The Wily Filipino

More Outsourcing!

I'm hemming and hawing about posting an anti-NAATA broadside which may get me into so much trouble, but this is more important. Check out this article from The Washington Post, via Philippine News. (Thanks to Nerissa for the original post.)

The Philippines is apparently -- I shudder at the turn of phrase -- one of five "emerging target countries," along with Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, and Georgia, where a spy organization will be operating as part of "developing a more efficient antiterrorist initiative."

This is, of course, nothing new.* But it helps to be reminded of the ramifications of such clandestine operations:

This official, declining to speak on the record about espionage in friendly nations, said that the Defense Department sometimes has to work undetected inside "a country that we’re not at war with, if you will, a country that maybe has ungoverned spaces, or a country that is tacitly allowing some kind of threatening activity to go on."

Laos and Cambodia were, of course, countries that the U.S. was not at war with...

But here's the best part:

This program includes "human intelligence operations," as opposed to such high-technology gathering as using "satellite photography," and range from "peacetime recruitment of foreign spies" to "interrogation of prisoners [my italics] and scouting of targets in wartime."

Finally! The Philippines gets to be the happy beneficiary of more U.S. outsourcing, from call centers to torture -- oh, wait, it isn't torture if it ain't on U.S. territory. My bad.

*One of these days I'm hoping to post this scary recruitment letter sent to me from Langley last year. This was because I was sitting calmly having breakfast at a conference in San Diego when this PsyOps woman asked to share my table. So we chatted, me busily gulping down my coffee once I discovered who and what she was, and we ended up exchanging business cards anyway and several months later, to my horror, I received a letter from the chief of the "PACOM Strategic Studies Detachment 4th Psychological Operations Group" looking for "a well-qualified individual who is fluent in Tagalog, loves the challenge of rigorous academic research and enjoys the possibility of foreign travel." I must note, however, that an "intelligence specialist" position at Fort Bragg has a way larger starting salary than I'm currently making.

Posted by the wily filipino at March 2, 2005 12:46 PM