In today’s news 11 Russians were arrested as part of a spy ring. Why do the Russians have spies here? This surprised me as I thought much of this behavior was left behind with the cold war – how naive of me. I started to wonder what a modern day spy does? What do they look like? What do they do? Are they like a James Bond? So, I started with the definition: An agent employed by a state to obtain secret information, especially of a military nature, concerning its potential or actual enemies. This reminds me of the book, The Art of War (know thy enemy, use deception and manipulation to achieve your goal). Sometimes I forget all these ugly things are still being done in the dark of night and I forget we are living in a dangerous world. Yet everyday people live in secret in the name of protecting the motherland. But how many people do we need to keep us safe? How much money do we need to spend? I thought a good place to find out would be the CIA’s website. Amazingly, or maybe not so amazingly, the CIA does not reveal any of this information. Here is what they say under FAQ’s
How many people work for the CIA and what is its budget?
Neither the number of employees nor the size of the Agency’s budget can, at present, be publicly disclosed. In 1997, the aggregate figure for all US government intelligence and intelligence-related activities—of which the CIA is but one part—was made public for the first time. The aggregate intelligence budget was $26.6 billion in fiscal year 1997 and $26.7 billion for fiscal year 1998. The intelligence budgets for all other years remain classified.
That figures… people who live in secret don’t share a lot about themselves, including how much money they have and how many of them there are.. But isn’t it our money they are spending and us they are protecting?
In my world the issue of spying doesn’t come up very often. Last time I thought about spies very seriously was in 2001. It was April and a Chinese jet flew so close to our propeller spy plane that he clipped the nose cone forcing our pilot to make an emergency landing on Chinese soil. I remember thinking, what the hell are we doing flying around China in a spy plane to begin with? What were we listening to? How much of this stuff goes on everyday? If someone was flying around my house listening and watching what I was doing all day that would piss me off. Do we have Chinese planes flying around the USA all day and night? This is insane, what a waste of time and energy? Think of the expense alone… Seems to me that you can go on YouTube see just about everything you want in America from the comfort of you chair in Beijing. The world is becoming transparent. What is everybody trying to learn about everyone else? What is so secret? I can only speculate that it is about nuclear stuff or weapons, things the general public would be too scared to deal with. What else could it be? Why can’t we just be honest about what is happening?
I guess this stuff can get pretty surreal, do you remember Alexander Litvinenko? He was an officer who served in the KGB and publicly accused his superiors of ordering the assassination of Russian tycoon and oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
According to wikipedia, Litvinenko was arrested on charges of exceeding his authority at work. He was acquitted in November 1999 but re-arrested before the charges were again dismissed in 2000. He fled with his family to London and was granted asylum in the United Kingdom, where he became a journalist and writer.
During his time in London Litvinenko authored two books, “Blowing up Russia: Terror from within,” and “Lubyanka Criminal Group,” where he accused Russian secret services of staging the Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts in an effort to bring Vladimir Putin to power. He also accused Putin of ordering the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
On 1 November 2006 Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized in what was established as a case of poisoning by radioactive polonium-210 and that resulted in his death on 23 November. The events leading up to his poisoning and death are a matter of controversy. The British investigation into his death resulted in a failed request to Russia for the extradition of Andrey Lugovoy whom they accused of Litvinenko’s murder, contributing to the further cooling of Russia–United Kingdom relations.
So it sounds like spying, murder and covert operations are integrated into the work at the highest levels of government . Our own CIA mission statement says that the CIA is the nation’s first line of defense but it also goes on to say it’s conducting covert action at the direction of the President to preempt threats or achieve US policy objectives.
To me, it sure seems like our society is immature as a whole. Things are so untrusting that the USA has “covert policy” as part of the basic job of our leader… and we are one of the more advanced cultures on the planet – what are the rest of the people doing?
I want a world where we have no spy agencies…. I don’t mean that we stop being diligent against some random terrorist, I think that will always be part of the game… But why don’t we just stop spying on our neighbors? I know the Chinese aren’t exactly our friends… although they have loaned us trillions of dollars. I know the Russians haven’t quite been the greatest partners but we did build a space station together, we can get along. I would bet that most people think this is a crazy idea, that I am naive, that it puts us at huge risk. How could we risk having no CIA? But on the other hand, we know that trust starts with somebody taking a risk. We know that America is the leader of the world in almost every way. With all our faults we still have the best track record when it comes to core values. Somebody has to lead us out of this mess. If not us, who? If not now, when?
I say let’s stop spying on our neighbors What are we really learning that makes us safer anyway… oh that’s classified.
What do you think?
