Secret Agent

Need to reacquaint yourself with the "XXX" movie franchise that hopes to make a lot of, well, $$$ in its return to theaters this weekend? Samuel L. Jackson is back in action, and moviegoers will still get plenty of bang-bang-bang for their buck. But producers have switched from a foreign locale to domestic, and an engine that's no longer (Vin) Diesel but something a little cooler, like Ice (Cube).

Rex Scouten, whose 48-year career in the White House began with the Trumans and ended with the Clintons, and whose duties included helping first families transition to their oversized new home, died Feb. 20 at a hospital near his home in Fairfax, Va. He was 88. The cause was complications from hip surgery, said his daughter Carol Scouten. Scouten started as a Secret Service agent and ended his career as curator of the White House's art and furnishings. Most of his years were spent as chief usher of the White House, primarily managing the 132-room mansion.

Robert Maloubier likes to tell people he is a retired accountant. That he studied finance in college, that he had a quiet life, that he stopped working at 66. He can barely get the last words out without a chuckle that pulls up the ends of his bushy white mustache so it curls around his cheekbones. "Oh, I love doing that," he says with a satisfied sigh. "Nobody knows about me here. " The truth is Maloubier, 88, never went to college. It's also hard to say whether he ever really retired, though he admits that when he turned 80 he had to stop rollerblading and flying his plane.

The prospect of a business book written by a former CIA officer fills one with dread at the inevitable 007 anecdotes and labored corporate parallels. But "Work Like a Spy: Business Tips From a Former CIA Officer," published by Portfolio, turns out to be rather different. There are no gadgets, few cloaks and fewer daggers: Instead it is a bracingly realistic book about people at work. It is short. It is sharp. Better still, it is sensible. It is also about spying, though only enough to lend a sprinkle of glamour and danger.

A gated Mediterranean owned by actor Pierce Brosnan, who was the fifth James Bond in the long-running film series, has come on the market in Malibu at $3.9 million. Designed as an artist's retreat, the two-story beach house includes a separate space that can be used as an office or media room. The living room has high wood-beam ceilings, walls of glass, a fireplace, plank oak floors, built-in cabinetry and two balconies with ocean and mountain views. Skylights and picture windows bring light into the kitchen.

Secret Agent 702 sounds like the spy who came in from the heat. But it's the name of a new Las Vegas adventure package aimed at thrill seekers who want to go race car driving and ziplining rather than gambling when they visit the 702 (that's the city's area code). The two-day package starts with a limousine pickup at the airport and a stay at Hotel32 , the boutique hotel atop the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino. Day 2 begins with an early morning helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon that touches down at the bottom on a plateau overlooking the Colorado River for a private Champagne breakfast.

Living in an age that has virtually accustomed us to both deliberate and random violence, we may well react somewhat differently from what Joseph Conrad expected of the readers of his tale of espionage and anarchic bombing. Exhausted after completing the huge canvas of "Nostromo" and seriously ill, Conrad had sought warmth in the south of France at Montpellier, where a compelling impulse made him drop his current projects and write what he thought would be a vivid short story titled "Verloc."

The prospect of a business book written by a former CIA officer fills one with dread at the inevitable 007 anecdotes and labored corporate parallels. But "Work Like a Spy: Business Tips From a Former CIA Officer," published by Portfolio, turns out to be rather different. There are no gadgets, few cloaks and fewer daggers: Instead it is a bracingly realistic book about people at work. It is short. It is sharp. Better still, it is sensible. It is also about spying, though only enough to lend a sprinkle of glamour and danger.

Patrick McGoohan, a two-time Emmy Award-winning actor who starred as a British spy in the 1960s TV series "Secret Agent" and gained cult status later in the decade as the star of the enigmatic series "The Prisoner," has died. He was 80. McGoohan, whose career involved stage, screen and TV, died Tuesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica after a short illness, said Cleve Landsberg, McGoohan's son-in-law. The family did not provide further details.

One of two Israeli nationals who were aboard a Mexico cruise ship when Karen Roston died on her honeymoon appeared Thursday as a surprise prosecution witness, announcing he was not a secret agent for the Israeli government, but a wedding photographer on vacation. Maurice Haziza's testimony in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles landed a strong blow to Scott Roston's claim that Israeli agents had strangled his wife, hoisted her overboard and tried to frame him for the murder.

Secret Agent 702 sounds like the spy who came in from the heat. But it's the name of a new Las Vegas adventure package aimed at thrill seekers who want to go race car driving and ziplining rather than gambling when they visit the 702 (that's the city's area code). The two-day package starts with a limousine pickup at the airport and a stay at Hotel32 , the boutique hotel atop the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino. Day 2 begins with an early morning helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon that touches down at the bottom on a plateau overlooking the Colorado River for a private Champagne breakfast.

TAMPA, Fla. - A gun was left unattended on Mitt Romney's charter plane by a member of the U.S. Secret Service on Wednesday as the GOPpresidential nominee flew to Indiana for a campaign rally. During a flight from Tampa to Indianapolis, the weapon was discovered in the lavatory by a CBS News reporter, who alerted agents on the flight, according to an account posted on the television network's website. An agent immediately retrieved the gun. It's unclear how long the firearm was left unattended.

The woman at the heart of the scandal that has tarnished the image of the Secret Service worldwide called the agents she ran into “stupid brutes” in an interview with NBC's “Today.” Dania Londono Suarez, speaking through a translator, had nothing but contempt for the agents and their behavior in Cartagena, Colombia prior to President Obama's arrival for the Summit of the Americas. “They were full of themselves,” she said. “I'm not to blame for being attractive,” she said after being asked if she has culpability for tempting the agents.

WASHINGTON - Three Secret Service agents implicated in a prostitution scandal in Colombia - including two supervisors - are leaving the agency as investigators seek to determine whether the embarrassing episode led to a security breach. Officials said it appeared that none of the 11 Secret Service agents who allegedly brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms in Cartagena before President Obama arrived for the Summit of the Americas last weekend had weapons, radios, schedules or other potentially sensitive material in their rooms.

WASHINGTON - Three Secret Service agents, including two supervisors, who were implicated in the agency's prostitution scandal are leaving the agency as investigators seek to determine whether the embarrassing episode led to a security breach. Officials said none of the 11 Secret Service agents who allegedly brought prostitutes to their hotel rooms in Colombia before President Obama visited for a summit last weekend had weapons, radios, itineraries or other potentially sensitive documents in their rooms.

CARTAGENA, Colombia - As many as a dozen Secret Service agents have been sent home from the Summit of the Americas here this weekend because of allegations of "misconduct," U.S. officials said late Friday. The agents were relieved of duty at the summit and replaced with new agents, according to a Secret Service spokesman. The activities that resulted in the sudden transfer of agents took place prior to President Obama's arrival in Colombia on Friday afternoon, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Thank you for Robert Lloyd's column recognizing the contributions of Patrick McGoohan ["McGoohan Really Had Our Number," Jan. 15]. Like Lloyd, I always wished McGoohan had done more roles. Every time I saw a movie with a smart tough guy, from the first Bond to "Die Hard," I always thought, "He should have had that part!" Rebecca Colson Huntington Beach

"Joseph Conrad's 'The Secret Agent' " from Christopher Hampton is such a dense, faithful and absorbing adaptation of the great writer's 1907 novel about an attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory that you must be prepared to pay exceedingly close attention to it or risk losing your way.

WASHINGTON - Eleven Secret Service agents and five members of the U.S. military working on a security team preparing for President Obama's arrival at a regional summit in Colombia were under investigation Saturday for apparent misconduct involving prostitutes. The incident occurred early Thursday at the Hotel Caribe, a historic beachfront hotel where the advance team was staying in the Caribbean resort city of Cartagena. The episode began when police and hotel personnel began checking hotel rooms as part of the strict security surrounding the weekend Summit of the Americas, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.

John Wood Award-winning British actor John Wood, 81, a British actor who won a Tony Award in 1976 for his role in the Broadway production of Tom Stoppard's "Travesties," died Saturday in his sleep inEngland, his agent announced. Best known for his theater work in London and on Broadway, Wood was nominated for two more Tonys, as Guildenstern in Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," which opened on Broadway in 1967, and as the title character in "Sherlock Holmes," a long-running revival of the 1899 drama that came to Broadway in 1974.