When Espionage Goes Wrong.

The world media was awash with news of the Russian Secret Service FSB's arrest and detention of an American CIA agent on May 13, 2013 in Moscow. He was trying to recruit  an agent of the FSB, but luck ran out on him and the unfortunate happened. The CIA Agent at the centre of this murky and embarrassing episode for the Americans was named by the Russians as Ryan Fogle. He was arrested and pinned to the ground by the same agent he was trying to recruit. Ryan Fogle should have known better as the Russians are now very alert of any suspicious activity in Russia, since the Kremlin's long tentacles can reach all corners of the world. A typical example will be the radiation poisoning and murder of a former KGB agent, Alexander Litvinenko in the UK some years back, and recently the death of  the Russian billioniare Boris Abrahmovic Bereszovsky. All these deaths are still being investigated and it is being alleged that Kremlin has a hand in these deaths. This current incident has caused so much embarrassment to  the Americans and they have accused the FSB of breaching protocol and naming the CIA agent. It seems the Americans  and the CIA in particular are mute and are crafting a carefully worded statement to assuage the disgrace this incident has caused to their image. The arrest of Ryan Fogle is just the latest twist in the long history of spying between the U.S. and Russia. Famously, 10 Russian sleeper agents were arrested in June 2010 and accused of spying for the Russians in the U.S. The best known is Anna Chapman who has become a major celebrity in Russia since being deported from the U.S. In the Cold War period, however, U.S. and Soviet espionage was often a matter of life and death. In 1985, a military officer Arthur D. Nicholson was shot dead by a Soviet sentry while spying in East Germany. One of the Cold War's major crisis was caused by the shooting down of an American spy plane in 1960 and the subsequent capture of its pilot.

Ryan Fogle should count himself lucky to be alive, he could have been injected with a lethal poison and rendered a vegetable for the rest of his life or could have been killed outright, and a nice picture would have been painted to make him look too guilty. In the world of espionage three words must always be in your head if you are a spook, these words are "Don't Get Caught", so what went wrong for Ryan Fogle? The U.S. and Russia still do not trust each other as they are still trying to learn each others secrets. God save this world.