This spy episode has gone onto the next phase....tossing the US spy chief in Berlin at the embassy out. There are two methods to this type of event.....with expulsion the more drastic one. This was simply the method of calling the guy in, and giving him the paperwork that he must leave within a reasonable amount of time.
The curious turn that occurred today....was that the interior ministry stood up and noted that they had reviewed the 200-odd documents that spy number one had passed over for twenty-five thousand Euro. What they indicated was that the value was pretty low....with the material all about internal operations and schedules. It was carefully worded....but you'd get the impression that whatever the US got....was worthless, and the twenty-five thousand Euro was basically thrown away.
This kinda makes me wonder if the US took the 200-odd documents and put five guys on translating them.....and then spent $300,000 on the services of various analysts.....to reach the eventual conclusion of worthless intelligence. Or did the analysts just shake their heads.....file the material....and figure some management idiot must have thought this was worth the money.
This brings me to the odd view of the US back in the 1970s....when we were deep into the cold war. The US prioritized things and they really wanted to know the absolute pure GDP of the Soviet Union, and how much went toward the military structure. For years....it was estimated with bits and pieces of intelligence that they gathered. Over the past decade....the Russians put out various documents freely, and it basically suggested that the Soviets spent a heck of a lot more than we imagined or had gathered via our intelligence. Was our intelligence efforts wasted? It's hard to say.
This spy business is difficult to measure.....kinda like walking into an antique shop and thinking you got a $7,000 painting from France, and then discovering it's a $8 painting instead.
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