Espionage

The question at the heart of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is simplicity itself: Is there a Soviet secret agent at the very highest echelons of British intelligence? Getting to the answer, however, couldn't be more deliciously, thrillingly, brilliantly complex. Starring a surprising Gary Oldman and masterfully directed by Tomas Alfredson, "Tinker Tailor" comes by that complexity honestly, courtesy of the subtle, allusive 1974 John le Carré novel set in a merciless espionage world where trust is an illusion and nothing is remotely what it seems.

WASHINGTON - Concerned about possible cyber spying, U.S. national security officials are debating whether to take the unprecedented step of recommending that a Chinese government-owned mobile phone giant be denied a license to offer international service to American customers. China Mobile, the world's largest mobile provider, applied in October for a license from the Federal Communications Commission to provide service between China and the United States and to build facilities on American soil.

Finally released after spending half of his life in prison, and still he had to wait. So Christopher Boyce hung around the prison parking lot, rubbernecking, taking in the fresh air around Sheridan, Ore., unsure what to make of freedom. A half hour went by before the big Suburban at last came lumbering up the driveway, carrying his father, a former FBI agent, and his mother, once a Catholic nun.

The question at the heart of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is simplicity itself: Is there a Soviet secret agent at the very highest echelons of British intelligence? Getting to the answer, however, couldn't be more deliciously, thrillingly, brilliantly complex. Starring a surprising Gary Oldman and masterfully directed by Tomas Alfredson, "Tinker Tailor" comes by that complexity honestly, courtesy of the subtle, allusive 1974 John le Carré novel set in a merciless espionage world where trust is an illusion and nothing is remotely what it seems.

North Korea's intelligence agency has arrested some of the country's own citizens and a foreigner for spying, the official Korean Central News Agency said. An unnamed foreign spy agency allegedly hired North Koreans who frequently travel abroad to carry out espionage on major military facilities and strategic locations in North Korea, the agency said.

Researcher Igor V. Sutyagin was found guilty of espionage, Russian news agencies reported. Sutyagin, a scholar at Moscow's respected USA-Canada Institute, was jailed in October 1999 on charges that he sold information on nuclear submarines and missile warning systems to a British company that Russian investigators assert was a CIA cover. Sutyagin maintained that the analyses he wrote were based on open sources and that he had no reason to suspect the company.

The case of a Chinese businessman charged with illegally shipping missile guidance technology to China's military has intensified concerns about espionage in the Silicon Valley. Qing Chang Jiang is at least the fourth Chinese native indicted since October on charges involving the shipment of equipment or trade secrets to China from this region.

A 23-year-old Marine corporal stationed in Yuma, Ariz., has been arrested on suspicion of attempted espionage, Navy officials said Thursday. The incident involved national defense matters unrelated to the Persian Gulf War, the officials said. Charles Lee Francis Anzalone, a field telephone wire specialist assigned to the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, was arrested Feb. 13 by Naval Investigative Service agents after a four-month joint investigation with the FBI.

SAN JOSE -- Two engineers about to go on trial on charges of stealing confidential computer chip designs from their Silicon Valley employer and a partner firm were indicted Wednesday on the rare and more serious charge of economic espionage, prosecutors said. The indictment returned by a grand jury in U.S.

Georgian authorities detained four Russian military officers on spying charges, and security forces surrounded Russia's military headquarters in Tbilisi to demand that a fifth suspect be handed over, Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili said. The Russian Foreign Ministry demanded the officers' immediate release and said the allegations were unfounded.

There's some grim diversion in watching Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro kill, kill, kill often while avoiding being killed, killed, killed in the fact-based but heavily hog-washed espionage thriller "Killer Elite. " But the script is a mess. It's an object lesson in taking a nonfiction book ("The Feather Men," about a cadre of ex-British Special Air Service operatives) and making a hash of it. The higher the body count, the lower the human stakes. When Statham utters "I'm done with killing," that patented Statham just getting started, mate glare suggests otherwise.

Iranian authorities imposed a harsh, eight-year sentence on two Americans arrested along the border with Iraq in 2009, state television cited an unnamed judicial source as saying Saturday, in a stunning verdict that could further strain relations between Washington and Tehran. Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, who have already been held in Tehran's infamous Evin Prison for two years, have 20 days to appeal their convictions on charges of illegal entry into Iranian territory and espionage.

Thomas Andrews Drake, the former National Security Agency employee accused of leaking classified information to a reporter, pleaded guilty Friday to one misdemeanor count of "exceeding the authorized use of a computer. " It's a much lesser offense than the Espionage Act and false-statement violations Drake was originally charged with, and represents a major reversal of the government's initial legal stance that he jeopardized national security. "I hope this is the death knell of using the Espionage Act to send a message to 'leakers' who are more often than not whistle-blowers," said Jesselyn Radack, who represents Drake in a separate case involving the NSA. "This was the wrong person, this was the wrong case, and the Espionage Act was an overreach," Radack said.

During the writing of an early draft of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," recalls John le Carré in an introduction to his classic spy novel, now reissued by Penguin Books along with a selection of his other works, he was banging his head against the wall. For a long time, he tried to make the story of a quest to ferret out a double agent in the British secret service succeed without flashbacks. After months of frustration, Le Carré took the manuscript into his garden and burned it. Such is the diligence of the master craftsman.

Iran declared Saturday that it had uncovered and dismantled what it called a U.S. "espionage and sabotage network" and arrested 30 people allegedly spying for the CIA. Tehran claimed that it also had identified and exposed 42 others in connection with the suspected U.S. spy network, according to a widely disseminated statement by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The statement alleged that the network was run by CIA agents via U.S. embassies in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Malaysia and sought to "gather information from scientific, research and academic centers … especially in terms of nuclear energy, aerospace and defense industries and biotechnology" as well as on oil and gas pipelines, telecommunications and electricity networks and border controls.

"Chaos," which premieres Friday on CBS, is a new spymedy — I am registering that word with the Department of Neologisms, but you may use it for a small consideration — from Tom Spezialy. His name was formerly attached, as an executive producer and sometime writer, to "Reaper," which I take as a recommendation, and "Desperate Housewives," not so much. When I hear the word "chaos" in the context of espionage, I of course think of the evil KAOS from "Get Smart," but here they are the good guys, CHAOS standing for Clandestine Administration and Oversight Services, a supposed department of the CIA. They have seemingly imagined an "H" somewhere in the word "Clandestine" or perhaps sitting silently before "Administration" — but that is just that sort of creative thinking that makes good spies, I guess.

The case against a Spokane couple accused of espionage centers on allegations that one of them brought home top-secret government documents and the other sold them. On Monday, however, the existence of those documents was called into question. The attorney for Deborah Davila said there is no proof she or her husband, Rafael, ever had any classified documents. And the National Guard -- the agency from which the documents allegedly came -- said it can find nothing missing.

An anti-espionage poster by the West German counterintelligence service that depicts a pretty blonde smiling seductively over her shoulder has sparked complaints of sexual discrimination. The public service union said it demanded the withdrawal of the poster after receiving a complaint from a female customs officer who was offended by the depiction of woman as seductress.

Contemporary history is seldom as relevant and engaging as Douglas Waller's new biography, "Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage," which is ? by turns ? fascinatingly instructive and thoroughly entertaining. Waller, a former Time correspondent and the author of an excellent biography of Gen. Billy Mitchell, has a great ally in his subject, who was a larger-than-life personality in an American Century favored with more than its share of outsized figures.

Erskine Childers was born in London in 1870 and educated at Cambridge; he married an American, fell in love with Ireland and served with distinction on the English side during World War I. Later he joined the Irish Republican Army, running guns and fighting against the British ? offenses for which he was arrested, sentenced and swiftly executed in the Irish Civil War of 1922. His was a life of tragic gallantry and compromised loyalties, issues very much at the heart of his sole novel, "The Riddle of the Sands," first published in 1903 and newly reissued, enshrined indeed, with the shiny black spine of a Penguin Classic and as a new edition from Adlard Coles Nautical, complete with maps and photos of places of the novel's locales.