Double-o-nothing

The square-jawed KGB illegal is the stuff of Russian legend. Given carefully constructed false identities,painstakingly trained in their adopted culture,they were sent out to unfriendly countries,without the legal protection of diplomatic passports. Their dangerous work would throw up crucial secrets; and their loneliness was rewarded with adulation back home. In a famous Soviet television serial,an illegal named Stirlitz penetrated the Nazi party; the similarities between him and Vladimir Putin,once an agent for the KGB in Germany,are not coincidental. Naturally,therefore,the arrest of 11 illegals in the US caused an upsurge of patriotic fervour in Russia,and threw the rest of us into a happily nostalgic Cold War reverie.

All of which emotions were in fairly short order replaced with utter puzzlement. What on earth were these five very ordinary suburban couples doing? Certainly not actually spying on anyone. At any rate,they didnt gather any information more effectively than anyone could by reading Washington DC gossip blogs in Moscow. One ran a real estate agency. Another a management consultancy that seems to have been even more soul-numbingly average than youd expect. They hung out with former classmates from places like Harvards Kennedy school of government or Columbias business school and pumped them for crucial secrets like the prospects of the international gold market. They werent expected to do much more than penetrate policymaking circles, actually; unsurprisingly,they couldnt be charged with anything more glamorous than not registering as employees of a foreign government.

A few decades ago a ring like this might actually have passed on to Moscow Centre useful titbits on how the Other Side thought. But for all those weaned on Cold War spies,this is another brutal reminder that the world of agents in fur coats murmuring details about oilfields has gone,replaced with a bright,flat world of ho-hum transparency.