CLOAKS
I agree wholeheartedly with Bayard's last paragraph
re: The sharing of intelligence with our friends. Part
of my reasoning has to do with the 'mole population'
that surfaces among our most trusted neighbors
and which we can never control except by keeping
our most precious diggings, findings and planning close
to the vest.
I harken back to Gen. MacArthur and his desire
to make Inchon happen without providing the NK
with advanced knowledge. He simply denied
access to his plans to all but a handful of his most
'required to know'. Had he been driven to share
with the Brits, Turks, Aussies, etc., (his in the field
allies), the Cambridge spies would have moved
swiftly to forward their findings and the war would
have likely taken a nasty turn.
JACK MORRIS
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http://www.thepalmerpress.com/welcome.html
- - - - - - -
> I grant that I have been out of the business for many decades, but I've
held
> a watching brief for most of that time.
>
> I simply find it very, very hard to believe that our own agencies would
ever
> stop trying to collect intelligence on even the closest of allies. The
main
> constraint I can think of is budgetary/economic, rather than
high-principled
> treaties or agreements. And this applies to the Brits, the Aussies and the
> Canadians, as well as the French and all others.
>
> Would we, for instance, ever really expect Whitehall/SIS/MI-5 to share its
> innermost secrets with us? Would we voluntarily give minutes of, say, NSC
> meetings to the Canadians? A trifle disingenuous, I think.
>
>
> Bayard Stockton
>
>
> > Steve,
> > You are right. But I think that there is an agreement with the Israelis
> not
> > to spy against each other. Unfortunately, the Israelis broke the
> agreement
> > with Pollard and subsequently. Of course, we don't know whether the US
> > broke the agreement also.
> >
> > Vince Cannistraro
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Steven Aftergood" <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2001 2:29 PM
> > Subject: Re: Secrecy News -- 04/17/01
> >
> >
> > > Thanks Vince. I basically agree. But I note that we have not even
> > > forsworn espionage against other democracies (outside of the UKUSA
> > > countries). Espionage by and against Israel and France, for example,
> has
> > > created friction of the kind that might be avoided by mutual
agreement--
> > if
> > > there were a will to do so.
> > >
> > > At 02:02 PM 4/17/01 -0400, Vince Cannistraro wrote:
> > > >Espionage against democracies might yield to bilateral treaties among
> the
> > > >democracies. A democracy doesn't need to protect itself by employing
> > covert
> > > >action against another democracy. But where Robert White's proposal
> fails
> > is
> > > >with closed societies, whether authoritarian, totalitarian or other
> > > >repressive forms of state authority. It is often, though obviously
not
> > > >always, with those societies that the U.S. has problems that require
a
> > > >robust espionage capability.
> > >
> > >
> > > ___________________
> > > Steven Aftergood
> > > Project on Government Secrecy
> > > Federation of American Scientists
> > > http://www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
> > > Email: [log in to unmask]
> >
>
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