One of the central locations in my newest book, Deep Plant, is New York City. Known the world over as the Big Apple, it is a extraordinary collision of sights, sounds, smell, taste and vibration. What struck me about NYC was how close all the major landmarks we see in movies and TV are to each other. Central Park, Times Square, Empire State Building, Wall Street, Broadway, Grand Central Station, Rockefeller Center, Tiffanys, the Waldorf Astoria Hotel … I could go on.

Manhattan is the most densely populated of the five boroughs and serves as the center of New York City’s self-identity. When people speak of New York, the often are referring to Manhattan. An island, it’s bounded by the Harlem River to the north, in the east by the East River, on the west by the Hudson River and the Upper Hudson Bay to the south.

Manhattan is the home to many amazing and impactful organizations and buildings. You often hear of New Yorkers referring to ‘uptown’ and ‘downtown’. Downtown is famous for Wall Street and Battery Park, while Uptown is home to things like Columbia University on the Upper West Side. But for today, I want to touch on Midtown Manhattan.

According to Wikipedia, it is this country’s largest commercial, entertainment and media center as well as home to some of the most expensive retail real estate on the planet. On Fifth Avenue alone, rents can be as high as $3,000 per square foot. It is home to two of America’s four major TV networks, CBS and NBC.

While the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade starts up by Central Park, it winds through and finishes at Macy’s Midtown flagship store. Midtown is the nexus of New York.

What are some of the cool things to do in there? Well what do you like? Loud? Vibrant? Crowds?

Be the star of you own movie here where the world celebrates New Years with the dropping of the ball at midnight. Neon lights, the life blood of one of the world’s most recognizable locations, pulse with energy. Hard to take a bad pic anywhere in the Square. Experts suggest taking selfies on the steps right atop a TKTS booth, facing south, which offer a unparalleled view of the Square.

Have you ever wanted to visit the winter ice skating rink you see in the movies or on TV. From Times Square, you’re a short walk, less than half a mile, to Rockefeller Center. On the way you’ll pass Hershey’s Chocolate World, the Ninetendo Store, NBC Studio 1A where they film the Today Show and FAO Schwarz Toy store, made famous in the movie Big. In winter, ice skating. Summer, outdoor bistros and dining. And of course in either season, Starbucks.

An interesting bit of trivia,

It was the vision of John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of John D. Rockefeller, the oil magnate who founded what is today Exxon.

Construction of the Center commenced in 1931, with the majority of the complex finished by 1939. It is home to many of America’s most recognizable establishments. Radio City Music Hall, home of the world famous Rockettes. NBC studios where you can see live tapings of the Today Show, SNL and the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. You can eat or have a drink at the iconic Rainbow Room, on the 65^th floor, used in the movie, Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

Other prominent features to be found at Rockefeller Center, is the extraordinary artistic influences. The building’s design, art, sculptures, statues and color, are massively dominated by Art Deco, an extremely popular style of the early twentieth century.

Two examples of this are the statue of Atlas holding the world at the eastern side of the Rock Center, across Fifth Avenue from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The other, is perhaps one of New York’s most recognizable landmarks, the famed statue of Promethus overlooking the ice-skating rink.

I will continue my travelogue of Midtown again soon, but for now, these are some of the vast number of highlights to see when you visit New York.

If you have an experience in Mid Town to share, please email me, would love to hear about it. Until next time!

One of warfare’s most valuable tools is espionage. Intelligence about one’s adversary is critical to success. But is spying an art or technique? Maybe it’s a little of both. In ancient China, the great military tactician and theorist Sun Tzu’s grand treatise The Art of War, included a chapter devoted to the importance of intelligence. He wrote:

“What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer,

and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.”

An earlier blog, The Return of the Cold War Spy Thriller, highlighted the perception between observation and actual espionage. The craft of spying has existed since the dawn of warfare and empire building.

In Rome, the Frumentarii ranged across the Empire, gathering info on potential enemies or scoping battle sites. While in Japan, ninjas often gauged an enemy’s strengths and weaknesses as well as carrying out assassinations of leaders of rival warlords. And in the Americas, the Aztecs employed the quimitchin, secret agents who lived among the enemy, uncovering their vulnerabilities.

The Bible includes the stories of Joshua and Caleb, two of the twelve spies sent by Moses to reconnoiter the Promised Land before they would enter it. It also includes the story of Rahab, who lived in the city of Jericho prior to arrival of the Israelites in the year 1400 BC. She aided the Israelite spies with intelligence-gathering efforts leading to the fall of Jericho.

Many historians credit Francis Walsingham with establishing some of the spy-craft techniques common to espionage. Working for Queen Elizabeth I, he developed things like cryptography, code breaking, and general intelligence gathering from across Europe.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, most European powers were developing ways to keep tabs on their neighbors. Industrial espionage became necessary as no country wanted to be surprised by a potential enemy’s new weapon system or military advantage.

Washington found the answer in one of Hale’s college classmates: Benjamin Tallmadge. Tallmadge had an extensive network of contacts in New York, Connecticut, and Long Island. He was instrumental in creating the Culper Gang, named in part after Culpeper County in Virginia where Washington had served as a surveyor early in life.

In our next post, we’ll look at the development of modern spy networks. If you like an adrenaline injected thriller, with more twists and turns than a roller coaster, focus your spyglass on my new novel, Deep Plant!    

Central to most great history is the realm of shadows. Spies, espionage, and intelligence are key elements to turning the tide your way. From the aforementioned Nathan Hale, history has been influenced and tilted askew by legendries such as James Armistead Lafayette, an American slave who provided invaluable intel to the United States during the Revolutionary War—or Mata Hari in WWI; Virginia Hall in WWII; Aldrich Ames and Jonathan Pollard, both who spied against the US during the Cold War; the Rosenbergs, Ethel and Julius, who gave the USSR our nuclear secrets; Anna Chapman, the recent Russian femme fatale.

My new book, Deep Plant, touches on an element that occupies the gray area between perception and reality. Could a country successfully program and insert sleeper agents into a potential enemy? The beauty of dormant moles is that often they are native to the country being undermined, and will fit in with little or no fear of detection. Simultaneously, since they are sleepers, presumably, they will not even be aware of their installed programming until they are activated—by which time it is too late to neutralize them.

History is replete with attempts to brainwash people—by various intelligence gathering organizations such as the CIA, MI6, or secret police organizations like the East German Stasi, the Chinese and North Korean Ministries of State Security—with the intent of controlling or causing the victim to inflict damage on another person or country. The concept of brainwashing falls into a category referred to as thought control by psychologists. Methods might include efforts to change the way someone thinks, induce certain behaviors, or in the realm of fiction, make someone do something (usually bad) at a certain time, place, or to someone when the person’s programming is activated.

The plots of these movies or TV shows, are sometimes farfetched but still who does not like a good caper? The canvas espionage provides is broad and deep, allowing the audience a breather from the boredom of the daily grind, to see (in most cases) good triumph over evil. Thrillers fascinate, the best of which we like to debate as evidenced by the 50 Best Spy Movies of All Time compiled by Vulture.com. ­­

Because these people are putting themselves at great risk, we voyeuristically condone behavior we’d condemn in family or friends. Alcohol consumption that would kill a pirate  …or a fleet of pirates, Las Vegas whale level gambling or copious copulation, we live vicariously through these characters, certain that we’d never allow ourselves this license. But spies are supremely invested with abilities to not get drunk, even after a night at the bar. They never lose at the tables. And they get people to do anything with just a glance. Also, they can discern evil in other people, or the ability to recognize when they’re being followed or engage in fights worthy of the heavyweight championship of the world. They do things we can’t.

Hollywood spies love gadgets! Cars that go underwater, shoot missiles, with bulletproof glass or tires. And ejection seats … bye-bye bad guy sitting in the passenger seat with a gun trained on you. Push a button, whoosh problem solved. And if you happened to be passing beneath a freeway overpass at the moment of ejection … well even better. Watches that blow stuff up. Pens that can turn into guns, knives, a blow torch or a hairdryer. We love this stuff.

Now it’s not just all hijinks and capers in the movies. Many films over the last hundred years have sought to capture the tedious grind of everyday espionage wed to the one percent sheer terror that grips an agent in the face of a blown op. With the explosion of streaming channels such as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Disney+, there are newer versions of old tales told from the perspective of countries and peoples not traditionally represented in spy films.

Hollywood loves spies and espionage! In my last post, I shared an interesting piece from the 1970’s, Three Days of the Condor. There are many great movie spies. But likewise there have been a number of great TV shows that seek to capture the gray shadows of espionage. One that I grew up with, was a great show from the sixties, The Man From UNCLE. From its opening each week, it promised a high stakes adventure with stereotypical cool men, hot women and a world up for grabs plot in exotic locations.

A spy show with semi-existential outcomes every week, it gyrated from serious to more camp back to more serious in tone. But as a kid, this was often the best way to get a dose of spy adventure. The Man From UNCLE also enjoyed an extraordinary galaxy of guest stars. Barbara Feldon of Get Smart, Robert Culp of I Spy, Ricardo Montalban, Joan Crawford, Janet Leigh, Kurt Russell, Jack Palance, Sony and Cher, Joan Collins, Leslie Nielsen, Angela Lansbury, Rip Torn, Nancy Sinatra, Telly Savalas and so many other stars of the day made guest stops. Even William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy appeared in the same episode a full two years before Star Trek.

Additionally, the musical score for the show was not the usual background noise, but movie worthy orchestra compositions from the likes of Lalo Schifrin (of Mission Impossible fame), Emmy Award winner Morton Stevens (of Hawaii Five-O renown), Emmy Award winner Gerald Fried (Roots) and multi-nominated, Academy Award winner Jerry Goldsmith. You can find some of this on iTunes or Amazon. Take a listen.

Ultimately, TMFU ran four seasons, capturing a Golden Globe Award for best TV show. Robert Vaughn went on to a long career in film and TV, winning a Primetime Emmy Award in 1978 for Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series, Washington: Behind Closed Doors. After UNCLE, David McCallum appeared in a number of movies and TV shows, none with the success of TMFU until he landed the role of a lifetime, Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard on the hit show NCIS.