petesouza Edited • 124w A Putin mystery. Or not. In 1988, I photographed President Reagan during his visit to Moscow. Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the then Soviet Union, gave Reagan a tour of Red Square where groups of “tourists” (KGB agents?) were positioned around the square. Note the man on the left with the camera around his neck. In 1993, I published a book of photographs (“Unguarded Moments”) from my tenure at the White House during the Reagan administration. Some ten years later, I received a random letter in the mail from someone who asked if I knew I had captured a picture of Reagan and Vladimir Putin as shown on page 145 in my book. (Putin had by then become the President of Russia). I was astounded by this letter. I contacted both the Reagan Library and a NSC official in the Bush 43 administration. No one could definitively say whether it was Putin. In 1988, Putin was in fact in the KGB, though he was apparently stationed in East Germany. In January 2009, I was hired as the chief WH photographer for President Obama. A few days before the inauguration, I did an interview with Steve Inskeep of NPR. I was telling this story as an example of how the relevance of presidential photos can change over time. "And as soon as you see the photo you go, oh, my gosh, it really is him (Putin),” were my exact words. A big mistake; I never should have said that, because in fact it had never been verified. The Kremlin apparently listens to NPR and almost immediately denied it was Putin. About a month after the NPR interview, I received a postcard to my home address. The Red Square photo was on the front of the postcard. The man in the camera was circled with a red marker, and someone had written the word “spy” and drawn an arrow to the man. I turned the postcard over to the Secret Service; nothing ever came of it. In July of 2009, President Obama traveled to Russia and met with Putin at his dacha. No Russian official ever said anything to me, though Robert Gibbs had teased me that I would be detained. And I was able to make the second photo shown here, which I can say is definitely Vladimir Putin on the right.
La presenza di Putin nella foto segue il principio della lettera rubata. Ovvio che fosse parte di una cerchia di spie tirate fuori per l'occasione. Uno di quelli fotografabili.
Perché mai il KGB avrebbe esposto una spia di prima categoria?
Perché Putin all'epoca pensava di esserlo anche se pochi, forse nessuno, credevano in lui.
L'episodio della cartolina appartiene al lato cinico-ludico di Putin. Come l'esibizione di Konni davanti alla Merkel.
Alla risposta ufficiale del Cremlino ha fatto seguito quella semiufficiale di Putin.
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