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Comment by malermeister | Hacker News Reader

This guy sounds incredibly naive - he was just gonna drive through the USSR taking photos and thought he wasn't gonna get caught?

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What about this guy? This guy sounds like he fell for pretty much the same dumb shit - "go to Russia, take some photos for us, it'll all be good kthxbye"

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/15/876966569/american-paul-whela...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Whelan_(security_director...

Yes, I would've myself thought that a CIA recruiter who suddenly comes upon a 22 year old American in Germany out of a sudden, with an offer of money, car, and a ticket to USSR must be a communist spy himself trying to pull off some trickery.

Perhaps he was? I mean, they were on his tail from day one. That alone sounds suspicious. It let the Soviets make the Americans look retarded, and as a bonus the USA had to give up Soviet prisoners to get their dancing monkey back.

Nobody underestimates a genius. Everyone underestimates a moron, that is assuming he's not really a moron.

There's value in being underestimated.

There's also the point that he doesn't seem interested in filling in the details about what happened. So, is he just trying to retain some privacy from a dumb mistake, or is he hiding something? IT IS A MYSTERY!

In 1961 the KGB would be on any foreigner from day one. No surprise at all. In 1979 I crossed from Poland to Russia by train, and while we were stopped for the axles to be changed to the wider track gauge, I moved from one railroad car to another to hang with my friends. When Russians discovered that one car had a missing passenger and another had an extra one, they checked the entire train and we were delayed good several ours.

Don't you love those axle changes though? Every time I go through one I think.. we could just switch trains.

People do the same in North Korea today and don't expect to get caught and are insanely proud of the pictures they took.

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