by Rambuncle » Fri Dec 02, 2005 10:57 pm
Pages 380-382<br><br>Knight knew what most people only vaguely suspected--that Intelligence Agencies engage in both the collection of valid signals (information) and the promiscuous dissemination of fake signals (disinformation). They collected the information so that they could form a fairly accurate picture of what was really going on; they spread the disinformation so that all their competitors would form grossly inaccurate pictures. They did this because they knew that whoever could find out what the hell was really going on possessed an advantage over those who were misinformed, confused, and disoriented.<br><br>This game had been invented by Joseph Fouche, who was the chief of the secret police under Napoleon. British Intelligence very quickly copied all of Fouche's tactics, and surpassed them, because an intelligent Englishman is always ten times as mad, in a methodical way, than any Frenchman. By the time of the First World War, Intelligence Agencies everywhere had created so much disinformation and confusion that no two historians ever were able to agree about why the war happened, and who double-crossed whom. They couldn't discover whether the war had been plotted or had just resulted from a series of blunders. They couldn't even decide whether the two conspiracies to assassinate Archduke of Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary (which triggered the war) had been aware of each other.<br><br>By the time of the Second World War, the "Double Cross System" had been invented--by British Intelligence, of course. This was the product of such minds as Alan Turing, a brilliant homosexual mathematician who (when not working on espionage) specialized in creating logical paradoxes other mathematicians couldn't solve, and Ian Fleming, whose fantasy life was equally rich (as indicated by his later James Bond books), and Dennis Wheatley, a man of exceptionally high intelligence who happened to believe that an international society of Satanists was behind every conspiracy that he didn't invent himself. By the time Turing, Fleming, Wheatley and kindred British intellects had perfected the Double-Cross System, the science of lying was almost as precise as Euclidean geometry, and nearly as lovely to the detached observer.<br><br>What the Double-Cross experts had invented was the practical applications of the Strange Loop. In logic or cybernetics, a Strange Loop is a set of propositions that, while valid at each point, is so constructed that it leads to an unresolvable paradox. The Double-Cross people drove the Germans bonkers by inventing disinformation systems that, if believed, were deceptive, but if doubted led to a second disinformation system. They enjoyed this work so much that, at times, they invented Triple Loops, in which if you believed the surface or cover, you were being fooled; and if you looked deeper, you found a plausible alternative, which seemed like the "hidden facts," but that was just another scenario created to fool you; and, if you were persistent enough, you would find beneath that, looking every bit like the Naked Truth, a third layer of deception and masquerade.<br><br>These Strange Loops functioned especially well because the Double-Cross experts had early onfed the Germans the primordial Strange Loop, "Most of your agents are working for us and feeding you Strange Loops."<br><br>Many German agents, it later turned out, had managed to collect quite a bit of accurate information about the Normandy invasion; but many others had turned in equally plausible information about a ficticious Norwegian invasion; and all of them were under suspicion, anyway. German intelligence might as well have made its decision by tossing a coin in the air. <p><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things - Terry Pratchett, Jingo</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--></p><i></i>
