Latest news with #TheDeterminedSpy
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Son of CIA deputy director was killed while fighting for Russia, report says
An American man identified as the son of a deputy director of the CIA was killed in eastern Ukraine in 2024 while fighting under contract for the Russian military, according to an investigation by independent Russian media. Michael Alexander Gloss, 21, died on 4 April 2024 in 'Eastern Europe', according to an obituary published by his family. He was the son of Juliane Gallina, who was appointed the deputy director for digital innovation at the Central Intelligence Agency in February 2024. The story of how the son of a top-ranking US spy died fighting for Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine is an unlikely tale of how homegrown anger at the United States and online radicalisation led from a middle-class Virginia childhood to the killing fields of eastern Ukraine. On a VKontakte page attributed to Gloss, a high school football player born to parents who both served in the military, he described himself as 'a supporter of the multipolar world. I ran away from home. traveled the world. I hate fascism. I love my homeland.' He also posted the flags of Russia and Palestine. According to the investigative website iStories, Gloss is one of more than 1,500 foreigners who have signed contracts with the Russian military since February 2022. The database for the enrollment office was later leaked, exposing him as having signed the contract in September 2023. Sources told iStories that Gloss had been deployed with 'assault units', those engaged in harsh frontline fighting, in December 2023. An acquaintance said that he had been deployed to a Russian airborne regiment sent to storm Ukrainian positions near the city of Soledar. 'With his noble heart and warrior spirit Michael was forging his own hero's journey when he was tragically killed in Eastern Europe on April 4, 2024,' his family wrote in the obituary, which did not mention Russia and Ukraine or discuss the circumstances of his death. In university, Gloss was active in gender equality and environmental protest circles. He joined Rainbow Family, a leftwing environmental protest group, and in 2023 traveled to Hatay, Turkey, to assist in the recovery following the earthquake that killed more than 56,000 people. He had also become increasingly angry at the US for its support of Israel and the war in Gaza. While in Turkey, Gloss began expressing a desire to go on to Russia. 'He was usually watching videos about Palestine and was so angry at America,' one acquaintance told iStories. 'He started thinking about going to Russia. He wanted to war with the USA. But I think he was very influenced by the conspiracy theory videos.' Related: The Determined Spy: Frank Wisner, the CIA and a covert career cut short After receiving a visa to Russia, he traveled around the country before arriving in Moscow, where he joined the military shortly before his documents expired. Photographs and videos obtained by iStories showed he was sent to a Russian training camp, where he mostly trained alongside Nepali contract soldiers. Three months after enlisting, an acquaintance said, he was deployed to Ukraine as a member of an assault battalion. A number of acquaintances told the outlet that he had not been interested in fighting, but hoped the army would allow him to receive a Russian passport and stay in the country. The circumstance's of Gloss's death are not known. A friend said that his family had been informed by the Russian government of his death but were given little other information. 'It was announced that he died within the borders of Ukraine,' the friend wrote. 'We do not know whether he participated in the war. They did not provide any other detailed information.' It was not clear whether the Russians performed a background check on Gloss or knew the identity of his mother. The Guardian has approached the CIA for comment on the reports.
The Guardian
12-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The Determined Spy: Frank Wisner, the CIA and a covert career cut short
Frank Wisner was a leading light of the early CIA, a director of clandestine operations who came of age in the second world war then fought the cold war by fair means or foul, from funding American cultural outreach to orchestrating coups in Iran and Guatemala. Before becoming a biographer, Douglas Waller reported for Newsweek and Time. His new book, The Determined Spy, is about Wisner, a man who lived an extraordinary life but came to be buried at Arlington national cemetery, under a simple headstone, identified merely as a commander in the US naval reserve. 'I've always gravitated toward controversial characters,' Waller said. 'People who had loyal followings and charisma, and just as many people who hated them, who even considered them evil.' 'The first was 'Wild Bill' Donovan, who headed up Franklin Roosevelt's spy service, the Office of Strategic Services. He was charismatic, his agents revered him, but there were people in the Pentagon and even the state department who thought he was as evil as Hitler. I recall during that time running across Wisner among hundreds of OSS officers and thinking: 'Gee, this is kind of an interesting guy.' What little I had on him, I put in my stories file, and thought: 'Well, I'll get back to him.' 'The next book I wrote was Disciples, an ensemble biography of [CIA leaders] Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Bill Colby and Bill Casey. And again, I ran across Wisner, particularly when he was working for Dulles in Germany after the war, in charge of 200 operatives. And I talked at that point to Wisner's oldest son, Frank Wisner II.' Wisner II, who died in February, aged 86, did not just look like his father. He also carved out a high-level government career, as ambassador to Zambia, the Philippines, Egypt and India, and US envoy to Kosovo. 'This is the first time the family opened up,' Waller said. 'They made all the material available. Wisner's personal papers are at the University of Virginia. His middle son, Ellis Wisner, provided a lot, particularly medical material, stuff that hadn't been released. 'Frank Wisner II had gotten declassified material from the CIA that he turned over to me, which was a big help. With the three sons – Graham Wisner is unfortunately deceased too – I spent probably 50 hours on interviews about their father. There were some very painful sessions. His death was quite a blow.' Wisner was 56 when, in October 1965, he killed himself. It was the awful culmination of a long struggle that saw Wisner committed to a psychiatric hospital in 1958. He experienced bipolar disorder, little understood in his time. Psychiatrists gave Waller 'a whole stack of reading to do, to get a sense of how bipolar disorder can evolve, and a lot of the myths behind it'. Waller 'tried to accurately portray the shock Wisner's suicide was for everybody. 'Ellis Wisner told me he thought that maybe his father, at the very end, was debating whether or not to kill himself, by the fact that he went to the family farm [in Maryland], he got his work clothes on. 'But when you read the scientific literature, you find that this is a normal way that suicide can play out, that the disease can be so unrelenting, so oppressive, that suicide seems the only option, and the person about to commit it becomes almost at peace with himself, with how his life is going to end. That's what you saw with Wisner … the symptoms for this disease, if untreated, can be so relentless.' So could Wisner, in work, family life and intense socializing with the Georgetown set, a hard-drinking group of government officials and journalists, among them Phil Graham, a publisher of the Washington Post 'People confused that side of Wisner with the manic depression,' Waller said. 'A world war two buddy wondered whether Wisner's deep hatred of the Russians was part of his disease. But the Russians gave him a lot to hate in their takeover of eastern Europe. He was ahead of the US government when he was posted in Romania [during the second world war], in terms of warning that the next enemy was going to be the Soviet Union, which at that time was an ally. 'There's parts in the book where you see even Donovan worried about Wisner having to dial it back. He wasn't a religious man but he took his own role in history very, very seriously. And eventually, I think you see the country coming up to where his view is, and viewing the Russians as an existential threat. You have to see yourself in that period, in 1950 or so, when Americans firmly believe the Russians are bent on world domination. The Pentagon even picked out a day they thought the Soviets might invade western Europe: 1 July 1952. Nothing happened, but the paranoia which Wisner felt, at the tip of the spear? It existed.' Turned inward, that paranoia fueled the red scare, anti-communist witch-hunts led by Joe McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican senator now on many minds as Donald Trump purges the federal government. 'Wisner had a view on the red scare,' Waller said. 'He saw a huge threat of communism, but it was outside communism, Russian communism, not the Communist party in the US. He didn't think much of that. He thought guys like McCarthy were really barking up the wrong tree.' Wisner was surveilled himself, by J Edgar Hoover's FBI. Suspicions largely arose from a wartime affair with a Romanian princess, one of many parts of Wisner's story that seem stranger than fiction, or at least evoke novels by Graham Greene or Ian Fleming, who was Wisner's friend in London. Waller notes the immense human cost of Wisner's efforts to topple elected leaders in Iran and Guatemala, in 1953 and 1954. He also describes CIA failures, many in eastern Europe and notably in Hungary in 1956, when Russia crushed an uprising. Few think Wisner broke down due to guilt over Iran and Guatemala. Some think Hungary broke him. Waller does not. Wisner's illness was powerful enough on its own. Sign up to First Thing Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion By the time of the Bay of Pigs, the fiasco in Cuba under John F Kennedy in 1961, Wisner was out of hospital but also out of the mainstream, in a softer role in London. Waller said Wisner's work before his breakdown should all be seen in context: 'The popular view is that the CIA are rogue actors, hatching these coups in the dark without anybody in the US government really knowing about it – which is a bunch of baloney. [Harry] Truman knew full well about what [under Wisner] was blandly called the office of policy coordination, which eventually became 6,000 men and women involved in clandestine operations worldwide. [Dwight] Eisenhower … was more than eager to point the CIA and Wisner's forces toward third-world targets. The Eisenhower view was you're either for the US or against it. What was happening was exactly what the White House wanted.' Sometimes, the White House wanted even shadier work. Nazis and Nazi sympathizers were recruited to the anti-communist cause. Waller said: 'The whole issue of working with Nazis wasn't as bad as has been portrayed, and it wasn't as good as has been portrayed. There were a handful of Nazis they brought in to the US. They worked with a lot more overseas. But Wisner was always a diehard anti-Nazi.' Waller keeps an eye on current events. As the war in Ukraine drags on, Trump not having delivered peace as promised, the US president's attitudes toward Russia and Vladimir Putin are in perpetual question. 'We are now in the middle of the second cold war against the Russians,' Waller said. 'Wisner was there at the beginning of the first, 70 years ago. And I think there's lessons to be learned from that. You're seeing history repeat itself, in some respects. Not sure we're winning at this point, but we're in, definitely in a second cold war. 'Another question I get asked is: 'How do you compare the quality of Wisner's CIA with the CIA now? And the answer is, it's vastly superior today.' In 2022, US intelligence predicted Russia's invasion of Ukraine with striking accuracy. Failures, particularly over whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, also dot the record. The Determined Spy is a serious book, a study of American covert power and its lasting effects on those who attempted to wield it, as well as on the world at large. But though Frank Wisner was a powerful man, Waller focuses on his human side, his weaknesses as well as his strengths. Some episodes from Wisner's career, particularly from the early stages, as the CIA was born, produce a kind of comedy of trial and error. In Turkey during the second world war, Waller said, a 'former savings and loan business executive from Illinois, Lanning 'Packy' MacFarland, just made a complete mess of the Istanbul station. 'Frank Wisner II said his dad told him about his first meeting with MacFarland in Istanbul. Wisner went to a nightclub, hoping to see him there, kind of incognito. And the lights to the stage turn on, and there's Packy MacFarland with a line of chorus girls, dressed in drag, singing, 'Boo Boo, baby, I'm a spy.' That was a favorite song among a lot of other spies there. Packy wasn't the only one with poor operational security.' The Determined Spy is published in the US by Dutton In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at
New York Times
31-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
In Espionage and War, Secure Communication Is Key. Just Ask These Spies.
Given all the press attention and congressional hearings, the recent leak of war plans in strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen may feel like a singular event. And mistakes aside, as the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, asserted before Congress, the operation itself 'was very successful and continues to be very successful.' So why worry? But consider the career highlights of some of the world's most noteworthy spies in these three new books. The Determined Spy The biggest surprise in Waller's lively biography of Frank Wisner, THE DETERMINED SPY: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner (Dutton, 645 pp., $36), is how stunningly naïve U.S. covert and martial operations have been at times. As Waller shows, Wisner's tenure provides one of the harsher lessons of the world of espionage: What appears to be a success at the time may not prove so over the long run. Wisner was a major figure at the C.I.A. in the 1950s, when the agency toppled the governments of Iran and Guatemala. Washington was so pleased with those results that it contemplated doing the same in Cuba. That's how, in 1961, we ended up with the fiasco known as the Bay of Pigs. That leads to a second harsh lesson that intelligence agencies don't like to talk about much — how frequently their people in the field are incompetent. For example, during part of World War II, the chief of American spying in the continental crossroads city of Istanbul — perhaps the most fruitful location for spies at the time — was Lanning 'Packy' Macfarland, a former savings and loan executive from Illinois who was fond of wearing a trench coat and slouch hat. This 'dangerous buffoon,' as Waller calls him, had two lovers: One worked for the Germans, the other for the Russians. Waller, the author of several books on national security, reports that when Wisner replaced Macfarland in Istanbul, he had almost as little experience, but apparently a great deal more native intelligence and drive. Wisner even stood a good chance of becoming the head of the C.I.A. until he suffered a series of manic highs caused by bipolar disorder. He left the agency and, in 1965, killed himself. The results of his coup in Iran live on even today, with the government there regarding the United States as 'the Great Satan.' Iran's Ministry of Intelligence Today's C.I.A., trying to adjust to the mixed directions that come from President Trump, Elon Musk and the president's other assorted appointees, likely would get a bit of quiet sympathy — but not much — from Iran's Ministry of Intelligence. As described by Ward in IRAN'S MINISTRY OF INTELLIGENCE: A Concise History (Georgetown University Press, 195 pp., paperback, $26.95), Iranian intelligence has frequently found itself torn between the country's unelected supreme leader and its elected president. In 2011, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tried to push out the intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi, supposedly for wiretapping the president's chief of staff. The supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's displeasure bubbled up through the media, and the chief spook went back to work while Ahmadinejad pouted at home for a week. Two years later, Moslehi was in trouble again, allegedly for spying on a legislator. The country also has intense interagency rivalries, much like the well-documented one that has long persisted in America between the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. The Iranian intelligence ministry, which conducts foreign operations but mainly focuses on suppressing internal dissent, is frequently overshadowed by Iran's more ideological and militaristic Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In 2016, for instance, there was squabbling over who ran better background checks as each agency independently vetted parliamentary candidates ahead of that year's election. By 2023 the tension between the two organizations was so persistent that Khamenei told them in writing to be more cooperative with each other. Overall, Ward's book is thin gruel, featuring only a few interesting tidbits, such as the fact that the details of the Iran-contra scandal — that is, the astonishing report that the Reagan administration was sending weapons to Iran in exchange for American hostages held in Lebanon — were first leaked to a Beirut magazine by a senior Revolutionary Guard official who was unhappy with the shadowy deal. (This dissenting hothead was executed for his intervention, Ward notes.) But the single biggest revelation for me in this book was the author's mention — in an aside — that despite having been a C.I.A. analyst for nearly 30 years specializing in Iranian security issues, he neither speaks nor reads Persian. Imagine an Iranian trying to be an expert on the United States without being able to watch American television and movies, read its books and magazines, and converse with its officials and citizens. Have we learned nothing from the exploits of Packy Macfarland? Watching the Jackals In intelligence, sometimes the most illuminating information comes from unexpected quarters. Of several recent books on covert operations, the most enlightening is WATCHING THE JACKALS: Prague's Covert Liaisons With Cold War Terrorists and Revolutionaries (Georgetown University Press, 350 pp., paperback, $39.95). Richterova, a political scientist at King's College London, lived a researcher's dream: 99 percent of the existing files of the intelligence agencies of Communist Czechoslovakia have been released — and, what's more, without any redactions. She describes how she was the first to read many of these 'freshly declassified files and sift through them as they were brought into the archive reading room on heavy-duty trolleys.' The odd factoids alone are worth the price of admission, demonstrating just how minutely detailed and vivid these documents can be. In 1966, when Che Guevara visited Czechoslovakia for three months as he prepared for his ill-fated mission to Bolivia, he and his companions had only two records to listen to, one by the South African singer Miriam Makeba and the other by the Beatles. In 1977, Abu Daoud, one of the planners of the Munich Olympics massacre five years earlier, checked into Prague's Hotel Intercontinental just as the International Olympic Committee was meeting there — apparently just a macabre coincidence. Two years later, when the volatile Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal accidentally locked himself out of his room at the same hotel, he angrily walked the hallways of the establishment brandishing a large revolver. The heart of Richterova's surprising work lies in the uneasy relationship between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the 'plodding' Czech intelligence services. Czechoslovakia's relationship with the P.L.O. began uncomfortably and worsened with time. 'It was characterized by dissonance — a mismatch in expectations, objectives and preferred tactics,' she writes. Among other things, she adds, this tends to emphatically disprove the allegations made by the journalist Claire Sterling and others in the 1980s that there was extensive cooperation between the Communist Warsaw Pact states and terrorist organizations. The Palestinians, their skills honed by their ongoing fight with Israeli intelligence, ran circles around Prague's operatives. Richterova notes that the Arabs were veterans in espionage tradecraft, using multiple disguises and passports. Some, working for Carlos the Jackal as bodyguards in Prague, were so bold as to detain and question a Czech intelligence officer who was tailing them. The P.L.O. did try to please Prague, partly by proposing a variety of risky operations. Among these was an offer to kill or kidnap Czech exiles who were critical of the Communist regime, including a former chief of the country's state-run television network. The P.L.O. also said that it could attack the Munich headquarters of Radio Free Europe. Prague listened, but was wary of carrying out such schemes, given the potential blowback from the West. The country's leaders might have had other concerns as well: Czech spies deemed P.L.O. agents especially weak on clandestine communications. At one point in 1983, they suggested a course in cryptology. As Trump administration officials have learned lately, communications security may seem like a minor issue — until it blows up in your face.
