Who said anything about being surprised? And are you saying there were no running gags about it? FWIW, I'm assuming they would have asked him to report on fell

Who said anything about being surprised? And are you saying there were no running gags about it? FWIW, I'm assuming they would have asked him to report on fellow hackers without openly saying so. I got that implication from the article, but it doesn't say so and presumably they wouldn't have made that explicit when they approached him.