ever imagine.

Ruta Sepetys often writes historical fiction based in places and times largely forgotten by common historical memory. Her diligent, honest account of a fictional life set in a real nightmare comes to us at a unique time. Sepetys tells a story of a society where civilians live every day under constant surveillance not just from the government, but from their fellow citizens. Families cannot speak too loudly in their own homes not just for fear that it’s bugged, but that their parent or sibling is an informer. This phenomenon seems Orwellian, like something that can only be found in fiction, but have you ever been talking to a friend about desperately wanting an air fryer for you new apartment and then, suddenly, you can’t stop seeing adds for air fryers? Here and now, we live in a world of surveillance. So far, it’s benign enough – after all, you do want an air fryer – but for how long will this benevolence last?

Despite Christian’s knowledge that he is surrounded by those who could betray him, he still strives to strengthen the relationships he holds dear. It’s his unwillingness to sacrifice these relationships that both condemn him to his fate and save him from it. I Must Betray You does not shy away from the moral discrepancies that occur when we are forced to operate in a society of secrecy and deceit. Yet, it reminds us that, despite the very real risk that accompanies trust, we cannot survive alone.

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow

- Ann Leave a comment

guest post by Lexie R

I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that when I need a break from the serious news of the day, I turn to celebrity gossip. I love reading about the secret inner-workings of the entertainment industry, the behind-the-scenes machinations that make the celebrity machine look so effortless, and the blind items about who is misbehaving. So when journalists like Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, and Ronan Farrow broke the news about accusations of producer Harvey Weinstein’s decades of abusing women, I thought to myself, “I’ve read about this on blind items sites a hundred times, how is it that none of these people knew about this?” Well, as is made clear in Ronan Farrow’s gripping new book Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, it sure seems like a whole lot of people did, in fact, know.

Catch and Kill takes the reader through the process of how Farrow investigated what was previously only whispered about: claims that mega-producer Harvey Weinstein routinely harassed and abused women for decades. If you were a “Friend of Harvey”, you made it in the entertainment industry; if you weren’t, you didn’t. For a non-fiction work that everyone knows the ending to, I found Farrow’s account to be breathless, fast-pasted, and engaging. Though I had read Farrow’s reporting of the accusations against Weinstein, there was a lot I didn’t know about how the story was investigated and all the hurdles Farrow faced in trying to report it. What was most startling was Farrow’s account of NBC executives who, after months of reporting and collecting firsthand accounts and even an audio recording of Weinstein admitting to an assault, suddenly wanted him to stop talking to sources and drop the story. This part of the story is still ongoing, with NBC disputing Farrow’s claims and alleging that he had no story until he went to The New Yorker and published it a month later.

One of the more thriller-esque parts of the book was the way he weaved in details about Weinstein apparently hiring an Israeli intelligence agency to follow Farrow and gather information on him in an effort to smear his reputation. Every few chapters or so we get a glimpse of two men sitting outside Farrow’s home in a silver Nissan or just so happening to be at the same restaurant as him, and later the precautions Farrow had to take when it because clear that he was in fact being followed and his phone was being targeted. But even in such serious parts of the book Farrow managed to include some levity; my favorite of these such moments was the revelation that the private investigators assigned to tail Farrow’s boyfriend Jon Lovett (of podcasts Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It) gave up because Lovett’s routine was too boring (to which Jon replied “I’m interesting!…I went to an escape room!”)

All throughout the book, Farrow makes it clear that though he received many acclaims for bringing this information to light, the real heroes of story are the women who risked everything to come forward and speak up about what had been done to them. Many of these women held onto their stories for years because they had seen others lose their careers after trying to speak up; for them to do so at this time was courageous and Farrow is quick to point that out at every turn.

This is a great read if you’re interested in the incredibly thorough process of reporting, real-life espionage, and demolishing institutions that empower and encourage abusers. Highly recommended.

Citizenfour

- Stephanie Leave a comment

citizenfourI have a guilty secret to share. Sometimes I go weeks without paying attention to the news, only checking the surface for sports scores or when a major event happens that is all over social media. As a result, when I’m busy or stressed, I can have no idea what is happening in the world outside my personal bubble. My news-watching habit was pointed out to me when I checked out the movie, Citizenfour, to watch one day.

The person on the cover didn’t look familiar, but the plot sounded promising: a behind-the-scenes look into privacy invasions by the NSA. I started watching and wondered continuously who this “Citizenfour” character was, a person conversing with director Laura Poitras and later with journalist Glenn Greenwald through incredibly encrypted and secure channels, one who was telling them that the secrets they had to share would blow the lid off of a huge governmental conspiracy.

Even when Poitras and Greendwald flew to Hong Kong to meet Citizenfour at the hotel room where he had been camping out, I still had no idea who he was, but the topic was fascinating. Hundreds upon thousands of classified documents that he had taken from his contracting job with the NSA that highlighted evidence of mass numbers of both indiscriminate and illegal privacy invasions that the NSA had perpetuated over many years. That tickled my brain. Things were starting to sound familiar. I then looked closer at the face on the screen. Edward Snowden! That’s what this was about.

Citizenfour follows Snowden’s decision to hand over thousands of classified documents that he gathered while being on loan to the NSA about many different secret programs and projects that the NSA and other governmental organizations had put together, as well as some information about the programs that other countries were a part of, all under the guise of surveillance after the tragedies of September 11th. What I found to be interesting about this documentary was that Snowden wanted the focus to be on the information contained within the classified documents and less on the person that was leaking them to the press, himself. The interactions between Snowden, Poitras, and the journalists that he came in contact with while in Hong Kong highlight the varying degrees of secrecy, intelligence gathering, and electronic surveillance that Snowden was seeking to expose to the world. Unplugging the hotel phone, hiding under a sheet to type in his password, talking through notes passed back and forth may seem to a passing person like signs of paranoia, but as Snowden highlights throughout this documentary, the government is capable of tapping into anything and everything, whether we choose to believe it or not.

If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, check out the materials below!

after snowdenno place to hide1971odyssey of an eavesdropperthe shadow factory

Read Everything Janet Evanovich Wrote?

- Lynn 1 Comment

Then you may very well enjoy Lisa Lutz’s series about the nutty, but lovable Spellman family. Unfortunately, there are only four books in this series.

The Spellman Files introduces us to Isabel, the narrator, her incorrigible younger sister Rae, her parents, or “the Units” as she calls them, who run the family business. Because that is a private investigation firm, they spend much of their free time spying on each other – literally making secret tape recordings.

The series is written in the style of reports for a client, complete with footnotes,  (Isabel calls each book a “document.”)

Isabel, like Stephanie, has many personal issues. Rather than eating too much junk food, Isabel drinks too much. She has a hard time with commitment and, though she loves her family,  they also drive  her nuts.

She has a cast of eccentric friends that recur in each book. Petra, a hair stylist and Isabel’s best friend from high school, Morty, an octogenarian lawyer who tries to keep Isabel out of jail, and Henry Stone, a police detective, though normal himself, albeit exceptionally neat and healthy, gets ensnared by the Spellmans.

As will you,the reader….