6 ms·

Adam Curtis has a great post on this. "BUGGER: Maybe the real state secret is that spies aren't very good at their jobs and don't know very much about the worl

Adam Curtis has a great post on this. "BUGGER: Maybe the real state secret is that spies aren't very good at their jobs and don't know very much about the world" https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9...

yters 7y ago
80/20 rule probably applies to every job.
- krustyburger 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  The whole thing sounds pretty damning until one considers that Enigma was in the end an intelligence operation to place things in perspective.
  - yters 7y ago
    I wonder if we mostly just hear about intelligence failures. Seems successful intelligence is most likely to be kept under wraps so reliable methods are not disclosed.
    - caseysoftware 7y ago
      I worked at the Department of Justice ~15 years ago. This is the exact reason I got out. My boss who had been in the field and around the alphabet soup of names for almost 30 years said: "No one will ever know all the times we've done our job well.. but every mistake will get us f*d up the ass."
      - mattmanser 7y ago
        Not sure what you're saying here, is it that you got out because your boss was incompetent and delusional, or you got out because he was effective but you needed some sort of external validation despite your work being effective? Very confusing comment, whichever is true.
        pvaldes 7y ago
        I understand that is saying that their good job was not appreciated, but the eventual mistake was always criticised so they just can't win or keep a positive image of themselves. Sounds like a draining job. On the other hand, claiming that "We didn't see it coming" is the safer and more logical public reaction for most cases. The opposite "We knew that this would happen" is a mine field. If they knew it; there is an informer. With enough repetitions or forcing rare events to test the reactions, anybody suspicious could be disclosed as mole. And if they knew it, but didn't do anything to prevent a disaster, the public outrage wave would hit they really hard. Better to pretend to be dumb.
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        It’s like running IT in a company. If things go well people are asking what you are doing the whole day. If things don’t go well you get the blame.
        DoctorOetker 7y ago
        really, this isn't different from any job, and not evidence that that it was not a case of "you only had one job!"
    - colechristensen 7y ago
      There are advantages to everyone thinking your spies aren't very useful.
      - Krasnol 7y ago
        Wasn't the argument the other way around? Like everyone thinking your spies are everywhere and know everything?
        hutzlibu 7y ago
        Both versions work, depending on the situation.
        bryanrasmussen 7y ago
        If your spies are everywhere then it is useful if people think they're no good. If your spies are no good or nonexistent it is beneficial that people think they are omnipresent masterminds. on edit: fixed typo
        colechristensen 7y ago
        Generally people having extreme opinions about your abilities positive or negative is good.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Or the whole room 40 stuff in ww1 basically tracking the German High seas fleet in real time.
- Millennium 7y ago
  In this case I'd say it's more like 99/1, only even more so, to the point where using numbers doesn't even make sense. Spies are way more trouble than they're worth, except when they're not. But when they are not, they're worth literally everything.
mlb_hn 7y ago
The US Army had previously pointed out a similar issue to the BBC article, where a lack of internal guidance and oversight was leading to analysis and collection of non-optimal data [1]. Just like in academia, there seems to be a bit of a tension in getting to useful predictive insights to issues. [1] http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/AfghanistanMGFlynn_Jan2010.pdf http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/Afghanistan...
Nimitz14 7y ago
Oh my god the incompetence is outrageous. Thank you for posting. Le Carre's mocking of the American counterparts doesn't seem fair in light of this. Or maybe his point was at least the Brits were so incompetent they didn't really do that much in the end!
otakucode 7y ago
I've always been stunned that the CIA is permitted to continue operation after their many catastrophic failures. I mean, failures on a scale that are just mind-blowing and show their intense ineffectiveness. A couple weeks before the USSR collapsed, for instance, the CIA wrote a paper describing the USSR as a threat continuing to grow and the largest threat on the global stage. This isn't so much because they were incapable of seeing that the USSR was on the brink of collapse.... well, sort of I guess it was. What I mean is that they had the intelligence to know, but the concept was so dangerous for them to fathom organizationally that they couldn't admit it. The USSR was their bread and butter. They had more spies in Moscow than the KGB. We already knew the USSR wasn't doing great when Reagan was around. When he took office, the CIA was asked to do the standard thing and put together a bunch of briefings for the incoming president. The head of the USSR division at the time was Aldritch Aimes. He put together a paper saying the USSR was a paper tiger and running out of money. The director of the CIA threw the report away and told Aimes 'the president wants an enemy and we're going to give him one'. (that was one of the major things Aimes claimed made him jaded and led to him becoming a double agent for the KGB because he no longer viewed the CIA as doing serious work for good but just a group of opportunistic lackeys) So they missed the USSR collapsing... and the fall of the Berlin wall... and the Arab Spring... basically every gigantic sociopolitical change for the past 70 years has caught the CIA by surprised and that not being the case is literally their only job.
- smsm42 7y ago
  > led to him becoming a double agent for the KGB So some spied did some efficient work, apparently, just not the CIA ones.
- Ascendency 7y ago
  Actually, that story shows how the CIA did their job well...but politicians and President Reagan didn’t want to hear it and used their oversight role to force their intelligence experts to fit their narrative. For the last 40+ years, political forces in the US are increasingly trying to distort facts to fit narratives instead of accepting facts and then spinning / competing over what to do about it.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
paggle 7y ago
Reminds me of the article “Maybe today’s Navy is just not very good at driving ships” https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swos-a-culture-in-crisis/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swo...
cm2187 7y ago
France had its own fair share of embarrassing secret service blunders. Many are described in an excellent documentary [1]. For instance when New Zealand arrested the DGSE agents who sunk the Rainbow Warrior, the agents gave them the phone numbers of their “relatives” as part of their cover story. Instead of calling the numbers, the New Zealand police called their french counterpart to do a reverse lookup on the numbers, and the French police responded that the numbers belong to the DGSE... One of the biggest success of French secret services is Farewell, the code name for a Soviet officer providing valuable intelligence to the DST. Based on this intelligence, France expelled Russian agents. The Russian ambassador protested to the French foreign minister, who showed him some stolen document to prove that France was well informed. Having seen what document had been stolen, it didn’t take long to the Russians to identify the source and execute him. Or in the 80s in Lebanon. A huge explosion killed dozens of French UN soldiers. France suspected Iran was behind the attack and decided to respond in kind. They left a jeep loaded with explosives in front of the Iranian embassy but the bomb didn’t explode. They then tried to shoot on the jeep to make it explode, no luck. It didn’t take long to the Iranian to find who purchased the jeep... [1] first part (the others must be on youtube too): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JQijy9P7M_4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JQijy9P7M_4
- w1nst0nsm1th 7y ago
  Reminds "Bons Baisers de Hong Kong" (which could be translated as "From Hong Kong With Love"), a parody of Bond movies... Souvenirs, souvenirs...
goatinaboat 7y ago
That is the enduring appeal of James Bond movies - the comforting fantasy that the spy agencies are competent
im3w1l 7y ago
The world has changed a lot, and quickly. I imagine not too long ago, just having someone in another country, hanging out in cafes reading newspapers and making small talk with the other people there could have brought a lot of info. Info which we take for granted now.

yters 7y ago

80/20 rule probably applies to every job.

krustyburger 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
The whole thing sounds pretty damning until one considers that Enigma was in the end an intelligence operation to place things in perspective.
- yters 7y ago
  I wonder if we mostly just hear about intelligence failures. Seems successful intelligence is most likely to be kept under wraps so reliable methods are not disclosed.
  - caseysoftware 7y ago
    I worked at the Department of Justice ~15 years ago. This is the exact reason I got out. My boss who had been in the field and around the alphabet soup of names for almost 30 years said: "No one will ever know all the times we've done our job well.. but every mistake will get us f*d up the ass."
    - mattmanser 7y ago
      Not sure what you're saying here, is it that you got out because your boss was incompetent and delusional, or you got out because he was effective but you needed some sort of external validation despite your work being effective? Very confusing comment, whichever is true.
      - pvaldes 7y ago
        I understand that is saying that their good job was not appreciated, but the eventual mistake was always criticised so they just can't win or keep a positive image of themselves. Sounds like a draining job. On the other hand, claiming that "We didn't see it coming" is the safer and more logical public reaction for most cases. The opposite "We knew that this would happen" is a mine field. If they knew it; there is an informer. With enough repetitions or forcing rare events to test the reactions, anybody suspicious could be disclosed as mole. And if they knew it, but didn't do anything to prevent a disaster, the public outrage wave would hit they really hard. Better to pretend to be dumb.
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      It’s like running IT in a company. If things go well people are asking what you are doing the whole day. If things don’t go well you get the blame.
      - DoctorOetker 7y ago
        really, this isn't different from any job, and not evidence that that it was not a case of "you only had one job!"
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    There are advantages to everyone thinking your spies aren't very useful.
    - Krasnol 7y ago
      Wasn't the argument the other way around? Like everyone thinking your spies are everywhere and know everything?
      - hutzlibu 7y ago
        Both versions work, depending on the situation.
      - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
        If your spies are everywhere then it is useful if people think they're no good. If your spies are no good or nonexistent it is beneficial that people think they are omnipresent masterminds. on edit: fixed typo
      - colechristensen 7y ago
        Generally people having extreme opinions about your abilities positive or negative is good.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Or the whole room 40 stuff in ww1 basically tracking the German High seas fleet in real time.
Millennium 7y ago
In this case I'd say it's more like 99/1, only even more so, to the point where using numbers doesn't even make sense. Spies are way more trouble than they're worth, except when they're not. But when they are not, they're worth literally everything.

mlb_hn 7y ago

The US Army had previously pointed out a similar issue to the BBC article, where a lack of internal guidance and oversight was leading to analysis and collection of non-optimal data [1]. Just like in academia, there seems to be a bit of a tension in getting to useful predictive insights to issues. [1] http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/AfghanistanMGFlynn_Jan2010.pdf http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/Afghanistan...

Nimitz14 7y ago

Oh my god the incompetence is outrageous. Thank you for posting. Le Carre's mocking of the American counterparts doesn't seem fair in light of this. Or maybe his point was at least the Brits were so incompetent they didn't really do that much in the end!

otakucode 7y ago

I've always been stunned that the CIA is permitted to continue operation after their many catastrophic failures. I mean, failures on a scale that are just mind-blowing and show their intense ineffectiveness. A couple weeks before the USSR collapsed, for instance, the CIA wrote a paper describing the USSR as a threat continuing to grow and the largest threat on the global stage. This isn't so much because they were incapable of seeing that the USSR was on the brink of collapse.... well, sort of I guess it was. What I mean is that they had the intelligence to know, but the concept was so dangerous for them to fathom organizationally that they couldn't admit it. The USSR was their bread and butter. They had more spies in Moscow than the KGB. We already knew the USSR wasn't doing great when Reagan was around. When he took office, the CIA was asked to do the standard thing and put together a bunch of briefings for the incoming president. The head of the USSR division at the time was Aldritch Aimes. He put together a paper saying the USSR was a paper tiger and running out of money. The director of the CIA threw the report away and told Aimes 'the president wants an enemy and we're going to give him one'. (that was one of the major things Aimes claimed made him jaded and led to him becoming a double agent for the KGB because he no longer viewed the CIA as doing serious work for good but just a group of opportunistic lackeys) So they missed the USSR collapsing... and the fall of the Berlin wall... and the Arab Spring... basically every gigantic sociopolitical change for the past 70 years has caught the CIA by surprised and that not being the case is literally their only job.

smsm42 7y ago
> led to him becoming a double agent for the KGB So some spied did some efficient work, apparently, just not the CIA ones.
Ascendency 7y ago
Actually, that story shows how the CIA did their job well...but politicians and President Reagan didn’t want to hear it and used their oversight role to force their intelligence experts to fit their narrative. For the last 40+ years, political forces in the US are increasingly trying to distort facts to fit narratives instead of accepting facts and then spinning / competing over what to do about it.
C1sc0cat 7y ago

paggle 7y ago

Reminds me of the article “Maybe today’s Navy is just not very good at driving ships” https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swos-a-culture-in-crisis/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swo...

cm2187 7y ago

France had its own fair share of embarrassing secret service blunders. Many are described in an excellent documentary [1]. For instance when New Zealand arrested the DGSE agents who sunk the Rainbow Warrior, the agents gave them the phone numbers of their “relatives” as part of their cover story. Instead of calling the numbers, the New Zealand police called their french counterpart to do a reverse lookup on the numbers, and the French police responded that the numbers belong to the DGSE... One of the biggest success of French secret services is Farewell, the code name for a Soviet officer providing valuable intelligence to the DST. Based on this intelligence, France expelled Russian agents. The Russian ambassador protested to the French foreign minister, who showed him some stolen document to prove that France was well informed. Having seen what document had been stolen, it didn’t take long to the Russians to identify the source and execute him. Or in the 80s in Lebanon. A huge explosion killed dozens of French UN soldiers. France suspected Iran was behind the attack and decided to respond in kind. They left a jeep loaded with explosives in front of the Iranian embassy but the bomb didn’t explode. They then tried to shoot on the jeep to make it explode, no luck. It didn’t take long to the Iranian to find who purchased the jeep... [1] first part (the others must be on youtube too): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JQijy9P7M_4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JQijy9P7M_4

w1nst0nsm1th 7y ago
Reminds "Bons Baisers de Hong Kong" (which could be translated as "From Hong Kong With Love"), a parody of Bond movies... Souvenirs, souvenirs...

goatinaboat 7y ago

That is the enduring appeal of James Bond movies - the comforting fantasy that the spy agencies are competent

im3w1l 7y ago

The world has changed a lot, and quickly. I imagine not too long ago, just having someone in another country, hanging out in cafes reading newspapers and making small talk with the other people there could have brought a lot of info. Info which we take for granted now.