A Brilliantly Wtitten Manipulative Attack on the Trump Administration

5/16/25 Politico article examines the history of trying to find the "Fourth Man," a putative Soviet/Russian spy inside CIA. (Edward Howard Lee, Nelson Aldrich, Robert Hanssen being the first three.)

The examination of the struggle to find this last spy is gripping.   The entire article is an attack on FBI Director Patel's attempts to get the FBI away from political intrigue and focused on pursuit of domestic criminals.  The article admits it is more a supposition that Patel wants to scrap their counterintelligence operations than anything else and quotes the FBI as denying any such intentions:

"After several months of chaos and trepidation at the bureau, Patel has yet to publicly set a clear course for counterintelligence. The FBI appears to be moving to a regional command structure, according to The New York Times, but hasn’t announced further changes to its capacity to thwart spies, other than to suspend an analyst involved in investigating Russia’s 2016 election meddling."

Was he investigating Russian election meddling or part of Russiagate?

This article attempts to cast Trump and his appointees as either Russian stooges or foolishly short-sighted.  But then again, this is the journal of swampland.