President Obama’s official chief White House photographer, Pete Souza, was also President Reagan’s official photographer. According to Souza, this photo taken of Reagan in Red Square shows what appears to be a young Vladimir Putin posing as a touri…

The Soviets probably also bought into the liberal train of thought that Reagan was a dunce and they could stage-manage the entire affair and convince Reagan that all Soviet children were this smart and knowlegeable.

The Soviets were not born yesterday. The idea that they would evaluate Reagan by American liberal standards (in 1988 no less) is not realisitic. They would have had a file on him going back to the 1950′s or maybe longer.

Not 100% walk in to Court sure, but enough to dispute the photo of the guy and the kid with Reagan is not Putin. Printed out several Putin right-side photos and did some measurements. Ratios and other features do not appear to match. If anyone has facial recognition software, what’d you come up with?

Another interesting tidbit, everybody in front of Reagen (including the kid) is looking at Reagen’s hand. A sign that everyone is watching for the kid to get the handshake right. People behind Reagen are looking at the alleged Putin to see signs of approval b/c they can’t see the handshake directly – a sign of respect for the alleged Putin, or whoever he may be.

Interesting post though, Ed.

Despite the turmoil at the time, the KGB was still very much in control of security in the USSR back during this time. Flooding the square with KGB and their families would have been the logical thing for them to do rather then risk some dissident or total unknown asking Reagan a question or making a statement. The Soviets would have wanted to control the entire thing. If Putin was supposed to be in East Germany, it would only take a day or two on a train to get him back for this event, along with his family. Pulling in agents from outside Moskow would have been a tactic to throw off CIA attempts to ID regular agents used in Moscow. The Soviets probably also bought into the liberal train of thought that Reagan was a dunce and they could stage-manage the entire affair and convince Reagan that all Soviet children were this smart and knowlegeable. All they would have done is convince Reagan it was a put on.

Reagan was a good enough actor to recognize bad acting but not react to it.

notropis on March 16, 2009 at 3:51 PM

Good catches…the Navy photo was in the early 90′s to mid-90′s, if memory serves.

BTW…hair is rarely used as a hard identifier. For a quick scan, it works, often, but hair can be colored, enhanced, cut, and so forth. Eyes, nose, mouth and chin and the distance between a set number of points of each is a more reliable indicator. The relative distances rarely change at all from age 20 to 70′s.

Putin was actually a fairly high-ranking officer in the KGB, though. Would they have used such an agent for this kind of detail and risk his exposure?

Daring, its not unusual for Soviet spies.

July 23, 2000

Ruth Werner, 93, Colorful and Daring Soviet Spy
By DAVID BINDER

Ruth Werner, a colorful and successful Soviet spy whose exploits included radioing invaluable atomic bomb data to Moscow in the middle of World War II, died on July 7 in Berlin. She was 93.

In her 20 years as an intelligence operative in China, Poland, Switzerland and England, she had a number of close calls. But she always managed to extricate herself from the predicament — unlike Klaus Fuchs, the agent who fed her the British atomic bomb secrets, who was imprisoned in Britain for nine and a half years, or Richard Sorge, the master spy who recruited her, who was executed in Japan in 1941.

Her espionage work was entwined with her romantic life, which included an affair with one of her spy chiefs; later she married a British Communist to become a British citizen and only later came to love him. She told some but not all of her story in a 1974 autobiography, still observing the iron rules of conspiracy by never mentioning Fuchs, who was still alive.

Here

Here

Here

Thong-wearing KGB agent plays ping-pong

See this photo

Vashta.Nerada on March 16, 2009 at 1:44 PM

We did a series of posters of Gobachev, with the birthmark adjusted to resemble Afghanistan.

Expose Putin? To the West? In 1988, exposure was never an issue.

The West was never a Putin assigned target.

He was primarily internal Party security, in the DDR and back home in Mother Russia. He looked over the shoulders of Party elites to make sure they did not get out of line, and when they did, the Putin hammer came down. This is how he built his power base in Russia…fear and intimidation, and rewards for loyalty, to him, not necessarily Russia. Being in his position he could exercise personal power, look the other way to grab a higher-up’s loyalty, or work a lower rank subject upwards.

NATO and the US was never on his tasking list…so he would have been a “safe” and “reliable” candidate to be among the “typical Russian families” who just happened to be in Red Square when Reagan did his walkabout with Gorbachev.

Remarkable piece of history, nonetheless.

I miss Reagan.

Could be photoshop – I don’t see the map of Albania on Gorby’s forehead….

Vashta.Nerada on March 16, 2009 at 1:44 PM

It was actually a map of Nicaragua mirrored, that way he could ponder his Central-American take-over plan every time he went to the bathroom.