BAYARD & HOLMES
~ Piper Bayard & Jay Holmes
Since our first Bayard & Holmes Love-A-Spook Day, we annually have honored either an individual or a group of people from the Intelligence Community (“IC”). Our pantheon of awardees has included the likes of Ric Prado, Virginia Hall, Billy Waugh, Arkady Shevchenko, and others.
This year, we recognize some of the unsung tech heroes of the Shadow World who are essential to the operations and security of the Military and Intelligence Communities. Without those who operate our surveillance technology, the Military and Intelligence Communities would be functioning at a severe deficit. These teams are critical for keeping tabs on enemy nations and organizations and collecting, filtering, and interpreting data to keep our Military and Intelligence Communities operating at peak performance. This year, we recognize and honor our Remote Sensing and Satellite Teams with our 16th Annual Love-A-Spook Day Award.
And now from Jay Holmes . . .
As Love-A-Spook Day approached, I wanted to once more generate a bit of love for some long-forgotten, deserving heroes of the Intelligence Community. I have a list of many deserving folks in my aging and not yet fully senile mind. Some of them arrived on my list through me being lucky enough to have known them, and others got there through my curiosity for history.
I started my research and built an outline for a worthy recipient and then I realized that there was insufficient public information on that individual to justify a decent paper for Love a Spook Day. I will invest more time to dig more deeply at a later date for that particular courageous lady. The same thing happened twice more, not enough public information readily available.
That research and writing exercise reminded me about an crucial and unavoidable fact . . .
None of us will never know who the greatest spooks are.
The Power of Anonymous
An important factor in their success is remaining unnoticed. They never appear to anyone to work in the Military or Intelligence Communities, and their job descriptions and names do not appear in print. Their friends and family accepted them as a traveling salesman, a traveling auditor, an engineer on an overseas project, a boring clerk in some unimportant company, etc. They look like any other unremarkable, overworked, underpaid, over-stressed member of the local community, and they like it that way. Fame is not on their bucket list. Without anonymity, they would not be able to achieve their goals.
STEM Spooks
Beyond those greatest or most interesting spooks, we have the dedicated professional individuals doing “more ordinary jobs” who are almost never written about unless they attempt to use their career to become a political hack. For me, even during my childhood, I imagined Intelligence and National Defense work in any form to be foremost an act of devotion, and always dependent on teamwork wherein every member was important. What was more difficult for me to guess at as a child was that intelligence agencies, both ours in the US and others around the world, would become more and more reliant on bright, hard-working “tech people.” That’s what I called them in my young adulthood. Now they now call themselves “STEM employees.”
Though I was an operations guy and remain so at heart, I was respected for my “good tech skills and my science education.” That skill level and science education would not earn me enough status in our current STEM groups to be trusted to make the coffee. The world has moved on, but in a good way. The brighter, younger, better-educated STEM folks have forged newer and better abilities, and many of the tools they have created were beyond what I could have imagined in my youth.
A long time ago, I realized that I owe many of those STEM folks some love.
Anyone who appreciates their freedom and safety also owes the STEM folks some love.
The Fordow Example
On this 16th Annual Love-A-Spook Day, we celebrate, more specifically, the always-underpaid and always-overworked Remote Sensing and Satellite-related STEM Spooks. They are the specialists who work long hours to refine massive volumes of satellite data into critically important information for the Military and Intelligence Communities. These teams give us a view of what people around the world are doing that helps the rest of us to better plan missions and keep our people safer.
Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant
June 19, 2025
Image by NASA, public domain
For example, they would let us know if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (“IRGC”) jihadis are building a working nuclear weapon since they were last visited by those fun-loving USAF B-2 crews. This would allow us to calculate how soon those talented air crews would need to return for another Fordow-style frolic. The information gleaned by the Remote Sensing and Satellite teams would also inform us on how to suppress Iranian Air Defenses to give those air crews a fair chance to return alive from such a daring mission.
The IRGC are not all entirely stupid even though they sound like it when they howl back and forth to each other. They know that we know that they have not given up on their WMD ambitions. We know that they know that our various types of aircraft and air crews will likely be returning. Never underestimate the determination of the IRGC.
24/7/365
The intelligence to plan and conduct a next B-2 Mission to Iran is a massive and presumably ongoing mission that requires a substantial number of scientists to pull off. The ability to succeed at that mission will continue to require good advanced satellites producing well-targeted, well-selected, and well-filtered data. Numerous people must work excessive hours to interpret that data well enough to keep any US Air Force or US Navy flight package alive and on target.
At the same time, the Remote Sensing and Satellite teams will continue to watch the entire globe to keep track of the huge numbers of mining operations, industrial operations, and all manner of logistics locations. They don’t get to stop any of that work just because they need to focus on half a dozen particularly dangerous countries this month. It’s a 24/7/365 mission, and the variety of agencies and STEMs who get that done have our respect and my gratitude. I hope that they can forgive me for my lack of modern STEM skills when I often harass them with useless ideas and suggestions.
Our Honorees
Piper and I happily salute all the personnel who were part of the recent bombing raid on Iran. They get our love every day. Today, we share a bit of that love with the STEM Spooks who contribute so much to such important and wildly difficult and dangerous missions and make them our 16th Annual Love-A-Spook Day honorees.
Thanks for that data, boys and girls. We need it. . . . We need it desperately.
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What do the main intelligence agencies do and where do they operate? How do they recruit personnel? What are real life honey pots and sleeper agents? What about truth serums and enhanced interrogations? And what are the most common foibles of popular spy fiction?
With the voice of over fifty years of experience in the Intelligence Community, Bayard & Holmes answer these questions and share information on espionage history, firearms of spycraft, tradecraft techniques, and the personalities and personal challenges of the men and women behind the myths.
Though crafted with advice and specific tips for writers, SPYCRAFT: Essentials is for anyone who wants to learn more about the inner workings of the Shadow World.
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