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What real Soviet spy would openly operate in communist/pro-Soviet circles? Quite a few did since that was where ideologically-motivated recruits were more read
by pvg 5y ago
What real Soviet spy would openly operate in communist/pro-Soviet circles?
Quite a few did since that was where ideologically-motivated recruits were more readily available. The obsession was misplaced and counterproductive not because the spies weren't there but because the overwhelming majority of people with left-leaning politics weren't any sort of spies or even 'disloyal' in any material sense.
- mywittyname 5y agoSure, but I'm arguing that they were mainly there to tie up counter-intelligence resources. We rarely captured the spies who actually stole damaging information. Of the few notable ones that were caught, most weren't running around rallies in Che t-shirts. They were milquetoast, stodgy coots who lived in suburbia. The CIA et al did eventually catch on to the personality traits and personal situations that make for a compromiseable target. But they clearly spent decades chasing their tail before figuring it out.
- fishtockos 5y agoAhh. Surely this explains Klaus Fuchs, the most important spy in the Manhattan Project and a long-time communist?
- pvg 5y agoI think you're anachronistically conflating Che-t-shirt leftism with the political inclinations of plenty of educated, professional people of the period. Many atomic spies had political or ideological motives as did several of the Cambridge Five and their initial contacts with Soviet intelligence came about because Soviet intelligence specifically set out to recruit in such circles.