Editors’ Note
Issue 16: Spies
MAY 7, 2024
Great spies are masters of deceit. Information on informants and bad actors is often spotty at best. Our latest issue of The Dial explores the known and unknown. Some stories might satisfy your craving for adventure and intrigue, and others may leave you with more questions than answers.
In a cinematic tale of fraud, lies, and deception, a group of reporters across Europe unravel the inner workings of Germany’s largest ever financial scandal: the rise and fall of the payment processor Wirecard. Through confidential documents, travel records, lab results, phone data, and more, these intrepid reporters piece together how one man stole billions of dollars, deceived close confidants, and disappeared. “Jan Marsalek’s tracks lead into a shrill parallel world that feels at times like a poorly lit B movie,” the reporter’s write.
Around the world, law enforcement agencies rely on informants to combat extremism and foil terrorist attacks. But how effective are these spies really? Who’s using whom? Jacob Kushner examines how Germany’s informant apparatus has been unable to squash — and sometimes assisted in the growth of — far-right radicalism. Up north, Svalbard, the northernmost perennial community in the Arctic, has been home to an international community of scientists, artists, and outdoor enthusiasts. Trust on the archipelago is disappearing and with it are the rights of its residents, Kenneth R. Rosen reports. Once a symbol of international cooperation, Svalbard has become a hotbed of suspicion.
This issue also explores what it’s like to be on the receiving end of close scrutiny. From Istanbul, Kaya Genç reports on President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s relentless campaign against the popular Turkish author Elif Shafak. Shafak, whose books envision a multicultural future for Turkey, has been accused by the AKP of plagiarizing plots and themes, and is part of a wider clampdown on academics and press freedom. From France, Scholastique Mukasonga shares letters to her friend Max Lobe about being in a state of exile. A survivor of the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda, in which her family was massacred, Mukasonga moved to France in 1992. “What can I do, I will always be, at heart, an emigrant — but what lessons have I drawn from it?”
Finally, we’re publishing an excerpt from the newly translated novel Elevator in Sài Gòn by Thuận. The detective story, which is banned in Vietnam, chronicles a young Vietnamese woman living in Paris as she unravels her late mother’s past, and investigates a mysterious figure tied to her family’s history.
– The Editors