Wednesday-Night

Swiss files on rogue nuclear ambitions, CIA dealings destroyed
Switzerland destroyed computer records documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers with suspected ties to Libya and Iran. Both Swiss prosecutors and international atomic inspectors hoping to discover the full activities of Pakistani nuclear scientist and black-market engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan desired to see the records of Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, who had connections with both Dr. Khan and the rogue nations who sought his services. The U.S. urged that the files be destroyed, ostensibly to ensure that terrorists never received the files but also to hide evidence that the CIA paid the Tinners tens of millions to discover details about Libya’s bomb program, Iran’s nuclear program and Dr. Khan’s dealings. The New York Times (8/25)

This is an extraordinary story. We will watch for more on it.
(Ottawa Citizen) One man’s China crusade
… the FBI has named China as the biggest intelligence threat to the U.S., says Mr. McAdam.
And Canada, he says, is now known as “one of the world’s centres for Chinese organized crime and espionage.”
Last year, CSIS director Jim Judd testified before the Senate that nearly half of all spies from 15 countries who operate in Canada work for China — and consume half his counter-espionage resources.

Clamour grows to save Bletchley Park

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(The Independent) Large parts of the park are in a state of advanced decay, with its iconic wooden huts – in which the elite recruits worked – rapidly deteriorating. It is estimated that £10m is needed to save the site for future generations – and transform Bletchley into a world-class visitor centre to immortalise one of the most extraordinary episodes in Britain’s history.
The country’s most brilliant minds – from mathematicians to crossword experts – were recruited to work at the centre located on the “Varsity Line” railway between Oxford and Cambridge universities, from where many of the code-breakers came.
The team, led by the cryptographer Alan Turing, eventually cracked the Enigma code, thought to be unbreakable by the Nazis. After the war, Winston Churchill had all records of Bletchley destroyed in order to prevent the Soviet Union from gaining its intelligence.

August 19
The name is Child, Julia Child

Julia Child: The OSS Years
(WSJ) First as senior typist in the Office of War Information (August 1942), then as junior research assistant in the office of OSS Director “Wild” Bill Donovan, Julia joined America’s novice intelligence team: the Ivy Leaguers, the Martini-drinking best and brightest, many of whose names have only recently been revealed, including Allen Dulles, later head of the CIA, and future Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg.
Julia “rose through the ranks” from senior clerk to administrative assistant, organizing a large office. She lived in the Brighton Hotel.
When she heard in 1943 that the OSS wanted volunteers for service in India, she applied; bored and in search of adventure.
August 14
Documents: Julia Child part of WWII era spy ring
WASHINGTON (AP) — Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.
The secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.
They were soldiers, actors, historians, lawyers, athletes, professors, reporters. But for several years during World War II, they were known simply as the OSS. They studied military plans, created propaganda, infiltrated enemy ranks and stirred resistance among foreign troops.
Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in “The Godfather”; and Thomas Braden, an author whose “Eight Is Enough” book inspired the 1970s television series.
Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.