The Spy Decade

The 1960’s was the Decade of the Spy. The first James Bond nov­el, “Casi­no Royale”, was pub­lished in 1952, but it was­n’t until the 1960’s that they became huge­ly pop­u­lar with the release of the first movie, “Doc­tor No”, in 1962, lead­ing to the movie fran­chise that con­tin­ues to this day. This pop­u­lar­i­ty did not go unno­ticed by the var­i­ous movie and TV pro­duc­ers and net­works: Eng­land had the very British TV shows like “The Avengers” and “Dan­ger Man” / “Secret Agent”, while “MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE” and “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” ran on Amer­i­can TV (which also re-broad­cast the British TV shows.)

“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”

The Unit­ed Network Command for Law and Enforce­ment was a fic­tion­al glob­al orga­ni­za­tion, main­ly cre­at­ed to con­front mul­ti-nation­al crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions such as THRUSH but also an assort­ment of left-over Nazis, the odd mad sci­en­tist, and oth­er threats to world peace and order. Agents Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Illya Kuryakin (David McCal­lum) were the orga­ni­za­tion’s top field agents, com­mand­ed by Mr. Waver­ly (Leo G. Car­roll), the head of the orga­ni­za­tion, from their New York City headquarters.

As would be expect­ed, giv­en that these pro­grams often mixed the fan­tas­tic with the mun­dane, they had sev­er­al fan­tas­ti­cal hyp­no­sis and mind con­trol episodes, which will be dealt with later.

But could there be a mun­dane, real-life hyp­not­ic spy? More­over, could there be proof of one? The answer is, sur­pris­ing­ly, yes.

“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.‘s ABC of Espionage”

The series’ pop­u­lar­l­i­ty engen­dered a wave of spin-off mer­chan­dise: tie-in nov­els (but no actu­al nov­el­iza­tions of any of the episodes) and short sto­ry col­lec­tions, com­pi­la­tion movies, toys ¹ and some non-fic­tion books, and one such non-fic­tion book in par­tic­u­lar: “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.‘s A B C of Espionage”.

Rita, the Beautiul Spy Who Hypnotized Me

“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.‘s A B C of Espi­onage” (1966) was writ­ten by John Hill. ² At first glance, this might look like just a quick­ly-writ­ten attempt to take advan­tage of the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the TV series, but, in fact, it is very researched, espe­cial­ly in describ­ing how the Sovi­et spy sys­tem trained its spies and oper­at­ed dur­ing the Cold War.

Fan­tas­tic? It’s all true. Here’s the book that intro­duces you to the world’s mas­ter spies, from Richard Sorge to Mad­mem­oi­selle Ger­maine: here’s where you’ll dis­cov­er that what Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin do on TV is only what real spies do — every­day, everywhere!

(The inside fly­leaf lists four books from this pub­lish­er: two Girl From U.N.C.L.E. nov­els, one John le Car­ré nov­el, and “Goldfin­ger”: the cir­cle is now complete.)

One chap­ter titled “How to Look After Your­self” con­tained the sec­tion ‘Rita, the Beau­tiul Spy’. Rita Elliott was a Sovi­et spy and hyp­no­tist. Her cov­er was that of a cir­cus per­former, which allowed her to meet her tar­gets socially.

The charm­ing, good-look­ing woman found com­par­i­tive­ly easy to attract men. … they accept­ed invi­ta­tions to her apart­ment. There she offered drinks into which she had mixed drugs that tem­porar­i­ly affect­ed each vic­tim’s will. She then hyp­no­tized the man and sug­gest­ed he was speak­ing to his supe­ri­or. Expert­ly ques­tioned, the man spoke freely … The impor­tance of this method was that before bring­ing the hyp­no­tized man back to nor­mal, she ordered him, upon awak­en­ing, to for­get every­thing he had said, to remem­ber only that they had been drink­ing together.

This seems a lit­tle far-fetched, giv­en what is known about hyp­no­sis: that lev­el of amne­sia or coop­er­a­tion is dif­fi­cult to achieve with­out a great deal of prepa­ra­tion and lack of dis­trust, so I would sur­mise that whichev­er com­bi­na­tion of drugs made the whole thing pos­si­ble. Still, I con­sid­ered this was a fic­tion­al sto­ry, cre­at­ed for the pur­pos­es of the book. Still, I checked every book on spies I found, to see if they also had this story.

And I found one.

“Women Spies: Who They Are and How They Operate Today”

Much, much lat­er, I found “Women Spies: Who They Are and How They Oper­ate Today” (1971) by J. (Joseph) Bernard Hut­ton. This is a book on exact­ly that: sto­ries of famous, infa­mous, and unfamous female spies dur­ing the Cold War. Hut­ton wrote sev­er­al books on espi­onage, includ­ing “School for Spies: The ABC of How Rus­si­a’s Secret Ser­vice Oper­ates” and “Women in Espi­onage: The Role of Female Agents Includ­ing the Work­ings of East­ern and West­ern Secret Ser­vices”, which may be this book under a dif­fer­ent title.

‘Rita, an Unusual Variety Artiste’

Rita was a Sovi­et spy in Aus­tralia in the 1950’s with an unusu­al espi­onage method: hyp­no­sis. Her cov­er sto­ry allowed her to meet peo­ple, invite them to her apart­ment for drinks, where she would drug and then, under the drug’s influ­ence, hyp­no­tize them and inter­ro­gate them. She would also induce amne­sia so her sub­jects would­n’t real­ize what she did. It sounds fan­tas­tic, but the offi­cial report stated:

There she plied her guests with drinks in which she mixed a drug, tem­porar­i­ly con­vert­ing them into a will-less object. She could then eas­i­ly hyp­no­tize the sub­ject and sug­gest they were mak­ing a report to his superior.

The book’s chap­ter relates she was oper­at­ing for at least five years, until she went dark when the Aus­tralian spy agen­cies sus­pect­ed her. She lat­er dis­ap­peared into East Asia.

Okay, good, good. But is this good enough to con­firm the sto­ry? After all, the sec­ond book was print­ed five years after the first book. There is always the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the sec­ond book just lift­ed the sto­ry from the first, since there is no attri­bu­tion in either to show where the sto­ry came from.

Confirmation?

After some Intenet sleuthing, I think I found the orig­i­nal source of this sto­ry: a New York Times news­pa­per arti­cle enti­tled “Com­pos­ite Por­trait of a Sovi­et Spy” from Feb­ru­ary 16, 1964.

The tech­niques employed by the Sovi­et woman spy today are far in advance of any­thing prac­tised in the last war. One is to doc­tor her vic­tim’s drink with a par­tic­u­lar drug that vir­tu­al­ly destroys his will to resist her ques­tion­ing. She then hyp­no­tizes him into a trance, in which he thinks he is mak­ing a report to a supe­ri­or offi­cer. Under her expert inter­ro­ga­tion, he usu­al­ly answers with the utmost can­dor. Before he comes out of his trance, she orders him to for­get what has hap­pened and to remem­ber noth­ing more than their hav­ing a social drink together.

A Russ­ian woman who went by the name of Rita Elliott recent­ly employed this tech­nique in Aus­tralia to find out what was going on at the Woomera range and atom­ic research sta­tions. She posed as a cir­cus artiste, and even­tu­al­ly, feel­ing she was under sus­pi­cion, she left the coun­try in a tour­ing cabaret, mak­ing her way back to the Sovi­et Union via India and Afghanistan.

The arti­cle itself has no byline, so it appears that the infor­ma­tion in the arti­cle derives from H. Mont­gomery Hyde, who served in British Intel­li­gence in World War II. His book “Room 3603: The Incred­i­ble True Sto­ry of Secret Intel­li­gence Oper­a­tions Dur­ing World War II”  has a for­ward by one of his co-work­ers in the Intel­li­gence ser­vice, Ian Flem­ing. The arti­cle details the process of train­ing Sovi­et spies that was also includ­ed in the Man From U.N.C.L.E. book.

So, is the sto­ry con­firmed? I would say, yes.

So, are spies using the same tech­nique, today? I would say, maybe. 

Addenda

This post is based on two posts on BlueSky:

• The Spy Era and the Man From U.N.C.L.E.
• Women Spies

1. One of the toys was a plas­tic brief­case con­tain­ing a col­lapsable sniper rifle: such were the inno­cent days.
2. John Hill was a pseu­do­nym of pro­lif­ic author Dean Koontz: how­ev­er, it does­n’t con­firm he wrote this book.