So hey, good sign to have Wilson-Plame in national TV commercials pro
Hillary.
Of course it's built in to the Constitution that intelligence pros
should have same rights as anyone, but there's been a lot of shyness
about participating, thinking that might jeopardize one's career,
which you may think is moot in Valarie's case, but not so, in that
blown cover spies actually get scrutinized more than most by a
suspicious lay public, so again, I'm happy to see we're not reliving
the McCarthy period.
That movie 'Incredibles' has many open allusions to this ugly period,
when you weren't allowed to be "out" and in government. Under those
somewhat hysterical control freaks, many comics were banned and/or
blacklisted, including some about superheros, with everything
sanitized to the point where you couldn't have a dissenting viewpoint,
no room for an underground. No wonder the ensuing counter-culture was
such a volatile mix (post 1950s). Suppressing human beings is always
a dangerous business, you get blowback every time.
On another somewhat related topic, you may wonder how advances in
management theory impact the spy business, and without claiming
insider knowledge, I might speculate for a few paragraphs, on some of
the new practices (not talking ISO 9000 or whatever, that's for
another conversation, probably not with me).
Let's just begin with a simple analogy from military science. What do
you do with some patriot who can think of nothing but invading other
countries, taking over its media, trying to run things absentee, by
remote control, with some sent to the front lines (aka "in harm's
way"), and therefore needing protection?
Over and over said patriot churns out these scenarios, a kind of
science fiction, a genre, a literature. But do those inheriting the
science fiction tradition rush to publish this stuff? Not usually.
Not futuristic or well written enough in the vast majority of cases,
although oft times there'll be robots, some space weapons, lots of
cyber stuff happening. Your average dweeb just doesn't have the
writing skills of a Le Guinn, Heinlein, Asimov, or an Arthur C. Clarke
(http://www.literature-map.com/urulsa+le+guinn.html).
So do you lock this person away, slip a tray of food under the door?
Why? These are otherwise capable and intelligent people, able to live
in a family context, get along with others. So what do you do?
Give 'em civilian GS status or military rank and let 'em write to
their heart's content, that's what. No shopping cart on the street
scene, just Uncle Sam's being magnanimous, keeping that military-
industrial complex afloat, now the entertainment-industrial complex,
now that the military theater has become an extension of video games,
including for the participants.
Our military planners are like game developers, war games developers,
scripting for actual assets, or dreamed ones, in the field. Problem
solved. Most this writing gets classified, then goes to the
shredder. So what?
So now you might switch to the State Department and confront an old
problem: USA foreign policy being what it is (often inept), you get
career foreign service types really coming to see it from another
guy's point of view, starting up with the memos about how we have to
change everything or the sky will fall.
Expats become radicalized and start sounding like insurgents, happens
a lot. So a standard move at State is to reassign often, keep
careerists from becoming too attached to any one culture. The UK
probably did something similar in its imperial age, or still does for
all I know (no insider knowledge remember -- but historical records
mostly open source from that period I should think, and if not then
boo to academics for being so lazy).
So at last we get to the spy services and the analogy of a military
war game programmer starting to see how the other side might have an
easy win, wants to write it that way, maybe just to scare people out
of complacency. We used to call that defection, more often motivated
by money, but sometimes an ideological thing -- the other side just
has a better belief system so why not switch, like changing religions,
deciding to "go native" (this happens to some case officers lets
say). So what do you do?
Of course sometimes you do what you always did, go after the defector
or at least poison the well, make sure his or her information is
treated as unreliable (therefore worthless) by the other side. But
enlightened management borrows a page from the Pentagon's book: just
assign 'em a new desk. You actually *want* to know what it's like to
think like a defector. Same rationale for bringing computer nerds on
board, once caught and/or negotiated with -- you want to "think like
the enemy" and have them improve your company's security.
So these "defectors" are actually a valuable asset, if your company
knows how to treat them properly, doesn't demonize too readily -- a
fine line in CIA circles I'd surmise, but in this era when no one
cares if you're gay, it's also possible no one cares if you think
highly of Putin's bunch, have connections therewith, insider
knowledge. That makes you all the more valuable, if trusted to act not
like a double agent (Swiss bank account a warning sign), but like a
diplomat with intimate knowledge of the opponent's play book. That's
what intelligence *is* for crying out loud. Counter-intelligence
would go out the window if there were no way to retain those who think
like the enemy.
I offer all of the above as a theory about why we're not hearing about
defections so much anymore whereas in McCarthy's time it was like
every other person was working for the other side. Back at the height
of the cold war, we'd get these defection stories every few months
seems like (check my stats?).
I'm betting the newly revamped post-911 management system is more
military in some ways, meaning used to dealing with crazies by giving
them rank (just not too much rank). The goal is good family wage
jobs, employee satisfaction.
That's ultimately what keeps most people out of trouble, not making
desperate, stupid, nothing-to-lose maneuvers. You make sure they have
something to lose, a stake in the system.
Civilians in the private sector learned this long ago, have written
extensively about it in the HR books, so I won't take credit for any
of this. I'm just speculating as to why we're experiencing such calm
these days, with regard to defections.
In sum: empathizing with others is not a problem, but an asset.
Intelligence pros know that in their bones, don't just give lip
service.
Kirby
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