CNN reports that a former State Department official and his wife have been arrested for spying for Cuba. The blog of the Legal Times says they were known as “Agent 202″ and “Agent 123″ respectively. They received instructions from their handlers via shortwave radio. Agent 202 was recruited in 1978.
According to the affidavit accompanying the indictment, Kendall, an army veteran and Johns Hopkins University PhD, was first recruited by Cuba during a visit to the island in 1978. At the time he was employed by the State Department’s Foreign Services Institute.
After returning from the island, he allegedly wrote that he had become “bitter” about the political situation in the United States, and that “watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience.”
“Everything one hears about Fidel suggests that he is a brilliant and charismatic leader,” he wrote. “Fidel has lifted the Cuban people out for the degrading and oppressive conditions which characterized pre-revolutionary Cuba. He has helped the Cubans to save their own souls. He is certainly one of the great political leaders of our time.”
Capitol Hill Cubans has a lot of detailed information, much of it apparently taken from the indictment. Agent 202 was discovered after an audit of his hard drive after retirement, plus analysis of communications intercepts, indicated that he had been spying for the Cubans.
According to an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, Kendall Myers began his work at the State Department in 1977, initially serving as a contract instructor at the Department’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington, Va. After living briefly in South Dakota, he returned to Washington, D.C., and resumed employment as an instructor with FSI. From 1988 to 1999, in addition to his FSI duties, he performed periodic work for the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR).
Kendall Myers later began working full-time at the INR and, from July 2001 until his retirement in October 2007, he was a senior analyst for Europe for INR, where he specialized in intelligence analysis on European matters and had daily access to classified information through computer databases and otherwise. He received a Top Secret security clearance in 1985 and, in 1999, his clearance was upgraded to Top Secret/SCI. …
According to the affidavit, Kendall Myers traveled to Cuba in December 1978 after receiving an invitation from an official who served at the Cuban Mission to the United States in New York City. … Approximately six months after the trip, the Myers were visited in South Dakota by the official from the Cuban Mission in New York and, according to the affidavit, Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers agreed to serve as clandestine agents of the Cuban government. …
The public is reminded that criminal complaints and indictments contain mere allegations and are not evidence of guilt. A defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
He was arrested after an April, 2009 FBI undercover operation caught him on tape agreeing to identify US government officials with responsibility for Latin America. … According to the affidavit, he also acknowledged delivering information to the CuIS that was classified beyond the “Secret” level. He further stated that he had received “lots of medals” from the Cuban government and that he and his wife had met and spent an evening with Fidel Castro in 1995.
A 2006 blog post from Stubborn Facts noticed a speech by Myers at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Advanced International Studies carried in a Times Online article.
The policy of hugging America close has been a failure for the British, a US State Department analyst claims … Dr Myers said that he could not think of anything to put on “the asset side of the ledger” for the Prime Minister other than being an articulate advocate of the war and foil for Mr Bush. “When Tony said it, at least the words strung along eloquently.” But he added: “Unfortunately, Tony Blair’s background was as an actor, not as an historian. If only he had read a book on the 1920s [when Britain briefly occupied Iraq], he might have hesitated.” …
He added that “in a certain sense I hope they [Britain] break it with us” because it was important for Britain to have stronger bonds with the EU. “But what I think and fear is that Britain will draw back from the US without moving closer to Europe. In that sense, London’s bridge is falling down.”
Kendall’s alleged and sudden outrage at the poor treatment of Cuba in 1978 during the Carter Administration and the six month period between his hiring by State and his recruitment by the foreign intelligence suggests that his sympathies were set long before then. His story may begin long before the actual recruitment and extends, I suspect, beyond the involvement of Agent 123 as well. The edges of conspiracy are vague and the real story is often buried beneath layers of misdirection. To ordinary people, the events as described in the affidavit sound like a bad episode from the Republic Serials, with a TS-SCI cleared federal employee receiving instructions over shortwave radio from a cigar-chomping dictator with plans to rule the hemisphere. This can’t happen, but it does. Implausible or not, this world exists. It’s odd to realize that there are people out there, wearing either white or black hats, who weigh their words habitually to make sure that one part of their lives doesn’t leak out into the other; who observe strange rules of transportation and communication; who are watching and are watched. The shadow wars are real. Ok. Take a deep breath and wait thirty seconds. Now we can forget that universe exists.
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67 Comments
1. Roderick Reilly:“”"“Everything one hears about Fidel suggests that he is a brilliant and charismatic leader,” he wrote. “Fidel has lifted the Cuban people out for the degrading and oppressive conditions which characterized pre-revolutionary Cuba. He has helped the Cubans to save their own souls. He is certainly one of the great political leaders of our time.””"”
Sounds familiar. I wonder how long Steven Spielberg, Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, Sean Penn and Michael Moore have been spying for Cuba
Jun 5, 2009 - 2:43 pm 2. wretchard:Willie Sutton once said, when asked why he knocked over banks, replied “because that’s where the money is.” It’s the same with secrets and influence. It is people in trusted positions, in high social places and in political office who are recruited to betray because they are in a position to betray. If you were Cuban or Chinese intelligence, you wouldn’t waste your time recruiting people with no access. You want access. To the money men, the opinion leaders, to the movers and shakers. Spies are there because that’s where the secrets are.
Jun 5, 2009 - 2:49 pm 3. steeple:like the cockroach analogy, there are likely more than just two here
Jun 5, 2009 - 2:52 pm 4. Salt Lick:Can anyone here convince themselves Mr. Obama won’t feel a twinge of sympathy for Mr. Kendall? Or, in the reverse, will feel outrage over Mr. Kendall’s treachery?
Isn’t this just an example of two imperfect nations in needless struggle over issues they could resolve if they just put their wills to the wheel of peace?
Jun 5, 2009 - 3:09 pm 5. Fat Man:Only a McCarthyite wingnut would believe that the State Department is larded with communists.
Jun 5, 2009 - 3:11 pm 6. dan:The shadow wars – yes. The most fascinating subject, I think. Great book on the Stalinist effort is Double Lives by Stephen Koch.
Of course only fascist McCarthyist paranoids believe in such things – or believe they have an effect on national policy and public perception.
That is the most interesting response, I think, in light of the tons of information to the contrary: that “oh yes, this happens, but it doesn’t have any *effect* on anything, really.”
Nah. The KGB? What’s that? Means nothing. Move along now.
Jun 5, 2009 - 3:30 pm 7. Ashen:lol Fat Man, totally true. Totally.
Jun 5, 2009 - 3:30 pm 8. whiskey:This shows the longing for a Dictator, a Strong Man, an absolute hereditary ruler. By 1978, Fidel had ruled continuously for nearly twenty years. He has now ruled for fifty.
Left-right is not a good model. That of tyrant, of the hereditary model, vs. a mostly free society is the better one.
Jun 5, 2009 - 3:30 pm 9. Thrasymachus:Here’s another thing to add to the list of Stuff White People Like- “Leaking classified information.” And Christian Lander might add, “If you really want to impress a white person, take the next step and actually become an agent of a hostile Third World government. You will run a small risk of bruising the ego of a white person who doesn’t have access to top secret files or high level State of CIA officials but a medal from the Cubans beats an old Vespa or a trip to India as a status symbol any day.”
Anyone who was outraged by the bullying, imperialist behavior of the US during the *Carter* Administration must be really, really far to the left.
Jun 5, 2009 - 3:39 pm 10. Roderick Reilly:“”"”"”Only a McCarthyite wingnut would believe that the State Department is larded with communists.”"”"”"
That’s an odd, anachronistic statement. For the record, in the 40’s and 50’s, the State Department WAS larded with communists — the Soviets’ own archives confirmed this. There really was a substantial communist conspiracy in the U.S. government and in America unions. Joe McCarthy’s excesses notwithst . . . . .
Hey, wait a minute? Fat Man is being sarcastic.
Sorry guy, I missed the subtle satire.
Jun 5, 2009 - 3:41 pm 11. Pat Patterson:OK, now I officially have a headache. Kendall became a communist spy and sympathizer during the Carter Administration? Or is this something like being a premature anti-communist only it’s an example of a premature BDS.
Jun 5, 2009 - 3:42 pm 12. Stan:This is the sort of thing done by small states to protect themselves from the evil machinations of the US.
If Cuba was a malevolent dictatorship they would control all public (and much of private through party snitches)speech in their country, send troops to foreign countries to help impose their preferred political outcomes, hold thousands of political prisoners in their prisons and execute thousands of political opponents and suck wealth from the people so that their political elite became rich… oh wait…
Jun 5, 2009 - 3:44 pm 13. dan:Another thing – this one example gives the lie to a thesis or meme I read constantly among historians engaged in exposing the extent of the Soviet penetration of American institutions and cultural life during the 1930s and 1940s. They claim that after Khruschev’s “secret speech” there were no more ideological agents; instead, the KGB had to recruit based on money, blackmail, compromise, etc. Whether it’s Oleg Kalugin, Harvey Weinstein, Christopher Andrews, or Jim Woolsey, they all claim faith in Bolshevism died that day, or in any case died during the Hungarian repression – or definitely upon the crushing of the Prague Spring.
I call bulls–t: that is nonsense. Half my friends are Leninists without even knowing it. Every time I read it – Woolsey saying “after World War 2 the Politburo was only interested in keeping its dachas, not revolution” – I think, These people know better. Why do they say this?
Jun 5, 2009 - 3:44 pm 14. Rob:Shrug; in 30 years when we learn who Obama’s really working for none of this will matter…
Jun 5, 2009 - 3:53 pm 15. Knight:I think it is interesting that the announcement and arrests were made around the exact time Pres. Obama was making overtures to Cuba. First, the CIA’s mole Aldrich Ames – 2/23/1994; then the FBI’s Robert Hanson, 2/20/2001; and now the State Department. As Wretchard said, that’s where the spies are.
Jun 5, 2009 - 4:03 pm 16. Bonzo:Orson Scott Card’s ‘The Worthing Saga’ by far is my favorite science fiction story. Period.
Abner Doon runs everything on his planet, but to everyone else, including the Queen, Doon is a low level bureaucrat of no importance, he simply runs everything.
1. Who pulls Obama’s strings? No way he does. 2. Are the America hating, lifelong ‘beaurocrats’ who undercut W happy with the result? When it comes to empathy I’ll stand with ‘Justice’ (I cannot find a good link for the character ‘Justice’).
Jun 5, 2009 - 4:04 pm 17. Bonzo:I no nothing of this blog author:
Imagine living in a world where there is no pain, no suffering, no grief, no fear, no anger, no violence, no injury. Wrong actions, in a sense, have ceased to have consequences. If a person were to hurt himself/herself chopping wood or tending the fires, then there would be instant–almost magical–healing. Even morally wrong actions are prevented, on this world there are no children out of wedlock; and the child is always the husband’s never the lover’s if you’re an adulteress. Yes, there is an occasional death, but never for the very young, never for the able-bodied. It is hard to imagine for us this life of easy contentment. A life with no struggles? A life truly worry-free? A world where fire doesn’t burn you and ice doesn’t freeze you? Surely there must be a catch, right? Some reason why this world isn’t a perfect paradise…
http://blbooks.blogspot.com/2007/06/worthing-saga.html
Jun 5, 2009 - 4:29 pm 18. RWE:For years there was the mystery of the “numbers stations”. On shortwave a voice could be heard saying strings of numbers. You could pick it up in the southeast U.S. with even a cheap SW receiver.
It has always been assumed that it was some intel agency communicating with its agents, perhaps through use of a one-time pad or something like that. But nope, it was just Fidel talking to the US State Dept.
Jun 5, 2009 - 4:58 pm 19. pst314:How long until NPR invites this couple to do a weekly radio show?
Jun 5, 2009 - 5:03 pm 20. bogie wheel:I’d like a refund of my tax dollars that went to pay this lout.
Heck, even if it amounted to just 3 cents, I still want a refund.
Jun 5, 2009 - 5:08 pm 21. John Lynch:Bonzo-
Yeah, Abner Doon is a character that I’ll always remember.
However, he was bringing down a civilization doomed to decadence and decay. Are we?
Jun 5, 2009 - 5:20 pm 22. ledger:Shouldn’t Obama step in and give these two a position at the University of Illinois?
Obama could give them a title of “Distinguished Professor of Education” and “Senior University Scholar” like Bill Ayers. Obama has very good connections in the Ivy League world.
Jun 5, 2009 - 5:26 pm 23. Willie G:As I mentioned once, the only secrets ever lost were by those who had been (sometimes exhaustively) screened and investigated by our beloved government. (No offense, Subotai)
Makes you wonder….
Jun 5, 2009 - 5:33 pm 24. Blindman:I just dusted off my old copy of Tinker,Tailor, Soldier,Spy. Sadly Wretchard is right, there is a shadow world. Borders and loyalties are less distinct, an enemy once corrupted becomes an asset.
” He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath—”The horror! The horror!”
– Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Jun 5, 2009 - 6:03 pm 25. jaymaster:There are also many people wearing gray hats.
Jun 5, 2009 - 6:14 pm 26. Mad Fiddler:How many more citadels have been lost by betrayal from within than ever fell to assault?
Jun 5, 2009 - 6:16 pm 27. Uncle Jefe:Hang ‘em.
Jun 5, 2009 - 6:26 pm 28. Enscout:South Dakota?
Is it any coincidence that Mennonite farmers have been living communally there for longer than the Soviet Union existed? And still going strong.
There may be no connection with Myers, but the system they use is a purer form – less tyrannical, more freedoms – of communism than what the Soviets could ever master. Although they’ve always had trouble “keeping them down on the farm”.
Jun 5, 2009 - 6:40 pm 29. Lifeofthemind: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 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.
Blindman, well put.
Jun 5, 2009 - 6:41 pm 30. Lifeofthemind:Now the goofy Ajax system said that I did not have permission to edit my own comment during the 5 minute window. Wanted to correct a small typo so it reads “you could become a risk.”
Jun 5, 2009 - 6:49 pm 31. bogie wheel:LOTM – FWIW, I applied for, and was offered pending security clearance, a job at the late unlamented NDIC (see Murtha, Jack) several years ago. As part of the screening I had to take a polygraph, as well as undergo an extensive background check.
You probably don’t even need to be trained to beat a polygraph to beat it. Just be a sociopath … or a completely sincere and self-convinced pathological liar.
Every time I see one of these stories I find myself wondering how the cretins not only infiltrate the system but so often rise to levels where they can do such damage. I suspect there isn’t any one answer. But (a) system too complex, too much noise to pick up traitor signals, (b) Things That Everyone Knows But Must Not Mention, and (c) oblivious careerism of goodly percentage of non-traitors, all seem to be at least worthy candidate explanations IMHO.
By the way – I got the clearance. But Boosh defunded the NDIC. And not long after, I got my present job in the private sector. Like they say, whatever happens, happens for a reason. (Or is that, What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas ?)
Jun 5, 2009 - 6:52 pm 32. sigintel:Our socialist President Obama cant even produce a vault birth certificate, college records or info on his travels to Pakistan in the 80’s(was it a British passport, Indonesian passport ?? …US passports band from travel there then)….this guy could never get a security clearance and he’s the Commander in Chief….clearly a high level penetration by a foreign entity into the ultimate TOP SECURITY of the US. The CIA must be absolutely bird shit that this guy is POTUS!
Jun 5, 2009 - 7:06 pm 33. Lifeofthemind:bogie wheel,
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
Jun 5, 2009 - 7:11 pm 34. erc rodson:Well, if they were up to # 202 in 1978, approximately 20 years into Fidel’s reign, they ought to be well up into the five to six hundreds by now, even just assuming an arithmetic progression. So, where’s the other numbers?
Sorry, this reminds me of Agent Maxwell Smart and Agent 86. Lost focus.
Jun 5, 2009 - 7:21 pm 35. Nomenklatura:This case made me wonder: where are all the right-wing traitors selling out their countrymen to foreign governments? The ones we find always seem to be leftists.
Have there ever been any from the right?
Jun 5, 2009 - 7:47 pm 36. Lifeofthemind:Nomenklatura,
Jun 5, 2009 - 7:54 pm 37. fred: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.
I would bet that Mr. Myers was already a socialist years before he even went to Cuba for that visit in 1978. I’m betting that during the Vietnam War he was sometimes hanging out with the radicals. Back in the late Seventies, when I was an undergrad and definitely hooked on Marxism, I knew some older people on campus who were actually Communists who had even traveled to Cuba. At meetings they would talk with other fellow-travelers about their experiences.
One of the problems of vetting people for jobs like this is that it is impossible to know who the candidates associate with, unless those organizations were penetrated by spies. Obviously, this Myers guy slipped in under the radar. Plus, somebody at Johns Hopkins had to have vouched for him.
Jun 5, 2009 - 8:14 pm 38. F:Having an SCI clearance would give #202 access to information that would certainly have made him valuable to the Cuban government, but working the Europe account in INR probably didn’t turn up much of interest. I’d be far more worried about his ability to confirm for the Cubans the identity of agents who were passing secrets to the CIA and other agencies. Or to pass on the substance of sigint intercepts. That’s the kind of stuff that gets agents killed and dries up access. Not good. And how did they buy this treason? With medals. Medals that he couldn’t even hang on his wall or wear to the annual decoration ball. That, folks, is what you call an idelogical convert. He wasn’t doing it for the money to to cover up some secret he was being blackmailed over, he was doing it because he believed in Fidel. And as others have pointed out, he believed in Fidel because he was upset with Jimmy Carter’s presidency. This is one very sad story. F
Jun 5, 2009 - 8:14 pm 39. Tcobb:Before Castro’s revolution Cuba had the highest standard of living in the Caribbean. Today it has the second lowest. But what is poverty compared to the notion that everyone in the society is “equal?” I’m sure that that’s something Castro can be proud of as he’s viewing the ocean from his yacht.
Jun 5, 2009 - 8:20 pm 40. F:#37 Fred: If you’ve ever gone through a full field security clearance you’d know your associates would be pretty well known. My first such clearance was in 1968 and I had people I hadn’t talked to in years calling to ask me why the FBI was after me. And I mean YEARS. So this guy’s associations apparently didn’t ring any alarms. I’d agree, though, he was probably a fellow traveller long before his trip to Cuba. He just didn’t hang around with enough questionable types to raise eyebrows. I could understand it in this day and age, when we can elect a president who hangs around with people like William Ayers. But in 1978? Very strange. F
Jun 5, 2009 - 8:21 pm 41. Alaska Paul:Fidel out Sun Tzu’ed us. He turned our spies, so to speak.
Jun 5, 2009 - 8:31 pm 42. John Lynch:I briefly had a TS/SCI clearance during my naval service as a CTR. It’s not that big a deal. Yes, they do question a lot of your friends and associates. Once they called someone while I was on the phone with them!
I never thought my work justified the clearance I had, but I wasn’t the one making the decision. SCI is “compartmented” by definition, so just having the clearance does not give you access to everything. You don’t get to see everything at your clearance level, only what you need to do your job.
So, who knows what this jerk gave to the Cubans, or how much they gave to the Soviets. That’s the real crime. Cuba isn’t much of a threat, but the Sovs were and the Russians are.
And BTW, if you ever hear someone talk about a classification level “Above Top Secret,” they’re full of it. I never heard that term until recently.
Jun 5, 2009 - 8:33 pm 43. Lifeofthemind:The story was that Obama tried to get hired by the USSS and failed to pass security. In the 1980s Reagan was pushing Pershing II’s and GLCMs for Europe so the Soviets would have been very interested in the INR Europe desk. In the 1960s the FBI tracked campus radicals and the first objective of the New Left was to get the “Pigs Off Campus” once there is no one watching the trail they can radicalize and go invisible.
Jun 5, 2009 - 8:37 pm 44. fred:Do you think that during his Army days he may have already worked for some intelligence specialization? We have so little information about this guy’s background. If he was doing ham radio operation, he had to know Morse Code pretty well. It’s not something that college professors pick up on the fly.
I think there are probably more people at State, the CIA, FBI, and DoD working for foreign powers than many would suspect. I’m not sure I would go as far as saying that our agencies are crawling with them. It is a risky profession to be a traitor to one’s country. Still, I am suspect of departments and agencies that tend to recruit people out of our elite educational institutions, given the very strong pro-Leftist slant of those universities. Plus, a lot of these kids a bright and many, I would imagine, are smooth and could know how to blend in and be who they think their employer wants them to be, while their true loyalties remain hidden.
But, above all, the most successful penetration operation ever has to be the placement of the man who is now president of the U.S. That, gentlemen, is a stunning success for the enemies of our country. He may not even be a citizen. He certainly would never, in a million years, get a security clearance.
Jun 5, 2009 - 8:59 pm 45. Alexis:It sounds like Mr. Myers was a bitter man clinging to his shortwave and his Communism…
Jun 5, 2009 - 9:56 pm 46. Aristide:They love Cuba?
Send ‘em to Gitmo!
Jun 5, 2009 - 11:03 pm 47. wretchard:What happened to root causes? The latest word is that Myers was from a very socially prominent family in DC. He had prestige, an education, money. The trust of his country. What was his beef? Nothing, at least, that can be explained through the “root causes” theory.
What makes people like Bill Ayers hate their own country? Marxism, at least in its upper reaches, is the exclusive preserve of what they call the bourgeosie, the petty bourgeosie, or the downright rich. You won’t find workers and peasants among the movers and the shakers of the Marxist nomenklatura, except the token ones. No. These are people who want for nothing tangible or even logically copelling. They aren’t out to tear apart the world for justice. They’re out to remake it in their own image. If Mr. Myers was a indeed a spy, he didn’t do it for money; nor even for any rational reason. He did it for vanity; because he saw himself as morally superior in his own mind. He felt entitled.
These are funny people who can betray people they’ve known and worked with; possibly send them to their deaths and yet expect to be praised for their higher morality. They are crazy in their own way, full of bizarre punctilo. Angry if you get an academic citation wrong; outraged if you choose the white wine with meat; apoplectic if you happen to like Kentucky Fried Chicken yet wholly devoid of the smallest iota of normal human kindness. Emotionally they are no different from the Nazis, who could listen to Bach and weep at Wagner while sending children to the gas chamber.
Early on I discovered they could kill, without compunction, pity or remorse. Indeed they could kill with the most astounding self-righteousness. Readers will remember the proof of God’s existence I gave to someone in the Party. God exists because the Devil exists; the Devil exists because Hell exists; Hell exists because there must someplace to put the leaders of the Party.
Jun 5, 2009 - 11:31 pm 48. Dave:Pay attention to #47 everybody. These are the people that I label “neo-humanists”.
The original humanists/secular humanists have
become rather scarce. Most of them have reluctantly concluded that perfecting the human race is simply not possible. A few have even managed to conclude that any man-made definition of “perfection” is contrary to species survival.
Then comes the problem children. They have long since given up on perfecting thee and me. We are incorrigible. However they have
declared themselves to be perfected.
This means that they do not consider themselves a higher class of person but
a SUPERIOR FORM OF BEING.
(I daresay that they usually have a belief in personal immortality of the flesh—if they can just get rid of all the flawed mortals that keep polluting their environment.)
Thus they have no reason at all to behave themselves in any kind of ethical manner. And of course they consider places like Cuba
superior not in spite of a controlled populace but BECAUSE of a controlled populace.
All human beings at one time or another envision a utopia. Then most of us get down to business. All the really poor people do, they are scrambling for survival. Middle class and wealthy though have enough advanced logistics to keep indulging in their fantasies, often at our expense.
PS: Fred: In theological terms, is this considered Pelagian or something else? Just thought of that and you would be the one to know. Thanks.
Jun 6, 2009 - 12:26 am 49. Mad Fiddler:God help us, there are so many things that turn people into monsters.
We’ve seen parents treat their children as toys, and so casually teach them to behave as beasts.
We’ve seen parents viciously brutalize their children, and actively turn them to pathological torturers.
We’ve seen men who had no such treatment lured into a progression of escalating sexual obsession and violence (Ted Bundy types) by pornography and a culture of hedonism that whispered of no limits.
And at the same time, there are millions of people who were neglected, tormented and abused as children and yet managed to become wholesome adults, albeit with scars.
Love seems to be the crucial factor in healing.
But it took years of pondering these things for me to finally acknowledge that EVIL is a real presence in our lives, and we pretend otherwise at our peril.
The most tragic thing to me is the conclusion that examples like Kendall Myers so forcibly underscore: Simple boredom and ennui seem to be at the festering core of many of the present crop of soulless bastards. By that I mean they go through adolescence surrounded by luxury beyond the dreams of most humans, but view the world exclusively through the filter of their outrage that they must take orders and wait. Frustration at powerlessness, at living lives undistinguished by adventure, devoid of any act that elevates them above the crowd they despise, they look for outlaw activities and find in them the addictive reward of adrenaline that comes from daring discovery, exposure, punishment, shame.
Once begun, the satisfaction grows as it encompasses the triumph of knowing they’re getting away with a secret life that utterly violates everything their ignorant hosts and friends value.
Heady stuff for a sociopath. It’s bad enough when it merely steers a man to the grotesque sexual compulsivity of JFK or Clinton, both willing to risk friends, family, reputation, and the COUNTRY itself for just one more illicit orgasm.
What pathetic losers.
Ripe for any credo that slyly tells them they are heroes for betraying everything their contemptible culture has ever valued.
Jun 6, 2009 - 12:27 am 50. davod:They will be pardoned by Obama along with the Cuban Five. In return, Cuba will allow the US to sell Cuba food using US credit instead of having to pay cash.
Yes. The second statement is supposed to look ridiculous.
Jun 6, 2009 - 4:28 am 51. novanglus:Dan/13: Half my friends are Leninists without even knowing it.
I have noticed the same thing over the years. I too was one of these useful idiots, until I was in my last year of college. I started dating a Russian immigrant, a refugee who had experienced Soviet society first hand. She effectively disabused me of my wrongful educational in the system to that point. Recently, I have seen the video interviews of Yuri Besmenov and his description of active measures an intentional, multi-generational effort by the KGB to undermine the American educational establishment. See Bill Ayers for a radical example. But your point is spot on – most Americans are unaware of their brainwashing and Leninist leanings. If pointed out, they will deny it and claim they are just being “fair” and “sensible”. The concept of America will never die, but the United States is quite ill at the moment.
Jun 6, 2009 - 5:35 am 52. novanglus:LOTM/29: 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.
The use of polygraphs for clearance is a simple scam. People have proven that they are not definitive. What the interviewer relies on is your fear. It’s a bullying technique. If you can retain your composure and remain rational, you can beat it. Most people incriminate themselves in the pre-interview, because they fear they may be asked the same question under instrumentation. The bold psychopath can easily skate through the process, because they really believe what they tell the interviewer, so they feel no stress.
Jun 6, 2009 - 5:45 am 53. novanglus:Mad Fiddler: Frustration at powerlessness, at living lives undistinguished by adventure, devoid of any act that elevates them above the crowd they despise, they look for outlaw activities and find in them the addictive reward of adrenaline that comes from daring discovery, exposure, punishment, shame.
Is that not the story of Fight Club?
And what of the counter to these folks. The people that they refer to as the bubba community, clinging to guns and religion – and the Constitution. How far is Obama willing to push before there is a reaction? How many Americans like this guy are out there in a place that these neo-humanists never venture? I’d say alot more than they care to know.
Jun 6, 2009 - 6:03 am 54. Herb:Bogie @ 31 “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas ?”
Jun 6, 2009 - 6:33 am 55. dan:Unless you’re Bill Bennett
novanglus – yes I have learned much about the world from reading Lenin’s and Stalin’s actual writings, which I had never thought to do before a few months ago. I happen to believe, in light of actual events, that Stalin’s “The Foundations of Leninism” may be the most important book of the 20th Century.
I also happen to believe that the elevation of Antonio Gramsci is evidence of ignorance of Lenin’s writings – it’s all in Lenin, all of it. Even Stalin credits the long-term peace offensive subversion strategy in “Foundations,” although he says now (1927, when USSR was alone) is not the time to pursue such a strategy, but that it could be possible in the “distant future.”
Well, when the World War strategy didn’t result in World Revolution, but did result in a global encirclement and enfeeblement of “Capitalism,” most obviously in Europe, wouldn’t right now qualify as “the distant future” as seen from 1927? Not that that inference is proof positive, but yet another weight on the scale of probability.
What’s most interesting to me about Bezmenov’s videos (check out the user “hermitcleric” on YouTube for the full extant catalogue) is that it tends to confirm, albeit obliquely, that multi-generational subversive effort of the World Communist intelligence services as their strategy is described by Anatoliy Golitsyn, Jan Sejna, and the other writers JR Nyquist and Edward Epstein refer to. James Jesus Angelton was a believer, and frankly – from this remote location marooned in my own life – I tend to think the explanatory power of their accounts of Soviet strategy, allowing for probable innaccuracies since any strategy is carried out by living improvisatory beings, shifts the burden of proof to the other side. Add Pacepa, some things Kalugin says, Vladimir Bukovsky, and the works of Viktor Suvorov… and? What more do you want or believe you could learn about such a strategy, however different in its details in reality?
One thing’s for certain: there is a genius to this madness. It is impossible to read these people, to review the history of the 20th century without fear of being converted to “McCarthyism” or “fascism” (an anachronism that should be retired), without developing a profound appreciation of their genius. I hate to attribute a quality so admired to a people and project so perverse and evil, but hey – Satan is smart.
“how do they get so high in the ranks to cause that much damage?”
FWIW, I’ve read that the KGB handlers feed genuine information to their agents (i.e. co-optees) in order to get them promoted to positions of influence within the necessary institutions – whether they be CIA, State, Defense, media, arts, wherever. You get good intel, you get promoted – I mean, the enemy would never compromise actual secrets to advance some higher cause, like subverting your whole goddamn State Department right? Nah.
Jun 6, 2009 - 6:49 am 56. JFSanders:35. Nomemklatura:
“This case made me wonder: where are all the right-wing traitors selling out their countrymen to foreign governments? The ones we find always seem to be leftists.
Have there ever been any from the right?”
Is there a nominally “right wing” country out there? As in one who has as its foundation Life, Liberty and Property rights as written by the Founders of America.
53.Novanglus: THAT DUDE HAS ISSUES
Jun 6, 2009 - 6:57 am 57. fred:Dave,
I’m no longer a Pelagian heretic. It’s been 22 years since I gave it up definitively. 12 Step Program… but I didn’t have a sponsor. Never even tempted to go back.
I wish more Americans could see the Yuri Bezmenov interviews.
Jun 6, 2009 - 7:05 am 58. PA Cat:48 Dave
Apropos of heresies, I think these folks are an ugly combination of Gnosticism (salvation through superior enlightenment) and Pelagianism. Don’t know whether Fred would agree with that diagnosis or not.
Jun 6, 2009 - 7:41 am 59. programmer:@42 John Lynch
And BTW, if you ever hear someone talk about a classification level “Above Top Secret,” they’re full of it.
Wrong. That which can be named is not it.
Jun 6, 2009 - 7:42 am 60. PA Cat:If Mr. Myers was a indeed a spy, he didn’t do it for money; nor even for any rational reason. He did it for vanity; because he saw himself as morally superior in his own mind. He felt entitled.
Wretchard’s comment reminded me of a missing person case that is still unsolved as of 2009. Bradford Bishop was a Yale (BA) and Middlebury (MA) graduate from a socially prominent family in Pasadena who worked in Army counterintelligence for a few years before moving over to the State Department and the Foreign Service. In March 1976 he was told he would not receive a promotion that he thought he deserved. He left work early, went home, murdered his wife, mother, and three children, drove from Maryland to North Carolina to dispose of the bodies, and has so far eluded justice.
“According to Bishop’s co-worker, Roy Harrell, his family (primarily wife and mother) constantly told him that he was inadequate, washed-up, and wasn’t going anywhere in his career. This may have given him the motive to commit what seemed to be a crime of passion. The co-worker also went on to add that this was usually Bishop’s way to ‘put someone in their place,’ as he liked to say himself.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Bishop
So the murderous anger of the “funny people” that Wretchard describes in #47 can issue in very personal crimes as well as espionage.
Jun 6, 2009 - 7:58 am 61. fred:PA CAT,
Never was a gnostic. Gnosticism is a heresy because it taught that creation was a fallen order and intrinsically evil. It was created evil. The Church, in its wisdom, declared it a heresy and did not include the Gnostic texts in the canon.
Pelagians do believe in something quite opposite of the Gnostics. The gnostics do not see this world as the place where salvation occurs, whereas Gnostics want to get out of this world, out of the body, etc.
It was never, ever a part of my attitude or aspiration to cop a stance that I was superior to other people. If you knew me, as I was back then as a young man and who I am now as a 54 year old you would never think that of me. As for when I was a young man, I was a pained soul seeking meaning and salvation. Not a haughty, vicious person. In fact, over time I began to see that I did not have a lot in common with the actual socialist progressives themselves. There was just enough doubt in my mind that I was pursuing how to get around the conservative critiques of utopian thought. And when I could not accomplish it and saw to my satisfaction THAT IT COULD NOT BE DONE, I drew the correct conclusion and moved on.
And I recoiled at the Leninists I knew. There is something scary about some of those people.
Jun 6, 2009 - 8:44 am 62. RWE:Wretchard #47: “The latest word is that Myers was from a very socially prominent family in DC. He had prestige, an education, money. The trust of his country. What was his beef?”
Okay, you have also just described Osama Bin Laden.
My own theory is that Bin Laden and Kendall and their ilk realize that while they are comfortable and part of the in crowd they will never be more than that. Bin laden would never lead the house of Saud and probably not even the house of Bin laden. Kendall might become a Deputy Assistant Undersecretary for Latin American Affairs on Alternate Wednesdays in Months Without an R in Them, but he would never ever be President or even SECSTATE.
They would rather create a Hell and rule their part of it than serve in Heaven.
Jun 6, 2009 - 8:59 am 63. dan:The true believers must be educated enough to form an intense bond with what is, basically, a highly sophisticated image of the world. Such an image cannot be derived from the usual opportunities of poverty. Of course it happens, but generally in homes where a father or mother tend to be unsusually literary – like the proverbial English Midlands coal miner with a library of Shakespeare and Scott at home, the mother a school teacher given to social justice. In the less developed countries – Russia, China – the footsoldiers of social justice are vanity’s executioners. That is all.
Leninists themselves know this. “Give me a child for 8 years and I will make him a Bolshevik forever.”
Jun 6, 2009 - 9:12 am 64. PA Cat:Fred–
I did not intend to include you in that capsule summary; I’m like you in never having, as you put it, copped a stance of superiority of any kind. As for Gnostics, I ran into more than a few in graduate school. Some were the libertine type of Gnostic (let us wallow in the works of the flesh because they cannot damage the superior spirit), but there were also some who were early adopters of the humanity-as-blight-on-Gaia ascetic variety. It was quite an experience for an orthodox Christian.
Jun 6, 2009 - 9:40 am 65. novanglus:56/JFSanders: “53.Novanglus: THAT DUDE HAS ISSUES”
Agreed – but what is really frightening is that he also has a reasonable grasp of economic reality. I just wonder how many Americans are “that guy” just below the surface of their every day living?
Jun 6, 2009 - 9:52 am 66. John Lynch:How people can work for the State Department without believing in their country is something I don’t understand. How could the culture within our own government tolerate such beliefs? I don’t think this couple hid their feelings very deeply, so the question becomes “what happened to the State Department?”
Jun 7, 2009 - 6:43 pm 67. Ben Franklin:John Lynch is right. In a sane world, anyone who worked for our government and ever said anything nice about Castro would have their hard drives searched as just a normal part of doing business. As an agent of a government conceived in liberty it is not possible to do your job properly while believing that a communist dictatorship is anything other than abhorrent. That this sort of attitude is rampant in certain governmental circles is an indication of how far we have strayed down the road to tyranny ourselves.
Jun 8, 2009 - 7:46 am