The Daily Beast ran an interesting story on some of history’s more colorful expatriates:
Thompson belonged to a now practically vanished breed: the larger-than-life American expatriates, often connected to U.S. intelligence, who held sway in odd corners of the globe back in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, and up until the end of the Cold War. For better or worse, many of them have become legends. There was Anthony Poshepny, remembered these days as Tony Poe, a veteran of the secret war in Tibet who ended up living among the Hmong tribespeople in Laos—he married into one Hmong family—and collected the ears (and sometimes the heads, it’s said) of his slain enemies. He’s often said to have been the model for Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, although its producer-director, Francis Ford Coppola, denies it. There were the flamboyant, cigar-chomping Duane (Dewey) Clarridge, a CIA operations officer during the contra war in Nicaragua; Gustav (Gust) Avrakotos, who ran Operation Cyclone against the Soviets in Afghanistan, one of the largest covert operations in the agency’s history; and many others.
Now, if any US intelligence services are reading this—if just for the occasionaly boobie pics—I’d be more than happy to whore my insignificant talent and resources to you in the name of freedom, democracy and a government pension. I’ll assume you know where and how to reach me.
(HT to Liz)
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