Spies Like Us

Those of a Certain Age will remembere the 23-year-old movie 'No Way Out' starring Kevin Costner as a hero Navy Lt. Commander who is plucked for a plum job in the Pentagon as an assistant to the SECDEF.

Trouble is, Lt. Commander Tom Farrell is really a Russian spy sent to the U.S. as a young boy with a fake name and 'legend' to pass as an American.

Things go sour for Tom when he finds out he's screwing the same babe as the secretary of defense played superbly by Gene Hackman.  Hackman, in a rage, kills the girl.  His scumbag right hand man concocts a plot to divert attention from Hackman's involvement by inventing a phony 'mole' inside the Pentagon.  But neither Hackman nor the scumbag aide know there really IS a Russian mole in DOD.

The 1987 movie (with an uncredited Brad Pitt) made Costner a star, and featured former Senator Fred Dalton Thompson as DCI (before he entered politics for real).

Here's the scene where Costner is finally fingered and is trying to escape the dragnet. Tom/Yuri escapes, but his long-developed American identity is busted:



Far-fetched? Nyet. The FBI concluded a 10-year-investigation into 'illegal' agents by arrested 11 Russian spies who had lived normal lives in various U.S. cities as 'Americans.'

The FBI, with undercover agents posing as Russian agents, brought the whole operation down over the weekend.

They weren't arrested for spying.  Rather as acting as agents for a foreign government. The Smoking Gun has the court docs of the charges.  Read Cryptome's pdf docs.
One of the 11, hot busty babe 'Anna Chapman' (both pix) was ensconced in posh Manhattan digs claiming to be a real estate agent.  Perhaps 'Anna' is now lamenting, I'd rather be dead than red in the head. 

Anna is now the face of this spy scandal. NYDN  The next face of Estee Lauder.  Check out her real first name and Facebook. And ooh-la-la photos . . .

'Brush pass' and other tradecraft are sure to become a household phrases . . .

Here's how Itar-Tass spun the story (one 'spy' is still at large).

As for Pravda ('truth' in Russian), the paper claims the scandal orchestrated by Democrats targeted Obama, and not Russia:

Yevgeny Minchenko, the director of the International Institute of Political Expertise, described all that as a “delirious story”. It does not look like a spy scandal at all, he added.

“It’s a mess. Collecting political information, money laundering…They have charged the detainees with participating in political processes and attempts to exert influence on them. Any Western scientist of politics, who visits Russia, can be charged with the same things.

“They also said that the spies used Morse alphabet and encoded messages to transmit secret information. This is a joke if only we try to imagine what technologies intelligence services use nowadays. Does the USA really think that Russian special services are so outdated?

“Most likely, this scandal was masterminded inside the USA and does not have any Russian trace in it whatsoever. I have three versions to explain why they decided to do it. It can be a part of the campaign to promote US special services that would like to obtain more funding for their work. A group of the US establishment tries to sabotage the reset of relations between the USA and Russia. The scandal could be organized by Democrats as a tool to put pressure on Russia in the future.

Pravda insists the spy scandal was of U.S. 'design,' minimizing the light sentences compared with the ancient American Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spy case where the married pair of Russian agents were electrocuted in the 1950s. 

Pravda's best spin:  US media outlets said that the group was arrested after one of its members had been caught in a provocation organized by the FBI. A supposed spy accepted an envelope with $5,000 from a person who identified himself as a Russian communication agent. This seems to be very strange too. If the network had been working for years why would they accept cash from a complete stranger?

Ask the high-priced hookers who serviced Eliot Spitzer . . .

ABC's 'GMA' host George Stephanopoulos explains why he decided to lead with spies v BP gulf:

The spy ring bust came a couple of days after Obama and Russian President Dimitriy Medvedev enjoyed burgers at Obama's favorite Arlington, VA joint, Ray's Hell Burger during Medvedev's June 24th WH visit.