Honey Trapped: Sex, Betrayal, and Weaponized Love

By Henry R. Schlesinger

While the so-called ‘honey trap’ is a Hollywood cliché, it is also an enduring piece of tradecraft in the real-life world of spy versus spy. Employed by virtually every intelligence service in times of war and peace, the work of femme fatales and Romeo spies have shaped policy and history through seduction, betrayal and scandal.
Perhaps the most well known though least understood element of espionage, the use of honey traps can be found throughout history in religious texts, lurid headlines and pop culture mythology.
Honey Trapped is the first book to fully examine the oldest and consistently effective piece of tradecraft, from the ancient world to cyber seductions. Honey Trapped tells the stories of those spies, both famous and obscure, who used sex and leveraged love to acquire sensitive information. From Greek mythology to recent investigations, the potent mix of sex and espionage is sure to enthrall and entertain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rare Bird Books
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781644283073

Henry R. Schlesinger

Henry R. Schlesinger has been writing about espionage for nearly two decades. He is the co-author of Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda (Dutton, May 2008). His work has appeared in Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian, MIT’s Technology Review, The Intelligencer, and many trade publications. He has lectured on technology as well as espionage in a variety of venues, including NASA and the New York Public Library.

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FOREWORD

In January 1999, Yury Skuratov, Russia’s Prosecutor General, was investigating self-dealing in President Boris Yeltsin’s administration. Working quietly in collaboration with the Swiss prosecutors’ office, he was searching out corruption. As it turned out, there was a lot to investigate. One potential scandal threatened to reach the highest levels of the Kremlin and Yeltsin’s own family. A Swiss, Lugano-based construction company, Mabetex, allegedly poured millions of dollars into accounts and credit cards controlled by members of Yeltsin’s family. At stake were very lucrative construction and renovation contracts for the Kremlin as well as the Moscow parliament building. In particular, credit cards issued to Yeltsin’s three daughters, paid for by the Swiss firm, drew the attention of the press.

Additional probes into money laundering and the shady dealings of oligarchs were also under investigation. Alerted by British authorities, American law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, began investigating suspicious flows of money traced from the Cayman Islands accounts through the Bank of New York—America’s oldest bank. The amounts were staggeringly large, totaling in the billions of dollars.

Due to leave office the following year when his term expired, Yeltsin was threatened with the unraveling of an international corruption scandal as Swiss authorities began their own investigation into Mabetex. Once out of office, the unseemly political scandal could easily become a criminal prosecution. History would remember it as an ignoble ending to the first president of Russia, though at the time it was far more personal and immediate for Yeltsin and his family. Investigators had already found nearly $3 million in suspicious accounts held by the husband of one of Yeltsin’s daughters.

Then rumors began to emerge of a compromising videotape featuring a man that could be Skuratov having sex with two women. First surfacing within the Kremlin, the very grainy images and raw editing of the tape only added to its credibility as something acquired through a clandestine operation. Skuratov, shown the tape in private, attempted to resign. However, his resignation required confirmation by the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, which requested he testify to details of his departure.

The day before his testimony, on April 7, the state-owned broadcaster, RTR TV, ran portions of the tape. The next day, the head of the Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii (FSB), primary successor organization of the KGB, Vladimir Putin, gave a press conference along with interior minister Sergei Stepashin—both men would eventually become prime minister for short stints. The tape, Putin said, was authentic, adding that Skuratov should resign, and a thorough investigation be launched. The television appearance would mark the first time most Russians would see Putin speak in the media. His performance, despite the lurid nature of the topic, was businesslike and confident. In sharp contrast to Stepashin, who seemed uncomfortable by the whole affair, Putin addressed the matter in a sober and unflinching manner. Journalists would later note, it was a turning point for Putin. The intelligence officer who reportedly showed a talent for recruitment of agents in the field was now recruiting a nation.

Despite the embarrassment of a sex scandal, the Federation Council continued to hold fast, not confirming Skuratov’s resignation. Skuratov seemed buoyed by the vote of confidence, and kept at the investigation while citing powerful forces inside and outside the Yeltsin administration that sought his removal. The incriminating tape, he explained, was an effort at blackmailing him. In retrospect, there was a dark genius at work in creating a simple sex scandal to obfuscate a complex international financial scandal. The sex tape, no matter how murky, was not as shadowy as international banking.

The tape was then played again, this time on a Yeltsin-partisan television commentary show hosted by Sergei Dorenko. Morally outraged, he invoked the welfare of children and patriotism, somewhat disingenuously, as he played the tape on his own show. Skuratov was eventually suspended from his position, where he would linger for a year before a final departure. The Swiss scandal was hushed up as much as possible while lower-level players were rounded up in the US.

By the summer of 1999, Yeltsin sacked his now prime minister, Sergei Stepashin, and appointed Putin acting prime minister with an endorsement that he should succeed Yeltsin as president. Putin filed papers for his run the same day. Then, on December 31, 1999, Yeltsin resigned, elevating Putin to head of state. It was a stunning leap to power. Putin continued his charm offensive, recruiting a nation through photo ops and other associated image-building techniques. Despite his meteoric and somewhat implausible rise, he was a welcome change from Yeltsin. Athletic, serious, and competent, Russian media were filled with images of Putin competing in judo, fishing, and sporting superbly tailored suits at meetings.

Rumors would continue to accrue around Yeltsin’s resignation, the sex tape, and the series of crises that rapidly followed Putin’s rise to the presidency. It was later said that a man very much resembling Putin personally delivered the tape to the television station in person. Pundits theorized that without the sex tape that removed Skuratov from power, Yeltsin would have ended his career in disgrace, perhaps even prison, and Putin’s rise to power rendered impossible.

Sex scandal followed sex scandal during the ensuing years, somehow never losing their power of embarrassment while making headlines both in Russia and the West. In the lead-up to the US presidential election of 2016 rumors circulated regarding a sex tape involving then-candidate Donald Trump. A dossier compiled by a former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, who once headed up the Russian desk, began as an opposition report commissioned by a political rival, though ended up making headlines. Although much of the dossier was eventually proved true, the infamous tape remained a topic of speculation.

The word kompromat—short for compromising material—once confined to Russian espionage lexicon of the Cold War would enter the vocabulary of Western journalists, bloggers, and Twitter users. Western diplomats, businessmen, and politicians have all found themselves targets of Russian honey traps aimed at generating kompromat used for blackmail and the basis for embarrassing scandal. In fact, so common was Russia’s use of honey traps that many came to believe it was distinctively Russian tactic. Nothing could be less true.

INTRODUCTION

Sex has proved a formidable and enduring weapon in espionage. Honey traps have not only withstood the test of time, their role in intelligence operations has been documented throughout history, mythology, and portrayed in gaudy entertainments of popular culture. The Old Testament offers perhaps the best-known early example with Samson and Delilah, while the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mesopotamian epic poem (circa 2100 BCE), provides another early illustration. And, of course, there are the femme fatales of dubious loyalties who populate spy fiction that range from Gerda Maurus, playing Sonja Baranikowa in Fritz Lang’s classic 1928 Spione ( Spies ), to Bond girls and beyond.

In the real world of espionage, honey trap operations have been launched by virtually every modern intelligence service, though most of them deny ever using sexual entrapment and manipulation. Like the small-town brothel roundly denounced by the citizenry that nevertheless maintains a lively Saturday night business, sex occupies a distinct place in the world of espionage. Organizations that reluctantly admit to spy satellites, clandestine payments, and surreptitious audio surveillance, exhibit persistent squeamishness surrounding one of the profession’s oldest and arguably among its most effective tactics.

Popular culture suffers from no such inhibitions. Honey traps have long been a standard feature in spy fiction and films, offering titillation in what would otherwise prove unremittingly grim tales of betrayal, treason, and cleverly choreographed car chases. And too, sex, love, lust, and seduction, familiar to nearly everyone, provide instantly recognized motivation that keeps mayhem moving briskly along on the screen and the pages turning.

To be very clear, only a very small minority of women in espionage have functioned as honey traps. British nurse Edith Louisa Cavell, a contemporary of Mata Hari, was far more effective in her clandestine efforts without the use of sex. Hundreds of soldiers owed their lives to Cavell’s heroic efforts in providing safe houses and safe passage from Belgium to the Netherlands. Similarly, Belgian nurse Andrée de Jongh, headed up the Comet Line (Réseau Comète), one of the most significant escape networks in Europe during World War II. Comprised of some three thousand civilians, it facilitated the escape of nearly a thousand individuals, primarily downed British and American airmen, from occupied France and Belgium.

Dr. Mary Walker, a physician who spied for the Union during the American Civil War, is the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor (often mistakenly identified as the Congressional Medal of Honor). Captured by Confederate forces, she was paraded through the streets of the capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia, attracting a large crowd. Dressed in male garb, it was said she scandalously rode her horse astride, like a man, and was ridiculed for undertaking traditional man’s work of medicine. We were all amused and disgusted at the sight of a thing that nothing but the debased and depraved Yankee nation could produce, wrote Confederate Captain Benedict J. Semmes. [A woman] was dressed in the full uniform of a Federal surgeon. She was not good looking, and of course had tongue enough for a regiment of men. Although the Confederacy disdained a lady doctor, espionage was an acceptable undertaking for proper Southern belles outfitted in cage crinoline hoop skirts and exhibiting genteel manners, as evidenced by the much-heralded spies as Belle Boyd, Antonia Ford, and Rose O’Neal Greenhow. A significant exception would be Nancy Hart Douglas, a West Virginian who was reputed to ride and shoot as good as a man. At the height of the war, she acted as spy and scout for the guerrilla group called the Moccasin Rangers, often posing as a farm girl to carry out clandestine operations.

It is notable that from their early days, both British and American spy agencies employed women in a variety of key positions during wartime, peacetime, in the field, and headquarters. MI5’s spymaster Maxwell Knight made early use of women as field operatives, including Olga Grey (Miss X), who went undercover for years in the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) to expose the Woolwich Spy Ring in the 1930s. She had attained that enviable position where an agent becomes a piece of furniture, so to speak; that is, when persons visiting an office do not consciously notice whether the agent is there or not, Knight later wrote. The spy runner would go on to use women in a variety of field operations during World War II with equal success in hunting out German spies.

And then there is the first American civilian course in cryptography taught at Hunter College in New York City starting in 1940. A teachers’ college, where the majority of the working-class female students commuted to class by subway, the course was taught by the famed architect Rosario Candela. Although best remembered as the architect of some of the most desirable and pricey residences in Manhattan, Candela was also a passionate amateur cryptographer who wrote treatises on the subject. When asked by The New York Times whether women make good cryptographers, he replied, Capable women make just as good cryptographers as men…Actually some of the most highly successful cryptographers have been women.

Candela was not wrong. Arlington Hall, America’s Bletchley Park, employed hundreds of women as code breakers on its campus outside Washington, DC, including some of Candela’s former students, while one of America’s premier World War II codebreakers was Elizebeth [sic] Friedman. Getting her start working for the US Coast Guard breaking bootlegger codes during Prohibition, often working with her husband, William, she went on to break diplomatic as well as espionage ring codes of Germany and Japan.

However, the entrance of women into espionage didn’t suit everyone. SIS officer Claude Dansey, a notable figure in British intelligence for decades, disdained their use in espionage. I will not have any of your organization run by a woman, he is reported to have said in 1941 after learning a recruiter in France was a woman. They are simply not trustworthy…I can’t have sex interfering with our work.

Some Americans were even more dismissive. Society columnist Austine Cassini, writing for Washington’s Times-Herald during World War II, saw the recruitment of high-society blue bloods, particularly women, into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), more akin to a country club dance than a serious intelligence organization, writing, And the girls! The prettiest, best-born, snappiest girls who used to graduate from debutantedom to boredom, now bend their blonde and brunette locks, or their colorful hats, in the work for the OSS, the super-ultra-intelligence-counterintelligence outfit headed by the brilliant ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan. The depiction of the OSS as espionage frivolity by Cassini and others suited Donovan. If Washington wags wanted to quip that the organization’s acronym signified Oh So Social, then so much the better. Downplaying the seriousness of OSS personnel added an additional layer of cover for the cadre of officers who arrived at the organization from a wide range of backgrounds, including immigrants, artisans, and career criminals.

Neither is sexual leverage the exclusive province of women. Men also worked in the same capacity in both fiction and real life. Though not often viewed as such, James Bond used what we can only assume was considerable bedroom expertise to convince more than one beautiful enemy operative to switch sides. Of course, Bond’s operational and sexual conquests often ended up conveniently dead, one extravagantly painted gold in a suite at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach. In real life, East Germany’s Staatssicherheitsdienst, SSD (Stasi), proved particularly adept at deploying men—so-called Romeo spies or ravens—to romance women with access to secrets. And too, some Cold War KGB spy runners made a habit of seducing their female recruits. In one instance, NKVD officer Jacob Golos, the longtime paramour of his recruit Elizabeth Bentley, suffered a fatal late-night heart attack in 1943 while in Bentley’s apartment.

More recently, in 2013, FBI wiretaps caught two Russian SVR agents operating under diplomatic covers, Igor Sporyshev and Victor Podobnyy, lamenting the more mundane aspects of spy work. The fact that I’m sitting with a cookie right now…Fuck! Podobnyy complained. (unintelligible)…movies about James Bond. Of course, I wouldn’t fly helicopters, but pretend to be someone else at a minimum.

Sporyshev also complained about not receiving permission to play Romeo spy. I have lots of ideas about such girls, but these ideas are not actionable, because they don’t allow to get close enough, Sporyshev said. And in order to be close you either need to fuck them or use other levers to influence them to execute my requests. These guys were not James Bond.

As with any intelligence operation, the use of a honey trap involves meticulous planning along with the talent for improvisation aimed at a desired result. And while all operations necessarily mimic normalcy, honey traps require extra care in creating the illusion that nature is simply taking its course. Even male vanity, which can fuel delusions of an absurdly unlikely level of attraction to the opposite sex, has its limits of credulity.

Although honey traps differ markedly from what could be considered a more traditional agent operation, many of the same protocols apply. That is to say, targets are spotted, assessed, developed, recruited, and handled. In this regard they are not very much different from the recruitment and running of an embassy clerk with access to high-level intelligence. In a typical operation a lot is going on behind the scenes that is necessarily hidden from the target.

It is fair to say that those outside the intelligence community usually possess only a vague understanding of how honey trap operations actually work, such as the use of incriminating photographs to blackmail or careless pillow talk. However, like a clever piece of spy technology designed for a specific category of operation, honey trap operations offer many variations on a theme, each version engineered for a different result. It is also not unusual to put a new twist on a classic, though their goals can be listed in four broad categories of desired result. They are:

Control: obtaining the coerced cooperation of an individual for basic human intelligence (HUMINT) functions, such as wittingly passing secrets over an extended period for love or access to sex

Exploit: either wittingly or unwittingly revealing secrets through pillow talk, access to a briefcase, computer, cell phone, or other device containing sensitive material

Target: putting the target into a position that benefits the opposing intelligence service, such as making them vulnerable for an assassination or kidnapping

Discredit: revealing details or evidence of the scandalous liaison to create a personal or organizational scandal

It is also important to note that honey traps—the most human of all HUMINT operations—have not escaped the influence of technology. It is a popular trope that technology alters every environment it enters, and espionage is no exception. Take for example, the pretechnology case of Antonio Di Lando, a low-level official in fifteenth-century Venice tasked with decryption and other sensitive matters for the government. In 1498, he was seventy and betrayed by his mistress, Laura Troyolo, when she hid another lover, Hironimo Amai, under the bed (in some sources behind the bed). The plan called for Amai to listen in on the couple’s pillow talk and report the secrets Di Lando revealed. Venice’s governing body, the Council of Ten, took quick action. Di Lando was summarily put on trial and hanged, his body left on display for more than a day. Although the report was deemed credible, the reward Di Lando’s mistress and her accomplice anticipated never arrived.

While the result was not what the conspirators envisioned, their scheme illustrates the state of the art in honey trapping for centuries prior to the modern era. With the advent of photography, evidence of an illicit liaison became more reliable and offered the ability to report anonymously with credibility, though that has been reversed somewhat by the advent of deep fakes. These digitally manipulated images prove that we cannot always believe our own eyes.

Even prior to the arrival of portable cameras, photographs played a role. For instance, it could be argued that photographs of Mata Hari in costume served as an effective propaganda medium at first amplifying and then sustaining what would have ordinarily been a relatively insignificant and tawdry wartime episode. Today, the Mata Hari tale has expanded into pop culture, making her name synonymous with honey traps.

However, with the increasing portability of cameras, some honey traps could also be more effectively executed. In one 1960s case in Moscow, a pair of KGB officers wielding cameras quite literally jumped out of a hotel room’s closet to catch a British journalist in the act. The advances in miniaturization of cameras, such as the renowned Minox, not only enhanced clandestine tasks such as document copying, they also made surreptitious photography far more viable. Similarly, as listening devices shrunk in size and gained the ability to transmit a clear signal, they not only came into use for bugging conference rooms and offices, but also bedrooms and hotel rooms.

Film and video cameras would also cross over from more mundane clandestine operations to capture sexual escapades of a target as they shrank in size. While portability and miniaturization remain a common principle in espionage gear, they continue to expand operational options, including those for honey traps. One critical advantage miniaturization provided was eliminating the necessity of obtaining an adjoining room and surreptitiously drilling through a wall or ceiling.

Among the more recent technologies employed is the arena of social media. By employing rapidly growing numbers of social media apps and sites, intelligence services can create notional cyber love interests as well as easily disseminate video and still images. There no longer needs to be physical contact. Indeed, the love interest does not even need to actually exist in the flesh. An online romance is ripe territory for blackmail, but also implanting viruses or monitoring software in an image file too tempting not to open. In short, emerging and existing technologies, both clandestine and overt, have expanded variations of basic operations.

PART I

CHAPTER 1

The geopolitical dynamic of the ancient world was one in which empires rose and fell with seeming clockwork regularity. Viewed from a distance, ancient civilizations seem fragile things, though closer examination reveals them to be far more sturdy and complex than a cursory look would suggest. Then, as today, espionage played a critical role as a tool of statecraft, conquest, and personal survival for leadership. The celebrated wisdom as well as inexplicable folly of political leaders and military commanders in myth and recorded history was more often than not indebted to clever subterfuge. No matter how remote and strange the ancient world may appear to the modern eye, human frailties and failings have remained largely the same. The calculus of human nature, still central to the work of spies, remains as constant as the need for high-value intelligence.

Even the casual reader of spy writing will recognize the tradecraft of the ancient world. The Bible is packed with stories of spies, espionage often seeming more prevalent than miracles. There are scores of references to spies and intelligence operations in the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocrypha. Whether read as either ancient history’s after-action reports or fictional spy thrillers, it becomes apparent just how little has changed. Depictions of betrayal, lust, deception, and vengeance that have survived millennia are as familiar to us as today’s flawed or fated heroes and villains.

Moses dispatched a dozen spies—one from each of the twelve tribes—on a reconnaissance mission into Canaan on God’s instructions (Deut. 1:22). He was, to say the least, as specific in his intelligence requirements as any modern case office, as detailed in Numbers, chapter 13, verses 17–20.

Go up into the Negeb yonder, and go up into the hill country, and see what the land is, and whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, and whether the land that they dwell in is good or bad, and whether the cities that they dwell in are camps or strongholds, and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there is wood in it or not. Be of good courage, and bring some of the fruit of the land.

Joshua, one of the dozen spies dispatched to spy out the land of Canaan and leader of the Israelites following the death of Moses, also made liberal use of spies, sending a pair of spies into Jericho (Josh. 2:1) to bring back intelligence from inside the walls of the city. It is on this mission they encounter the harlot Rahab. The Bible, which often shows little concern about revealing sources or methods, relates Rahab’s role in providing a safe house for the two spies, misdirecting their pursuers, and detailing the intelligence she provided.

I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land will melt away before you, she tells them (Josh. 2:8). What follows are detailed instructions that provide for Rahab and her family’s safety during the imminent battle, including the signal of a scarlet cord in the window (Josh. 2:15).

Rahab, who does not quite qualify as a honey trap by the modern definition, very likely relayed her intelligence based on what she heard in the course of performing her job. It would not be the last time harlots or brothels acted as the center for intelligence collection. Likewise, the two Israelite spies exhibited sound tradecraft by choosing Rahab’s residence. As a known harlot, the presence of two strangers would not have attracted immediate attention.

However, it is not Rahab and her role in the taking of Jericho that most remember from a young age. Among the first Bible stories of the Old Testament many of us best recall is that of Samson and Delilah. The strength exhibited by Samson, which achieves superhero levels, has natural appeal for children. If some of the subtleties of the story are lost, the near continuous action and dramatic ending are irresistible to young readers of the Bible. The tale also proved irresistible to Hollywood. Cecil B. DeMille—the master of celluloid spectacles—directed the 1949 Samson and Delilah sword-and-sandal epic. With the film’s trailer promising, the most spectacular scene of destruction ever filmed, the movie starred Victor Mature, Hedy Lamarr, and, of course, a cast of thousands. Not only was DeMille’s effort widely praised by critics, it was also nominated for multiple Academy Awards and brought in more than $11,000,000 at the box office, making it the top grossing picture of the year.

The tale told in the Bible is somewhat more subtle. Although chosen by God to liberate the Israelites from the Philistines’ oppressive rule, Samson embarks on a path of rapidly escalating violence and mayhem culminating in his demise as well as the death of thousands of Philistines. It’s safe to say that few in the Bible have proved more unlucky in love than Samson. As for Delilah, the Biblical Bond girl, and first female agent in recorded history, she seems to be in it for 1,100 pieces of silver offered by each of the five lords of the Philistines.

There is a lot to unpack in a story so filled with violence, love, revenge, and betrayal. Depending on interpretation, it is a tale of a strong man improbably diminished by a duplicitous woman, the price paid for yielding to lustful appetites, or tragic result of disregarding higher obligations. It is also the story of the archetypical honey trap. Regardless of how you choose read to it, Delilah is a notable Biblical character. Not only does she seem unfettered by family, unlike the majority of women in the Bible, she is also the only woman in the story, aside from Samson’s mother, with a name. Neither Samson’s first wife nor the harlot he visits midway through the tale have names. And too, it is Delilah, not Samson, who captured the popular imagination, her name becoming synonymous with seduction and betrayal. The original femme fatale that would later become a standard in spy and mystery fiction, she is identified as neither wife nor harlot. Delilah suddenly appears in the tale as a mysterious stranger and just as suddenly vanishes.

Delilah, though the most widely known of the Biblical honey traps, is by no means the only one. Jael, though not as well known as Delilah, also deserves mention. Appearing in the Judges, chapter 4, verse 17 and the Song of Deborah (Judg. 5:24-26), Jael was a member of the nomadic Kenite tribe who shared the land with the Israelites. According to the story, Jael sympathized with the Israelites who suffered harsh treatment under King Jabin of Canaan. When the Israelites rally their troops, some ten thousand men, on the word of the prophetess Deborah, a battle ensues in which the Israelites prove victorious. With Jabin’s troops thoroughly beaten, in no small part thanks to a downpour that mired his nine hundred chariots of iron, his general, Sisera, manages to escape. Making his way on foot to the tent of Jael. The weary warrior is welcomed with sustenance and a place to rest. What transpires is related in Judges, chapter 4, verses 18–21.

And Jael came out to meet Sisera, and said to him, Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me; have no fear. So he turned aside to her in the tent, and she covered him with a rug. And he said to her, Pray, give me a little water to drink; for I am thirsty. So she opened a skin of milk and gave him a drink and covered him. And he said to her, Stand at the door of the tent, and if any man comes and asks you, ‘Is any one here?’ say, No. But Jael, the wife of Heber, took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, til it went down into the ground, as he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died.

However, Judith is portrayed as a far more complex character than either Delilah or Jael, using both violence and sexual appeal. The Book of Judith, part of the Apocrypha, describes a pious widow and unlikely honey trap to take on the powerful King Nebuchadnezzar and his commander Holofernes. With the Assyrians poised to attack the Israelite town of Bethulia, Judith derails the plan for subjugation of the Israelites.

Judith’s motivation is one of simple military calculation, though being pious, she prays, Behold their pride, and sent thy wrath upon their heads; give me, a widow, the strength to do what I plan. By the deceit of my lips strike down the slave with the prince and the prince with his servant; crush their arrogance by the hand of a woman. (Jdt 9:9–10.) It is a remarkable speech, reminiscent Lady Macbeth, who invokes unnamed spirits to fill me from the crown to the toe top-full. Of direst cruelty.

She then prepares by casting off her widow’s sackcloth, bathing, and, very simply, dressing in her best for a party. And bathed her body with water, and anointed herself with precious ointment and combed her hair and put on a tiara, and arrayed herself in her gayest apparel, which she used to wear while her husband Manasseh was living. And she put sandals on her feet, and put on her anklets and bracelets and rings, and her earrings and all her ornaments, and made herself very beautiful, to entice the eyes of all men who might see her. (Jdt 10:1–4.)

It is a noteworthy passage. Unlike the brief description of Delilah or Jael, it provides a detailed picture of her appearance as well as her calculation to appear before Holofernes as a beautiful woman and not a mourning widow. Also fully portrayed is the ruse she uses to gain an audience with Holofernes. Encountering a patrol, she tells them, I am on my way to the presence of Holofernes the commander of your army, to give him a true report; and I will show him a way by which he can go and capture all the hill country without losing one of his men, captured or slain. (Jdt 10:14.)

Holofernes, beguiled by Judith’s beauty, listens as she offers up a false intelligence report detailing the dire straits of the Israelites. Partly based in fact, she paints a picture of inevitable defeat for the Israelites. It is just the type of high-value intelligence report any senior officer would welcome, detailing a population suffering from poor morale and diminishing food supplies to committing transgression of God’s laws. That it was delivered by a beautiful woman in apparent distress could only have increased its credibility. Add to her appeal a level of shameless flattery that is embarrassingly over the top. For we have heard of your wisdom and skill, and it is reported through the whole world that you are the one good man in the whole kingdom, thoroughly informed and marvelous in military strategy. (Jdt 11:8.) How could the commander not welcome her into his military camp?

For three days she stayed in the military encampment, establishing a routine of nightly prayer with her maid, before finally coming to Holofernes’s tent for a feast. Waiting for the right moment, when he was passed out drunk, she drew his own sword from where it hung at the head of his bed and decapitated the commander. Wrapping the head in the bed’s canopy, she returned to Bethulia, leaving the encampment as if on her way to her evening prayers. Displaying the head to the crowd that greeted her, she said, See. Here is the head of Holofernes, the commander of the Assyrian army, and here is the canopy beneath which he lay in his drunken stupor. The Lord has struck him down by the hand of a woman.

The grisly trophy of Holofernes’s head is then publicly displayed in Bethulia to bolster the morale of the city’s warriors. While the discovery of the commander’s headless body incites the opposite reaction in the Assyrian troops, who fled into the hills defeated.

CHAPTER 2

Few mythological figures have captured the popular imagination and idiom as thoroughly as Pandora. Opening Pandora ’ s box is something to be avoided, though most scholars agree it was a jar she unwisely opened. The subject of countless portraits, statuary, and poems, Pandora is simultaneously rendered as beautiful and dangerous. Even in the modern era it is possible to find cosmetics, clothing lines, software, jewelry companies, and restaurants named in her honor.

Granted, an incomplete understanding of the Pandora tale may be the reason behind its popularity when it comes to merchandizing. Why else name a restaurant or cosmetics line for someone so closely linked to pestilence? Somehow the countless evils of Pandora delivered on the unsuspecting world are overshadowed by her irresistible beauty. In popular culture, it is her beauty and only vague sense of peril that is remembered in much the same way it is most frequently portrayed in classical art as temptation without consequence.

Pandora makes her first and most prominent appearance in the works of Hesiod. A Greek poet who lived between 750 and 650 BCE, though not as well known as superstars, such as Homer or Plato, he remains a significant figure among scholars for his Theogony and Works and Days. Pandora appears in both works but is only named in Works and Days. And too, in both cases, she is the first woman, created at the command of Zeus as a punishment for the theft of fire by Prometheus as a bane to set against a blessing.

The beautiful Pandora does, in fact, prove a curse by design. Zeus commands Ambidexter (a.k.a. Hephaestus) to create Pandora from the earth and water while the other gods contribute generously to her appeal. Most notably, Athena, the goddess of handicrafts and warfare, acts as fashion stylist, dressing Pandora in a white gown and embroidered veil, then places an intricate diadem (tiara-type crown) on her head.

It is not the only time the goddess Athena would play the role of fashion consultant. At the end of the Homer’s Odyssey she disguises Odysseus as an aged beggar allowing him to return home to Ithaca undetected. As intelligence officers know, almost no disguise is perfect, and Athena’s efforts on behalf of Odysseus are no exception. A long-healed hunting scar betrays Odysseus’s disguise. However, in Hesiod’s work Athena goes a step further, teaching Pandora the domestic crafts of weaving and embroidery. It is Aphrodite who then renders Pandora a desirable sexual being while Hermes bestows on her a taste for intrigues. Finishing accessorizing touches are added by the Graces, who adorn her with gold jewelry and flowers.

Hesiod is blunt in his description of the end result. Both immortal gods and mortal men were seized with wonder when they saw that precipitous trap, more than mankind can manage, he wrote in Theogony. Named Pandora (Allgift) because she was a gift from all the gods on Olympus, she is carried down along with a jar (not a box) from Mount Olympus by Hermes.

Too shrewd to offer Pandora to Prometheus, who was mindful of the gods’ trickery, Zeus sent her to Prometheus’s brother, Epimetheus. Although warned by Prometheus to not accept gifts from the gods, Pandora proved irresistible. And in short order she opened the jar, releasing all the ills of labor, sickness, death, and other evils into the world. Only hope remained, caught on the lip of the jar. Zeus, not yet satisfied with his clever vengeance, created a second curse that renders men who avoid marriage worse off than those who succumb to the charms of a woman, making the tale a very early catch-22. Thus there is no way to evade the purpose of Zeus, Hesiod wrote.

What remains fascinating about Pandora is her creation rings very similar to that of Judith’s transformation from pious mourning widow to desirable honey trap in the Apocrypha. Both women are clothed in their finery and jewelry as if warriors preparing for battle with each item dutifully listed. Although more often than not rendered nude in fine art, Hesiod spends a generous number of lines describing Pandora’s adornments. As described, both Pandora and Judith would not be out of place gracing the pages of Vogue or some other upscale fashion magazine. The clothing and jewelry worn by honey traps would endure as a recurring point of interest throughout the centuries in both fiction and real life.

Zeus, who is praised repeatedly by Hesiod as cleverer than mortal man, saw the most potent instrument of revenge as more than simply sex. Even in the oldest recorded instances, honey traps are not always about just sex. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Babylonian poem (circa 2100 BCE) provides a clear use of a honey trap in what is considered the oldest surviving work of literature. Focusing on Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, and his companion Enkidu, the earliest versions were found on cuneiform tablets, inscribed on both sides, and portray a tale of quest and friendship.

Gilgamesh, who is part god, is suffering an uneasy rule of his kingdom, largely due to his own appetites. Not the least of his peoples’ troubles are a version of the medieval droit du seigneur (right of the lord) to bed brides on their wedding night. Though not a popular custom among the citizenry, Gilgamesh continues to indulge in it.

Created by a goddess and spotted in the wild is Enkidu, a man who lives like a beast among wild animals. A nuisance to the local trappers and shepherds, his seduction is executed by Shamhat, the temple harlot. After an exhausting six days and seven nights of sex, Enkidu is shunned by the animals, but seemingly accepted by Shamhat who offers him a path to a more civilized life.

I behold thee Enkidu, like a god thou art. Why with the animals wanderest thou on the plain? she said, beginning the civilizing process in which she paints a picture of Uruk where {men} are engaged in labors of skill, you too, like a man, will find a place for yourself.

How could he resist promises of civilization and a chance for a job in the big city? The counsel of a woman fell upon his heart, the text reads. She stripped and clothed him in part of her garment, the other part she put on herself. Leading him to the shepherds’ encampment, she introduces him to beer (sometimes interpreted as