FBI updates reading list for spy catchers

February 6, 2003 10:13 AM

Despite the FBI's best efforts, the spy only passed public domain information to North Korea In Graham Greene's hilarious "Our Man in Havana", a salesman-unlikely-turned-spy passes vacuum-cleaner blueprints as plans of a nuclear plant to his superiors at MI6. Turns an American of Korean origin has been doing pretty much the same with North Korea and thus cannot be charged with espionage. One can only hope that the current bullish attitude of North Korea is all based on the info passed by this guy (who, BTW, sold it for cash).
posted by magullo (8 comments total)

I'll be very interested to hear what happens to this guy. From the article, it looks like he could make a good case for having just spoofed the N. Koreans into paying him for useless info. It's the American Way (see: Fox News, O'Reilly, Rivera, most of the rest of commercial TV, et al.). Seems like his only real mistake was not declaring the cash to the IRS...
posted by ubi at 10:36 AM on February 6, 2003

so. all north korea ACTUALLY has in it's possession weapons of mass suckage?

posted by quonsar at 11:17 AM on February 6, 2003

unlike the bullish attitiude of other "non mentionables"
posted by Satapher at 12:10 PM on February 6, 2003

If he sold useless information to them, i.e. drained away their cash, then I say good for him. But, yeah, the taxes situation is a bit odd. How do you declare something like that? "Yeah, um... I was pretending to be a spy, so a foreign government gave me money for uselss info. Where do I put that on the form?" That would be a funny situation to see.
posted by geekhorde at 1:01 PM on February 6, 2003

I am so in the wrong line of work.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 1:49 PM on February 6, 2003

How do you declare something like that? "Yeah, um... I was pretending to be a spy, so a foreign government gave me money for uselss info. Where do I put that on the form?"

Sounds like a Consultant to me.
posted by nyxxxx at 2:12 PM on February 6, 2003

one word: Decoy
posted by th3ph17 at 4:12 PM on February 6, 2003

Sounds familiar. Remember Edmund Pope, an American who was arrested, tried and convicted by the Russians in 2000? The FSB claimed he was buying secrets dealing with Russian torpedo technology – “secrets” which, it turns out, had been public knowledge for years! Some of this old torpedo technology had even been published in Popular Science magazine.
posted by Mack Twain at 5:43 PM on February 6, 2003