Spies fear being hung out to dry – Prefer dirty laundry bin instead

Spies fear being hung out to dry – Prefer dirty laundry bin instead
(a poor attempt at ABC Glass House humour)

Well, well, well, three holes in the ground!

It seems that certain budding psychopaths in the CIA are worried about being ‘outed’ by their employer for breaking the laws that they are supposedly defending.

I’m not normally into provoking the attention of these types but this has got to be a story. Infidelity is the label applied to the ‘western system’ by others, and perhaps here we have an example.

So, we have a story about being personally liable for torturing ‘war prisoners’. It is a “war on T” is it not? So, they must be war prisoners. Perhaps, perhaps not, amazing things do come out of governance systems these days, special ‘fuzzy logic’ included.

In this “war on panic”, although ‘war’ is the wrong term to use, more an “organised crime prevention program”, the employees for detaining and interrogating (nice code for torturing) terrorism suspects illegally may have to themselves face the justice system. Sounds fair to me. Or do we have a bifurcated legal system now? Rules of law. As scapegoats for politically discredited covert activities what VSM system are they falling foul of? System 2,3 or 5?

Here’s the whinge: “It’s bad … you get the (White House) Office of Legal Counsel telling the CIA something is legal and then someone changes their mind. But it’s not the counsel that’s held responsible, it’s the CIA employee.” – funny that! So who’s the smart ones? Obey orders or follow the rules. Nazi Germany 1940s revisited. But I guess whereas most normal people could easily tell what is reasonable and what is over the line, psychopaths cannot. Hence, the problem: How to write code and rules that are illegal and yet are necessary because of the qualities (or lack of them) of the human activity systems under instruction.

The torture “black sites” are believed to have been in Poland, Romania, Afghanistan and Thailand. Leaks last year put Bush under pressure to close them. So much for openness and transparency.

So, as a consequence, morale at the spy agency is down. It’s a bi-polar thing: after every high there is a come down. And of course we have the famous “blame shifting” that permeates political systems thinking (e.g. see Senge 1990). Pass a new legal framework corrupting ‘law’ and make it right in retrospect. Hey, why bother? Just ditch the law. It’s dumb anyway for these hip-shooting cow-boys.

So as part of this greater blame spreading ‘system’ we see the political machine trying to move the goal posts back in time so that these behaviour patterns can be perpetuated without risk and “get the CIA back in the business of effective interrogations of suspected terrorists”.

"Effective" and "suspected" being the operative words here. Guilty until proven innocent. At least the ancient Catholic inquisitions would rationalise that the torture/death was to save the soul. The modern public service inquisitions just want to “save our bacon”, i.e. theirs. How does it go again: “we were just following orders”. If the US Senate takes up a White House proposal limiting the punishable offences then all will be well it seems. Five years of criminally breaking the 1996 law passed to uphold the Geneva Conventions, can be wiped retrospectively. Magic! And no one is accountable. Or perhaps Mr Bush would like to step into the international court.

Ahhh,...that’s right, it's not recognised. Funny that: our superior 'western' justice system needs that ‘freedom of manoeuvre’. Why? What VSM system is operating here?

Ref
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Senge, P. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday.