By Ray Batvinis First published in the December 2012 issue of The Grapevine, Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI At 7:55 on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, 22-year-old Dwayne Logan Eskridge was in the Honolulu FBI office, sitting alone at his radio transmitter in a gun vault—spinning dials, checking frequencies and tightening […]
By Ray Batvinis First published in May 2013 issue of The Grapevine, Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI One of the strangest cases in FBI history occurred 73 years ago this month when FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered Special Agent M. Clair Spear to chaperon Carl Norden as he sailed from New […]
Christopher Boyce’s 1985 testimony to Congress about security at government contractors and effectiveness of security awareness programs. This three-part video is from 1998 episodes of CI-TV with host David Major, retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent. Christopher Boyce had been an employee of a government contractor with a top secret security clearance and worked in a […]
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr talked about the book they wrote with Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press; May 26, 2009). Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, was given unprecedented access to Stalin-era KBG records that allowed him and his co-authors to present an unprecedented […]
For the past few months I have been doing some background reading for a book project that I’m considering. I just finished Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel’s Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy, the remarkable 1995 biography of Theodore Hall, the teenage Harvard physicist wunderkind working at Los Alamos, who gave […]
From a joint conference of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Georgetown University Center for Peace and Security Studies. Extracts from a November 1976 interview with James Angleton who retired in 1975 as the head of counterintelligence at the CIA.
Coming in April 2014 from University Press of Kansas: Hoover’s Secret War Against Axis Spies FBI Counterespionage During World War II By Raymond J. Batvinis April 2014 312 pages, 24 photographs, 6 x 9 Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-1952-8, $34.95 The world was at war, America precariously poised on the sidelines. But already a second secret […]
I was honored to be part of a recent event at the National Law Enforcement Museum in Washington, DC. The family of FBI Special Agent Thomas M. McDade was giving the museum copies of a diary McDade kept while in the Bureau during the years 1934 to 1938. One of the most memorable events of […]
New original source documents have been added at the end of the article, The Strange Wartime Odyssey of Louis C. Beck: ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS (in .pdf): 20 June 1940: Telegram to Secretary of State concerning evidence about Henry Antheil’s activities 22 June 1940: Telegram on Antheil case 23 June 1940: Telegram on Antheil case; Translation of a Letter to Antheil […]
Video footage of FBI Special Agents training with various firearms in the 1930s. Video has no sound; video is in color towards the end. If you know of someone in the video or know of more information about the training location or type of weapons, please contact me.
Video of the facilities and techniques of the FBI and its agent training and dramatizes apprehensions. Reel 1, J. Edgar Hoover introduces the film. Fingerprints and criminal files are shown and explained. Dramatizes events in the capture of John Dillinger. Personages, Homer S. Cummings, John Dillinger. Reel 2 shows prominent persons, places, and objects in […]
On October 1, 2013, former FBI Special Agent Mike Rochford, author David Wise, and psychiatrist David Charney talked about the career of Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who spied for the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia for 22 years. The speakers focused on the contradictory nature of Hanssen, a self-described “patriot” who committed espionage against […]
By David Wise in the October 2013 issue of the Smithsonian magazine One spring night in 1962 a short, stocky Russian walked into the FBI office in Midtown Manhattan and offered his services as a spy for the United States. Aleksei Kulak, then 39, was working undercover as a science official at the United Nations. […]
From James Hoyer Investigative Law Firm: James Hoyer Lead Investigator Al Scudieri is President of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI. This week, he presided over the organization’s national convention in Sun Valley, Idaho. Every year, the Society pays tribute to agents killed in the line of duty in the region where the […]
At the Newseum, I explain how Robert Hanssen orchestrated his career to avoid being too closely scrutinized by the FBI. After the Hanssen case broke, the FBI revamped its procedures for regular screening of its own agents. I joined author David Vise in the discussion of this case. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
The Doublecross system during World War II Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Follows twenty-seven year old law school graduate, Tom Holliday, progress through thirteen week training course at FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. Trainees learn when, where, what, and how to investigate bank robbies, kidnappings, extortion and espionage crimes, and laws and federal statutes covering these crimes. Demonstrates how to photograph and read burned paper, how to […]
Shows FBI Hoover building and describes mission of Bureau. Shows old footage of 1930’s gansters, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, “Babyface” Nelson, “Prettyboy” Floyd, and John Dillinger to illustrate how aggressive Agency was at solving crimes under Director Hoover. Discusses expansion of agency after WW II to include investigations of espionage, sabotage, loan sharks, interstate gambling, […]
Military Newsreels 1942, Issue 12 Nazi spies are tried in the Supreme Court. Shows FBI agents with incendiary devices carried by the Germans who landed on the Atlantic shore from a submarine. Personages- John Edgar Hoover and Attorney General Biddle.
Careless talk costs lives propaganda from World War Two. Good soldiers on leave scenes. One tells his mother something and she spreads it around. Also warnings about foreigners in occupied countries, don’t trust them. North Africa. Military training film.
You must be logged in to post a comment.