Rosetta Stone and the Code of National Security
Drug War Without End
By T. P. WILKINSON
When I was a child the older daughter of my father’s best friend was reading a 1960 book by Ursula Nordstrom called The Secret Language. I remember searching for the book in the school library but failing to find it, begged Susan to lend me her copy. At that age I was convinced the book must have been about codes and I wanted to know everything I could about what people really meant when they said things, things maybe I didn’t understand. In fact the book was not about codes and I returned the book to Susan, disappointed that there were nothing but a few slang words for things at the school described in the book.
When I was a bit older my father gave me a book I haven’t forgotten either. Before I read all his Ian Fleming and Alistair McLean paperbacks, I read Stanley Lovell’s Of Spies and Stratagems, a humorous memoir by an OSS officer, telling more about the things “Wild Bill” Donovan’s boys screwed up than about what they really did. For years it shaped my conception of secret services and spying in America or by Americans. Even after years of reading about US government covert action throughout the world, I had this vision of well-meaning incompetence on the part of soldiers and bureaucrats trying their best to preserve and protect the USA.
It was not until the death of Philip Agee, probably the dean if not the patron saint of critics of the American national security apparatus, in 2008, that I felt compelled to read exposé Inside the Company. It was Agee’s memoir, followed by his book On the Run and the collection Dirty Work, which made me realise that to understand the CIA it was necessary to comprehend the secret language of national security of which it is the ultimate guardian. There is a code, if you will, an open code, at the core of the central processing unit of America’s empire. Agee was the first person to publish that code and like the Rosetta stone it has allowed the rest of us—at least those who are interested-- to read the hieroglyphics in which US foreign and domestic policy is written.
Douglas Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program and The Strength of the Wolf, has published a third volume in what might be called a "Ring" cycle to elaborate the language of America's elite in its wars for the "Rhine gold", aka "national security". Using the methods of a therapist and chronicler, Valentine begins his books with the apparently naive and inquisitive eyes and ears of a youth asking his elders "what they did in the war?" He retains a respectful tone throughout what are essentially interviews and intervenes only to provide needed background for the reader or to occasionally compare the stories of various performers in the same scene. The author only appears when it is necessary to clarify something either he or the reader is unlikely to understand or where confusion arises.
Continued>>>
http://www.counterpunch.org/wilkinson03122010.html
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