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I won't pretend like I know anything about tradecraft beyond reading Clancy and Forsyth, but I would've thought that "ex-diplomat working for a NATO funded NGO"

I won't pretend like I know anything about tradecraft beyond reading Clancy and Forsyth, but I would've thought that "ex-diplomat working for a NATO funded NGO" is about the worst non-official cover one could think of. Textbook spy cover would be a mid-level manager for a Canadian auto parts company, on assignment to the Chinese office.

dirtyid 5y ago
>worst non-official cover one could think of. In real life, career diplomats wind up in NGO circles where their skills are more transferrable. NGOs are also easier to spinup where needed and raises less eyebrows when they communicate and develop relevant contacts working within the established track 2/2.5 people to people system. 1000s of NGOs operated in PRC without much scrutiny until the NGO crackdown following CIA purge explicitly to reduce espionage/influence, i.e. Kovrig's International Crisis Group wasn't licensed to operate at the time of his arrest. There's also Spavor publically spamming his NK credentials. The TLDR is that PRC retaliation is calibrated, these two were rounded up because they were the most obvious spies, and while Canada/West can fool public by insisting they're just innocent individuals, to others in the IR community the message is obvious.