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Re2: Tell the People, Tell Foes
On Dulles, evidence, trust, 'is' and 'ought', and capacities.
Dulles - Craft of Intelligence chpt. 15, 'Security in a Free Society', Part 1.
Air date: Tuesday, 8th Sep. 2020, 5pm Pacific/US.
Retraice works on the question 'What's going on out there?' Our point of departure is the concept of intelligence, which seems to have at least three kinds: natural, artificial, and strategic. Here, we're working on strategic intelligence.
Allen Dulles
It is hard to know what to believe about Allen Dulles, the first civilian CIA Director (DCI) (1953-1961). 1. John Kennedy said this about him, during a ceremony awarding Dulles the National Security Medal:
"Allen Dulles's career as a citizen of this country, and as one who has made his vast resources, personal resources, available to the country, stretches all the way back to the administration of President Woodrow Wilson. I know of no other American in the history of this country who has served in [the] administrations of seven presidents, varying from party to party, from point-of-view to point-of-view, from problem to problem, and yet at the end of each administration, each president of the United States has paid tribute to his service, and also has counted Allen Dulles as their friend."1
2. Journalist (and later Dep. Dir. State Policy Planning Staff under Carter) Peter Grose2 1994 quotes James Angleton's (Dulles's long-time chief of counterespionage) eulogy, Fish's and others' and Buckley's remarks, p. 565 ff.:
"Angleton…. prepared the eulogy…. '[Dulles was] a splendid watchman… a familiar and trusted figure…. the least passive of humans, the most active and open of men. He stood in full view and was ever accountable in our good society.' … William F. Buckley [said] 'he knew at least who the enemy was, and that, those days, is practically a virtuoso performance.' … But across the restive Third World… Dulles became the symbol of all the oppression they had suffered from the early and later days of CIA meddling."
Journalist David Talbot3 2015 says about the eulogy, p. 616:
"The soft-spoken church minister, who was used to writing his own funeral orations, balked at reading the bombastic address that had been written by longtime Dulles ghostwriter Charles Murphy, with input from Angleton and Jim Hunt. But the Dulles team quickly set the cleric straight. 'This is a special occasion,' the minister was informed by an official-sounding caller the night before the funeral. 'The address has been written by the CIA.' "
3. The journalist Joseph Trento4 2001 claims that Angleton said this in his dying days5, p. 479:
"Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power…. Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offie, and Frank Wisner were the grand masters. If you were in a room with them you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell."
We can pause to reflect on the significance of this claim. If it is true, it is profound (Who was Dulles?); if it is false, it is profound (Who is Trento?). 4. And journalist Talbot6 2015 said Dulles had Kennedy killed, p. 560:
"Over the final months of JFK's presidency, a clear consensus took shape within America's deep state: Kennedy was a national security threat. For the good of the country, he must be removed. And Dulles was the only man with the stature, connections, and decisive will to make something of this enormity happen. He had already assembled a killing machine to operate overseas. Now he prepared to bring it home to Dallas. All that his establishment colleagues had to do was to look the other way—as they always did when Dulles took executive action."
So Dulles may have been a good guy, a bad guy, or any mixture of the two. We can set aside the question as essentially out of reach for the outsider (the evidence is almost entirely documents of one form or another, and they are numerous and conflicting).
The Craft of Intelligence
What is not disputed is Dulles's expertise in the domain of strategic intelligence. And there is a book7, The Craft of Intelligence, which he is supposed to have written, about the subject.
That would seem to be great news, for those interested in (strategic) intelligence. But we should hold off believing that he actually wrote it, or wrote every word of it.
- Talbot8 says it's a 'predictable Cold War screed', and by multiple authors, CIA and otherwise, p. 486 ff.
- CIA.gov confirms Dulles did seem to work with Charles Murphy as a ghost writer, in a letter reply (1960) from Dulles to Murphy about a planned book.9
- Grose10 1994 says the book was a compromise of sorts, between a policy book and 'now-it-can-be-told' stories of espionage, p. 539.
So we've established that we don't know Dulles, and we don't necessarily know who is talking when we read his book. But it does seem like certain chapters are all or mostly his voice. Chapter 15 is one of them.
The Gist of Chpt. 15: 'Security in a Free Society'
The central premises and arguments, p. 235 ff.
- We should say less.
- Free people have the urge to talk, and to know. (This is a problem for strategic intelligence.)
- This urge can cause them danger, because enemies listen too. (This is an overlooked consequence of the urge.)
- It doesn't make sense to spend on intelligence if we're going to undo it by bad policy and practice. (This is an overlooked logical error, or failure to prioritize.)
That's the case he aims to make; but the chapter has more in it than just his intended argument. Some preparation, anticipating the problems of reading this (or perhaps any such) case, will be worth the effort.
Four kinds of problems
There are at least four general kinds of problems revealed immediately in Dulles's chpt. 15, and in any such case being made.
Problems of Evidence
- Text: It can be altered or elided from edition to edition. Machines and automation might help with this, but machines can also more efficiently worsen the problem, depending on who (or what) controls them. Cf. deep fakes and block chains.
- Context: There is an enormous amount of information surrounding any event, including the assumptions of the author(s); out-of-context quotes are unavoidable. And the further back in time one goes, the harder it is to relate to anything, because the context is so unfamiliar.11
- 'We': The question 'Who is we?' is a recurring one for the reader. For example, Dulles p. 236: "The question is whether we can improve oursecurity system, consistent with the maintenance of our free way of life and a free press, and whether, on balance, it is worthwhile to try at least to limit our security lapses and indiscretions."
- Evidence of thoughts: We can't read his thoughts, we can read his writing (or writing attributed to him). We can't hear his thoughts, we can hear his words.
- Evidence of events: We can't witness past events, we can witness the evidence that reaches us, from the events and from elsewhere. We can't know who killed Kennedy. We can't know whether Dulles was good, or evil, or otherwise. We can only know what reaches us, and what we manage to reach for ourselves.
- Events and ideas: So we have history, which is not knowable, but somewhat bounded by probability (cf. Horwitch12); and we have ideas about how the world works, which can be tested, though such tests are history unless we conduct them ourselves, presently.
- Beliefs: While the whole truth is, strictly, out of reach, what others believe to be the truth is always present, and sometimes within reach (if they are open talkers). The word 'others' includes both persons and any things that might be said to have beliefs, e.g. machines, or intelligences more strange than machines.
Problems of Trust
- Deception and error: Every single line could be deceptive toward an end; the author might also be error-prone on the subject, or the in kind of thinking, underway
- Reputations: For every conventional account of his life, there is an opposite. So the issue becomes trust: which sources to trust. But if we only trust based on reputation, then the destruction of someone's reputation can take down any true statements or good arguments they make (and take them from us, in a sense). This is a common strategy.13
- Power (control) and incentives: There is endless material, old and new, about intrigue. It seems our trust can only be placed, with any shred of confidence, in persons who
- are in a demonstrable position of power (control) to know what they claim to know, and
- have a significant incentive to share that knowledge with us, or anyone.
On control, cf. Weizenbaum14 1976 p. 124-126, while talking about 'science and the compulsive [computer] programmer':
First, on belief systems:
"How… do…magical systems [of thought] remain at all a force in the minds of men?… [A]ny contradiction… is explained by…other magical notions…. [E]very new embarrassment [is] a special case to be… incorporated into [the] over-all system…. '[And contrary] evidence cannot accumulate… if each [bit…] is disregarded… for lack of [an alternative system of thought].' [quoting Michael Polanyi]"
Then, on control:
"The test of power is control. The test of absolute power is certain and absolute control."
Weizenbaum is not at all the last word on power, or on control. And such concepts will come back into view clearly when we examine natural and artificial intelligence.
On incentives, Nobel economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee15 argue that "[f]inancial incentives are nowhere near as powerful as they are usually assumed to be…":
"If it is not financial incentives, what else might people care about? The answer is something we know in our guts: status, dignity, social connections. Chief executives and top athletes are driven by the desire to win and be the best. The poor will walk away from social benefits if they come with being treated like a criminal. And among the middle class, the fear of losing their sense of who they are and their status in the local community can be an extraordinarily paralyzing force."16
So, in decided whether to trust a source, we have to ask: Would they know (power)? And would they tell if they did (incentives)? Secrets kept are powerful; senses of right and wrong are powerful; self-preservation is powerful; the desire to be loved, or to be feared, are powerful. What is the difference between the Pentagon Papers, the authenticity of which we do not question, or Sy Hersh's My Lai story, and other, more 'unbelievable' documents or testimonies? Why is one so universally believed and another not? Problems of 'Is' and 'Ought'
- Good guys and bad guys: What is said, and done, by an actor (e.g. an author) does not reveal as much as we need in order to know the person. And good guys tend to have disadvantages, and associated consequences:
- Openness of good guys gives advantages away—therefore good (smart) good guys might be more closed off;
- Errors of good guys can lead to harm—therefore good guys might misleadingly appear bad;
- Need for 'the bloodthirsty' to sometimes preserve groups with good guys in them has ugly implications. On 'the origins of cruelty', Victor Nell17 p. 230:
"[P]redation… is very hard work…. Hunting… 'involves a great deal of effort and prestige' [quoting Richard Lee]…Given these high costs, the predatory and hunting adaptations could not have emerged without massive conditioned reinforces that derive from the prey's terror and struggles to escape… the shedding of its blood, and its vocalizations as it is wounded and eaten, often while it is still alive…. A working hypothesis is that it is this stimulus array… that reinforces and sustains human cruelty and accounts for its high reward value."18
- Violence: The monopoly on violence combines with the ever-present threat of violence (crime, war) that (partially) organizes a society.19Fear and security are, perhaps, preludes to all else.
- Kinds of war: Psychological warfare, and cyberwarfare, are preludes to kinetic war:
- Psychological warfare: Rumors. The military historian Patrick O'Donnell20 quoting George Piday, an OSS agent, on rumors, p. 230:
"[O]ne thing was evident, the rumors hit the spot. The Hungarian newspapers were screaming their heads off, cautioning and threatening the population not to listen or believe [them]. It is my firm belief that rumors are one of the best MO [Morale Operations] weapons: it is easy to get one started from a neutral country or by agents inside the enemy country and [it] has a very damaging effect on the army and civilian population."
- Cyberwarfare: Probing defenses. The physics major21 turned security expert Bruce Schneier 2016, says 'someone is learning how to take down the Internet':
"Over the past year or two, someone has been probing the defenses of the companies that run critical pieces of the Internet. These probes take the form of precisely calibrated attacks designed to determine exactly how well these companies can defend themselves, and what would be required to take them down. We don't know who is doing this, but it feels like a large nation state. China and Russia would be my first guesses.…. It doesn't seem like something an activist, criminal, or researcher would do. Profiling core infrastructure is common practice in espionage and intelligence gathering. It's not normal for companies to do that. Furthermore, the size and scale of these probes—and especially their persistence—points to state actors. It feels like a nation's military cybercommand trying to calibrate its weaponry in the case of cyberwar. It reminds me of the U.S.'s Cold War program of flying high-altitude planes over the Soviet Union to force their air-defense systems to turn on, to map their capabilities."22
Problems of Our Capacities
We will have to hold three general pictures of Dulles in mind: good guy, bad guy, neither guy. We'll aspire to F. Scott Fitzgerald's23 definition:
"[T]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
He continues:
"One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the 'impossible' come true. Life was something you dominated if you were any good. Life yielded easily to intelligence and effort, or to what proportion could be mustered of both."
Recap
Dulles's argument that we shouldn't and don't need to tell so much, whatever points he goes on to make, will be made complex by the myriad problems that affect all such arguments (and all arguments): problems of evidence, trust, what is and ought to be, and our individual capacities. Such difficulties are really problems of philosophy and experience, uniquely solved (or not) by each of us, to some degrees, and unmeasured—though perhaps, with the aid of machines, measurable in some sense.
NEXT
We'll look closely at what Chapter 15 says about 'security in a free society'.
References
Duflo, E., & Banerjee, A. (2019). Economic incentives don't always do what we want them to. New York Times. 26th Oct. 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/opinion/sunday/duflo-banerjee-economic-incentives.html Retrieved 8th Sep. 2020.
Dulles, A. (1960). Letter to Mr. Charles JV Murphy from Allen W. Dulles. cia.gov. 9th Jun. 1960 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80B01676R003600130033-5.pdf Retrieved 8th Sep. 2020.
Dulles, A. (2016). The Craft of Intelligence. Lyons Press / Rowman & Littlefield. First published 1963. This edition copyright Joan Buresch Talley, daughter of Dulles. ISBN: 978-1493018796. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1493018796 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1493018796 https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017105 Different editions available at: https://archive.org/search.php?query=The%20Craft%20of%20Intelligence
Fischer, D. H. (1970). Historians Fallacies: Toward A Logic Of Historical Thought. Harper & Row. ISBN: 0061315451. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0061315451 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0061315451 https://lccn.loc.gov/69015583 Similar edition available at: https://archive.org/details/HistoriansFallaciesTowardALogicOfHistoricalThought/
Fitzgerald, F. S. (1936). The crack-up: A desolately frank document from one for whom the salt of life has lost its savor. Esquire. 1st Feb. 1936 https://classic.esquire.com/article/1936/2/1/the-crack-up Retrieved 8th Sep. 2020.
Gregory, R. L. (Ed.) (2004). The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. ISBN: 0198662246. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0198662246 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0198662246 https://lccn.loc.gov/2004275127
Grose, P. (1994). Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN: 0395516072. Also available at: https://archive.org/details/gentlemanspylife00gros
Hamblin, C. L. (1970). Fallacies. Vale. First published 1970. This Vale Press edition 2004. ISBN: 0916475247. Different edition available at: https://archive.org/details/fallacies0000hamb/page/12/mode/2up.
Horwich, P. (1982). Probability and Evidence. Cambridge. First published 1982; first paperback 2011; this Cambridge Philosophy Classics edition 2016. ISBN: 978-1316507018. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1316507018 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1316507018 https://lccn.loc.gov/2015049717
Kennedy, J. F. (1961). Remarks Upon Presenting The National Security Medal To Allen W. Dulles. jfklibrary.org. 28th Nov. 1961 https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHA/1961/JFKWHA-058-003/JFKWHA-058-003 Retrieved 1st Sep. 2020.
Nell, V. (2004). Cruelty. Article in Gregory (2004).
O'Donnell, P. K. (2004). Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of World War II's OSS. Free Press / Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 074323572X. Also available at: https://archive.org/details/operativesspiess00odon
Retraice (2020/10/25). Re6: Interface. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re6 Retrieved 26th Oct. 2020.
Schneier, B. (2016). Someone is learning how to take down the internet. schneier.com. 13th Sep. 2016 https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/09/someone\_is\_learning\_.html Retrieved 8th Sep. 2020. Also published at https://www.lawfareblog.com/someone-learning-how-take-down-internet
Talbot, D. (2015). The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government. Harper Perennial. ISBN: 978-0062276179. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0062276179 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0062276179 https://lccn.loc.gov/2015487367
Trento, J. J. (2001). The Secret History of the CIA. Forum / Prima. ISBN:0761525629 https://archive.org/details/secrethistoryofc0000tren/mode/2up Retrieved 8th Sep. 2020.
Weizenbaum, J. (1976). Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation. W. H. Freeman and Company. ISBN: 0716704633. Also available at: https://archive.org/details/computerpowerhum0000weiz
1Kennedy (1961)
2Grose (1994)
3Talbot (2015)
4Trento (2001)
5Trento says Angleton cooperated with him in the writing of his book, on the condition that he not publish anything said by Angleton until ten years after his death. p. xvii
6Talbot (2015)
7Dulles (2016)
8Talbot (2015)
9Dulles (1960)
10Grose (1994)
11Cf. Fischer (1970) on the proximity of evidence to an event, p. 62: "[A]n historian must not merely provide good relevant evidence but the best relevant evidence. And the best relevant evidence, all things being equal, is evidence which is most nearly immediate to the event itself. The very best evidence, of course, is the event itself, and then the authentic remains of the event, and then direct observations, etc."
12Horwich (1982)
13Cf. Hamblin (1970) p. 41 on ad hominem: "when a case is argued not on its merits but by analysing (usually unfavourably) the motives or background of its supporters or opponents."
14Weizenbaum (1976)
15Duflo & Banerjee (2019)
16Note the parallel, when thinking about power, between physical power (defined in part by the SI unit of force) and this different use of the word force, applied to fear (which we might call a psychological phenomenon), something that has the power to 'paralyze'.
17Nell (2004)
18We can wonder about a similar mechanism behind Angleton's 'liars'.
19This choice of words resembles a line from Oliver Stone's movie JFK. There is a complicated and uncertain trail of sources and repeaters who might have been responsible for the idea, in its more strict form, that "The organizing principle of any society is for war", including the (likely) satire piece, The Report From Iron Mountain. We have no special information on any of this.
20O'Donnell (2004)
21We said during the livestream, incorrectly, that Schneier was once a physicist. This correction will be mentioned in Retraice (2020/10/25).
22Schneier (2016)
23Fitzgerald (1936)
