News Alert: Brother of Afghan President Is on C.I.A. Payroll, Officials Say

[Michael Bailey]

> as Penny the DA said, are we being paranoid enough?
>
I was really just trying to add a little light commentary, but
I suppose with a little effort (all I'm prepared for
after a night shift) one can haul this around to
being Pynchon related.

What was drifting thru my mind on the way home
from work was the curious conflation of spies with
idiots in AtD.  That scene on the Mediterranean where
Cyprian and sidekick were talking about the school for
idiots - "no fish, of course, that's brain food"
and how it reminded me of the "training" scenes in
such novels as "Harlot's Ghost" where the CIA guys
go off to some training camp and learn how to memorize
numbers, (involving tricks like associating each digit
with something else, like a color, which seems to me like
it would actually be harder to remember) and how to tail
people and turn people, using tricks that when I read them
seem like they would be far less than 100% effective

...and how it's really hard to get a working spy network
going in a country, you end up - at least by the accounts
I've read of spying in Iraq, and Afghanistan - giving a lot
of money away and hoping people do what you want them to.

In the end, the spymasters are in the same position as
Doc and end up trusting the bad guys...

so in a way, the inherent vice Doc comes to grips with
is the same one that all guardians of public order face:
people are the source of evil, yet we must trust people
to maintain our defenses against it?