Deception

Deception

Untold Stories of Tonio

by Marco M. Pardi

“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Winston Churchill

“Oh. What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” Marmion by Sir Walter Scott, Canto VI, XVII.

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Tonio was well aware of the image Hollywood and fiction writers drew of Clandestine Service Officers: consistent liars skulking about in oversized trenchcoats. But he also knew this image applied only to agents, people who had been seduced or accepted into betraying their country’s secrets. Case Officers, on the other hand, were intensively trained in blocking or misleading inquisitive individuals. Most embassy based COs knew their “cover” — Cultural Attache, Economic Development Advisor, etc., was transparent to any local really qualified to be recruited as an agent but they maintained the ruse anyway including such practices as using only a false first name, never allowing any information about their personal lives (if married they did not wear a wedding ring; if not married they might wear a borrowed ring even if it didn’t fit well), and never identifying where they live or other staff. This was different from outright lying, and Tonio welcomed the difference although he was never embassy based.

Tonio’s position as a NOC – Non Official Cover, meant he rarely if ever went near an embassy. Anything he needed from an embassy, such as weapons or most recent photos, was provided via dead drop or brush pass. Tonio strongly felt himself an actor, playing out a role created for him by the Division which provided NOCs with their legends, credentials, and other supportive information. All this material was carefully crafted to the NOC’s actual background and capabilities. Thus, people with degrees and experience in international banking, health and medicine, social sciences and college teaching, journalism, international business, or a myriad of other fields were placed in those fields sometimes with the knowing consent of the host and sometimes not.

Sabbaticals, business or academic conferences, medical programs and other opportunities for travel and absence were developed and provided and a NOC could alternate from field work to academia and back to vary his profile and avoid becoming moribund or too questionable. The NOC became that person. But having no official cover also meant that a mistake could leave him or her with absolutely no protection. And that was a key deterrent against lies.

Tonio viewed a lie, no matter how small, as a cancer cell, needing to be fed, growing ever more powerful and complex, and sooner or later exceeding his ability to control. Ultimately, he viewed lying as immoral; perhaps a surprising attitude in a profession thought by outsiders to be utterly amoral at best. But for Tonio, the mission came first, the person came second. In his mind, lying was something done for personal reasons and the resulting confusion of subsidiary lies and the additional burden of protecting the lies put the mission at risk.

Tonio was a strong adherent to the principle that: People never hear a word you say; they hear what they tell themselves you said. Further complicating this, many people fancy themselves able to read non-verbal cues. He knew that was not only foolish, it was useful, especially in a person schooled in producing those cues when needed. Tonio knew a skilled operator avoided lies; he knew a skilled operator only provided the context in which people deceived themselves.

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The American people have an interesting history with the interplay of honesty and deception, especially in politics.In fairly recent history we can look back to President Richard Nixon and his secret seven day trip to China in 1972. Breaking a 25 year isolation from China, a declared enemy, the trip was prepared, also in secret, by Henry Kissinger and covered up with a variety of obfuscations from the White House. On Nixon’s return the trip was announced to the American people as a great success. Of course, China had long been supplying North Vietnam in its effort to take over South Vietnam and continued to do so. But the American people largely accepted the trip with a chuckle, considering it just another of Nixon’s “tricks”. In fact, his history had by then merited him the nickname “Tricky Dick”. One of my preferred bumper stickers of the era read, Dick Nixon Before He Dicks You.

But by that time Nixon had already become infamous for his “Southern Strategy”, a technique he developed while campaigning against Kennedy. Effectively, he played on the animus of Southerners toward desegregation and perceived cultural elitism. In doing so he unwittingly opened the floodgates for the strategies of division, deception, and outright hypocrisy which would one day bring a person like Donald J. Trump into the White House. Interestingly, Nixon’s greatest rival in his campaigns was a Southern bumpkin named George Wallace, a man who, if you now view his recorded speeches you will see prefigures Trump in almost every way. But it was another Southerner who ignited and tirelessly fed the flames of the resentment and hatred which now characterizes so much of American politics: Newt Gingrich. Throughout his political career he preached that Republican candidates should utterly destroy their opponents, using all available means including baseless stories and accusations, an early form of “conspiracy theories”. His tactics and strategies are now mainstream.

The Gingrich strategy was quickly adopted by Rush Limbaugh, a first semester college drop-out, whose talk radio program grew to 300 stations and 5 million listeners, many in “Rush Rooms”. Others include Sean Hannity, a drop-out from two universities, and Tucker Carlson, a B.A. graduate of Trinity College and listed member of the “Dan White Society” (White assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk) and whose application to the Central Intelligence Agency was denied are watched by millions per day. Hannity and Carlson dominate the airwaves throughout the United States.

Each of the above, and their several acolyte imitators, has learned that What you say is not as powerful as How you say it. Interesting examples of how the technique overtakes the facts appeared recently in the Letters to the Editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The contributor pointed to the incessant Right Wing mantras that Democrats want “open borders” while ignoring the fact of over two million arrests at the border so far under President Biden. As the writer said, if there were truth in the borders claim there would be ZERO arrests. Yet, the mantra is repeated constantly in political ads and Right Wing media. The other example given was that of Trump freely giving speeches to mass audiences in which he claimed Americans had lost their freedom of speech. No one seemed to catch the inherent contradiction; instead, they cheered wildly.

But, why? Why do so many people feel that something is wrong and it can only be fixed by an authoritarian take-over? Are they right, or are they deceived? Many years ago politicians on the campaign trail made famous the promise, “A chicken in every pot.” That seemed to work. Until the public aspired to a house in the suburbs, a car – then two cars in every driveway, the latest cellular phone, the biggest flat screen tv, and on and on while cheering the deception that all this and more can be achieved with little or no taxation and now with free education.

An acronym held dear among Case Officers in training is MICE. Money; Ideology; Compromise (you have something on a prospective agent recruit); Ego. With a little flexibility and patient insight one could determine the soft spot in an adversary’s defenses and turn him or her into an agent betraying their country’s secrets to you, even carrying out dangerous activities. But what accounts for the unrest which even now drives the throngs to an electoral failure, an unmasked pariah?

There’s an old saying, “The figures don’t lie but liars do figure.” What have we been told? How do we explain the rapidly growing disparity between the vanishingly few well-off and the growing masses of everyday Americans? Many people are resisting even controlled immigration and carefully vetted asylum on the grounds that these people are “taking American jobs.” Yet, when we ask the farmers and the construction managers – to name just a few, we find that they are crying out for the labor we are turning away, leaving us with either diminished products or products which, when harvested or produced by “Americans” (when we can cajole them into doing so) are astronomically more expensive as a consequence of “American” labor.

Behind all this is an ownership class which is increasing its financial wealth at rates almost impossible to accurately calculate. How are so many people led to believe this is the fault of immigrants and of people who are “other than” Right Wing Republicans?

Professional magicians have long used the attractive assistant to distract the eye while they work their sleight of hand. Looking at a broader picture in the United States, we see a well orchestrated groundswell of book banning in school and even public libraries. What’s more, the banned books are disproportionately written by minority authors. In a growing number of States parents are encouraging their K-12 children to inform on their teachers should the teacher mention, much less discuss, certain disapproved topics in class. This is already percolating up into post secondary education. I propose this is no coincidence. Tonio knew a skilled operator avoided lies; he knew a skilled operator only provided the context in which people deceived themselves.

Skilled operators know that by selectively narrowing the context from which to draw information people have much reduced chances of developing fully informed opinions. In recalling yet another age old saying, Knowledge is Power, we can at least realize, and perhaps develop and employ, the power that the cabal behind this rapidly changing national crisis fears the most. We can free ourselves from Deception.