It would be reasonable to say that any spy focus would be upon Washington, DC. In the past, it was not thought too much about. This year brings a whole new slant to the spying game. Now just a casual hello can bring you under scrutiny from the media and the intelligence agencies. Here are a couple of good stories.

As Written By MOLLY BALL for The Atlantic:

It is a funny feeling to realize you may have unwittingly come into contact with Russian intelligence—but not, these days, a totally uncommon one in Washington.

“There I was, standing in the entrance hall,” recalled Trevor Potter, a prominent election lawyer and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. This was in December, at a lavish holiday party at the French ambassador’s residence, teeming with D.C. types—diplomats, journalists, consultants, lobbyists, current and former officials. Potter had just entered when he saw the French ambassador, whom he knew, conversing with a man he didn’t know: a stocky, Slavic-looking fellow in a dark suit.

“The French ambassador said, ‘Do you know Sergey, the Russian ambassador?’ I said I did not, and we shook hands,” Potter told me recently.