Showing posts with label Sexpionage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sexpionage. Show all posts
The History of Sex: Prague -- Another Kind of Christmas Market -- (Chapter X, Part 31)
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The History of Sex: Prague -- A Little Night's Whoremongering -- (Chapter X, Part 21)
Aptly enough, my guide goes by the nom de screw of 'John.'
With the face of a pug and the body of a bulldog, he could be any nationality.
Come to think of it, he's got the blend-in-ability of a good spook—he even picked me up in the cobbled Old Town, lurking under a streetlamp like a character out of a spy novel.
The moment he opens his mouth, though, he's all matter-of-fact American, rattling off our schedule as if it were a ten-point marketing plan rather than the itinerary for a little night's whoremongering.
John charges just over €100 (around $130) for his VIP Brothel Tour, including entrance fees, cheap drinks and his questionable translation skills.
'If you want to be with a woman, I can talk to her and tell her how beautiful she is and get her warmed up.'
The tour runs for six hours and takes in at least four brothels ('depending on your stamina').
'YOU CAN EXPECT SOME LIES... THIS IS NOT TRUE'
Ironically, despite Prague's status as Europe's Sex Central, there's no centralized sex district in the Czech capital.
Wenceslaus Square and its sidestreets host some of the glitzier establishments—one 'cabaret' has a mannequin in a Santa cap perched over the door—but Prague's carnal side is far less visible than that of its Western counterparts. Four decades of Communism effectively snuffed out the red-light district.
For foreigners who don't speak Czech, this can make it hard to sniff out sexual bargains.
Throw in the perils of clip joints and taxi scams, and, well, it's a Slavic jungle out there.
In fact, the abuses are so bad one club has taken to stating on its flyers, in perfect doublespeak:
With the face of a pug and the body of a bulldog, he could be any nationality.
Come to think of it, he's got the blend-in-ability of a good spook—he even picked me up in the cobbled Old Town, lurking under a streetlamp like a character out of a spy novel.
 |
| OK, well, not this character George Lazenby hamming it up as James Bond |
The moment he opens his mouth, though, he's all matter-of-fact American, rattling off our schedule as if it were a ten-point marketing plan rather than the itinerary for a little night's whoremongering.
John charges just over €100 (around $130) for his VIP Brothel Tour, including entrance fees, cheap drinks and his questionable translation skills.
'If you want to be with a woman, I can talk to her and tell her how beautiful she is and get her warmed up.'
The tour runs for six hours and takes in at least four brothels ('depending on your stamina').
'YOU CAN EXPECT SOME LIES... THIS IS NOT TRUE'
Ironically, despite Prague's status as Europe's Sex Central, there's no centralized sex district in the Czech capital.
Wenceslaus Square and its sidestreets host some of the glitzier establishments—one 'cabaret' has a mannequin in a Santa cap perched over the door—but Prague's carnal side is far less visible than that of its Western counterparts. Four decades of Communism effectively snuffed out the red-light district.
For foreigners who don't speak Czech, this can make it hard to sniff out sexual bargains.
Throw in the perils of clip joints and taxi scams, and, well, it's a Slavic jungle out there.
In fact, the abuses are so bad one club has taken to stating on its flyers, in perfect doublespeak:
'WE DON'T PAY COMMISSION FOR TAXI DRIVERS, SO YOU CAN EXPECT SOME LIES OR BAD COMMENTARY ABOUT OUR PLACE. BE SURE, THIS IS NOT TRUE.'
The History of Sex: Prague -- Bliss Without Risk? -- (Chapter X, Part 19)
At present, though, you could be forgiven for mistaking the modern 'heart of Europe' for its throbbing groin.
The Czech Republic ranks not only as one of the world's biggest sources of trafficked women (and children) but also a major destination and transit country, with 'Romeo spies' having been replaced by 'loverboy' pimps who seduce girls into prostitution.
And whereas a British prime minister once betrayed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis by calling it 'a small country about which we know nothing,' nowadays hordes of British, German and American tourists fly into Prague to get to know it in the Biblical sense.
FROM BIG BROTHER TO BIG SISTER
Many aid agencies work from the premise that the sex trade is simply a fact of life.
'Bliss Without Risk' is a catchy name, but it seems an odd choice for a group trying to help prostitutes (surely most of the 'bliss' they encounter is male-oriented).
In its fight against sex diseases, the charity distributes comic books that are so graphic, they could be called 'How to Be a Whore,' complete with pictures of infected penises and blowjobs, handjobs and hotdogging.
Meanwhile, would-be prostitutes have a plethora of job opportunities, including specialist agencies like 'Oral Without Condom' and a club that's put a postmodern twist on the Big Brother sexpionage of yore: at the BigSister brothel, punters pay a cover fee of €10 for toiletries, but the sex is free—provided they sign a contract allowing BigSister to broadcast the video footage on the World Wide Web.
One client in 2008 was a lardy socialist from Scotland, a former candidate for the Solidarity party.
'Yes I did it,' he told The News of the World, 'but I was drunk.'
In other words, sex is so cheap in Prague, they're virtually giving it away.
The Czech Republic ranks not only as one of the world's biggest sources of trafficked women (and children) but also a major destination and transit country, with 'Romeo spies' having been replaced by 'loverboy' pimps who seduce girls into prostitution.
And whereas a British prime minister once betrayed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis by calling it 'a small country about which we know nothing,' nowadays hordes of British, German and American tourists fly into Prague to get to know it in the Biblical sense.
FROM BIG BROTHER TO BIG SISTER
Many aid agencies work from the premise that the sex trade is simply a fact of life.
'Bliss Without Risk' is a catchy name, but it seems an odd choice for a group trying to help prostitutes (surely most of the 'bliss' they encounter is male-oriented).
In its fight against sex diseases, the charity distributes comic books that are so graphic, they could be called 'How to Be a Whore,' complete with pictures of infected penises and blowjobs, handjobs and hotdogging.
Meanwhile, would-be prostitutes have a plethora of job opportunities, including specialist agencies like 'Oral Without Condom' and a club that's put a postmodern twist on the Big Brother sexpionage of yore: at the BigSister brothel, punters pay a cover fee of €10 for toiletries, but the sex is free—provided they sign a contract allowing BigSister to broadcast the video footage on the World Wide Web.
One client in 2008 was a lardy socialist from Scotland, a former candidate for the Solidarity party.
'Yes I did it,' he told The News of the World, 'but I was drunk.'
In other words, sex is so cheap in Prague, they're virtually giving it away.
The History of Sex: Prague -- The Last Chance for Communism -- (Chapter X, Part 14)
In late twentieth-century Prague, Bittman says, sexpionage was conducted on a case-by-case basis using known prostitutes.
The women's motives had nothing to do with patriotism; they did it to score cash or avoid jail.
Officially, prostitutes were 'social parasites'—not for having sex, but for living off the state—but they could stay on the game if they worked for the police.
Brothels would be rigged a la Salon Kitty or luxury hotel suites would be kitted out with secret cameras to film dignitaries' indignities.
Although the Eastern bloc may have used sexpionage more, Bittman says the West also used dirty tricks—in fact, he puts the split at seventy-thirty.
'Western intelligence services, including the Americans and the British, used the same methods. But I think some of the Soviet bloc authorities overestimated the potential to recruit people based on sexual entrapment. Gradually, in the Sixties and even in the Seventies and Eighties, when I was not involved anymore, this method became rather secondary.'
Mainly because of changes in Western attitudes toward sex.
When he defected, Bittman was working as a press attaché/spy at the embassy in Vienna.
'Every trip home was a distressing experience,' he writes. 'Czechoslovakia, once a highly developed country, had become the victim of economic and political mismanagement and a paradise for idlers and empty-headed babblers.'
With the initial blessing of the Kremlin, a mild-mannered reformist took power in Czechoslovakia, beginning the ill-fated experiment known as the 'Prague Spring.'
Contrary to popular misconception, Bittman notes that the Czech reform movement 'was neither anti-socialist nor anti-Communist. Many Communists who took part in the democratization process considered it the last chance for communism in Czechoslovakia.'
The women's motives had nothing to do with patriotism; they did it to score cash or avoid jail.
Officially, prostitutes were 'social parasites'—not for having sex, but for living off the state—but they could stay on the game if they worked for the police.
Brothels would be rigged a la Salon Kitty or luxury hotel suites would be kitted out with secret cameras to film dignitaries' indignities.
Although the Eastern bloc may have used sexpionage more, Bittman says the West also used dirty tricks—in fact, he puts the split at seventy-thirty.
'Western intelligence services, including the Americans and the British, used the same methods. But I think some of the Soviet bloc authorities overestimated the potential to recruit people based on sexual entrapment. Gradually, in the Sixties and even in the Seventies and Eighties, when I was not involved anymore, this method became rather secondary.'
Mainly because of changes in Western attitudes toward sex.
When he defected, Bittman was working as a press attaché/spy at the embassy in Vienna.
'Every trip home was a distressing experience,' he writes. 'Czechoslovakia, once a highly developed country, had become the victim of economic and political mismanagement and a paradise for idlers and empty-headed babblers.'
Good TV interview with Larry Bittman;
great footage of Prague and Vienna during the Cold War
At the beginning of 1968, though, there had been real hope for change.great footage of Prague and Vienna during the Cold War
With the initial blessing of the Kremlin, a mild-mannered reformist took power in Czechoslovakia, beginning the ill-fated experiment known as the 'Prague Spring.'
Contrary to popular misconception, Bittman notes that the Czech reform movement 'was neither anti-socialist nor anti-Communist. Many Communists who took part in the democratization process considered it the last chance for communism in Czechoslovakia.'
The History of Sex: Prague -- Interview with a Spy -- (Chapter X, Part 13)
Against this backdrop, the Czechs used every dirty trick in the book—inventing many of their own along the way.
In one year, 25 of their operatives carried out over 100 campaigns around the world, a success rate that impressed even the KGB.
Sitting in Bittman's office overlooking the Vltava, the Soviets' supreme head of disinformation surveyed a file of Western newspaper clippings containing Communist propaganda.
'If they did not have press freedom,' he remarked, 'we would have to invent it for them.'
To try and clean up the mess he helped create, Bittman took a job as a journalism professor in the US after his defection, changing his name in the process.
With some sleuthing of my own, I manage to find the former spy living in retirement.
Now in his late seventies, he's initially reluctant to talk about the bad old days, though he eventually agrees to speak with me on the phone.
Obviously, I'm very enthused about this—it's like getting to talk with a real-life baddie from a Bond film (Connery era), complete with domed skull and piranha underbite.
Imagine my disappointment, then, when the spy who came in from the cold pours cold water on the Sex School for Spies story.
'I don't think there was a school for this kind of job,' Bittman tells me. 'From a strictly professional point of view, there's always a very strict security protection in the recruitment of an agent, even if it is a prostitute.'
If you had schools, he reasons, 'this would mean that there would be a class of thirty prostitutes, and they would know each other. That is not professional.'
However, he notes that the set-up may have been different at the KGB: the Soviets thought sexual indiscretions were highly compromising, whereas the Czechs were harder to shock.
After all, Czechoslovakia was where Casanova retired to write his memoirs and where archeologists found the oldest ceramic figurine in the world, the pendulous-bosomed 'Venus of Vestonice,' dating from 27,000 BC.
In one year, 25 of their operatives carried out over 100 campaigns around the world, a success rate that impressed even the KGB.
Sitting in Bittman's office overlooking the Vltava, the Soviets' supreme head of disinformation surveyed a file of Western newspaper clippings containing Communist propaganda.
'If they did not have press freedom,' he remarked, 'we would have to invent it for them.'
To try and clean up the mess he helped create, Bittman took a job as a journalism professor in the US after his defection, changing his name in the process.
With some sleuthing of my own, I manage to find the former spy living in retirement.
Now in his late seventies, he's initially reluctant to talk about the bad old days, though he eventually agrees to speak with me on the phone.
Obviously, I'm very enthused about this—it's like getting to talk with a real-life baddie from a Bond film (Connery era), complete with domed skull and piranha underbite.
Imagine my disappointment, then, when the spy who came in from the cold pours cold water on the Sex School for Spies story.
'I don't think there was a school for this kind of job,' Bittman tells me. 'From a strictly professional point of view, there's always a very strict security protection in the recruitment of an agent, even if it is a prostitute.'
If you had schools, he reasons, 'this would mean that there would be a class of thirty prostitutes, and they would know each other. That is not professional.'
However, he notes that the set-up may have been different at the KGB: the Soviets thought sexual indiscretions were highly compromising, whereas the Czechs were harder to shock.
After all, Czechoslovakia was where Casanova retired to write his memoirs and where archeologists found the oldest ceramic figurine in the world, the pendulous-bosomed 'Venus of Vestonice,' dating from 27,000 BC.
The History of Sex: Prague -- Puritanical Communists -- (Chapter X, Part 11)
For dirty tricks abroad, the Soviets liked to use their satellite spy network in Czechoslovakia, 'the aristocrat of all the Communist intelligence services.'
With its location in the heart of Europe, Czechoslovakia had always been a bridge between East and West, making it more cosmopolitan, prosperous and liberal than the rest of the Soviet bloc.
Its first democratic president, Tomas G. Masaryk, had been a former spook whose spies sided with the Allies during World War One; in 1918, he signed Czechoslovakia's declaration of independence in Philadelphia at the same table used by Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin in 1776.
And in a nod to women's rights, the founder had also added his American wife's surname to his own: the 'G' stood for Garrigue.
Tragically, the Allies had tried to avoid a Second World War by gifting the tiny democracy to Hitler.
Unappeased, the Führer entrusted its subjugation to Reinhard Heydrich, an SS chief who'd helped engineer the Night of the Long Knives, chaired the committee on the Holocaust and masterminded the Salon Kitty project in Berlin.
When Czechoslovakia was finally liberated, the Red Army captured Prague first, and the Soviets quickly set about undermining democracy.
The Czech foreign minister—Masaryk's son—was one of the democrats who died mysteriously during the Communists' (relatively) bloodless coup, which became the blueprint for subverting democracies in the West.
And after briefly flirting with sexual excess as 'a provocation of bourgeois society,' Czechoslovakia soon pursued the Soviet ideal of 'Socialist puritanism.'
'In the early Fifties, we were more puritanical than in the West,' scoffs Jirina Siklova, a Czech feminist who came of age during the Stalinist era.
As a teenager, she remembers building a bridge as part of a Socialist youth brigade.
At night the sexes were strictly segregated: any boys or girls caught sneaking over to the other side were dismissed and officially blackballed for leading a 'bourgeois lifestyle.'
With its location in the heart of Europe, Czechoslovakia had always been a bridge between East and West, making it more cosmopolitan, prosperous and liberal than the rest of the Soviet bloc.
Its first democratic president, Tomas G. Masaryk, had been a former spook whose spies sided with the Allies during World War One; in 1918, he signed Czechoslovakia's declaration of independence in Philadelphia at the same table used by Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin in 1776.
And in a nod to women's rights, the founder had also added his American wife's surname to his own: the 'G' stood for Garrigue.
Tragically, the Allies had tried to avoid a Second World War by gifting the tiny democracy to Hitler.
Unappeased, the Führer entrusted its subjugation to Reinhard Heydrich, an SS chief who'd helped engineer the Night of the Long Knives, chaired the committee on the Holocaust and masterminded the Salon Kitty project in Berlin.
 |
| 'May 1945': A Czech poster commemorating the victory over the Nazis ' |
When Czechoslovakia was finally liberated, the Red Army captured Prague first, and the Soviets quickly set about undermining democracy.
The Czech foreign minister—Masaryk's son—was one of the democrats who died mysteriously during the Communists' (relatively) bloodless coup, which became the blueprint for subverting democracies in the West.
And after briefly flirting with sexual excess as 'a provocation of bourgeois society,' Czechoslovakia soon pursued the Soviet ideal of 'Socialist puritanism.'
'In the early Fifties, we were more puritanical than in the West,' scoffs Jirina Siklova, a Czech feminist who came of age during the Stalinist era.
As a teenager, she remembers building a bridge as part of a Socialist youth brigade.
At night the sexes were strictly segregated: any boys or girls caught sneaking over to the other side were dismissed and officially blackballed for leading a 'bourgeois lifestyle.'
The History of Sex: Prague -- The Breaking Point -- (Chapter X, Part 10)
For straight targets, the most sinister honeytraps involved being framed for rape and threatened with life in a Soviet jail.
After Verkhonoye, Vera's first assignment was to seduce an American businessman in Moscow.
She was given a job as a chambermaid at the man's hotel and 'accidentally' walked in on him while he was showering.
He offered to show her a good time in bed, and as soon as he'd finished, two KGB men posing as hotel security broke through the door.
Vera started to scream that the man had raped her.
While the goons pummeled him, the man begged her to tell the truth, but she swore she'd been attacked.
'Then, suddenly, they all began to laugh,' Vera said.
'The American got up and pulled on his clothes, saying to me in Russian that I was very good in bed. It was a final examination, and I passed successfully. Even while I believed that the man was an innocent victim, his whole life threatened with ruin, I felt nothing for him… A man was merely a target, to be rapidly assessed and then dealt with.'
Then she added a quote that's almost too good to be true.
'By the time our training was completed, we were hard, cynical, sophisticated young women capable of bedding any heterosexual man and providing him with the time of his life.'
In time, however, Vera's pillow talk with Westerners made her doubt her indoctrination.
In 1963, she was ordered to bed a French student who was due to marry an aristocratic girl back home.
The boy was very much in love with his fiancée and initially resisted Vera.
However, she eventually seduced him.
The KGB showed him the photos and threatened to derail his marriage unless his father, a major figure in mining, handed them commercial intelligence.
'The boy said he needed time to think it over,' Vera said. 'The same afternoon he walked in front of a car near Red Square and was killed. Perhaps it was an accident. But it was the breaking point for me.'
After Verkhonoye, Vera's first assignment was to seduce an American businessman in Moscow.
She was given a job as a chambermaid at the man's hotel and 'accidentally' walked in on him while he was showering.
He offered to show her a good time in bed, and as soon as he'd finished, two KGB men posing as hotel security broke through the door.
Vera started to scream that the man had raped her.
While the goons pummeled him, the man begged her to tell the truth, but she swore she'd been attacked.
 |
| Behold, the nipple transmitter! In Sexpionage, David Lewis writes: 'If a female undercover agent wears fake nipples fitted with radio equipment, even the most intimate body search won't reveal that she's wired for sound. Powered by body heat, the nipple's chip transmitter with microphone is said to have a range of several hundred feet.' |
'Then, suddenly, they all began to laugh,' Vera said.
'The American got up and pulled on his clothes, saying to me in Russian that I was very good in bed. It was a final examination, and I passed successfully. Even while I believed that the man was an innocent victim, his whole life threatened with ruin, I felt nothing for him… A man was merely a target, to be rapidly assessed and then dealt with.'
Then she added a quote that's almost too good to be true.
'By the time our training was completed, we were hard, cynical, sophisticated young women capable of bedding any heterosexual man and providing him with the time of his life.'
 |
| And here's a close-up. On his website from his days as a photojournalist, Lewis shows how to make a nipple transmitter |
In time, however, Vera's pillow talk with Westerners made her doubt her indoctrination.
In 1963, she was ordered to bed a French student who was due to marry an aristocratic girl back home.
The boy was very much in love with his fiancée and initially resisted Vera.
However, she eventually seduced him.
The KGB showed him the photos and threatened to derail his marriage unless his father, a major figure in mining, handed them commercial intelligence.
'The boy said he needed time to think it over,' Vera said. 'The same afternoon he walked in front of a car near Red Square and was killed. Perhaps it was an accident. But it was the breaking point for me.'
* * *
The History of Sex: Prague -- Gay Honeytraps -- (Chapter X, Part 9)
The tale of Claude put a positive spin on the real-life story of John Vassall, one of Britain's infamous Cold War traitors.
Lewis reckons a raven from Verkhonoye helped blackmail Vassall.
A gay man from a good family, the embassy attaché was invited to a party in Moscow where he was photographed sleeping naked with a man.
Back in London, he agreed to steal official documents for the Soviets from his office overlooking the back garden of No. 10 Downing Street.
In fact, if a similar plot had worked, Communist puppetmasters would have pulled the strings at No. 10 itself.
In his memoir, a former spy named Josef Frolik recounted how one of his colleagues at the Czechoslovakian Embassy in London spent two years trying to trap a Conservative who 'was not markedly heterosexually inclined.'
The Tory was unmarried and a keen musician, so the Czechs arranged for a bisexual organist from Moravia to visit London and bump into him at recitals.
As they chatted, the British MP mentioned that he'd like to play the organ at the Church of St. James in Prague.
The Czechs immediately invited him to visit—the idea being that once he was there, the Tory would also take a turn on the Moravian's organ.
Unfortunately, 'at the last moment, some wise member of British Counter-Intelligence warned the would-be organist that someone waiting for him in Prague was prepared to play another kind of tune.'
Sexually ambiguous to the end, Ted Heath went on to become Prime Minister (only to be posthumously 'outed' by a gay Tory in 2007).
Lewis reckons a raven from Verkhonoye helped blackmail Vassall.
A gay man from a good family, the embassy attaché was invited to a party in Moscow where he was photographed sleeping naked with a man.
Back in London, he agreed to steal official documents for the Soviets from his office overlooking the back garden of No. 10 Downing Street.
In fact, if a similar plot had worked, Communist puppetmasters would have pulled the strings at No. 10 itself.
In his memoir, a former spy named Josef Frolik recounted how one of his colleagues at the Czechoslovakian Embassy in London spent two years trying to trap a Conservative who 'was not markedly heterosexually inclined.'
The Tory was unmarried and a keen musician, so the Czechs arranged for a bisexual organist from Moravia to visit London and bump into him at recitals.
As they chatted, the British MP mentioned that he'd like to play the organ at the Church of St. James in Prague.
The Czechs immediately invited him to visit—the idea being that once he was there, the Tory would also take a turn on the Moravian's organ.
Unfortunately, 'at the last moment, some wise member of British Counter-Intelligence warned the would-be organist that someone waiting for him in Prague was prepared to play another kind of tune.'
Sexually ambiguous to the end, Ted Heath went on to become Prime Minister (only to be posthumously 'outed' by a gay Tory in 2007).
The History of Sex: Prague -- 'Their Trade is Treachery' -- (Chapter X, Part 8)
If the KGB's swallows occasionally found their work hard to—well, you know—then pity the poor ravens.
A defector called Dimitri Labyav told Western debriefers that he'd been instructed to seduce only middle-aged women, given the surplus of unmarried female secretaries in Western Europe after the War.
'To have sex with a pretty girl is easy, but being passionate to order with a frigid spinster takes skill,' he noted, no doubt eliciting sympathetic nods from his interviewers.
Labyav's first hands-on lesson at Verkhonoye came in the form of a Russian peasant who was 'ugly, uncouth and unwashed.'
For some of his gay cadres (who had been blackmailed into service), having to make love to women as old as their mothers was too much.
'Two of them committed suicide during my stay there.'
A WISER, IF SORER, MAN
By the 1960s, sexpionage had become such a problem for the West that it featured in a cautionary MI5 booklet.
As its title indicates, Their Trade is Treachery is written in a lock-jawed, humorless style that's often unintentionally funny now.
Contrary to the fictional womanizing of James Bond, gay entrapment appears to have been more of a peril for the British than hetero honeytraps.
Case No. 1 tells the story of 'Claude Robinson'—'a man who liked the Russians'—and learned the hard way about vodka: 'Claude gulped a great deal'—especially when he was 'subjected to a homosexual assault,' then photographed and blackmailed.
In the case study, he promptly reports the incident to the embassy and is whisked out of the country a wiser, if sorer, man.
In reality, though, reporting a sexual indiscretion to your superiors wasn't that easy: a forced return from a foreign posting was a black mark on any diplomatic or corporate career, and if that threat didn't work, the KGB could always post the photos to your family or the media.
A defector called Dimitri Labyav told Western debriefers that he'd been instructed to seduce only middle-aged women, given the surplus of unmarried female secretaries in Western Europe after the War.
'To have sex with a pretty girl is easy, but being passionate to order with a frigid spinster takes skill,' he noted, no doubt eliciting sympathetic nods from his interviewers.
Labyav's first hands-on lesson at Verkhonoye came in the form of a Russian peasant who was 'ugly, uncouth and unwashed.'
For some of his gay cadres (who had been blackmailed into service), having to make love to women as old as their mothers was too much.
'Two of them committed suicide during my stay there.'
A WISER, IF SORER, MAN
By the 1960s, sexpionage had become such a problem for the West that it featured in a cautionary MI5 booklet.
As its title indicates, Their Trade is Treachery is written in a lock-jawed, humorless style that's often unintentionally funny now.
Contrary to the fictional womanizing of James Bond, gay entrapment appears to have been more of a peril for the British than hetero honeytraps.
Case No. 1 tells the story of 'Claude Robinson'—'a man who liked the Russians'—and learned the hard way about vodka: 'Claude gulped a great deal'—especially when he was 'subjected to a homosexual assault,' then photographed and blackmailed.
In the case study, he promptly reports the incident to the embassy and is whisked out of the country a wiser, if sorer, man.
In reality, though, reporting a sexual indiscretion to your superiors wasn't that easy: a forced return from a foreign posting was a black mark on any diplomatic or corporate career, and if that threat didn't work, the KGB could always post the photos to your family or the media.
The History of Sex: Prague -- How to Train a Sex Spy -- (Chapter X, Part 7)
The training started with a series of sex films more explicit than anything Vera had ever seen.
Still a virgin at eighteen, she had been raised by an aunt who was very religious.
In subsequent sessions, the girls were ordered to strip for each other and watch a couple have sex in front of them, while an instructor in a white coat narrated their technique.
Then the girls had to undress for a trio of male instructors who ended up fondling them.
'On the sixth day the men began to abuse us and comment on our bodies. During the first week I often cried myself to sleep out of shame. But slowly it didn't seem embarrassing any longer.'
Around the eighth day, a group of officer cadets were bussed in and each girl was given a partner for the evening.
In a bugged cocktail bar on the site, the boys were instructed to play the part of nervous foreigners, while the girls deployed their training to seduce them.
In reality, most of the soldiers were actually chomping at the bit—visiting the sex school was a special reward for them.
Vera described her target as 'an animal.'
'There was no romance for me that evening. He tore off my brassiere and began to massage my breasts very hard… It was to this stranger that I lost my virginity.'
The next morning, the girls were ushered into the theatre for more sex films—only to find out that their performances had been secretly filmed.
One girl whose target had failed to have an erection was criticized so harshly she became hysterical.
The trainee swallows then had at least three more bouts of sex with strangers: once to get them used to the hidden cameras (one girl was so self-conscious her bedmate beat her for 'acting like a robot'); then to teach them how to seduce fumbling virgins (actually teenage boys); and finally the ultimate test—conjuring a performance from a jaded sexagenarian.
Still a virgin at eighteen, she had been raised by an aunt who was very religious.
In subsequent sessions, the girls were ordered to strip for each other and watch a couple have sex in front of them, while an instructor in a white coat narrated their technique.
Then the girls had to undress for a trio of male instructors who ended up fondling them.
'On the sixth day the men began to abuse us and comment on our bodies. During the first week I often cried myself to sleep out of shame. But slowly it didn't seem embarrassing any longer.'
 |
| Katya, the KGB head in the TV series, Archer |
Around the eighth day, a group of officer cadets were bussed in and each girl was given a partner for the evening.
In a bugged cocktail bar on the site, the boys were instructed to play the part of nervous foreigners, while the girls deployed their training to seduce them.
In reality, most of the soldiers were actually chomping at the bit—visiting the sex school was a special reward for them.
Vera described her target as 'an animal.'
'There was no romance for me that evening. He tore off my brassiere and began to massage my breasts very hard… It was to this stranger that I lost my virginity.'
The next morning, the girls were ushered into the theatre for more sex films—only to find out that their performances had been secretly filmed.
One girl whose target had failed to have an erection was criticized so harshly she became hysterical.
The trainee swallows then had at least three more bouts of sex with strangers: once to get them used to the hidden cameras (one girl was so self-conscious her bedmate beat her for 'acting like a robot'); then to teach them how to seduce fumbling virgins (actually teenage boys); and finally the ultimate test—conjuring a performance from a jaded sexagenarian.
The History of Sex: Prague -- The Soviet 'House of Love' -- (Chapter X, Part 6)
The most remarkable aspect of Sexpionage was Lewis' interviews with reputed alumni of the KGB's top 'sex school'—or the 'Verkhonoye House of Love.'
Having passed their preliminary training at the Marx-Engels School outside Gorky, potential sex spies were transferred to a special training center at the Lenin Technical High School at Verkhonoye*, a godforsaken spot near the Autonomous Tatar Soviet Republic.
Between lessons on politics, economics and how to kill people—the usual spy stuff—the recruits were told their mission and forced to lose their inhibitions.
A defector in London named Sasha Demidov recalled that 'ravens' were ordered to start having sex with each other—even though homosexuality was officially illegal:
'If they were invited to an orgy in the West, they had to be able to participate with both sexes. If they thought a Western male could be blackmailed after having an affair with them, they had to be able to overcome any repugnance and sleep with him. At all stages it is emphasized that any task which is for the good of the Soviet Union must be undertaken.'
SWALLOWS AND RAVENS
The same ethos applied to the opposite sex.
With the aid of a former West German spook, Lewis managed to track down one of the few swallows who flew the nest and lived to tell the tale.
'Vera' seduced a KGB colonel to travel in East Germany and then escape West.
At the time Lewis met her, she was in her mid-thirties and living in Tunisia with her husband and two young girls.
Still fearing a KGB hit, she chose to meet Lewis in a small café in the walled brothel district of Sousse.
As she lit a cigarette—just like in the movies—the former sex spy recounted how the fifteen women and five men in her group were transported to Verkhonoye, split into groups, and systematically degraded into accepting their Party-designated fate.
After a pep talk from a female instructor promising them a life of luxury (countered by a uniformed man telling them their true motivation should be love of the Party), they were gradually made aware of what their country expected in return.
----------
* Note for potential researchers/documentary makers: Lewis--and other sources likely based on his book--consistently spell the location as Verkhonoye; unfortunately, a Google search for that name doesn't yield any hits, though that could be for any number of reasons.
According to Lewis' book, Verkhonoye itself was located 'about 100 miles from Kazan near the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Republic.' Kazan is actually the capital of modern Tatarstan, so I take that to mean that Verkhonoye itself was just outside the Tatar Republic.
The closest fit I can find on Google Maps is Verkhniye Tatyshly--though there are a lot of other potential candidates (like Verkhnyaya Salda).
The Lenin Technical High School, or 'Verkhonoye House of Love,' was reportedly part of a complex covering seven square miles, 'approached by a long, narrow road which runs through bleak countryside.' So for anyone on the ground, it shouldn't be hard to miss.
Having passed their preliminary training at the Marx-Engels School outside Gorky, potential sex spies were transferred to a special training center at the Lenin Technical High School at Verkhonoye*, a godforsaken spot near the Autonomous Tatar Soviet Republic.
Between lessons on politics, economics and how to kill people—the usual spy stuff—the recruits were told their mission and forced to lose their inhibitions.
 |
| This titillating article... |
A defector in London named Sasha Demidov recalled that 'ravens' were ordered to start having sex with each other—even though homosexuality was officially illegal:
'If they were invited to an orgy in the West, they had to be able to participate with both sexes. If they thought a Western male could be blackmailed after having an affair with them, they had to be able to overcome any repugnance and sleep with him. At all stages it is emphasized that any task which is for the good of the Soviet Union must be undertaken.'
SWALLOWS AND RAVENS
The same ethos applied to the opposite sex.
With the aid of a former West German spook, Lewis managed to track down one of the few swallows who flew the nest and lived to tell the tale.
'Vera' seduced a KGB colonel to travel in East Germany and then escape West.
At the time Lewis met her, she was in her mid-thirties and living in Tunisia with her husband and two young girls.
Still fearing a KGB hit, she chose to meet Lewis in a small café in the walled brothel district of Sousse.
As she lit a cigarette—just like in the movies—the former sex spy recounted how the fifteen women and five men in her group were transported to Verkhonoye, split into groups, and systematically degraded into accepting their Party-designated fate.
After a pep talk from a female instructor promising them a life of luxury (countered by a uniformed man telling them their true motivation should be love of the Party), they were gradually made aware of what their country expected in return.
 |
| ...is from this 'men's magazine' from April 1965 |
* Note for potential researchers/documentary makers: Lewis--and other sources likely based on his book--consistently spell the location as Verkhonoye; unfortunately, a Google search for that name doesn't yield any hits, though that could be for any number of reasons.
According to Lewis' book, Verkhonoye itself was located 'about 100 miles from Kazan near the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Republic.' Kazan is actually the capital of modern Tatarstan, so I take that to mean that Verkhonoye itself was just outside the Tatar Republic.
The closest fit I can find on Google Maps is Verkhniye Tatyshly--though there are a lot of other potential candidates (like Verkhnyaya Salda).
The Lenin Technical High School, or 'Verkhonoye House of Love,' was reportedly part of a complex covering seven square miles, 'approached by a long, narrow road which runs through bleak countryside.' So for anyone on the ground, it shouldn't be hard to miss.
The History of Sex: Prague -- Sexpionage, Soviet-Style -- (Chapter X, Part 5)
For Beria, this institutionalized sadism took the form of kidnapping and raping young girls.
Professionally, he also turned sex into one of the KGB's most advanced weapons against the West.
'By using specially trained prostitute spies and combining their skills with the latest technological advances, the Soviet secret service has achieved the most refined form of sexpionage possible,' declared the author of what is in turn one of the most fascinating books from the Cold War era.
In Sexpionage: The Exploitation of Sex by Soviet Intelligence, David Lewis claimed to expose how the KGB trained its agents for work that was literally undercover—revealing, for instance, that the Russians called male sex spies 'ravens' and females… 'swallows.'
Though Lewis was billed as 'one of Britain's leading investigative reporters' in 1976, there's no way his book could have been completely accurate, simply because of its timing and the top-secrecy of its subject.
What's more, the photo on the jacket—a Caucasian jezebel beneath a Soviet flag bedcover—makes you wonder if it should carry a 'Warning: Parts of this book may have been sexed up.'
So more than thirty years afterwards, I tracked down the author to find out. Having documented Commie-v-Capitalist spy gadgets during the Cold War—my fave is the American 'breast transmitter' that fit under a fake nipple—Lewis is now a neuropsychologist who uses brain sensors to advise multinationals on how consumers think as they shop.
Back when he was researching Sexpionage, he tells me, it was hard to assess the information he dug up.
'I think a lot of it was exaggerated—not through my desire—but simply by what I was being told,' he says candidly.
'You just didn't know who to trust. Everybody could've been spinning you a yarn.'
Professionally, he also turned sex into one of the KGB's most advanced weapons against the West.
'By using specially trained prostitute spies and combining their skills with the latest technological advances, the Soviet secret service has achieved the most refined form of sexpionage possible,' declared the author of what is in turn one of the most fascinating books from the Cold War era.
In Sexpionage: The Exploitation of Sex by Soviet Intelligence, David Lewis claimed to expose how the KGB trained its agents for work that was literally undercover—revealing, for instance, that the Russians called male sex spies 'ravens' and females… 'swallows.'
Though Lewis was billed as 'one of Britain's leading investigative reporters' in 1976, there's no way his book could have been completely accurate, simply because of its timing and the top-secrecy of its subject.
What's more, the photo on the jacket—a Caucasian jezebel beneath a Soviet flag bedcover—makes you wonder if it should carry a 'Warning: Parts of this book may have been sexed up.'
So more than thirty years afterwards, I tracked down the author to find out. Having documented Commie-v-Capitalist spy gadgets during the Cold War—my fave is the American 'breast transmitter' that fit under a fake nipple—Lewis is now a neuropsychologist who uses brain sensors to advise multinationals on how consumers think as they shop.
Back when he was researching Sexpionage, he tells me, it was hard to assess the information he dug up.
'I think a lot of it was exaggerated—not through my desire—but simply by what I was being told,' he says candidly.
'You just didn't know who to trust. Everybody could've been spinning you a yarn.'
The History of Sex: Prague -- Spies and Czech Mates: From Big Brother to Big Sister: The Metamorphosis -- (Chapter X, Part 1)
Chapter Ten
SPIES AND CZECH MATES
From Big Brother to Big Sister:
The Metamorphosis
'The twentieth century has taught us that every society, every social and political order, has imposed certain prohibitions on sexuality.'
--Soviet dissident Dr. Mikhail Stern, Sex in the USSR, 1979
In 1940, the SS converted a brothel in Berlin into a high-tech booty trap with microphones in the walls and a monitoring station in the basement.
Code-named 'Salon Kitty,' the project recruited twenty women to give their bodies for the Fatherland, plying diplomats and potential dissenters, including the Führer's own foreign minister.
 |
| The poster for the movie based on the book by Peter Norden |
Of course, sex and espionage were old bedfellows.
In the Old Testament, before the walls of Jericho came a-tumblin' down, two Israelite spies spent the night hiding in a prostitute's house.
As they made their escape, they promised the archetypal hooker with a heart of gold that she could save her family from being massacred by hanging a dyed rope from her window, forever linking the color scarlet to illicit sex.
Several millennia later, with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over them, spies on both sides of the Iron Curtain decided that preventing The End justified the means.
As a result, the Cold War finessed the use of sex bombs, making old-timers like Mata Hari look like deluded amateurs.
'I would not have kept her on my payroll,' sniffed Markus Wolf.
The East German über-spy was best known for infiltrating his spies into West Germany while keeping his own identity secret—for 25 years, Western intelligence didn't even have a photo of the spymaster they were fighting.
 |
| Wolf after the Cold War |
In his memoirs, though, Wolf boasted that his real claim to fame should be his use of 'Romeo' spies.
'If I go down in espionage history, it may well be for perfecting the use of sex in spying.'
Never mind that he was using similar techniques to those pioneered by the Nazis.
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