At last we have the final explanation: The recent Russian Spy Case was just a Hollywood conspiracy to promote its action thriller "Salt" (see below review).
July 22, 2010
Movie Review 'Salt'
Spies, Spider Venom and Sex Appeal
By A. O. SCOTT
“Who is Salt?” is the question posed, for the past month or so, on the side of just about every bus in the land. To the extent that “Salt” is a mystery, the question is apt enough. Is she — played at high velocity and with steely ferocity by Angelina Jolie — a Russian mole, a C.I.A. superassassin or a little of both? But to the much greater extent that “Salt,” directed by Phillip Noyce from a screenplay by Kurt Wimmer, is an action movie, the more salient question might be: What does Salt do?
You name it. On the run from suspicious colleagues in the C.I.A. after she has been slandered or had her deep cover blown by a Russian defector (Daniel Olbrychski), Salt sheds her shoes and then her underwear (so as to blind a security camera and spike the blood pressure of at least half the audience) and proceeds to assemble a rocket launcher out of office furniture and cleaning supplies. That’s just an overture, really, to a symphony of hurtling, fairly ingenious fights and escapes. Salt leaps from the roofs of moving trucks on her way out of Washington and then — once in New York — enacts vengeance, pre-emptive mayhem and self-defensive killing using spider venom, plastic explosives and stolen clothes.
It all happens in such a frenzy of momentum and on-the-fly exposition that some of the more preposterous elements in the story will strike you only in retrospect, after the helicopter leaps, the elevator-shaft daredevilry and the race-the-clock flirtation with thermonuclear war. But that it as it should be. Mr. Wimmer has constructed a puzzle just complicated enough to keep you alert while Mr. Noyce, a protean Australian craftsman whose other credits include “Patriot Games”and “Rabbit-Proof Fence,”throws the pieces in the air and watches them collide, explode and crash to the ground.
Evelyn Salt — a name usually reduced, because everyone is in such a hurry, to its first or final syllable — is seen, before the opening titles, being tortured in a North Korean prison, from which she is sprung by a co-worker (Liev Schreiber) and the German arachnologist (August Diehl) who will become her husband. Two years later, on their wedding anniversary, Salt leaves the apartment they share with a cute dog and some poisonous spiders, and makes her way to the corporate offices that serve as a front for her C.I.A. job. There she meets the Russian defector, who insists that Salt is really named Chernkov, that her father was a wrestler and her mother a chess prodigy, and that Salt was taken away by the K.G.B. to be trained from infancy as an undercover agent.
She and her classmates were schooled in “idioms, idiosyncrasy and ideology” (a much better slogan than “Who is Salt,” by the way, though perhaps for a different movie) so they could infiltrate American society. Now, two decades after the end of the cold war, they are being activated to cause some big global trouble.
Does Salt travel to New York to foment this trouble or to head it off? Since Ms. Jolie is someone you are inclined to root for, and since she throws out a few damsel-in-distress bids for empathy amid all the smackdowns and chases, it’s hard not to think of her as one of the good guys. But a lot of circumstantial evidence, like flashbacks to her childhood at the Soviet superspy Hogwarts, suggests otherwise. The movie does what it can to scramble the moral signals, but the plot twists are telegraphed even as they are camouflaged, by the casting, as well as by the writing. Mr. Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor, squabbling as two C.I.A. officers chasing Salt, are skilled at suggesting potential ambiguities about their characters without distracting attention from the star.
Which is scarcely possible, in any case. Perhaps the most ridiculous scene in “Salt” has Ms. Jolie walking away unnoticed from the aftermath of a multi-vehicle smashup. I suspect this was meant as a joke, since her magnetism is the film’s foundation and reason for being (even though her role was originally conceived as a vehicle for Tom Cruise). She is the prime special effect, and a reminder that even in an era of technological overkill, movie stars matter.
Not that “Salt” matters much. Despite an overlay of geopolitics, the movie is as loud and empty as James Newton Howard’s score, which I don’t mean entirely in a bad way. The music does what it needs to do to amplify and inflect the action, while also paying subtle sonic homage to the brassy Bond-style soundtracks of the past. And the film itself moves with speed and efficiency. Ms. Jolie’s contribution is to endow the silliness with a gravity and clarity of purpose that makes you care, for a scant hour and a half, who Salt is, what she does and where she stands. Not that she stands for much, or stays still for very long.
“Salt” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Fisticuffs and gunplay, accompanied by swearing.
SALT
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Phillip Noyce; written by Kurt Wimmer; director of photography, Robert Elswit; edited by Stuart Baird and John Gilroy; music by James Newton Howard; production designer, Scott Chambliss; costumes by Sarah Edwards; produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Sunil Perkash; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes.
WITH: Angelina Jolie (Evelyn Salt), Liev Schreiber (Ted Winter), Chiwetel Ejiofor (William Peabody), Daniel Olbrychski (Orlov), Andre Braugher (Secretary of Defense) and August Diehl (Mike Krause).
Thursday, July 22, 2010
A Wry Dystopian Seer
By MATTHEW KAMINSKI, Wall Street Journal (July 22)
In the American future of "Super Sad True Love Story"—Gary Shteyngart's third novel, to be released Tuesday—the satire comes without veils. Books, a.k.a. "printed, bound Media artifacts," smell bad. The new generation can't read texts but "scans info" and sends "Teens," a sort of tweet, on the latest model of "äppärät," the iPhone a dozen generations hence. Nearly everyone under 30 is "completely ahistorical"; over 30, obsolete. "We're in a post-literate age," says one young thing. "You know, a visual age." And "America is history."
Mr. Shteyngart says he knows a bit about the passing of the literate age. "I'm writing novels!" he says. "I'm one of those last Japanese soldiers on one of those islands, hiding in a cave and shooting, because nobody told him that Hirohito has surrendered. Banzai!"
At 38, the writer is hardly obsolete. His name appears on glam lit lists like Granta's "Best of Young American Novelists" and the New Yorker's "20 Under 40." Our obsession with rankings is actually a running gag in "Super Sad True Love Story," and as in 2006's "Absurdistan," or his first book, "The Russian Debutante's Handbook," Mr. Shteyngart can barely write (or utter) an unfunny sentence. He says he worries the comedy may blunt some of the serious intent. "But can you imagine a dystopic novel about our stupid media culture that has no humor? It'd be a disaster."
Sitting earlier this week at Brown Café, his midday haunt on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Mr. Shteyngart wears a checkered blue shirt and thick glasses. He is shortish and balding, a Soviet-born Jew who emigrated from Leningrad in 1978. An awning on a shop across the street reads "Information Overload." "How appropriate," he says, laughing. "I don't know what they sell, but I don't want it."
In the imaginary future, technology makes us dumber. "I'm feeling pretty dumb these days," says Mr. Shteyngart, an iPhone nestled in his khaki shorts. "I'm so glad that one of the first teenage slang was TMI"—too much information.
While conceding "change is inevitable," he notes that "things happen way too fast. I always bring up the example of Tolstoy writing about the War of 1812 in the 1860s. The horse was a horse and a carriage was a carriage. Tolstoy didn't have to worry about the next killer app. The novel is a disaster at this point. It's not a disaster that there are no good novels being written. There are wonderful novels written. It's that our brains are being disassembled right now and being put back together in a whole different shape, and that is not going to be conducive to reading a 300-page thing that doesn't have any links."
Mr. Shteyngart made an amusing Internet trailer for the book starring writers Edmund White and Jay McInerney and the actor James Franco, a former student in his writing class at Columbia. "You have to use extraordinary ways to attract an audience," he says. The danger is that serious fiction will "become poetry, which now exists almost entirely inside the walls of academia."
In "Super Sad True Love Story," the death of letters helps bring about America's collapse. At the start, we see a country sapped by a military misadventure in Venezuela and deeply indebted to the People's Bank of China-Worldwide. The Chinese People's Capitalist Party is the new global hegemon.
Behind the scenes, a U.S. secretary of defense whose name evokes Rumsfeld rules a one-party (the Bipartisans) paramilitary state. Hot fashions for women are "TotalSurrender" skirts with a slit down the crotch or see-through "Onionskin" jeans. Consumption of pornography starts around age 6. News comes courtesy of FoxLiberty-Prime or FoxLiberty- Ultra, or any member of the Media, always capitalized, who streams whatever first comes to mind with his äppärät. And things get worse. A clue toward the end of the story that won't give away the ending: A sign outside a local watering hole reads, "WE ACCEPT ONLY YUAN SORRY BUT WE ALSO HALF TO EAT."
Mr. Shteyngart waves away easy political labels. "Everyone gets a drubbing," he says. "Some conservatives can say it's about illiteracy, about certain cultural values no longer being transmitted." He sings a popular tune of American decline: "Every power that moves that quickly will have a precipitous fall. There's little you can do about it. One can hope for a soft landing—the Netherlands, not Argentina."
But enough of the Orwellian prophesy. As Mr. Shteyngart says, "I wrote a love story. It's in the title." Lenny Abramov, a shortish and balding 39-year-old Russian Jew, falls for a young Korean-American, 15 years and several technological eras younger.
Lenny's fictional 740-square-foot apartment in a 1950s tower on Grand Street was Mr. Shteyngart's real home until two weeks ago, when he moved up to fashionable Gramercy Park. We sneak into his old building. Mr. Shteyngart finds another occasion for his dyspepsia, a death notice posted next to the elevator: "Every other day someone is dying, old Jewish guys and girls who didn't move out to the suburbs. It's so disconcerting." In the novel, Lenny is obsessed with mortality and aging, and works for a "life-extension" company called Post-Human Services.
When I say I miss the pre- äppärät days—say, 1995—and even felt better informed then, my fellow Gen-Xer completes the thought. "Much better informed—and happier," he says.
"The younger generation that I know—and I do know a lot of them—they're not happy," he says. "All of us are overwhelmed with information. All of us are struggling to survive in ways we never had to before. Things were much better when this country actually produced things like drivable cars and people like us wrote about it. It was simple, and good. Good cars, good journalism, good haircuts. . . . 'Mad Men' is nostalgia for all of us—well, not the racism, the sexism and the anti-Semitism."
One of Mr. Shteyngart's literary heroes is Philip Roth. After several beers at Cafe Katja in Lenny's hood, we agree that Mr. Roth's books, whatever the period, are a distinctive pleasure to read. "This is all I wish for my career," Mr. Shteyngart says. "Some will be better than others. I don't care. I want people to have fun. Why is that so wrong?"
Mr. Kaminski is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
Write to Matthew Kaminski at matthew.kaminski@wsj.com
In the American future of "Super Sad True Love Story"—Gary Shteyngart's third novel, to be released Tuesday—the satire comes without veils. Books, a.k.a. "printed, bound Media artifacts," smell bad. The new generation can't read texts but "scans info" and sends "Teens," a sort of tweet, on the latest model of "äppärät," the iPhone a dozen generations hence. Nearly everyone under 30 is "completely ahistorical"; over 30, obsolete. "We're in a post-literate age," says one young thing. "You know, a visual age." And "America is history."
Mr. Shteyngart says he knows a bit about the passing of the literate age. "I'm writing novels!" he says. "I'm one of those last Japanese soldiers on one of those islands, hiding in a cave and shooting, because nobody told him that Hirohito has surrendered. Banzai!"
At 38, the writer is hardly obsolete. His name appears on glam lit lists like Granta's "Best of Young American Novelists" and the New Yorker's "20 Under 40." Our obsession with rankings is actually a running gag in "Super Sad True Love Story," and as in 2006's "Absurdistan," or his first book, "The Russian Debutante's Handbook," Mr. Shteyngart can barely write (or utter) an unfunny sentence. He says he worries the comedy may blunt some of the serious intent. "But can you imagine a dystopic novel about our stupid media culture that has no humor? It'd be a disaster."
Sitting earlier this week at Brown Café, his midday haunt on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Mr. Shteyngart wears a checkered blue shirt and thick glasses. He is shortish and balding, a Soviet-born Jew who emigrated from Leningrad in 1978. An awning on a shop across the street reads "Information Overload." "How appropriate," he says, laughing. "I don't know what they sell, but I don't want it."
In the imaginary future, technology makes us dumber. "I'm feeling pretty dumb these days," says Mr. Shteyngart, an iPhone nestled in his khaki shorts. "I'm so glad that one of the first teenage slang was TMI"—too much information.
While conceding "change is inevitable," he notes that "things happen way too fast. I always bring up the example of Tolstoy writing about the War of 1812 in the 1860s. The horse was a horse and a carriage was a carriage. Tolstoy didn't have to worry about the next killer app. The novel is a disaster at this point. It's not a disaster that there are no good novels being written. There are wonderful novels written. It's that our brains are being disassembled right now and being put back together in a whole different shape, and that is not going to be conducive to reading a 300-page thing that doesn't have any links."
Mr. Shteyngart made an amusing Internet trailer for the book starring writers Edmund White and Jay McInerney and the actor James Franco, a former student in his writing class at Columbia. "You have to use extraordinary ways to attract an audience," he says. The danger is that serious fiction will "become poetry, which now exists almost entirely inside the walls of academia."
In "Super Sad True Love Story," the death of letters helps bring about America's collapse. At the start, we see a country sapped by a military misadventure in Venezuela and deeply indebted to the People's Bank of China-Worldwide. The Chinese People's Capitalist Party is the new global hegemon.
Behind the scenes, a U.S. secretary of defense whose name evokes Rumsfeld rules a one-party (the Bipartisans) paramilitary state. Hot fashions for women are "TotalSurrender" skirts with a slit down the crotch or see-through "Onionskin" jeans. Consumption of pornography starts around age 6. News comes courtesy of FoxLiberty-Prime or FoxLiberty- Ultra, or any member of the Media, always capitalized, who streams whatever first comes to mind with his äppärät. And things get worse. A clue toward the end of the story that won't give away the ending: A sign outside a local watering hole reads, "WE ACCEPT ONLY YUAN SORRY BUT WE ALSO HALF TO EAT."
Mr. Shteyngart waves away easy political labels. "Everyone gets a drubbing," he says. "Some conservatives can say it's about illiteracy, about certain cultural values no longer being transmitted." He sings a popular tune of American decline: "Every power that moves that quickly will have a precipitous fall. There's little you can do about it. One can hope for a soft landing—the Netherlands, not Argentina."
But enough of the Orwellian prophesy. As Mr. Shteyngart says, "I wrote a love story. It's in the title." Lenny Abramov, a shortish and balding 39-year-old Russian Jew, falls for a young Korean-American, 15 years and several technological eras younger.
Lenny's fictional 740-square-foot apartment in a 1950s tower on Grand Street was Mr. Shteyngart's real home until two weeks ago, when he moved up to fashionable Gramercy Park. We sneak into his old building. Mr. Shteyngart finds another occasion for his dyspepsia, a death notice posted next to the elevator: "Every other day someone is dying, old Jewish guys and girls who didn't move out to the suburbs. It's so disconcerting." In the novel, Lenny is obsessed with mortality and aging, and works for a "life-extension" company called Post-Human Services.
When I say I miss the pre- äppärät days—say, 1995—and even felt better informed then, my fellow Gen-Xer completes the thought. "Much better informed—and happier," he says.
"The younger generation that I know—and I do know a lot of them—they're not happy," he says. "All of us are overwhelmed with information. All of us are struggling to survive in ways we never had to before. Things were much better when this country actually produced things like drivable cars and people like us wrote about it. It was simple, and good. Good cars, good journalism, good haircuts. . . . 'Mad Men' is nostalgia for all of us—well, not the racism, the sexism and the anti-Semitism."
One of Mr. Shteyngart's literary heroes is Philip Roth. After several beers at Cafe Katja in Lenny's hood, we agree that Mr. Roth's books, whatever the period, are a distinctive pleasure to read. "This is all I wish for my career," Mr. Shteyngart says. "Some will be better than others. I don't care. I want people to have fun. Why is that so wrong?"
Mr. Kaminski is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
Write to Matthew Kaminski at matthew.kaminski@wsj.com
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Twittering/Theorizing: Two Sides of the Same Public Diplomacy Counterfeit Coin
In reply to Professor Graig Hayden's thoughtful article, "In the interest of informed debate," InterMap:
On the one side of the coin, you have what I'd call Twi'lek twitterers: 140 characters in cyberspace will solve American image/public diplomacy problems now! On the flip side you have academe's over-conceptualizers: what's needed are the latest social-science (often quantitative and survey-driven) studies of PD to make it effective and productive.
But let's consider the golden middle: in-depth discussions, face-to-face, on US public diplomacy -- and efforts to improve it -- based on history and experience, including the current realities of practicing public diplomacy today by American diplomats overseas.
Such a historical, "let's be-concrete" but substantive perspective does not exclude (well, not quite) mindless twittering or overly "mindful" conceptualizing. It just puts these two approaches -- quite similar in their avoidance of the complexities of life, one by superficiality, the other by abstraction -- in their proper intellectual/policy place.
As for academics engaged in arcane PD theory, examples of their work can be seen in abundance, and on a continuing basis, in Bruce Gregory's outstanding Updated Public Diplomacy Resources and the equally excellent Literature on Public Diplomacy of The Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’ Library and Documentation Centre.
As for preparing for a public-diplomacy career, I think that, far more important than an advanced degree in public diplomacy, are the following: thinking and writing clearly; in-depth exposure to the humanities; a historical perspective; knowledge of foreign language(s); wide overseas experience; and keeping up to date with technological developments. Of course, a PD "degree" does not necessarily exclude these matters, but it's a question of what should be a priority.
Regarding professors' ability to engage persons in the last three feet, so important in public diplomacy, the legendary rudeness and bad manners of socially club-footed academics ("the mad professor" trope) -- uncouth behavior I have endured on perhaps too many occasions, while in academic settings, since leaving the Foreign Service -- are also in not infrequent evidence among university/think tank experts in public diplomacy. There are, of course, numerous exceptions, as is always the case in life, Craig Hayden being among them. Indeed, I was honored and delighted that he addressed and enlightened my Georgetown class.
On the one side of the coin, you have what I'd call Twi'lek twitterers: 140 characters in cyberspace will solve American image/public diplomacy problems now! On the flip side you have academe's over-conceptualizers: what's needed are the latest social-science (often quantitative and survey-driven) studies of PD to make it effective and productive.
But let's consider the golden middle: in-depth discussions, face-to-face, on US public diplomacy -- and efforts to improve it -- based on history and experience, including the current realities of practicing public diplomacy today by American diplomats overseas.
Such a historical, "let's be-concrete" but substantive perspective does not exclude (well, not quite) mindless twittering or overly "mindful" conceptualizing. It just puts these two approaches -- quite similar in their avoidance of the complexities of life, one by superficiality, the other by abstraction -- in their proper intellectual/policy place.
As for academics engaged in arcane PD theory, examples of their work can be seen in abundance, and on a continuing basis, in Bruce Gregory's outstanding Updated Public Diplomacy Resources and the equally excellent Literature on Public Diplomacy of The Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’ Library and Documentation Centre.
As for preparing for a public-diplomacy career, I think that, far more important than an advanced degree in public diplomacy, are the following: thinking and writing clearly; in-depth exposure to the humanities; a historical perspective; knowledge of foreign language(s); wide overseas experience; and keeping up to date with technological developments. Of course, a PD "degree" does not necessarily exclude these matters, but it's a question of what should be a priority.
Regarding professors' ability to engage persons in the last three feet, so important in public diplomacy, the legendary rudeness and bad manners of socially club-footed academics ("the mad professor" trope) -- uncouth behavior I have endured on perhaps too many occasions, while in academic settings, since leaving the Foreign Service -- are also in not infrequent evidence among university/think tank experts in public diplomacy. There are, of course, numerous exceptions, as is always the case in life, Craig Hayden being among them. Indeed, I was honored and delighted that he addressed and enlightened my Georgetown class.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
What's important, what's happening, and what's public diplomacy
Note: Final version of the below at Huffington Post
Yes, we all love the new social media. They provide instant information. And, what's often overlooked, they can be a useful research tool. Type, for example, "public diplomacy" when you're on Twitter, and you'll get the latest on what twitterers are saying about the subject.
But what's happening is not necessarily what's important. Much of what twitterers say is as significant as that Viagra ad aired on the corporate evening news. "Now" is not "wisdom." That's the great limitation of the new social media as an intellectual or even political tool, including public diplomacy.
All those titillated by Twitter should read Evgeny Morozov, who has written skeptically about the new media and is dismissed by a self-promoting State Department functionary in the following sweeping fashion:
Public diplomacy (PD) -- which the State Department defines as "engaging, informing, and influencing key international audiences" -- is not rocket science. All too many of academic theories about PD are incomprehensible, pompously-expressed "concepts" from persons -- among them rightfully esteemed tenured professors whose intelligence is all-too-often joined by a tactless inability to handle the last three feet of person-to-person contact -- who have never actually practiced the "public diplomacy" they lecture about. Walt Whitman:
Yes, we all love the new social media. They provide instant information. And, what's often overlooked, they can be a useful research tool. Type, for example, "public diplomacy" when you're on Twitter, and you'll get the latest on what twitterers are saying about the subject.
But what's happening is not necessarily what's important. Much of what twitterers say is as significant as that Viagra ad aired on the corporate evening news. "Now" is not "wisdom." That's the great limitation of the new social media as an intellectual or even political tool, including public diplomacy.
All those titillated by Twitter should read Evgeny Morozov, who has written skeptically about the new media and is dismissed by a self-promoting State Department functionary in the following sweeping fashion:
The problem with his thinking ... is it neglects the inevitability that this technology is going to spread — so he advocates a very dangerously cautious approach that says it’s dangerous and we shouldn’t play in that space. What the Evgeny Morozovs of the world don’t understand is that whether anybody likes it or not, the private sector is pumping out innovation like crazy.Yes, Mr. Jared Cohen -- the State Department functionary referred to above -- it's the inevitable end of history all over again, 21st century version! Keep on technologically pumpin', private sector (with a little help from the State Department) and all will be fine with the universe (just ask BP). How naive, ahistorical can you get ...
Public diplomacy (PD) -- which the State Department defines as "engaging, informing, and influencing key international audiences" -- is not rocket science. All too many of academic theories about PD are incomprehensible, pompously-expressed "concepts" from persons -- among them rightfully esteemed tenured professors whose intelligence is all-too-often joined by a tactless inability to handle the last three feet of person-to-person contact -- who have never actually practiced the "public diplomacy" they lecture about. Walt Whitman:
When I heard the learn’d astronomer;Still, PD, dealing as it does with complex human relationships from an international perspective, is worth talking intelligently about, especially when approached by scholars/PD practitioners who value life and history above theory and abstraction. Goethe:
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle TheorieTwitter and other social media can provide an entrée into PD discussions, but such discussions should go far beyond 140 characters, as I'm sure most twitterers themselves -- and they are, like this writer, ordinary persons eager to communicate with their fellow human beings -- would agree.
Und gruen des Lebens goldner Baum.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
The Russian Spy Case and Public Diplomacy: Some Out of the Box Speculations
In a recent conversation with a wealthy member of the US corporate world with whom I have been in close contact since childhood and who has done extensive business in the communist world (yes, he's my older brother), he gave me -- I, a long-time student of Russia (an intriguing country about which I am still learning, after 40 years of observation) -- his somewhat unconventional, but -- upon further thought -- provocative take on the recent Russian "spy" scandal in the U.S.:
The FSB actually let the word out to the FBI about the undercover activities of these so-called spooks so that it (the FSB) could get them (its spooks) off its payroll, given the huge costs (for the hard-up Russian government budget) of keeping these silly amateurs fed, housed, and bourgeois-comfortable in the USA.
Makes a lot of sense to me, given the sorry state of the Russian "economy."So does the notion, towards which I incline, that the so-called "spies" were the privileged relatives/contacts of ex-KGB bigwigs who were given a free long-term komandirovka (business trip) in the US thanks their "godfathers" in what was once the USSR -- following the Russian age-old custom of po blatu. Is it that surprising that the straight-out-of-a-James-Bond movie sex kitten/"spy" Anna Chapman is the daughter of a former KGB officer?
The jeunesse dorée of the elite sent overseas for its enlightenment/amusement at the state's expense is a recurrent pattern in Russian history since at least Peter the Great. So are denunciations by Russians of Russians perceived to live privileged lives abroad by those, stuck in Russia, who believe such privileged lives should belong properly to them.
Please forgive the generalizations, but I am trying to understand events about which we have so little real information.
If you think the above is nonsense, read the court documents (which actually are interesting information) cited in Anne Applebaum's article "Up to their old spy tricks again," Washington Post. It's quite clear, from perusing this record, that "Moscow Center" was not exactly happy with how little its "agents" were "doing" in the Land of the Free at state expense. Some quotations:
A Moscow Center message to spook Richard Murphy:
You were sent to the USA for long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, home etc. -- all these serve one goal: fulfill your main function, i.e., to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels [intelligence reports] to c [Center].
Talk about the C- student being told why he's going to school free of charge!
And then there's this from the record:
B. THE YONKERS CONSPIRATORS
BC. The Yonkers conspirators have also worked to gather information on behalf of the SVR [Moscow Center]. Thus, for example, throughout 2002 and 2003, law-enforcement agents, acting pursant to judicial orders, intercepted aural communications taking place inside the Yonkers House. On September 10, 2002, JUAN LAZARO and VICKY PELAEZ, the informants, were recorded discussing Moscow Center's disappointment with the quality of LAZARO's then-recent reporting:
LAZARO: They tell me that my information is of no value because I didn't provide any source ... it's of no value to them.
PELAEZ: Really?
LAZARO: Yes. They say that ... " ... without a source ... without stating who tells you all of this ... It isn't ... your report isn't ...
PELAEZ: [interrupts] Put down any politicians from here!
...
LAZARO: I'm ... I'm going to give them what they want want. But, I'm going to continue what I'm telling them ... If they don't like what I tell them, too bad ... but, [unintelligible] work because they like it . ... they're [unintelligible]. They say their hands are tied. On the inside, they don't even care about the country ...
PELAEZ: So ... why do they have you? If they don't care about the country ... what do we have intelligence Services for?
What would you -- if you were an underpaid FSB apparatchik sitting in a dumpy office in Moscow with a ruble salary -- do with these freeloaders?
Full of envy, you'd do all you can to get rid of them, despite their KGB connections, living off the hog in America thanks to Kremlin-provided dollars! Off with their heads! Now!
And you'd let the FBI do it! The Americans are efficient, after all, and they can do the job better without our no-nonsense leader Stalin around ...
Meanwhile, with this minor episode over, how about serious public diplomacy on the part of our century-old Eurasian neighbor if it wishes to present/represent itself to American citizens? Of course, the same recommendation, flip-side, could be made to us, the relatively young United States of America, vis a vis Russia, with which we do share many common aspirations (common values, in the Putin era, is perhaps too strong a word, at least as regards Russian officials close to an ex-KGB operative who spent perhaps too many formative years in communist East Germany).
Chapman Image from
Saturday, July 3, 2010
The McChrystal Controversy and Public Diplomacy
Below my comments, slightly edited, to an on-line discussion regarding General McCrystal's dealing with the media, specifically Rolling Stone:
1) McChrystal and his staff didn't know how to deal with the press in an adult way: a "public affairs" gang that couldn't shoot straight. Sure, the media must be kept accurately and honestly informed, but that doesn't mean reporters must treated on "he's my good drinking buddy, I can tell him everything" basis, which evidently was the case with the Rolling Stone reporter and the McCrystal staff, the reporter who "exposed" his drinking buddies and their boss so mercilessly.
From my twenty-year-plus Foreign Service officer (FSO) experience (for what it's worth), as a "public diplomacy" member of US missions overseas who often dealt with media, both American and foreign, I learned that journalists respect spokespersons who keep a professional distance, as it underscores the fact that the spokesperson realizes that he can separate the official from the personal.
2) The RS article suggests that the McChrystal "Team America" was living in its own, own, very own little world. Sure, the "team" was fighting a war (which does, granted, mean a certain sad involvement in reality on its part), but the team's comments indicated, at least to me, that its members saw themselves in terms of "us" ("us" being Special Operations living in a bubble of its own macho making) vs. "them" -- "them" being, ironically enough, not so much the "insurgents" as other (wimpish) members of the USG, supposedly superiors and colleagues.
3. The Pentagon has gotten so huge and overextended that its right hand doesn't know what its left hand is doing. It's an apple that looks quite shiny on the outside (boy, those aircraft carriers sure look great on photographs, as do well-pressed military uniforms).
But inside the organization there's a rot of confusion, turf wars, indecision, waste, duplication, and simple idiocy. Money is thrown away in incredible ways, all this in the name of "keeping the homeland safe." (I won't get into the military-industrial complex debate). We are not only militarily overextended (we simply can't afford such mind-boggling expenditures on wars and bases unless we want to be the next collapsing empire, be it Rome or the USSR). We are also militarily totally confused, with too much taxpayer money made available for often senseless military initiatives we simply can't afford (AFRICOM comes to mind).
Moreover, and perhaps more important, America is increasingly perceived overseas as wearing combat boots rather than projecting new ideas and providing innovative products. This view about America-as-an-aged-centurion
fighting against social and political change, held among foreigners, including the young, is not in our long term economic and political interests.
4. I admire our men and women in the military. I have had many intellectually stimulating exchanges with members of our armed forces in academe and elsewhere from which I learned a great deal. Overseas, as an FSO, I thought our military attaches were exemplary representatives of our country, well informed and sensitive to local public opinion.
However, the most important lesson for me, as a civilian, regarding the McChrystal fiasco -- aside from how badly it was handled from a strictly "how to deal with the press" professional perspective -- is that we are engaged in a senseless, ruinous war -- a war unpopular throughout the world -- in Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, that no one, in or out of the administration, really knows why we are fighting. Whenever I hear a military official say that we're fighting "the bad guys," I want to ask: But who the hell are the "bad guys"? Please, tell me, specifically, who are they?
For McChrystal and his boys, it seems, the bad guys were everyone but themselves.
Image from
1) McChrystal and his staff didn't know how to deal with the press in an adult way: a "public affairs" gang that couldn't shoot straight. Sure, the media must be kept accurately and honestly informed, but that doesn't mean reporters must treated on "he's my good drinking buddy, I can tell him everything" basis, which evidently was the case with the Rolling Stone reporter and the McCrystal staff, the reporter who "exposed" his drinking buddies and their boss so mercilessly.
From my twenty-year-plus Foreign Service officer (FSO) experience (for what it's worth), as a "public diplomacy" member of US missions overseas who often dealt with media, both American and foreign, I learned that journalists respect spokespersons who keep a professional distance, as it underscores the fact that the spokesperson realizes that he can separate the official from the personal.
2) The RS article suggests that the McChrystal "Team America" was living in its own, own, very own little world. Sure, the "team" was fighting a war (which does, granted, mean a certain sad involvement in reality on its part), but the team's comments indicated, at least to me, that its members saw themselves in terms of "us" ("us" being Special Operations living in a bubble of its own macho making) vs. "them" -- "them" being, ironically enough, not so much the "insurgents" as other (wimpish) members of the USG, supposedly superiors and colleagues.
3. The Pentagon has gotten so huge and overextended that its right hand doesn't know what its left hand is doing. It's an apple that looks quite shiny on the outside (boy, those aircraft carriers sure look great on photographs, as do well-pressed military uniforms).
But inside the organization there's a rot of confusion, turf wars, indecision, waste, duplication, and simple idiocy. Money is thrown away in incredible ways, all this in the name of "keeping the homeland safe." (I won't get into the military-industrial complex debate). We are not only militarily overextended (we simply can't afford such mind-boggling expenditures on wars and bases unless we want to be the next collapsing empire, be it Rome or the USSR). We are also militarily totally confused, with too much taxpayer money made available for often senseless military initiatives we simply can't afford (AFRICOM comes to mind).
Moreover, and perhaps more important, America is increasingly perceived overseas as wearing combat boots rather than projecting new ideas and providing innovative products. This view about America-as-an-aged-centurion
fighting against social and political change, held among foreigners, including the young, is not in our long term economic and political interests.4. I admire our men and women in the military. I have had many intellectually stimulating exchanges with members of our armed forces in academe and elsewhere from which I learned a great deal. Overseas, as an FSO, I thought our military attaches were exemplary representatives of our country, well informed and sensitive to local public opinion.
However, the most important lesson for me, as a civilian, regarding the McChrystal fiasco -- aside from how badly it was handled from a strictly "how to deal with the press" professional perspective -- is that we are engaged in a senseless, ruinous war -- a war unpopular throughout the world -- in Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, that no one, in or out of the administration, really knows why we are fighting. Whenever I hear a military official say that we're fighting "the bad guys," I want to ask: But who the hell are the "bad guys"? Please, tell me, specifically, who are they?
For McChrystal and his boys, it seems, the bad guys were everyone but themselves.
Image from
An email from Rosa Brooks on psyops, MISO, and public diplomacy
Original Message-----
From: Brooks, Rosa CIV OSD POLICY
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 4:11 PM
To: NAMES REDACTED
Subject: Yes, "PSYOP" is changing to "MISO"
All,
USDP sought clarification from SecDef and reports that he is comfortable
with a complete PSYOP name change, from PSYOP to Military Information
Support Operations ("MISO" - sounds like a soup, but what can you do? I
guess we could also keep saying MIS).
ADM Olson and GEN Casey's emails and related message traffic have
already leaked out, so now that we have clarity on SD's views, we will
need to move quickly to inform key Congressional and interagency
players, and respond to media queries with this information. (Walter
Pincus from Wash Post as already queried us). My hope is that this will
not be a big deal, but given the sensitivities around PYSOP and the
PSYOP budget, you never know.
Key points to make if asked: This is just a terminological change, not
a substantive change. The term PSYOP was anachronistic and misleading;
Military Information Support is a more accurate description of the
activities and programs at issue. We already use the term "Military
Information Support Teams" to describe the PSYOP personnel who deploy to
embassies and provide support to State Dept public diplomacy efforts;
this more thoroughgoing terminological shift will make our terminology
consistent and help reduce misunderstandings.
If this generates enough Hill or press interest, we may want to pull
together a one-pager from existing congressional reports to explain what
kinds of activities we are talking about.
Meanwhile, we will work with OGC & Leg Affairs to determine whether
formal congressional notification/legislative change is needed to make
this... officially official.
Rosa
~~~~~~
Rosa Brooks
Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy &
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Rule of Law & International
Humanitarian Policy
--From; Brooks image, with following caption: Appearing on the last episode of Tucker on March 14, 2008, Barack Obama fan and LA Times columnist Rosa Brooks grimaces after claiming Obama "probably wasn't listening" in church when Rev. Jeremiah Wright made his controversial statements.
From: Brooks, Rosa CIV OSD POLICY
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 4:11 PM
To: NAMES REDACTED
Subject: Yes, "PSYOP" is changing to "MISO"
All,
USDP sought clarification from SecDef and reports that he is comfortable
with a complete PSYOP name change, from PSYOP to Military Information
Support Operations ("MISO" - sounds like a soup, but what can you do? I
guess we could also keep saying MIS).
ADM Olson and GEN Casey's emails and related message traffic have
already leaked out, so now that we have clarity on SD's views, we will
need to move quickly to inform key Congressional and interagency
players, and respond to media queries with this information. (Walter
Pincus from Wash Post as already queried us). My hope is that this will
not be a big deal, but given the sensitivities around PYSOP and the
PSYOP budget, you never know.
Key points to make if asked: This is just a terminological change, not
a substantive change. The term PSYOP was anachronistic and misleading;
Military Information Support is a more accurate description of the
activities and programs at issue. We already use the term "Military
Information Support Teams" to describe the PSYOP personnel who deploy to
embassies and provide support to State Dept public diplomacy efforts;
this more thoroughgoing terminological shift will make our terminology
consistent and help reduce misunderstandings.
If this generates enough Hill or press interest, we may want to pull
together a one-pager from existing congressional reports to explain what
kinds of activities we are talking about.
Meanwhile, we will work with OGC & Leg Affairs to determine whether
formal congressional notification/legislative change is needed to make
this... officially official.
Rosa
~~~~~~
Rosa Brooks
Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy &
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Rule of Law & International
Humanitarian Policy
--From; Brooks image, with following caption: Appearing on the last episode of Tucker on March 14, 2008, Barack Obama fan and LA Times columnist Rosa Brooks grimaces after claiming Obama "probably wasn't listening" in church when Rev. Jeremiah Wright made his controversial statements.
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