So there has been a lot of talk about these Russian Spies, but i am having a hard time understanding what information these individuals were gathering.
Any thoughts.
"Spy" covers a lot of ground, from pilfering a copy of "Invasion Plan Orange" to setting up networks of influence. The Soviets were big on doing the latter (a little quality time with Google will tell you all about that, try phrases like agents of influence all the way to "shit eaters" (the Russians had little respect for those working against their own counties interests)). Influencing the actions of a foreign power is tremendously more useful than "gathering information"; after all, what is the point of the latter but to take action upon it?<p>I haven't been following this case at all, but I noticed in one article that one of them, a "Donald Heathfield" was a classmate at Harvard's Kennedy School with Felipe Calderon who is now the president of Mexico.<p>I haven't more than skimmed the beginning of this, but it's likely to be of use. Radosh is an old Cold Warrior, he's seen it all before: <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2010/06/30/lessons-from-the-russian-spy-arrests/?singlepage=true" rel="nofollow">http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2010/06/30/lessons-from-th...</a>
What information were they gathering? Quite possibly nothing at all. The Russian secret service plays a long game; it would not be out of character for them to have someone doing absolutely nothing for 10 years just so that they could be used to pass messages at a later date without drawing suspicion. Of course, if they saw something useful -- say, if they found out that someone in a position of power had large debts -- they might be expected to break cover to the extent necessary to report that.
As I understand it -- they were gathering information about what offers would US politicians give to Russian politicians during the meetings.
The reason to gather this information could be to be better prepared for oncoming negotiations.
So if you want to stretch it -- then you can call it spying, but it's hardly worth much.
If instead of making all this noise about "spying" FBI dealt with more important things (such as credit card fraud) -- it would be much better.
Unfortunately -- no such luck.
Here's a good overview:<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/02/AR2010070205569_pf.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07...</a>