"Is It Time, Morgiana?" (revisited)

So the general media is saying that Obama has expelled thirty-odd Russian 'spies.'

But you better not be one of those who believe this kind of rubbish. 

Factually, they are diplomats.

Susan Lehrman - wealthy New York Socialite

Diplomats are the kinds of people who have access to other diplomats and high levels of government - although only in rare cases, exactly the highest levels. And what they do is 'suggest' diplomatically, that you do things like check out the Tsarnaev brothers. And they only suggest because often they can only base their views on educated speculation - it may be very well educated speculation but it will lack the hard forensic evidence to warrant taking the matter directly to say, the FBI. Diplomats do stuff like a 'heads up.' 

Now spies on the other hand, actual spies, be they of those who interfere with what you are doing, or who gather highly sensitive information that may be used against you, will be positioned differently to diplomats.

They will be located in entirely different places to embassy compounds. Theoretically, you will not be able to detect them. Yes, there are trained lawyers who will handle things if an actual 'operative agent' gets into trouble - and those lawyers will be in or close to embassies. But they will not generally have exact knowledge of who the spies are and only 'find out' when the embassy is contacted and the appropriate accreditation is exposed by that individual 'in trouble' for whatever reason. Sometimes, it's just that someone was apprehended in the commission of a real crime, who was supposed to be carrying it out secretly, and didn't - and then, embassy cover begins at which point smart people realize, oh, that wasn't an ordinary 'crook' that was a foreign agent doing something and things went wrong. For instance, he might have been pulled up for speeding, or jay-walking or something, in the middle of well, what he was really up to...

'Karl Rove is a spy.' Who he spies for I have no idea. Well, I don't know that he's a spy, what I'm saying is that he is the type of person who is - he goes where they go, he knows who they like to know, he does what spies do.

Amy Pascal. You remember, from the Sony email
hacking

He gives lectures - free lectures - at places such as the Gilbert M. Grosvenor Center. 

And at those lectures, people turn up who shouldn't really be there, and then they talk to others there with the same views and outlooks and so on and an 'association' develops. These things take place over years, decades, even generations. Nobody 'spies' who just turns up one day into a desk job at an embassy, and then a few months later gets turfed out because you have 'discovered' they are a spy!