A Novel that Didn’t Sell : An Introduction to Literary OSINT

The book traces a history of OSINT in its literary dimension, i.e. of the practice of Open Source Intelligence as applied to literary and fictional products. Although espionage is not an activity usually associated with the “open” reading of a newspaper, a novel or, even less, a poem, the bulk and relevance of secreted information about a foreign country that can be filed after that a technical, professional reading of open sources is carried out is astonishing, and so it was even before the advent of social networks. Indeed, a cooperation has always been the rule, rather than the exception, between the realms of fictional literature and espionage. This osmosis, however, has gone well beyond the routine recruitment of men of letters by the secret services (Marlowe, Defoe, Graham Greene being only the top of the iceberg). The purpose here is to tackle the other side of this relationship, namely the use made by intelligence of pre-existing, purely fictional artifacts with the purpose of extracting sensitive data from them. An operation that can lead either to the compilation of handbooks for spies in replacement of a proper training, or to the devising of a system of critical reading of literature purported to the acquisition of information on enemies and allies alike (the proper Open Source Intelligence).