Spy games a surprise

Editorials

July 15, 2010

The Lockport Union-Sun %26 Journal Thu Jul 15, 2010, 02:17 AM EDT

The recent arrests of 11 alleged Russian agents in the United States is a puzzlement.

Living in deep cover as average, suburban Americans, the alleged spies were an unexpected throwback to the Cold War era. Unexpected because the Soviet Union has been gone for a couple of decades and because today’s intelligence needs have less to do with military secrets and much more with economic and technological developments.

Longtime neighbors were astounded, of course.

(The innocent neighbor is always astounded by news happening next door, whether the house was suddenly flattened by a meteor or found to have housed a serial murderer for a decade. The last happenstance was well-parodied by the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who noted neighbors could be counted upon to observe, “He was a quiet man.”)

Psychologists say the children of the alleged spies could be terribly traumatized by the deception, having been raised as Americans in complete ignorance of their parents’ vocation.

As for the rest of us, well, color us confused about just what the Russian secret service was thinking.

A spy living as an average citizen in a closed society might well be able to glean something of use about an international enemy. For instance, almost any information about wages or food or medical supplies might give the United States some valuable real-time intelligence about North Korea.

But from the United States? Fighting out our policy issues in full throat on 24-hour cable news? In the Internet age?

The problem for Russian analysts can’t be too little information about the United States economy, but, rather, too much. What an average citizen — or a dozen, or 100, or 1,000 — could add to that can’t be much more than throwing a thimble full of water into the ocean.

Indeed, one has to wonder whether the alleged operatives weren’t living the life a little tongue in cheek. Suspect Anna Chapman, for instance, bought a disposable cell phone using the name “Irine Kutsov,” living on “99 Fake Street.”

That’s got to be somewhere in the “Pottsylvania” neighborhood of “Boris Badenov” and “Natasha Fatale,” cartoon characters from the 1960s era “Rocky and Bullwinkle Show,” which parodied the Cold War.

The FBI should take a good, close look for any remaining sleeper cells in Frostbite Falls, Minn.

— The Kingston Daily Freeman

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