His excellent site is at www.datafilter.com/mc which has been awarded by USA Today as a USA Today Hotsite on 04/29/2002
www.usatoday.com/tech/2002/04/29/hotsites.htm

The following is his post:

"[The article below deals with CIA "literature analysis." Besides
just reading for hidden messages, as mentioned in the article, they
also *hide* messages in deniable ways. Sometimes they may mean for
the hidden message to be picked up, while at other times they may go
for a more subliminal influencing. This would just be skillful (or
clumsy) literary writing except that in this case it is applied to
spying and manipulation. NLP-style systems even formalize some of
these manipulation-via-language techniques.

Whole conversations can go on between the lines. Whole "languages"
of codewords develop, evolve, and disappear. International diplomacy
packs great meaning into what to the untrained person would just
look like a simple change of wording. This all exists, and is quite
real. The only surprising thing is that when it comes to covert
harassment victims people want to deny that this sort of laconic
communication takes place. (It is not quite the same, but
remember the cointelpro-induced suicide of Jean Seberg?
www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/04/24/1019441262517.html)

The article below deals with Angleton, who is portrayed as going
a bit over the edge with this sort of analysis. That is easy
to do if you are in the spy business -- AND if you are dragged
into that world as a victim. They want people to get paranoid.
After they shock you with a few hidden messages deniably revealing
some intimate surveillance detail they want you to start getting
paranoid. They want you to start seeing hidden messages
everywhere, even where they aren't. (On a related note, there was
a _Washington Post_ article not too long ago about scientists
traveling overseas and being dropped hints about their supposedly
"private" activities which were actually under surveillance. This
is also how the FBI harassed reputed mobster Giancana, and he
actually won an injunction against them.)

It is sort of a fine line to walk as a victim. I call it the
calibration problem, where you have to calibrate the normal level
of background noise (i.e. to determine what is likely coincidental
vs. non-coincidental). Some things are so blatant, though, that
you do not need to bother with that. It is also important to try
to remain calm as you analyze such things -- even as they try to
trigger you and rattle you. Just gather data and put together the
larger picture, but don't necessarily believe anything between the
lines or put too much stock in it. It is easier to lie between the
lines than on them, because it is deniable. The insinuated smear
is supposed to be difficult to deal with. You either ignore it
or you counter it, but if you counter it then it may make it seem
like you have smeared yourself and made it worse.

Gather what info you can. There are even some between-the-lines
"friendlies" at times, but be careful there, too. Watch out for
good-Nazi, bad-Nazi routines and bait-and-trigger ops. (Bait-and-
trigger ops do things like building up your hopes just to exploit
dashing them, and purposely trying to attract your interest just
so that you'll be paying close attention when the kick-to-the-head
trigger comes.)

If they can't come out and say something, why is that? Take that
into account. If you *can* come out and say something then go
ahead and do that rather than playing some games between
the lines. For example, "the US government systematically and
brutally tortures its own citizens."]


----------------------------------------------


School for spies
What the CIA learned (and mislearned) in the groves of academe.
www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/12/28/school_for_spies/
By Jeet Heer, 12/28/2003

[...]

It wasn't just globe-trotting historians and social scientists who
made the leap. As Winks emphasized, Yale's literature specialists
played a key role in shaping the agency's thinking. Mole-hunter James
Jesus Angleton, the most controversial figure in CIA history, began
his career as an apprentice of the New Critics on Yale's English
faculty, and his literary training in "close reading" may have shaped
his hyper-skeptical (some would say paranoid) approach to
counterintelligence.

With their emphasis on wide-ranging historical research and, later,
the minutely detailed examination of language, Yale's literary
scholars shaped the CIA's understanding of the world -- for better and
for worse.

[...]

In 1942, erstwhile Yale student Donald Downes recruited English
professor Norman Holmes Pearson into the OSS. As Winks explains,
Pearson knew how to read materials "as intently as possible for hidden
messages" because the Yale Department of English taught him "how to
read, really read, closely, without interruption, how to interrogate a
manuscript. . .." (After the war, Pearson would resume his scholarly
career, which included collaborating with his friend W.H. Auden in the
editing of the five-volume anthology "Poets of the English Language.")

[...]


--
Mind Control: TT&P ==> www.datafilter.com/mc
Home page: www.datafilter.com/alb
Allen Barker"


www.datafilter.com/mc