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Re3: Tell Everyone On problems of information: 'careless leaks' and 'giveaways'.

Dulles - Craft of Intelligence, Chpt. 15, 'Security in a Free Society', Part 2.

Air date: Wednesday, 9th Sep. 2020, 7pm Pacific/US.1

America is a delightful country in which to carry out espionage…. One of the weakest links in the nation's security … is the yearning friendliness of her people…. they crave public recognition…. I was able to find one American after another who seemed impelled—after a drink or two—to tell me things he might never have told his own wife.2

We talked yesterday about Allen Dulles, his book, and the various problems that arise in reading his chapter 15, 'Security in a Free Society', and any such writing. Main Points

We can break chapter 15 into three categories:

1. problems of information: openness; the desire to tell (careless leaks) and to be told (giveaways);
2. problems of trust: vulnerability to attacks by friends (contrived leaks) and foes (betrayals);
3. problems of survival: preventing a group's own destruction by its enemies (those who would exploit information and trust problems) and by its own (those who would do anything to solve information and trust problems, e.g. Angleton).

Here, we'll focus on problems of information.

Problems of Information: 'careless leaks' and 'giveaways'

We want to give valuable information because it makes us look good, in the know, smart, and because it sometimes seems to further our ends, especially if we spin it, or select it carefully.

We want to get valuable information because we then have it to give, and because it might further our ends, and because we are at a disadvantage compared to others who have it.

Our spies try to get information from others, and hide our information from them.

Others' spies try to do the same.

The question always recurs: Who are 'our' spies, and who are the 'others'?

Compare the Times article: "In Poland there is a variety of forms of intelligence…. In any case, the assumption in Warsaw, true or not, is that Colonel Monat knew whatever was to be know…. This reporter learned of the Monat story a couple of months ago. To have written it in Poland would have meant immediate expulsion and possibly arrest. There is also the possibility, which has to be considered by Western newsmen working in a Communist country, that a secret already known to the West was dropped into a correspondent's ear by a Communist contact as a provocation—to find out whether he knew about it or to entice him into using it while still within the territory of the Communist state and subject to reprisals for 'espionage.' "3

'Careless leaks'

1. Monat (opening excerpt).4
2. "The careless leak, one not due to malice or plan, may be the result of some astute reporter."5
3. The letter and memorandum of Woodrow Wilson to William Jennings Bryan (Dulles's uncle Robert Lansing's predecessor as Secretary of State), 'suggestions for safeguarding the more important diplomatic proceedings': "One person to draft all despatches [sic]…. to transcribe all such despatches [sic]…. to do all the enciphering and deciphering…."6
4. The guessing reporter: "There are times, of course, when sources are not given [by reporters] because… their stories might have been the product of their own intelligent guesswork. In the case of able reporters, these guesses often hit quite close to the mark."7

'Giveaways'

1. "But it was obviously in published form that Monat found his most precious sources. 'Americans,' he says, 'are not only careless and loquacious in their speech, they also give away far more than is good for them in public print.' "8

   Dulles goes on to say that the 'house organs' (print publications) of branches of the U..S. military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines) "fight 'the battle of interservice rivalry' in print" (Dulles quoting Monat) and (further) each branch publishes a "stream of manuals and reports".9

   Consider the question: Is the competition net-good or net-bad? How would we know? How would we experiment?

2. " 'It must be extremely difficult', Monat adds, 'for the U.S. Military to try to defend the nation and its freedoms when the very sinews of its defenses are being exposed, day by day, to anybody who can read.' "10
3. On Douglas Cater's The Fourth Branch of Government: "President Truman once claimed [that]… '95% of our secret information has been published by newspapers and slick magazines'…. "11

   Compare Vallee's 'Major Murphy': "Suppose I gave you [a scientist] 95 per cent of the data concerning a phenomenon. You're happy because you know 95 per cent of the phenomenon. Not so in intelligence. If I get 95 per cent of the data, I know this is the 'cheap' part of the information. I still need the other 5 per cent, but I will have to pay a much higher price to get it…. Hitler had 95 per cent of the information about the landing in Normandy. But he had the wrong 95 per cent!"12

   Dulles again: "Cater also refers to a statement by Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson in which Wilson estimated that this country was giving away military secrets to the Soviets that would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if we could learn the same type from them."13

4. The (Bedell) Smith test: "In 1951 he enlisted the services of a group of able and qualified academicians from one of our large universities…. to determine what kind of an estimate of U.S. military capabilities the Soviets could put together from… unclassified sources…. [T]he findings… were deemed to be so accurate that the extra copies were ordered destroyed and the few copies that were retained were given a high classification."14
5. "Is there any way to stop the giveaway?"15

   "I, of course, recognize that… committees of the Congress need to receive a substantial amount of classified information from the executive. Does it necessarily follow that this must be published in great detail? It is often the intimate and technical details that are the most valuable to the potential enemy and of little interest to the public. I question whether, with respect to these technical details, there is a public 'need to know.' "16

   "A more difficult area is that of the press, periodicals and particularly service and technical journals."17

   "Undoubtedly it is of the greatest importance in this nuclear missile age to keep the American people informed about our general military position in the world…. [W]hat we don't really require is detailed information as to where every hardened missile site is located, exactly how many bombers or fighters we will have or the details of their performance."18

Recap

We've divided Chpt. 15 into problems of information (discussed today), problems of trust (later) and problems of survival (later).

Problems of information include Dulles's terms 'careless leaks' (e.g. saying too much, answering dangerous questions) and 'giveaways' (e.g. the publishing of superfluous details by public and private entities, open government hearings and investigations).

Problems of information ultimately rest on our senses of what makes information valuable—subjectively at least, objectively perhaps.

Giving information can feel good, and be good for us; and we have to get it to give it, and to stay ahead of others. The question is: When does the quantity or quality of the information, however told, cause, or risk causing, a net loss of what's good for us?

Compare Bostrom19 on 'information hazards': "[R]isks that arise from the dissemination or the potential dissemination of true information that may cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm."

NEXT

Problems of trust: Dulles's 'contrived leaks' and betrayals.

References

Bostrom, N. (2011). Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge. Review of Contemporary Philosophy, 10, 44–79. Citations are from Bostrom's website copy: https://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf Retrieved 9th 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. Different editions available at: https://archive.org/search.php?query=The%20Craft%20of%20Intelligence

Rosenthal, A. M. (1959). Polish spy chief defects to west. New York Times. 22nd Nov. 1959 https://nyti.ms/1GZQ0Ku Retrieved 9th Sep. 2020.

Vallee, J. (1979). Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults. And/Or Press. ISBN: 0915904381. A different edition available at: https://archive.org/details/MessengersOfDeceptionUFOContactsAndCultsJacquesValle1979/mode/2up

1Retraice 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.

2Dulles (2016) p. 237, quoting Col. Pawel Monat, a Polish intelligence officer trained by communists who defected to the West in 1959 (Rosenthal (1959)), and later wrote a book.

3Rosenthal (1959)

4Dulles (2016) p. 237par7a. Paragraph numberings, such as 'par7a', are done by Retraice; they are useful for company purposes, but must be done manually by the reader. Page numbers, specific to the cited sources, should be preferred for reference.

5Dulles (2016) p. 241par23.

6Dulles (2016) pp. 242-243pars24-27.

7Dulles (2016) p. 247par39.

8Dulles (2016) p. 237par7b.

9Dulles (2016) p. 237pars8-11.

10Dulles (2016) p. 237par10.

11Dulles (2016) p. 237par11.

12Vallee (1979) p. 68, his emphasis.

13Dulles (2016) p. 238par12b.

14Dulles (2016) p. 238par13.

15Dulles (2016) p. 238par14.

16Dulles (2016) p. 239par15b.

17Dulles (2016) p. 240par19.

18Dulles (2016) p. 240par20.

19Bostrom (2011)