How Did the Image of the American Spy Derail?

[Mr Khan]

Largely by the belief that spies operated in their own world: Spies targeted other spies, and this was largely true when other nations formed the prime national security threat, and a lot of this super-cool "international intrigue" stuff still goes on, daily, endlessly, like the Israeli Massad deep-infiltrating the Iranian nuclear program and assassinating some of their engineers.

Domestic spying has *never* been romanticized. That conjures images more of the Cheka or the NKVD, who have always been seen as villainous.