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Re5: Hints From Inside

On problems of survival: destruction by enemies and fanatics.

Dulles - Craft of Intelligence, Chpt. 15, 'Security in a Free Society', Part 4, final.

Air date: Friday, 11th Sep. 2020, 4pm Pacific/US.1

"George Tenet, director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the beginning of the twenty-first century, summed up the Agency's main mission in three words: 'We steal secrets.' During the Cold War, Allen Dulles, the longest-serving CIA director, wrote that, over the centuries, intelligence organizations had also shown themselves 'an ideal vehicle for conspiracy'."2

We talked yesterday about problems of trust: 'contrived leaks' betrayals, and the role of motivation. Main points

This segment is about problems of survival: preventing a group's destruction by enemies (those who would exploit information and trust problems) and by its own fanatics (those who would do anything to solve information and trust problems, even destroy the group's definition). It's based on Allen Dulles's The Craft of Intelligence3 chpt. 15, 'Security in a Free Society'. This is the 4th and final part of our chpt. 15 series.

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. We're currently working on strategic intelligence, i.e. espionage and its related activities.

We're reading Dulles's chpt. 15 because it might contain hints about the 5% of expensive information4 we want: information about survival—of life, leisure and legislation—against enemies and fanatics, by way of the 5%, the price of which seems to be legwork, empiricism, and competition.

Survival of life, leisure and legislation

1. life: the capacity to breath and think, and pursue satisfaction;
2. leisure: time for doing things unrelated to fending off death;
3. legislation: a symbol of representative government more broadly, "the empire of laws, and not of men."5 Cf. today's FT op-ed by Ash6.

We talked yesterday about problems of trust (contrived leaks, betrayals), and before that problems of information (careless leaks, giveaways), as labeled by Dulles.

If giveaways and careless leaks are your team's information problems, and contrived leaks and betrayals are your team's trust problems, what can we say about solutions?

Solutions to information and trust problems

We can say that the problems need to be mitigated at least. But we can also say that totally solving them is logically impossible: at every moment, an individual mind might be changing; if it changes in certain ways, the team will have new information problems or trust problems. Minds, by definition, are continuously changing.

Here we have a hint of totalitarian logic: If only we (a team's leaders, owners, rulers) could stop minds from changing—or changing in certain ('wrong') ways. The only way to stop minds from changing at all is to destroy them. This is why it's logically impossible to totally solve i- and t- problems: destroyed minds cannot do anything, including problematic things like leaks, giveaways and betrayals.

Hence killing and kinetic warfare are sometimes done even by 'good guys' who have run out of ideas, but are determined to survive.7

But the ways to stop minds from changing in certain ways are many (think: propaganda, rhetoric, fear, inspiration, norms, laws, hiding certain bits of information while endlessly broadcasting others).

Dulles chpt. 15 recap

What did Dulles want us to know, and what hints can we derive from his words about 'the secret world'8?

Dulles recap:

1. Basic problem: Free people want to be free to talk and know, but too much of either can be dangerous to them (p. 235);
2. It's wasteful to spend money on keeping our secrets while also spending money on revealing them (p. 238-239);
3. There are four major sub-problems: giveaways, careless leaks, contrived leaks, and betrayals.
4. Our founding documents seem to make it impossible to fix this (p. 235), but I (Dulles) think we can improve the situation without breaking our founding documents (p. 236):
   • have lots of frank discussions;
   • don't publicize superfluous military details;
   • don't make prosecution of espionage cases so difficult;
   • enact something like the British D-notice system;
   • improve our vetting of personnel;
   • make more things secret because we can and do keep secrets9;
   • be more careful with our overseas installations.
5. Openness is an inherent weakness in free societies, for which we must compensate (e.g. p. 236, 'facts of life').

The importance of espionage: the first or second oldest profession.10

Recap

We're all players on various kinds of teams (some more important than others). As individuals, we want both ourselves and our teams to survive—not just to keep breathing, but to keep and improve the kind of life we've inherited, or built, on top of that breathing, one with some free time, and with freedom from tyranny. From the writings of spymaster Dulles (or a team writing in his name), we've gleaned information about how strategic intelligence contributes to a team's survival, by confronting problems of information and trust, among other things.

Next

This concludes our first series on strategic intelligence. Next: artificial intelligence.

References

Andrew, C. (2018). The Secret World: A History of Intelligence. Yale University Press. ISBN in paperback edition printed as "978-0-300-23844-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)". Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0300238440 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0300238440 https://lccn.loc.gov/2018947154

Andrew, C., & Dilks, D. (Eds.) (1984). The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century. Macmillan Publishers LTD (eBook), University of Illinois Press (hbk). ISBN 978-1349072347 (PDF eBook); ISBN 0252011570 (hbk). Citations may be from the PDF or the hbk. eBook available at: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-1-349-07234-7.pdf Retrieved 20 Aug. 2020.

Ash, T. G. (2020). Hearts don't beat faster for 'the rules-based international order'. Financial Times. 10th Sep. 2020 https://www.ft.com/content/0388ee5d-69aa-41c8-bd3c-8603dfe14a36 Retrieved 11th Sep. 2020.

Dulles, A. (1947). Germany's Underground: The Anti-Nazi Resistance. De Capo. First published 1947; De Capo edition 2000. ISBN: 0306809281. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0306809281 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0306809281 https://lccn.loc.gov/99058434

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

Harrington, J. (1887). The Commonwealth of Oceana. George Routledge and Sons. First published 1656. This edition 1887. https://archive.org/details/cu31924030366094/page/n9/mode/2up Retrieved 11th Sep. 2020.

Oleson, P. C. (Ed.) (2016). AFIO's Guide to the Study of Intelligence. Association of Former Intelligence Officers, 1st ed. Citations are of the pbk edition, ISBN: 978-0997527308. PDF edition available at: https://www.afio.com/40_guide.htm Retrieved 10th Sep. 2020.

Ransom, H. H. (1984). Secret intelligence in the United States, 1947-1982: the CIA's search for legitimacy. In Andrew & Dilks (1984).

Retraice (2020/09/08). Re2: Tell the People, Tell Foes. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re2 Retrieved 22nd Sep. 2020.

Retraice (2020/xx/xx). Re6: Interface. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re6 Retrieval pending.

Samuelson, R. (2017). A government of laws, not of men. Claremont Review of Books. Fall, 2017. https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/a-government-of-laws-not-of-men/ Retrieved 11th Sep. 2020.

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

NBC News (1965). The science of spying. [video recording]. 4th May. 1965. https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.614513 Retrieved 11th Sep. 2020. See also: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP67-00318R000100050001-2.pdf (a script) and https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP82R00025R000500260013-9.pdf (an analysis of the content and public reactions to it) Retrieved 11th 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.

2Andrew (2018) p. 2, citing Ransom (1984) p. 205, who gives no clear source for the quote. UPDATE: After the livestream, we were able to find the source: Dulles (1947), p. 70. Also of note, Dulles's actual words were: "An intelligence service is the ideal vehicle for a conspiracy. [emphasis added] Its members can travel about at home and abroad under secret orders, and no questions are asked. Every scrap of paper in the files, its membership, its expenditure of funds, its contacts, even enemy contacts, are state secrets. Even the Gestapo could not pry into the activities of the Abwehr until Himmler absorbed it. He only succeeded in doing so late in 1943." This update will be mentioned in Segment 6, Retraice (2020/xx/xx).

3Dulles (2016)

4The 5% idea is based on Vallee (1979) p. 68, 'Major Murphy's' model for how to think about strategic intelligence: the most important information in an intelligence contest is likely to be the most expensive, not the most abundant.

5Harrington (1887) p. 16. Harrington, who attributes the idea to Aristotle and Livy, was later cited by John Adams, according to Samuelson (2017).

6Ash (2020) on rules and laws: "An underlying value or principle takes precedence over arbitrary rules, which are often the product of messy bureaucratic, diplomatic and political compromise. Such rules should not be confused with international law, which a UK minister this week outrageously, foolishly and unacceptably said his government will 'break in a specific and limited way'. International law has a very high value and must be upheld. But if what we mean by 'rules' is actually law, then we should say law — a stronger, simpler and more precise word."

7Cf. Retraice (2020/09/08) p. 4, on 'good guys' and their (arguable) "[n]eed for 'the bloodthirsty' " (bad guys).

8Andrew (2018)

9See also NBC News (1965) at 48:04 where Dulles says "I can assure you that the CIA—when I was there as director and I'm quite sure it's the same with Mr. McCone—has given these committees full information about what it's doing, how it's spending its money, and how it operates. When I appeared before them, again and again I've been stopped by members of the Congress, who said, 'We don't want to hear about that, we might talk in our sleep! Don't tell us this!' " Cf. Talbot (2015) p. 551.

10Oleson (2016) p. ii