oaf@mit-vax.UUCP (Oded Feingold) (09/20/86)
>> From what I've seen, the U.S. govt. is willing to let Daniloff rot in jail >> in order to have a topic for jingoistic, anti-communist speeches and a >> reason to refuse to seriously negotiate in Geneva. Any Comments? >> [Bruce Kirby] > Given that the media have argued that Daniloff was captured in order > to make a trade, why would such a trade be necessary in the first place? > I.e. why did the Reagan administration choose to capture an alleged > Soviet spy and try to sentence him to years in prison in the U.S. > just before the proposed Summit? > ... > The usual practice is to simply *expel* spies connected with Foreign > Missions [That Flaming Commie, Sevener] ------------------------------ TFCSevener, you're missing the point that the US is hurting REAL bad from Edward Lee Foster, the CIA man who defected to the USSR (e- luding the boys we send to watch over him in New Mexico) after expos- ing the US spy network in Moscow. That led to the torture deaths of at least 6 people. The word among US internal-security types was to grab the biggest fish they had a case against, just to show, before the summit, that we don't take commie guff lying down. If the Soviets took a hostage, fine, let them live with the PR consequences. Without such a direct- ive, we could have dangled Zakharov for lots more infractions and frankly lots more money before snagging him. That's why we're busting instead of expelling. We have several corpses to avenge, and they've wiped the floor with us on this one. The amazing thing about the media is that NOBODY to my knowledge has put two and two together in the Zakharov case, to which Daniloff is a mere footnote. That's more surprising still since there's the closed reporting cycle of Foster defects --> Zakharov arrested prematurely --> Daniloff framed --> Foster announcing Daniloff's "guilt" (I mean, How do he know? He just arrived.) Whaddaya need - does Ken Arndt have to say it? Everyone will say "That idiot Feingold is flaming again, just try- ing to get a rise out of us, he doesn't mean it." I never claimed I'm not an idiot. But when I have my nose rubbed in shit, as the Soviet spy establishment has just done to the American, I understand this is not my lucky day, and if the same guy who did that then pees in my beer, as the KGB did with Daniloff, I'll suspect that the two actions are part and parcel of the same thing. -- Oded A. Feingold MIT AI Lab 545 Tech Square Cambridge, Mass. 02139 {allegra|ihnp4!mit-eddie}!mit-vax!oaf OAF@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU 617-253-8598