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CIA Spies Byzantine Basilica

Picked this up from the Courier-Mail of Brisbane, Australia, via a tip from Archaeology magazine.

Using satellite photographs of Syria taken by the CIA in the 1960s, an Australian team has located a Byzantine basilica, an Early Bronze Age fortified town, Early Islamic pottery factories, a complex of megalithic tombs, and tools from the Palaeolithic period.

The photographs were taken by United States military surveillance satellites operating under the CIA and defence-led Corona program in the late 1960s.

I’ll bet the late Tom Lawler would be pleased. A great patrologist and translator of St. Augustine, Tom earned his daily bread as an executive for the CIA. I wonder how many other convergences of vocation and avocation he was not at liberty to tell us about.