The Long Tail of Spy Stations
The CIA's public map archive lists 110 country maps. A 1961 memo from White House aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to President Kennedy counted 16 CIA case officers among 20 people in the Vienna embassy's political section. Both are true — and together they describe an intelligence footprint far longer and stranger than the London-Moscow-Washington picture most of us carry. This episode traces how espionage got from early modern ambassadors running "more-or-less official agents" and France's cabinet noir mail-opening operations, through Siena's 1252 spy supervisors and Venice's Bocca di Leone…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.