GADGET GURU Barney Collier (Greg Morris) was a key member of the Mission: Impossible team.
The tiny African nation of Botswana has reportedly dispatched its own Mission: Impossible-type spy team to engineer the overthrow of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. And even more shocking, their next target is American President Donald Trump!
“It’s total role reversal,” says a U.S. intelligence source who has compiled a dossier on the alleged scheme. “During the Cold War, it was the superpowers who sent spies to thwart the dictators of Third World countries. That scenario was played out again and again on the 1960s TV show Mission: Impossible, as the American spy ring concocted ingenious plots to bring about the downfall of the tin horn dictators of banana republics, played by actors like Ricardo Montalban and Fernando Lamas. Now it’s a small Third World country that’s deployed agents to rescue the two superpowers from authoritarian rule and make the world safe for democracy.”
Screen legend Ricardo Montalban frequently played tin horn dictators in ’60s spy shows.
The source likened the flip-flop to the movie The Mouse that Roared, in which the pint-sized European country of Grand Fenwick declares war on America and launches an invasion carried out by 20 men outfitted in medieval chainmail.
“The difference is that these are secret agents, not soldiers – and based on what we know of the efficiency of Botswana’s spy agency, there is a very real possibility that they will actually pull off their mission.”
President Putin is widely viewed as a vicious, cold-blooded tyrant. The former KGB boss has murdered a host of opponents, including journalists, activists, and political leaders – with radioactive materials his frequent weapon of choice — and he’s jailed scores of others, such as the peaceful protest group Pussy Riot. The Russian leader has also ruthlessly bombed civilians and rebel groups in Syria, brutalized Georgia and Chechnya, invaded Ukraine and brazenly annexed Crimea, the first such land grab in Europe since 1945.
Russians who dare to oppose Putin, like the group Pussy Riot, tend to wind up in jail — or dead.
“Putin has has flooded the West with so many spies that there are more in England today than during the Cold War – including those licensed to kill who carry out his personal vendettas,” the source revealed. “He’s a venal and violent real-life supervillain who usurped power and uses his position to enrich himself and his cronies, amassing a private fortune close to $200 billion. In the past, the CIA might have been ordered to quietly overthrow someone that evil, but that won’t happen, for obvious reasons. The government of Botswana’s president Seretse Khama Ian Khama sees Putin as a threat to world stability and feels it has a moral obligation to step in.”
Out of all the countries in Africa, it’s not entirely surprising that Botswana stepped up to the plate. While it has a miniscule population of about 2 million, it has never been conquered or colonized and is one of Africa’s most stable countries, boasting the continent’s longest continuous multi-party democracy. According to a recently BBC profile, it is virtually free of corruption and has an excellent human rights record.
“Botswana is the world’s largest producer of diamonds and the trade has transformed it into a middle income nation,” the report states. Gay rights groups have recently been granted legal recognition – a far cry from Russia, where Putin has issued draconian laws against the LGBT community. “Botswana has a long tradition of lively and unimpeded public debate,” according to the BBC, which notes that the government has allowed a “free and vigorous” press to flourish.
“In many ways it’s like the fictional country of Wakanda that the comic book hero The Black Panther calls home,” the intelligence source notes.
In contrast to the sober-minded leaders of Botswana, temperamental tycoon Trump has branded journalists “enemies of the people” – and that’s one of the red flags that raised concern in the African nation.
“Botswana sees Trump as potentially even more dangerous to world peace than Putin,” the source revealed. “A classified document we obtained describes him as an ‘emotionally unstable narcissist and pathological liar, with authoritarian tendencies.’ They fear that it’s simply too risky to allow someone like that to have his finger hovering over the red nuclear button.”
Could Trump really be overthrown like the buffoonish leader of some banana republic?
How the African secret agents intend to bring down the two leaders is as yet unknown. Experts say that the Botswana intelligence agency is highly sophisticated, modeled closely on the superpowers’ own Cold War-era spy networks.
“We anticipate the use of intricate and cunning plots, high-tech gadgets hidden in objects such as watches, cigarette lighters and shoes, the use of glamorous lady spies and other staples of the intelligence field,” the source says. “Their agents have been trained in methods such as gaining access to secure facilities by pretending to be carpet cleaners and crawling through narrow airshafts.”
The fact that the agents are African and the Russian population is almost entirely white won’t pose much of an obstacle, he adds. “There have been incredible advances in disguise technology since those masks of the Mission: Impossible era.”
TV’s Mission: Impossible team employed trickery, technology and clever disguises.
Copyright C. Michael Forsyth
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