Below the fold:
- Yet another personal note.
- Spy versus Spy, a illustrative story
- Some advice from the Captain
Yet another personal note
If you'll allow me a moment of self-indulgence, I'd like to explain briefly some of the problems I am having get this story out to you in a convincing and coherent manner. Those of you that follow me and are watching closely will remember that I teased a upcoming blockbuster story on Saturday. That story was written (actually two separate versions, because it was a very hard tale to tell) but for reasons that I cannot yet disclose, I decided to hold off on publishing it. When the time is right, I will come back and explain why I made that decision. This is one of the issues that keeps me up at night: the point of these blog posts is to get the information out to you because it is so important that you know what is going on. On the other hand, there are certain things that the Captain can't yet disclose to you because he's in the middle of a weird game of spy versus spy in which knowledge is power. I am committed to putting the right information into your hands here and everything I am putting up on this blog is the truth to the limits of my own understanding. However, I will openly admit to you that I am also committing some white lies of omission because there is some information that I can't disclose yet.
I've gotten some feedback on yesterday's blog post that makes it clear that I committed the cardinal sin of writing: I failed to communicate clearly. Some people thought that I was completely abandoning the fight against the Bogwench and her evil crew. Nothing could be further from the truth, so let me try again to clear this up. The point of that post was that it has become clear to me that I am wearing too many hats in this situation:
- Blogger/pseudo-journalist trying his best to inform people.
- Twitter troll undermining Ms. Mensch's credibility.
- Defendant in an imaginary lawsuit. <snicker>
- Counter-intelligence strategist.
- Defender of those under attack by the goblins of the #ScoobyGang.
- Archivist of evidence.
- Trusted behind the scenes go-between for various factions on our side.
To be quite honest, it's just too much stuff for anyone to handle. The Captain has tried to wear all these hats at once and I'd like to think I've done a reasonably good job at it under the circumstances, primarily because I have had plenty of help from lots of great people. However, the sheer pace of all this is simply unsustainable over a longer period of time. While I truly do think we've got the upper hand here right now, the battle is going to go on for while yet. These people have invested a lot of time and effort into this campaign and they are going to try to as much damage as they can before they are done. Personally, I think I can do the most good by handing off some of the duties on that list to other people and concentrating on 1) and a little bit of 2). And, as I said in the previous post, I would like to stop focusing entirely on the #ScoobyGang and devote some of my attention to some other issues (more about that in an upcoming blog post.) My apologies for any confusion. Make no mistake, I will continue to be thorn in Ms. Mensch's side for as long as it takes to put an end to this fiasco.
Spy versus Spy
One particular phrase I have thrown around a couple of times here is "counter-intelligence operation" with reference to my role (as always, I mean me and all the great people working together on this) in the current situation. This may strike you as some sort of self-important bit of delusion on the part of the Captain: seriously, what is this egotistical fool going on about here? Believe me, I am not making this claim lightly nor am I pretending that I really know what I am doing here. Quite by accident, I brought some knowledge to the table here that has proved to be helpful in this role, but I am an untrained amateur who has gotten caught up in a big fight with some professionals. Indeed, one of the amateur mistakes I made during the past few months was being slow to recognize the seriousness of the situation and the tactics necessary to combat it.
Some of elements of a counter-intelligence operation are:
- Gathering intelligence on the enemy: learn as much as you can about who they are and what they are planning.
- Secure your own operations from attack: identify infiltrators and secure your own internal lines of communication.
- Disrupt the enemy operations.
I explained in the last post how I clung to a relatively benign explanation of the #ScoobyGang's goals and motivations. In exactly the same manner, the Captain was slow to recognize that what we were doing on our side was actually a counter-intelligence operation against a well organized campaign of disinformation. Malcolm Nance has described Ms. Mensch as an "Agent of Chaos" and I don't think he is using that term lightly. He's a professional and I am not ashamed to admit that it took me a lot longer to see the full picture here.
Again, I hope that you are reading this with some amount of skepticism. It certainly does sound pretty far-fetched, doesn't it? "Infiltrators?" What in the name of Sam Hill is he talking about? Again, as I described above, I can't get into some of the details here because it will disrupt our ongoing operations but I can describe what is going on in general terms. Twitter right now is swarming with accounts who are not what they appear to be. Some of these accounts are engaged in active deception operations to infiltrate our side. That sounds completely crazy to many of you and unfortunately, I can't put the proof out here publicly because then I would be giving away some of the techniques we are using to counter their operations. I have shared the proof with a few trusted people and you are just going to have to take the Captain's word for it now. Some of you may have received cryptic messages from me in DMs along the lines of "Be wary of this account: xxxxx." This is serious stuff.
As an aside, this is yet one of the many tricky dilemmas that the Captain is dealing with. Why don't you just put up a guide that tells us how to spot these fake accounts on our own? Sound simple enough on first read, doesn't it? However, if you stop and think about it, you can see the problem. If I do that, I am exposing the methods we are using to find these people. There is an active opponent here and if they become aware of how we are locating their spies, they will change their tactics and cover some of their mistakes. Tricky, right?
What are they up to? As best as I can tell, they are engaged in a full spectrum of disinformation operations:
- Gather intelligence on our side.
- Spreading disinformation to disrupt us.
- Engaging in false flag operations
Crazy, right? It is, but it is true. This is why I linked the article on Surkov in the last post (you had better have read it by now.) This is a much different animal than an ordinary propaganda campaign; I described it a "Russian-style disinformation campaign" because that is the model here. It's not just about pushing out bad information to fool people. It is much more insidious and dangerous than that. "Agents of Chaos" is the right term here; the goal is get inside our heads and foster an atmosphere of confusion and paranoia to disrupt the Resistance and render Twitter useless as an organizing tool.
One of the great difficulties of combating this kind of campaign is that once you begin to suspect people of playing both sides, it is very difficult to stop yourself from descending into paranoia. You begin to suspect everyone, everyone begins to suspect you, it can rapidly spiral out of control. Even the Captain will admit that it has been a struggle to stay evidence-based and keep everything under control. And, that's a huge problem, because the goal here is disruption. Individual acts of sabotage can be countered, bad information can be exposed, but once trust between people starts to break down, organizations become paralyzed. There is a famous case from history that illustrates the dangers of the hall of mirrors we can find ourselves in.
Meet James Jesus Angleton (wikipedia entry here); his hunt for Russian moles with the US intelligence community has been the subject of several excellent books and was the basis for the Matt Damon movie The Good Shepard. It is a fascinating story and it shows the real dangers that arise when even the most highly trained intelligence professionals face once they go down this type of rabbit hole.
There are many recent examples of incidents that illustrate how even people whose jobs depend on sorting out the truth have been deceived by a piece of planted information. I picked this one because this character has somehow managed to figure in so many different crazy stories this year:
If Louise Mensch's fantasy boyfriend James Comey can't sort through the confusion, how are we going to manage?
Some advice from the Captain
I already told you to get off Twitter and social media, but you are still hanging around, aren't you?
I'm not going to pretend I have the answer for you because this is a really hard problem, but I can offer you some general guidance that might help guide you through this mess.
- Always remain aware that you are in an active hostile environment with people that are trying to deceive you.
- Trust yourself and build a network around you in layers with the most trusted people closest to you.
- Beware of "new friends," especially those who seem to ask a lot of questions.
- Overly vehement or impassioned attacks on the #ScoobyGang should be cause for suspicion, especially people who seem to go to far.
- Err on the side of caution. It is better to wrongly suspect someone's true intentions than to be victimized by them.
- Be aware of the fact that others may suspect YOU. After all, they are trying to protect themselves too. Don't gossip and don't ask too many unnecessary questions.
- Keep information closely guarded. Use a "need to know" basis to decide what to share. You are going to make a mistake along the way, the idea here is to limit the damage.
- Don't let yourself descend into paranoia. You should be wary and alert but don't fall into the Angleton trap.
- Don't trust anything that the Bogwench and the #ScoobyGang says. Pay more attention to their actions. The clues are there.
- Don't trust anyone who appears to support them OR even remains staunchly neutral on the subject. What is going on here is plain to see and people who claim to be interested in "both sides" are either fools or something else. Either way, you don't need them.
One last bit of advice for anyone who finds themselves in the #ScoobyGang's crosshairs: Louise Mensch is a world class manipulator and gaslighter. She will take any opportunity to turn a situation around so that she looks like the victim. Their gang of goblins will use every trick in the book to make you look bad, use the Twitter terms of service to their advantage, and to goad you into making mistakes they can pounce on. The oldest rule on the internet applies here:
DO NOT FEED THE TROLL.
Seek help from those you trust and keep your head down. There are tons of decent people on your side. We have the numbers and we are #StrongerTogether.
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