Friday, January 20, 2012

What do you get when you cross James Bond with Fred Flintstone?

x-ray of fake rock in Moscow spy row

You get a fake rock that was obviously made by Q over at the MI6 lab. Kinda like the ones you hide your extra key in, only this one had electronics instead of keys. The only problem was that the FSB knew about the cliche bit of spy craft. So what did Putin do when he found out? What any politician would have done. He sat on it until he could get some political leverage out of it. In this case, he had the state TV do a documentary on it, complete with grainy footage of the British agent kicking it one night in a park to try to get it working correctly again. Putin first released the footage in 2006 so he could enact provisions that gave him far tighter reigns on so-called NGOs or non-governmental organizations--basically anything not run by the government or one of his oligarch buddies. And he has trotted it out again in the wake of criticism of the last election. Good job James, er, Fred.

3 comments:

Dave H said...

If MI6 was behind it, I imagine it was a red herring to draw attention off of the real surveillance equipment. (Including the guy kicking it to draw attention to it.)

Now if it was DHS, on the other hand...

2cents said...

Probably, but i'm thinking bureaucracy creeps into MI^ from time to time too, inevitably degrading the quality of service.

Dave H said...

Well, maybe, but sometimes I wonder if spook organizations like that run clandestine ops against their own government, at least as far as concealing their own capabilities and assets. They tend to outlive their administrations, so institutional thinking gets to be pretty ingrained.

Some of the intelligence breakdowns that failed to catch the 9/11 highjackers were because the CIA had the intel but didn't share it. They're (often) good at what they do, but what they do isn't always the right thing.