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

[Mark Kohut]

Good obs and thoughts.......

I just want to add: Pynchon seems to deeply know that once we are 'spying'
as a people.........NO one can really be trusted any longer, yes? 

For TRP trust is a personal face-to-face condition at minimum. 



--- On Thu, 10/29/09, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: News Alert: Brother of Afghan President Is on C.I.A. Payroll,  Officials Say
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Thursday, October 29, 2009, 9:18 AM
> > 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?
>