Russia claims it arrested a CIA spy earlier this week:
Photographs quickly circulated of Fogle in custody, along with a disguise and gear — including two wigs, sunglasses, a knife and cell phone, a map of Moscow, a microphone, and an aluminum RFID shield.
Julia Ioffe is struck by the cartoonish nature of Fogle’s spy gear:
“Oh, you should talk to [former Moscow CIA station chief] Burt Gerber,” one espionage specialist exuberantly suggested. “He invented the pop-up kit!” The pop-up kit, if you must know, is what the Agency used in Moscow at the height of the Cold War: because all cars coming out of the U.S. embassy were tailed by the KGB, the American spook would have a driver who would make a sharp turn, the spy would jump out and disappear into a crowd, and a contraption in the shape of a human would pop up in the passenger’s seat. Then, there was the “spy rock,” in 2006. The Russians alleged that the British were using a rock to spy on them. It was all very funny until last year, when the Brits confirmed that, yes, in fact the rock had been spying on the Russians.
The Dish 