Spy vs "Spy" on Prague's Charles Bridge .. (from an edited Facebook entry)

John Brown

12 hrs ·

Via PF

"As recounted by The Billion Dollar Spy, one CIA officer new to the Soviet station was amused to sometimes reach for his coat only to find it had vanished. (Later, it would mysteriously return, now likely bugged by the KGB.) His apartment was bugged and his lines were tapped. Once, he used an unsecure line to set up dinner at a restaurant with friends. While driving to the restaurant, he figured out that the cars behind him and in front of him were KGB surveillance. At some point in the drive, he and his wife got lost, so they decided to just follow the KGB to see what would happen. The KGB took him straight to the restaurant. "

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  My favorite pre-Facebook "followers" in Prague 83-85 -- while doing harmless work (as I innocently interpreted it) as a "Assistant Pubic [sorry, Public] Diplomacy Officer -- was to meet interesting people wanting to know more about America and to help organize jazz concerts with free-thinking Czechs at my USG taxpayer-paid-for-residence. I was regularly followed by what was, I'm quite sure, the "secret" police on my way home (I would always walk home from the Embassy) after assignments within the walls of an insular, but not-quite-yet fortress U.S. mission (inside the Embassy, I always thought I was on planet Mars). An indication of who they -- the "secret" police-- "were" was the minuscule leather bag that they carried (around their belts) in their hands, God knows with what primitive electronic equipment. Am glad I helped keep these hard-working Czechoslovak government agents employed (hey, we all need a job!), and in good physical shape, if not health. Conceivably my hour-long promenade "home" (which included crossing the splendid Charles Bridge over the Vltova river; pictured below) kept members of a local population "significantly" happy that American dips appreciated the beauty and history of their "heart of Europe" city.