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Fire On Fire: Chapter 14
(Ch. 13) ... (Ch. 1)
II Gallery II Tag List Application II Symbol Guide II
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Summary: Who watches the watcher?
WARNINGS: The usual Espionage stuff, Implied substance abuse
A/N: Sorry for the wait, y'all! I'm going away for the holidays soon so it might be a lil bit before I can publish another section of FOF again but I do have some more Hallmark AU content coming your way in the meantime! 💖
Taglist: @latibvles @softguarnere @brassknucklespeirs @mccall-muffin @holdingforgeneralhugs @emmythespacecowgirl @parajumpboots @vibing-away @lieutenant-speirs @wwhatev3r
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Contemporary: September 20th, 1944. Oosterbeek, Netherlands.
The first time Alix saw the man wearing glasses, she didn’t think much of him. He had entered the café a few minutes after her and sat a few tables back, casually spreading the day’s newspaper out onto the small, round table in front of him.
The freshly-cleaned windows were too foggy to see properly so with a huff, Alix subtly shifted in her seat and retrieved her makeup compact from her purse. 
Pretending to inspect her eyeliner, she was just able to glimpse the pattern of his tweed suit jacket a few seats behind her and for a fleeting moment, she thought she saw him watching her.
But she must have been mistaken because when she checked again, he was summoning a waiter to inquire about something off the menu like any other patron.
Once is normal, she reminded herself, looking out the window as she waited for her target to pass by. It's fine.
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The second time Alix saw him was later that day, in Prince of Orange Park, while she was following her mark. 
A slight autumn breeze rustled through the brightly-colored foliage with a gentle crunch and crackle, reminding her of better days at a home so far away that sometimes, she could scarcely believe it had ever existed at all.
If only Gio could be here, she thought sadly as she admired the orange glow of the falling leaves. He would've loved this. 
Her talented brother's favorite escape-- besides the cinema-- had been his art. He would spend hours wandering their vast backyard, scouring the landscape for the perfect place to set up his easel and pastels or paints.
 
Alix's chest ached at the memory now. 
She would've given anything to receive another letter from him, the stationary mottled with colorful smudges, the evidence of his latest creation. 
"You'd better be saving these, passerotta," Gio had joked after Alix had commented on the waxy staining on his latest letter. "They're Martinelli originals and they're already signed!"
Passerotta.
Her heart sank.
Little Sparrow, Gio's nickname for her since they were children due to her black eyes, playful antics, and small stature.
Oh the irony.
Her brother's passerotta was long gone, she thought sadly. The OSS Sparrow Program had ensured that.
Now only the killer in her remained.
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At least everything was going according to plan. Lieutenant Kruger had exited his meeting with some collaborators exactly on schedule– at least that intel was good– and Alix knew he would need to cross the park on his way to receive his orders from his superiors.
For a supposedly sick man, the gaunt SS officer was speeding along at an incredible pace and from the little she had seen of his face in person compared to the dozens of recon photographs she had studied, Alix felt fortunate to have recognized Kruger at all because the SS officer in front of her looked markedly different from the one in the dossiers the OSS had compiled.
Despite being only 23, the Lieutenant looked decades older. He appeared almost breakably thin with a grayish pallor and sunken, dead eyes that gave him the appearance of a drowned corpse more than a living person. His cheekbones jutted out like the jagged edges of a cliffside and Alix could see open sores trickling blood down the hollows of his cheeks.
The thick gray material of his SS uniform hung off his rail-thin frame like an empty potato sack and despite the frigid autumn weather, there was a fine mist of sweat coating his forehead.
With a fashion magazine casually tucked under her arm, the spy trailed soundlessly behind him, always making sure to keep at least 10 or so paces between her and her target.
Conducting surveillance was difficult without contacts keeping her updated but it was still possible. 
Except something was different.
Alix couldn't put her finger on what exactly but something was wrong. She could feel it in her gut.
The young spy had almost made her approach several times but something kept holding her back like an invisible hand on her shoulder, making her hesitate and reevaluate.
Her every muscle on-edge, Alix flexed her fingers at her side in a desperate bid to loosen up the tension but the anxiety swirling in her stomach just wouldn't leave. 
The park in Oosterbeek wasn't nearly as crowded as Eindhoven had been but still, there was something almost eerie about the way the hair on the back of her neck was standing on end. 
Everywhere she went, she felt eyes on her, following her, but when she would look, no one was there. Alix knew she was probably just being paranoid because of what had happened with Jean-Pierre selling one of her identities to the Gestapo but nonetheless, she still couldn't shake the sick feeling that she was being watched. 
As Kruger cut through the grass, his limbs practically quivering with suppressed energy like a man electrocuted, Alix continued on the sidewalk to avoid arousing suspicion.
The young agent allowed her eyes to casually roam the scene, taking in the earthy scent of the grass and the passing smoke of distant explosions which somehow didn't damper the nearby giggles of schoolchildren at play. 
A little girl with dirt-streaked cheeks and flame-bright hair was wielding a stick like a blade, apparently holding her own in a dramatic swordfight with an older boy who appeared to be her brother. 
Alix couldn't help but smile as she passed them by. 
She was almost out of the park completely when she spotted the man in the glasses again, this time loitering by one of the columns that marked the exit as he took casual puffs from his pipe.
Alix felt her blood run cold the moment he locked eyes with her and she abruptly switched directions, abandoning her target for the moment. Self-preservation came first and the emptiness…the ice in the man's expression felt dangerously like a punch to the stomach.
The tweed jacket he'd worn earlier was gone, replaced instead by a coat far too heavy for even the most blustery Fall day, which made Alix even more nervous. It completely obscured his body shape, making it impossible to tell if he was carrying a weapon.
First trick of the trade.
The agent could practically hear Nixon's languid baritone in her head. 
Twice is suspicious, kid. Get the hell out of there.
With one last glance over to Lieutenant Kruger's back as he disappeared around the corner, the OSS agent let out an irritated huff and quickened her already brisk pace in the opposite direction. 
Her target would have to wait.
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The third time Alix saw the bespectacled man was from inside the bookshop just across the street Hendriksen Hotel, which was apparently serving as an impromptu SS headquarters. The stranger was wearing his tweed jacket again and standing on one of the hotel's many balconies above, notebook in hand, and Alix tried to slow her racing heart as she pretended to browse the shelves.
Angling herself slightly and squinting against the streaming sunlight, Alix tried desperately to make out any distinctive features but there were none. He was an ordinary-looking man in his mid-thirties with dark, straight hair, thick glasses, and an aura she couldn't place but that seemed to scream at her from the depths of her mind, making Alix feel violently ill.
The young agent didn't even have to look up to know he was watching her; she could feel those empty eyes boring into her even through the glass window of the bookshop she was lingering inside.
But she had a mission to complete; she couldn't hold off any longer. 
Still, even as she idly perused the first book she'd grabbed, the feeling of the bespectacled man's soulless eyes staring her down never left. 
Even when she looked up and the man was gone, the merciless waves of nausea signaling his presence just wouldn't leave her. 
He had been scribbling into a notepad, she remembered, and five words from the Evasion & Counterespionage section of her training began to reverberate over and over again in her mind like gunshots as she waited for her target to leave the hotel across the street:
Three times is a tail.
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j-august · 1 year
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And yet the Stasi kept on searching for camouflaged infiltrators. The fact that they weren't able to unmask more spooks did not convince them that the Americans were less active. On the contrary: surely it had to mean the class enemy was using ever more sophisticated means of disguise.
Philip Oltermann, The Stasi Poetry Circle
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Do you know how the press are informed about injunctions? I'm assuming the original journalists are told when they're taken to court to get the injunction but how do they make sure another paper doesn't find out the story and print it? Are injunctions sent to someone high up in all the media organisations and they check before a story is published?
I wondered the same thing and couldn't find a great answer. I'll do my best but if there are any experts in English law, do help me out.
The thing about an injunction is it prevents publication. So they might hear about it from other journalists or sources through the grapevine. They might see the injunction order because the very basic details of an injunction order are published unless it's a superinjunction, and then they could easily ask a colleague and find out. And there is something in English law called the spycatcher principle. I won't go too much into the detail - I can if you're interested lol - but basically it means that everyone who is aware of the injunction has to abide by it, even if it wasn't issued against them specifically. So according to one article I found solicitors do normally circulate injunction orders with all the details to other major press outlets themselves because then they know that they can't publish the story even if they come about the information independently.
Journalists generally have an obligation to check a story with the subject if it's making a serious accusation, under the Editor's Code. At that point the injunction order would be presented and they would have to shelve the story. So theoretically it should be very rare that a journalist doesn't find out about an injunction, even if it's five minutes before they were due to publish. But if an injunction was broken and it was genuinely unintentional I think they'll just be told to take it down immediately and potentially, knowing how vicious privacy lawyers are in the UK these days, they would be sued for invasion of privacy instead
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Tracklist:
Afro Jacker • Beat Bang • Drop It To The Floor • Badman • Spycatcher • Jugs • Trouble On The Floor • On A Roll Man • Junk • How Y'all Like Me Now • Sound Boy Massive
Spotify ♪ YouTube
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kammartinez · 9 months
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ebookporn · 4 months
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Spies, Margaret Thatcher, Peter Wright’s book, censorship, and free speech
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by Caroline Davies and Kevin Rawlinson
National Archives papers show prime minister tried in vain to avoid inquiry over Peter Wright’s memoirs
Margaret Thatcher was “utterly shattered” by the revelations in Spycatcher, the memoirs of the retired MI5 officer Peter Wright, files released publicly for the first time reveal.
The files also reveal the dilemmas faced by Thatcher’s government in its futile battle to suppress the book, including whether to agree to the Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer mediating an out of court “solution”.
Allegations by Wright, a former assistant director of MI5 who retired to Tasmania, included that the security agency had bugged embassies, that a small group of agents had plotted against the prime minister Harold Wilson, and that Sir Roger Hollis, the director general of MI5 from 1956-65, had been a Soviet mole.
The book, which was banned in England in 1985, was first published in Australia and the US after the government lost its long-running high-profile court case against Wright in Sydney in 1987.
The documents show the government losing control in a legal game of “whack-a-mole” as extracts popped up in newspapers and books appeared in shops and on library shelves around the world.
READ MORE
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deafmangoes · 1 year
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So the spouse and I recently finished watching all of the original Captain Scarlet - the one with the puppets and the incredibly high on-screen body count for a "kids' show".
And I tell ya, I have theories. If I can get them into any sort of coherence I'll probably post them, but for starters:
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This man is a gay icon and - I'm pretty sure - Lieutenant Green's dad. I will elaborate.
I am aware that Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's stated backstory for Charles Grey (his actual name) is that he's a widower whose wife died possibly in childbirth - but where's the fun in respecting canon?
White is exceptionally Dad-like to the whole Spectrum team; even to the point where, during the penultimate episode*, he pulls Captain Scarlet in during an emotional life and death situation and tells him to get a haircut.
Throughout the entire run, he just gave me the strongest vibe of a very "straight gay (yet catty and sarcastic)" father figure who had seen some shit and thrown hands in the past. Again, referring to his backstory, he was a rebel leader against a tyrannical British government, helping to overthrow it, and then became not only the youngest fleet admiral on record but retired to head up the London branch of the 'Universal Secret Service', becoming a feared spycatcher.
I imagine that under this tyrannical government, a lot of LGBTQ+ rights were repressed, which has led to his particular attitude (as perhaps an artefact of the show being made in the 60s, he really gave me the vibe of someone forced to live in the closet for much of his life, who now doesn't give a fuck).
Speaking of giving a fuck. He's Lieutenant Green's dad. Perhaps this happened during a time of indiscretion after the death of his wife, before he fully came out of the closet, I don't know, he might just be bisexual! But he's definitely Green's dad, and Green doesn't know this.**
I base this theory solely on how overly protective he is of Green, even more so than the rest of Spectrum. He refuses to let Green go into the field except under duress, keeps him literally within eyeshot at all times at the communications desk, and goes far softer on him than his peers.
Incidentally, the show takes place in 2069 of what we can assume to be an alternate history where architects think that a "car park" consisting of one giant spiral concrete entrance/exit looming over London is a good idea - but assuming for a second that the divergence point is still in our future, and that Colonel White is in his fifties during the show, that means he would have been born in the last decade.
And that the UK becomes a fascist dictatorship as if that would ever happen lol ahahaha i made myself sad
Anyway. Yeah. Colonel White is the best character in the show. I'd follow him into certain death against an immortal and unkillable enemy any day of the week.
*This episode is revealed to be All A Dream but I have no reason to believe everyone in it was acting at all out of character.
**I know that in the CGI remake Green is not only gender-flipped but also there's an episode where she has to literally kill her own father, but that's clearly a different universe.
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jcmarchi · 3 months
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'Plug-and-Play' Nanoparticles Could Make it Easier to Tackle Various Biological Targets - Technology Org
New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/plug-and-play-nanoparticles-could-make-it-easier-to-tackle-various-biological-targets-technology-org/
'Plug-and-Play' Nanoparticles Could Make it Easier to Tackle Various Biological Targets - Technology Org
Researchers at UC San Diego have developed modular nanoparticles that can be customized to target biological entities such as tumors, viruses or toxins.
The surfaces of the nanoparticles are engineered to host biological molecules, making it possible to tailor the nanoparticles for applications from targeted drug delivery to neutralizing biological agents.
Live cell fluorescent visualization of biological molecules binding to the surface of genetically modified cell membranes, which make up the coating for the modular nanoparticles. Image credit: Zhang lab/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
Scientists say the beauty of the technology lies in its simplicity and efficiency. Researchers can use a modular nanoparticle base to attach proteins targeting a desired biological entity rather than crafting new nanoparticles for each specific application.
In the past, creating nanoparticles for different biological targets required going through a distinct synthetic process from start to finish each time. But with this new technique, the same modular nanoparticle base can be modified to create a set of specialized nanoparticles.
“This is a plug-and-play platform technology that allows for rapid modification of a functional biological nanoparticle,” said Liangfang Zhang, a nanoengineer at UC San Diego.
Zhang and his team detail their work in a U.S. National Science Foundation-supported paper published in Nature Nanotechnology.
The modular nanoparticles consist of biodegradable polymer cores coated with genetically modified cell membranes. The key to the design is a pair of synthetic proteins, known as SpyCatcher and SpyTag, that are designed to spontaneously — and exclusively — bind with each other. This pair is commonly used in biological research to combine various proteins. In this study, Zhang and his team harnessed the pair to create a system for attaching proteins to a nanoparticle surface with ease.
Here’s how it works: SpyCatcher is embedded onto the nanoparticle surface, while SpyTag is chemically linked to a protein, such as one targeting tumors or viruses. When SpyTag-linked proteins encounter SpyCatcher-decorated nanoparticles, they bind to each other, enabling proteins of interest to attach to nanoparticle surfaces. 
For example, to target tumors, SpyTag can be linked to a protein designed to seek out tumor cells. That SpyTag-linked protein is then attached to the nanoparticle. If the target shifts to a specific virus, the process is similar: Link SpyTag to a protein targeting the virus and attach it to the nanoparticle surface.
“It’s a streamlined and straightforward approach to functionalizing nanoparticles for any biological application,” said Zhang. The researchers are looking to further improve the modular nanoparticle platform for targeted drug delivery.
Source: NSF
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kamreadsandrecs · 7 months
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Bestie the second that I finish my term papers I am sprinting to my laptop to catch up on FOF, but for now I'll just send in a ⭐ because you know I love anything that my friend's share about their writing 🥰
You're all good, bestie, I completely get it!! My fingers are crossed for you that your term papers go well!! 🤞🏽🤞🏽🤞🏽 Thank you for the Ask!! 💖
Hm, today I think I'll discuss this lil Joelix section from Chapter 11!
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So the concept of time plays an understated but still, very important role in FOF!
From an outsider's perspective, the relationship between Joe and Alix might seem to be moving fast, but the context of wartime adds a level of urgency.
During WWII, young people especially were living as though they may not see tomorrow because for many, there was a very real chance that they wouldn't.
There's a great quote from the movie "Mission of Honor" spoken by a young woman who hooks up with a couple RAF pilots where she explains,
"Before the war, I'd be called a tart. Now I'm just 'a good sport'."
Because believe it or not, normally strict social mores were looser in the 40s because of the war.
Rates of premarital sex were at an all-time high, underage drinking + partying at dancehalls was becoming more normal, teenagers & twenty-somethings were getting married within like weeks of meeting, because there was a feeling of impending doom hanging over everyone like the fucking sword of Damocles,
so "It's Now or Never" became the sort of unspoken motto of the age.
And with Alix & Joe, that's especially true.
Espionage radio operators in the field were like an invisible timebomb, 6 weeks tops until they'd be captured & executed. The Nazis had significantly improved their spycatching technology, so much so that they could have a radio signal zeroed to a tiny radius in a matter of minutes & once the Gestapo has you, unless you're Extraordinarily Lucky like Nancy Wake, you're going to die a miserable death.
Alix & Joe both know their odds, which is why once they make it official, there's no more hesitation.
As usual, their minds are in the same place: They've wasted enough time apart, trying to deny their feelings; if one or both of them is going to die before they make it back, then they're going to die knowing without a doubt how fervently they were loved by the other.
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sleepyowlsleeps · 10 months
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when my brain reads stuff wrong pt.1
Meat and space
Welsh charger
Apparent spycatcher
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notbryanray · 1 year
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Angelic communion and human writing
[An excerpt from the section “Steganographia” in John Crowley’s novel FLINT AND MIRROR:]
Books of common phrases with fixed hidden meanings: every court possessed them, all differing from the books of other courts. The counting of the lines, the numbers of the letters, the variation of typefaces—anyone could do the arithmetic that revealed the meanings. But none of the tricks and devices common to earthly cyphers were of use in angelic communion: the face message might be cast in the most recondite language the writer possesses, only to baffle mere human investigators and spycatchers; the more urgent message beneath or behind the face message is directed to the angels, who flock to the writings of men, which they can never have enough of, because they cannot themselves create such things; even their consumption of them can be said to be more like eating and drinking than the human activity of reading. But the message they alone can carry and deliver, the message merely embodied in the outward paper and ink, is produced like the orderly web of a spider from the writer’s own body and soul, and is transmitted to the angel bearers by the writer’s hope and need as much as by his letters red and black.
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mi6-rogue · 1 year
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Intranasal virus-particle mimicking vaccine enhances SARS-CoV-2 clearance in the Syrian hamster model
Preliminary report; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused a pandemic and multiple vaccines have been developed and authorized for human use. While these vaccines reduce disease severity, they do not prevent infection allowing SARS-CoV-2 to continue to spread and evolve. To confer protection against infection and limit transmission, vaccines must be developed that induce mucosal immunity in the respiratory tract. Therefore, we performed proof-of-principle pre-clinical vaccine and challenge studies with a virus-particle mimicking intranasal vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. The vaccine candidate consisted of the self-assembling 60-subunit I3-01 protein scaffold covalently decorated with the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD) using the SpyCatcher-SpyTag system. We verified the intended antigen display features by reconstructing the I3-01 scaffold to 3.4A using cryo-EM, and established RBD decoration through both SDS-PAGE and negative stain TEM. Using this RBD grafted SpyCage scaffold (RBD+SpyCage), we performed two vaccination studies in Syrian hamsters using an intranasal prime and boost vaccine regiment followed by SARS-CoV-2 challenge. The initial study focused on assessing the immunogenicity of RBD+SpyCage, which indicated that vaccination of hamsters induced a non-neutralizing antibody response that enhanced viral clearance but did not prevent infection. In an expanded study, we demonstrated that covalent bonding of RBD to the scaffold was required to induce an antibody response. Consistent with the initial study, animals vaccinated with RBD+SpyCage more rapidly cleared SARS-CoV-2 from both the upper and lower respiratory tract, whereas admixtures of SpyCage and RBD, or either component alone did not. These findings demonstrate the intranasal SpyCage vaccine platform can induce protection against SARS-CoV-2 and, with additional modifications to improve immunogenicity, is a versatile and adaptable system for the development of intranasal vaccines targeting respiratory pathogens. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.27.514054v1?rss=1%22&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr Read more ↓
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history-matters · 2 years
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CONCORDSKI
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The Soviets infiltrated the Concorde factory in France, right under the nose of the D.S.T. (Directorate of Territorial Surveillance), the French intelligence service. A declassified C.I.A. report noted that the spy ring included a pair of Czechoslovakian priests who smuggled microfilm rolled into toothpaste tubes and passed them along to spies on the Ostend-Warsaw express. And at the British Aircraft Corporation Concorde factory, an English spy whose code name was “Ace” had been carefully funneling a trove of documents to the Soviets.
By 1964, British and French intelligence had one Soviet agent under surveillance. His name was Sergei Pavlov, chief of Aeroflot’s Paris office. The agent assigned to watch him was Pierre Levergeois. Pavlov was arrested in 1965, and deported, travelling back to Moscow to become the deputy minister for civil aviation.
But another Soviet spy remained undetected in France for 15 years, gathering intelligence on Concorde and sending it back to the Soviets through coded radio messages. His name was Serge Fabiew, and with the help of French Communist Party members, he would bring to the Soviets hundreds, if not thousands, of technical documents.
The French had intercepted his messages but couldn’t crack the transmission code until Fabiew was arrested in 1977 and revealed the cipher under interrogation. Even then, the sheer bulk of Russian-language messages was so overwhelming that the D.S.T. had to bring a Soviet expert back from retirement to make sense of it all. He discovered a note of congratulations from Moscow, revealing that Fabiew had sent a complete set of blueprints back to Russia. On 1 February 1978, 53 y.o. Yugoslavia born Russian emigre was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Some of these activities were directed via the East German Stasi (Ministry for State Security). One such operation, known as "Operation Brunnhilde" operated from the mid-1950s until early 1966 and made use of spies from many Communist Bloc countries. Through at least 20 forays, many western European industrial secrets were compromised. One member of the "Brunnhilde" ring was a Swiss chemical engineer called Dr Jean Paul Soupert, also known as 'Air Bubble,' living in Brussels. He was described by Peter Wright in Spycatcher as having been 'doubled' by the Belgian Sûreté de l'État. He revealed information about industrial espionage conducted by the ring, including the fact that Russian agents had obtained details of Concorde's advanced electronics system. He testified against two Kodak employees, living and working in Britain, during a trial in which they were accused of passing information on industrial processes to him, though they were eventually acquitted.
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keibadrive · 2 years
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2022年 デルマーダービー(G2) レース結果と動画
デルマーダービーDel Mar Derby G2 2022/09/04 デルマー競馬場 9R 芝1800 9頭立て 馬場状態:Firm 3歳 2022年 デルマーダービー(G2) レース結果 着順 枠番 馬番 馬名 性齢 斤量 騎手 調教�� オッズ 人気 タイム着差 1 2 2 スローダウンアンディSlow Down Andy 牡3 55.5 M.グティエレスMario Gutierrez D.オニールDoug O’Neill 7.7 5 1:48.27 2 4 4 スパイキャッチャーSpycatcher 牡3 55.5 R.クアトロRyan Curatolo M.グラットMark Glatt 69.0 8 1/2 3 3 3 war at sea 牡3 55.5 M.スミスMike E Smith R.W.エリスRonald W…
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