With the exception of the Cambridge Spies or Edward Snowden, who the hell defects to Russia? Tara Reade that’s who. Tara Who? Read the next paragraph to get a better read on Reade.
Tara Reade is the former Biden staffer who accused him of sexual assault during the 2020 campaign season. Few outside the wingnut bubble found her allegations credible and they’re looking increasingly incredible after the press conference she held in Moscow the other day. Guess who was with her? Maria Butina, that’s who.
That’s right, Maria Butina who was convicted of spying on dipshit American gun nuts then sent home to Mother Russia. Upon her return, Butina was rewarded for her mischief making with a seat in the Duma.
In 2018, I had a lot of fun at Butina’s expense:
It’s unclear why Butina was at the Reade presser. Does she think she’ll be treated as well as Butina? The Russians never treat defectors as well as their own agents. Kim Philby is the best example of that. The KGB was worried that he was a triple agent who came to Moscow to spy on them. He was not but they mistrusted and mistreated the bull goose Cambridge Spy.
I don’t know how Edward Snowden has been treated. If you’re curious, ask Glenn Greenwald who has been curiously silent on the Reade-Butina press conference. I eagerly await his nutso leftist fascist take on this mishigas. I need a good laugh and Glenn always brings the unintentional comedy.
Unlike Philby or Snowden, Tara Reade does not have any valuable information to impart. What she brings to the party is some serious crazy:
“Sitting next to Butina, Reade said: “I just really so appreciate Maria and everyone who’s been giving me [protection] at a time when it’s been very difficult to know if I’m safe or not.
“I just didn’t want to walk home and walk into a cage or be killed, which is basically my two choices.”
Reade recently considered testifying before US House Republicans seeking to use committees to attack Biden and his family.
The decision to defect to Russia, she told Sputnik, “was very difficult. I’m not an impulsive person. I really take my time and sort of analyse data points.
“And from what I could see based on the cases and based on what was happening and sort of the push for them to not want me to testify, I felt that while [the 2024] election is gearing up and there’s so much at stake, I’m almost better off here and just being safe. My dream is to live in both places, but it may be that I only live in this place and that’s OK.”
Say what? Joe Biden put out a hit on Tara Reade? Is Hunter the hit man? All I have are questions.
If the Russians were trying to embarrass POTUS, they failed. The Reade presser was overshadowed by the way Biden pantsed KMac to conclude the debt ceiling mishigas. I only wrote about it because it gave me an excuse to write about Maria Butina and Kim Philby. Thanks, Tara.
At the presser Reade sounded more like Marge Greene than a former Democratic aide as she spouted the Kremlin line:
“To my Russian brothers and sisters, I’m sorry right now that American elites are choosing to have such an aggressive stance. Just know that most American citizens do want to be friends and hope that we can have unity again.
“I am enjoying my time in Moscow, and I feel very at home.”
I hope she likes cold weather. That’s one thing Russia has plenty of.
That concludes The Curious Case Of The Defective Defector.
I can’t read Reade’s mind and have no wish to do so but punning on her name reminds me of a hit song by a Canadian troubadour who died recently. The last word goes to Gordon Lightfoot:
This may upset preconceived notions about the FSB – Vadim Bakatin (last KGB Chairman) was one of the greatest spy masters in espionage history. Unbeknownst to many, on occasion the Soviets cooperated with the West in the Cold War. Vadim Bakatin was one of the architects of this co-operation in the eighties. The KGB and Western agencies frequently collaborated when combatting global crime syndicates involved in heinous crimes such as smuggling body parts.
An interesting take on this oft forgotten aspect of the Cold War is still visible in the preserved website of a niche global intelligence agency, FaireSansDire, based in the UK from 1978 and now supposedly shut or dormant: see The History of Faire Sans Dire in “About Us” on TheBurlingtonFiles website.
A series of novels based on the activities of FaireSansDire’s founders are also worth a peep but to date, for legal reasons, only one has been released. The larger than life characters who met in MI6 in the early seventies and later established FaireSansDire included Colonel Alan Brooke Pemberton CVO MBE and Barrie Parkes BEM both of whose fascinating backgrounds can be accessed on the web. Pemberton’s People in MI6 even included Roy Astley Richards OBE (Winston Churchill’s bodyguard) and an eccentric British Brigadier (Peter ‘Scrubber’ Stewart-Richardson) who was once refused permission to join the Afghan Mujahideen. For more beguiling anecdotes best read a brief and intriguing News Article about Pemberton’s People in MI6 dated 31 October 2022 in TheBurlingtonFiles website and then read Beyond Enkription.
Interesting in a spooky kinda way. Thanks for sharing.
Yes, it is spooky to learn that much of the time, what Bond and to a lesser degree Smiley have taught us is as foreign to espionage as saying Indiana Jones presents a realistic portrayal of the quotidian life of an archaeologist.