Tinker Taylor Soldier Activist

They were the very essence of the what the Peace Camp thought of themselves, a pragmatic bunch, a caring bunch, a better educated bunch, each of those things and it’s opposite. With a little help from the press, we were to be convinced of their dialectic infallibility, experience, and patriotism. Among those who were supposed to be the wise old (and unelected) owls of the State Department, with their “been there, done that” disdain for elected officials of a non-leftist persuasion, we were to believe that they had the country first, and then humanity’s best interest at heart. They were “sacrificing their futures” for the defense of the nation’s laws, her decency, and so forth. This is the kind of thing that would put a retired analyst instantly onto the national spotlight in those heady days of their proletarian struggle:

A senior American official has spoken of "the myth of the special relationship" between the United States and Britain, arguing that Tony Blair got "nothing, no payback" for supporting President George W Bush in Iraq.

Kendall Myers, a leading State Department adviser, suggested that Mr Blair should have been ditched by Labour but the party had lacked the "courage or audacity" to remove him.

The press was tangentially lauding people like this, and giving them more of a vehicle to propagate, because they were saying openly what the people of the press couldn’t do openly without being rather obvious in their act. Dissent is patriotic, as we all know. One must say this in a measured, thoughtful way when saying this, as though one DIDN’T read if off of a bumper sticker on a Suburu that’s burning oil, or a dealer services Volvo SUV.

Mr Blair, he said, was more articulate than Mr Bush, but the Prime Minister's ignorance of the British experience in Mesopotamia had led him to make a catastrophic error in backing the Iraq invasion. "Unfortunately, Tony Blair's background was as an actor and not an historian. If only he'd read a book on the 1920s he might have hesitated."

So they thought of themselves as the freaking Ewoks, or something – fighting the great tide of reality. Whatever. That’s an awful lot of sneering condescention for a supporter of populism, especially if he spent the previous breath telling us how Blair was duped by the genius-idiot.

But is turns out that doublethink has something of a heritage. You don’t come to believe that it’s critical to the good of man by yourself.

So in the spirit of “speaking up even if your voice shakes” the intrepid souls of the left demonstrate that treason must also be patriotic too, especially when you’re quietly aiding a dictator. Power to the people, and all that...

WASHINGTON - A married couple in their 70s was accused Friday of spying for Fidel Castro's Cuba for 30 years while the husband was a top intelligence analyst at the State Department.

Walter Kendall Myers, known as "Agent 202" to the Cubans, and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, "Agent 123" and "E-634," were nabbed at a Washington hotel following an undercover FBI sting.

They allegedly admitted their treachery spanned decades, U.S. officials said.

Far from a senior state department analyst, Dr. Myers was a part time professor, pinch hitter, and VERY former mucky-muck in the state department. But rather tellingly in the illuminated Clinton years and remaining later unremoved, did have a rather interesting post, that of "Executive Director, Advisory Committee for the Study of Eastern, Europe and the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union" well after he and Frau Myers committed themselves personally and freely to the ideals of the communist state, at the specific expense of the United States' position.

He might have been speaking from his own "anti-war" position, but he was likely also operating as somebody's anti-American flunky. After all, someone who could potentially get bagged for engading in espionage, remaining undetected for more than 20 years, would if they had any sense at all, maintian a low profile.

What should surpise no-one was their zest and zeal - for something that these two dwellers of the ritzy, yoga-distracted Cathedral neighborhood of DC where Al Gore learned to be a Tenneseean, really hoped could impoverish and be forced on the American population where they would not have to share the sameness to be forced on the unwashed masses, classes, and other compartments that the fantasy left what to lock us all into.

Gwen Myers, now 71, would sometimes pass secrets to Cuban agents - one code-named "GOD" - by exchanging shopping carts in a grocery, court papers alleged.

"They weren't doing it for money - they were true believers with an affinity for Castro," the U.S. official said.

Amusingly, their Cuban handlers used spycraft techniques dating to the 1930s. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a sentimentally ancient “number station” running for them. The Cuban “press” play the guilt angle, suggesting that since America was being defeated by Cuba, that the US Government was taking it out on poor widdle old people who through a lifetime of covering their eyes couldn't see what was rather obvious: communism's subsuming of the individual, his creativity, his beliefs into a ugly grey mold, distinct absense of intellectual or cultural diversity, the very opposite of the form the left think their own freedoms should take. But no matter: for people of this ilk, all human progress must halt for the sake of man. Even treason itself is rationalized as "patriotic."

Maybe they thought it a cheap trade if you're going to get a cool name like "Agent 202".