I know it is really hard to keep aa big secret. Even more so when you are a politician and you have to publicize your own success so that the public remembers your name. There are people, for instance, in the intelligence community whose whole lives are essentially one big secret. The sometimes have a second identity. They live in other countries. They meet people and open up contacts with countries which have no diplomatic relations with the country they come from. Okay, politicians are not part of the intelligence community. Sometimes it is even difficult to realize how unintelligent they are.

Secret direct back channels are the juice of diplomacy. They are the hardcore work of diplomats especially from a country which is in a neighborhood where open diplomatic relations are far from the norm. These secret direct back channels are hard to open. They are based on a long process of trust building and can be destroyed by a single leak beyond what is agreed on. I know some diplomats from here and from other countries who have spent their life’s work opening up secret direct back channels. I know people from the intelligence community who have done it too. They will almost never speak about their work in public, even after retiring. I have never been a........

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