Category Archives: History

Spy Catcher, The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer

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This book by Peter Wright, former assistant director of England’s MI5, must not have been a best seller.  I bought a hard cover copy at the Westminster, CO library for a dollar as part of their campaign to clear out books no one had been reading.  The book chronicles the author’s quarter of a century in British intelligence.  It is not an easy or fun book to read, because it contains so many details of people, organizations, and events.  It is undoubtedly an excellent reference book for those reasons.

The book presents an astonishing contrast between the British and Soviet intelligence operations.  Seldom is there mention of any Soviet secrets being collected by the British unless the Soviets wanted the British to know the secret.  Practically every British secret of any importance was known by the Soviets, and Stalin often knew it before it had filtered through the British bureaucracy.  The British were a bit similar to the Soviets in their freedom to use any means to gather intelligence.  The author said it was made clear MI5 operated on the basis of the 11th Commandment, “Thou shalt not get caught.”

There are also astonishing indications that some events that were viewed as defeats for the Soviets based on the West learning their secret plans were in reality the outcome desired by the Soviets.  The Cuban missile crisis is one example.  Wright believed the Soviets intentionally allowed the United States to learn they had installed intermediate range missiles in Cuba to create the crises.  Their purpose was to get an agreement from the United States to cease in the attempts to assassinate or overthrow Castro.  The Soviets believed having a staunch ally just off the Keys from Florida was worth the perception the Americans had found their missiles and forced their removal.   Continue reading →

Energy Victory, Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil, Part I

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This book by Robert Zubrin details our current dependence on foreign oil, the consequences of that dependence, and what we could do about it. There is too much information to cover in a single review, so this part will be about the current situation and the consequences. The first sentence of the Preface warns, “America is losing the war on terror.” The author lays much of the blame for that on the wealth being looted to buy oil from the Mideast as a result of our failure to have a competent energy policy, and that money is financing the war against us. Petro dollars have been and are funding Islamic schools that graduate the fanatics who will plan and execute future terrorist acts. Iran is developing nuclear weapons with the proceeds from oil.

The author is no fan of Saudi Arabia, and he provides a history of that country to back up his position. Muhammad ibn Saud and Muhammed ibn Abd al Whahhab formed a partnership in the mid-eighteenth century to foster their belief that the Islamic world had a duty to wage jihad. Their religion deemed that humanity was divided into Muslims, infidels, and polytheists. Once the Muslims conquered an area, the infidels (including Christians and Jews) would be allowed to live as inferiors. The polytheists (Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and “insufficiently orthodox Muslims”) were to be killed without delay. Saud married Wahhab’s daughter, and the Saudi royal family was formed. They began their jihads, and inhabitants of Shiite areas were massacred. In 1932 Ibn Saud proclaimed the conquered areas to be Saudi Arabia and all inhabitants to be personal property of the royal family. He formed alliances with American businessmen to avoid the imperialistic British. Roosevelt signed a treaty with him in World War II to ensure America’s fuel supplies. Continue reading →

Merchant of Power, Samuel Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis

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This book by John F. Wasik is an ideal follow up to the one by Petr Beckman about the best way to produce electrical power, because it is an excellent reference to understand how electricity became so important in our lives. The book tells the remarkable story of Samuel Insull, who escaped an impoverished childhood in England by travelling to America to become the trusted secretary of Thomas Edison. His willingness to work tirelessly combined with his ethical nature endeared him to Edison. He became Edison’s accountant and marketer responsible for finding investors. He had to be aggressive and creative in the constant search for money, because Edison was often on the verge of being broke. Edison arranged to lay the power lines to light Wall Street, but he did not have a method for measuring electrical usage. He made his profits selling light bulbs.

Insull eventually split from Edison’s endeavors, moved to Chicago, and built an empire with power generating capacity and a power grid to light Chicago and other metropolitan areas. He saw everyone without electricity in their homes as a potential new customer. (Sinclair Lewis’s Babbit mocks the residents of Floral Heights and their desire to keep up with the neighbor’s most recent electrical purchases.) Insull built General Electric with financing from J.P. Morgan, and marketed electrical appliances. He became a very wealthy man, which set him up to lose massively in the Depression.

Insull pioneered “massing production,” which was later shortened to “mass production” by Henry Ford. His plants made generators and distribution systems, and he developed and implemented the idea of the government regulating electrical rates. Continue reading →

Which President Authorized Wiretaps?

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George W. Bush faced a storm of criticism and threats of impeachment because he authorized the National Security Agency to use warrantless wiretaps on foreign enemies, but those enemies were communicating with U.S. citizens. Regardless of your position on his actions, his name isn’t the only possible correct answer. The question posed in the title is a trick, because it should say “Which President didn’t authorize wiretaps?” The Time Magazine archives contain several articles on the matter. An article dated May 10, 1976 says there had been six Presidents beginning with FDR who had taken the liberty to authorize wiretaps on suspected “subversives.” I think they missed one, because Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon are mentioned. I’ve found references that Eisenhower was receiving reports from the FBI providing him intelligence collected on his critics. Perhaps he just left authorization from Truman in place. Ford authorized warrantless wiretaps,  so that makes it seven of seven for the time period covered.

Roosevelt’s Attorney General and J.Edgar Hoover had resisted doing wiretaps, but the President overcame their objections with a memo he sent to Attorney General Jackson on May 21, 1940. The book “Roosevelt’s Secret War” says the memo acknowledged the Supreme Court had ruled against the legality of wiretaps. FDR then writes, “I am convinced the Supreme Court never intended any dictum in the particular case which it decided to apply to grave matters involving the defense of the nation.” He then proceeded to authorize wiretaps “of persons suspected of subversive activities.” He did implore that the wiretaps be limited to “…to a minimum and to limit them insofar as possible to aliens”

Not all of the wiretapping was done under the guise of national security. “A squad of FBI men used informants, undercover agents, and bugging to let Lyndon Johnson know what was happening behind the scenes at the 1964 Democratic convention in Atlantic City.” The Nixon administration “…was installing illegal wiretaps and using the Internal Revenue Service to hound its domestic ‘enemies’…”

I haven’t found a President since FDR that didn’t authorize or accept results of warrantless wiretaps “under certain conditions.” President Obama even took the position to maintain the secrecy of the wiretapping authorized by George W. Bush. The thorny issue of how far a President should or can go in infringing on individual rights in the name of national security undoubtedly is not resolved. I’m confident that the Presidents were doing what they thought was necessary to protect the country (except for maybe Johnson and Nixon). However they weren’t listening to Benjamin Franklin’s warning when he said, as listed in Wikiquotes, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  We’ll have to guess what his ghost would say about the actions of many Presidents.

The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear

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This book written by Dr. Petr Beckman was published in 1976, which was several years before I had the pleasure of meeting him. He escaped from Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, and knew plenty about repression. He was Professor of electrical engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and therefore also knew plenty about the generation of energy. I was a subscriber to his “Access to Energy” forum, which advocated that plentiful, inexpensive energy was and is the key to maintaining the incredible freedoms created by a powerful economy. Access to Energy continues to be an excellent pro-energy forum, and it is currently published by Dr. Arthur Robinson.

Dr. Beckman’s acid wit shows up in his dedication of this excellent book, “To Ralph Nader and all who worship the water he walks on.” He then proceeds to discredit Nader’s positions opposing nuclear energy.

The primary point of the book is that there is no safe way to make energy. “Energy is the capacity for doing work, and as long as man is fallible, there is always the possibility that it will do the wrong type of work; to ask for safe energy, therefore, is much the same as asking for incombustible fuel.” However, nuclear energy is “far safer than any other form of energy.” Continue reading →

Health Risks of Plutonium

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The people I worked with at Rocky Flats were experts on handling radioactive materials and limiting exposures and managing risks associated with plutonium and other radioactive and potentially hazardous materials. They were committed to controlling emissions to the lowest possible levels since, after all, many lived with their families close to (even downwind of) the Plant. However, an issue that continues to receive attention is the health risks of low-level plutonium emissions that occurred during the nearly 60 year operations and cleanup of the RF site. GotheBetterWay.org  opposes a proposed beltway that is proposed to be constructed near the Rocky Flats site, and mentions concerns about plutonium contamination.

In an exchange with a commentator, I used the comparative term “very little” to describe an average of 0.006 ounces plutonium per year emitted from routine operations that processed tons of the material at the RFPlant. This is equivalent to 0.2 ppm emission (99.999% capture) for a processing rate of one ton per year.  The commentator responded that “very little” was inappropriate, since his research found “billions of particles per acre.”

This “billions per acre” seems an impressive number until put it in context with concentrations of radioactive elements — and plutonium, in particular — from worldwide fallout (discussed in chapter 25 of the book on this site). The book, “Transuranic Elements in the Environment,” indicates measured fallout levels of plutonium per square kilometer in northern hemisphere soils ranged from 0.1 to 2.2 millicuries (mCi = 0.001 Ci). This is equivalent to some 10 to 300 million billion (i.e., quadrillion) atoms per acre from fallout alone, which is not connected with RFP operations. Epidemiological risk calculations suggested that exposure to fallout plutonium could result in up to 125 to 600 additional cancer deaths (of the US total 500,000 per year), but researchers could not preclude the possibility that no additional cancer deaths would result.

The health risk from radioactive materials like plutonium is an unresolved issue. I’ve posted a review of the book “No Place to Hide,” that discusses the continuing health risks created by historical atmospheric nuclear testing.