That’s true. But once you got past that, the author’s point was good.
I particularly liked his discription of Francis’ reaction to the question on the plane - he was caught off guard and almost said something unwise and then you could virtually see the wheels turning as he thought, ooops...time to shut this whole thing down and go into hiding.
In general I wish editors would help writers get to the point more quickly. All too typical these days (especially in blog posts to FR) are articles like:
Newly Declassified Files Prove FISA Warrant was Improper
The Battle of Tsushima in 1905 was naval history's only decisive sea battle fought by modern steel battleship fleets. It has been characterized as the "dying echo of the old era – for the last time in the history of naval warfare, ships of the line of a beaten fleet surrendered on the high seas". In this battle the Japanese fleet under Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō destroyed two-thirds of the Russian fleet, under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, which had traveled over 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km) to reach the Far East. In London in 1906, Sir George Sydenham Clarke wrote, "The battle of Tsu-shima is by far the greatest and the most important naval event since Trafalgar". The destruction of the Russian navy caused a bitter reaction from the Russian public, which induced a peace treaty in September 1905 without any further battles.
Just like the Battle of Tsushima, the FISA warrant is one of the most significant battles of our time...