The spies who became politicians

[htpcl]

Nice to meet you! Bond. James Bond. Look at these names now... Andropov, Bush, Putin, Kinkel, Panetta, and now Ungureanu. All of them have one thing in common. They jumped over from professional espionage and plunged into politics. Nothing too unusual, some would say. Dangerous!, others would counter. And who would be right?

Comments

[htpcl]

The problems start when one's intelligence legacy starts messing with their decision-making and affecting their policies. That's the main reason why most former Eastern bloc countries adopted laws that were aimed at "cleansing" their politics from former servants of the communist regimes. My country was too reluctant to do that, though - mostly because real democratic revolution never happened here in the first place, instead the old guys renamed themselves from communist to socialist and largely remained in power. The files of the former secret services haven't been completely revealed, which has tainted the political process over the past 20 years, every time someone disturbing the political landscape with some unpleasant revelations about the past of some of their rivals. Even our incumbent president turns out to have been part of those services. The new one has promised that he won't let any former spies into his team, but that remains to be seen.

The latest such scandal erupted in the Orthodox Church, which is the official church of the country. Almost all top clerics were found to have been agents of the secret services, or at least they had been reporting to the communist party. Which is no surprise, since you wouldn't be let to get to such a high post if you hadn't been recruited. The scandal comes strangely timely, as a younger bishop (the one presiding over my region) is preparing to take the place of the incumbent Patriarch of the Orthodox Church (who's very old), and he'll surely play the "those guys are evil and I'm not" card to get to the coveted post.

In a nutshell, whether political appointments or not, people who've spent a portion of their political career around the ranks of the intelligence services, should expect extra distrust and suspicion from the public, and I guess there's no way around that.

[onefatmusicnerd]

Yeah, but Leon Panetta spent 30 years as a budget wonk and auditor, went to the CIA to clean ship, for 30 months. This guy is an accountant...