Jim Farmelant:
This whole episode reminds me not only of the tactics that the Feds used against the left back in the 1960s and 1970s but also of the tactics used by the Czarist secret police in Russia. They used to send out agents to student hangouts and such in order to recruit disaffected young people into joining, what they were being led to believe, were revolutionary conspiracies against the regime. After which, these young people would then be arrested. This allowed the Czarist regime to claim all sorts of victories against the revolutionary underground. And indeed they were quite successful at infiltrating revolutionary groups. As I recall the assasin of the conservative prime minister, Stolypin, was in the pay of the secret police.
---
What was the name of the guy who infilitrated the Bolshies so successfully that Lenin refused to believe that he was really a plant?
[Incidentally, according to Sergo Beria, his father had the greatest respect of the tsarist secret police. He also said that Dzerzhinsky obtained physical pleasure from torturing people. Though that one might apply to Beria too. ;) Beria apparently thought Dzerzhinsky was despicable. Pot, kettle, black. ;)]
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com