> it isn’t uncommon for people who have gotten caught criminally to have done plenty to push the envelope over the years That's actually part of espionage 101

> it isn’t uncommon for people who have gotten caught criminally to have done plenty to push the envelope over the years That's actually part of espionage 101- pressuring a person through each little step on the ladder so that they can get all the way up to straight-up criminal behavior without ever doing anything that much worse than they did the week before. I'm not saying this is an incident of espionage, just that espionage folks have recognized what you pointed out, and basically made it a step by step formal process.