Great news for unemployed Americans: Many of us are probably Top Secret Intelligence Agents, for the Government. Don’t worry if you’re not really doing much — nobody else is, either. And nobody knows that everybody else is an Intel Asset, or if they know, they don’t know who, exactly, is an Intel Asset. Relax! Submit a report now and then, “to your supervisor.” Have you heard about something funny going on, maybe via Twitter or whatever? Good enough for the CIA or FBI or Military Intelligence (ha) or Universal Exports or The Politico.
We didn’t read the long-ass Washington Post article by Dana Priest, because who reads these things? We did, however, get the same press release from the newspaper that was sent to the cable news producers, which is why this excerpt will sound very familiar if you had Morning Joe or Random CNN Anchor Program playing on the teevee this morning:
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on Top Secret programs related to counter-terrorism, homeland security, and intelligence at over 10,000 locations across the country. Over 850,000 Americans have Top Secret clearances.
* Redundancy and overlap are major problems and a symptom of the ongoing lack of coordination between agencies.
* In the Washington area alone, 33 building complexes for Top Secret work are under construction or have been built since September 2001.
That sounds like a lot of stuff! Anyway, the Post went all out with an iMovie introduction they made and an URL somebody bought from GoDaddy or whatever. [Washington Post]
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This isn’t the first time the feds’ left hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. Is there going to be any more free cheese?
Redundancy and overlap are major problems…
Is it me?
I remember when writing about the secret government meant you were crazy.
[re=620660]Katydid[/re]: It should have read: Overlapping and redundant redundancy is a major recurring problem.
OK, which one of you spies is responsible for the UFO over China?
We know how this ends in US America.
1) Instead of being James Bond, it will be Spy vs Spy.
2) ITT tech will start offering a “degree” in spycraft to those interested (but in fact too dumb or oblivious) to enter the espionage field.
So what’s news about this. Trickie Dickie and Henry the K used ITT intel in Chile all the time. Did ITT have anything to do with Allende getting wacked? Who knows besides the Shadow?
*in before ‘I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you.’*
[re=620662]Panquake[/re]: Now it just means you remembered to take enough A.D.D. medication to be capable of noticing basic, everyday things, like whether the sun is still up there, or if it is raining, or maybe what the Bilderberg Group is up to today (probably something boring).
If I heard secret intelligence, I’d post it to Wonkette, because I figure most of the intel community trolls here all day.
[re=620679]ManchuCandidate[/re]: BTW, my ITT = International Thieves and Thugs, not ITT Tech.
Well of course they need this many spy agencies. As we’ve learned from the TV, at least half of the agencies are rogue groups out to control the world, or else already secretly control the world (Former VP and President Cheney and Logan lead these); those which are still loyal are plagued by moles and have dedicate all their resources and high technology to stopping the rogue groups. That is, when the good agents aren’t actually working for an evil agency, but don’t know it.
I’m just disappointed that I’ve never gotten to witness any of the cool shoot outs or car chases these spies are constantly getting into.
[re=620679]ManchuCandidate[/re]: Can you somehow work Pussy Galore into the equation?
[re=620688]weejee[/re]: /Touches nose/ (Canny.)
[re=620693]JMP[/re]: And don’t forget the ones who don’t know they’re working for an evil agency at first, but then become double agents, and also their father/boyfriend/etc was already in the evil agency as a double, but they thought they were just part of the conspiracy, and there’s this weird DaVinci-punk inventor or something and I completely lost interest after that point.
[re=620660]Katydid[/re]: [re=620669]FMA[/re]: These agencies face several major problems, multiple issues they have to deal with, many of them. Among this significant difficulties are redundancy, repetition, replication, recurrence, overlap, duplication, and different organizations working on the same matters simultaneously.
All rather smacks of the tautological. Except Pussy Galore. Nothing tautological about our P.G., what? (Nudge, nudge.)
[re=620712]JMP[/re]: I hear they’re also doing one another’s jobs all the time, and that it’s a big problem…
If they would just put different facts into every press release, the Washington Post might get folks like Ken Layne (and me) to read the whole long and important article.
[re=620659]chascates[/re]: This is sometimes known as The Stranger.
Intelligence assets or intelligence asshats?
I prefer AMD, personally.
in other words, after Bush named a ‘intelligence” head to take care of redundancies, coordinate agencies etc. they’ve done nothing. Tell me why are we paying this person?
Complex, bloated, redundant and inefficient. That is a description of the Washington Post story. I find it telling that the mammoth opus shared front page space in the Post with a story about the meanies who hog seats on the Metro.
Can you spell “slow news week”?
Damn it. I was led to believe that Chuck was special.
I keep telling everyone I’m not “unemployed,” I’m “redundant.” But still they keep accusing me of being an Anglophile. Maybe this “Official Press Release from Dana Priest” will help them to see my true value to Our Precious Homeland.
I almost got a security clearance once. It was because everybody else at Raytheon Aircraft plant I used to work at was too fucking lazy to go pick up the mail.
Well sure, all of us are American spies, but is Alvin Greene an American spy? That would help explain the bit about taking America back from the terrorists and Communists. Maybe he knows something… Either that or he’s been asleep for the last 21 years.
As a patriot, I’m going to out a spy right here, right now. Am I the only one who has figured out that a woman who is barely familiar with the English language while posing as a public figure is obviously a foreign operative? Esp. when her handlers can send secret messages to her house, which they can see without even leaving Russia? Why has no one arrested Bible Spice?
I’m not the first guy who fell in love with a woman that he met at a restaurant who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist only to lose her to her childhood lover who she last saw on a deserted island who then turned out fifteen years later to be the leader of the French underground.
[re=620830]DustBowlBlues[/re]: Alias FOX GUV
I once put down my employment status on my 1040 as spy. They said I couldn’t DO that, so the next year I put down retired spy. This could explain why I was audited a year later.
[re=620830]DustBowlBlues[/re]: User-of-owls and I were pondering that same point just the other day. Why is that snow billie grifter not in chains?
[re=620693]JMP[/re]: [re=620704]mumblyjoe[/re]: oh, and then later there’s a magical prophecy, but one that uses MATH! or possibly, SCIENCE!, you know like every single fucking other book, movie or TV show for like a decade, but really at that point I was completely fed up.
[re=620833]Extemporanus[/re]: I know. It all sounds like some bad movie.
[re=620833]Extemporanus[/re]:
How were you to know;
she was with the Russians, too
[re=620852]weejee[/re]: And the thread mysteriously dried up quickly after that. Coincidence? I think not!
Does anyone out there know a simple test to determine if one is hot enough to work as a spy? Or is that only in the Russias?
[re=620687]actor212[/re]: If I heard secret intelligence, I’d post it to Wonkette, because I figure most of the intel community trolls here all day.”
That, or on facebook.
I CAN’T believe they left Ernie Kovacks off that poster.
Ernie-Fucking-Kovacks.
It’s OUTRAGEOUS!
[re=620682]MarieDeGournay[/re]:
“Kill me, master. Kill me.”
“Not now, Benson. We have work to do.”
[re=620864]user-of-owls[/re]: The CIA and Navy tried training dolphins to do G2 work. Has the Company mastered the ability to train hookworms to do deep undercover work? Gasp!!!
[re=620704]mumblyjoe[/re]: I was getting at that with the last line, but maybe should have had a bit more detail. I gave up on that shortly after the time jump, and it sounds like that was a good idea. (And Abrams sure loves his time travel; he even worked it into the last couple episodes of Felicity, a college romantic dramadey that had had no sci-fi or fantasy elements until all of a sudden she decides to travel back in time to choose Noel instead of Ben.)
Tried to work in a Chuck refence, but couldn’t think of anything quickly.
[re=620659]chascates[/re]: Feta cheese this time, please!
[re=620888]JMP[/re]: And there’s that new one, which is why I mentioned ex boyfriends. I’m currently taking odds that the he’s actually not a rogue agent per se but actually Totally A Good Guy, only then it ends up he actually is a bad guy after all, if the show makes it to a second season.
Also, what is it with Abrams and one-word titles? Felicity, Alias, Lost, Fringe, Cloverfield, Armageddon. I’m pretty sure he only called Star Trek Star Trek because he had to in order to use the license.
Yes, I am a spy. I’m on the payroll of 26 different agencies, but nobody seems to realize this. If anyone here has a position of responsibility in any such agency, you owe me a check. Plus back pay and interest.
I always try to play the game Harry Mathews played in “My Life in CIA.” If someone suspects you of being a spy, simply play along and do nothing to discourage this perception. It will drive that person completely crazy and lead you into all kinds of adventures.
Here’s what our Toastmasters plays like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbONIQfQmDU
I got an all-caps “BREAKING NEWS” email about this story yesterday from the Post, because the Post now considers a long-winded summary of stuff everyone knew for the last half decade to be breaking news.
[re=620722]OCKerouac[/re]: I think that’s the mission statement for the US Department of Redundancy Department
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