It took Belgian intelligence years to decide if a top colonel was spying for Russia, potentially exposing Nato to "grave damage".
And even if he was innocent, leaked files painted a picture of the Nato and EU host state as a playground for Ferrari-driving spies and shisha-smoking criminals.
Nato has four levels of classification.
The highest one, called "cosmic top secret", covers information that could cause "exceptionally grave damage" to the Western alliance if it got ...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.