The Spy Business

The recent arrests and deportation of the 10 family style spies reminded me of my own attempt to venture into the spy business. It sort of started way back when my son Fred was in the plastic model making age. His primary interest was airplanes but periodically he would venture into ships, tanks, and other military hardware. Keep in mind now that I used to be a machinist who worked in the defense industries during world war 2. What startled me about Fred’s models was there absolute detailed scale to the real thing. When I looked at a model of the Bradley Tank I thought, Ahaa, I could just sell that to the Russians and they could start building a full scale model of the same thing. That went for fighter planes, battleships, destroyers the whole panoply of military hardware.

The Spy Business model got a big jolt in one of my travels. During the fifties or sixties, I ventured into the Nuclear Museum at Los Alamos New Mexico. In the handout section there was various booklets, pamphlets, and documents describing in fine detail how the Atom Bomb worked. Soon after I came upon a copy of “Jane’s Fighting Ships.” Therein was a detailed description of the most advanced naval hardware. The more I looked around for military information the more stuff on Tanks, Planes Radars, and Ships seemed to be available in museums, bookstores and libraries. Present day, if you add the Internet you got it all right there at your desk.

Okay, so here is the Business Plan. Together with a coworker friend we would designate specific areas of research. ie, Naval, Air, Gunnery, Electronics, Land, Submarine’s, Etc. Etc. We would then hire graduate students with interests in these areas to comb the literature for material that would be useful to anybody who was willing to pay for it. And pay you would because this was going to be a bargain compared to what it would cost to set up spies to collect the same information. Our plan would be completely legal as we would not be selling any secret security material. We thought we would set up shop in either Washington DC or Zurich Switzerland.

Yes, we had financial sponsors who thought it was a great idea as it would promote peace through equalization of armaments. Like the nuclear standoff between the US and Soviet Union. So what happened?

It was on one of my regular trips to the Nations Capital that I ran the idea passed a good friend who worked as a statistical analyst for the Congressional Budget Office. He let out a loud laugh said, “Schrank it already exists. Just take a walk over to K. Street” and-----(don’t recall the cross street) “but right there you’ll find a bookstore selling everything you ever wanted to know about the military in every corner of the Globe.”

Yupp, there it was two floors of books pamphlets, print outs, on every subject that might be of interest to intelligence agencies or anyone interested in how to build a better bomb. Oh, well another great business idea gone with the wind.

It brought me thinking about the latest cracking of the ten family Russian Spy Ring. These folks should have just defected to Brighton Beach that Russian émigré community right next to Coney island. Heck they could have then reported on the rebuilding of the Parachute Jump that was surely a way to spot ships at sea. What In Gods name were the Russians thinking that a nice family living in Montclair New Jersey raising beautiful Hydrangeas were going to steal secrets of what?

It is probably just another example of “old organizations never die they just roll over and continue doing what they know even though it is absolutely irrelevant.” Like “The March of Dimes” setup to fight polio. With the advent of the Salk Vaccine they just shifted over to fighting lung disease. I might add, “old organizations never die as long as they find a way to pay the executives.”

This is what I assume is going on in Moscow. The KGB successor need to continue having spies in the US. Where else could they go? I’m pretty certain they have them in London maybe even Paris. Now I'm sure you noticed that Somalia or Outer Mongolia are not on the list. I still don’t understand why the Russian Ten didn’t defect? Maybe they forgot what winter is like in Moscow? While we’re singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Xmas” I can hear them singing, “I’m dreaming of Montclair New Jersey. What am I doing here with no beach to spy on what the folks are doing about sun screen.” Oh well it will be good for the CIA as they can now say, “See we need more than the 28 billion we get to keep track of all this new “Family Style Spying.” Its like Family Style eating in Italian Restaurants. Goodbye and good luck.