INTELLIGENCE – PRIVATE DETECTIVE WORK
USA – CANADA – BRAZIL – MEXICO ET SEQ.
WALHALLEN ED, INC.
PRIVATE DETECTIVE-S / PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR-S
As we conclude that the United States of America [called America daily; and its inhabitants Americans] is the recognized leader of the Free World, the West, we surely need to define the latter's borders.
A reasonably drawn culture (culture in this context meaning not arts, but how people live their daily lives and interact with others) map would start and include Stockholm-Helsinki, down south to Berlin-Lvov [Lemberg]–Brasov/Bucharest–Sofia [exclude Orthodox Athens] and further west to Rome–Madrid–Paris–London–New York– Montreal/Ottawa–Vancouver–Los Angeles–Mexico City–Caracas–Rio de Janeiro–Buenos Aires–Santiago, and then ending in Wellington and Sydney.
Some qualified anthropologists and intelligence professionals would include sub-Saharan Africa in the West.
Why Europe lost its leadership of the Western Civilization has a great many reasons most seasoned historians argue about. One is clearly that in the sixteenth century, as the self-certainty of Christianity fuelled the first conquests, it [Europe] was more barbaric, possessing the natural brutality necessary to drive things effortlessly. It had freedom without passports and bureaucracy; most of it now lost in order to design and implement complicated organisational frameworks where immigration, gender issues, high- and safe pensions, take precedence over “the enthusiastic industrial and commercial ventures that used to carry the day.”
The answer to Europe’s stalemate does not lie with Keynesian or Friedman economics, but with Max Weber (author of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism). More work, more innovation, and more marketing – less bureaucracy – are what Europe desperately needs; more individual freedom rather than government oppression.
After the Great War, the United States emerged as a great power; after the Second World War, it was a superpower. Most countries have lost time recovering from wars. The United States has not. It has actually grown because of them. Nowadays, a French politician proposed the denomination of hyperpower for the United States. The U.S. navy is larger than all other navies combined. The U.S. atomic-driven submarine U.S.S. Alabama has more firepower than all bombs dropped during the entire Second World War ... The American economy is larger than the economies of the next four countries combined.
The U.S. treasury Secretary Coleridge in 1812 expressed the view that the national debt – then subjectively deemed high – was to be the engine of economic growth, “the reservoir and waterworks of our country.” Today, the national debt amounts to $32tn (32.000.000.000.000). Some serious economists calculate, however, that the U.S. economy has a net worth measured in hundreds of trillions of dollars.
Blending the Bible, computer technology, traditional values and gay rights, you’ll end up describing American culture of today (very narrowly). Mix this with an adolescent mind, overconfidence and insecurity at heart, and you’ll see a United States that is dangerous even in its most benign state. The United States pursues its ends ruthlessly, overreacting, trying to prevent stability in other areas of the world [divide and rule, i e], showing its immaturity and all of it originating in fear. The United States has a history of worrying that it is losing its edge.
Also in Europe, many nations are driven by fear of losing what they have in terms of welfare, employment, housing et cetera; however, taking risks, even being reckless, shows initiative, and where are there chances without risks.
Western Europe is in decay, with a few exceptions, and it has to do with its age of civilization; vitum est temporis potius quam hominis - "the fault is owing to the age rather than particular persons". Today, 2020, there is only one European high-tech company among the world's most valuable; a German software offspring.
The United states is the indispensible nation, not because “might makes right”, nor because in the end, the strongest man’s word is law. The American economy and American society, in contrast with Europe’s, are capable of responding to the economic pressures and competition they face. They can adjust, adapt, and persevere.
America is a force for good, although at times it sees itself besieged by forces beyond its control. American military power is not the cause of its strength, but the consequence. Anger does not make history; power does. Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote it down: "Amerika, Du hast es besser!"
What has all this national- and international geopolitical reasoning to do with the deductive reasoning of a professional private detective – private investigator? Well, I’d say, almost everything.
Developments, in the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico, and the rest of Latin America – geopolitical, technological, demographic, cultural, military – are driven by rational short-term self-interest. As rational actors, reality provides decision-makers with limited choices, and hence the predictable behaviour which we as private detective-s / private investigator-a are trying to forecast [and detect].
As well, knowledge of a nation’s [or person’s] vulnerabilities, and how she may view these, and knowledge of the stature and vulnerabilities of other states [or persons] party to the situation, you are in a fair way able to predict the probable courses of action; especially precise by measuring her actions in the past.
Mentioning the past: In 1929, U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, newly appointed by President Hoover, closed down the “Black Chamber”, the State Department’s cryptographic bureau, which had been reading foreign diplomatic and other coded messages for more than a decade.
His speech announcing the closure commenced as follows: “Gentlemen! Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” Needless to say, Stimson’s view did not survive the unsettled international conditions of the 1930s, let alone World War II itself.
Secretary Stimson’s British equivalent during the catastrophic Crimean War, Lord Raglan, expressed something similar alongside Stimson’s. He stated: “It is repulsive to gather information in hiding [and not in earnest],” which was his British sportmanshiplike comment in 1854.
“Having been able, hypothetically, to arrange a modern-evening soaré with Stimson and Lord Raglan, inviting Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, would surely have been funda-mentally amusing. Maybe they’d agreed on many issues?”
Probably the most important British cryptoanalytical success involved German diplomatic, rather than naval, codes. On January 17, 1917, British cryptoanalysts decoded a message, known to history as the “Zimmermann telegram,” in which the German foreign minister directed the German ambassador to Mexico to propose a German-Mexican alliance against the United States, in case the Americans reacted to German initiation of unrestricted submarine warfare (scheduled for February 1) by declaring war on Germany.
Subsequent publication in U.S. newspapers of the telegram, which envisaged Mexico recovering Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, created a firestorm that did much to make President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to go to war inevitable. The release of the telegram was handled so skillfully that the Germans did not suspect that their code had been broken.
In contrast to the European experience, American cryptography was in its infancy at the outbreak of the Great War (World War I). The story of American cryptography during the war and in the following decade illustrates how, despite the immense intellectual challenge involved, it was still possible for an individual, working by himself or with a small group, to discover the basic principles of the art and to solve codes and ciphers used to encrypt the most sensitive messages.
Indeed, Captain Herbert Yardley, first chief of the “Black Chamber”, relates how he was able, working for several hours on his own, to cryptoanalyze a message to President Woodrow Wilson from Colonel Edward House, Wilson’s personal representative, then on a diplomatic mission to Germany. Yardley’s account of his leadership of the U.S. Army’s cryptoanalytic unit once the United States entered the war, as well as of the State Department’s “Black Chamber” after the war’s end, indicate the extent to which cryptography was at that time an art rather than a science and how much it depended on the insights and intuitions of individuals working essentially by themselves.
The West’s present chief guard-dogs are the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA), based in a fertile agricultural area 30 km’s north of Washington, called Fort Meade; and Great Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), located in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Together these employ roughly 155.000 people and have an annual budget exceeding $38bn.
The intelligence arms of these two countries, the U.K. and the U.S., followed different paths. The U.K.’s SIS (Secret Intelligence Services) was founded in 1909, and later added military intelligence, MI5 and MI6. The U.S. first established the Office of the Coordinator of Information, later renamed and reorganized into the OSS (the Office of Strategic Services), thence to CIG (the Central Intelligence Group), and finally, in 1947, all efforts were combined into CIA (the Central Intelligence Agency).
The international coordination and cooperation between these intelligence groups were, to say the least, intense and stormy for the great part of the Cold War, and before.
Miles Copeland, coordinator for several years at CIA, exclaimed: “What it comes to, is that when you look at the whole period during 1944-1955 - leaving out anything KP [Kim Philby-a British double-agent working for the Soviets] picked up at other times – the entire Western intelligence effort, which was pretty big, was what you might call a minus advantage. We’d have been better off doing nothing.”
Any armchair intelligence chief or pundit could have told you that these supposedly “highly motivated amateurs” – myrmidons of global security, intelligent and less intelligent, would clash in a business that can be as mundane as it is arcane. U.K. intelligence operatives would quip: “She [the U.S.] never gives up, and never regards a setback as a defeat. It’s bad with her; worse without her.”
The United States is the leading power not only of the West, but also of the western hemisphere, the Americas. How do we define the latter? Well, since Mexico, though being located geographically in North America, and a founding member of NAFTA [North American Free Trade Association], no competent intelligence analyst would call it anything but a strongly Latin American country, being part of Mercosur, speaking Spanish and showing all the signs of a Latin mentality. We therefore define the Americas as part Latin America, part USA and Canada, rather than North- and South America.
Militarily, economically, technologically – and in almost any other measure thinkable the whole of Latin America is a midget compared to the United States; and including Canada won’t change the figures by much, except geographical extension. Before the United States bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2mill in 1867, Brazil was in fact larger than the United States geographically.
The combined GNP of all Latin American countries is roughly $5,2tn, that of the United States alone $14,2tn. However, the GNP figure is not absolutely crucial in a comparison between nations, but still. The total population of all Latin American countries is 440 mill, that of the United States roughly 300 mill.
Spain, and to a small degree Portugal, came in the 16th century, i e the “Siglo de oro" - the Golden Century, to descubrir – discover, conquistar – conquer, and poblar – colonize. “Conquistan” – the “Conquest” was to a large degree “la ultima barbaridad;" Corte’s troops in Mexico endeavoured many “noche triste”, and Pizarro admitted “en confision” before his beheading: “Pues, yo soy el sin ventura Gonzalo” – “I am the unlucky bird Gonzalo.”
Conquistan was not sin pleyto ni contiendo alguna – “without struggle or quarrel of any kind,” but rather tan parecidos a los sueños son las glorias – “so much like a dream is victory and honour.”
To concentrate on a country, a nation where Walhallen’s private investigative operatives have large, long and extensive experience, Brazil, it [Brazil] has admittedly shown a considerable strength during the last 30 years. Goldman Sachs, the American investment bank, even coined the term BRIC-countries, i e Brazil, Russia, India and China; supposedly the most important, fast-growing and leading emerging-market countries, and put Brazil first.
But recently, a stagnant economy, a bloated state and mass protests among the middle class has shown that maybe the economic boom was just a voo de galinha – “chicken flight”. It is estimated that three-quarters of Brazil’s growth in the past decade has come from adding more workers and only a quarter from productivity gains.
Calculations show that in 2000 Brazil achieved 19% of United States’ productivity levels, but by 2012 this had dropped to 18%. Over the same period the Chinese figure leapt from 6% of that in the United States to 17%.
The “custo Brazil” – “Brazil cost”, implicitly defining Brazil’s high costs relative other similar nations, means that taxes are 36% of GDP, payroll taxes 58% of salaries, et cetera. Brazil, though, has several manufacturing jewels, and is developing a world-class research base in biotechnology, genetic sciences and deep-sea oil and gas technology. Rotten infrastructure, however, loads unnecessary costs on businesses.
High crime rates have bred a private army of 650.000 security guards, and Brazil’s murder rate rivals Mexico’s, a world top-ten in this highly miserable contest. Having been chosen to host both the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, Walhallen certainly hopes for the best.
Instead of having gangs roam the countryside, ready to kill for a watch, food or even an ill-times glance, maybe it's preferable letting the United States having a “droit de regard." This will only become evident in a final act of history, though, never to happen.
Active measures, as well as intelligence collection by the United States’ intelligence services in Latin America have been numerous, but to mention a few, though not admitted, would be: a great number of assassination attempts on Fidel Castro by CIA; the assassination of Salvador Allende; Oliver North and the Contras in Nicaragua; the Panama invasion of the 1980s; the 1981 CISPES’ People of Salvadore investigation, et al.
In intelligence activities, truth is not always the goal, but only a means toward victory. Intelop is largely about remembering patterns of behaviour and understanding why these patterns repeat themselves.
When the findings of the intelligence arm are regularly ignored by the consumer, and this because of “consumer intuition”, he [the consumer] should recognize that he is turning his back on two instruments by which Western man has, since Aristotle, steadily enlarged his horizon of knowledge – the instruments of reason, and the scientific method.
Business intelligence is part of the conflict between corporations, whether part of criminal organizations or not.
Hard competition must not always result in El vencido – vencido y el vencedor perdido – “The defeated defeated – and the victor lost". A cold war – between companies or nations – is the best of wars, as it stimulates but does not destroy.
U.S. corporations will remain headstrong, immature and brilliant; and the world’s response to them will be a combination of envy - the worm that does not rest, and is the major cause of resentment and hatred shown to us – and admiration.
My dear female Russian colleague claims ours [Russian private detective - private investigator intelligence] is the best, however, U.S. private detective-s / private investigator-s have numerous times shown their superiority, technically as well as tactically. At times, though, due to the “otherness” of our adversaries, we have miscalculated expected behaviours.
As a former gumshoe operative – and pilot – of the Agency, I often find business a pursuit of war by other means; a rough and tumble game that rewards aggression too well. Everyone thinks that their own aggression is justified as retaliation. There is a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive.
It is [often] more effective to have government be your avenging angel than to carry out revenge yourself.
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious evidence; do not claim to be a boy scout while accusing others of juvenile delinquency. Let the little grey cells do their work, with stubbornness, creativety, persistence, boldness, hope and habit.
Thank you.
Truly yours,
Bo Anderson
Bo Anderson
bo.anderson@walhallen.net
www.private-investigator-walhallen.com
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UNITED STATES - CANADA
MEXICO - BRAZIL - ARGENTINE ET SEQ.
