very interesting, intriguing. this is also grim, tragic, sad, and i think anyone woo watches these images can feel that in your heart as a human being. yet you're also raising a part of this that goes to anything, shakespeare, game of thrones, you name it, where you talk about the patterns and the conniving. and you're giving us a theory, richard, that either this is a brutal two-fer to both punish the intelligence aide but also take him off the board as a potential rival, right, as a potential brutus. or if it's mostly that, then it's pretextual, and you're positing that maybe that's the main thrust of it. how does u.s. intelligence and u.s. diplomacy, which you both know so much about, but richard you have done in policy planning at the state department, how does that wing of our government deal with all of these theories and possibilities to gain any kind of potential edge as putin continues to send out his aides to do these negotiations?