My point was merely that a Soviet making an unauthorized crossing into our country during the Cold War would (and should) have raised eyebrows. If an American likewise makes an unauthorized crossing into Iran, I feel much the same; the question isn’t whether they could make an authorized crossing, it’s whether they made an unauthorized one.
But these Americans didn’t present themselves as anything like defectors. They presented themselves as people who no longer want to stick around upon being picked up but would sure like very much to get back to another country now. How would we have treated such a Soviet who wasn’t interested in defecting upon slipping across our border?
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You’re probably right – but if you do indeed think that people sneaking across borders should be presumed to be spies, then there’s a whole other debate on paranoia that we could have.
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In general? No. Were I an Iranian, dealing with Americans sneaking across my border? Yes.
Well it would depend on the circumstances, wouldn’t it? If they were tourists in Mexico who were hanging out on one of the lakes that spans the U.S.-Mexican border, and accidentally strayed to our side, most likely they would not be detained for very long at all. Countries typically do not assume everyone who accidentally crosses their borders are spies, mostly because spies have little reason to be hanging out around remote borders and then in addition to that even a cursory investigation can quickly dismiss any such notions about a person being a spy.
A better question might be, if someone was a spy why wouldn’t they act like they wanted to defect? If the hikers were spies exactly what job are they doing by immediately begging to be sent home and ending up in prison. If they were spies they would instead profess great love for the Ayatollah and a desire to live in an Islamic state. In truth though since there is no practical purpose to having human intelligence there no one actually believes they are spies at all. Everything is just posturing at this point.
However what you’re ignoring is that in reality both the CIA and the KGB knew how espionage works, and so does Iran. No one sends secret spies into remote border regions to do…what? Observe nothing? Meet no one? Infiltrate the cities and population centers that aren’t there?
Most espionage human intelligence gathering is in the form of turning persons already in that country into assets, James Bond style incursions deep behind enemy lines are extremely rare and unheard of, really. When American spies have had to physically go into hostile countries they try to establish very good cover, that would make the host country never notice them or question why they might be there. If possible they might even try to feign some other nationality or ethnicity (Eastern European or something.)
Yeah. Paranoia. That’s what I’m talking about. Inability to discern young leftists getting lost in a national park from spies sneaking across a border is a good sign of paranoia.
Are you aware that Iran has held two of the three hippies for longer than North Korea held US sailors on the USS Pueblo, who were doing real spying?
By the way, when you suspect that these hippies are spies, how do you explain that they didn’t have any fake passports, visa, or other identification on them?
Do you really think that the CIA typically sends secret agents into hostile nations using personal passports, without visas, using their real identities? Are you kidding?
If that were true, then we could sneak spies across the border by making 'em look like incredibly stupid young leftists. If, instead, it’s merely good sense – look, Pascal’s Wager rightly gets a lot of criticism on these boards, but what’s the harm to Iran if they give the potential spy treatment to (a) stupid Americans and (b) spies posing as stupid Americans?
They probably did it for the same reason I see lone women walking around Humboldt Park in Chicago. OK some are there to buy drugs but others just want to walk around and don’t care it’s not safe.
Again, you’re telling me what you’d expect a spy to do; you’re using that to presume they aren’t spies. To the extent that you have a point, you have the exact reason why they’d be sent in with that cover story: you believe it’s implausible to figure they’re spies, you believe it’s paranoia to think otherwise – that’s exactly what I’d prey on in hopes of slipping stuff past you.
Same thing for Martin Hyde’s questions:
To the precise extent that Iran would reason that way to eliminate suspicion, a blind spot could be exploited.
The other thing to keep in mind is anyone found on a patrolled border is always going to be questioned to a degree, and if they are not from that country they will be detained and probably eventually deported. For that very reason “hikers” is not a good cover story, it doesn’t matter that “hey, no one would ever expect a spy to be so stupid” because it’s still a bad cover story. The reason being no country is going to ignore random hikers who have crossed a border illegally. What Iran is doing that is out of the ordinary is holding them indefinitely, even the USSR or the U.S. during the Cold War would have released them (back to their original country–so there is no threat of them spying on us and thus the cover served no purpose) when no evidence at all existed to suggest they were spies.
The hiking thing isn’t just a bad cover story, it’s just a bad way to infiltrate because no matter how good the cover story is, you will always be deported. On the other hand if you go into the country as an Eastern European businessman, and do so in a non-flashy way (travel with other Eastern European businessmen who have been coming to the country for years on business) it is very unlikely you will be noticed at all, and further it is more likely your cover survives scrutiny.
However in reality your whole premise is flawed, cover isn’t about convincing authorities who have detained you that you belong there, it is about keeping off the authority’s radar entirely. Even the best cover will be blown if the authorities look into it very deeply. For that reason hiking into the country across a patrolled border is just stupid espionage, because your mere physical presence there immediately alerts authorities that you are out of place.
Further if the Iranians actually thought they were spies, the Iranians would have been smart to not detain them right away or even apprehend them. It’s pretty basic stuff that if you’ve “made” an enemy spy who has entered your country you don’t want to just grab them, you want to watch them to know what they’re up to, because that is valuable intelligence. Once you’ve seen who they meet with and what they’ve discussed, then you go in and take the enemy agent and all of the assets in your country he has met with. You’ve turned the situation 180 in your favor that way.
If he doesn’t get caught, and he’s just an incredibly stupid hiker, no harm done. If he doesn’t get caught, and is a spy – well, that’s bad.
If I catch him, and he’s an incredibly stupid hiker, then I wouldn’t mind deporting the guy. If I catch him, and he’s a spy posing as an incredibly stupid hiker – well, then, I could of course still deport him if I want, but probably don’t want to, right?
If he gets caught, yes. So what’s an innocuous cover story if he’s caught, though we’re of course hoping he doesn’t get caught?
Might have been too late. What if they’ve already been apprehended and held for a good stretch by the equivalent of beat cops long before the guys at the top get involved? Spies would then know it’s then too late to follow through with the mission, so releasing 'em won’t lead you to anything else – so what do you do, if you come in at the middle?
Why wouldn’t you deport him? Nations have historically done that all the time. Or you kill them in a dark room and no one ever knows their names (there’s a book in the entrance of the CIA HQ you should look at some time.)
But again, cover is about not being noticed, not about trying to explain your way out of trouble once apprehended. For that reason being a hiker in the wilderness is a horrible cover story, because it fails at keeping you from being noticed.
Investigate and deport, as virtually all countries do.
Egypt, Israel, Serbia. These countries don’t strike me as zomg danger zones. I hear people go on skiiing holidays to Afghanistan these days. My dad brought a school class on a trip there and went with my mother another time. It remains to be seen how it gets on post-Mubarak but it has been selling itself as a mass tourist destination for years. My mother’s been in Israel. Half the backpackers I know have been in Serbia. I suppose if you visited when the smoke from the NATO bombings was still in the air it would have been risky.
Well, “defending” might be putting it a little strongly. I mean, if someone asked why a serial rapist then murdered his victims, I likewise might not stop to spell out that I of course approve of neither rape nor murder while trying to figure out why the guy is so keen on silencing possible witnesses.
Some. Never made an unauthorized trek across a border.
Because Iran is a backwards hell hole that likes to parade Americans through their judicial system and who think they may be able to use these people as bargaining chips later on.
Even at its worst the Soviet Union was a more proper country and this kind of thing just wouldn’t have happened.
Even people like Gary Powers who clearly was a spy was given a moderate sentence by the Soviets and was eventually exchanged in a spy trade as happened periodically throughout the Cold War.
But here’s the thing, for us to accept Waldo’s proposition of “anyone who enters a country illegally should be treated as a spy” as rational we have to presume that intelligence agencies literally have no ability whatsoever to ever determine if someone is a spy or not.
Can you imagine the practical ramifications if countries actually operated in such a way? I’m not 100% clear on which Federal agency would evaluate illegal entrants as potential spies (FBI, CIA, NSA?) but they would probably have to be 20 times as large as they are now if they had to investigate every single Mexican in detail in order to see if they are spies or not.
It’s much more rational to instead recognize that all borders get routinely crossed by haphazard people both by accident, for low level criminal activity, and other such reasons. It isn’t even all that important that you have super tight border controls to protect yourself from espionage, it’s more important that you have good security procedures to keep secrets secret. The United States was a very open country throughout the Cold War and sure, sometimes we were successfully infiltrated by the KGB, but we also deterred many of their efforts as well. If the KGB had actually wanted to expend resources hiking Russians from Canada into Northern Montana it would have actually been good for us, because they’d be wasting trained operatives in an area devoid of any intelligence value whatsoever.