The Spies Keep Spying

Anyone walking past many foreign embassies in Washington, D.C., would probably pay little attention to the television antennas, satellite dishes, and other electronic gadgets on the roofs. But these fairly nondescript items are a reminder that the embassies have served as command centers for vast networks of spies working in the United States to funnel information and to arrange for the transfer of technology back to their home countries.

Espionage was a major undertaking for many nations during the era of the Cold War, which lasted from about 1946 until 1990. Because the world was divided into hostile camps, dominated by the two superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union the Cold War made espionage a vital undertaking in order to protect national security and to help prevent a major war.

The embassies and consulates of the United States were used as headquarters for the gathering of military and industrial secrets of other nations, particularly the Soviet Union and its allies. With the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the excesses of Cold War espionage ended.

But the intelligence-gathering organizations that conducted espionage did not go out of business. There were still many trouble spots in the world that merited attention. This is the world that C. Smooth the Spy chose to enter.

C. Smooth as the name implies was a smooth operator. Not all espionage is a secret, furtive activity with the romance and thrills of a "James Bond" novel. Much intelligence work is a slow, painstaking, and tedious business and this is where C. Smooth shined.

To get less accessible information is in part the work of a very special spy who, by various means, steals government and industrial secrets and arranges for illegal purchases of sophisticated technology. Some of these spies are citizens of the nations on which they spy but not our man. C. Smooth he was no body's citizen. He was a rare commodity in the modern world of espionage.

He identified with a group of ancient compatriots whose very names brings shivers to the spines of secret holders. Names like: Mata Hari, Franz von Rintelen, and Wilhelm Canaris, who like he worked independently giving no allegiance to any cause, government, ideal, or system. He would often be heard saying, "Who me? You got the wrong guy. I wasn't even there." This was the existence of C. Smooth that is up until the great heist.

The U.S. had been developing a stealth technology for several years and was just about to undertake field testing of an intelligence gathering robots in the shape of a stealth rabbit. C. Smooth was contacted by the KGB to steal the rabbit.

He was reported to have said: "Who me? I wasn't even there." He accepted the assignment and went searching for the stealth rabbit, which could not be found. The rabbit was so stealthy that not even the great C. Smooth was able to locate it. However, the rabbit did find C. Smooth.

A battle ensued and the outcome was not a pretty sight. It is said that right before C. Smooth was pummeled to death by the stealth rabbit's ears he said: "Who me? I wasn't even there."