KGB

• In his new role, Parks will be responsible for workplace sales in those three states for the life insurance carrier.
• Barry Parks brings 10 years of experience in the insurance industry to his new sales role at Boston Mutual Life.
• "Barry is a great addition to the Boston Mutual Life sales team and I'm thrilled to have him on board," said Joshua Police, Executive Vice President – Distribution and Business Development at Boston Mutual Life Insurance Company.
• "I'm looking forward to sharing the Boston Mutual Life story and leveraging my sales and broker management experience to help build out our business in the region," said Barry Parks, Regional Sales Director – Kansas, Colorado, and Missouri at Boston Mutual Life Insurance Company.

• However the Lords is an unelected house, which raises questions about what place it can have in a modern democracy.
• These have flared up with new vigour in the wake of former prime minister Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list, which contained multiple surprises.
• With close to 800 members, the House of Lords is the second largest legislature in the world (behind only the Chinese National People’s Congress).
• The absence of elections to the Lords, combined with its size and cost, makes the public perception of how people are appointed even more important.

Routes to the Lords

• There are several ways to become a member of the House of Lords.
• Prime ministers leaving office can recommend peerages in their resignation honours list for people who have supported them.
• Historically, the most controversial of these routes have been the political and resignation honours lists – primarily because of perceptions of cronyism.

The appointments commission

• The commission also has a role to play in vetting other nominations for propriety, including political appointments with a view to minimising potential reputational risks for the house.
• The commission is not involved in the appointment process after providing that advice to the prime minster.
• However, while the commission must vet the nomination, the final decisions are taken by the prime minister of the day.

Change in the air

• This means that its role can be altered without seeking permission from parliament.
• As recent events have shown, its advice can also be ignored, which has created a troublesome new precedent.
• It is proposed this could have regard for the size of the chamber when making recommendations to the prime minister.

• The Espionage Act has historically been employed most often by law-and-order conservatives.
• While navigating the sound and fury over the Trump indictment, here are a few things to note about the Espionage Act.

Espionage Act seldom pertains to espionage

• One portion of the act – 18 U.S.C.
• section 794 – does relate to spying for foreign governments, for which the maximum sentence is life imprisonment.
• More typically, as in the Trump investigation, the act applies to the unauthorized gathering, possessing or transmitting of certain sensitive government information.
• All of these prohibited activities fall under the separate and more commonly applied section of the act – 18 U.S.C.

A violation does not require an intention to aid a foreign power

• Current claims by Trump supporters of the seemingly innocuous nature of the conduct at issue – simply possessing sensitive government documents – miss the point.
• It concerned the unauthorized soliciting, obtaining, possessing and publishing of sensitive information that might be of help to a foreign nation if disclosed.
• Petraeus shared classified information with an unauthorized person for reasons having nothing to do with a foreign government.

The act is not just about classified information

• Top secret-sensitive compartmented information is reserved for information that would truly be damaging to the U.S. if it fell into foreign hands.
• The Espionage Act applies to all national defense information, or NDI, of which classified materials are only a portion.
• This kind of information includes a vast array of sensitive information including military, energy, scientific, technological, infrastructure and national disaster risks.

The public can’t judge a case based on classified information

• Cases involving classified information or NDI are nearly impossible to referee from the cheap seats.
• Because they are classified.
• And even if a judge in an Espionage Act case had access to all the information needed to evaluate the nature and risks of the materials, it wouldn’t matter.
• The fact that documents are classified or otherwise regulated as sensitive defense information is all that matters.
• The case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, is the most prominent prosecution of that era.

• With these opening words, Ian Fleming (1908-64) introduced us to the gritty, glamorous world of James Bond.
• Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale, was published 70 years ago on April 13 1953.
• British readers, still living with rationing and shortages after the war, eagerly devoured the first James Bond story.
• It had expensive liquor and cars, exotic destinations, and high-stakes gambling – luxurious things beyond the reach of most people.

Ian Fleming, Agent 17F

• He only lasted a year at military college (where he contracted gonorrhoea), then missed out on a job with the Foreign Office.
• The director of British Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Henry Godfrey, recruited Fleming as his assistant.
• Fleming excelled, under the codename 17F.
• They would obtain a German bomber, dress British men in German uniforms, and deliberately crash the plane into the channel.
• Fleming claimed he played against a German agent at the tables, an experience that supposedly inspired Bond’s gambling battles with Le Chiffre in Casino Royale.
• Fleming also pointed to Sidney Reilly, a Russian-born British agent during the First World War.

The changing world of Bond

• Bond novels still sold well, especially after John F. Kennedy listed one among his top ten books.
• From Casino Royale to For Your Eyes Only (1960), Bond battled SMERSH, a real Soviet counter-espionage organisation.
• The early Bond novels were Cold War stories.
• In the novels, Bond drove Bentleys – the Aston Martin was introduced in the 1964 film Goldfinger.
• Their female characters do more than just spend a night with Bond before their untimely deaths.
• But the revised Bond novels will include a disclaimer noting the removals.

Spies After Bond

• Le Carré introduced his readers to a more mundane, morally grey world of espionage.
• He thought Bond was a gangster rather than a spy.
• There’s a little more Bond in Mathews’ books than in those of le Carré or Rimington.
• The more tedious and banal aspects of spycraft – brush passes, broken transmitters, and dead drops – accompany the glamour and romance.

The wilderness of mirrors

• The real world of espionage is so secret that most of us only ever encounter it on pages or screens.
• We don’t usually look to Bond films for accurate representations of espionage.
• But the influence of Fleming’s spy and the general aura of secrecy surrounding intelligence work lend some glamour and excitement to the work of real spies.
• This is why the CIA invests time and money into fictionalisations dealing with its work.