I think the comment was making an analogy to a more contemporary issue.

As far as whether they could figure out how to target Koslov personally, that requires more info than we have. The nature of any complicated scheme is that, while yes, information is compartmentalized, doing it at all requires a lot more "regular people" than you expect. Leaders alone can't effect a criminal conspiracy.

At the end of the day, someone like, say, a mid-level foreign affairs analyst probably saw this stuff and could have blown the whistle too.