I’ve been a little loathe to write of Elizabeth “Betty” Thorpe Pack (1910-1963), famous WWII Spy-Dame, for the simple reason that she is too closely associated with a term this Agent truly dislikes: Sexpionage. Sexpionage, quite simply, is a practice attributed to the dames who use those other “womanly charms” to get the intel or [...]
“Feds”
After yesterday’s entry, this Agent is requiring a little levity. Levity in the form of a guilty pleasure. Oh, guilty pleasures, they’ll get you in trouble every time… Mary Gross and Rebecca De Mornay star as Elli and Janis in the 1988, fluffball comedy “Feds” as two FBI trainees who couldn’t be more different, but [...]
Violette Szabo
In the intermingled histories of Dames in War, you no sooner research one skirt when another comes to light. So to continue with the apparently British Babes theme that is currently in play, Violette Bushell Szabo (1921-1945) represents one of the more tragic figures of WWII. Violette was born in Paris to a French mother [...]
Pearl Witherington Cornioley
You gotta hand it to the British Broads of WWII. This Agent is losing track of exactly how many stories there are of the dames being deposited behind enemy lines via parachute where they raised all sorts of covert-hell. Pearl Witherington Cornioley (1914-2008) is yet another one of these stories. Pearl, although a British subject, [...]
Gertrude Bell
Gertrude Bell (1868-1926 ) was one rip-roaring, bad-ass skirt. An academic, travel writer, explorer, cultural anthropologist, diplomat and spy, this broad can reasonably claim to be the founder of modern day Iraq. Bell, daughter of a famous industrialist and clearly born into a life of British privilege, first gains props for being the first woman [...]
The Bionic Woman
“We can rebuild her. We have the technology.We can make her better than she was before: better, stronger, faster.” And so begins the career of Jaime Sommers, The Bionic Woman (1976-1978). A tennis pro nearly killed in a skydiving accident, she is rebuilt and becomes an agent for the Office of Scientific Intelligence a fictional [...]
Ethel Rosenberg
Ethel Rosenberg (1915-1953) and her husband, Julius, were executed for espionage in the early days of the Cold War. As documents related to the case are now becoming declassified, one has to ask: Ethel Rosenberg, Spy-Dame or Dame Blamed? Ethel Greenglass was born to New York City Jewish immigrants in 1915. She dreamed of being [...]
Nada Nadim Prouty
Nada Nadim Prouty, aka “Jihad Jane” is a Lebanese immigrant who over-stayed her welcome on a visa in 1990. She faked a marriage for citizenship which then allowed her to not only received clearance and a job at the FBI in 1999, this dame cross-channeled and went to work for the CIA in 2003 as [...]
Clarice Starling
Oh, you knew it was only a matter of time before we visited this broad. Jodie Foster’s Oscar-winning performance as FBI trainee, Clarice Starling, in the movie “Silence of the Lambs”, still has certain friends of this Agent quoting “It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.” Quick recap: [...]
Isabelle Cheng
Isabelle Cheng (1970-), aka Chang Nian-Tzu, embroiled herself in a serious brouhaha here in the US four years ago when the US Department of State discovered that one of our own, Donald Keyser, was involved in a tryst with Cheng who is a Taiwanese Spy Dame. The details aren’t terribly clear but what we do [...]
