Know the enemy

I needed to understand my adversary. 

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle”   - Sun Tzu, The Art of War 

In May, I started the conversation with Mac with a fairly good idea of who and what he was. I invited him to be a Facebook friend. Miraculously, his vanity and curiosity and fear were stimulated enough and he responded. I wrote, and confronted him, and he responded again. I startled him and he gave away more than he meant to.

I realized very quickly as the correspondence continued that I needed to understand the world of espionage and covert action. I didn't care about the logistical aspects of tradecraft: blending into scenery or cracking safes or entering secure buildings undetected. What I wanted to know was: "Why? What are their guiding principles? What do they care about? What drives them? What do they want? How do they function?" And, most importantly, "How can I negotiate for Sjors?"

I have my own guiding principles. They have to do with truth-telling to self and others; with being good (rather than nice. They are different things); there is something about protecting the weak and fighting injustice. As I've gotten older, a greater portion of my character is consumed with this last piece. I don't seem able to tolerate injustice anymore.  Like Daisy in Gaiman's Anansi Boys, my personal song has in it the repeat refrain, "Evildoers Beware!"

I know myself. I knew that I had lost too much. I knew that I had lost what mattered most. Sjors was lost to me. What did it matter if I launched an insurgency now?  As it got underway, I knew that this fight was more important than any other fight I'd been in.

I knew what I was willing to do, but I didn't know what Mac and his organization would do. Would they come after me? Would they ransack my apartment? Take my stuff? Would they monitor me? Would they confront me in person? I reconnoitered my neighborhood with a friend in case I needed to know a particular egress. I stored my electronics off-site. I packed a "Go bag" and squirreled it for a quick getaway. I'm not Jason Bourne. I don't have special skills in evasion and I could never win in a street fight, but I didn't want to be an easy target, either.

So I began to research. I read articles and books. I watched movies. John Le Carre was helpful. And there was a book about the British spy ring in Washington DC during WWII: The Irregulars, by Jenet Conan that helped me begin to understand the type of thinking and the egos involved in covert collection.  But the most useful information about the methods and motivations of espionage organizations came from David Perry, an ethicist who interviewed CIA handlers and agents and then wrote a 1995 article about it in the Journal of Conflict Studies: Repugnant Philosophy: Ethics, Espionage and Covert Action.

The article shocked me. The most horrifying realization was: my assumptions about Mac & Co. had been built around a general business model, and the reality was far far worse. I have a fairly good grasp of organizational dynamics and the driving principle to protect the institution. This knowledge and instinct has saved me before now (just try to file a gender complaint within any HR department and watch them circle the wagons). When I read Dr. Perry's article, I realized that the model I had built to understand Mac & Co. wasn't malevolent enough. 

Agencies like Mac's are in the business of deception. Lying isn't merely a company recommendation. It is a requirement. All employees must become expert liars. Dr. Perry cites an observation by Hulnick and Matausch:

The Central Intelligence Agency ex-pects, teaches, encourages, and controls these tactics so that the lies are consistent and supported ('backstopped'). The CIA expects intelligence officers to teach others to lie, deceive, steal, launder money, and perform a variety of other activities that would certainly be illegal if practiced in the United States. They call these tactics 'tradecraft,' and intelligence officers practice them in all the world's intelligence services

Okay, then. So they lied. I could tell that after a couple of exchanges with Mac (and it wasn't as though Sjors had been brilliantly truthful to me, either). What else was there?

It was the management of  operatives and agents that made me sick at heart. I saw in Dr. Perry's description of these methods a form of manipulation that I recognized all too well: the "Subtle web of irresistible compromises" and gently guiding the operatives down a path of self-deception. E. Drexel Godfrey, Jr., former Director of Current Intelligence at CIA, strongly criticized CIA methods of recruiting agents, stating that CIA officers are "painstakingly trained in techniques that will convert an acquaintance into a submissive tool... shred away his resistance and deflate his sense of self-worth."

I had seen these manipulations used against Sjors. Or, I should say: I saw the repercussions in Sjors' psyche as the methods were used to bring him in line and keep him there. Ultimately, they succeeded. Sjors is as lost to me as if he had died.

Mac's organization would not use dirty tactics as a last resort. It was where they started. Knowing this, I walk into this with my eyes wide open.