@66:

Uh, I don’t think that the conclusion is that the Sassi /intended/ to offer up one of their pawns to bring down the enemy–not that they wouldn’t have, mind you, if they saw the chance–but that they were, in fact, /everywhere/, and were willing to, and to be quite ruthless about using the death of one of their own to further their goals. It turned out that Willi Brandt’s government was just riddled with Stassi & KGB agents; indeed, it was the discovery of one such that brought it down–another weak spot in spying and such; the more you have, the more exposure you have.

Oh, and this sort of thing is like all human endeavors; sometimes you get the bear, sometimes he gets you. Somewhere on the Web there is, I’m sure, a summery of the KGB agent identities we got in the first month or so after the fall of CCCP; it seems that, over-all, Joe McCarthy was more right than wrong….

You should not over-estimate the effectiveness of such things–but neither should you underestimate it.

pgf