[LAST CALL] Double Duplicity Dilemma

by **Omniabstracta** » Mon Jul 08, 2019 5:44 pm

Howdy folks! I tried drafting an issue here once before but lost motivation pretty soon, and it never ended up going anywhere. It's been a long while since then, so I thought I'd try my hand at issue authorship again and see how it works out. All feedback is, of course, welcome and appreciated!

As a note, I'm unsure of what issue eligibility issues (^-^) this may have, so that's hopefully another thing I can work out through the drafting process.

Title:
Double Duplicity Dilemma

Eligibility:
Hasn't digitized government records in issue 1100 option 3.

Description:
@@A@@ @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ spy accused of double-dealing with the Blackacrean government has claimed a curious defense: It was all a ploy, an infiltration mission, authorized at the highest level. Official archives have proven infuriatingly inconclusive for both sides of the argument, and with backroom bureaucrats able to neither confirm nor deny this supposed "triple agency," the intelligence community has become inflamed over apparent incompetency in the service.

Option 1:
"Oh, come on," growls your Defense Minister, @@RANDOMFIRSTNAME@@ @@ANIMAL@@, taking a long draw from an imaginary corncob pipe. "There ain't a damn thing wrong with our intelligence, and anyone who says otherwise is probably already working for Blackacre! More scrutiny is what we need, on our agents, on everyone—never know who could be two-faced. As for the spy, I say we string 'em up for treason right here and now, give the traitor’s compatriots a lesson in where loyalties lie."

Effect:
holidaymakers carrying briefcases are arrested under suspicion of espionage

Option 2:
"I was only doing my job!" cries @@RANDOMNAME@@, as @@HE@@ rappels down from the ceiling, where @@HE@@ has been waiting conspicuously for the past fifteen minutes. "It's not my fault those paper-pushers back at headquarters lost some paperwork! I should be treated as a hero for my valiant service, not some villain. In fact, you should fund some productions to publicize my exploits, really sweep the public consciousness. Just think of it: the intrigue, the drama, the royalties!"

Effect:
"Mission Somewhat Plausible" is all the rage among moviegoers

Option 3:
"Y'know, @@HE@@ has a point," whispers a mysterious voice, emanating from a shadowy corner of your office. "It's possible that this spy has accomplished a great deal for us, and with no paper trail to boot. If we were to, say, "misplace" a few more documents here and there, we could create a clandestine army, with no accountability, and nothing to tie their actions back to @@NAME@@!" The voice fades, cackling maniacally, as your assistant makes a note to install more light bulbs.

Outcome:
rogue @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ super-agents wash up frequently on distant shores

Option 4:
"Why do we have spies anyway?" asks the stack of filing boxes assembled on your desk. It topples, unearthing the Minister of Records looking simultaneously bedraggled and bored. "All the secrecy, all the lies, it's all too hard to keep track of. Besides, our neighbors probably don't care about our internal affairs anyway, why should we about theirs? Let's just be transparent with everyone. Makes my job easier."

Outcome:
dark-suited foreigners crowd recently cleaned windows in @@CAPITAL@@

by **Australian rePublic** » Mon Jul 08, 2019 11:20 pm

Option 4, yea but spies aren't about @@NAME@@'s Transperancy, they're about the transperacy of other nations

by **Omniabstracta** » Mon Jul 08, 2019 11:35 pm

Australian rePublic wrote:Option 4, yea but spies aren't about @@NAME@@'s Transperancy, they're about the transperacy of other nations

I dunno, I’d argue that spies and spying involve both ends of that. Yeah, it’s mostly about peering into the private affairs of other nations, but it also inherently involves hiding covert operations from your neighbors. I’ll try to make more clear the inclusion of both intelligence and counter-intelligence, but it might get a bit too wordy.

by **Omniabstracta** » Sun Jul 14, 2019 7:24 pm

Alright, draft numero dos is up. I've made some minor wording adjustments for clarity and humor, and I've changed option 4 to better reflect what it's actually meant to do. Again, I'm looking for honest critiques, so no criticism is too harsh!

by **Omniabstracta** » Wed Jul 17, 2019 9:15 am

Draft three is finished, I've added the eligibility requirements and I've made some minor tweaks, and I think I'll be ready to submit this soon. I haven't received a lot of feedback yet though, so I'll be holding off until I hopefully get a few more opinions.

by **Chan Island** » Fri Jul 19, 2019 5:21 am

No choice to make spies be more thorough about paperwork? Have each secret classified document be signed in triplicate, lost, found, lost again, found again, put on the notice board in the basement of the spying agency for 3 months in case of complaints and then, and only then, can it be considered legitimate?

No option to send spies over to Blackacre to see what their side's secret documents has to say about this?

And no option to put spies on the spies?!

What is this, entry-level espionage drama?

by **Omniabstracta** » Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:24 pm

Chan Island wrote:No choice to make spies be more thorough about paperwork? Have each secret classified document be signed in triplicate, lost, found, lost again, found again, put on the notice board in the basement of the spying agency for 3 months in case of complaints and then, and only then, can it be considered legitimate?

No option to send spies over to Blackacre to see what their side's secret documents has to say about this?

And no option to put spies on the spies?!

What is this, entry-level espionage drama?

Why, if I use up all the options too soon we'll never have enough material for the fifteen sequels!

But seriously, I realize there definitely could be quite a few more resolutions to this particular issue, so I tried to make the subtext on each of the options as broad as possible. The first option entails increased scrutiny and record-keeping on government agents (and everyone else, for that matter), the second is about relaxing regulations on and encouraging agent autonomy (and using that to gain public support), a la fighter-ace initiatives in an airforce. The third and fourth options are the more broad solutions, with one expanding the scale and scope of covert operations in general (including counter-ops like the ones you described), and the other significantly defunding intelligence services and improving government transparency.

I could try to expand on these more nuanced outcomes of each option, or I could just add a couple more, but it makes things too bloated for my taste honestly.

by **Australian rePublic** » Fri Jul 19, 2019 7:43 pm

Good Luck!

by **Candlewhisper Archive** » Mon Jul 22, 2019 2:18 am

In a rather confusing chain of events, @@A@@ @@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ spy accused of double-dealing with the Blackacrean government has claimed innocence—on grounds of being a “triple agent.” Documents dredged up by backroom bureaucrats have been able to neither confirm nor deny the story, and the intelligence community is inflamed over the debate.

I'm not sure I get the premise here. Doesn't our intelligence service keep records of the operational status of our agents?

If they're a spy for us but not for Blackacre, they're just a spy.
If they're claiming to spy for one side, but have been subverted by the other, then they're a double agent.
If they're known to have been subverted, but then a deal is struck to keep them secretly loyal while pretending to have been subverted, then triple agent.

Regardless, you can't claim to be a triple agent that we didn't know about. To be our triple agent it has to be known to us that you're a double agent, and for us to accept this and to control your activities.

The issue might be more plausible if the issue set up made it more about unaccountable intelligence organisations -- a spy that was thought to be a double agent being killed by one of your agencies, then another revealing that he was actually a triple agent, but none of this being known to your Ministry of Defence, who thought he was just a spy. Then rather than judge whether to believe one individual (who frankly, is too small to be concerning the nation's leader with) you can be looking at overall transparency of intelligence services, and communication between branches.

by **Omniabstracta** » Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:59 am

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:I'm not sure I get the premise here. Doesn't our intelligence service keep records of the operational status of our agents?

If they're a spy for us but not for Blackacre, they're just a spy.
If they're claiming to spy for one side, but have been subverted by the other, then they're a double agent.
If they're known to have been subverted, but then a deal is struck to keep them secretly loyal while pretending to have been subverted, then triple agent.

It's known that they've been dealing covertly with Blackacre, so they're being accused of being a double agent. Their defense is that they are a triple agent—that is, they were sent on purpose to buddy up to Backacre, embed themselves in their intelligence structure, and then leak back any important information they have gleaned at the end of the assignment—it's just that we've lost the records of said assignment up at the top.

There are many reasons only an inconclusive part of the story could be verified by whatever documents we do have, maybe there's reference to this agent being assigned to an important operation and nothing in the archive about what that operation is, maybe the information they've been peddling is just a bit off in key places, or perhaps largely irrelevant (I had a line about lunch menus in the Capitol in one of my offsite drafts that was just a bit too silly). There are too many reasons, in fact, hence only mentioning the joke about NCND for fear of making the description too long.

This sort of mission-critical document loss is more common than you might think, with the US military losing track of entire troop deployments in Vietnam (chapter five contains the most discussion on this, I believe), the CIA sometimes forgetting that some of its agents are actually dead, and the CIA Information and Records Program including "unlawful loss" as a main cause for investigation.

Regardless, you can't claim to be a triple agent that we didn't know about. To be our triple agent it has to be known to us that you're a double agent, and for us to accept this and to control your activities.

In many cases it is valuable to grant active agents autonomy and to avoid communication or direct oversight, for fear of compromising the mission. As mentioned earlier, it is entirely possible that the mission directive included sharing findings only after its conclusion, and there wouldn't be any interim verification. After all, Blackacre is written to be a generally capable and competent nation, and if they begin seeing @@NAME@@ utilizing information it shouldn't have soon after integrating a spy from @@NAME@@, they're going to suspect something's up. It's the same reason the British didn't go out and bomb a bunch of German positions immediately after cracking Enigma⁠—short-term advances have to be sacrificed to maintain the long-term advantage.

The issue might be more plausible if the issue set up made it more about unaccountable intelligence organisations -- a spy that was thought to be a double agent being killed by one of your agencies, then another revealing that he was actually a triple agent, but none of this being known to your Ministry of Defence, who thought he was just a spy. Then rather than judge whether to believe one individual (who frankly, is too small to be concerning the nation's leader with) you can be looking at overall transparency of intelligence services, and communication between branches.

Overall, the issue is not really about the spy herself, but @@NAME@@'s intelligence services in general. When secrecy is the norm in an institution, things become so obtuse, bloated, and need-to-know that often, the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing. What's causing the intelligence community to become "inflamed," and what caused the issue to be brought to @@LEADER@@'s desk, isn't the case of one double-agent, that'd be inconsequential I agree. It's the fact that this casts doubt on the ability of the service to keep track of itself, much less the affairs of foreign powers, and that's a pretty big issue.

But, of course, written out like this it's much too long and much too boring, so I wrote it along the lines of a generic spy-thriller. It doesn't have to be taken seriously by the reader, and if it isn't it's (hopefully) an fun and entertaining read. The nuance of the underlying problems are still there, though.

by **Candlewhisper Archive** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:33 am

Sorry, I miscommunicated. I didn't mean that you should explain to me and justify the premise, I meant that you should edit the issue to explain and justify the premise.

by **Omniabstracta** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 10:31 am

Candlewhisper Archive wrote:Sorry, I miscommunicated. I didn't mean that you should explain to me and justify the premise, I meant that you should edit the issue to explain and justify the premise.

Nah, it's my fault, I went into immediate defense mode and I should've known better. This is a drafting forum after all, not a debate forum :P

Anyway, going under the assumption that this has been rejected then, I've rewritten a good part of the issue for draft number four and I'm now open to more feedback.

by **Barfleur** » Tue Jul 23, 2019 11:35 am

I like this draft, and I hope it gets selected if only so I can choose option #3.

by **Candlewhisper Archive** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 1:00 am

Good redraft. Looking pretty solid now.

by **Omniabstracta** » Fri Jul 26, 2019 8:10 pm

Assuming no more feedback, I'll be submitting this in two days or so. Don't want to rush and miss some important pointers this time around.

by **Omniabstracta** » Wed Jun 10, 2020 1:39 pm

Well this is a bit embarrassing, I don't recall if I ever actually submitted this issue. In either case, I'll work on ironing out the kinks and fixing up a few issues, since I'd imagine if I did submit it, it's since been rejected. I'm honestly not quite sure I'm too confident on the premise anymore, but I suppose that's no reason not to try ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

by **Australian rePublic** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:46 am

Option 3, if the army has no accountability, what's to stop them overthrowing government?

by **Omniabstracta** » Fri Jun 12, 2020 9:25 am

Australian rePublic wrote:Option 3, if the army has no accountability, what's to stop them overthrowing government?

Well, yeah, you’re choosing to give support and discretion to a shady, probably corrupt, virtually unknown organization, I’m not sure what leader is expecting. While that possible outcome I think is well outside the scope of the issue in particular, I don’t much see why it’s a problem.

I’m unhappy with the vague Bourne reference in the third effect line though, so I’m thinking of changing it to something along the lines of "@@DEMONYMADJECTIVE@@ super-agents frequently pop up "taking walks" through government archives", which can hint at subversive operations both at home and abroad, including those along the lines you were talking about. Thanks for the inspiration

by **Candlewhisper Archive** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 6:12 am

This has been submitted around July last year, for your reference.

[LAST CALL] Double Duplicity Dilemma

[LAST CALL] Double Duplicity Dilemma

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