In Spymaster’s Prism, retired CIA agent Jack Devine explores the contacts between Russian agencies and Trump 2016 while spreading disinformation and confusion among the American electorate. He isn’t the first author to recall that Russia’s Soviet predecessors were masters at that game or that the difference between now and then comes down to the new avenues of attack. Social networking has extended and multiplied Russia’s reach. Devine recalls that the KGB and CIA secretly negotiated the “Moscow Rules,” which placed some limits on each other’s activities. Vladimir Putin, ex-KGB, has ignored those rules, albeit Devine wonders if this is his response to NATO expansion and Western support for post-Soviet regimes. The U.S. largely ignored the Russia as a threat during that country’s chaotic ‘90s and turned eyes elsewhere after 911. Devine persuasively argues that this was a grave mistake.
