On spooks

Whatever be the outcome of battle between Trump and 'deep state', there is an indisputable fact - the FBI is still haunted by the ghost of Hoover

Spook, according to the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, has two meanings: 1. A ghost. 2. Chiefly North American, a spy. This column is about both, but primarily about spooks in the American sense, with the spook in the ghostly sense being primarily the shade of the legendary FBI director J Edgar Hoover which still haunts his agency. 

First, spies. My first encounter with a spy was when as a lowly Third Secretary in Tokyo in the early 1960’s, my First Secretary Mani Dixit asked me to look at a report on Japanese politics that our resident spook had produced. As a