The Americans was a TV show about foreign spies planted in the US by the Soviet Union during the 1980s. The husband was a travel agent. I never watched so I have no idea how a travel agent could do much damage to America.

There have been plenty of examples of Americans spying for the Soviets during the 1980s and doing immeasurable damage to the US.

In 1985, sometimes referred to as “the year of the spy”, G-men rounded up John Walker, who headed a Navy spying ring, and Ronald W. Pelton, who worked for the NSA. Also nabbed was Jon Pollard, who spied for Israel.

Arguably the worst example of an American spying for the Soviets, then the Russians, was Robert Hanssen. Hanssen started his career with the FBI, ironically, in 1976. He began spying the same year that Walker, Pelton, and Pollard were arrested. His espionage lasted until 2001 when he was arrested. The damage he caused was enormous, and it wasn’t for an ideology, it was for money. $1.6 million in cash, diamonds, and bank deposits.

Stars and Stripes Magazine reported that a couple has been arrested in Kapolei Hawaii on “conspiring against the government and identity theft” charges.

A U.S. defense contractor and his wife lived for decades under the identities of two dead Texas children, court records say. https://t.co/2QaPNhNvux

— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) July 28, 2022

Their real names are Glenn Primrose and Gwynn Darle Morrison, both born in 1955. The couple was originally from Port Lavaca, Texas. They married in 1980 and, here is where it gets cold-war-like. Seven years later, they resurfaced and assumed the identities of two dead Texas children named Bobby Edward Fort and Julie Lyn Montague. Fort died in 1967. Montague died at the age of three weeks in 1968. In 1988, about a year after they assumed their false identities, they remarried as Fort and Montague.

Primrose waited until 1994 (arguably to build up a “history”), and at 39 years of age, he enlisted in the Coast Guard. Fort, had he lived, would have been 27. I don’t know a single 39-year-old man who could pass for a 27-year-old, either in appearance or during a physical, but he enlisted and eventually “served” 22 years stationed, finally, at Barber’s Point, not far from their home in Kapolei. In 2016, Primrose was hired by an “unnamed” defense contractor and had been employed as such until his arrest last Friday.

That Primrose got into the Coast Guard is a clear failure in basic vetting. That he got a “secret” clearance in the Coast Guard, and then the same secret clearance in 2016 with a defense contractor, is unconscionable.

The government’s pleading indicates that a “close associate” said Morrison lived in Romania while it was a Soviet bloc country. Her attorney denies this. Attached to the pleading as an exhibit is a photo of both Morrison and Primrose wearing a Soviet KGB uniform. That was a “joke” said defense counsel. According to the Assistant US Attorney handling the case, a search of the couple’s home turned up an invisible ink kit, documents with coded language, and maps showing military installations.

Both defendants have indicated that it is all a big misunderstanding – neither of them are spies, according to a defense attorney. It’s all a big mistake. Da.

The government has asked for no bail. They remain in custody with a bail hearing set for this coming Tuesday.