Savvy people seeking information might pull up a chair in Washington, D.C. and wait. Almost any place in the northwest or close-in southeast or northeast quadrants of the city will do. Before long, information will present itself. Doesn’t matter if you’re talking insider information about stock exchange companies, military secrets, or the deliberative processes of the executive branch. Information on most any topic imaginable- local, national and international- flows freely and is readily accessible in the capital city. I was reminded of this a few months back when I published a story about a long ago summer job in Massachusetts for a company that I suspected could have been a CIA front operation. It didn’t take but two hours before unsolicited information on both that company and the CIA found its way to me. More recently, some rather disconcerting information on our nation’s counterintelligence activities invaded my personal space.
On the day before Labor Day, I went to the United States Capitol to hear the National Symphony perform its annual Labor Day concert.- a Washington, D.C. tradition. Standing in a security line to gain access to the Capitol grounds, I couldn’t help but overhear an animated and somewhat loud conversation immediately behind me. The speaker, a recent college grad, was describing her job amid floods of giggles. The concept of discretion apparently never occurred to her as she stood among the crowd and announced that she was an intelligence analyst. Giggle, giggle. She explained how her particular role is actually counterintelligence analysis. Giggle. Regular intelligence gathering, she said, involves finding out about things that have already happened, whereas counterintelligence means trying to figure things out before they happen. I’m not sure what was so amusing about this statement, but it was followed by a wave of giggles.
And this is where the unfettered access to information associated with life in Washington, D.C. can be downright disconcerting. This young woman who couldn’t contain her giggles works for the Pentagon where she is supposed to try to predict terrorist incidents. She confided to her friend that to do her job, she is supposed to try to think like a terrorist. Giggle. Giggle? What is so funny about this? She doesn’t know how to think like a terrorist, she said. As far as she is concerned, anyone who would blow himself up is crazy. More giggles. So how’s she supposed to guess what a crazy terrorist is thinking?
By now, anyone hearing her giggly self realized that our nation’s security is at least partially committed to the care of a giggling circa twenty-one year old who has no idea what she’s doing and no idea that it’s not wise to admit her failings in a crowd of thousands of strangers who could be anyone, anyone at all, perhaps high level government officials or perhaps those very terrorists she is supposed to thwart.
This young woman said she was sent to Italy during the Olympics as part of a terrorism prevention team. What did she do there? She said she went to the United States Embassy in Rome and tried to convince officials there that she was working seriously “for once” (her words) in the hopes that they would keep her posted in Italy, allowing her to travel and see the country. Kudos to the United States Embassy in Rome for not falling for this ploy. Much to the dismay of one Embassy in Great Britain where she did end up, I’d venture to guess.
It was all I could do to restrain myself from offering this young woman unsolicited career advice when she mentioned that she might quit her job and go to law school. “Go to school anywhere for any subject matter,” I wanted to tell her. “Just get out of the counterintelligence field.”
For a humorous take on security issues, read this story or this one.
