Transcript – Episode 84

[Show music begins]

Michael Harle: This is Episode 84 of Alohomora! for May 17, 2014.

[Show music continues]

Michael: Welcome, listeners, to MuggleNet.com’s Alohomora! podcast where we are conducting a global reread of Harry Potter. I’m Michael Harle.

Eric Scull: I’m Eric Scull.

Laura Reilly: I’m Laura Reilly. And here today we have two very special guests. I’d like to welcome Lynn M. Boughey and Peter Earnest, [who] are the authors of Harry Potter and the Art of Spying, which is a new really awesome book. Welcome, guys.

Lynn Boughey: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Peter Earnest: Thank you for inviting us, yes.

Laura: All right. So would you guys each like to tell the listeners a little bit about yourself? You both have very amazing backgrounds. So Lynn, if you’d like to start.

Lynn: Well, my background isn’t near as interesting as Peter[‘s], but I’m a Potter fan and decided that, reviewing the series and rereading it, that there was a lot of spycraft in it. So I sat down, did an outline on the book, and reviewed the book we’re working on now, Order of the Phoenix, And then once I had a rough draft, I brought in my good friend Peter Earnest, who will tell you about his background, and he’s the real spy, so we could get all the spycraft accurate, and so that’s my marginal background, and I’m a lawyer as well as a former college professor.

Laura: Great.

Peter: All right. I began life in Edinburgh, Scotland, grew up not far from where Sean Connery did – we went in different directions…

[Eric, Laura, and Michael laugh]

Peter: … came to this country, have grown up largely around the Washington, DC area, served a stint in the Marine Corps as a marine officer in Japan, then was recruited by CIA and served some 35 years in CIA, about 25 years of that in what are called clandestine or Covert Operations. Then I served other functions in CIA. I was an investigator inspector with the IG, I covered Capitol Hill, the oversight committees, and I was also the director of media relations and spokesman for Directors Judge Webster, Bob Gates, and Jim Woolsey. Then I left there, went into the private sector, and then I accepted a position as the executive director of the International Spy Museum here in Washington, DC. I’m the founding director, so I was here when we opened in 2002, and I am still here residing over our museum, which is going down the path now of becoming a non-profit and also, within the next two to three years, relocating.

Laura: That’s amazing. We are so, so glad to have both of you, and I’m a huge fan. I’ve been to the Spy Museum, and it’s truely an amazing experience.

Peter: Oh, great.

Laura: I couldn’t be more excited – I believe I speak for all of us in saying that – to have both of you on this. Your book is fascinating, and we’re definitely… we’re so glad that you’re here for this chapter because that’s particularly relevant.

Eric: We do want to ask the gentlemen what their Hogwarts house[s] would be, had they been sorted into Hogwarts houses. [laughs]

Peter: I did do the little questionnaire at the beginning, and I am in Hufflepuff.

Eric: Oh, yes.

Michael: Oh, awesome. [laughs]

Eric: Lynn, how about yourself?

Lynn: Well, I’ve decided to be [a] Ravenclaw because I assumed that Peter was going to be [a] Gryffindor, as a former spy.

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: Well…

Eric: Well, that’s good. We have a nice… Michael and I are both Hufflepuffs…

Michael: Yes.

Eric: Laura?

Laura: I’m a Gryffindor.

Eric: Gryffindor, there we are. So all of the nice houses are represented.

Laura: Oh, no.

Peter: Good, good.

[Eric laughs]

Michael: And it’s particularly perfect having both Lynn and Peter on today because we are venturing into Chapter 7, “The Ministry of Magic,” today, and we want to remind you, the listeners, to make sure [to] read that chapter before listening to the show, so you can get the most out of our discussion.

Eric: Yes, and before we talk about “The Ministry of Magic,” we’re going to get into some of the comments that our listeners have written regarding last episode’s discussion on Chapter 6. The first comment is a question coming from Steph on Facebook, who asks,

“Do you think, with Molly’s emotional state, that the [H]orcrux is affecting her more than the others in the [Black] house, like with Ron in Deathly Hallows?”

I know neither of us were on last week’s episode, but giving it a listen, we did discuss Molly’s overbearing overprotectiveness, and now Steph is wondering if that could be attributed to the Horcrux playing on her fears as a mother.

Laura: I would have to disagree, just because I don’t think Molly’s behavior is uncharacteristic at all, not just of her but just of most mothers [who] would be put in that situation. And I don’t necessarily think the Horcrux being tucked away in a closet is greatly affecting the people around them so much. It affected them more when they had it around their neck[s].

Michael: Yeah.

Laura: It could be adding to a pretty grim, tense environment, but I don’t think it woud be affecting her that drastically, and I don’t think her behavior is uncalled for or uncharacteristic.

Eric: I would tend to agree.

Michael: It’s a really cool idea, but I think also from Deathly Hallows we have evidence, as Laura said, that that’s not the case because Mrs. Weasley acts pretty much the exact same way when Harry, Ron, and Hermione are trying to talk to each other about what they have to do with the Horcruxes. And this issue of how she interferes with knowledge and plans comes to light again. So yeah, I think even though nobody’s particularly happy to be staying in Grimmauld Place, I don’t think it’s the Horcruxes or everything that’s contributing to that. I think it’s more the situation that we’re in.

Eric: Well, I would tend to agree with the both of you, and I have to say, however, regarding last week’s discussion, I was blown away by the implication that the Horcrux did attract all of those Dark creatures to that same room. That that was the room that was so difficult to clean as a potential side-effect of the Dark nature of the Horcrux. I did think that was…

Laura: Yeah.

Eric: … very exciting.

Laura: That is.

Eric: And we do want to thank Steph for asking the question.

Lynn: I think one other thing we could add in is that the boggarts really describe Molly’s emotional state, and when she sees the death of her children, I think that’s sub-consciously and consciously her worst fear. And I would argue that that’s one of the reasons she’s acting the way she is, with or without the Horcrux.

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Eric: Yeah.

Michael: Absolutely. Well, and it was mentioned on the last episode as well that the thing that… because I know a lot of the listeners were actually being pretty hard on Molly on our comments these past few weeks. And last week it was mentioned that as a reminder that her brothers, the Prewetts, did pass away during the war. They were killed during the last war. So she’s already lost very close family members to a war and to think that she has a brood of so many children plus Harry and Hermione to worry about now…

Laura: And the whole Percy thing happening.

Michael: And the whole Percy thing.

Eric: So the next comment I’d to bring up comes from Surprisinglyswishy on our Alohomora! main site. The comment says,

“In the podcast, someone asked which family you would rather be [a] part of: the Blacks, the Tonks[es], or the Malfoys. I think the point of the family tree in the book is to say that it doesn’t matter [which] family you’re a part of. The three sisters were all raised in the same household, and they took totally different paths in life, which proves what’s already been proven so many times before: [that] it’s your choices […]. The family tree shows us that all of these people are a part of the same family, but who their family was didn’t matter as much as the choices they made as individuals.”

A good comment from Surprisinglyswishy.

Laura: Yeah. I think it’s definitely… that’s made abundantly clear in this that everyone went on different paths. I mean the majority of them took the darker path, but there can always be exceptions, and there'[re] a few.

Eric: Something about the Lestranges really attracted Noah. [laughs] He said that he would join the Lestranges on the last chapter, but uh…

[Michael laughs]

Laura: I’m pretty sure the answer is the tallest.

Eric: … that’s Noah. We’re just not sure about him.

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Michael: Well, and this comment just, I think, points out what’s a really great thing, I think, especially about Order of the Phoenix and [what] its role in the series is. And we’ve touched on this a little bit before but just that it’s the book where there’s a little less black and white going on in each of the characters. We start to see a lot more layered motivations from everybody, and things become a little more complicated. People [who] you thought were flat-out bad and flat-out good suddenly don’t seem that way anymore.

Peter: I will tell you that in the world I worked in, the world of espionage and clandestine operations, as you go in to the field, you become very quickly aware of the absences of blacks and whites. It becomes very gray. Because in many cases you are working with people who, on the face of it, may appear very black or even very white, but because of your unique position and insight, you discern the grayness. You see the black in the white and the white in the black. So that part of the book struck me as very real.

Michael: Mhm. Definitely.

Laura: That’s beautifully put.

Lynn: And isn’t it fascinating that the black sheep of the Black family, the ones [who] rebel, are the ones [who] end up going toward the good side, if you will?

[Michael laughs]

Laura: Yeah.

Eric: And more to the point, the black sheep is seriously black. [laughs] He’s Sirius Black.

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Eric: Yes, there'[re] so many black puns, fun black puns.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: We were talking about that. I think that’ll be a continuing discussion for this book.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: Our final comment comes from another one of our favorite usernames, AccioPotassium!, who says,

“I might have found some more to add to the symbolism of the Black family[, as shown in this chapter]. The rusty daggers may represent the [Black family’s] long history of backstabbing to gain a more powerful position in wizarding government. Another idea could be that the daggers are from the story of the great Shakespearean play Macbeth. The coiled snakeskin [we saw] could embody the Blacks tradition of being almost completely Slytherin […] pure[-]blood, as they constantly are trying to remove mud from their family tree. The ornate crystal bottle may symbolize the Blacks moral belief of being kept pure throughout their history, while the large opal signifies the superiority of being a purely magical family, and the blood indicates the extensive family bloodline.”

Wow.

Michael: [laughs] That was thought out.

[Eric laughs]

Laura: Yeah, I mean, it’s… I don’t think J.K. Rowling particularly does anything carelessly, and I think just because all of these things are very visual and very… she does take the time to describe all of this, it could just be to set the scene of this being a creepy hell on Earth but also very Victorian. I do think that… maybe not down to every little last thing, but I do think stuff like the snakeskin and the daggers are definitely meant to if not symbolize something directly at least paint a picture of who these people were, and it does it very well.

Eric: Agreed.

Lynn: I like the reference to Shakespeare and Macbeth. One of the things that Peter and I wrestled with in our book is that how often do we bring in the references such as Macbeth and the witches and the prophecy and of course the daggers that Macbeth sees, and for what’s it worth, about a month ago on April 16, I in front of four judges represented Macbeth and Lady Macbeth on continuing legal education. I’m afraid that Macbeth ended up going back to jail, but Lady Macbeth… they allowed her to have a hearing to determine if she was competent to stand trial.

[Eric, Laura, and Michael laugh]

Peter: I mean, it’s interesting, Lynn, when you… I remember you told me about that case, and it will be interesting if any of you go back after recent trials of notorious spies. And I’ll pick Aldrich Ames, who was the CIA turncoat, and Robert Hanssen, who was the FBI turncoat. In both those instances, the court, in effect, bargained with the defendants so that in exchange for their agreeing to life in prison, the wives were – in at least one case – let off with a much, much [shorter] penance of seven years. I think she was out in five. And in the case of Hanssen, she got to keep part of his pension. So that’s very true to life to the mock court that you participated in, Lynn.

Laura: Yeah.

Eric: Well, I find that to be very fascinating.

Laura: Yeah, and we want to also just thank our listeners. We say this every week, but it bears mentioning still: the sheer amount of comments that we receive… and paring it down to three. I think we received around 140, so thank you. Please keep commenting. And continuing on our comments for last week, we’re going to move into our Podcast Question of the Week responses. So last week it was asked that… all right, so “So this chapter and the ones right before it have had two prominent mother figures: Mrs. Black and Mrs. Weasley. Our question is as follows: Does Sirius have issues with Molly Weasley because she is a strong mother figure, and he has bad personal experience with strong mother figure? What about Harry? Does he have similar issues with Molly that are somehow rooted in his childhood interactions with Lily?” So leading into our first comment… okay, this is by Elvis Gaunt. It says,

“We surely see some similarities between Mrs. Black and Mrs. Weasley with both of them shouting a lot, but I think it[‘]s purely superficial. Molly tries to mother Harry, not Sirius. Molly is in total agreement with Dumbledore ([that] Harry should not be given any information, Sirius should not go to the trial with Harry, etc). Sirius resents Dumbledore and shows this resentment towards her when she seconds Dumbledore’s opinions. I don’t think Sirius has a resentment towards all mother figures because he [said] he was accepted as a second son by the Potters, and he liked it there, just like Harry hates the Dursleys but loves the Weasley home because they treat him as their (seventh?) son. Both of them grew up with bad parents, and they [just] hated that particular set that they had, not all parents. Harry[, on the other hand,] resents Mrs. Weasley just like any teenager would when they[‘]re told they are too young for something by their parent.”

Eric: Oh, great analysis by Elvis Gaunt there. I tend to agree, for sure.

Laura: Yeah, and that was definitely the majority of the comments in response. I think everyone, without any [laughs] opposing views agreed that Harry was just resenting Mrs. Weasley, not for any deep-set issues but just because he is a teenager being told he can’t do something that he wants to do.

Michael: Well, it’s not like… because it was noted last week by the hosts that this is the first proper mother figure Harry has had in his life, and I think that’s partly where this idea came from with this question. Because it’s like… but he’s had guardians who have told him no a lot, so… and he doesn’t really like to be told no anymore, these days. Harry and Sirius definitely seem to be relating a lot more as far as… I think the issue isn’t so much perhaps parental figures as it is authority figures at this point.

Laura: Right. And that’s pretty much exactly what this next point… their thesis is as well. From LeslieLovegood, it says,

“[I] think Sirius'[s] problem with Molly spawn[s] from 2 things, neither of which are related to his mother, the first of which is that Sirius simply doesn’t like being told what to do. We know that he never has, which is why he [is] always in trouble in his youth. At this point everyone seems to be telling Sirius what to do, and that lack of freedom is coming to a boiling point. The other thing is that he doesn’t like that Molly is challenging him over [his] ‘guardianship’ of Harry. Sirius loves Harry, probably more than anyone left on Earth. We know he feels extremely guilty about James and Lily’s deaths, and he would do anything to keep his godson safe. Molly is implying that Sirius isn’t doing what[ i]s best for Harry. Mix that with the fact that Sirius wants to protect Harry but at the same time be his best mate, and Sirius just explodes on Molly.”

So that’s pretty much what you were saying, in that it’s just he came from being wrongly imprisoned for all these years and then now got this pseudo-freedom, but he’s still being caged up and being told what he can and can’t do.

Michael: Yeah.

Laura: And he’s a grown man who’s been prone to not listening before, so…

Michael: Yeah.

Laura: Yeah, I don’t think it’s deep-set mother issues, necessarily.

Michael: Plus the fact that he’s living in this house that he hates and did not want to be in and also that Harry is – well, along with Lupin – Sirius’s last connection to his past and a more striking connection in the way that, of course, Harry looks like James. This is definitely, I feel, played up more… this is something that the movie decided to cut, interestingly, that the book definitely plays into a lot, which is that Sirius sees Harry as a BFF, as the new James, and it’s…

Laura: Remember, at the end he does say, “Nice one, James!” when they’re fighting. So they left that in.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, they slipped that in in the movie, which was a bit out of place compared to how they portrayed the rest of it, but yeah, no, it’s a precarious situation here where, like LeslieLovegood is saying, Sirius wants to be both godfather and best friend.

Eric: Well, Lynn and Peter, I did want to ask how you guys feel about Sirius Black, his character in this book as he’s being told that he cannot go outside, and he’s sort of trying to struggle with guiding Harry, but he’s falling short because he’s not really allowed out. And given the eventual conclusion of this book, sort of what are your thoughts on Sirius, I guess, as a character and what he has to do, what purpose he fills in this book?

Lynn: Well, I think Peter should handle that because he’s had to be deep cover, and he’s been in places assigned by the CIA where, frankly, he was probably in places where he didn’t want to be and was getting no information and was stuck there. So let’s let Peter handle that one.

Peter: [laughs] Okay. I like your analogy. I was stuck in places I didn’t want to be.

[Eric and Lynn laugh]

Peter: But that was because of cover. And I don’t think that’s… I know we’re projecting ahead and we want to focus on the Chapter 7…

Eric: Sure, sure, sure.

Peter: … but, in the case of Sirius, it’s almost like he’s a prisoner of ideology. In other words, it’s not clear to me why he can’t get out. I understand that he can’t. But what’s circumscribing him? Lynn, I’ve got to believe you have a better idea on Sirius than I do, as to his circumstances in this book.

Lynn: Well, I guess my gut reaction is that he feels trapped, as has been discussed at the last podcast, that he has to stay there because if he is captured, they’re afraid he’ll get chucked back into Azkaban. And so he feels useless and unable to do anything. And so I understand the psychology that he’s dealing with. Whether or not he should be able to just get out and leave and find a different place, I guess that’s his choice to have to stay there. Obviously it’s a safe house from a spy world standpoint. No one can see it, no one can get in there. And so from a standpoint of just laying low and being covert it’s a perfect place for him, but he clearly doesn’t like it.

Peter: Yeah, I would draw an analogy with… in a number of instances we recruited people to be what we called “stay-behind assets.” That is, they were like sleeper agents. And we would recruit them and they would simply go on about their lives. The idea was that if war came, and that country was overrun, they would be our contacts, our agents, our assets within. I would ask you to think of the resistance during World War II, where a number of people rose up against the German occupiers. But some of those folks were trapped in that situation. They could not show their opposition overtly. They couldn’t do anything. They sort of just had to stay in place. In some cases they were activated. In some cases they rode out the war, as Lynn would say, trapped in a safe house.

Lynn: Well, and Sirius is also… he has an important role in the sense that he is providing headquarters. Which is, again, both a safe house when Mr. Weasley is injured, and other things. And so he does have an important role. And since it is headquarters, his staying there allows him to be in the action even if it’s from the inside.

Laura: Yeah, he definitely plays an important role in the Order, and I think because he’s not doing – I think one listener put it like – “the fun Order tasks” but he’s bummed out about it. But he’s still playing a very important role.

Michael: Well, thank you again, listeners, for all of your fantastic comments on last week’s Question of the Week. And with that we head into Chapter 7 of Order of the Phoenix.

[Order of the Phoenix Chapter 7 intro begins]

[Sounds of an elevator]

Woman: Welcome, listener, to Chapter 7.

[Sounds of elevator bell]

Woman: “The Ministry of Magic.”

[Order of the Phoenix Chapter 7 intro ends]

Michael: For the very first time, readers of the series and Harry head to the Ministry of Magic after receiving advice from members of the Order on his upcoming hearing. Following a brief trip through Muggle London – during which Mr. Weasley once again marvels at Muggle technology – Harry experiences the Ministry first-hand, including entry via a telephone box, a wand security scan, the first sighting of the symbolically-charged Fountain of Magical Brethren, peering into the Ministry’s various departments, and seeing Kingsley Shacklebolt actively double crossing his Ministry superiors. Arriving early in an attempt to calm his nerves, Harry is immediately thrust back into panic mode when Mr. Weasley’s co-worker informs them that the time and location for Harry’s hearing has been changed. No longer a simple interview with Amelia Bones, the hearing is now located in the Ministry’s infamous Department of Mysteries, with the full Wizengamot panel in attendance. And despite a rushed trip down the lift, Harry arrives outside the courtroom door more than five minutes late. So with that, we are going to take a field trip of sorts to the Ministry of Magic in this chapter and explore a little bit. Before we leave Grimmauld Place, there’s a few little minor points to make sure and highlight. One of them is that this moment happens from the book, page 122. [in a British accent] “Lupin glanced at Harry, then said to Tonks, ‘What were you saying about Scrimgeour?’ ‘Oh, yeah, well, we need to be a bit more careful. He’s been asking Kingsley and me funny questions.'” [back to normal voice] So of course, this is the first major name drop of Rufus Scrimgeour in the series, who will become a major character later on.

Eric: Future Minister of Magic.

Michael: Future Minister of Magic. But for now, simply head of the Auror office at the Ministry. Tonks also references her night watch at the Department of Mysteries. She’s not the first character to do so and she certainly won’t be the last, continuing these, kind of, slow-burn hints that everybody in the Order is participating in watching something at the Department of Mysteries.

Laura: I will say – just because you used that term slow-burn hints – from reading… I will admit, I got a little ahead of myself rereading. I got sucked into it again.

Michael: Mhm.

Laura: But this is… we’ve kind of made fun of how the previous books have hit you over the head with the foreshadowing.

Michael: Mhm.

Laura: This book is much better in truly having those subtle things go by without you really noticing that they’re important, and then they turn out to be majorly important. So I’ve been enjoying that.

Michael: Well, and I was going to ask Peter and Lynn actually, with thinking about that. As readers who are kind of a little more, perhaps, tuned in to analyze things closely than the casual reader, would you guys, I don’t know – perhaps if you remember your early readings of the series – but were you able to pick up on these hints that Rowling lays out?

Peter: Well, some of them are obvious but some of them, you’re shocked at the end as well. But one of the subtleties I’ll tie into, is when Tonks refers to not wanting to do the night watch. Notice she says, “I’ll have to tell Dumbledore I can’t do night duty tomorrow.” And I think that’s a very subtle reference that Dumbledore’s acting as the handler for all of these various people of the Order of the Phoenix. He truly is in charge of sending them out and giving them assignments. So I thought that was a nice subtle reference to who’s really running the Order of the Phoenix and the members.

Eric: Hmm.

Laura: Yeah, that’s very true.

Eric: You know what’s funny – if I could just really quick – what’s really funny about that is that I was listening to the audiobook, catching up, and Tonks is so exhausted, I guess, from her recent duty and while she’s saying that she is going to have to call in and that sort of thing, she’s yawning. And now, Jim Dale – I never grew up listening to his audiobooks but I have to say – you know how they say that a yawn is contagious? When he, as Tonks, was yawning, three times, all three times, I was yawning with him. I was like, “Man, this Order duty is totally taking it out of me. I’m so tired. Stop it, Jim Dale. Stop it.”

Laura: I just yawned.

Eric: It was unbelievable.

Michael: I yawned when I read it. [laughs]

Eric: This is the first fun chapter in Order of the Phoenix and not for the least of reasons which is that you get to see the wizarding government but Chapter 7, this is finally where, for me, the book really became fun, kind of back to the way that the previous books had. It’s a lot of information but, as you were saying, it’s hidden well and kind of packed layer upon layer, very smartly by Jo.

Michael: And Peter, what did you want to say about some of the hints that Rowling drops?

Peter: Well, no, I just wanted to comment on that business about … it’s clear that there’s somebody assigning them to duties and also the whole business of the night watch. Much of my career was spent looking at deception, particularly organizations that were deceptive by their very nature.

Eric: Hmm.

Peter: And trying to discern who was giving the orders, who was carrying them out. But the other thing that struck me so strongly was – and this now goes back to my days in the Marine Corps – when people are assigned to duty, particularly night duty, particularly things that are inherently boring or stretched out, it is hard. You’re fighting, trying to stay awake, you’re fighting the situation. One of the fascinating things about an organization like the Marine Corps or any other kinds of elite organizations, is people are recruited into those organizations because they are very action oriented. They are very… they are risk-takers, they are physically, usually, fit. And often we put them into situations like guarding embassies and so forth, that do not call, by and large, on those qualities.

[Eric laughs]

Michael: Uh-huh.

Peter: There is no action. There’s nothing to do. You spend hours maybe just in one place. Now, that doesn’t mean that from time to time the whole place falls apart and there’s an attack like Benghazi or anything else. And that’s the real challenge for people, is to be in situations like that and to try and rise above your inclination to, in effect, go to sleep.

Eric: Mmm.

Michael: Mhm. Yeah, no, I think that’s a great point. It’s funny, sadly because I’m terribly ignorant on the spy front and I’m more into the media arts myself. The way that you were summarizing the… because from literature and what-not, we, as consumers of entertainment, get this idea that doing something like guarding a treasure or something, an important document, is very exciting and something is going to happen at any minute. But people don’t account for the real life fact that it’s actually a lot of waiting around…

Peter: Yes. Yes.

Michael: … in reality. Because I was thinking in terms of making a movie. A lot of people who make movies, everybody…

[Peter laughs]

Michael: … thinks it’s very glamorous and exciting but it is not the same thing. The majority of movie making is waiting around for something to happen.

Peter: Yep.

Michael: It’s kind of that same idea that you just have to sit and wait, but… and it is a shame, like you said, because you’re recruiting people who have that drive to go immediately.

Peter: Yes.

Eric: And Tonks, as an Auror, is used to hunting down offenders and all that.

Michael: Mhm.

Eric: Used to being on the road, whereas this night duty…

Peter: Boring.

Eric: … as we know from future chapters, it’s guarding a weapon that is kind of a weapon, I guess. I always have to be like, “It’s kind of a weapon.”

[Michael laughs]

Eric: But she’s guarding and it’s a lot of standing around, as you say.

Michael: Mhm.

Eric: For her in particular.

Peter: Information is a weapon, by the way.

Michael: Oh, yes.

Eric: Oh, yes. And that was a topic that was talked about last episode, and I fully agree that information is a weapon, but I think when reading the books as young teenagers and Lupin and Sirius are telling Harry, “Voldemort’s after something he didn’t have before, a weapon.” We’re thinking it’s a really large wand.

Peter: Of course.

Michael: Well, and I think that’s why what Lynn pointed out is what’s so brilliant in this particular situation is that the weapon is not at all what you as a reader would assume it to be. I think young readers would assume that it is an awesome wand. And the funny thing is, once it gets to Deathly Hallows, and it is an awesome wand, I know there are a lot of readers who were not happy with that.

[Eric, Laura, Michael, and Peter laugh]

Peter: Well, it’s not just young people who can be enchanted by the concept of a weapon. Professor Umbridge is taken into the Forbidden Forest by Hermione by saying that, well, the weapon’s ready.

Laura: Well, that’s true.

Michael: Obsessed with the concept. Definitely.

Eric: That’s true.

Michael: Definitely. But now that we’ve left Grimmauld Place and we have all Apparated to the entrance to the Ministry, you will notice that it is not exactly what you would expect. We are standing outside of a telephone box, which, for you kids out there who didn’t live in the times of payphones and telephone boxes being all over the place…

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Michael: That looks like a little red box that you just step into. It’s just about fit for maybe two people really comfortably. And that is our entrance. That is our visitor entrance, notably, to the Ministry. Interestingly, there is a certain number that you have to dial to get into the Ministry, and I’m actually going to… I have a phone that makes noise. Phones used to make noise, kids.

[Michael and Peter laugh]

Michael: And when you dialed, you would hear something kind of like this. [dials a phone]

Eric: Wow!

Michael: Oh my gosh. [laughs]

Eric: Except I’m pretty sure that the Ministry one is even a rotary… is that what they…? The rotary phone that they…

Michael: I think… I wasn’t sure if it was a rotary or a payphone.

Eric: Yeah, I think it says it rolls back into position as he…

Michael: But it would make… so it would be like [makes a gargling noise]

Eric: [laughs] Yeah.

Peter: It does also make a reference to the word “dial.” But remember, even the old dial phones had the letters next to the numbers. And I think it’s fascinating. I think Laura just a little while ago said [that] everything J.K. Rowling did has meaning, and just in the first book, for example, on the top of the Mirror of Erised, there are those letters that those of us who really were interested in codes were able to break that down into one full English sentence, and she never tells you what that was, and you have to figure it out. And of course, 6-2-4-4-2, we… I’m sure we’ll get to it. That spells out a very specific word in English.

Michael: Yes. Listeners, if you don’t know this particular code, just for a moment, just glance at your phone and look at the little letters. See if you can figure it out. These letters actually came to prominence in the fandom through J.K. Rowling’s website, her early version of the website. There was a little cell phone on the desk on the web page, and if you dialed this number, you would actually get a[n] early draft of Sorcerer’s Stone where Ron and Hermione accuse Harry’s parents of stealing the Sorcerer’s Stone.

[Eric laughs]

Laura: Just figured it out.

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Eric: Laura, what…

Laura: I was staring at my phone.

Peter: If I could interject, since [Lynn] and I have been working on this book, and I’ve gone to the International Spy Museum probably four or five times, where we spend a whole week just going word-for-word on it, and every place I went, both there and when I’ve guest lectured as a college professor or otherwise in high schools, I would give this number out and see if people could figure it out. And here’s the most fascinating thing that’s happened as a result. Two things: 1) ages. Kids to adults of all ages had loved trying to figure it out. Most people take about five or ten minutes. But the person out of about 500 people I’ve tried this on – and that includes spies, people at the NSA, people at the CIA, schoolteachers – the best person who’s done it so far was a young girl in her homeroom class. She’s in seventh grade in Red Lodge, Montana. She did it without looking at a phone; she did it in her head in less than ten seconds.

Michael: [laughs] That’s impressive.

Eric: Now that is a future spy, I believe.

Michael: When you give them that challenge, do you give them the context? Or do you tell them it’s from Harry Potter, or do you just tell them this set of numbers decodes a word?

Peter: I definitely give them the context.

Michael: Oh.

Peter: As a matter of fact, in our book, the left front cover of our book Harry Potter and the Art of Spying has both the Mirror of Erised where it tells you where it comes, from and it tries to let you figure it out, and then on the bottom half we have this. And the context is, of course, as we all know, as we just discussed, they go into the Ministry of Magic by getting in through the phone booth, and then of course I refer to them that Harry remembers that number later when he and his friends fly there on the Thestrals and get in. And that shows what a good observer Harry is and that he’s becoming a spy, and he’s breaking codes or using codes. And so yeah, it’s been fun, and again, I’m constantly amazed at how many people love trying to figure out that particular code. But I do put it in context, yes.

Eric: Now, I cannot imagine, though – just going back to doing that in your head – because for me, it’s so confusing because the number 1 doesn’t have any letters associated with, and both 7 and 9 have four letters instead of three, instead of the usual three. So I would never be able to figure it out. [laughs]

Peter: Well, I went to her classroom yesterday, her English classroom, and described it without telling the class who figured it out, and after discussing these two codes, I gave her a signed advanced copy of our book, and I didn’t want to use the word “witch,” so I put on it that “You’re the smartest person in your class.” I thought the parents may not appreciate me saying that she’s the smartest witch in her class.

Eric: Sure, sure, sure, sure.

[Eric, Laura, and Michael laugh]

Michael: Well, and speaking of references, this telephone box could possibly be seen – and I know this was actually mentioned in your guys’ book – as a Doctor Who reference or homage. I don’t know if we actually have confirmation that that’s intentional on Rowling’s part. It would seem to be quite obvious. I never got it because I experienced Doctor Who after I read Harry Potter. And in a way, the telephone box has become its own iconic thing for the Harry Potter readers, I think. For quite a while, I was hoping I could find one and dial 6-2-4-4-2 and see where I could get.

[Laura and Peter laugh]

Michael: So… and the interesting to know, too, about the telephone box is they are… the interesting thing about that is an entrance to the Ministry is that the employees, as we later find out, enter through the toilets.

[Peter laughs]

Michael: They actually flush themselves down at such a less glamorous entrance than a telephone box, right?

Laura: No, I think that was only after the negative influence took over, and it was imposed as a degrading thing.

Eric: I wasn’t sure. Well, this is described as being the Muggle entrance, isn’t it?

Laura: The visitor entrance.

Michael: This is the visitor entrance.

Eric: The visitor entrance. And then the employees… what I love about the toilets, if I could say, is that the idea of the government workers as being public servants that they are completely submitting themselves. They’re flushing themselves. And also, it speaks to the place. “Oh, what a great place to work. I get there via toilet.”

[Peter laughs]

Eric: For those implications, for those reasons, I really do like the toilets. But the phone box, I feel the same way, that I too have often dialed that number and just wait to be taken down.

Michael: It’s hard being our generation, right? We’re looking for telephone boxes, we’re looking for police boxes, and we’re waiting for owls.

Eric: And still waiting for our Hogwarts to be mailed.

Peter: Let me just… I want to make some comments about the Ministry itself.

Michael: Oh, yes, please.

Peter: But I want to stay with you all for a moment with the phone boxes and the toilet bowls. In the case… you’re reading about two worlds: the Muggle world – the world of the Muggles – and Harry Potter’s world. And I lived in another world, a third world, which is a world of secrets, a world of… there are any number of spies in this city where I am – Washington, DC. They don’t have the word “spy” written on their forehead. You don’t know who they are, all right? But they’re there. If you suddenly had them light up, if you had some device, you’d be stunned. And the thing is that in many cases when we train people to become non-official cover agents, that is, to go into the field not as American officials but under cover, often, we do not bring them into headquarters. We had them train somewhere else, and if they were to come into headquarters, which we do from time to time, they might be brought in under a cover situation, not necessarily a toilet, which is interesting…

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Peter: … but the idea of the phone booth, which of course has been moved by Maxwell Smart and all sorts of other people, is not that bizarre. When we have set up secret sites, often, the entrance to those sites is made to look like anything else on the street, whether it’s a small shop or a business firm or something. But it looks anything other than having anything to do with the intelligence agency, and as we get into the Ministry, I’d like to talk about that a little bit, but this idea of a covert entrance, almost a silly entrance, that to me is very natural.

Michael: Yeah. No, it’s actually… what’s so interesting about having you guys on for me is that I’ve just never really equated Harry Potter with the spy and intrigue concepts and ideas, and so to put it in that context, this is absolutely fascinating to me because of course, that’s the whole idea, is this idea of concealment of something really grand and supposed to be major secret, being hidden under perfectly ordinary things, which is definitely a modus operandi.

Peter: And you’ll notice that J.K. Rowling also does this throughout the series. I mean, they have to dress up as Muggles to get into not only the visitor entrance at the Ministry of Magic but [also] in St. Mungo’s… I mean, it looks like something else. Headquarters – number twelve, Grimmauld Place – disappears, so to speak and can’t be seen unless the Secret-Keeper gives you the information. It’s our position, and one of the reasons we wrote the book is that the entire series shows spycraft at its best, especially when it comes to the double agents.

Michael: Yeah, and to analyze things further, going off of the point that Harry is a very excellent observer, we are now [o]n Level 8 of the Ministry, which is the atrium, and we look down the hall, and we see what is, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating objects in the Harry Potter series, actually, as a whole. It is the Fountain of Magical Brethren, and this fountain is unexpectedly important, not only to this book but [also to] future ones. As we see, there is a witch and a wizard as well as, I believe, a goblin, a house-elf, and a centaur in this fountain, and it’s such an interesting… the way that the figures are placed and the particular name of the statue are at odds with each other, and Harry notes that the wizard looks very grand, as does the witch, and that the other three look a bit servile in comparison. And of course, if you look at the name, it is the Fountain of Magical Brethren, “brethren” meaning “brother.” It’s usually used in religious circles, that term. And brethren also implies equality, but that’s certainly not what this statue represents [laughs] by the way that Harry observes it, both the first time and the second time.

Laura: Can I… I just thought something was interesting just in the creature… because obviously, there'[re] a million magical creatures, but the creatures that they chose were the ones that can also speak. Am I correct? It was a centaur, a goblin, and a house-elf. Am I correct or…

Eric: Yes. Yes.

Michael: Mhm.

Laura: Yeah. So those are, as far as I can tell, the three major speaking creatures…

Michael: Mhm.

Eric: That’s interesting.

Laura: … and they’re the ones that also are the most at odds with wizards as far as their equality, as being subhuman or whatnot, so I thought it was interesting that it was almost… they’re accepted into wizard society, so it’s like, “Oh, you get to be in the statue, but you’re at that part of the statue,” versus an owl or something that’s straight up an animal. So I just thought it was an interesting choice.

Lynn: And importantly, notice it describes the last three – the centaur, goblin, and house-elf – looking adoringly up at the wizards…

Eric: Yeah.

Michael: Mhm.

Lynn: … I mean, this is, I think, a real fission point – or fissure point, I should say – because this shows perhaps the weakness or the pride before the fall in regards to… they’re showing that everyone looks up at the wizards. How far away is that from young Dumbledore accepting a concept of, “Well, we’ll be in charge of everybody including the Muggles…” a sense of utilitarianism because that’s what’s best for everybody because we’re in charge, and that’s what that statue is saying; it is an elitist concept, no doubt about it.

Peter: Let me, if I could… what I hear you say… you go into the entrance and you look down the atrium and so forth… if you go into the entrance of any modern intelligence agency, to a degree, you are awestruck. It is a place of secrets. You are there and you’re escorted through some sort of visitor protocol. There are people around you, but it’s typically, physically, a very awe-inspiring place. To pick up a bit on the statues and things, if you go into the entrance of CIA, there is in the front of that building a statue of Nathan Hale, a man who is standing there with his hands tied behind him and he has been hanged.

Eric: Ooh.

Peter: That’s an extraordinary thing to put in front of a major executive facility in a city of granite statues, Washington, DC. When you then go into the atrium, these are large marble-covered halls. This is the place where it says, “The truth shall make you free.” There is a large statue of one of the wizards of intelligence, and that was Donovan, who created the Office of Strategic Services. And he looks down on you, and at his feet is a notebook with people who belonged in OSS, some of who were Soviet penetrations. And on the far wall is our memorial wall. It is a wall of stars. And those stars speak to you because they are the stars of the officers who have fallen and who have been placed on that wall, and in many cases we can not know their names or their backgrounds. And so you are in a place – and I’m not using this loosely – almost of worship. So that if we, just for a moment, think of the Ministry of Magic as sort of a CIA – or MI6 if you want – kind of place of power, and secrets, and layers, and incorporating some of the, if you want, the sacredness of how the people regard themselves.

Lynn: And I note also that the Science and Technology director at the CIA… they have several books that have been written about them; one of them is called The Wizards of Langley.

[Everyone laughs]

Peter: That’s right, that’s right, yes!

Michael: Well, and that’s just a perfect deconstruction because what’s so interesting, as far as Harry’s relation to the fountain, is he notices it and takes it in and thinks it’s nice, but – and I’m sure they’ll get to this in a few chapters – after his hearing he completely sees the statue in a different light, and kind of sees it as this false representation of wizard ideals of how their world is. So Harry picks up on that pretty early. But the fountain will come back, so it is just worth keeping note of. And as we journey further into the Ministry we have to receive a security scan on our wand. Interestingly, when you get a security scan of your wand, the Ministry gets all of your details about your wand, and then you get it back…

[Everyone laughs]

Michael: … which seems somewhat impractical, especially if you’re there for a hearing for committing a crime with magic.

Peter: I will tell you, if you visit a major intelligence agency today…

Michael: Mhm.

Peter: … when you go through the visitors station, they take away your wand.

Michael: Yeah, that’s what I figured, if you had a weapon of some sort…

Peter: Oh no, no, no. They take away your wand. What is the modern wand?

Eric: Cell phone.

Peter: It’s your cell phone.

[Michael laughs]

Peter: And they keep it, and you get it back when you leave.

Lynn: Peter and I were just at a conference last week in DC at the Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and they told all the people, “Don’t bring your phones, don’t bring computers…” and indeed, they had a lockbox at the outside at the visitors’ entrance where, if you had any of those things, they gave you a key and you had to lock it there and you could not have that in there. And so the security at the Ministry of Magic is just like anywhere else in the spy world.

Eric: I think that part of the reason that, again, Harry gets his wand back, is perhaps due to the fact that the government refuses to acknowledge Voldemort’s return, and so they’re still in a very lax state of security, whereas years later, people’s wands are getting snapped in half at the Ministry.

Laura: Well, also at the same time, I think it’s worth noting, at least, that this kind of disenthused person that’s doing the security is just doing whatever…

Eric: You can call him by his name. His name is Eric.

[Everyone laughs]

Laura: Oh, Eric, okay…

Lynn: That’s right!

Laura: … he doesn’t really care and he doesn’t necessarily look up, and it’s only as he’s leaving that he’s like, “Wait a minute, you’re Harry?”

[Eric laughs]

Laura: … and maybe that’s just the general wizarding reaction, but it could also be “Oh, this is a high security…” not necessarily high security, but someone whose run-in with the law is right now in contention, and then Mr. Weasley shuffles him away like, “Okay, keep moving, they didn’t take your wand away…”

Michael: Mhm.

[Eric laughs]

Laura: … I’m not sure if those things are necessarily related, but I do think that it would have been more practical on the Ministry’s part to take his wand away because if they were going to then destroy it then there wouldn’t need to be a struggle, pretty much, later.

Eric: Oh, that’s a good point.

Michael: Yeah.

Peter: But you are dealing with a Ministry here that is perpetuating a chronic intelligence failure…

Michael: Mmm.

Laura: True.

Peter: … the refusal to acknowledge Voldemort’s return… that is an absolute existential intelligence failure because it threatens their world.

Eric and Michael: Mhm.

Laura: Yeah. Exactly. This is just one of the many things we’ll see throughout this book and even leading up to Deathly Hallows… just failure after failure of keeping things truly secure, and even as we’ll see with the Sirius stuff; the amount of effort that’s being put towards the Sirius investigation even if it’s not a legitimate investigation… where their priorities lie is just absurd.

Eric: Right, resources are being wasted.

Michael: And speaking of security failures, let’s just nab a few of these interdepartmental memos out of the air that are just floating around our heads.

[Lynn and Michael laugh]

Laura: Right.

Eric: Oh, you can’t touch them; they’ll zap you.

Michael: [laughs] Oh, is that the rule, Eric?

Eric: Yeah, that’s the rule. They’ll zap you.

Michael: Eric knows this because he’s security.

[Eric laughs]

Laura: They’ll give you a paper cut.

Eric: I will say the security guy is very nonplussed and as a young kid I was happy to read my name in a Harry Potter book. I resolved to have a more excited job, no matter how old I got, to be more pleased with my job than this man, Eric, is in the books. I mean, he’s at the Ministry of Magic! How cool would that be, right? But like anything, it’s just part of the security check-in process. “Give me your wand, I’ll give you this paper and then you get your wand back…” fairly uninteresting, but highly important.

Michael: [laughs] But as we snatch at the interdepartmental memos we find ourselves in the elevator heading upwards because the Ministry is so far underground. So we are going up levels from Level 8 to Level… we’ll be going to Level 2 and there are quite a few departments in-between, very interesting departments. And this part of the book speaks to how the Ministry is set up as a system. And actually, interestingly, when I was reading the excerpt that we received of you guys’ book, I read that excellent paper that you guys linked to called “Harry Potter and the Law,” which discussed the bureaucratic set-up of the Ministry of Magic and that what we see are multiple departments that are pretty much self-governed and don’t really have to report to anybody because the idea that we have already learned is that department heads eventually have the chance to make Minister of Magic. And from what we know of the Harry Potter series, they are never voted into power; they are selected in-house possibly by the Wizengamot. But thanks to the extended canon of Harry Potter and Rowling’s additional writings throughout the years, such as Pottermore, as well as the extra school books she wrote – two of which we had by the time Order of the Phoenix came out – there is much further elaboration on each department’s internal chaos. If you check out Pottermore’s sections on Floo Powder, the Hogwarts Express, the Knight Bus, and the Quiddich World Cup – even the current ones that Rowling is writing as we speak – as well as Fantastic Beasts‘s entire first introductory chapter where Newt Scamander summarizes the disasters of the Regulation and Control of Magic Creatures and their attempts to sort Beasts and Beings and as well as to classify and hide magical beasts…

[Eric laughs]

Michael: … we see that the entire Ministry of Magic is already kind of unhinged to begin with. A pretty dangerous place. I don’t know, Peter and Lynn, if you want to speak to that? [laughs] I wouldn’t want to ask too deeply about how things are set up in places like the CIA.

[Everyone laughs]

Lynn: Well, I’ll only make one comment and that is one of my favorite lines: “God so loved the world He did not send a committee.”

[Everyone laughs]

Lynn: I can’t talk about the CIA bureaucracy; I’ll have to let Peter do that.

Peter: Well, bureaucracies are bureaucracies, okay? I think what was very personal for me… and Michael, I think it was your story or perhaps it was Eric when you said, “When I was growing up, I’ve got to get an exciting job…”

Michael: Oh, yes, that was Eric. [laughs]

Peter: Yeah. Well, when I was growing up… for many years I was very interested in magic; I was an amateur magician. And eventually somebody told me when I was very young, “You’re going to go into…” and I don’t know what word he used; might have been “intelligence.” I didn’t know what he was talking about, but in later years when I professionally was involved in deception and dealing in deception, it dawned on me what that was about, and that I had in fact realized my young desire to be involved in the world of magic, but it was the world of deception.

Michael: Mmm.

Peter: And so when I read that in the book, when we went to the Ministry of Fear, that had a special resonance for me, to go to somewhere… excuse me, the Ministry of Magic… that had a very special resonance for me because I thought, “How cool is that? A Ministry of Magic?” I was just bowled over.

Michael: Mhm. Yeah, it’s a pretty incredible… the fact that Rowling in such loving detail has set up a full government system in her books in a way that you wouldn’t necessarily have to for Young Adult Fiction…

Eric: Boy school…

Michael: … it’s very impressive.

Peter: Oh, I’ve got to weigh in with this. When I first went to the Agency, we’re talking early ’60s, one of our communications devices was the vacuum tube. You would open up the tube, put a message in it, put it into the tube system, it would be sucked up into the air, go all over the building and end up somewhere.

Michael: Nomadic tubing, right?

Peter: And I got to thinking, this is the same as the owl system. I mean, for a long time they did it by owls. And I’ve forgotten who said it, but that was very messy.

[Michael laughs]

Peter: So now they move things around with this little glider, these little paper gliders that get on elevators to get off at the right floor. But the analogies with my real world are too perfect.

Lynn: I also note that when we were discussing the bureaucracy that there’s really two professions that don’t fair well with J.K. Rowling. And one is the bureaucracy and the other is reporters. And it seems to me, when we look at her background where she had to go through the bureaucracy so she could get whatever government assistance she could get while she was writing the first book and having to feel very not good about having to ask for it and she gave herself a year to try and get off that system and to finish her book and I’m sure that was not fun time, but also, I bet she wasn’t treated very well. And then, of course, once the book hit, the reporters, I’m sure she met a few Rita Skeeters. And I do note that Rita Skeeter did interview Peter and I and we have a website – artofspying.net – and it has not only 250 Potter spy trivia on it, but it also has Rita Skeeter filleting the two of us for anyone who’s interested.

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Lynn: And when we attend LeakyCon 2014, coming up at the end of July and August for the second, third, and fourth, we will be there doing a presentation, Peter and I. We will also be handing out a very special newspaper called The Leaky Prophet.

[Peter laughs]

Lynn: And Rita Skeeter’s interview is in it of us, as well as the Potter trivia, and so we look forward to going to that. But back to the point, she doesn’t seem to like bureaucracy and my guess is they weren’t very nice to her when it mattered.

Eric: Well, I just love going to what Peter said about deception because we… even the American public, it’s almost familiar, it’s almost ingrained into the public consciousness that a government agency must inherently be deceptive to some extent for the safety of agents in the field, for the overall preventing mass chaos, that sort of thing. There comes a time when deception is part of the game and now connecting that with magic which has inherently deceptive principles – slide of hand, what you don’t see – I think it’s really a perfect marriage in quite a way I hadn’t thought of before.

Lynn: I had one other thing. I find it fascinating that the CIA uses deception to find out the truth and to tell our leaders the truth and everywhere else in government they’re trying to hide truth or pervert it.

[Michael laughs]

Eric: It’s mind-boggling, for sure.

Michael: Well and speaking of truth tellers and double crossing and whatnot, and I really just want to give this topic of conversation to Lynn and Peter to touch on because it is such a big chunk of this particular chapter that they analyzed and I don’t want to go too far into because I know Laura has set up a fantastic Question of the Week, but I’ll let you guys run with it because you have some really interesting ideas about it. Here in Level 2 in the Department of Magical Law, where we have deboarded the elevator, we encounter Kingsley Shacklebolt, who is a double agent. And there’s a few interesting points that you guys had in your book that I was hoping you could briefly discuss for our listeners.

Peter: The term double agent gets misused, of course. I think of him – Lynn, you and I talked about this – but he is certainly a mole.

Michael: Hmm.

Peter: He is an agent within and his higher authority really is the Order of the Phoenix, is it not?

Eric and Laura: Mhm.

Michael: Yes.

Peter: These are the kinds of agents, in some cases, I work with. They were not betraying anything. They were serving a higher cause. They would not have called themselves agents. They wouldn’t have said they were double agents. They were helping me because we believed in something beyond their immediate organization and so for me, the Order of the Phoenix and it’s called a higher loyalty seems absolutely natural to me. I’m not uncomfortable with that at all.

Lynn: And Kingsley Shacklebolt is indeed – he’s doing his job, but he’s also pretending to look for Sirius at the same time that he’s able to give inside information to Dumbledore’s Army and it make’s perfect sense. He’s the right person in the right place and to just tie it in to real world, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the person who was providing the United States the information so we were able to know exactly what was going on, literally the book on the missile that were supposedly in Cuba, that prevented a world war because that person provided the information. He was found out later and shot, by the way, in Russia, the Soviet Union.

Eric: Mhm.

Lynn: Another person that Peter worked with extensively is a person from Poland who realized when he was working on the Polish staff that the Soviet Union, if there was going to be a war, they were planning to have it right on Poland. If there was a nuclear exchange, the first place it was going to be decimated was Poland. And he, for that reason – and he felt that he was being a patriot – provided the Soviet battle plans to the United States or England so as to prevent that from happening and he felt like he had saved his country and for ten years they thought of him as a traitor. Peter, remind me. You were the primary researcher on the book, could you remind me the name of that fellow?

Peter: Yeah. His name was Ryszard Kuklinski. Kuklinski, yeah. And he was… this is almost right out of Rowling. He was later acknowledged to be a hero of both the United States – or the West – and Poland. It’s quite an extraordinary case.

Michael: Well, and it’s… those two stories and this particular fictional one that we’re examining are excellent examples and I know you both mentioned in the book and analyzed this concept further of that in the Harry Potter series that dreaded phrase, “For the greater good…”

[Eric laughs]

Michael: The second time that’s come up recently. Marissa Reynolds recently said it two episodes ago when we were discussing the book and it’s coming up again here with Kingsley and his operations in the Ministry. It’s depending on… it’s a lot of different factors on that moral gray-ness.

Eric: I imagine it’s very subjective, the “for the greater good…”

Michael: Mhm.

Eric: … and who determines…

Michael: What the greater good is.

Laura: Right. I also want to point out just that Kingsley is a mole is particularly interesting to me just because in this… and this isn’t the only instance: we see him doing this in Half-Blood Prince. We find out he becomes a mole in the Muggle world working for the…

Michael: For the Muggle Prime Minister…

Laura: … Muggle Prime Minister. To try and get an idea of what’s going on through there to report back to the wizard Ministry, so then he becomes a mole for the Ministry, whereas, he was a… the other way around before, and yeah. It’s just interesting to me. It’s complicated if everyone’s doing that, then that’s why… who can you trust? That’s why that situation becomes an issue, but it’s that whole idea of the greater good and who are you serving and who are you betraying is just very, very interesting.

Lynn: And if I can mention one thing that… and the book that we have, the first part of the book, we go through Order of the Phoenix chapter by chapter to describe the spy craft, but then the second half of the book, we have chapters that the types of spies, and which ones are moles and which ones have been double agents, we also have one on the ethics of Harry Potter, and I just mention that because the greater good does come out on a regular basis. And I was just rereading, I’m pretty sure it was Book 6, and we list all the different spies throughout the series and all the different people who were double agents, and I have to confess, we missed one, and that was Lupin.

Laura: Mhm.

Eric and Michael: Oh.

Lynn: Lupin was a double agent, I believe, in Book 6, where he was going…

Laura: The werewolves.

Lynn: … and living with the werewolves.

Michael: Yep.

Laura: I… yeah, I picked up on that because I put that into my Podcast Question of the Week.

Lynn: Aha.

[Laura and Lynn laugh]

Eric: Well, but this conversation… before we get on to that, this conversation between Arthur and Kingsley here, where there are several different layers to the conversation. You know, on one hand, they’re talking very office, can be overheard about needing more information, needing a report from Arthur, and then on a different level, the one that only Harry hears is a six-inch voice sort of thing, is if you can get out of here by six, Molly’s making meatballs. It’s… and the distance that they’re trying to convey, the lack of familiarity with one another on the outside, whereas, it’s obviously very intimate, “Hey, you can share my wife’s cooking tonight” on the inside. Very interesting, very exciting to see that taking place for Harry. It is a bit like espionage. It feels that way in the hidden fact that they’re hiding their true identities in front of everybody around them.

Laura: But at the same time, they’re taking pretty… not big risks, but risks nonetheless by saying comments like that of inviting him over for dinner and Kingsley winking at Harry. There are so many people there and there’s so many people essentially on so many different sides that even just small things like that is… it’s a risk, and I think the purpose of putting it in there is to highlight this, the fact that they are pretending and being… pretending to have this cold distance, but at the same time, it’s fairly irresponsible, considering, is it really worth it to be doing those sort of things?

Michael: Well, yeah. In front of Harry, they do treat it like child’s play. Pretend is a great word in that situation, Laura.

Laura: Right.

Lynn: Well, Peter, you must have occasionally ran into agents you were running and you had to pretend you didn’t know them?

Peter: Oh yeah, well, there were times when [laughs] I encountered people in the street and they had to pretend not to know me.

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Peter: And I think when you engage in an activity where you take on other names, which I did, you run that risk. And so you need to be prepared to deal with it because it’s liable to come up in the most unexpected of times.

Michael: Mhm.

Laura: Definitely.

Michael: So…

Eric: I did want to mention, while they were going up in the elevator… speaking of the Fountain of Magical Brethren, the Beast, Being and Spirit divisions of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures on Level Four, in between the Beast, Being and Spirit divisions and the Pest Advisory Board, is the Goblin Liaison Office. The Goblin Liaison Office, of course that’s where the goblins are placed – in between all of these departments that feature nasty beasts and the pests and that sort of thing, so it definitely isn’t very equal.

Michael: Oh no. If you read the introduction of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them you’ll see, as I mentioned before, that there is a lot of complicated politics at the Ministry of Magic. And one of them, of course, sadly, is poor Mr. Weasley’s piddly little office that we see. Eagle-eyed readers will also notice that we get our first appearance of The Quibbler. That will be important later on.

Eric: Oh.

Michael: Slipped in there. But then of course, we have one last crucial detail in our visit to the Ministry in this chapter, which is that Harry’s hearing has changed both time and location. And not only is the time very soon, it’s five minutes ago and we are terribly, terribly late. The horrible thing about this that I just caught onto while reading is, I recently took… last year I took a class called Partners and Policy Making: Learning to Advocate for Individuals with Disabilities, and this was actually talked a lot about in that summit, about power play and how the… and we see a lot of this from the Ministry in this situation. Poor Mr. Weasley has tried to combat it this whole time by both himself dressing as a Muggle, making sure Harry looks as plainly dressed as possible, not using magic to get to the Ministry, and somehow the Ministry has still found a way to undermine that. I don’t know… again, Lynn and Peter, if you want to weigh in on this in instances of official spy business…

Peter: Well yeah, I would just make a quick comment, and that is the situation is not an unusual one. You’re in the wrong room at the wrong time on the wrong day. And one of the things as an intelligence officer you then fall back on and try to analyze, “Well, who did this?” and “Why did this happen?” And the one thing that you can never rule out – and is probably more often than not the case – is just sheer incompetency.

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Peter: That’s what you can get. In other words, there is no malevolence; nobody is out to get you. Somebody just screwed up.

[Eric laughs]

Michael: But do we think that’s… I was going to say, do we think that’s the situation here?

Lynn: No, I think it’s clear that Fudge was trying to make it so that he wouldn’t be there – total denial of any type of due process or trial. It’s almost [like] Alice in Wonderland – sentence first, trial after.

Eric: Hmm.

Laura: Yeah. [laughs]

Lynn: And he was clearly… when we get to the next chapter, the way the whole thing went where it’s not Ms. Bones who’s supposed to be fair but instead three inquisitors… and again, I don’t want to get to the next chapter, but one of the things we try to do throughout our book is look at everything that happens and look at it from an intelligent standpoint, and we have little interior paragraphs that say, “Okay, analysis. Do we think this is an accident that the time and place was changed?” And of course, Dumbledore just happens to be away but luckily finds out through other means, and it clearly was Fudge’s intent to make sure that Dumbledore wasn’t there…

Eric: Mhm.

Lynn: … and Harry potentially wasn’t there or was late. They might have waited a while longer for Harry. So it seemed clear to me that the whole purpose was that Dumbledore wouldn’t be there and once again save Harry.

Eric: Yeah. I had one further comment to make about this government place where they all work: the situation regarding windows in different offices – Arthur is judged as being not important enough to have a window in his office – and the inter-office politics of the government building. We learn that the Magical Maintenance Staff controls what the weather is looking like through these windows. They were angling for a pay raise, and so it was a monsoon for two months until they presumably got that pay raise. That everybody in the organization had to deal with bad weather so this department could get more funding, I just thought was a really unique, interesting insight that as a kid you just don’t expect. But it tends to reward you again and again the older that you get, and if you’re involved – not necessarily even as a government agent or in espionage, but inter-office politics – it’s nice to see these concepts be represented here in Harry Potter.

Michael: Well, and as I mentioned before, that’s just one of those wonderful little details that Rowling puts in that you always love because she doesn’t have to, but it makes the world feel so much more accessible and real that there’s… Arthur Weasley takes the time to mention that there’s “a little office drama going on,” water cooler talk. It’s a nice little moment. But to go back to the issue with the hearing, the one thing I just wanted to say before we wrap up this chapter discussion is that with the Partners in Policy Making summit, what we were taught was frequently when you do meetings – because if you have an individual with a disability in your life, you go to a lot of meetings – what frequently will happen is that somebody will change the time of the meeting, change the location, and when you get to the meeting, you will end up encountering a bunch of people that you don’t know. Sometimes people from the state are brought in and there’s no good explanation as to why, people who are providers and it doesn’t make sense why they’re there – a lot of ulterior motives in things going on in meetings like this. So I like that it’s put here by Rowling that this particular instance happens and it’s such a dramatic change, because it really does happen in real life. So with that, we leave Harry and Mr. Weasley standing outside the courtroom for the hearing, and that ends Chapter 7, “The Ministry of Magic.”

Laura: Okay, so the Podcast Question of the Week, we’re going to play off of one of the questions that were one of the analysis questions in our guests’ book, The Art of Spying. So between Snape, Lupin, Pettigrew, Kingsley, and many more characters, we see a great deal of double agents and moles throughout the series. In this chapter specifically, Kingsley is working as a mole in the Ministry for the Order of the Phoenix, providing misinformation about the whereabouts of Sirius Black to the Ministry for the case he’s leading. So is Kingsley a traitor to his employer, or does his belief that the Ministry is doing something morally wrong negate him as a traitor? And what about the other moles in this series, such as the most complicated double agent of them all, Snape? So I will leave that there for you guys.

Eric: Well, we would definitely, really resoundingly, standing ovationally like to thank both Lynn and Peter for joining us on this episode of Alohomora! You guys offer just the coolest stories and insight, and let me just say, thank you so much.

Peter: I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you for including us.

Eric: We wanted to take some time to just say, if you could inform us where your book is available – this is, again, Harry Potter and the Art of Spying. Where is it that we can get our hands on a copy of this book, of course, and for the listeners as well?

Peter: Okay. Well, I will just mention it is available here at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, and Lynn, I believe it’s available at a bookstore in Red Lodge, Montana.

Lynn: That is correct. It’s also… it has been sent to the 750 independent bookstores throughout the United States, who are members of the American Booksellers Association. So if you have a handy bookstore you like, you can order it there. Also, it’s already on Amazon.com as a pre-order. It doesn’t come out technically until September 15, but we’re bringing a whole stack of copies to LeakyCon 2014 in Orlando, which is from July 31 to August 2. Peter and I will be there; we are presenting on our book. We will have over 1,000 books that are available for the 5,000 people there if they want to buy the books. We’ll be handing out the Leaky profit to anyone who wants it. And we understand our presentation, LeakyCon has set up a room that seats 600, holds 1200, and they intend to fill it. So Peter and I are going to have to do a lot of magic and Peter, bring your magic tricks with you.

[Eric and Peter laugh]

Eric: Well, I know that Laura, myself, and Michael will all be in the front row if we can muster it.

[Eric and Laura laugh]

Eric: The courage to get up early enough to do it. But I think that your discussion, what you bring to the professions, what you bring to the books as a result of your individual experiences is just super fascinating, and I look very forward to seeing you at LeakyCon.

Lynn: Well, thank you very much.

Laura: Seconded. [laughs]

Michael: Oh yeah, I’ll be up front in costume, you guys, so…

[Everyone laughs]

Lynn: Well, I’ll mention one other thing. We understand that there’s a possibility that there will be a wizard walking around in a beautiful blue cape, full beard…

[Peter laughs]

Lynn: … and he has a CIA briefcase that’s attached to him, à la Blues Brothers with a…

Michael: Handcuffs!

Lynn: Handcuffs! So anyway, look for the wizard as you walk around with the CIA briefcase handcuffed to his arm.

[Laura and Michael laugh]

Laura: Once again, thank you guys so much. But if you, the listeners, would like to be on the show, head over to our website and check out the “Be on the Show” page at alohomora.mugglenet.com. If you have Apple headphones, you’re all set to record, no fancy equipment needed. So definitely check that out.

Michael: And in the meantime, if you need to get in touch with us because perhaps you need some advice for your upcoming Ministry hearing, there are a lot of ways to reach Alohomora!. You can tweet us at @AlohomoraMN, you can find us on facebook.com/openthedumbledore, our Tumblr, mnalohomorapodcast. You can also leave us a voicemail at 206-GO-ALBUS, that’s (206) 462-5287. You may subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes; we love to hear your thoughts on the show. Make sure to follow us on Snapchat at mn_alohomora where Mike Platco is doing some amazing artwork from the wizarding world. And of course, we have our Audioboo account. Leave us a message directly on alohomora.mugglenet.com and it could be played here on the show. It’s free and all you need is a microphone to record yourself, so make sure to get in touch with us.

Eric: We would also like to mention the Alohomora! store, where we have plenty of show themed items for you to purchase. I would read out what kinds of items but we actually replaced that sentence in the usual document with “What do you want to see in the store?” So if there’s something besides flip-flops and…

[Michael and Laura laugh]

Eric: … travel mugs, and things that you want to see, please let us know. And also, I’ll try and work on getting the old line back into this document, so that I remember all of the things that we sell. Suffice to say, very interesting things and very wonderful items. You can support the show by visiting the store, which you can find at alohomora.mugglenet.com.

Laura: And also be sure to check out our exclusive mobile app, which is available seemingly worldwide with varying prices. There are transcribed bloopers, alternate endings, host vlogs, and more. And I believe this week, I am in charge of the content and I will try to work in something spy related, but…

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Laura: … that shall be determined. [laughs]

Eric: Even if it’s just you jamming to the Mission Impossible theme, I’m sure it will be awesome.

Michael: Ooh.

[Eric laughs]

Laura: That’s true.

[Show music begins]

Eric: Well, once again, I am Eric Scull.

Michael: I’m Michael Harle.

Laura: I’m Laura Reilly, and thank you for listening to Episode 84 of Alohomora!

Lynn and Peter: Open the Dumbledore!

[Show music continues]

Michael: Can I… I’m just going to tack on. I need to say my name again because literally right when I said it, Charlie came out of his room and sneezed the loudest sneeze he possibly could, so then…

Eric: Charlie?

Michael: My brother.

Eric: Oh, okay.

[Eric and Michael laugh]

Eric: Okay, say it.

Michael: I’m Michael Harle.