<nettime> Ex-Intelligence Officers, Others See Plusses in WikiLeaks Disclosures

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2010 12:37:51 -0500
To: intelforum@his.com
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Subject: Re: Ex-Intelligence Officers, Others See Plusses
	in WikiLeaks  Disclosures

I must have missed most of this thread. Ex-spies pretending to
be ex- despite lifetime requirements to remain secretly active,
covertly, or openly as critics, whistleblowers, dissidents, novelists,
informants, professors, contractors, movie stars, chefs, ministers,
retirees, AFIOs, FOIA officers, NARA files watchdogs, conference
promoters, lobbyists, private eyes, lawyers, NGOs, politicians,
bloggers, spy site operators, indeed the full range of skills and
professions and opinion manipulators they were hired and trained
for, is a fruitful topic of discussion.

How did the bizarrely incredible deception of "ex-spy" originate?
No spy can be ex and live to tell about it. Agee not excepted. The
Agee ploy deserves better analysis.

Perhaps the fanciful notion arose from the equally bizarre notion
of the turncoat which drove Angleton mad when nobody would
believe his justifiable and logical paranoia that there is no such
thing as a turncoat, having himself deployed that trick and learned
it was a surefire sentence of death, or if not death, lifetime incarceration
in a cocoon of suspicion.

Perhaps the ex-spy was invented by Conrad, Greene, Le Carre or another
artful inventor of fiction to lend credence that spying could come to
an end and promise to free the spy of tormenta only to be betrayed once
again and again by his merciless and cruel runner, corporeal or
self-inflicted Cartesian doubt.

Perhaps ex-spy was invented like so many other terms of spy euphemisms,
like the high-faluting term intelligence, for being on the dole like other
over the hill deadbeats embarassed without a dramatic title to excuse
the failure to make it without welfare.

That may be an unfair characterization of what is common among ordinary
folks to camouflage who they are and what little favorable deals they
have devised to keep over-weaning self-esteem in check, and certainly
under the radar of those they have harmed, for noble purposes as
ever, as well as debtors and vicious in-laws.

Why would anyone use the term ex-spy except to ensnare the dumbest
believer in salvation through confession of sin? That could be it,
Augustinian, it takes one to spy one up to no good.

Careful, cynicism is a sign of the Id beast running the ego toward a
superego punji trap.

Does this have anything to do with Wikileaks. No except to solicit
secret and surefire returns on tulips.

John Young
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