Well the intelligence community (IC) doesn't hire for competence, it hires for "reliability". And it does that by scouting out certain traits in potential recruits. It's actually more of a cult.
https://web.archive.org/web/20141203033 ... telligence
You may be surprised by the nature of the anecdotes in this post. In a nutshell, leaders of the intelligence community do not respect the personal boundaries of ‘intelligence community’ members, much like cult leaders don’t respect their followers’ boundaries. Intelligence community members, like cult-followers, dont’ expect to have any boundaries between themselves and their bosses. I’ll remind readers of Quinn Norton’s observations on the “IC” (“Intelligence Community”, for those of us who don’t belong to it):
The IC are some of the most surveilled humans in history. They know everything they do is gone over with a fine-toothed comb — by their peers, their bosses, their lawyers, other agencies, the president, and sometimes Congress. They live watched, and they don’t complain about it.
Followers in cults are traumatized in various ways by the different kinds of abuses they are exposed to as they accept the leader’s control over them; these abuses typically include intimidation, belittling and humiliation, and, more concretely, severe overwork and deprivation of sleep and proper nutrition. The follower’s rewards, which are recognition from the leader and the ensuing prestige the followers gain within their group, are bestowed and rescinded at the leader’s whim, keeping the follower in a state of instability and fear about displeasing the leader and thereby losing status and favor.
After the abuse, they want to see if the IC members stay "true".
Bearing what Shaw says in mind, here is the first of my anecdotes: An agent wanted to marry someone who was a clear security risk. Quite sanely, “IC” leaders said “no”. Also sanely, the agent said “I’m going to marry this person.” The sanity ends here, because instead of asking the agent to drop their badge by the front door, the “IC” tried to shame them into changing their mind about the marriage by demoting the agent to a low-prestige clerical job, which the agent carried out dutifully. After several months, the “IC” suddenly changed its mind, let the agent marry the security risk and gave the agent back a ‘worthy’ job. (I don’t know if it was the same job.)
Several things could have happened here, the “IC” may have eventually decided that they could use this marriage to spread disinformation– I just don’t know. However, the “IC’s” actions tell us that the most important thing to them was ensuring that the agent was still reliable: the “IC” decided that they could roll the dice with a security risk as long as the agent proved their continued reliability through a shaming exercise. My understanding is that these shaming exercises are not uncommon and are used to ‘correct’ undesirable political opinions too.
It's well documented that narcissism is unusually prevalent in military communities.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8487970
Various studies examining the prevalence of personality disorders in civilian inpatient and outpatient populations have consistently found narcissistic personality disorder to be one of the least common. In striking contrast to this, a recently published study showed narcissistic personality features to be among the most common personality features in a military outpatient clinic population. This paper examines several possible explanations for this finding. This surprisingly high relative incidence of narcissistic personality features may be related to a self-selection bias on the part of persons choosing a military career. Narcissistic personality traits may confer adaptive advantage in certain military professional roles. Kohut's theory of specific transference requirements in individuals with narcissistic character structure serves as a useful explanatory model for these findings.
They want slaves that give all their loyalty to the organization, but expect to give no loyalty back in return.
https://web.archive.org/web/20141218224 ... of-people/
The fairytale of the supreme leader teaches children to identify with following one leader who is ‘good’– for modern readers, think Harry Potter, He-Man etc. The story doesn’t change much when it’s repackaged for adults, except there’s more carnality thrown into the mix: consider the pantry-erotica of Nigella Lawson; the submissive longings of Fifty Shades of Grey’s Ana; or James Bond’s slavishness to the organization of his master ‘M’. Whether child or adult, the reader is encouraged to believe validation of one’s own worth comes from being accepted by a powerful master.
More on abusers:
Any abuser will try to convince their target that the target ‘needs’ them to be happy, that the abuser provides some special validation to the victim. In reality, the victim’s healthy needs are not being met and that’s a painful problem for them. Instead of dealing with the source of the problem– the abuser and the unhealthy need– the victim tries to deal with their pain in other ways, not all of them helpful. Consider the propensity for military drone operators to self-destruct, for example: US version and UK version.
Institutional abuse won’t be something dramatic like bodily harm: it might be working employees in a way that makes having a healthy family life impossible; or making the ‘clearance’ process such a black box that it scares employees out of political engagement; or exploiting existing mental illness. In return, the employee is told that they’re special, unique, a ‘cut above’ the rest and part of a ‘secret team’.
This type of positive reinforcement is particularly effective against people with low self-esteem, or the character weaknesses which used to be described as ‘narcissism’. (‘Narcissism’ is exceptionally prevalent in the military community, which is the community most spooks are drawn from.) Perhaps worst of all, these abusive practices can trick weak-minded people into doing things that run against their own conscience; things that poison the soul and may also trap the individual later. Ex-intelligence agents don’t exist. Welcome to human resources in the spy business!
Beyond character traits such as narcissism, control can be managed through substance abuse and addiction.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150604221 ... d-control/
The military and intelligence communities are unusually tolerant of addiction amongst their own members. The ‘get out of jail free’ card is ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder': much behavior is forgiven on the grounds that the individual is suffering from battle stress– which may be a perfectly humane and reasonable explanation of the bad behavior, but tends to ignore the fact that 1) the person may still be suffering from an addiction and 2) the addiction could have been in place well before any combat experiences.
What do I mean by ‘tolerant’? I’ve seen veteran police officers excuse soldiers’ ‘buzzed’ (i.e. drunk) driving on PTSD grounds on three separate occasions– three different drivers in three different states. Alcoholism is something that the ‘IC’ and military seem very willing to turn a blind eye to; there is a culture of heavy drinking in these communities which extends from the grunts all the way to the higher-ups. I’ve also seen an inexplicable number of professional ‘second chances’ given out as a result of self-destructive, addiction-related behavior.
Alcoholism isn’t the only addiction which is given leeway by the military and ‘IC': in my experience there is a pervasive culture in these institutions which considers casual sex ‘macho’ as long as it’s kept away from ‘the chain of command’. I’m told that quite a number of recruits join on the expectation that they’ll have access to women they’d otherwise not have. Amongst the ‘IC’ agencies, it’s not unheard of for ‘office meetings’ to be regularly held in strip clubs. Your tax dollars at work.
IC employees become co-dependent on their employers
‘Co-dependent’ is a psychiatric term that I’ve come to understand as ‘a type of person who looks for relationships which help them avoid emotions that they are terrified of feeling’– emotions that would “annihilate” them. This means that co-dependent relationships are not love-based, but based on the need to cover up those scary feelings with:
security (financial, physical, etc.)
feeling of belonging, worthiness, specialness, ‘secret team’
enabling of addiction, or feeling that their addiction is ‘okay’.
Besides better understood addictions such as those to drugs, alcohol and medications, “enabling of addiction” includes addictions to sex, power, gambling, pornography, overworking, overeating, spending, exercise/ ‘cult of the body’ addictions; or ‘spiritual’ addictions like miracle cures, ‘personal empowerment’ schemes, religious ‘epiphanies’, psychics, gurus, cults or other “emotions for sale”. Co-dependent people want relationships that enable their addiction, or at least that ‘don’t judge’ it.
How does this all fit together:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of overlap between medical definitions of ‘co-dependency’, addiction and ‘narcissism’, the personality disorder I’ve identified as being useful to exploitative organizations. Tian Dayton, a clinical psychologist, offers this explanation:
A narcissist often prefers to have people around him who behave in such a way as to meet and gratify his own needs or enhance his own vision of himself. If they act separately, have too many of their own points of view or their own opinions they threaten the narcissist’s equilibrium.
How does this mirror addiction? The addict is ever absorbed with getting their next fix; that’s how they maintain their equilibrium, albeit very dysfunctionally. Their needs come first.
The narcissist also tends to be absorbed in themselves and in meeting their next need and rather unaware and even uncaring of the needs of those around them.
Same with the addict: the needs of those around them have to come second to their meeting their own, often overpowering desire for their next “fix” whether it be a drink, drug, food or sexual encounter. Both the narcissist and the addict are first and foremost self absorbed. They come first.
Addiction creates a kind of narcissism. It is constantly preoccupying; it takes a person over body, mind and soul.
So this explains better how the IC targets their perps. Maybe some of the shills reading this board can chime in with their experiences
If anybody is interested in reading more about how the IC identifies "reliable" recruits, look into Gittinger's Personality Assessment System:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150611184 ... nt-system/