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Spies Like Us

When I lived in Mali, West Africa in 1976-78 one of the great parlour games we played was: guess who the CIA agents attached to the American Embassy are.

I had a certain advantage here -- I'd once read that the CIA heavily recruited in Ivy League schools, employing bright young men, degreed in economics.

So I had him nailed: xxxx xxxxx, from Princeton, an economics major, with some vague title, like, "economics advisor to the Ambassador."

And it turned out that xxxx xxxxx was indeed with the CIA.

I teased that out of yyyyyy yyyy, after a very long evening of drinking.

What surprised me was the identity of the station chief. He didn't fit the profile at all.

And, no, I didn't run down to the Soviet Embassy and rat on them, or on my informant.

Fun's fun; but then someone gets their eye poked out, and mama's worst dreams come true.

Besides: the Americans are the GOOD guys; the Soviets were MASS MURDERING SCUM.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on September 29, 2003 2:54 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Second Time Around.

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