Spy vs. Spy

Boris & Natasha

I'm pretty confused. Kremlin officials acknowledged that at least 10 of the 11 suspects caught in the U.S. spy dragnet were Russian citizens. Then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin complained that American police were "out of control" when they threw them in jail. . . . Because they were Russian citizens? Because they weren't really spies? Because they admittedly were both Russian citizens and spies but when countries are friends they overlook these little episodes?

I'm also confused by the narrative that's struggling to coalesce around the arrests. The U.S. is stuck in a Cold War mentality? The arrests were intended by right wingers to embarrass the President and undermine his nuclear treaty with Russia? (And they managed to pull this off with a New York Times exposé?) Alternatively, the arrests were intended to undermine the U.S. effort to engage Russia in a joint effort to put the screws on the Iranian nuclear program? Wheels within wheels.

Jammie Wearing Fool notes that one of the arrested spies was a leftist journalist who wrote for El diario, including muckraking pieces about how the U.S. prison system is an institution of slavery, as well as pieces bucking the MSM's harsh criticism of countries like Venezuela. JWF adds: "I wonder if [she] was a JournoList member?"

There's an endearing hokiness to their tradecraft. They were trained to identify each other with the code phrase, "Excuse me, but did we meet in Bangkok in April last year?" to which the correct reply was: "I don’t know about April, but I was in Thailand in May of that year." Or as my sister used to say to random acquaintances in bars, "Dubrovnik, '68. I took you two-love, two-love." The pair in Seattle spoke in what sounds for all the world like a Boris-and-Natasha accent. They fit in seamlessly at the office by going on anti-George W. Bush rants. They were crazy about their two-year-old son.

The Russians are arguing that the U.S. shouldn't take much action because, among other things, the spies never managed to do any actual harm. Were they just trying to send back enough low-grade nonsense to justify their continuing to live in a pleasant country? Or was their endearing bumblingness all part of a very deep game indeed?