Latest news with #spy
Telegraph
25-05-2025
- Telegraph
Tinker, tailor, carpenter, spy: MI5 seeks woodworker for top-secret missions
MI5 is hiring a carpenter to help protect the country from terrorism and hostile-state threats. The successful candidate will be deployed in the field to help carry out intelligence-gathering operations around the UK and 'directly contribute to the security of our nation'. The new recruit will have to sign the Official Secrets Act and must have a 'meticulous' attention to detail and 'sound problem-solving skills'. The role has a starting salary of £43,000, is being advertised on MI5's website and on its official Instagram account. A video promoting the vacancy features footage of a person chiselling, sawing and planing a piece of wood with the caption: 'POV [point of view]: you're a carpenter and you want to be a spy... It takes a variety of skills to keep the country safe.' The job description on the intelligence service's website states: 'As a maintenance carpenter, your work will encompass maintenance, repair and construction within secure facilities, including hardening of critical infrastructure and creating bespoke spaces in many different types of property. 'You will be responsible for creating technical drawings, selecting appropriate materials, and carrying out tasks to a high standard, all while adhering to stringent security protocols. 'Another aspect of the role, and very exciting part of it, is occasionally deploying within the UK on intelligence gathering operations; utilising your trade skills to directly contribute to the security of our nation.'
Wall Street Journal
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Josephine Baker's Secret War': The Star Who Spied
Josephine Baker arrived in Paris from the slums of St. Louis in 1925 and rose to stardom playing a stereotype of an African 'primitive' in 'La revue nègre,' a musical act featuring an all-black cast. Wearing nothing but a rope of beads and a skirt of rubber bananas, Baker clowned and gyrated on stage in a wild danse sauvage that fascinated her mostly white audiences. By the end of World War II, however, Baker had transformed herself into a regal activist for racial justice, an extraordinary reinvention that, as Hanna Diamond relates in 'Josephine Baker's Secret War,' was sparked by her work spying for the French. Drawing on documents in archives from France, Morocco, the U.K. and the U.S.—which she cross-checked with the often unreliable memoirs by Baker, her lover and one of her ex-husbands—Ms. Diamond aims to establish an accurate account of Baker's wartime activities. Soon after France declared war on Germany in 1939, the French military intelligence agency recruited Baker as a spy. As Ms. Diamond, a professor of French history at Cardiff University, writes, Baker's fame gave her access to military officials and diplomats who, in their eagerness to socialize with a global superstar, often unwittingly spilled vital secrets. Baker's effervescent charm and exceptional acting skills aided her spy work, as did her ardent patriotism. She became a French citizen in 1937 with her marriage (her third) to Jean Lion, a Jewish sugar broker. By the start of the war the couple were estranged (Ms. Diamond reports that Baker arranged papers for Lion's family to get safely to Brazil), and Baker became romantically involved with her intelligence handler, Jacques Abtey, who posed as Baker's secretary on their information-gathering missions through Spain and Portugal and across North Africa.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Incredible facts about Mission: Impossible
'Mission: Impossible - Fallout' is often touted as the best movie in the action series, and it's clear to see why. The 2018 movie delivers on its gripping narrative and jaw-dropping stunts in what is a triumph for Tom Cruise's iconic spy franchise. So, with the series set to reach its climactic conclusion with 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning', let's look back at director Christopher McQuarrie's masterpiece …
New York Times
19-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Israel Recovers Troves of Documents Belonging to Its Most Famous Spy
For decades, Israel has been trying to recover the remains of Eli Cohen, one of its most famous spies, who was executed in Syria in 1965. While that goal remains elusive, intelligence services and the prime minister's office on Sunday implied that they may have gotten one step closer by acquiring documents and personal affects from Syria that belonged to Mr. Cohen. The trove of 2,500 items includes documents and photographs from Mr. Cohen's years undercover, information about his final moments, personal artifacts taken from his home and handwritten letters to family members, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement. The Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, worked together with an allied foreign government to retrieve the archives, the prime minister's office said. It did not elaborate on which country helped and when exactly it had recovered the documents. It was not clear how the government acquired the documents. During his three years as an undercover agent in Syria in the early 1960s, Mr. Cohen fostered close relationships with top Syrian officials and provided substantial information to Israel, including about Syria's military, its relationship with the Soviet Union and power struggles within the leadership. Syria was Israel's main rival in the region at that time. Two years after his death, Mr. Cohen's information helped Israel achieve victory in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, also known as the Six-Day War, and seize the Golan Heights from Syria. It was unclear if the documents shed light on where Mr. Cohen was buried. The announcement came just days after President Trump met with the president of Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, in Saudi Arabia as Syria tries to reintegrate itself into the international community. At the meeting, Mr. Trump urged Mr. al-Shara to improve Syrian relations with Israel. In Israel, the announcement about Mr. Eli's documents and personal effects was received as a unifying moment at a time of division between Mr. Netanyahu and the country's intelligence services. 'Everybody can agree it's a good thing,' said Yitzhak Brudny, a professor of history and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 'It's not controversial.' 'It's a symbolic thing,' Dr. Brudny said. 'Eli Cohen is a symbol of success and failure.' Mr. Cohen was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1924, to Syrian Jewish parents. He moved to Israel in 1957 and joined the Israeli military intelligence service three years later. The Mossad sent him to Damascus, where he was to pose as a Syrian businessman. Mr. Cohen befriended top Syrian officials under his new name and identity, Kamel Amin Thaabet. (In 2019, Netflix turned Mr. Cohen's tale into a six-part series.) While working as a spy in Damascus, Mr. Cohen sent dispatches in Morse code to his Israeli bosses. He was caught after the Syrian Army intercepted one of his messages. Though there had been claims that Mr. Cohen transmitted to his Israeli handlers too often, David Barnea, the director of the Mossad, said in 2022 that Mr. Cohen was caught 'simply because his transmissions were intercepted and triangulated by the enemy.' In January 1965, the Syrian authorities arrested, interrogated and tortured Mr. Cohen for about a month until his trial. He was sentenced to death and publicly hanged in Syria in May 1965, at Marja Square in Damascus, his body swaying on the rope for hours. It was not the first time that the Mossad had dedicated significant time and resources to recovering some of Mr. Cohen's belongings. In 2018, Israeli intelligence recovered a wrist watch that belonged to Mr. Cohen in a complex operation in Damascus. Nadia Cohen, Mr. Cohen's wife, has long campaigned for the return of her husband's remains so that a proper burial could take place. Sophie Ben-Dor, Mr. Cohen's daughter, on Monday reiterated the need for the return of her father's remains in an interview with the Israeli news site Ynet. She said it wasn't just about recovering his bodily remains, but 'about a country's moral duty to look after its people.'
Al Arabiya
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
60 years after he was hanged, Israel recovers Syrian archive belonging to Eli Cohen
Israel has retrieved thousands of items belonging to the country's most famous spy after a covert operation in Syria. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared some of the 2,500 items from the Syrian archive relating to Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy who infiltrated the political echelon in Syria, with Cohen's widow. Sunday marked 60 years since Cohen was hanged in a square in Damascus. The items recently spirited into Israel include documents, recordings, photos, and items collected by Syrian intelligence after his capture in January 1965, letters in his own handwriting to his family in Israel, photographs of his activity during his operational mission in Syria and personal objects that were taken from his home after his capture. Suitcases of items brought to Israel included worn folders stuffed with handwritten notes, keys to his apartment in Damascus, passports and false identification documents, missions from the Mossad to surveil specific people and places, and documentation of all the efforts of his widow, Nadia Cohen, begging world leaders for his release from prison. Cohen's success in Syria was one of the Mossad spy agency's first major achievements, and the top-secret intelligence he obtained is widely credited with helping Israel prepare for its swift victory in the 1967 Middle East War. Eli Cohen managed to forge close contacts within the political and military hierarchy of Israel's archenemy in the early 1960s, ultimately rising to become a top adviser to Syria's defense minister. In 1965, Cohen was caught radioing information to Israel. He was tried and hanged in a Damascus square on May 18, 1965. His remains have yet to be returned to Israel, where he is regarded as a national hero. In 2019, actor Sacha Baron Cohen portrayed Eli Cohen (no relation) in a six-episode Netflix series called 'The Spy.' 'We conducted a special operation by the Mossad, by the State of Israel, to bring his (Eli Cohen's) archive, which had been in the safes of the Syrian intelligence for 60 years,' Netanyahu told Nadia Cohen on Sunday in Jerusalem. Ahead of viewing the items, Nadia Cohen told Netanyahu that the most important thing was to bring back Cohen's body. Netanyahu said Israel was continuing to work on locating Cohen's body. Last week, Israel recovered the body of an Israeli soldier from Syria who had been missing for more than four decades, after he was killed during a clash with Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1982. 'Eli is an Israeli legend. He's the greatest agent Israeli intelligence has had in the years the state existed. There was no one like him,' Netanyahu said.
