So I started reading "The Spy and the Traitor" by Ben Macintyre about cold war spying, and ran across an interesting parallel near the very beginning.
In 1968 the KGB was planting fake news, posters, and other things to give the false impression that Czechoslovakia was about to erupt in a violent counterrevolution so that the Soviet crackdown that followed might appear justified.
Among the things the KGB did was this:
They distributed inflammatory posters calling for the overthrow of Communism, and planted arms caches, wrapped in packages conveniently marked "Made in the USA," which were then "discovered" and denounced as proof of an imminent insurrection.
Gosh, that sounds familiar. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Eric Holder did something similar in the early days of the Obama administration. It was called "Fast and Furious," and it too dealt with arms. You'll recall the history. Firearms were supposed to have been sold legally in the U.S. but somehow ending up in Mexico. The goal was to influence voters to accept stricter gun control laws. Fortunately, it backfired. But unfortunately, their aggressive illegal efforts ended up killing innocent people. That would have been an acceptable risk to the Soviet Union, and it was probably acceptable to the Obama administration. After all, as the famous dictator once said, "You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.
In any event, "The Spy and the Traitor" is a good book, so far. Hopefully, it will be as interesting as another of Ben Macintyre's books, Rogue Heroes about the start of Britain's SAS.
------
2:40 PM 7/1/2019
Comments