Word: barnette
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...early 1950s, Lady Isobel Barnett, wife of the lord mayor of Leicester, became a celebrity in Britain as a panelist on the BBC's version of What's My Line? Last month Lady Barnett, 62 and widowed ten years, faced a panel herself: a jury considering charges that she shoplifted a tin of tuna and a carton of cream worth about $2. She admitted slipping the items into a cloth bag pinned inside her coat, but insisted it was an oversight, and she told the court the cloth bag was where she kept a flashlight as protection against...
...story was front-page news in Britain. The day after her death, one tabloid ran a purported interview with Lady Barnett, complete with the headline "PLEASE HELP ME-I CAN'T STOP STEALING." The shopkeeper who had turned in Barnett received abusive letters. Wrote Novelist Penelope Mortimer, in the Evening Standard: "Isobel Barnett's disguise had been cracking for some time. No woman of her intelligence steals so clumsily unless she wants to get caught...
Many in Britain think shoplifters should be offered special treatment, perhaps a discreet warning for a first offense. But dissenters argue that given such an opening, every thief would quickly develop symptoms of kleptomania when caught in the act. Whatever effect Lady Barnett's death may have on the reform of shoplifting laws, some noncompulsive thieves added a ghoulish touch to the debate: while members of her family were attending a memorial service, thieves broke into Lady Barnett's manor house near Leicester and stole $14,400 worth of silver...
...Barnett failed, apparently because there were no openings. In January 1979, however, he was rehired by the CIA as a contract agent; 13 months later he abruptly resigned. By that time, both the CIA and the FBI were aware that Barnett was a KGB agent. In fact, TIME has learned that his links with the Soviets were known to some U.S. officials at least two years before the CIA rehired him. That, of course, raises a crucial question: Why was Barnett allowed to return to the agency...
Justice Department officials contend that Barnett was not arrested or exposed earlier because the CIA hoped to turn him into a triple agent. Intelligence experts scoff at this argument on the ground that the KGB would never trust a turncoat agent with any Soviet secrets. Another theory is that rehiring Barnett was simply an administrative goof. When it was discovered, officials decided that the best strategy was to play for time until it was decided how to handle his case with the least amount of damaging publicity. Whatever the truth, the Justice Department promises to shed at least some light...