Andor and the Explanation Triumphant

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As we have discussed, it is "the explanation" that is the better part of filmmaking.  Forget and leave behind the pathetic necessity to "show something" to "demonstrate something on the screen".  Some pointless visual effects.  Some ridiculous action sequence.  No, the most important part of the film, the play, the whatever, is when a character explains to another character what is going on, what they believe, what they are thinking, what they have been hiding.

I dont know where the series Andor is going and whether it can maintain its momentum to transcend, to rise above the pathetic Star Wars mythology with its emphasis on giant cosmic eggs / death stars and its Joseph Campbell-esque "hero's journey" so simple, so overused. 

No, what we need is two adults, desperate and alone, who reveal their plans, their hopes, their dreams, their failures, their secrets.  To reveal, at least in part, what is going on.  

 

Forget your battles between giant robots, that is for children.  

Episode 10 of Andor has a classic in the explanation genre.  It even has a little craft from the intelligence world.  It seems the rebellion has planted an agent in the empire security service.  This agent requests a meeting with his handler to warn him and to resign.  And the handler, in classic intelligence fashion, tells his agent that he can not resign, that he is trapped.  And then the handler explains his sacrifice, his motivations, his fears as a way of reminding the agent that he is not alone in regretting, in part, the price he has paid.

They did a really good job.

 

 

 

 

Ukraine! Well I am Certainly Surprised

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Of all things, I really did not expect Vladimir the Great to actually recreate Munich before Europe's horrified eyes.  And Vlad knows that whatever Biden does, he can use the Republicans to destroy him and the Democrats and put their stooge in power, just like they did in 2016.

 

 

Indications of War and the Underwater Surveillance System of Norway

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[If this event in Norway had happened, wouldnt we have heard about it from many sources?  Wouldnt it be a big deal?  I am guessing that either this did not happen or people are being seriously discreet.  Well I guess we will find out.]

This post is to bring to your attention that something has happened recently that has almost certainly caused concern and sleepless nights for many people.  It may sound innocuous if a little aggressive but it may actually signal that something important is about to happen.  The particular event involves the silencing of a Norwegian underwater sensor system which probably had the ability to track Russian submarines which work very hard not to be tracked.

See the following story.  These people have a good reputation for discussing things of interest without using secret sources. 

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43094/norwegian-undersea-surveillance-network-had-its-cables-mysteriously-cut

Even when rivals do not intend to go to war, they do things we might call provocative and not all that trusting or friendly. So for example, since WW2 we have flown jets somewhere close to the Russian border to see how long it takes for their radar to light up, where they are, and a bunch of what is sometimes called "signals intelligence", which means we may not know what they are saying but we know they are talking. Russia might fly a strategic bomber towards the UK to see how long it takes for them to be intercepted. This is all normal peacetime activities. If you want peace, they say, prepare for war. So far so good. But there is more to it than that.  When JFK was assassinated and people asked why the pentagon did not go on alert, the guy in charge of that said something like "the board was clear", the board probably referring to something called NMIC.  in other words, yes, the president had been assassinated which could be the opening stage of a war, but none of the other things they look for had happened.  What sort of things?  Well there is a list of things.  Assassinations for example, mobilization of the ground forces which are in maneuver near the border. Important reconnaissance systems becoming inoperative.  The satellites go dark.  The relevant embassy or embassies starts destroying classified material.  All of these things happen now and then, sometimes for innocent reasons (e.g. a satellite went dark but thats because it simply broke, no need to get your panties in a bunch over it.)  But there is more history here.  

When Israel was about to do the 1967 preemptive strike they told us to take a listening post, a ship in the Mediterranean,  away. We refused or ignored them and they blew up the USS Liberty so that we could not hear the fighters being scrambled for Egypt (even if we did not know what the pilots were saying, they wanted surprise so no warnings).   There is a fuzzy line between what you might normally do, try to catch spies for example, and things you might do if you were about to attack and needed tactical surprise (or in some cases strategic surprise, a whole other thing). Its one thing for Russia to roll up an amphibious tank onto a beach in Sweden to spy on a naval base in the middle of the night, but its a whole other thing to cut underwater cables, revealing they have that ability, which is a big deal independent of the cables actually cut.  We knew they had that capability but they had not demonstrated it on operational cables of a strategic listening system by a neighbor.   You only do that right before you need to do something you dont want people to see. Something fairly big. 

So in deterrence theory we say that if there is nuclear war it is very important to have a few days notice, if you can, because all kinds of things can be moved around for safety. So we keep a 24/7 team in the basement of the pentagon connected to a bunch of different sources to ask what is going on. Are the satellites mysteriously going silent? Have NATO generals suddenly disappeared? Are the bad guys on maneuvers near the border. Are the underwater cables going out?

The job of the people on the ground is to read the clues and form the right conclusions about what is going on.  Thats what they get paid for.

 

Intelligence, Ambiguity and the SONY Hack

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[Since I wrote this blog post, I came across evidence that maybe the NSA does actually know what happened. See https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/world/asia/nsa-tapped-into-north-korean-networks-before-sony-attack-officials-say.html]

I am slowly going to get around to the issue of who perpetrated the SONY hack. I am pretty sure that whoever it was executed a fishing expedition and that Amy Pascal was a victim but not an original target. Whoever this was hoped there would be good stuff in the emails, and of course they started from the top down, and released a bunch of stuff and hoped that some of it would cause trouble and they were right. The first rule is to not put anything in email you would not want to see in the NY Times. Yesterday I read what was supposedly the supposedly horrible content of the Pascal/Rudin dialog about Obama and some actor, and you know, it's not enough in my mind to have caused this level of reaction. What they said was that someone of a certain ethnic group likes to see positive depictions of that ethnic group in film, I think. And that a specific actor wanted money for work they wanted him to do and that they did not want to pay him. Big whoopie. So Amy goes into independent production but that does not make SONY any more or less racist. Thank goodness they were not discussing Michael Jackson. What a mess that would have been!

I had not realized that the DOJ had in fact filed a case against a mysterious Korean who N. Korea says does not exist. So while the USA may be ineffectual, and FBI Counterintelligence was not able to protect our poor, helpless SONY executives, we did step up to the plate to formally complain and so I retract my inflammatory statement that we did nothing. There isn't much they can do after the fact. The issues of N. Korea, who our government believes did this hack, see below, are complicated. We are already doing what we can short of war to rein those maniacs in. Our State Department's worst fear is that Kim is deposed and the whole sucking puddle of shit collapses and we have a real mess. We may look back in nostalgia to the days of Kim and SONY and say, "Wow, wasn't that great! We didnt know how great it was."

As outsiders to the world of intelligence, we can not really know with certainty what is going on, but if you pay attention, and watch over time, then there are things you can know, up to a point. Sometimes you may have to wait but even then it's not as if you can prove anything to everyone's satisfaction. There are classic examples here. We knew the government thought that Julius & Ethel Rosenberg were guilty but the real evidence, not the stuff presented in court, was withheld for 30 + years and that is one of the reasons that, decades later, they went public with Venona and many people still dont believe it. (1) Many cases are not brought to trial because the intelligence community is not willing to expose the evidence and by definition the sources. There are mysteries about the Ellsberg matter, mysteries that have never been resolved, that if anyone knows the answer to, they are not talking. Pretty much everyone thinks the Warren Commission was a coverup but of what? It was only recently that I finally heard a theory that I believe in... that it was a CIA fuckup but not the way most people believe. (2) But do I really know? Of course not.

N. Korea has proven to be a plucky little nation even if they are really annoying. They came this close to winning the Korean war at the beginning. They are probably behind one of the most successful counterfeiting operations in the history of counterfeiting. (3) And who can forget their recent sinking of a S. Korean destroyer? Or the assassination of a relative of Kim by secret agents? Or the fabulous operation using the Yakuza to steal from Japanese ATMs that involved a hack involving banks, special ATM cards and intense rules. (4) N. Korea has proven their capability in this area over and over again. They are a player in cybercrime and cyberwar. They have the capability to execute the SONY hack, many believe. But if not them, who?

Some believe that the hack was perpetrated by an individual or perhaps a small team of disgruntled SONY employees as an extortion plot and that the demand to withdraw the famous satirical film about a fictional Kim was just cover. I know that some cybersecurity officials believe that there is evidence that the hack was perpetrated by a state actor. These things are not all that subtle, you know. There is a level of skill and of effort over time that is found with state hacking operations in contrast to talented individuals or groups like Anonymous or private criminal groups. And generally each of these groups have a track record and leave a series of clues that indicate modus operandi.

I know that generally the DOJ does not file a case in this kind of thing unless they think they have enough evidence that can be presented in open court should it ever come to trial. But maybe they knew this would never come to trial so they decided to use this as a way to embarrass N Korea, which is basically impossible because they are shameless, but whatever. Cui bono? One could make a case for the disgruntled insiders who eventually released the material to make good their threat did it. And of course the N. Koreans could have done it and had motivation.

But do I really know, no I dont. If someone knows for sure, through unspecified intelligence sources, well I cant know about that. I havent seen the evidence and I am not qualified to evaluate it. In the absence of a plausible candidate or candidates for the insider theory, and for all I know there is such a candidate but no one is talking about it because it is defamation in the absence of good evidence, I think, then I propose that the most plausible candidate is N. Korea. I will probably never know for sure. That is the fate of most judgments or assessments that we make about intelligence matters. In the absence of a confession, and maybe not even then, we can not be sure.

______________

1. A pretty good description is at https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945-present/venona.htm. But if you dont believe it, then by all means go to the NSA site on Venona and there is much more detail. There are people who to this day deny that Ethyl knew what Julius was up to which is, frankly, ridiculous. There are others who say that even if they were spies, their work did not really help the Soviets. People will believe whatever they want to believe. I would not be surprised to hear that some people believe that Venona is a fake and was made up to frame the Rosenbergs. How could I possibly know?

2. An article I read by an academic who studies the JFK assassination believes that recently released evidence shows what some people believed at the time. That the CIA knew more than they were saying and that they had been tracking Oswald in Mexico City, had tapped his phone, knew that he had visited various embassies, knew that he was up to no good. Then instead of acting, or communicating their concerns to FBI Counterintelligence, they just dropped it. And when JFK got shot by their guy, Oswald, they knew that no one would believe that they had not had a hand in it or that they could be so stupid as to not warn anyone so they suppressed the information about how much they knew. That is one theory which may be supported by the evidence, but as you know, there is a lot of evidence and a lot of controversy about that evidence. It would take maybe a year, probably more, just to review the evidence that is public and form some sort of conclusion that is actually informed.

3. This is so much harder to do than most people realize. Yes, North Korea, may have had help. I certainly hope so. And N. Korea is not the only source of these dollars. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar.

4. See https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/26/the-incredible-rise-of-north-koreas-hacking-army

More on Operation Paperclip

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[Excerpted from a letter to a friend regarding Operation Paperclip]

I think you might benefit as I have from reading this book. The CIA made public a book review on it:

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol-58-no-3/operation-paperclip-the-secret-intelligence-program-to-bring-nazi-scientists-to-america.html

It wasnt just rocket scientists, it was much more than that, and complicit is not the word. In many cases these are the leaders of the projects that killed 10s of thousands of slave laborers (100s of thousands?). I am not aware of the Manhattan project being even close to what happened in Nazi Germany. We are talking about some of the worst people of the Nazi regime when it came to such things as medical experiments with a 99% death rate on non consensual subjects. And it was after the fact and we hired these people because we did not believe that we could compete with the Russians with their German scientists any other way. I say, bullshit.

I dont think that the Manhattan project makes us equivalent to the Nazis even a little bit, in any way, whatsoever. I could argue this persuasively for 100,000 years and some people could not hear me, so I suggest we dodge it. They dont want to hear what went into the decision to drop those bombs, what went into the decision to stop dropping those bombs, and so forth. It is way beyond their capability to put themselves into the mindset of those who were there. Even the simplest historical issues are beyond their capability to hear. If it were me, I would not have dropped the bombs directly on those cities, I would have deliberately dropped it offshore, for example. The city would have been wrecked, many people would have died although not as many who did, and the point would have been made. But would the Japanese leadership have heard the message if they had done that? I dont know, but I know that the people who were there and whose job it was to save American lives did not think that it would. Hiroshima was not a civilian target, not even a little itsy bitsy bit. Some scholars wrote a nasty letter a few years ago (10?) comparing Hiroshima to the beautiful and innocent city of San Francisco not realizing how insanely stupid and ignorant their argument was (and these were people who studied the subject), because even a stupid moron who studied the war in the pacific would realize that San Francisco was one of the eseential cities in our war in the Pacific. Perhaps people in academia in this subject are by definition stupid, I dont know, but they sure did not enhance their credibility in this discussion.  The Manhattan project is one of the great achievements of our civiilization and really is not comparable in any way with the use of Nazi scientists who deliberately killed people in their charge.

There is an important issue here: we can not trust our government to uphold our morals. We must realize that we must take action and at the very least punish those who, for example, by government policy use torture to achieve policy goals. We have used torture in our nations past, but never by policy to the best of my knowledge. Is this an important point, yes I think it is.
We are all complicit today in the destruction of our government and the murder of innocent people, whose number we will never know because unlike the Nazis we deliberately do not keep and destroy the records (see EPA and Gestapo/ICE). Every day that Trump is in power, every day that McConnell puts right wing nuts in the court system means our system failed. The courts need to be sanitized at once, failure to do so means that we live in an oppressive right wing dictatorship. There is nothing those people wont do to achieve their bizarre right wing goals over the wishes of the majority of the people in this country (which is obvious to everyone in the world except maybe Americans in denial).

The game is over. Its time for a new government.

What Everyone Who Studies Intelligence Knows about Wikileaks

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Many Americans don't like what they think is the "intelligence" business.  There are good and bad reasons why this might be, but its sufficiently important that I think that people should know more about it so that they can make more accurate or possibly nuanced judgments about it.  It is, after all, *their* intelligence community and is genuinely working, for the most part, in what they believe is the nation's interest as ordered by the POTUS and the relevant committees of Congress.

Even though there is a lot we can not and will not know about the world of intelligence there are lots and lots of things that we can know by paying attention and knowing the history of these things.

And so, in light of this, here is one comment on current events.

It has been obvious for years, certainly at least a decade and possibly more, that whatever else Wikileaks may be, it is probably also a tool of foreign Intelligence.  From the material released and the timing of that release it is likely that Wikileaks has been chosen as the "public mouthpiece" of materials collected by foreign intelligence agencies that have collected the material from one source or another, and are looking for a way to get this material into the world at a time of their choosing to influence some political process ongoing in the West.  This has been completely obvious, and if it is not true, a lot of people will be surprised. But what does it mean?  What should we do about it? And what does it not mean?

It does not mean that the people running Wikileaks are insincere or believe that they are doing anything but what a freedom loving person of the world should be doing. They may be completely uncompromised in their goals.  Nor does it mean that they have necessarily committed any crimes, although they may have.  But even so, be aware that a crime in one country may not be a crime in another.   On the other hand, I think it is likely from what little I know that they very well may have knowingly committed some crimes that are in fact illegal in this country, but that is to be seen.

All I am really saying here is that you should not be so naive as to think that Wikileaks is a completly independent, do-good-for-the-world, totally disinterested organization.  They serve a very useful purpose for people who are not friendly to this country.  That said, they may provide a useful service for the rest of us, that would depend on your point of view on many other issues.

The Horror of Counter Intelligence Under Trump II

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Can you imagine the horror of being in American Counter Intelligence and realizing that the people you work for, the President and the Congress, are made up of traitors who are working with a hostile foreign power to destroy your country?

The Horror of Counter Intelligence Under Trump I

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The role of counter-intelligence is to prevent the work of foreign intelligence agencies to gather information or take hostile action against our country.  For example, when Russian manipulated and threw the 2016 election to that traitor Trump, this was a failure of our counter-intelligence.

And they know it.

But they also know that they work for Congress, and that Congress is run by Republicans and Republicans in Congress are well known to be traitors who want to destroy this country and throw elections to the people the Russians want.

This is the nightmare of any intelligence agency.  What if their bosses are traitors working for the enemy.  If you did not know this, read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John LeCarre.

So we are fucked, and they know we are fucked, because of the Republicans.

Trump's Motivation for Releasing the CIA Files on JFK

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One of the interesting things about the newly released CIA files on the JFK assassination is why Trump released them when no other president would.

Does this make Trump the advocate of freedom and transparency in government? No, of course not. His administration will go down in history as one of criminality and lies, the worst this country has ever seen in its entire history.

So what other motivation does Trump have?

He has two motivations and they are both very clear. First, Trump hates America and wants to destroy its institutions. By releasing the papers, he lowers the CIA's credibility as the CIA clearly executed a cover up of their failure to prevent the JFK assassination. Second, Trump hates the CIA because the CIA has said that the Russians spoofed the election and possibly threw the election to the least qualified candidate in an effort to destroy America.

So this is not about honesty and transparency. This is about Trump getting back at the CIA and his work to destroy America, hand in hand, I have to say, with his friends and financiers, the Russians.

[Note: Larry Weinberg on Facebook pointed out that Congress set the deadline for this release. Thats true, but what Congress really did was set a proposed date, the President had the power to postpone the release indefinitely. So it was really Trump's decision to release, and he had complete power to postpone. Any other president could have requested the release at any time]

Three Cold War Intelligence Stories

When the Cold War ended, or at least morphed into another form, many people claimed to expect a peace dividend. I never did, I thought that was the most egregious wishful thinking as clearly the world was leaving one set of perils and diving right into another. (To be fair, the people calling for a "peace dividend" knew this very well, they were merely arguing for more money for such things as education after years of being told there was no money for it, we had to spend the money on the Cold War). 

On the other hand, I did expect and we are slowly receiving an “intelligence voyeur dividend” as events that happened during the Cold War became explained, or partially explained, or revealed, or whatever. What is the value of such exposure? I think that there is value in telling the history of that time, or at least some of that history, and there is also value in having a better educated citizenry, one which will have some understanding of the way the world works and what has been happening around them in the recent historical past. 

We have here three essays, all published in The Guardian in the UK about three different people who were involved in intelligence matters in the Cold War and whose story, what is known about them at least, is worth reading if you care about this sort of stuff.

The first is an article on Ashraf Marwan who was killed in London in 2007. He died a very rich man. He may have been assassinated, he may have committed suicide. He was certainly a spy for Israel, or was he a double agent under the control of Egypt? Its a wonderful story that suggests an answer to one of the mysteries, but by no means all.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/15/who-killed-20th-centurys-greatest-spy-ashraf-marwan

The second is about a Czech / Soviet spy who penetrated the CIA and was the last prisoner traded to the Soviet Union in the cold war. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/30/how-a-czech-super-spy-infiltrated-cia-karel-koecher

The final story is about a dyslexic member of the US Intelligence community (possibly the National Reconnaissance Office) who collected material and tried to sell it to interested parties and how they caught him.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/26/spy-couldnt-spell-how-biggest-heists-us-espionage-history-foiled

Spy vs Spy from Mad Magazine

A Conspiracy Theory about the Panama Papers

What is great about conspiracy theories is that they do not have to be motivated by mere facts. After all, the point of a conspiracy is that a cabal is actively hiding the truth so all right-minded citizens are forced to speculate. Its their own damn fault for lying to us so often, right?

The art of creating a vibrant conspiracy theory is to weave events that are believed to have happened into a narrative that purports to explain why and how it happened. Sometimes events are invented or enhanced to enrich the process. Often bogus analysis and interpretation is required to make a conspiracy theory plausible, except of course it doesn't make it plausible at all, but merely exposes the credulity or borderline insanity of the audience. The best conspiracy theories do not open themselves up to magical thinking, at least not so much.

This post proposes that there is some basis for attributing a lovely conspiracy behind the Panama Papers leak that is causing such havoc in the world today.

And what havoc it is creating! We have one prime minister resigned already, and red faces in many parts of the world. That stalwart upholder of freedom and truth, the People's Republic of China, is madly trying to suppress the information that reveals so many Chinese in the government had these off-shore accounts. Russia is even saying that this is all a plot to besmirch Putin.

So without further ado, here is my take on the events, starting many years ago.

In part one of the story, various intelligence agencies of the West, possibly on their own or in cooperation with the intelligence agencies of other allied countries, run operations against aspects of the banking and legal infrastructure of off-shore accounts. They do this in order to try and identify and compromise the activities of other countries that use such accounts for their own covert activities including the financing of terrorist activities, arms purchases, and other operations. Thus, law firms such as the now famous, or infamous, Mossack Fonseca, are the target of operations by the western intelligence agencies.

As a result of analyzing this intelligence, it is of course noticed that various criminal activities, such as the illegal diversion of government funds, narcotics, and tax avoidance are also exposed. But as always, there are real barriers to using this information in domestic law enforcement as the source of the intelligence would have to be exposed.

In part two of the story, the United States and other countries are the victims of some very serious provocations, often behind the scenes but not entirely. Whatever is happening in Ukraine, and whatever happened in Crimea, there is every reason to think Russia is being proactive here behind the scenes. An even better example is the People's Republic of China who, if one can believe what one hears, has executed the largest intelligence operations in the history of the world outside of wartime in their “advanced persistent attacks” against American domestic and military targets. In other words, the PRC waged undeclared war against us, stole an incredible amount of military and other information, and then blandly denied it to our face.

In part three of our story, some part of the intelligence infrastructure, or the administration, notes that various leading members of the governments that are being so annoying have also violated their own laws by having these off-shore accounts for their own personal gain. They have thus made themselves vulnerable to attacks or blackmail of one form or another, perhaps thinking that they are protected because the “Western democracies” never inconveniences the rich of the world. And while that is true, it is possible that a special exception will be made for the leaders of some countries who have really gone out of their way to be annoying.

In part four of our story, the intelligence community of the country or countries try to come up with a way to use this information without having to admit that they have in fact spied on these law firms not to mention the various banking industries of certain nations who are guilty as hell. And it is noted that the world's fourth estate is unbelievably credulous and romantic about the so-called “individual whistle blower” who is acting out of a desire to help the world, or so the press believes.

Thus, the narrative goes, instead of releasing all the information collected from various law firms, banks, and so forth, it is proposed to leak the information of one particularly interesting law firm, and pretend that it came from an individual who, of course, must remain anonymous.  In this way, no one doubts the information the way they would if it came from our government, and even better, we don't have to pay for the analysis which no one would believe anyway. Instead we get hundreds of journalists on someone else's payroll to rake through the muck, having previously checked to see that there is nothing *too* embarrassing to us before it is released. In other words, some Americans and other westerners will be exposed here, but nothing too serious.

Thus I am proposing that one possible explanation for this unprecedented compromise of the great international industry of hiding money had nothing whatsoever with a lone whistle blower at all.

It is made all the more delicious as none other than that narcissistic keeper-of-the-truth, Ed Snowden, is acclaiming this leak and calling on various heads of state to resign.  How wonderful if it were to turn out not to be an individual leaker at all, but none other than the US Intelligence Community?

Sadly as time goes by and more and more prime ministers of the Western nations are forced to resign, this theory becomes more and more unlikely.  Which is a shame.  Perhaps, if it were true, it would merely be an example of "unintended consequences"?   Perhaps there is an intelligence agency somewhere with egg on its face?  Or perhaps it will turn out that this agency was in fact manipulated by the Bavarian Illuminati which stands behind and manipulates all such things? What is great about conspiracy theories is that you never know.

Wikipedia and the Moral Dilemma

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I use Wikipedia every day, at least once a day and probably more often than that. In their latest fundraising, I sent them $10.00 and if you know how cheap I am these days, that is quite a statement on my part.

And yet....

Every once in a while I come across egregious and even gross inaccuracies and therein lies the moral dilemma. Wikipedia is created by thousands of dedicated individuals most of whom are volunteers and all of whom are committed fanatics who probably have nothing better to do with their lives. I tried just this year to fix one egregious character assassination on their part of a living person (Marc Canter), something they *claim* to take special care about, and it was a nightmare. Its all bullshit my friends, they couldn't care less about accuracy as long as they get their rocks off.

So when I come across mistakes, even gross mistakes, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to tilt at windmills and try to fix their misapprehensions? What good will it do? In situations like this, it is the insider who wins, the one with the most time to waste, usually the one who is most insane, and contrary to some beliefs I am not even slightly insane or at least I have no desire to waste my time trying to correct asshole beliefs.

Never try to teach a pig to sing.

If you want to read the bullshit and try to guess what the mistakes are, please see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_operation

You see, contrary to what you see in the movies, almost all black operations are legal, they are approved through a process that involves the Department of Justice, the Intelligence Committees of Congress, and of course the Executive Office of the President and various of his/her staff.   The process of approval is circumscribed in order to keep things as secret as possible, which is something that this government, as stated in the constitution and as approved by the courts, has the right to do.

You should realize that the process is not perfect, that it has changed over the decades, often in response to perceived abuses of the system by various administrations, and because the various Intelligence agencies believe that they have been used by various Administrations and then allowed to hang.   

You should also realize that almost all Intelligence activities have at their core the violation of someone's law, generally speaking, just not US law.  And yes, this is a tricky point in international relations, one that, upon examination, could make one wonder to what extent nations respect international law and to what extent they just pay lip service to it and invoke it when it is convenient to do so.

What Wikipedia should be saying here is that while black operations do not have normal Congressional oversight, they do have a process of approval that has been approved by Congress and the courts, and that these operations are therefore, in general, believed to be legal activities of the US Government, although by definition they are not ones that they would want to be publicly disclosed.

In other words, the paranoid interpretation that all secret intelligence operations by this country are illegal and not approved by the government is simply not true.

But that said, or at least that is my understanding, do I really want to try and change Wikipedia?

Secret Cables of the Comintern

Those of you who aspire to be a faithful student of the cold war will be pleased to hear about a fabulous online resource, the Journal of Intelligence and Security, apparently published by Taylor Francis. The archive is online and I think that by jumping through hoops one can get a certain number of articles for free.

But even if you do not read the journal articles themselves, they make available their book reviews of the current literature and I have found that very useful as a guide or index into subjects.

In particular they review a new book that has resulted from the brief period when certain archives of the Comintern of the former USSR were public. One result of that openness is a collection of secret cables from this organization, the Communist International, sometimes also known as the Third International, which was the organization that worked for Communist revolution in the world.

Our reviewer has something amusing to say about revisionist history in the 1970s and 1980s when it was discovered to the horror of many in this country that the accusation of Soviet control of the American Communist Party and the work of various people such as Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs was not merely right wing paranoid conspiracy theories but were based in fact.

Here is an excerpt from that review.

You can read the full review here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684527.2014.952933

Computer Sciences Corporation Makes A Fast Buck by Betraying Country

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This story today about greed and stupidity features CSC, the Computer Sciences Corporation, a very well known and very large government contractor on important security projects. What you need to know going in is that there is zero possibility that CSC was unaware of what a gross violation not only of law but of trust that the government has, or had, in them by doing what they did.  What did they do?

CSC and another company was hired to engineer an important secure communications system at the Pentagon. A whistleblower revealed that the two companies had subcontracted out a significant part of that project to Russian programmers in Moscow which is not only a direct violation of the letter and spirit of their contract but incredibly stupid as well.

Of course they did this for the best reason that all companies, from Volkswagon to Exxon, violate the law: to make a fast buck at the expense of the people they claim to be working for.

And furthermore, the top executives will probably use the "Volkswagon Defense":, that is, if anyone asks them why they did it, they will no doubt say that they didn't know, and that "engineers" had done it.  That is why we pay these executives 10s of millions a year in salary, bonuses and termination packages, to come up with stupid shit like that.

In this case, it is known that there have been security breaches because of this immense stupidity, at least one virus inserted by the Russians, and who knows how many more, but are the companies punished?

Not really.

The two companies have not admitted to their flagrant violation of law, they have paid a trivial penalty that would not cover even a few pennies of the real costs, and it is now up to the craven and weak Department of Justice to file criminal charges if they dare. But the DOJ never files criminal charges against major US Companies, that would violate every principle that the DOJ stands for which is to protect and exalt the rich.

So one more time we have an example where the so-called free market, e.g. naked greed, violates any and every principle or morality that they claim to uphold.

Good going CSC.

This story is not being covered by the mainstream press as it uses too many big words and probably would not sell as many newspapers, or web clicks, but you can read about it here:

http://intelnews.org/2015/11/12/01-1809/

The US Government should immediately cancel all contracts with CSC and investigate to see in what other ways this criminal organization has violated the trust we had in them.

The Computer Sciences Corporation can be found here.  Their web page gives no indication of to what extent they are a defense contractor.  

http://www.csc.com/

The Meaning of Baccarat in the Identity of James Bond

The modern term of art for the rejuvenation of a franchise is “reboot” and the art of rebooting a beloved property of another generation is full of subtlety as well as peril. A false step can not only damage a franchise for years to come, it can cause the property to deviate from its true nature, and once it walks down the dark path, forever is its destiny affected, at least until the next reboot. It is the management of these properties and their long term development that is one of the most important responsibilities that a studio or producer takes upon themselves.   Like a publisher or curator at a museum, their decisions will quite literally affect our culture, or at least our popular culture.   And with a solemn understanding of their responsibility they approach the problem of adaptation of a franchise with the sensitivity and deliberative nature not unlike a professional castrator of pigs at a slaughterhouse.

As a good producer or studio executive knows, no change is too shallow, inappropriate or ill-advised if it may result in more money in the short run.   In this, they express the highest morality and integrity that our society has to offer.

When the owners of the Bond licenses began development of a new series of Bond films, they had to choose whether to leave Bond in the cold war, and thus make a film set in that era, or bring Bond into our century. They chose to do the latter, updating the character with actor Daniel Craig, and changing Bond's background in a variety of ways both subtle and not so subtle.

One of the changes, at the time unmentioned by any but the most hardcore students of Bond, was to change the preferred card game from a variant of baccarat to a variant of poker, the far-too-trendy “Texas Hold Em” variety. This was either a fundamental mistake or a very bold move on the part of the filmmakers. Did they fully understand the significance of baccarat to the character and identify of James Bond?   Perhaps they merely thought to themselves that the general movie-going audience will not have heard of baccarat in any form and are even less likely to have played it themselves.  Yes, that is correct, and that is part of the point, baccarat is an elitist game of an upper class of society in Europe.

In Dr. No, Ms Sylvia Trench, a guest at the club, plays chermin de fer against a mysterious stranger. 

Joshua Pines, a semi-professional poker player, suggests that poker is a suitable game for James Bond as it is a game of skill, not of chance.  I have no doubt that poker is indeed a game that requires great skill. I would go further and say that poker requires much more skill than even the most skill-oriented form of baccarat, the chemin de fer, which is the variant that Bond plays. But demonstrating skill is only a small part of what baccarat means to the entity we think of as James Bond.

She makes arrangements to raise the limit on the table.  The mysterious stranger introduces himself as "Bond, James Bond" 

When we examine the backstory of James Bond and his relationship with British foreign intelligence, SIS, that is, where Bond came from and what services he can bring to that organization, one aspect of this background is that James Bond is a member of a minor branch of Scottish nobility. He is, as they say, “of station” in the eyes of both British and European nobility. This means that he can go to many places in the world where the rest of us are not welcome, except perhaps as a guest of a member. And even then, we would not be recognized as a peer. But Bond is a peer, a member of the inherited nobility of Europe, a more elite form of society than exists in our country. And this nobility has a long history of being very conscious of who is and who is not a member, and of the social conventions that come with it. In a sense, it is also part of his cover, as in intelligence as well as crime, a good cover is by definition mostly true.

Cmdr. Bond is called away on a secret mission, but he makes arrangements to meet Ms. Trench in a more private setting. 

The game of baccarat also has a long history among the games of chance of European society. It comes in three variations. One variation requires no skill and is a pure game of chance. One variation requires some skill, and the third variation, the chemin de fer, requires the most skill, about as much as the game of blackjack. But demonstrating skill is not the point, and has never been the point of the society of the upper classes. One is there because one was born entitled to be there, not because one was good at anything. That Bond chooses to only play the chemin de fer is revealing about him, he may have something to prove.

Ms Trench arrives early at Bond's apartment, and takes the liberty of getting ready for bed.  Baccarat is clearly value added in terms of improving or enhancing Bond's social life.

When the producers of the Bond movies chose Casino Royale for the reboot, it was the fulfillment of a long-term Bond anomaly. Casino Royale was the only Bond property they could not get the rights due to their being previously licensed to make the Bond spoof of the same name. Thus returning to the Casino Royale was in a way back to basics for Bond. The plot of the novel and of this 2006 motion picture testifies to the cooperation between the US and UK intelligence communities (the CIA backs Bond's game at a critical moment and allows it to continue), and to issues of “fifth columnists” as the antagonist, Le Chiffre, is the chief financier of a French worker's union as well as a paid agent of the Soviet Union in the original text.

Bond was SIS's best gambler, and as a member of the Scottish nobility, would not be out of place at this elite casino.He could legitimately be there and play this European game of chance and skill and work for the destruction of the French traitor. The high stakes game at a casino of this type is unlikely to be poker but could very well be baccarat.

But that is not the only role for baccarat in the novels and movies of James Bond.  Another very notable occasion is at the beginning of Dr. No (1962), the first Bond film with Sean Connery, which opens in Jamaica where a murder takes place, and then switches to Les Ambassadeurs / Le Cercle, a famously elite club of diplomats and aristocracy in London.

It is at this club that the lovely Ms. Sylvia Trench engages in a fierce game of baccarat / chermin de fer with a mysterious stranger.   This stranger introduces himself as "Bond, James Bond," timing his words to match the upbeat of the music track that begins, also mysteriously, in the background. Thus, not only is chermin de fer Bond's game, it is the game that leads inevitably to his first successful romantic liason on film.  Who is to say what would have happened had he been playing poker?  He certainly would not have been at Le Cercle that evening and thus is unlikely to have met Ms Trench.

Certainly CDR Bond knows how to play poker, and plays it well, but it is not a game of the European elite.  (1) Far from it. Poker is the quintessential American card game, a game of skill, a game that probably originated on the riverboat casinos of the Mississippi and then spread West with the frontier. You could hardly get more American than that.

In conclusion, when you change baccarat to poker, which I have no doubt they did without much thought, you actually change a fundamental aspect of Bond's public identity.   Was a reference to a currently trendy American card game really worth such a price?

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1. In reviewing the games of Les Ambassadeurs, see URL below, I notice that three-card poker is currently a game there.  No doubt this is a sign of creeping Americanism and other degrading trends in European society.

Baccarat on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baccarat_%28card_game%29

Dr. No (1962) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055928/

Casino Royale (2006) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381061/

The club where Bond met Ms Trench
http://www.lesambassadeurs.com/

A Commentary on the NSA Disaster from British Cinema of the 1960s

Many Americans do not understand the NSA disclosures and fall into a juvenile and narcissistic (1) explanation based on an endless diet of “evil CIA conspiracies to murder the president and destroy friendly freedom loving countries” plot meme of American movies and TV Shows.  The reality is so much less interesting but in ways that, sadly, require a bit of history to appreciate and that has never been an American strong point. 

This problem of "NSA explanation" extends to our allies in the West who for some reason want to know what is going on and do not trust us,  How funny that an American should have to remind Europeans about history, how very ironic.  These same Europeans are always lecturing us about their superior knowledge of history as learned in elite European universities, something us poor Yanks could never hope to understand given our inferior breeding. This history reminder is especially odd in the case of the United Kingdom. Surely we can count on them for understanding?

Well, yes and no. The more informed of us realize that the NSA disclosures involve operations that are shared with and in part originated with the British and various members of their Commonwealth, but even our well-bred friends seem to have slipped a bit and forgotten that one of the unusual aspects of post 1945 intelligence is the cooperation between the US, the UK and their Commonwealth, a cooperation that, to everyone's surprise, survived the last world war and continues to this day. In other words, its not "us vs them" in this case, it is more likely to be some version of “us vs us” when the full story comes out, if it ever does.

But I speculate, and in the great tradition of retroactively finding meaning in works of art and fiction, I have noticed an oddly plausible discusssion for some of what we know about the NSA disaster in a venerable, indeed perhaps penultimate, spy movie from the Cold War, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) as directed by Martin Ritt from a novel by John le Carre, aka David Cornwell, a veteran of British M.I. {5, 6}.

Control discussing intelligence methods with Leamus in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) 

Although the movie does not discuss anything like the NSA disclosures it does contain words of wisdom, I think, for how people in the Intelligence Community see this sort of thing.

The movie is remarkably faithful to the book, and both are confusing as can be which touches on some of the ambiguity and complexity of the real Cold War. It seems to me that one should not have to worry about spoilers in a movie that came out in 1965, especially to readers of this blog, but the fact is that not everyone has seen this fabulous, if depressing, movie. The good news is that one can discuss major elements of the film and not give anything away, you will still be confused unless you read and/or watch this film several times and spend some time thinking about it.

But fortunately, the scene in question is near the very beginning of the film, and gives very little away except perhaps upon reflection in light of other developments. It is the briefing between the protagonist, Leamus, and his boss in British intelligence, whose work name is Control. In this briefing, Leamus has returned from Berlin where he has just seen the collapse and death of one of his networks, and is meeting with his boss to see if he will be retired, or transferred to a non-operational job, or given another assignment in the field.

As we have discussed earlier in this blog, I believe that one of the greatest of all devices in the history of the cinema is the device of The Explanation. In this scene, the head of the British Foreign Intelligence service explains to an agent some of the rationale behind their work.

I have put the scene up at Youtube, until they take it down, education not being seen as a valid excuse for Fair Use no matter what Congress or the FCC may say. I have also provided a transcript below. The italics are mine. You may watch this scene here.

Control: Would you like a drink?

Leamus: No, I'll wait.

Control: You can still do that?

Leamus: (startled at Control's rudeness)

Control: I wondered whether you were tired, burnt out.

Leamus: (silence)

Control: Well this phenomenon we understand here. Its like metal fatigue. We have to

    live without sympathy, don't we. You can't do that forever. One needs to come in,

    in from the cold.

Leamus: I'm an operator, Control. Just an operator.

Control: There is a vacancy in banking section that might suit you.

Leamus: Sorry, I'm an operational man. I'll take my pension, I don't want a desk job.

Control: You don't know whats on the desk.

Leamus: Paper.

Control: I want you to stay out in the cold a little longer. Please do sit down.

Control: Our work as I understand it is based on a single assumption that the West is never

    going to be the aggressor. Thus, we do disagreeable things, but they are defensive.

    Our policies are peaceful but our methods can't afford to be less ruthless than those

    of the opposition. Can they?

Leamus: (silence)

Control: No, I'd say that since the war our methods, our techniques that is, and those

    of the communists have become very much the same. Right. I mean, occasionally,

    we have to do wicked things. Very wicked things indeed. But, uh, you can't be less

    wicked than your enemies simply because your government's policies are benevolent,

    can you?

Leamus: (silence)

Control: What I have in mind for Mundt is a little out of the ordinary. You haven't met

  have you?

Leamus: Mundt? No.

Control: He was here in 59 posing as a member of the East German steel mission.

Leamus: I was in Berlin.

Control: And, uh, how do you feel about him?

Leamus: Feel?

Control: Yes.

Leamus: He's a bastard.

Control: Right.

Those students of the filmmaking arts will notice that this is not a pure Explanation as it also makes good use of those tired narrative cliches of foreshadowing, well-written dialogue and great acting.

This movie also has several great examples of the art of the Explanation beyond the one already cited. Another one can be found here, but trust me, this one is a spoiler if you have not seen the film.

So in conclusion, I would like to suggest that this fictional discussion from the cold war should serve to remind us that our faithful public servants are often aware of the moral ambiguity of some of their work. Also, in judging this situation without solid knowledge let us not forget that, generally speaking, the NSA is on our side.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059749/

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1. The great narcissism of the American Public is revealed in the presumption that the NSA has nothing better to do than to gleefully and egregiously spy on them as if the NSA was an infinitely resourced department of the Divine Will that watches over every one of God's, or the IRS's, creatures.  Unlike Santa Claus, he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, not.

Journal of Information Warfare

Cryptome has put on their site an NSA journal that is unclassified with the fabulous name of “Journal of Information Warfare”.

It has a variety of entertaining articles, and I have put the table of contents below. I think that most normal people will find it a little difficult to read as it seems to be written with a very turgid government style. One can get used to it but it is certainly not very evocative prose. I suspect that if one were to work in the NSA that one would have to learn to read and write such things effortlessly.

See for yourself.

The Journal of Information Warfare volume 13, issue 2

http://cryptome.org/2014/06/nsa-jiw-2014.pdf

Submarines, Spies and the Search for Malaysia Airlines 370

Every day when I get up, I check to see the latest news on MH 370, our missing 777. Every night when I give up for the day, I check to see the latest news. Its day 49 or so in the search and I am completely fascinated. Its the O.J. Simpson trial of our generation. There are so many little details, nuances, retractions, infographics, revelations, it goes on and on and on. And somewhere, somehow, there is an airplane, whether 4 miles deep or in Afghanistan, waiting to be discovered.

It is commonly asserted on the Internet forums, that the real location of MH 370 has been known for a long time. Here is a quote from a probably non-crazy person on a related topic from an article in news.com.au which you can find here. 

        Professor David Stupples, an expert in electronic and radio engineering at City University,
        London, believes that officials did not upgrade to a more powerful submersible earlier 
        because they were acting on “good” information.

        “My reading of this is that some as yet undisclosed and very good intelligence is at play,” 

        Prof Stupples said.

        “Intelligence that seems to be so sensitive that it has not been disclosed.”

Well, I do not believe they know exactly where the plane is. But I do believe there is reason to think that they might have some evidence that leads them to a guess where the plane might be.  And I think this might be the case because of one of the great stories of the cold war, a story that is partially in the open and yet by no means is it all in the open, a story about how the US Navy found a lost Soviet submarine that had gone down with all hands and which the Russians could not find.

So who is this "they" I refer to?  My guess is that it is the US Navy and maybe even specifically the part of the US Navy that is concerned with anti-submarine warfare.

The US Navy has a tremendous incentive to track the submarines of other nations, particularly those submarines designed to carry strategic missiles. Even the other side does not know where these submarines are, it is a part of the theory of second strike deterrence that neither side knows exactly where they are. Only the submarine itself knows where it is, except at certain intervals when the submarine raises a radio antenna above the surface and checks in. The rest of the time all that is known is the general area where the submarine is, its patrol area.   The submarine is somewhere in that area with all those nuclear missiles.

So the US Navy developed a variety of ways to track such submarines, and most of them involve listening for them. We listen with grids of sensors on the ocean floor, we tow sensors from ships, we drop buoys from the sky and we listen. We listen all the time and we look for very specific things, and those sounds are the sounds of specific types of ships that travel underwater. The ocean is very noisy and so they have a lot of technology to filter out all the things they don't care about.

So how does that help us find MH 370?

The listening stations generally archive their data for a few weeks. We know this from the story of the missing Soviet submarine. So they can go back, if they choose, and are prompt, and look at the data and see if there was anything unusual that took place within a certain time frame. In the case of the Soviet submarine, there were two explosions in the water one several minutes after another, and the sound thereafter of what sounded like many smaller implosions in the water. As if tanks were imploding. Which is what a submarine would sound like if it sank after a disaster.

What would an airliner sound like if it hit the water?

I dont know, it depends on its speed and angle of impact, I think. But almost certainly big sections of it would break apart and sink. And when they sank, the wings with empty fuel tanks and other parts of it would trap pockets of air and implode as it descended to the bottom. 

So my theory goes like this. That out of interest and a desire to help, the people who run some of these sensors decided to look and see what they could see.  Possibly Pres. Obama asked them to. They looked at the data for the period of time that MH 370 could have been flying, and they looked in the general area of that part of the world, and they heard something anomalous. Maybe it was the plane going in, or maybe it was the sound of imploding parts of the plane, or maybe it was both or something else entirely.

According to my theory they would not talk about what they found, they have no intention of compromising their very expensive, very secret systems that have other much more important missions in life.

But they could say to the Australians, “Look in this area, somewhere within about 10 or 20 miles or so of this point. Look there...”

So that is my conspiracy theory.

Thank you.

______________________________________________

Notes

Wikipedia page on SOSUS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS

Undersea Warfare article on SOSUS

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/usw/issue_25/sosus.htm

I am not very impressed with the Wikipedia article on the K-129 submarine which says nothing about how they found it and has other spurious information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_(1960)

Lets Put the National Reconnaissance Office in Charge of Film Production

Rewritten on 5/1/2025 to tone down my real feelings.

Although Hollywood is awash with so-called 3D films, more properly called stereoscopic, there are many of us who doubt their commitment to the medium. Hard to believe, I know, that Hollywood would not be completely sincere but the reality is that many producers are primarily motivated by the business considerations.  

Whether this lack of artistic intent is true in general in studio executives, it is certainly true in the case of stereoscopic films. This stereo "fad", which has lasted longer than I would have guessed, is based on two motivations: an effort to do something that will bring people into the theatre and as part of a larger play with consumer electronics manufacturers to help them sell new televisions to consumers. Beyond that they don't really care.

In addition, stereo projection was enabled by an artifact of digital projection, so it cost the exhibitors very little to be able to reliably project stereo movies. "Very little" is a lot to exhibitors, generally speaking, so there may have been some cost sharing between studios and exhibitors. In other words, studios could hedge their bets by making a stereo version of the film and not have to outlay a lot of money to do so, and in return are covered if stereo exhibition or television becomes very popular.

A tiny percentage of filmmakers actually care about stereoscopic and work to explore what it means to filmmaking and the rest just accommodate the requirement as part of the deal they had to make with the studio to get the project financed. Their sincere cynicism combined with the studio's unwillingness to extend shooting days to allow for the complications of stereo during principal photography is why the filmmakers choose to "add" stereo in the post-production process with the "dimensionalization" techniques. What is interesting about these post-production stereographic techniques is not that they work well, but that they work at all.

The dreary prospect about the lack of passion is the danger of the self-fulfilling prophecy: the filmmakers and studios do not care and the films thus produced are lackluster at best in the area of stereo and the audience senses this and gets bored. And one more time, an opportunity to create a vibrant stereo cinema art form is lost as it has been lost before.

What then can the believer in stereoscopic cinema do to avert this mediocre result? Is there a way forward that will encourage excellence? I think that there is and that the answer is to put someone in charge who believes in stereoscopic, who genuinely cares, and has a proven track record of demanding excellence in this area.  I know of only one such organization: the National Reconnaissance Office.

Notice that the NRO logo image is in the 2.35 widescreen aspect ratio.  This shows that they are already aware of filmmaking conventions.

The NRO is one of the famous secret three-letter agencies of our country's intelligence community. It was and is the one with contract authority to build and launch the satellites and broker the result to the various other agencies and departments such as the CIA, the Dept of the Air Force, and so forth. For decades it has had the largest budget of any three letter agency because the satellites are so damn expensive. Although cloaked in secrecy, the NRO recently declassified their history, or part of it, in "A History of Satellite Reconnaissance" which can be found on their website here.

I think these NRO mission badges are hilarious.

A careful reading of this document will show that various groups inside the NRO have shown a passionate commitment to stereo in various satellite projects as well as an excellent track record for sponsoring the creation of new cameras for reconnaissance, 70mm, counter-balanced, and with other exotic attributes, as well as new and better high resolution film in collaboration with Kodak. They have a proven track record for managing large complicated projects and yet holding firm to what is important. They have integrity and vision.

A stereo project that was managed by the NRO would not be able to get by with shallow and uninteresting post-filmmaking stereoscopy tacked on at the end. No, they would insist on stereo being designed in from the beginning with principal photography being shot in stereo.

Lets end this mediocre effort by the traditional studios who neither understand nor care and put the NRO in charge of all feature film production in Hollywood and get some decent stereo films for a change.

I call upon all the stereoscopic partisans of the world to rise up and write your congressman or whatever the international equivalent may be and demand that the NRO be given this new assignment.  The stereoscopic cinema has been given another chance, lets not throw it away this time.

Visit the NRO on the Internet at www.nro.gov.