Please excuse the audio quality on this episode. You can hear and understand the conversation perfectly, but we had a technical glitch with the microphones. As a result, our audio went through the computer microphone rather than our professional grade exterior mics. This is still a wonderful and VERY intriguing story and we know you will enjoy it.
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The year was 1971. A young, twenty-something couple fresh out of college with their teaching degrees accepted a job at an international school in Nairobi, Kenya.
The new job, foreign land, and unique culture was challenging. However, they embraced the adventure, exploring their new surroundings, meeting new people, and taking in all that Kenya had to offer.
A year later, the father of one of their students befriended them. Unbeknownst to them, he was the CIA station chief for the region…and he’d been watching them! In the 70s, there was a lot happening in Africa and the CIA was trying to stay ahead of it all. The agency needed "normal" people who could get in close to other foreigners, and find out what America's rivals were up to Africa.
Their new friend approached the young couple with an offer to serve their country, and make the extra money they needed to supplement their teaching income.
They accepted, and the ride began!
With expert story-telling talent, Linda Shields Allison shares the stories that define the precarious balancing act that she and her husband lived through as they monitored listening devices, and attended cozy neighborhood parties...with potential enemies.
While teaching young children by day, they were also hosting shadowy agents in their home, who trained them in the arts of secrecy and subversion. They glided casually through their social circles while their family home doubled as a safe-house for mysterious men, with no names, who would appear one night, and vanish the next. They lived two lives - one of which they couldn't even tell their own families about.
Lower the blinds. Pour yourself a martini - shaken, not stirred. Then listen to this tale of espionage and international intrigue told by a woman you could easily mistake for just the gal next door ... because she IS the gal next door.
Join us as Linda Shields Allison gives us the backstory behind her spy memoir: {Code Names} Betsy and Babe.
Find Linda's book HERE: https://booklocker.com/books/13738.html
Also available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever books are sold.
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