It's being reported Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge is working on the development of a national ID card in the form of a national drivers license Read about it here I  And here. It's also being reported all over the Internet that Ridge has hired ex-KBG head Yevgeni Primakov as a consultant to help him do it.

I heard that name somewhere before. As I thought about it, I remembered it was Primakov who then NATO's Secretary General Javier Solana negotiated the agreement with Russia that allowed NATO's eastward expansion in 1997. It was called The Founding Act on Mutual Relations. If it wasn't for this agreement, there would have been no eastward expansion for NATO. In fact, after Solana negotiated this agreement, he returned to NATO headquarters to receive a standing ovation from the Western leaders.

I often wondered how Solana pulled it off. How did he talk the Russians into allowing their former Warsaw allies to become members of their arch rival NATO? What did Solana promise in return? It wasn't that the Russians suddenly trusted NATO. In fact, Primakov was quoted as saying, "NATO we hate, this man (Solana) we love." So, how did Solana do it?

The official deal was, although Russia wouldn't be given a vote in future NATO operations, Russian would be given a role in areas of cooperation and consultation. So, is that it? Does this explain why a former KGB head would be given a consultation job with Washington?

Nevertheless, I still wondered what other assurances may have been given the day Solana made that historic agreement with Russia. You see, Solana's diplomacy was credited with doing the most to change the face of Europe since the Yalta Conference at the end of the Second World War.

Now we hear the man with whom Solana made that world-changing deal, Yevgeni Primakov, has been hired by Tom Ridge to help America develop her new, Soviet style national ID card.

I should have known it was going to be there -- another Solana connection.

By the way,  the EU is doing it too Read about it here.