Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Were Russian Spies in Cambridge No Way Outed?

Do you remember the plot to the 1987 movie No Way Out? It starred Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young, and Will Patton.

Kevin Costner gets his picture taken with Sean Young, and the negative ends up under her bed. Later she is killed in a fit of rage by Hackman, who happens to be Secretary of Defense. Patton his aide finds the negative in cleaning up the scene. Hackman and Patton use the resources of the DOD to track down the person in the photo, under the pretext the guy is a Russian sleeper agent. Turns out (here comes the spoiler) Costner is a Russian sleeper agent!

So here is our 2010 spy story. Two Russian sleeper agents enter the U.S. posing as a Canadian couple. After 9/11 in which Al Qaeda terrorists entered the U.S through Canada, FBI counter-intelligence officers search a Cambridge safe deposit of two Canadians whose identities they suspect may be phony. They find picture negatives in the safe deposit box that were developed in Russia.

As his Russian handler tells Costner at the end: "This bizarre incident has given them their Yuri."

Update: Who keeps their negatives in a safe deposit box? I do. That way if my condo building burns down and I lose all my pictures, I can get them reprinted. Yes, the government can search your safe deposit box without your knowledge, but the government can search your home without your knowledge too.

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