Reading While Eating.

So you know how sometimes when you’re eating dinner you like to do some light reading for fun and so occasionally you’ll grab something like Henry S. A. Becket’s glossary The Dictionary of Espionage off the shelf? Well I do that too. Did you see the thing on page 70?

FRENCH ROOM

The conference room of the director of Central Intelligence, so named for reasons no one remembers.

I thought that entry was particularly fun. I also liked this one:

KING GEORGE’S CAVALRY

A British term meaning, in effect, when all other efforts fail, buy what you need (“Send in King George’s Cavalry”).

Lot’s of these are very British. I guess that that isn’t a big surprise. The British and the Soviets excelled at this clandestine intelligence stuff, but the British were funnier:

MISCHIEF, INCORPORATED

Left-wing British euphemism for “MI” the formal designation for Great Britain’s two major intelligence services, MI5 and MI6.

This is probably the best one that I can across tonight though:

SOUTH CAFETERIA

CIA’s “classified: dining area. Covert employees eat there, secure in the knowledge that no outsiders are permitted inside. Visitors from the “outside” - including such fellow spy agencies as the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency - are shunted to the overt cafeteria. The food reportedly is better in South Cafeteria.

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