7 hours agoThis was the double spy who inspired James Bond's film.
Periskopi(8 years ago)
(8 years ago)J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), was one of the most powerful and frightening men in the United States, director of the Bureau of Investigation, later turned FBI, from 1924 to the year of his death. No American president had the courage to retire because he had compromising files on [...]
The image of Hoover is surrounded by many shadows: it was an unmovable anti-communist, persecution, even illegal methods, all who supported radical ideas. However, he stubbornly denied the presence of organized crime in the United States (or mafia) until he was forced to acknowledge his existence in 1957.
During his career, he persecuted black rights activists (in 1964 he sent an anonymous letter to Martin Luther King, inviting him to commit suicide), women (resting all women agents of the Federal Bureau), and was accused of not fully investigating President John F. Kennedy's murder.
Conservative to the marrow, he could not tolerate constant gossip about his alleged homosexuality, which controversist Truman Kapote (an alleged homosexual) was very fond of flowing.
Hoover, he did not trust strangers, and for that reason, he underestimated information received by a spy in the service of Great Britain, who warned him of a possible attack on Pearl Harbor, and caused the United States to enter World War II.
Hoover did not trust Dusko Popov, a man who represented all he hated: he was a women's funli, loved sports cars and game of fortune, and was also of Yugoslav origin. A man so skilled at his double spy work, and with such an unusual life, that he inspired Jan Fleming to create his famous character, legendary agent James Bond/07/07.
A source of inspiration as concrete as that some real facts of Popov's life are shown as adventures of Bond itself. Jan Fleming, himself a secret agent in the United Kingdom service, and in that role he even had the opportunity to get to know the activities of Dusko Popov, with whom he shared passion for women and strong alcoholic beverages.
One evening in 1941, at an Estoril casino in Portugal, Popov threw a huge sum on the table for $4,000) just to challenge an even crazier player. The money Popov had received from the Germans, to organize a spy network in England, would actually end up in British M16 crates.
In view of Popov's fame, the British placed it under the supervision of Fleming, who was left shocked (and hypnotised) by the indifference shown by Popov, to the possibility of losing such a amount of money, which, moreover, did not belong to him.
The scene, perhaps a little exaggerated by Popov, is brought back to the series “Casino Royal” of James Bond, even though Fleming gave another version of that evening at the casino. If the writer had known Popov long ago, he would not have been so surprised by his conduct.
Dusan “Popov was born in 1912 in Serbia, to a wealthy and educated family, which did not pay attention to travel spending and educating her children. After graduating from law, Popov went to Frayburg, Germany, to protect his doctorate. It was 1934, and Germany was already experiencing the Nazi delta, with book burning, Jewish persecution, and the construction of the first concentration camps.
At the time, Popov was not interested in politics, but rather in sports cars and girls, passions he shared with a German friend, Johann Jebsen, rich and careless like him himself. But in the past two years in Frayburg, young Dusan well understood what was the true face of Nazism, and he even had the courage to ridicule him publicly, thinking that he, a Serb, had no obligation to prove his loyalty to Hitler.
In the summer of 1937, after completing the doctorate, Popov was ready to go to Paris to celebrate the completion of his studies. But he failed to arrest the Gestapo on the charge of being a Communist, putting him in prison with no formal judgment.
It was his friend Jebsen, the one who informed Popov's father of what happened, who managed to free his son because of his influential friendships. In 1940, Jebsen told Dusan that he had become part of the German secret service Abvehr to avoid recruiting the German army, Vermaht, and offered to join him.
Popov agreed, but only after consulting with British intelligent service: he would play a double game in favour of the Allied forces, codenamed “Trichikli” (just as Jebsen did, which ended up in a concentration camp, where he most likely died).
In 1941, Abvehr sent him on a mission to the United States to organize a spy network and investigate some of the objectives of German intelligence. The demand for detailed information on Pearl Harbor prompted Popov to suspect that the US fleet stationed in Hawaii was in serious danger.
On August 12th 1941, Popov informed Hoover of the imminent danger, but the suspicious FBI leader did not report to the superiors. After returning from the United States (Hover ordered him to leave the country immediately, Popov moved to London, where it actively contributed to the operation”Fortitude”, part of the broader fraud strategy called “Bodyward”.
The landing in Normandy was also successful thanks to Popov, who managed to convince the Germans that the Allied forces would land in Kale.
Like James Bond, while conducting dangerous war operations, Popov did not give up his lifestyle as a playboy and gambling player, after writing later (maybe somewhat excessive) his memories “Spy against spy”, published 1974.
In 1981, Popov's physics surrendered to excesses with alcohol and tobacco: The secret agent died at 69 years of age, 17 years after Jan Fleming, the writer who had shaken that strange evening in 1941 at the Estoril casino. / “Vanilla Magazine” Albanian from the world.al
