Judith Clark: changer?
A fascinating story: from violent 60s radical to—well, to what? Do you think Judith Clark’s change is sincere? Do you think she should be let out of prison?
Those are two separate questions, by the way.
[ADDENDUM: David Horowitz says “no” to both questions.]
I believe in forgiveness and redemption and I hope this woman finds both, but her ass belongs in jail. She was 31 years old when she committed her crime.. a hardened adult. The harm she did cannot be expunged. That is the point of harsh sentences. That her accomplices were treated more gently is the real injustice.
Couple of points: Her colleagues were more guilty and got lesser sentences. Definitely unfair and makes the system look stupid.
Since I’ve been a conservative from the age of about two, I didn’t change. But I was born in 1945 and grew up during the turmoil of the Sixties.
These folks were different, the lefties. A communist might say something about eggs and omelets and be thought vile. Still, there is hardly anything a government does which doesn’t find somebody worse off, sometimes pretty badly worse off, including the population of a place where the government decides to hold a war, even for the best of motives.
These lefties were different. They HATED anyone who was, even inadvertently and unaware, in their way. An average family who might, had they heard about it, have objected to losing their goods in some cockamamie revolution, were hated, reviled, condemned. These people didn’t just try to kill, or support killing, or kill, in order to get past, say, a guard. They killed because they thought any obstacle to their plans was EVIL, and needed killing and they were glad to do it. Disagree with them and they hated you viciously and viscerally.
Somebody in the position of this woman was personally so far from normal human sympathies and judgments that any claimed change would have to be looked at with great care.
I don’t know if I can justify it with references to a justice system or anything moral or empirically shown to be useful. But I would like to see all of these people locked up forever. Perhaps I’m returning the hate–fair’s fair–but I also think they’re a different, sinister type of personality which is so self-referential that there is nothing they can’t justify to themselves, nothing at all. They are different from most other criminal types and I wouldn’t think their change, so called, would get to the bottom of their personality, the dangerous part.
No one who has Found Jesus for real would ask to be released from prison.
Part of repentance means that you accept the penalty for your actions. If she’s truly changed, then good for her. She can use that change to help her fellow jail mates.
Oh, she’s Jewish, and she’s found YHWH.
Same thing applies.
dicentra: one can argue that she’s already used that change to help her fellow inmates, for many years. The article goes into that.
Assuming her change of heart is sincere: how much punishment is enough for the role she played in the crime? Her sentence seems to have been disproportionate, and was partly based on the perception that she was unrepentant and could not be rehabilitated.
Her daughter went to Stanford, so I assume Judith is also a bright woman. Yet she wanted to overthrow society to create some fantasy utopia. And this was in the early 1980s, long after most other counter-culture radicals had given up on the idea of revolution and decided to get Ph.ds and change the world by indoctrinating college students.
I’d worry she’s so smart that she’s just manipulating everyone around her to make them believe she’s really changed.
She can rot in jail as far as I’m concerned.
Just like I was for Karla Faye Tucker going to the Texas Death Chamber for her horrendous acts at 23, I’d be for the same “proportionality” with this woman and her comrades. Amazing that they didn’t receive the full limit. I completely believed Ms.Tucker’s rebirth and sincerity AND the necessity of Proportionality of the sentence. Baa-Daa-Bing.
I held “Karla Faye Tucker going to the Texas Death Chamber” against Bush. What a waste. It was only asked that she live out her life in jail. It was asked unanimously by the Warden and the guards, those saps.
So some will want every Clark to rot in hell. and others will want to let her out with mercy.
I have a son in prison. He committed a felony. No violence. He wouldn’t cooperate (rat) and was over sentenced. Even the judge thought so, but sentencing guidelines prevailed.
I feel sorry for him, but he brought it on himself.
This is life. It’s not fair. If she gets out, it won’t bother me. If she stays in, let her continue her good works.
But a governor who won’t do what he thought was right for fear of being “tarred and feathered”?
Jail him.
Kinda like a distaff Bill Ayers, except one who didn’t manage to wriggle off the hook, then? And now, mirabile dictu, she’s repentant, as Ayers doubtless would be now too, if he’d been rung up.
Let her rot.
She, like Ayers, should account herself lucky she wasn’t hanged, as she would have been had it been my call. Felony murder doctrine, Judith.
I just read Ron Radosh’s post on this at PJM. He also presents David Horowitz’s view, which seems to have some merit. DH points out that Clark’s involvement with the terrorist scene involves much more than this single robbery and that Clark has not given information about others involved in crimes. That is probably irrelevant to her conviction and sentencing in the Brinks robbery; however, I would care more about her fate if her remorse was not just personal. Her associate Bill Ayers continued to influence young minds, even in math books. Has she ever spoken out against this? What does she think of the romantization of the radicals that persists among the OWS supporters?
As an aside, note the wording of the NYT article. The police officers were “gunned down,” which sounds nicer than “murdered.”
And Clark was a “single mother” who “kissed her infant daughter goodbye that morning.” Awwww. Sniff.
Let’s review the bidding, shall we? Clark gets humanized, whereas two nameless, faceless police officers are “gunned down,” (note the passive voice; these things just happen, through no one’s agency, no one’s fault really, Act of God and all that). Maybe they kissed their infant children goodbye that morning too, but we’ll never know, because Robbins doesn’t give a rat’s ass about them, and apparently didn’t bother to inquire. Did they have families? What were their dreams? Who cares, right?
BTW, I read through some of the comments at NYT: there seems to be a lot of people who think the terrorists were fighting the good fight and just got a bit carried away. At least one commenter felt it was unfair that she is in jail while Bush and Cheney aren’t held accountable for their crimes.
Note also that Robbins, evidently in an effort to make Clark more palatable, points out that no one ever accused her of holding or firing a gun, which of course is irrelevant if NY subscribes to the felony murder doctrine. As for holding guns, most of those executed at Nuremburg probably never killed any innocents personally either.
Sorry, but this kind of revisionist rubbish really gets my goat. The NYT clearly views her crimes as excusable, just a misunderstanding really, not like she did anything reprehensible, such as voting for Bush.
So, she ‘s found “GAWD”? Good for her, now she can go back to her cell and rot there . xin loi ,you miserable excuse for a human being..
“self-referential personality!” Very great way of summing up the Utopian Leftist personality.
Since Capote’s “In Cold Blood” found that people are really more interested in the criminals than the victims, the left has used criminal stories to present the noble naughtiness of their well-intentioned and “injustice made me do it” heroes. Nauseating. You can see bits and pieces of it coming out all over and I’m not far from Occam’s and Richard’s well founded observations.
She, in my thinking, is much like a Muslim terrorist: they think they are great warriors, but, in reality, they’re souls have been formed and caged by a monstrous evil.
It’s likely that her parents have much to answer for since, as self-referential personalities, probably had no love for her and modeled the heartlessness that is the Utopian Left.
Definitely the greater problem is the leniency shown her partners, not her sentence. She deserves to spend the rest of her life behind bars and should be grateful for the amount of restitution, albeit vicariously, she has been able to provide. God can and will forgive and she can have a part in the world to come. That is the gift God gives man. But for the state to forgive? That would be an injustice and encourage terrorists everywhere.
I vote for clemency.
She does not deserve clemency. I do not have any problem with her serving out her 75 year sentence.
I base my call for clemency on my judgment that she is reformed, and on the circumstance that her extended sentence occurred as a result of her militant actions during her own trial, and on my judgement that she would benefit society.
Re her rhetoric during her trial:
Her courtroom rhetoric was cousin to rhetoric – and I say this from wide personal experience – which is COMMON in comment sections of left side blogs, and is common in the comment section of at least one so-called “moderate” blog. She describes having used leftist doctrine in the same way in which other addicts use drugs or alcohol, i.e. in order to protect herself from threatening feelings, and from other life challenges which she perceived as scary threats. Her description, of using doctrine in order to protect herself and to wall herself off from perceived threats, also reminds me EXACTLY of the behavior which I have seen in comment sections of many left side blogs. Therefore, when I read of her courtroom behavior in her own trial, I recall many left side (and “moderate”!) blog commenters who, as I type this, are not all so far off from displaying similar courtroom behavior.
I also think this, re her courtroom behavior: she was under a tremendous amount of stress. She reacted like a metaphorical cornered animal.
She is a different person, now, from the person who reacted that way in court. IMO.
The above said: I reiterate that I do not have a problem with her serving out a sentence which is deserved. I believe she is leading a fulfilling life in her current circumstances. She is contributing to society and to humanity. Even as I keep clear eyes on the pain of the survivors of her crime, I also salute her for the life she is leading while she is incarcerated.
I vote for clemency.
And as for repentance and such, how about the repentance of the man responsible for the murder of Polish Jews?
Hans Frank arguably showed true (not cost-free) repentance by turning over to the Allies his personal diaries that, as he probably knew, would hang him, and indeed confessed to some of the charges against him.
Would they have given him a skip? (I wouldn’t.)
Her courtroom rhetoric was cousin to rhetoric — and I say this from wide personal experience — which is COMMON in comment sections of left side blogs, and is common in the comment section of at least one so-called “moderate” blog. She describes having used leftist doctrine in the same way in which other addicts use drugs or alcohol, i.e. in order to protect herself from threatening feelings, and from other life challenges which she perceived as scary threats.
It’s not about her. It’s about her victims. Her stupidity/ pathology does not excuse her actions.
She broke the law. She needs to pay. Period.
I have to say that my call for clemency is influenced by my sense that clemency would reflect God’s will. So, I am acting from a spiritual sense … which cannot be fully defended or explained via rational debate.
I will try to partially defend my call for clemency:
None of us, by our actions, deserve heaven. Yet, Jesus, by grace, grants us heaven … if only we will repent in heartfelt fashion. God’s will is to forgive us, and to welcome us to eternal life with Him.
I have that sense, of God’s will, in this situation. She does not deserve clemency. Yet, she has repented in her heart, her repentance is evident in the way she is living her life.
One more circumstance:
Think of charitable giving to any sane adult: does that adult deserve your charity? No. That adult deserves to reap the fruits of their own misbehavior. We do not seek out those who deserve our charity: no one does. Rather, we try, in our own lives, to reflect the forgiveness and the grace of God. We try to live out the will of God, as best we are able to comprehend it.
I have no comprehensive rational argument which constitutes a valid defense of my position. I have, only, my mysterious personal sense of God’s will in this situation. I fully admit that Horowitz has an interesting argument re Clark likely knowing details of other crimes, that Occam has interesting arguments re Hans Frank and re the victims, that others have interesting arguments. I have no intellectually reasonable counter-response to them. Instead, in this instance, I have, only, my sense of acting on God’s will, as best I can determine it.
Instead, in this instance, I have, only, my sense of acting on God’s will, as best I can determine it.
Simple solution: refer her case to a Higher Court. Which is where I came in.
One of my favorite aphorisms (perhaps original, but probably not) is “by making provision for a problem one guarantees its existence.”
I just read some more of the comments at PJM. I think what really disturbs me about these cases is that leniency advocates try to pin real guilt for the crime on our evil society. We are still the collective evil, while the Stalins, Maos, and Ceausescus of the world are just people who failed to successfully implement their utopian schemes. My gut reaction to the victims languishing in our terrible prisons is similar to Bush’s reaction to the AQ supporters: they are either with us or they are with the enemy. I’m sick of being told I must be perfect if I am to judge them. It is they who have spent their lives trying to erase society’s lines between acceptable if imperfect behaviour and gross criminality.
The radical black groups supported by Clark and her ilk told generations of black kids they shouldn’t act white by learning to read, and now their inability to read is our fault for not spending enough on education. And Obama directed money to Ayers to continue propagating this BS. Enough!
There’s an old story about Frederick the Great visiting one of his prisons. He was mobbed by inmates protesting their innocence. In fact, all the inmates did so, except for one. He sat aside, away from the crush of petitioners, saying nothing.
The King noticed. “You, there, by the window,” he said. “Don’t you want to tell me that you too are innocent?”
“No, your Majesty,” the prisoner replied. “I am indeed guilty, and richly deserve my fate.”
“Guards!” said the King. “Release this prisoner at once! I will not have his bad influence on all these innocent inmates.”
It’s an old, old story. I expect that was Horowitz’s point.
That her daughter went to Stanford means nothing. They collect peoples. Since they couldn’t get the purely evil mother, they went for the daughter. If she got out it would greatly surprise me if she didn’t go directly to one of the now vile Ivy League institutions.
Oh, and no, and no.
In a just society, she would have been tried and executed; in a civilized society, she would have been tried and executed; in a society which cared about its own self-preservation but which was neither just nor civilized, she would have been tried and executed.
In our Weimar society which exalts Ayer and Obama, I’m surprised she isn’t on W, OWN, and Lifetime promoting her self-congratulatory biography.
The world she and her compatriots wrecked was better than the world of her imagination and better than our own. Why shouldn’t she ask for clemency: she looks out from prison to see that communism she wanted has poisoned Amerikka, and she is satisfied.
She sees others (Horowitz, Simon, etc.) who have become “conservatives” who wish to “conserve” the the bloated corpse their hate and unreason made. Why is she punished instead of rewarded? It’s so unfair.
Doom: why judge her daughter harshly? You know absolutely nothing about the daughter except what’s in the article, and there’s nothing there that reflects badly on her.
Being a member of the Weather Underground she must have approved of their agenda, which according to the testimony of one Larry Grathwohl included the elimination of some estimated 25 million citizens who the Underground deemed unfit for re-education. So since Madame La Farge here has not made one peep about remorse or shock at the murderous intent of her like mined associates Dohrn and Ayers I am tempted to come down on the side of having her remain in prison. However since she is such a kindly looking older woman and so caring and sad at being locked up I say we give the old gal a chance. Let’s take her down to Quantico, to the MOS0317 training range give her 300 yards head start and tell her “Now Run”.
That her daughter went to Stanford means nothing.
Quite right, on so many levels.
In addition to the butterfly collecting aspect you mention, there is also a reverse “sins of the father” consideration. So her daughter did something considered worthwhile – what does that make the mother? If the daughter had committed a crime, would that justify increasing the mother’s sentence?
Furthermore, one of the idiotic commenters on the NYT site pointed to the virtues of the daughter Clark had “raised.”
I do believe that Clark was inside prison, while the daughter was outside, and thus Clark could have had essentially nothing to do with raising her daughter. Moreover, if she’d actually cared about the daughter, she wouldn’t have committed the crime in the first place.
I gotta agree with Occam’s Beard: give her a fair trial and fine hanging.
Why is it that liberals invariably empathize with criminals, such as Clark, and disparage decent law-abiding citizens, such as her victims?
Is it mere adolescent contrariness that drives the Mumia effect, or is it a more profound pathology?
The only reason I mentioned that her daughter went to Stanford was to draw the inference that the mother is probably a bright woman also.
And if you accept the inference that she’s relatively “smart”, then I was suggesting it’s at least possible that she’s been able to manipulate those she interacts with into believing she’s truly rehabilitated when in fact perhaps she is not.
As Horowitz points out, correctly I believe, if she were truly repentant and remorseful wouldn’t one of her first acts have been to turn against all of her comrades to prevent additional harm from coming to innocents?
Her crimes were bad enough. But in some ways, what is more disturbing to me is her ideology and her willingness to use violence to impose her fantasies about creating an idealized society on the rest of us. Had she been successful, she’d have changed how we all live — without the rest of us having a say in the matter. I find that attitude so undemocratic, totalitarian, repugnant, arrogant, that I do not want her or any of her sympathizers to ever taste freedom again. We can’t change how the system has dealt with her sympathizers, many of whom are now free. But she’s a fricking terrorist traitor – or at least she was – and I am unwilling to give her any benefit of a doubt about her alleged rehabilitation.
There was some line in the article about how she didn’t recognize the authority of the judicial system at the time of her trial. She fouled her own nest.
Screw her.
“Do you think she should be let out of prison?”
Yes, on condition she is sent off with only a bag seeds and a hoe to South Georgia Island for the rest of her life instead; and Bill Ayers and Kathy Boudin and Bernadine Dohrn are sent along too.
But let out, and accorded the protection of the very law and cultural norms these organisms were actively warring against, and still covertly attempt to subvert and destroy? No.
To quote Horowitz:
“a truly remorseful terrorist will feel obligated to turn his back on his fellow terrorists and their supporters and do the innocent a service by revealing what they know, and who their networks are, and what they actually did – not just what they got caught doing. This kind of truth-telling is an authentic form of atonement and would protect others”
She certainly did foul her own nest, and bravo for her change of heart. I tend to believe that it’s sincere but the depth of it? Let her divulge all the names and all the details of everything she knows. How satisfying it would be to the families of those who died and were wounded to give Ayers the right to a speedy trial and execution.
What is beyond fathoming is Ron Radosh’es “Well, she said she was sorry,” justification. A person’s later contrition does not reduce the price of atonement; that price is set by the value of what was lost and the enormity of the transgression. The “I’m sorry I did it now let me out” should not even rationally enter into any consideration of the punishment given.
Still worse, how wrong the NYTs is: Their assumption that the travesty of justice that is Ayers and the Clinton pardons is the standard by which Clark should be measured is nothing less than a declaration of hatred and war against the America that fought the Korean and Vietnam wars, the America whose military has brought more freedom and life than any other institution in the history of the world.
Scott has well pointed out what the old Clark and her ideological supporters (Harvard, NYT) will do if able to gain power. We see Obama doing it everyday as much as possible: an end run around the Constitution to end civil liberties. And even this is not enough for the Utopian Left who are so very disappointed with their Dear Leader.
Sincere repentance is described in the book of Lamentations:
It is good for a man that he should bear
The yoke in his youth.
Let him sit alone and be silent
Since He has laid it on him.
Let him put his mouth in the dust,
Perhaps there is hope.
Let him give his cheek to the smiter,
Let him be filled with reproach.
For the Lord will not reject forever,
For if He causes grief,
Then He will have compassion
According to His abundant lovingkindness.
For He does not afflict willingly
Or grieve the sons of men.
To crush under His feet
All the prisoners of the land,
To deprive a man of justice
In the presence of the Most High,
To defraud a man in his lawsuit–
Of these things the Lord does not approve.
Again, the real injustice here is not that Clark, while being the least of the terrorists received the most punishment. Her punishment is apt and deserved. The real injustice is the appalling lack of value and respect shown to the victims of terrorist violence and the amount of credence and play the lies and disingenuous stories the New York Times receives.
I read an article about an hour ago that said one of the robbers became a professor at Columbia after he got out of prison. Ijust can’t find it again, though, so I don’t know which one. But does that surprise anyone? Universities seem to have an awfully soft spot for terrorists.
Ed B. (Jan.14th; 6:34pm): I cordially invite you to take a little time with Google and Karla Faye Tucker. Find the horrendous crime scene photos of the two folks hacked to death by the future devout Christian. She unabashedly claimed to have had a sexual climax while she was butchering the second victim. You “..held..Karla Faye Tucker’s..going to the Texas Death Chamber…against Bush.” Whew. And, further, “But a governor who won’t do what he thought was right for fear of being ‘tarred and feathered’? Jail him.” Nice.
One would have to buy into the proposition that Governor Bush, in 1998, was going against his principles–as a devout Christian, as well as the Governor of the state–which is an impossibly long reach. You figure GWB feared and later showed fear in the years of tarring and feathering by the Lib-Left? Right.
Your ,”..governor who wouldn’t do what he thought was right..” does fit perfectly and truthfully Bill Clinton–coward & malignant narcissist–who sent a retarded black man to the Arkansas death house during his preps for his presidential run. That’s gotta be who you mean. Got To Be.
I don’t know. Other Weather people who did much worse than Judith Clark are free as a bird- some with pardons from Bill Clinton.
Bernadette Dohrn was the manager of a clothing store which stole credit cards/credit card information which got passed on to the Weather people involved in the Brinks robbery.
Never a hint of regret from Billie Boy and Bernie- except that they “didn’t do enough.”
Other Weather people who did much worse than Judith Clark are free as a bird
This argument cuts two ways – they should have been rung up too.
– some with pardons from Bill Clinton.
Let’s face it, Clinton shouldn’t have been issuing pardons, but rather seeking one. His sale of a pardon to Marc Rich alone warranted prosecution.
“”Why is it that liberals invariably empathize with criminals, such as Clark, and disparage decent law-abiding citizens, such as her victims? “”
OB
Because they have an inverted morality. It’s why they are 180 degrees wrong on virtually every issue.
It ain’t got much to do with political views. That’s just an artifact of what troubles them spiritually.
Some excellent comments above.
To answer your two questions, Neo:
Yes, I believe she is sincerely repentant (I admit that this is based on the flimsy evidence of a NYT article.)
No, I think she should stay in prison. Repentance is not a get out of jail free card. The men murdered in the course of the robbery she and her comrades carried out are still dead.
Ms. Clark deserves a great deal of credit and admiration for the work she has done in prison as well as for her seemingly genuine rehabilitation.
She also deserves to stay in jail. Those who died in the crime in which she participated never had that chance to further and grow in their lives. Their survivors were left to cope with heartbreaking, never-ending loss.
A just society insists that criminals pay for their acts. The fact that other participants escaped equally harsh sentences does not demand Ms. Clark’s be lessened.
The daughter seems to have thrived, perhaps it’s a good thing the mother was locked up. Keep the mother in jail. It’s a shame her compatriots didn’t get harsher sentences.
Occam’s Beard:
Good points.
Every terrorist deserve hanging, repentant or not. Repentance only allows them make some pease with themselves. Good for them, if so, but it does not abolish a need to hang them anyway.
It’s pretty simple. I would only require a concrete form of her loyalty or change. Thus I would set her a mission to prove her loyalty. Preferably to kill someone like Ayers, but there are other less extreme options. If she succeeds at the mission, she passes. If she does not, then she remains a fugitive.
Ymar: ah, but putting aside your specific example (offing Ayers), she could cooperate with whatever task might be set her in order to deceive the authorities into a false belief that she’s reformed, if she’s really a revolutionary. Don’t moles have to do that sort of thing all the time?
To those who think ill of Governor Bush for not commuting Ms. Tucker’s sentence: He could NOT do that.
The Governor of the State of Texas does NOT have that authority. That authority is held by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. The most that the Governor can do is to delay a scheduled execution, once, for 30 days.
Her value was not originally that of a mole, thus a counter-espionage overview would rate her threat level as low on that scale. However, part of what these “loyalty tests” really are is forcing people to burn their bridges. The Left usually give their members loyalty tests as well, and those usually involve something like crime, anti-social behavior, or other things that distance them or completely alienate their circle of social options. This, like a cult, cuts off social ties and supports, allowing the cult to fill in the gap and say “if you leave Jim Jones’ camp of safety, the CIA will kill you and x your family”. One of the reasons why the Left didn’t like this woman having a child in a normal family sense, is because it divides her loyalties. Which it proved to be true, more or less.
So my loyalty test would explicitly conjoin success with also forcing her to make herself an enemy of the Left, and a target as well. The only way they could turn or re-turn her, would be kidnap, blackmail, or otherwise control her daughter. That, however, would be easily counter-checked with sufficient bodyguards and Blackwater types.
If she refuses to do so, given the risk of the Left targeting her or her daughter, then you immediately understand what her level of “motivation” is. It’s not enough. If she commits to the task, she can still fail or the Left can still succeed later, but now it’s an even chance battle.
By the very fact that the Left would have to target her or her children, would push her even more into an anti-Leftist camp, making her more reliant on alliances and connections with anti-Leftist alliances. The chances of her cooperation in the future, barring any kidnapping incidents, will be assured.
Btw, her very actions of calming down people and preventing them from using violence, is anti-Leftist itself. The Left needs revolution, race hatred, and divisions, and whatever she does, it will be against them. And the Left treats turncoats especially ruthlessly. Juan Williams and various others, know that quite well. And Juan William wasn’t even part of the hard Left, like Ayers.
This is for making her a member or enemy of the Left. If you just want to see her motivational levels for reform, that would accomplish the same goal. The thing about counter turning and triple, or quadruple, spies is their inherent value. She has little to no inherent value as a spy or 4X agent. But she does have much value as an example of Leftist history and current modus operandi, or as an example of what the Left does to turncoats. That will have to suffice for people who can’t read character and belief just by meeting with her. That will have to suffice for them and their doubts.
Neo, I think you might be thinking of double spies like the one that gave Hitler the wrong info on Normandy, and only gained that status by giving him previously accurate information.
That only works if the Allies that he betrayed or sold out, don’t know who he is and what he is doing. You see, the fundamental problem with double spies is that if their cover gets blown, depending on how it is blown, both sides will try to kill him.
It has happened. If for example, the regular military knows who this guy is and that he leaked the info, they would assassinate him, arrest him, or bomb him out. If the Nazis figured he was working as a spy for Britain, they would do the same thing. Only the leaders of either side would be allowed access to who he “really is”, so to speak. So these people tend to only be able to work in the shadows. If too many people know about their potential connections, they can’t do their work, probably because people are too suspicious. The British leader couldn’t order his people to cooperate with him, lest they give out his identity, and the British leader isn’t going to tell them that he’s really a double spy.
Anyways, for this situation, the threat level is low to non-existent. Too many people know too much. And they’ll take action, if they don’t like what she does, either way.
Ymar: actually, I was thinking of a guy who worked as a mole in the IRA, and who had to prove his bona fides by killing somebody who was a designated enemy of the IRA. Something like that. I think he wrote a memoir, but I can’t remember his name or where I read it or any of the details.
I assume that was a mole in the IRA that was set by British SAS or sympathizers, rather than by the IRA’s own enemies.
The reason is that Ireland’s clan connections and mafia like organizations, would make it mighty hard for someone to cross lines like that, survive, complete a loyalty mission, and survive again from both sides.
Not to say it is impossible. If he can keep his cover, anything is possible. If.
The IRA vs Ulster vs British SAS thing tends to get complicated, though. Whenever you add a new faction to the pot, uncertainties increase, cloak and dagger games increase in complexity and irreducible complexity standards, and sometimes the spymasters don’t even know which turn one of their turned spies is at.
Ymarsakar: yes, a mole for the British. At least that’s my recollection.