So, typically an employee of an intelligence agency has a diplomatic passport and is attached to an embassy or some such. It is considered generally unacceptable (at least in some countries) to have a cover as a journalist, but other private employment is allowed. Being an intelligence officer with a cover as part of an aid agency is generally not allowed, although that does happen, and results in things like vaccine refusals and the execution of medical personnel who are trying to eliminate diseases. I’m not going into specifics, but one of the places where that happened rhymes with “Wackystan.”
Anyway, the job of the intelligence officer is to recruit spies, like an admin assistant in some government agency. They generally don’t do the physical spying themselves, but they’ll use various approaches to get foreign nationals to send them files and such.
In any case, this person just seems like a cool con man. The absolute last thing someone involved in intelligence wants to do is attract attention (most of the time - some recent Russian operations in the US have been quite blatant), and this person was just having a great time.
So, typically an employee of an intelligence agency has a diplomatic passport and is attached to an embassy or some such. It is considered generally unacceptable (at least in some countries) to have a cover as a journalist, but other private employment is allowed. Being an intelligence officer with a cover as part of an aid agency is generally not allowed, although that does happen, and results in things like vaccine refusals and the execution of medical personnel who are trying to eliminate diseases. I’m not going into specifics, but one of the places where that happened rhymes with “Wackystan.”
Anyway, the job of the intelligence officer is to recruit spies, like an admin assistant in some government agency. They generally don’t do the physical spying themselves, but they’ll use various approaches to get foreign nationals to send them files and such.
In any case, this person just seems like a cool con man. The absolute last thing someone involved in intelligence wants to do is attract attention (most of the time - some recent Russian operations in the US have been quite blatant), and this person was just having a great time.
This is cool and sounds believable. Do you have other insights?
For this, not really. This story just sounds more like a poor man’s Frank Abagnale than a super spy.
The absolute last thing most people involved in intelligence work want to be is “interesting.”