ESPIONAGE AS PROFESSION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000700310023-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 29, 2004
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: May 15, 1956
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved Fo'r,.e ps 2005/01 /05 : c.IA-RDP7
f
ESPIONAGE AS,,PROFESSION
/rFollowing is a translation of an article by Ted Cordova
.Claure entitled, "Espionage As Profession," in the Spanish-
.language magazine Momento (Moment), Caracas,. No. 513, 15 May
1966, pp. 20 - 23.2
In the invisible fight of espionage, the Germans also had passed."
Hitler's Wehrmacht was beginning to cede terrain on all fronts.
hardness had been exceeded by the events. The balance of power
in Europe was definitely inclining in favor of the Allies as
The year 1944 was dying in the midst of a winter whose
pation.
Norway was living the last days of the long night of Nazi occu-
were doing forced labor for,the Germans in repairing torpedo
boats and submarines for the Nazi fleet. But all knew that
A German official arrived at the dockyard building of
Bergen on the Norwegian coast of the North Sea. The German
military a utomobile,Wanderer stopped ini'ront of the gate,
always well guarded. Within,. hundreds of Norwegian workers
call and translated for the soldier. A voice cried out:
The official entered the building at the moment when
the telephone of the guard sounded. The worker answered the
"It is Gunnar Sonsteby calling Leave this building'
trampled under foot. - He cried out, and wanted to know what was
The German guard fled. Other guards did the same. The
wo_'ker sounded the alarm and also fled. Presently dozens of
workers left running, squeezing themselves through the gate.
The official who arrived in the Wanderer was practically
immediately ..... Leave immediately what will blow up in a
thousand pieces within two minutes..",
going on. The only. answer was "Sonsteby, Sonsteby.!"
 Approved for Release. 2005/01105": CIA=RDP7,5.-00149ROQ0700310023-9
The official did not understand. He was not well informed
German intellgence
by thei body flew through the air among the splinters of
later when his
.the dock yard..
Sonsteby, the famous number 24, the invisible saboteur
of Norway, the man the Gestapo never could catch was a courteous
_, _ r ... at the Inc+- mnmani'_ to
save human lives. Generally, the men trr onin o his name ?.~-
German soldiers. veb?]- -
c4n-n- the destruction of.barracks , of a munitions depot or of
a destroyer.anenorea on the AYVA VYGgiaA.
rv,,, of this saboteur of the Second World War
twenty years after, the autobiography . Vl. SJVA10l.eby , Repo- - --
Agent Number 24," has been published.;an its entirety.
British literary critics have rated Sonsteby as the
an o,, of. James Bond. only that ' in this case every-.
-thing related is the tru h.
In these James-Bondian times, when the image of the
secret agent has been deformed'by sadistic play-boyish tenden-
Iles of the common man - -----
. the author Ian Fleming and the producers of film series the`..
.,,.P .a.,r,;nrr +hc
examples of these espi ---vd- ---- - Three books recent
World War _ seem to be - forgotten.
published in three different .countries and pol ica 1. system -
are restoring the records of the.r.eal heroes of espionage.
Besides the mentioned-"Report of Agent No. 24," on
; rr Norway at the beginning' of the year, the
..Londonngndsj;eVi:Nork. Sorge, the master Key of he Russ+.G.6
espionage system in he __ i_.-- 7 -' -
Union, has been commemorated on a postage stampy and an oil
n.. Sore of the three sn-Ces mentioned in these three
hanged by the
he was v. r ...` _ ---
end of 1944, precisely- at - th e time when Sonsteby. acted in
Norway and when Abel was already organizing the espionage
activities of the USSR in the United States.,--'. At the same time
acted in Europe' .with a '.base f n- Switzerland, another famous
Cantin'ue
 Approved For Release -2005/01/05 : CIA~RDP75-001498000700310023-9
agent: Allen Dulles, who later was the first head of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
These spies of real life were individuals of 'a character
much different from those presented to us by James Bond, al-
though the risks and also the extraneous technical resources
did not differ much from fiction. Besides, while the descrip-
tion of their personalities holds nothing exciting -- Sorge
as well as Sonsteby were cold, placid men -- their adventures
were really impassioned.
The Russian Abel, a real braggert, always acted with
the water. Abel added that the FBI agents were really imprudent-
and should not have left him out of their eyes.for a single
moment.
Abel was sentenced to life imprisonment in the United
States, but later the USSR retrieved him in exchange for the
1933, acting as. a German journalists;'In,fact,. everyone believed
sity, F. W. Deakin and G. R. Storry, is the most complete.
Sorge was an experienced spyo# the Soviet Service in
then, giving his memoirs a political tone, he stated that he had
never lost confidence that he would never be abandoned by the
Moscow Government, and that his faith in the Communist system
was compensated when the Russians paid his exchange with Powers.
The most famous of all spies in any case was Richard Sorge,
concerning whom,at least half a dozen books have been written.
.However, the last work by the writers employed by Oxford Univer
great agility under the noses of the Federal Bureau of Investi-
gation until the day when the North American agents were able
to capture him with his hands in the dough in a New York hotel.
Abel related that even at the moment of his capture the FBI
agents seemed ingenuous and inefficient. A small device with
the secret espionage keys was the only thing I had in my pos-
session when six agents of the FBI entered my hotel, relates
Abel. However, before taking me out as a prisoner, they per-
mitted me to enter the bathroom, a circumstance of which I made
use by throwing the device into the water closet and flushing
spy-pilot Gary Powers, whose plane was downed in the famous
incident of 1960. The U-2 was shot down over Soviet territory
and Powers sentenced to imprisonment in Russia. Abel gives to
understand that he was not sentenced to death in the United
States because of the possibility that he might some day want
'to buy his liberty for the secrets he undoubtedly knew. And
 that Sorge was German and as such he was prominent as a
correspondent of the newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung in Tokyo.
.Sorge, on the other hand, was a spy who received no orders
from any head of the secret service and who acted with abso-
lute initiative. His best contact with Ivioscow was at the
,Kremlin, and it was a~rude Bolshevik with thick mustaches,
Japan-Italy axis was established.
Approved mFo.r. Release.'2005/01/05: CIA-RDP75r00149R000700310D23-9
immediate practical value than in more peaceful times. Sorge
arrived in Japan as a German correspondent and immediately
transformed himself into a favorite of Hitler's embassy in
from any point and at whatever cost each time he requested it.
Undoubtedly,.-in times of war, spies have a much greater
called Joseph Staiin, with whom Sorge was connected directly
Tokyo. His contacts became vitally important when the Germany-.
It is asserted that Sorge advised Stalin of the Japanese
marine was to pick him up at the Japanese coast.. He was sub-
.jected to a trial and dreadful tortures. They finally lost
patience and hanged him. Biographers state that. the immutable
gating Sorge's life. Some state that Stalin did not give credit'.
aspect has originated a controversy-among the authors investi-
invasion of nussia more than a month in advance. This last
preparations to attack Pearl Harbor and warned of the German
Sorge fell in love with a Jpanese girl. 'He was arrested
transmit the intelligence in spite of his knowledge.
to gorge's reports anct.others that the spy, in fact, did not.
by the Japanese secret police a few days before a Russian sub
cally a determined situation. .
''bridge was more valuable than his capacity to evaluate politi-
,nal clandestineness and his skill to place explosives under a
Stalin greatly lamented the loss of his ace.spy in.'the Orient.
hand, was a man of action, the saboteur who, besides spying on.'
mission of intelligence. The Norwegian Sonsteby, on the other
Sorge was the real intelligence agent type, quiet men,
with contacts in the upper political world, with a strict
.the enemy, had the mission to destroy him.. His life was eter-
give any political capacity to his personality. Author Fleming
In this sense, James Bond seems more like Sonsteby,
although Ian Fleming, in some of his works is resolved not to
..also worked in the intelligence service during the war. But
the need to place Bond in. a half ambiguous state -- his activity
is not directed against'.the.espionage of other nations but against
a maffia,called Phantom.; is.the great, weakness of Fleming'.s
 Approved For Release 2005/01/05 CIA-RDP:75-00149R000700310023-9
parts are the most substantial
at least in the case of Richard c-, ,
.books on real personages evoke such a e pu terestn of
the intelligence and documental ecial interest. Although
5
works. And from this weakness arise the incongruences to
describe the secret agent in a faithful manner.
It is precisely for this reason that after so much
fiction on espionage and secret agents th 1%
aorge,ihe books do not main-
tain the narrative rhythm of novels. The authors of the book
on Sorge investigated the life of the Soviet spay for three
.years in archives and by means of interviews. The excess of
documentation in these books makes reading difficult, even
though in the long run it.prepares the reader for a better un-
derstanding of the impassioned subject of the."secret agents,"
v,ho, paradoxically are famous t
d
o
ay
. .
Action also was not missin
b
g a
ove all in Sonstb'
,eys
case. In less;.than three years
the secret Nor
i
,
weg
an secret
agent, working for the British secret service and for the clan-
destine stru
l
i
hi
g5
e
n
s own countrdtk
y, uneroo exploits which,
make the activities of James Bnnr9 look lik
e
"
Re
ort f
,,
p
om ~ o. 24 Sonsteby, the saboteur agent',`
who announced the danger by +01
lood Ge "
'?' a ma11 soldierbecause he started to cry hysteri-..
tally -- stole loco
ti
mo
ves from prisonrs ' ti j
erans,ust as
he changed his identit d
-+ ?~ +.~+4T OVVd.C11 1rVUl Tine aorcea labor office.
on a certain occasion with b?
a6c,111~7 V cne recruitment
of worker-slaves in the German
, permitting hundreas
of Norwegians on their way t.n -r~rrWnA 1