Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Logging on...


(illustration of the Soviet Agat-4 which was a copy of the apple II computer)


The first spy balloon in history:


Feb 10, 1962: Gary Powers was exchanged for KGB agent Willie Fisher, aka Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, real name William August Fisher at Glienicker Bridge Berlin.



Depicted in the 2015 movie...



Also worth noting Abel's film career began back in '68 when he performed an opening monologue in the Dead Season film (Myortvyy sezon) directed by Savva Kulish, which also featured a 'spy' exchange at the Glienicker Bridge.

The film “the Dead Season” served another purpose. Its director Savva Kulish was openly given advisers from the KGB. The film was preceded by a 10-minute speech by a real Soviet intelligence officer - Rudolf Abel (Vilyam Fisher) - who was arrested in the USA by the FBI in 1957 and in 1962 was exchanged for the U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers. The KGB intelligence officer’s speech was intended to make the film more “documentary”. The “Dead Season” presented the KGB version of Konon Molody’s exposure in London, his imprisonment and safe return to the Motherland.

In the Dead Season, KGB intelligence officers were depicted in a manner reminiscent of the famous British spy movie the Ipcress File (1965): they were the heroes who bravely penetrated the German army’s highest echelons during World War II and who kept fighting against inhuman Fascist scientists who not only escaped punishment but were hired by the Western intelligence after the war. The main character, inspired by Konan Molody, was a Soviet intelligence officer who was sent to the West to unmask a German scientist who was developing a new type of weapon, even more terrible than the atom bomb.

The “Dead Season” was extremely successful: more than 100 million people watched this film during its first nine months.

Propaganda, KGB style

Putin allegedly said it inspired him to join the KGB.

Weapons used in the Dead Season







Cold War podcasts:
Gary Powers & the 1960 U2 Incident  | The Bridge of Spies spy


Feb 10, 1968: national security adviser Walt W. Rostow alerted LBJ about a secret operation (Fracture Jaw) organized by Gen. William Westmoreland that included moving nuclear weapons to South Vietnam. Historian Michael Beschloss discovered the documents.




NY Times (archived)