By Dr. Ludwig de Braeckeleer ——Bio and Archives--October 14, 2018
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Tom Bishop (Brad Pit)--Ah, Jesus Christ, you just... You don't just trade these people like they're baseball cards! It's not a # game! Nathan Muir (Robert Redford)--Oh, yes it is. It's exactly what it is. And it's no kid's game either. This is a whole other game. And it's serious and it's dangerous. And it's not one you want to lose. -- Spy Game (2001) “Although no one had written them down, they were the precepts we all understood... By the time they got to Moscow, everyone knew these rules. They were dead simple and full of common sense...". -- Tony Mendez --The Master of Disguise “There was only one rule: to win." -- Oleg Kalugin--Former major general in the KGB “We are drifting as a society into what can be fairly described as a post-truth world...where there is no longer a basic understanding of what objective facts are.” -- General Michael Hayden--Former CIA and NSA Director
“During the cold war, there was an understanding about what was and what was not acceptable.” “The FSB works with impunity. They do not know the rules, and if they did, they do not care about them.”CIA veteran Jack Devine believes that some of the unwritten conventions of spy-craft with Russia no longer apply.
“Russia today seems unconstrained by any norms.”
“I am not familiar with any such [spy] etiquette. (...) There was only one rule: to win."Colonel Chris Costa, who until recently was the senior director for counter-terrorism on the White House national security council, is the executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. Like Kalugin, he does not recognise the terms spy etiquette or spy rulebook.
“There are examples of people being beaten up, roughed up,” says Costa, who worked in intelligence for 30 years. “It would be very dangerous to make the assumption that there are rules.”Let us be open minded. Perhaps, we should also consider a third possibility. Current events--such as the Skripals' case or the Havana attacks--may be misunderstood and/or incorrectly described. Kalugin says he finds the poisoning attempt in Salisbury puzzling.
“Well, it is a really confusing picture. I do not see it as professional. I do not see a reason why he [Skripal] would be killed. He is not the kind of figure that would be dealt with in that way.”
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Ludwig De Braeckeleer has a Ph.D. in nuclear sciences. Ludwig teaches physics and international humanitarian law. He blogs on “The GaiaPost.”