During cold war times, espionage was the most romantic of professions, at least, for those not involved in it. We as people were fascinated by the tales of spies in alien and hostile countries gathering intelligence and risking their lives for the sake of our country. It sure did give us some chills and thrills and the novelists of the day had enough material to write and keep us enthralled.

Every second novel or a movie used to be about them and their exploits. The very fact that the nature of the job doesn’t allow for facts to be divulged gave free rein to our imagination of what they were indeed doing out there in the cold.

Then the era of declassification happened and many a skeletons tumbled out of the closet. That added to the intrigue to the whole thing.

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Nowadays, we find the spies getting caught like amateur theater artist and we feel cheated. And then there are the leakers.

Leaking is the in thing now and Snowden is one example.

One can only imagine the meetings being held at Langley the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters about how to stem the bad press and do something about getting the initiative back.

It is going to be no easy task.

That’s because this is an era of 24-hour news channels that beam breaking all day, every day. Everyone is vying for eyeballs and therefore any information is pure gold. They have their own choppers and agents in the guise of reporters.

They are motivated too as their survival depends on it.

Any slip up anywhere is taken, processed and blown out of proportion.

Spying, hacking and leaking were done by professionals once up on a time, but now the whole world is in on it and they have taken the fun out of the spook games.