Stage Ten: The Brooding in Jail Stage
Years go by, at least two or three.
His fifteen minutes of notorious fame have long since passed.
Incarcerated for all this time, the insider spy now broods, and forced by a lack of diversions, he must face himself for the first time.
Gone are his insolence and his in-your-face comments, now replaced by more realistic, sadder but wiser self-observations about the way his life has gone wrong and the consequences of his poor choices.
For example, interviews in print with Aldrich Ames conveyed such thoughts, and Robert Hanssen expressed similar thoughts of remorse and self-reproach directly to me.
Surprisingly, the insider spy is rarely truly dedicated to the subversion and destruction of his native land.
His beef was always primarily with himself, and with the local people or institutions that were his nearby, handy targets.
He may actually harbor attachment and true patriotic feelings towards his country, however paradoxical and unlikely it may seem.
He now will offer gratuitous advice about how to protect the country from the likes of himself, and insightful ideas about the state of the world.
Many of these ideas would be useful contributions—-if only the jailed insider spy enjoyed the standing to be listened to and taken seriously.
This is the final stage, which provides the first real chance to get a balanced understanding of the perplexing life decision of someone who has decided to turn traitor.
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