Comments on The Belmont Club,"Agent 202 to Agent 123"

James Jesus Angleton went to his grave convinced that we had been penetrated and he was laughed at and called a paranoid. He was right. Our security clearance vetting procedures will now do an exhaustive job of finding out if you owe $500 or have unpaid parking tickets but can not verify if your college work and associations indicate that you could become a risk. The CIA relies on polygraphs which are probably most useful at discouraging people with minor peccadilloes but which real bad guys might be trained to beat. Other agencies do not use the sweat box but they do not have access to the level of real in depth background checks that would uncover a potential traitor. It certainly does not help that the downside costs for being caught are so low.

For my nickel Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson engaged in a conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States in concert with foreign linked agents of influence like Soros. A proper clearance process would have found them unreliable and removed them years before they did damage. They certainly seem far more deserving of punishment to me than others who are currently in prison.

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bogie wheel,
(who wondered how cretins can infiltrate and rise in the system)
Here is the super secret big secret of security. All you need is a clipboard and you can go anywhere.

“Tell him you’re from MI-9″
- Basil Seal in Evelyn Waugh’s Put Out More Flags

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Nomenklatura,
Traitors often don’t know who they are working for. Suppose that 35 years ago a right wing guy tried to help apartheid South Africa, odds are he’d have ended up working for the Soviets without even knowing it.