Today is largely offline. We set it aside to pay tribute to those no longer with us whose lives resonate so profoundly still. To see one’s memories of extraordinary people in all their richness memorialized with skilled, appreciative care of archivists and specialists proves to be at once re-assuring and dislocating. We expected an emotional reaction; its depth and intensity nonetheless surprising.
Apropos of nothing in particular we also came across this today in another context. Already being in a reflective mindset, many thoughts rushed by unbidden. Some recalling the era, others the panoply of history, and others the sad context of that anniversary and the wreckage.
Still couldn’t repress a smile imagining Percy Alleline as emcee. And then we heard Smiley say:
Peter Guillam: Why was Control always so hostile to Alleline? Percy wasn’t a complete fool.
George Smiley: Percy can flirt, Peter. And Control hadn’t reckoned on the power of the Alleline lobby.
Peter Guillam: Who were they?
George Smiley: Golfers. “Golfers and Conservatives.” That’s what Control said to me.
Alex says
@Aldershot
Indeed. Write to the Right People….Explaining my Position.
Aldershot says
Perhaps you could contact them and request clarification.
Alex says
@Aldershot
I wasn’t aware Hot Air (never was blog better named) accepted that anyone had been tortured in the first place.
Aldershot says
lol
Dr Leo Strauss says
@Comment
The Neocons won that one, destroying what was left of CIA. Tap dancing on its corpse is tacky but a useful ruse. The current entity using that name has no real dog in that fight – much of the cadres/human capital, institutional memories and personal egos involved are all gone.
Was surprised that Feith passed on the chance to promote the Bolton doomsday clock until Israel must attack Iran. It’s not like Hudson is any less behind The Cause as AEI. At least the second tier Georgetown Foreign Service School cut him off after a couple of years.
Comment says
Dough Feith on msnbc just now – basically says he thought there was wmd in Iraq only because the cia said there was
Aldershot says
Coincidentally:
“When the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two other al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005, officials believed they had wiped away all of the agency’s interrogation footage. But in 2007, a staffer discovered a box tucked under a desk in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and pulled out the Binalshibh tapes.”
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/08/17/cia-guess-what-we-found-under-the-desk/
And from the comments:
“And…if the officer who originally took the notes, or photos, or took possession of a box of working papers is transferred…the box or file would pretty much sit there until the next big round of office cleaning…sometimes years later if the office is in a secure vault or SCIF…unless that particular officer decided to shred or burn the contents of his personal box of folders and such.
The tapes being found under a desk in the Counter Terrorism Center? Entirely probable. More so if the originator of the box or tape had long since been transferred.
If the original tapes had never been entered into the information management system…for all intents and purposes they never existed.
The court order to produce did not direct the Agency to open every file in every office and go through every bit of paper until each and every speck of info demanded by the Court was found. The subpoena was specific in its request. The Agency complied, albeit sloppily, too sloppy for my tastes.
Now, years alter (actually a couple years ago) a box is opened and a video is found along with other items, under a desk in a secure facility within the US.
Much ado about nothing. Though, I’d have the counter terrorism folks do some overall housecleaning/housekeeping. Those cubicles are already too small and too cluttered with actual hard intel product and references, 201 files and such to have Stimpy’s box of stuff from Nouakchott Station he sent home when he got transferred to Niamey Station five years ago being added to the pile.
coldwarrior on August 17, 2010 at 2:25 PM”
Dr Leo Strauss says
Imagine the late fees . . .
Aldershot says
Sweet!