It's Wednesday, December 6, 2023.

I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

Analysts of literature point out that there are a limited number of plots that are persistent.

As you look at novels, you look at short stories, you come to understand that there is no infinite number of plots

that are out there to be developed. Instead, there are some recurring plots and the details are changed.

The sequence may be changed, the dialogue is changed, but the basic shape of the story continues.

There are murder stories, murder mysteries, there are trial stories, There are medical urgency stories. There are

mysteries. There are morality tales. There are family dramas. There are

marriage and love stories. A basic number of structural stories and one of the most interesting

of those long lasting stories is the spy story the espionage story. There's a reason why it attracts our attention and there's a

reason why it became an explosive arena of literature in the 20th century. It's

because there was so much espionage in Spycraft taking place.

As you look at the major wars of the 20th century, the espionage that was behind World War

1 pales in what came later in World War II, but let's just remind ourselves that the American entry

into World War I came as a result of espionage. The United States government had

come into possession of a telegram from a senior German official named

Zimmerman to the government of Mexico.

It became known infamously as the Zimmerman telegram. And once the American government had it,

the American government understood it was at war.

Because Imperial Germany was making a deal with Mexico

that if Mexico came into an alliance with Germany against the United States,

Imperial Germany would work to return Mexican territory, including Texas and much of the

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