Volume 9, Number 10 · December 7, 1967
Bogey Men
By A.J.P. Taylor
The Espionage Establishment
by David Wise, by Thomas B. Ross
Random House, 308 pp., $5.95
Spies are big business nowadays. Every major Power has ten or twenty thousand on the payroll.There is a spy serial on most television circuits nearly every night, and spy stories make the best money for writers. Scientists perfect the most ingenious devices for spies. Politicians tremble before them. Nearly everyone probably has a spy living next door or at any rate in the same street. Yet when one asks what it is all for, there is no easy answer. The spies, it seems, are like the nuclear deterrent, simply engaged in canceling each other out. In the last resort, the espionage establishment, as our authors call the spy system, has exactly the same aim as any other establishment: jobs for the Boys. Spying pays high salaries and gives an illusory self-esteem to its operators. For those outside the game, it does no good and some harm.
Review, 2265 words
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