Opinion

The ex-spy who casts a light on the Trump-Russia saga

Yet for any devotee of a good John le Carré thriller or James Bond film, it is also rather depressing. If Moscow did want to establish a relationship with the Trump campaign, was the initial connection really as easy and obvious as firing off an email? More disturbingly: what has become of the top brass of Russia’s spy network? Has Moscow’s opinion of the US really fallen so low that it phones espionage operations in via the D-Squad? In search of answers, I visited Peter Earnest, a 36-year veteran of the CIA who spent the better part of two decades in the agency’s clandestine operations. In retirement, the white-haired but sprightly ex-spy has found himself executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington DC after a career that spanned the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Mr Earnest said he had been watching the news unfold with piqued interest. Pointing out that he lacked insider knowledge of the drama, he noted that the initial email sent to Donald Trump Jr appeared to have the kinds of “teasers” that an intelligence operation would send out to test the interest of a target — the teaser in this case being compromising information on Hillary Clinton.