The elimination of our assets by betrayal brings to mind CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. She was exposed as a CIA officer for political reasons by those who needed to conceal their ploy for the invasion of Iraq. This betrayal in turn exposed the assets she had cultivated, who were no doubt subsequently executed.
That Plame/Wilson incidents didn't rate any detailed investigation by our crack MSM, to say nothing about an expose that could have put a monkey wrench into the plan our war criminals instituted with the infamous 'Shock and Awe' news event that followed. Officer Plame's exposure may have necessitated a bit of mischievousness, perhaps even a certain amount of malfeasance. No harm, no foul.
Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, become whistleblower Edward Snowden, gave information to the public, not to a foreign government; thus he was not an asset to Russians (or anyone else), but only a perceived liability to the United States.
Up to this point my favorite books were John le Carre's Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy (John le Carre was a British spy) and Smiley's People. These books were fiction, based on his experiences, although real-enough fiction. Astonishingly, the intended Mini-Series, The Assets, 2014, is a dramatization of from what le Carre would call 'the theater of the real'.
Liberties are taken because of the dramatization necessary in the making of a movie, but the overall impact of the events that played out is real. Wikipedia adds information that offers some minor contractions. This page suggests another major reason for the General's decision to betray his country: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Polyakov
John le Carre from a BBC news interview in 2010 speaking of how the 'brutish yet direct application of pure wealth has changed everything', certainly as timely today as ever:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/today/hi/today/newsid_8977000/8977025.stm
"Something much healthier has happened in our attitude towards the secret world. We no longer buy into the mystique the way we did, because of its successive failures. Iraq is a glaring example, but there have been many others.
"As for the old foe, le Carre reacts with insouciance to the recent revelation of a Russian 'sleeper' network in the United States.
"'I would believe almost anything of the state of Russian intelligence at the moment, which is on the one hand closely involved with Russian crime, on the other hand it is the crucible of the new Russian imperialism. It is a complete mix.
"'It contains people who want Stalin back. It contains people who just want to make a buck. It is a vast, amorphous organisation.
"'Somewhere in that organisation were a bunch of neanderthal intelligence officers who really believed we should do today what we did in the past.
"'This really was a case of fighting the last war.'
"And le Carre reveals that he once asked a top Russian what Vladimir Putin had been like in the KGB. 'He was not very good,' came the reply. 'We tried to train him for illegal work, after a few weeks it was decided he was completely incompetent for this.'
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
