Word: colonels
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Under sniper fire during an embassy demonstration in Yemen, a Marine colonel (Samuel L. Jackson) orders his men to shoot at the demonstrators; 83 Yemenis are killed. At the colonel's court martial, his attorney (Tommy Lee Jones) cries bureaucratic cover-up--which the script, from a story by former Navy Secretary James Webb, sees as more damning than the massacre of civilians. The issues demand nuance, not the rhetorical bombast offered in this muddle. It has something to offend every political sensibility but little to offer in thoughtful drama...
...Soviet Friendship in Leipzig collecting, analyzing and passing on bits of information. He was thought to be close to his counterparts in the East German intelligence service, Stasi, who were notorious for their crude repression, though he claims he "never saw it." He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, respectable but hardly stellar...
...Lieut. Colonel Putin came home to a Russia that was radically altered. While he had been tasting the ways of the West, his country had roiled through the reversals of perestroika. Moscow Center's talent spotters took no interest in him, and he was given a low-rent KGB "cover" job assisting the rector at his old Leningrad university, a position normally reserved for a retiring agent. He was unsure how he fit into the new order, says a close aide. Worse, says Polokhov, who met him again in 1990, Putin was "hurt that the state did not want...
...elevated to head of the FSB, the Yeltsin-era successor to the KGB. On the day he walked into the headquarters on Dzerzinsky Square, he said, "I'm home at last." But Moscow's top boys regarded the mere lieutenant colonel with disdain, says a former agent: "We considered Putin a little bit too short in stature." He went to work replacing top echelons with St. Petersburg friends and launching an unpopular campaign to cut jobs. Meantime, citizens were troubled by the way Putin's FSB continued to persecute environmental activists and initiated official monitoring of the Internet...
...such a sinister organization twists minds. Putin rehung the plaque of Yuri Andropov at KGB headquarters, and always stoutly defends the organization and his service in it. "Their system of education is so strong that there is no such thing as a former KGB agent," says former army Colonel Viktor Baranets. Today, Putin has surrounded himself with many old spy mates. Says a senior U.S. diplomat who has met Putin: "There is a real danger his software is heavily programmed with a reliance on power. He may be deep rooted in traditions that represent the worst of the Russian past...