I wasn't kidding about the BNDs reputation being rubbish.
And yet, they still seem to embarrass themselves in public less than the CIA.
I wasn't, btw, specifically targeting Germany with that remark; I'm cynical enough to assume any government will spy anywhere they think it'll benefit them. It's not a gentleman's game; at best, one is politer and more discreet when spying on allies. (Or should be, anyway; see again CIA cock-ups.) Though I agree that any spying between the US & Germany is a waste of resources better spent elsewhere.
I suspect some of it is simply that it's easier: recruiting a bureaucratic asset in a western European country uses techniques that were established decades ago, in a language and cultural context that the US intelligence community isn't still scrambling to catch up on. It's a lot safer, to the bureaucratic mind (and the CIA is toxically bureaucratic), than trying to infiltrate some scrubby non-state insurgent group where a captured spy could end up executed on live TV. (Very embarrassing to his superiors, that.) And the CIA is cripplingly risk-averse.
the CIA for all its reputation has to be rubbish as well, given that they managed to miss predicting any of the major earthquakes in the last thirty years
Oh, I think there's no question of that. Whatever reputation the CIA still has, it's trading on what it earned decades ago; in most of my lifetime, it's been wrong on almost every major issue to come to light. There's a reason, when I'm writing espionage fiction, that I make up my own fictional department, and it's not just because I want the freedom to invent my own jargon.
(Actually, it's the reverse: when the BND started to suspect the triple wannabe of having approached the Russians, they asked their American compadres for access to any email accounts he might have in addition to his official ones.)
And apparently the Americans handed it over, without noticing that they were thereby exposing themselves, which just... *headdesk*
the top CIA official in Germany has just gotten kicked out
Oh, dear. That doesn't bode well. Not that I blame them, mind.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2014-07-10 05:04 pm (UTC)And yet, they still seem to embarrass themselves in public less than the CIA.
I wasn't, btw, specifically targeting Germany with that remark; I'm cynical enough to assume any government will spy anywhere they think it'll benefit them. It's not a gentleman's game; at best, one is politer and more discreet when spying on allies. (Or should be, anyway; see again CIA cock-ups.) Though I agree that any spying between the US & Germany is a waste of resources better spent elsewhere.
I suspect some of it is simply that it's easier: recruiting a bureaucratic asset in a western European country uses techniques that were established decades ago, in a language and cultural context that the US intelligence community isn't still scrambling to catch up on. It's a lot safer, to the bureaucratic mind (and the CIA is toxically bureaucratic), than trying to infiltrate some scrubby non-state insurgent group where a captured spy could end up executed on live TV. (Very embarrassing to his superiors, that.) And the CIA is cripplingly risk-averse.
the CIA for all its reputation has to be rubbish as well, given that they managed to miss predicting any of the major earthquakes in the last thirty years
Oh, I think there's no question of that. Whatever reputation the CIA still has, it's trading on what it earned decades ago; in most of my lifetime, it's been wrong on almost every major issue to come to light. There's a reason, when I'm writing espionage fiction, that I make up my own fictional department, and it's not just because I want the freedom to invent my own jargon.
(Actually, it's the reverse: when the BND started to suspect the triple wannabe of having approached the Russians, they asked their American compadres for access to any email accounts he might have in addition to his official ones.)
And apparently the Americans handed it over, without noticing that they were thereby exposing themselves, which just... *headdesk*
the top CIA official in Germany has just gotten kicked out
Oh, dear. That doesn't bode well. Not that I blame them, mind.