
The Mail from Budapest (1993) - never-the-bride
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol2no4/html/v02i4a11p_0001.htm
======
ncmncm
These things are always carefully rewritten to try to soften the essential
ugliness of the whole endeavor, but the effort never quite succeeds. Some of
it must be to avoid distracting from the drama of the story, but the rest
must, I think, be simply the habit of deception. Re-reading, carefully, we can
find the chinks where the truth has been sealed off.

The most essential activity of spycraft, always and everywhere, is extortion.
It may be in what we think is a good cause, but spycraft doesn't care. In this
case, all these people executed or driven to suicide got there in service of
protecting what was, in the end, a doomed republic, betrayed not by spies but
by its own hope that appeasement might mean peace. They incidentally handed
over to Germany all the armament built to defend themselves. Germany used
Czech tanks, and probably no small number of Czech soldiery, to invade France.

I predict it will turn out, in the fullness of time, that the coroner who
ruled Epstein's death was suicide was compelled to that conclusion, not by the
facts, but by some threat, from somebody served by his death. No republic is
defended by the compulsion, but the overwhelming majority of people taught the
practice were taught in service of government. Once taught, they go on to a
career of it, somewhere.

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ableal
Tripped over the CSR acronym in the second paragraph ("Austria was weak,
Poland cool toward the CSR, and Hungary antagonistic.")

From the context, must be Czecho-Slovak Republic. Wiki agrees
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakia)

~~~
taejo
The correct abbreviation in Czech and Slovak, as shown on that page, is ČSR;
however it does seem that CSR was used in English.

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sbmthakur
That was a great read. Thanks for sharing.

~~~
politelemon
Thoroughly fascinating, is there more like this? I really like these 'short
stories' with this level of detail.

~~~
Shengbo
Plenty of others in the same archive[1], but you pretty much have to sift
through it manually to find something interesting.

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-
intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-
intelligence/kent-csi/author-combine.htmhttps://www.cia.gov/library/center-
for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/author-combine.htm)

------
smcl
"His conduct was so circumspect that the rueful Czechs concluded that, unlike
Ujszaszy, he had never been trained by the Hungarian intelligence service"

Sick burn on the Hungarians there

~~~
ncmncm
Still, they had hundreds of agents. Czech must have had as many in Germany and
Hungary.

Many Germans living in Denmark joined the resistance after the invasion. After
the war they were rounded up and handed over to Germany, which executed them
immediately: they had betrayed their Fatherland.

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t0mk
Nice story, would make a good history movie, they are running out of those in
there. So far the topics of cz historical movies are:

\- Hussites - early protestant church (based in Prague) turned mercenary army
after Vatican burned their leader at stake

\- How trendy it was to be "Czech" before WWI, when part of the Austrian
empire

\- How silly was WWI from the czech point of view (Svejk)

\- Legions in the White army in WWI

\- How great it was during the first republic (1918-WWII)

\- How bad it was during WWII, the Munich betrayal

\- How bad/silly it was just after WWII

\- How bad it was during the communist rule (1948-1989)

\- How silly it was during the communist rule

\- Another betrayal, by the Warsaw pact armies in August 1968

\- How wild it was during the 90s

.. and most of those are pretty drained.

I googled the topic in czech and not much popped up.

Thanks for the link, it was a good read!

~~~
bgilroy26
What is your favorite historical Czech movie? Which one do you think was the
best executed?

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KRS-Won
Anyone have the TL;DR?

~~~
smcl
In the build-up to WW2 the Hungarians had a spy network within Czechoslovakia
that was completely compromised by a Hungarian colonel who was predictable and
careless with how he distributed communications to them. It's really quite a
decent read

