wearing blinders when he's saying this because as time goes on in the spanish civil war, the soviets are ubds mining they're there to help. also they steal all of its gold. give it to us for safekeeping and we'll take the part we need to pay for the arms that we're sending you. but they take it all and stalin has a party when it gets to russia on ships going through the mediterranean. he has a wild party and says hey, if they think they're ever getting this back, they're wrong. anyway, it's probably still there. so ernest doesn't really focus on any of this stuff. he senses some of it. he thinks it's accessed by vims but he doesn't seem any reason for communist discipline. so what do they want from him? why would the kgb come to ernest? what do you have to earn? they looked at him as a journalist. for them journalists were use for for a number of things. they could write an article that's slanted towards your point of view. they could be principle agents. they could run other agents and that is a way to get information from lower level sources funneled through the journalist and then turned o