Kislyak’s phone calls with Michael Flynn, and Flynn’s apparent misstatements about the contents of those calls, cost the onetime national security adviser his job last month. Kislyak’s undisclosed meetings with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then a senator, have caused Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Kislyak’s contact with Trump—a brief hello at a reception before a speech hosted by a D.C. think tank—has raised further alarm.

Suddenly, everyone who’s ever met Kislyak is suspect, and Kislyak himself a subject of fascination. (In recent press reports, he has been described in conflicting terms: Is he a cordial man-about-town or an under-the-radar homebody?) An idle chat has become a “contact,” that sinister term of spycraft. And for those who circulate in Washington politics and policy circles, the whole affair hits close to home—a peeled-back corner of the spy game always being played below the capital’s surface.

What seems like networking can turn out to be something else entirely. One former congressional staffer, who worked for a member of the House International Relations Committee, told me that a few years ago he was offered a cash payment equivalent to his annual salary to pass along committee documents related to Taiwan.

“This guy just called out of the blue and asked me to lunch,” the former staffer recalled. The “guy” was an American who had previously worked as a congressional chief of staff. “And that was the offer he made—my current salary, in cash.”

The staffer, who had a security clearance, turned down the offer and reported the contact to his security officer, who said the guy was “on the radar” of American intelligence. The same staffer said he was once asked for classified information by a Malaysian embassy official; a friend who worked for a member of the Agriculture Committee was told to watch out for Chinese spies who supposedly hung out at the Hawk ’n’ Dove, a Capitol Hill bar, to eavesdrop on staffers’ conversations.

Staffers with security clearances are trained to spot this sort of thing, but those without clearance receive little in the way of security training. They have access to power and are prone to gossip. Many come in as interns, or fresh from a local campaign. A second former congressional staffer recalled repeatedly being asked on dates by an attractive woman from the Israeli embassy who had also been out with many of his friends. When they finally did go out, he couldn’t shake the feeling it might be “an old-fashioned honeypot scene,” he said, and declined her offer to come home with him.

Was he just being paranoid? In Washington, it can be impossible to discern what is on the level and what is not, what is paranoia and what is justified. Did a bunch of conservative bloggers suddenly develop opinions about the Malaysian regime in 2011 out of sincere conviction, or because they were being paid off? (It turned out to be the latter.) Why did several prominent think tanks suddenly hold discussions and publish reports in favor of Norwegian oil drilling? (They were getting millions of dollars from the Norwegian government, according to a New York Times investigation.)