Mrs. Iselin, Stockholm Perfectionist

Zamyatin's detractors in the Soviet Union might have been wicked men, but they were not stupid, and no one believed that a Russian We had been reconstituted out of a Czech translation..." Clarence Brown, translator, kindle location 120

Evan Perez, in the heat of the moment, does not care to reflect on when the Federal Bureau of Investigation cared to follow the letter of the law? Under the biracial nanny czar, if rumored revisionists are to be believed? Mueller made a few missteps with both anthrax suspects after 9/11, leading Hatfill to a nearly three million dollar settlement, and then miscalculating Dr. Ivins durability to the point that the public will never have criminal veracity tested through due process.

Granted, Hatfill and Ivin were both beneficiaries of western knowledge production, and had dangerous levels of expertise. Tamerlan was someone generated out of Stalinist oppression, whether or not he was aware of it before he struck out at an American liberalism that tried to give him a chance in a more free flowing society that is only free to those able to drive, those able to maintain geographical mobility, those able to generate income.

Whatever Hoover had buried in terms of personal secrets, he would not have allowed Tamarlan Tsarnaev back into the United States, and this is the level of difference we seemingly have forgotten how to determine. It may have been unkind to revoke his Visa, or pull his passport, but it would not have amounted to torture, not while we parried with Alexander's agents to get them to show their cards, and they had cards to play.

A waking nightmare about Obama being targeted by a black woman wearing a wig started me thinking about when a candidate is in charge and when they aren't. I do not take such dreams literally, but do not ignore them either, and Condon's late century thriller about stand ins and doubles was no doubt a slap in the face to Hoover's paranoia, but what was Mrs. Iselin's portraiture, really? Communist? Right wing?

What she is amounts to the certainty of conviction that runs so deep it frightens, and in the right hands, perhaps fascinates, and necessitated that the film adaptation was so rigidly schematic, because, much like other late Ike era narratives, the anxiety over the line between American muscle against Marxist radical leveling made people uneasy, and even Sinatra couldn't sanitize those who would be forever altered by Stockholm syndromes. Not quite brain washing, but certainly a psychological indoctrination of the kind that leaves deep scars.