What percent of the population is capable of black ops?

If you went to a high school with a graduating class of say a thousand, how many of your classmates would have the mental characteristics to be employed by the CIA? For the sake of argument we will call this characteristic the Henry Kissinger factor.

A certain percentage would be liberals and oppose illegal wars, stand up for the poor etc. The vast majority would status quo middle Americans who go along with governments lies about why we do horrible things in other countries. The average American G.I. is morally good but perhaps rightly or wrongly assigns blame until it rises to the highest levels of command a.k.a the chimp.

Smaller percentages would be criminals and lunatic nuts. The CIA would never employee these people because due to natural paranoid tendencies those organizing illegal operations themselves might be in danger.

The demographic I am looking for is people who are intelligent enough to know the consequences of their actions but choose to do so anyway. What are the personality characteristics of these people and can they be spotted in public by their mannerisms or speech?

I'd say that any number of folks are able to mix up some explosives of some sort and probably blow themselves to smithereens trying to make a point. I'd say that the number of folks who are able to pull it off and survive is much smaller. Most folks simply lack the mental ability to do that kind of work and not trip it up somehow.

I'd also speculate that Black ops work takes a certain amount of either sociopathic behavior or else patriotism. (Please note, that this is not the "rally round the flag" brand of patriot, but more like the "Thousand yard stare" sort of guy.) I can only speculate that the guys who actually run the spy networks are not 100% able mentally to kill for the sake of politics--thus I'd have to think that it is a very select group that could do much in the way of black ops involving any real loss of life.

As for goon squads to go in and do "black bag" ops (breaking and entering and the low key stuff like wire taps) I'd say they are pretty easy to fined--maybe not always as smart as you'd like.

Just my two cents...

Laura

"thousand yard stare"...i like that.

look for, in high schools, people with high grades who will do anything to achieve their own ends...especially with respect to grades. we call them "Grade Mercenaries" in my school.

so maybe the average Joe could pull it off



The most amazing thing to note from this follow-up experiment is that 32% of the subjects in the proximity-touch condition held the hand of the learner on the shock plate while administering shocks in excess of 400 volts! Further experiments showed that teachers were less obedient when the experimenter communicated with them via the telephone versus in person, and males were just as likely to be obedient as females, although females tended to be more nervous.

Milgram's obedience experiment was replicated by other researchers. The experiments spanned a 25-year period from 1961 to 1985 and have been repeated in Australia, South Africa and in several European countries. In one study conducted in Germany, over 85% of the subjects administered a lethal electric shock to the learner!

http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm

Somewhere I have a book I acquired a long time ago by a researcher who interviewed many of the Nazi "doctors" who conducted inhuman experiments at the death camps. As I recall these were professional men who did not share the Nazis' hatred of their victims and who constructed an elaborate psychological defense mechanism to shield themselves from the reality of what they were doing, in effect "doubling" themselves into a work-self capable of horrors and a personal-self which stayed distant from the same horrors.

The upshot of this research, and a number of other experiments and studies, is that just about anyone can be induced to do horrible things given the right motivation. And sometimes that motivation isn't very extreme. Our buttons are deeply wired and easy to push when you know where they are.

The person who is immune to the kind of persuasion practiced by propagandists and drill sergeants is the exception. The rule is that most of us can be persuaded to do all sorts of horrible things if we're convinced it's for a good or important cause.

Contracting out increases the odds of plausible deniability, and avoids the issue of potential resistance from Americans who might believe their orders to be at odds with their nation's welfare.

Look at the Kennedy assassination, with the heavy involvement of Cubans and the likely involvement of at least one French OAS sniper.

some of those bloody fingers are also American. I agree completely with your above post.

....I would love to "outsource" my freeper coworkers! I would probably be collateral damage, but heck it would nice to see these smug SOBs feel some pain for once.

My father died recently and he was one of these people. He actually worked for the CIA during the 60s and 70s designing computer spyware. He was also a sociopathic, sadistic, and very intelligent man. Most people were easily taken in by him. He had an outgoing personality, with an agressive tendency to argue that maybe put some people off, but also impressed them. To him, it was all a game. He liked to fool people, especially people in high-level positions or authority--like the IRS, doctors, judges, etc. He participated in the LSD experiments in the late 60s and was always interested in mind games and all research having to do with behavioral psychology. He raised his children according to BF Skinner--and told us so. Intermittant reward and punishment. Extinguishing behavior he found undesirable through aversive "therapy" like electric shocks and sensory deprivation (dark closets).

He had absolutely no conscience. If he felt the pain he inflicted on others it did not show, ever. But at the end he was very paranoid, from what I hear from one of my brothers who had seen him a few years ago (I had no contact with him for most of the last twenty years.)

His body was found in his home in Florida (!!!) nearly five months after he died. Or we think it was him. It was so badly decomposed that the coroner just used chest x-rays and the fact that all the doors were padlocked on the inside to confirm his identity. But all four of the tires on his car were slashed in the garage. The investigators said he had at least five social security numbers and false identities that they could find. He had disappeared under false identities twice that I know of, forging my mother's signature on a house to sell it and leaving her and four children with no means of support.

The thing that I know about people like this is that they are walking among us and very, very few would recognize them. They are smooth, successful, smart, I now have a sort of hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck reaction that I have learned to trust.

Meaning someone who seemed to fit this profile? Where, in what context?

I'm very sorry you had to grow up with this - hopfully you have turned out well.

but one of them was Barbara Bodine. I met her through my work at the university. She is the former ambassador to Yemen who kept FBI agent John O'Neill from following the leads on Bin Laden in the USS Cole bombing. O'Neill was later killed in the WTC on 9-11. Bodine was later sent to Baghdad with the first occupation group.

However, I met her a year or more before the invasion and did not know any of this at the time. She was recruiting at the university for the foreign service. I listened to her give the keynote speech at a conference and had the DANGER sensations loud and clear. Everyone else was extremely impressed with her. I could barely stay in the room. She was articulate, sober, and also managed to answer questions without answering them. But few seemed to notice that.

I have met a few others. As with pedophiles, they are not the guys (or gals) in the gutter with the paper bags hiding a bottle of cheap wine. They are in positions of power, like the priests. They are trusted. Most people will defend them even when the suspicions are revealed because they cannot imagine these "good people" doing anything so heinous.

Generally, I would say there are degrees of the personality traits. One would be thinking that rules and laws are only for stupid people. Those who come barrelling up in the right hand lane during a traffic jam because they are going to get ahead of all those sheep waiting in the stalled lanes. Those like the Enron, World Com execs, who relish the game of "business" without regard to the catastrophe they are bringing down on their loyal employees and customers. There are many ways besides murder to harm multitudes.

Thanks for your concern for the way I turned out. I guess I am still a work in progress and it has not been easy. I used to have a sig line from Starhawk that said: What do I know that I don't want to know? What do I see that I don't want to see.

This is the necessity of our times. Wisdom requires facing up to the magnitude of the problem before us. First is to recognize the danger. Trust your gut, is my advice, and the hair on the back of your neck.

You description sounded a lot like some very sucessful (and feared) folks I've run across in the business world - initially very impressive and authoritative, yet once you know how they operate very short on ethics.

...and was always interested in mind games and all research having to do with behavioral psychology.

Sounds that way.

Wherever we lived there was always a room that was his, that nobody else, not even my mother, was allowed to go into. He would disappear for hours or days and we would not know where he was and were not allowed to ask.

this guy worked for US Army CID.

He wanted me to deisgn him a bookshelf in his basement that had would allow him to work behind it and spy on people in the den, without him knowing he was there.

My dad said he was one those guys who used to toss VC out of helicopters to make the other VC in the helicopter talk...interrogation technique.

He was estonian...supposedly served in both the USSR & German armys?

Interesting guy. But he was someone you didnt want to mess with...really in conrol, but he had a temper too.

I wonder about this: I'm usually mortified by the idea of being personally involved in hurting someone, so I guess that means I'm basically "decent." O8) Now, that being said, I wonder whether thoroughly decent people are enough to protect a decent way of life. Can nice people be relied on, all by ourselves, to successfully defend niceness? That's the doubt in the back of my mind. :eyes:

I'll start by saying two things: (1) Only a small % of "intelligence" is CIA. There are many other agencies, some you have never heard of. (2) Intel "agents" are not necessarily "bad" people.Part Two: Every college/university has intel agents as part of the faculty. Most news agencies do. This should be of interest, and perhaps of serious concern, to all of us. Education and the media are probably not where intel agents = democratic rights.
Who do agencies look for? Think of in your high school, the smart kids that were pleasant, but lacked the social skills to connect and have deep personal relationships with others. Yep, those boys and girls that never get bored spending hours and hours alone, just thinking or carrying out tasks to prepare for the next test.
Who else: the well-educated kids who were in the service, then go into "civilian life" where they work for businesses loosely connected to the defense industry. They have spouses, children, are valued members of the community. But they have a secret part of their life, highly compartmentalized, that their family is totally unaware of. They are primarily used to collect information. But, if there is a "problem" as so defined by that smart kid with no connections, the family-man in your community resolves it. Without a trace.

"Yep, those boys and girls that never get bored spending hours and hours alone, just thinking or carrying out tasks to prepare for the next test."

but what does this mean:
" But, if there is a "problem" as so defined by that smart kid with no connections, the family-man in your community resolves it. Without a trace."

.... but let me give an "extreme" example. JFK's removal is referred to as a coup. It wasn't, not at all. His election may have been. His removal was merely a re-alignment of the staus quo. It happened in a way that was officially covered-up for years. Now, reduce the stage, and think of, say, a minor JFK in Florida perhaps. He creates a problem that interferes in the orderly running of the political/economic machine. He may need to be removed, in an extreme example. A rifle from a fourth floor window does not qualify as "without a trace." But there are forces who possess the ability to induce a heart attack in a person who would not otherwise suffer from a heart attack. Removal of problems always and only occures as a last resort, when other methods fail. (Clinton, for example, compromised his own ability by his habitual thinking with the little head.) We know that Hoover tried to "get" King with the infamous tape from the motel. Didn't work. So he was removed without a trace. Remember, the power elite didn't care AT ALL about blacks drinking coffee or going to the bathroom with whites. But when King challenged the economic structure, he was removed. Extreme example, for sure. But lesser ones happen far more often, even today, than people are aware of. Did I answer your question?

im not "there" yet. But ok.

about 1 whole one could ordinary CIA work.

Its harder than it looks.

Don't delude yourself into thinking they don't hire "unusual" people. For certain operations, nothing less will do.