Intel gathering

'Spying did occur'

When Attorney General Bill Barr acknowledged last week that he believed “spying did occur” during the 2016 presidential campaign, Democratic outrage centered on his use of the word spying, something the FBI insists it never does.

It is true that government investigators used Stefan Halper, a Cambridge-based professor, to invite various Trump advisers to Britain so he could wine and dine them while pumping them for damaging information he would later turn over to intelligence contacts in Washington, but that apparently doesn’t make him a spy nor mean his handlers were engaged in spying. Those who, like the attorney general, think differently just aren’t with the program and, as one senator put it, “owe the FBI an apology.”

Just as President Bill Clinton tried to wiggle off the hook when accused of lying by arguing that what he meant turned on the meaning of “is,” the legitimacy of the reaction to Attorney General Barr’s use of the word “spy” depends not on what Mr. Halper and others did, but on what he and the rest of us mean when we use the word.

Most of us would agree that if “A” pays “B” to get close to “C” and report back what he learns, “A” would be spying on “C” and “B” would be a spy. It turns out that in the eyes of our intelligence services if “A” is, say, Russia and “B” reports back on his or her conversations with “C,” “C” is a spy and “A” is spying through “C” on “B.” That is logical and consistent with the popular understanding of the meaning of “spy” and “spying.”