Intelligence an Uncommon Virtue along the Potomac River.

Any thinking person, in this accretion of humanity which makes up the Washington community, with a lick of common sense knows or should know not to take themselves too seriously. This includes myself, and I have always made it a point not to believe anything I say without checking it with my wife of the moment.

For the past thirty plus years that has been Miki. And she has a supreme talent for keeping me centered on reality while not letting much of what I say or write go unquestioned or accepted as serious. She is humbling to say the least, and most.

Today, I again venture into the weird world of Washington Think directed by the front page of the Washington Post, which I take most mornings with a cup of green tea. The tea at least is indubitable. There I find the biggest and most complete breakdown of the National Intelligence budget I have ever seen published. All of it thanks to that "traitorous" Edward Snowden.

How could he do it?

One thing which my non-Government friends and family can't avoid saying when we discuss the Snowden case is "how could a guy with a high school diploma" have so much access to so much sensitive data?

 It is as if, they think that there is another parallel reality in which the Government dwells. A place where a special  caliber of humans live in a rarefied society unique and whole to itself. Review the sixth word in this essay.

The Government is made up of people like you, your neighbor, the idiot who is tail-gating you, the people of your world. All governments in every country in the World are composed of these people, people like you. But they are unique also in a way most people would never even consider.

When most folks go to work for the Government, they start to assimilate the mantra of "Government Majesty." Being part of the machinery which "governs" causes them to believe that what they are doing bestows upon them a certain importance which the average citizen of Society can't possibly possess.

Partly because we as society tend to let them work unattended. Partly because the job we have put them in holds so much power over all of us.

 "I hire you at a small wage to get you out of my way so I can make serious money!"

In 1959, I was a new probationary hire at the Pentagon in the aerial photo collection, processing and interpretation for an Air Force organization called PRIS&D, Photo Interpretive Reconnaissance Services Division. Our job was to handle and pass on all the intelligence pictures and film which the Air Force produced around the World. Strangely, I was given the job because my Dad who was on General LeMay's staff had a problem at home. Me!

So, he did what dads did in those days. He got his kid a job at the factory. The kid in this case was a nineteen year old high school drop out who hadn't even gotten past the sophomore year at school. I was pretty much a looser already on the road to poverty and failure, looking for a place out of the wind.

Instantly. I was hired after a government check of my background. Given a top secret clearance, because the job required I handle such materials, I was a GS-2! I bought a new car, with my new found status and credit. And I started receiving my green computer card pay checks. The people at work called me Mr. Husztek.

At work I handled the Gary Powers U-2 papers. I handled the first letter sent by President Eisenhower into space on an Air Force rocket. I also handled films and photos taken by agents in Russia, and Eastern Bloc countries. These were the worst of photos taken under the worst of James Bond's missions, with the worst cameras ever made. It was all very interesting, and should have been the stuff which would turn me into a good Government worker.

A 19 year old friend of mine from Arlington, was hired at the same time I was under the same conditions. He stayed on and settled into the job after I had left the scene. I wasn't cut out to go to one place and work every day any more than I was for school. While in my first months of that year I won some productivity awards and letters of commendation. It sort of became apparent to management I wouldn't work out,when I organized, Pie Eating Contests in the lunch room and Model Car Races in the vast corridors outside of our lab. Being Mr. Husztek just wasn't taking.

He and I met by chance some twenty years later at a gun shop in Alexandria. He was working there weekends as their armorer and gunsmith. That was when I learned he had stayed on the job and ultimately became the head of the department. He was on the verge of a well earned retirement. I was still struggling to pay my bills with no idea of how I could ever retire.

Oh yeah did I mention that he was a member of George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party?

There is the picture for your consideration. Two dropouts in their late teens. One a member of a cult-like group who has his family's basement in Dominion Hills of Arlington decorated like a shrine to a neo Nazi War Machine complete with a portrait of Adolf Hitler. The other totally bored with the whole business of establishment life. These two nutty kids were handling the Nation's most sensitive intelligence secrets.

What's that got to do with you? Another friend's father said it all. He was a master electrician, a member of the Union, he too planned for his son to go into the trade. I really envied that. To be able to get into a job where you could have a Union to guarantee job and pay. Wow! So that old man and I are having an argument, and I mention to him I have a respectable job at the Pentagon.

His response,

"A lousy GS-2 job my boy will do a hell of a lot better!  I hire you at a small wage to get you out of our way so we can make serious money!"

Yep folks.

Government workers are the ones who can't find gainful employment at home in the real world.
We hire them out of every community in the Nation, many we move to Washington, where they settle like debris out of the river itself. They go from no one in particular to some one of Majestic Importance by donning the Government mantle. Some we elect out of our community and send there. Once in Washington, they become obsessed with their endowed importance, and as the singer of Hotel California says "they can never ever  leave."

Edward Snowden was the norm, not an anomaly. And that is what, today as I write, has our Nation's Security Community and those of all the Nations around the World in a paroxysm of total fear. The finger on the trigger was never more than mine, my friend's or Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden's.

It can never be any thing else..
After all, the guy in charge never actually had a job and is just a beginner too.