Former Spies Talk to David Grann About Espionage in the Real World
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2017
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Russia’s effort to undermine the 2016 U.S. election shows that covert operations are as much a danger now as they were at the height of the Cold War. The staff writer David Grann moderated a panel at the 2013 New Yorker Festival that included Tony Mendez, the former C.I.A. agent whose exploits in Iran inspired the movie “Argo”; Jeff Moss, who founded the hacker conference DEFCON and now advises the Department of Homeland Security; Stella Rimington, a former director of the British intelligence agency M.I.5; and Joe Weisberg, the former C.I.A. officer who created the TV show “The Americans.” They debate the value of human intelligence versus surveillance, the differences between American and British intelligence, the ethics of assassination and drones, and whether espionage sometimes does more harm than good.
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| 1:13.2 | I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, the New Yorker's David |
| 1:18.4 | Grand talks to a panel of former spies at the 2013 New Yorker Festival. They'll discuss |
| 1:24.7 | how espionage has changed since the Cold War and how advances in technology |
| 1:29.3 | have changed the way spies work. |
| 1:32.5 | Now, I'm incredibly honored to moderate such an extraordinary panel. |
| 1:38.1 | Tony Mendez is a decorated American spy who worked at the CIA for 25 years. |
| 1:45.0 | Known as a master of disguises, he specialized in carrying out |
| 1:49.3 | exfiltration operations, which involved getting people out of hostile countries |
| 1:55.3 | before they would be killed. |
| 1:58.2 | In 1979, he devised and oversaw a daring plot to liberate six American diplomats |
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