Garbler, Florence
Fitzsimmons. CIA Wife: One Woman's Life Inside the CIA. Santa Barbara,
CA: Fithian Press, 1994.1. Central Intelligence Agency
2. U.S. Spy Cases
3. Cryptography
4. Women's Groups
5. British SAS
6. Ireland
7. Soviet Union/Russia
Garbler, Florence
Fitzsimmons. CIA Wife: One Woman's Life Inside the CIA. Santa Barbara,
CA: Fithian Press, 1994.
Clark comment: The CIA career of Garbler's husband was derailed around 1964 when he came under investigation by James Angleton as a Soviet mole. Paul Garbler's obituary appears in Adam Bernstein, "CIA Cold Warrior Paul Garbler; Won Payment Over Loyalty Slur," Washington Post, 6 Apr. 2006, B6.
Surveillant 3.6 notes that Garbler's husband spent thirty-six years (1942-1978) in the intelligence business and was the first chief of station in Moscow (1962-1964). Garbler blames Richard Helms "as weak for refusing to step in and curtail an out-of-control Angleton who was engaged in a character and career assassination campaign of her husband and others."
According to S.E., CIRA Newsletter 20.2, the "first portion of this book relates a wonderful love story.... Then, despite its title, it begins to represent the memoirs of both husband and wife chronicling their more than 25 years with the Agency.... [I]f the couple were fond of a CIA or cover colleague they usually do not name that person.... Former Director Richard Helms and DDO Tom Karramessines, Foreign Service officers Malcolm Toon and Walter Stoessel, along with others, each come in for their own harsh treatment."
Roosevelt,
Selwa "Lucky". Keeper of the Gate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990.
Clark comment: Selwa Roosevelt was Archie Roosevelt's wife. Surveillant 1.3 notes that Selwa Roosevelt was the chief of protocol in the Reagan White House. In Chapter Sixteen, "CIA Wife," she "briefly details the impact and contrasts of her husband's 30-year CIA career, on her duties as wife, mother, news reporter, and protocol chief."
Slatkin,
Nora. "Women in CIA." CIRA Newsletter 21, no. 3 (Fall 1996):
3- 7.
Speech by the CIA Executive Director to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 15 May 1996.
Foster,
Jane. An Unamerican Lady. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1980.
Constantinides notes that Foster, who worked in Morale Operations with OSS during World War II, was indicted with her husband in 1957 as Soviet agents. In discussing her OSS experiences, Foster "relates much about personal, social, and administrative matters but precious little about her operations." With regard to the charges brought against her, she denies being a Soviet agent but admits that she lied about her Communist Party membership and marital status. The indictment against Foster came on the basis of information from FBI double agent Boris Morros. See Morros, My Ten Years as a Counterspy (1959).
Olmsted, Kathryn S. "Blond Queens, Red Spiders and Neurotic Old Maids: Gender and Espionage in the Early Cold War." Intellihence and national security 19, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 78-94.
Elizabeth Bentley, Judith Coplon, Priscilla Hiss, and Ethel Rosenberg "received the most media coverage of any female Communist spies, and their cases best illustrate the gender constructions used to interpret them."
Childs,
James R. "Breaking Codes Was This Couple's Lifetime Career." Smithsonian
Magazine 18, no. 3 (1987): 128-144.
The Friedmans.
Laville,
Helen. "The Committee of Correspondence: CIA Funding of Women's Groups,
1952-1967." Intelligence and National Security 12, no. 1 (Jan.
1997): 104-121.
This is a well-conceived article on a little-researched topic. The author sees CIA financial assistance to the New York-based women's group, the Committee of Correspondence, as part of the Eisenhower administration's effort "to devolve a large part of the responsibility for overseas propaganda on to the private sector." Her conclusion that "the relationship between the government and the Committee was based on shared goals and an understanding by government that the members of the Committee were the experts in the field" is on the mark. The greatest wrong note sounded by Laville is her refusal in the face of all evidence to the contrary to give up on the idea that the CIA in some way "controlled" the Committee's activities.
Laville, Helen. "The Memorial Day Statement: Women's Organizations in the 'Peace Offensive.'" Intelligence and National Security 18, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 192-210.
The 1951 Memorial Day Statement, signed by the leaders of 10 women's organizations, "re-affirmed American women's gendered commitment to peace but defined this peace in a way which could oppose and thwart the aims of the Soviet peace offensive.... They became less partisans for peace and more advocates of a ... peace ... which demanded such corollaries as freedom and democracy."
Van
Voris, Jacqueline. The Committee of Correspondence: Women with a World
Vision. Northhampton, MA: Interchange, 1989.
Ford, Sarah. One Up: A Woman in Action with the SAS. London: HarperCollins, 1997. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. [pb]
According to CASIS Intelligence Newsletter 31/28, this autobiographical book describes the author's "two years as a member of the 14 Intelligence Company of the British Special Air Service (SAS)." The unit, formed in 1974, "provide[s] surveillance in the most hostile parts of Northern Ireland." West, History 26.1, notes that this book is written by the first woman member of this "extraordinarily secretive" unit. The organization "mounts highly sophisticated surveillance operations." See also, James Rennie, The Operators (1997).
McCoole, Sinéad. No Ordinary Women: Irish Female Activists in the Revolutionary Years 1900-1923. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. Dublin: O'Brien Press, 2003.
From publisher: "Spies, snipers, couriers, gun-runners, medics -- women played a major role in the fight for Ireland's freedom, risking loss of life and family for a cause to which they were totally committed." This work includes the biographies of sixty-five women activists.
Ryan, Meda. Michael Collins and the Women Who Spied for Ireland. Dublin: Mercier Press, 2006.
7. Soviet Union/Russia
Fischer, Benjamin B. "Farewell to Sonia, the Spy Who Haunted Britain." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 15, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 61-76.
Fischer notes that, strictly speaking, Ruth Werner "was not ... a spy. As a GRU ... agent and illegal who served as liaison between the Moscow Center and the real spies, she was rather a spy-handler." As SONIA of the Venona transcripts, she handled both Klaus Fuchs and Melita Norwood, work that "put[s] her in the superstar category" in espionage history.
Kronenbitter, Rita T.
1. "The Okhrana's Female Agents: Part I: Russian Women." Studies in Intelligence 9, no. 2 (Spring 1965): 25-41.
"The Okhrana depended heavily on female agents, particularly in foreign operations.... The best of the female operatives ... [had] their paramount motivation in patriotism and devotion to the anti-revolutionary cause.... Women could be the most valuable of agents, engaged in extremely dangerous or sensitive operations, but they never held positions entailing any kind of supervisory function."
2. "The Okhrana's Female Agents: Part II: Indigenous Recruits." Studies in Intelligence 9, no. 3 (Summer 1965): 59-78.
The author extends her story to the Okhrana's non-Russian female agents.
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