Reading the report of the 9 / 11 Commission, one thing becomes clear: in our system of government secrecy and classification, there is always the "Story" or "Narrative" that someone somewhere within the enormous Government and Military Secrecy Establishment will make a decision correctly to share information with government agents that need that information.
After 9 /11, it became clear that there was no such screenplay device, no "deus ex machina" which will suddenly share the info at a critical moment, enabling the hero to defuse the bomb or whatnot. Then there was an enormous amount of money spent to try and correct this, and to assure that someone somewhere will share secrets.
That is a story. It is not reality. There is no one anywhere who can and will make the right decision to share secrets in a system devoted to secrecy. There is no nexus where everything comes together, where someone has total vision.
A story, a narrative, and a myth. How many myths rule our lives today? Jospeh Campbell was wrong; what we need is more myths of the type which ennoble us, not the ones of today which degrade us: degrade our wisdom, degrade our religion, degrade our hopes, and make us such as we are today.
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2 comments:
At the heart of the secrecy establishment is a pervasive disdain for others in the establishment doing the same thing. You are right there is no czar to pull it all together, but I contend the myriad agencies we have doing spying on them and us are all inveterate opponents of one another. Winning in the bureaucracy counts more than victory in some other field of endeavor. Besides, the record of all these agencies in actually producing decent, effective intel is negligible, to say the least.
And I don't believe the b.s. that they've done a fabulous job since 9/11. I won't believe it till I have evidence. All the evidence I have to date is that these people are constantly tromping on their foreskins (as the DoD jargon so elegantly puts it).
I agree. They are "opponents" because in a system devoted to secrecy, I believe it is impossible to have a "central intelligencer" disbursing information in a timely manner.
As far as a fabulous job, they were the WMD boys in 2002-2003.
And that is an elegant phrase. I'll try it out in different ways, different situations, and different organs.
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