THE ETHICS OF ESPIONAGE

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
From wherever you are around the world, around the world.
Welcome to the Circle of Insight, a show that explores
the many facets of human behavior and the wonders of
the human mind. And now here's your host, doctor Carlos.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome everyone. Well, I'm really excited because we're going to
talk about a topic that I don't usually cover on this podcast,
and it's ethical espionage. Our guest has readen in two
books on ethics of spying. They're fascinating read a reader
for the intelligence professional. He's been in the professional. He's
been in the intelligence community for over twenty five years.

(00:54):
His name is doctor Jan Goldman. He's Professor of Intelligence
and Security Studies at the Citadel. His research areas focus
on ethics and intelligence operations. Is there such a thing
as ethical spine? Well, we're gonna find out. So let's
welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Doctor Goldman. Welcome, sir. Yeah, thank you, Carlos. Glad to
be here. Oh, we're glad to have you.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
This is really an interesting topic. Of course, this is
a podcast designed around this area and topic. Can you
do The first thing of verse is can you define
what is ethical espionage?

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Sure? Sure, excuse me, so ethical espionage. Quite frankly, let's
be honest. There are some people, a lot of people
will say that it's an oxymoron and that you know,
you can't have ethical espionage, it just doesn't work. But

(01:45):
the reality is, if you take this idea that ethics
has no place in the intelligence collection the use of intelligence,
that you're really saying. And here's where I like to
talk about the analogy. Here. The analogy is if you

(02:06):
believe war is hell, and if war is hell, then
you need people who are willing to kill, and there's
nothing wrong with that. But we also know that in
war there are rules of engagement and we learned this
from World War Two when because of the war in

(02:28):
World War two and the Nazis, we created crimes against humanity.
And these are rules of engagement, so that for example,
you know, you're not to torture anybody somebody running away,
you know, not really shoot him in the back. I mean,
these are things that come out of just war theory,

(02:54):
and just war theory are what we would consider rules
of engagement for when won a country goes to war,
and when you go to war, how do you conduct
yourself during the war. In the naval Academy, West Point

(03:16):
Air Force Academy. They teach just war theory. And just
war theory is, you know, you have rules of engagement
that you have to follow, and if you don't, you
use For example, during the Vietnam War Mayli and during
mayl I, we brought people up on charges because it

(03:36):
was a massacre. All right, you don't you don't kill
women and children and babies, all right. So that's just
war theory, and we have codified that through international agreements.
Now we look at spying. How far do you go
that you are going to encroach on someone civil liberties?

(04:01):
How far do you go in collecting intelligence? So that
if there is no limits on how one obtains information,
then there's nothing wrong with torture. And I'm not I
don't want to get wrapped around the axle in focusing
specifically on torture, because it's it's immoral and it's from

(04:27):
a practical standpoint, it's not effective. The intelligence community does
not teach torture. So these are all things that the
intelligence community we have established. So when I decided in
early two thousand and this was after nine to eleven,

(04:50):
with the creation of black sites and so forth, you know,
and people were saying not only was it immoral, but
they were all so illegal. I decided to look at it,
and I want to make it absolutely clear. I mean,
we know what ethics is, we know what morals are,
and we're applying that to the people who work in intelligence.

(05:17):
And if this is and this also goes to the
root of ethical espionage, because you have to ask yourself.
The people who work in intelligence, like the people who
work in the Armed services, they're professionals, so there is
standards of conduct. So why would we not have standards

(05:37):
of conduct for intelligence professionals? And there you know, if
you look at the American Bar Association, I mean, you
want to go defend someone, you have to take a test,
you have to be certified, you have to agree to
the American Bar Association Code of ethics. If you want
to be a doctor, the same thing. This is typical

(06:01):
of a professional. So even for people who make furniture
or people who you know, any anyone who considers themselves
a professional has a code of ethics. And so the
question I would ask is, so what are our code
of ethics or are we to rely specifically on the

(06:23):
individual's personal conduct? Because now what you're doing is and
I'm not I'm not I'm not saying that we should.
I'm not saying that we hire bad people. What I'm
saying is what is it that we expect out of
the individuals we do hire? And and if you are

(06:44):
going to say torture someone, then that has to be
with the you know, I mean, Derkowitz says that it
should be like a search, a search warmed where you
should get a judge, and the judge says, in this situation,
you know, torture is warranted. You know. I try to
stay away from making a decision on whether something is

(07:08):
moral or immoral. My goal as an academic is to
raise these questions and discuss them. And I have always
been fascinated by this, And like someone who teaches just
war theory, I'm teaching ethical espionage. It doesn't make someone

(07:30):
who wants rules of engagement a pacifist anymore than someone
who wants ethical espionage. To say we should be against
the intelligence community, Well, that leaves.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Me to several questions if you make me bring up
in my mind at least, And what I want to
try to do is try to tap type of things
out to remind myself. One of them is honeytraps. So
we're talking about techniques here, So we got honey trap,
you have some of the situations that we've seen lately

(08:08):
with some of the Chinese spies and some of our
work there on that side, or false propaganda, are any
of the techniques because it sounds like almost what you
were saying also, is that ethics is kind of on
a spectrum. There's a spectrum of ethical behavior. Is that
really black and white? So do the techniques also fall

(08:29):
under some kind of ethical umbrella?

Speaker 3 (08:31):
You think? I do? I do? And and I would say, like,
for example, you know, people say that torture is immoral,
torture is illegal, torture doesn't work. But and in most

(08:51):
cases I would say ninety nine point nine percent they're correct.
It reminds me of it in Germany. And Germany there
was a local sheriff who they captured this individual who
held this fellow went into a house a wealthy individual

(09:15):
kidnapped their six year old son and then buried the
sun in a grave with an oxygen tank and said
and said to the family, if you want to ever
see your son again, he's got two hours to live.

(09:36):
And I need you know, I need one hundred thousand dollars. Well,
they dropped the money off, and when the guy went
to get one hundred thousand dollars out of the trash can,
the local German authorities arrested him. And when he was
brought back to the station, they said to him, where's

(09:59):
the boy. We know that he's got two hours to live.
Where's the boy? And and the fellow said, I don't
know what you're talking about. It. I just happened to
be in the park. I saw this bag, I grabbed
it and there was you know, I don't know what
you what you're what you want. Eventually the sheriff told
everyone to leave the room, went in and said to him,

(10:23):
I'm going to torture you until you give me the answer,
and I will not stop until you do. And the
and the guy immediately and he was serious about it too.
He already he he already said I don't have time.
And if that's true, two hours we're gonna you're gonna
be tortured. It'll be the worst time of your life. Well,

(10:46):
the guy gave it, gave the information up. They went
and they found the kid. He was buried, but the
oxygen tube had run and the oxygen had run out
and he's suffocated. But the sheriff was was brought up
on charges for threatening and using torture, and of course

(11:07):
the fellow who committed the crime was was sent to
prison for murder. But the question you have to ask
is even using not even torturing, but even threatening to
use torture, would that have been appropriate in this kind
of incidents. And this is the fact that this happened

(11:29):
in a small town in Germany, and the Germans brought
the sheriff up on chargers and said, you're gonna go
to jail for threatening to torture. From what we have
learned from World War two, and the Germans are very
strict since World War Two, you can understand, but they

(11:52):
have gone from a Kantian perspective, and kant the theory
of Kant is that you do not use people to
obtain an objective. And if you are using torture, uh,
this is of course inappropriate. He also says you can

(12:14):
you can't an eye for an eye, but that's that's
going off. But the fact is, these are questions that
we need to discuss. And what we're finding out is
a lot of people, uh, something like torture. For nine
to eleven, those were used as fishing expeditions. I'm going

(12:36):
to torture you until you give me information, but I
don't know what information I'm looking for. Well, that's that's immoral,
that's inappropriate, And that's what I would say ninety nine
point nine percent is the fact, when you get down
to it, you're not really torturing someone. You're actually looking

(12:56):
for revenge. And that's not that's just that's just not
that's just not propriate. Trap. Yeah, but then you get
into honey traps. If honey traps are legal, and there's
nothing Look, if someone has a you know, you can

(13:17):
use sex and let's understand what what honeytrap is. A
honey trap is an intelligence collection operation where you are
trapped and trapping someone by using sex and by using sex, uh,
it's probably gonna be recorded, pictures may be taken, uh,
and then you're hoping to use that. Or you can

(13:40):
use sex where someone snuggles up to another individual and
you know, you try to befriend them.

Speaker 4 (13:49):
And so you know the old uh, the old honey
trap of of you know, meeting in a supermarket and
then you know, the guy meets a woman and a
woman and actually for one of the intel services.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
But if you're looking at a honey trap for blackmail purposes,
and say, for example, you know there was a theoretically
there was a black mail operation where one individual was
a honey trap, a mail with another male, except he

(14:28):
came from a country where homosexual relations were illegal and
can almost be put to death or put to death.
And so this politician in New York City who was
at the United Nations, who was having a homosexual affair
with another fellow who was working for an intel service,

(14:51):
whose pictures that were being taken, and then shown the
pictures and said, okay, if you don't play ball with us, uh,
these photos one are gonna go to your family and
your wife is not going to be too pleased. And
two it's gonna go to your government and they're gonna

(15:15):
call you back and you'll probably be shot. All right.
So uh, now you ask yourself, okay, what's wrong with that? Well,
I mean we're now looking at blackmail as uh, and
and and you got to ask yourself what are the
ethics of blackmail? And when we get into blackmail, you

(15:37):
know the reality is from a practical standpoint, you may
be able to use it once, but you're not gonna
be able to use it more than that. Uh, you know,
I mean just like any other blackmail. And the other
thing you have to ask yourself as far as the
honeytrap is concerned, is if somebody comes to you and says, Carlos,

(15:58):
give me some secrets. I mean, I'll give you some secrets.
I'm sorry, I'll give you some secrets, but in return
I will give you you'll give me drugs. Would you
do that if someone if if you if you're dealing
with an informant who is placed in a high value

(16:20):
location and has access to an enemy country's secrets, but
it is only willing to give you those secrets if
you gave him drugs, would you do that?

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Hey, you'd have to kind of go off with utilitarian theory.
There anoulysis right find of give you and all this
other stuff.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yeah, so you give me, So chances are good you
would say, you know, jan I want to give this guy.
If I give this guy a couple of ounces of
coke that I can get in exchange for you know,
one hundred top secret documents, I mean, what he does
with his nose. I don't care, right, you want to

(17:06):
you want to you you want to sniff cocaine? Hey,
knock yourself out. I want the one hundred documents that
you can get. And I think most people would say,
you know, I don't really care that this guy means
nothing to me, right, and I have access to to
the drugs. What happens if this fella says to you, Carlos,

(17:29):
I have a I have a thousand documents top secret. Uh,
but I I like I like children. I'm a pedophile. Uh.
And if would you help him out with his uh,
with his addiction there, and then you got to say yourself, okay,
oh a thousand documents, I don't know, that's pretty good.

(17:51):
But then you can say, wait a minute, I'm drawing
the line, all right. If you you know, I'm not
gonna support pedophilia, so you have to So when we
say that I don't care about ethics, then I would
say to you you need to reevaluate. You know, if
you're working in the military and you're special forces, if

(18:14):
you come off the bus and they say, hey, why
do you want to become special operations and you say,
because I like killing people. They're going to ask you
to go back on the bus, because that's not the
kind of people we want. So that's what I would
say as far as what ethics is and kind of
you know, instead of getting into all the theories, are

(18:35):
just cutting to the chase. This is This kind of
brings it home. Where do we draw the line when
we conduct intelligence collection operations?

Speaker 2 (18:47):
You give us a lot of food for thought. And
it's interesting you mentioned that you mentioned that example of
special forces. I know when I wrote a book a
few years ago on ISIS recruitment, ices didn't want the psychopaths.
They didn't want the trouble makers a lot because they
cause a lot of problems that people couldn't control them.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
The leaders didn't want to deal with them.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Even al Qaeda broke off with isus's original leaders our
caring because he wasn't controllable. I was all over the place,
and it's like, you know, forget it. But I wanted
to ask you this question, U, doctor Goldman. My last
question here is society seems sometimes not Sometimes it changes,
and it changes the parameters or the boundaries of ethics.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
In a sense. We look at Batman.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Originally, everybody follows Superman, he was good, he was clean.
You knew exactly what right or wrong was. Batman seems
to cross those lines now and the newer versions of
the movies. You and I know doctor Golden's plub were
thinking Batman was talking about. But we see Batman in
his ethics that he's crossing the lines. You know, he
goes into those torture modes. He goes into these modes

(19:48):
where he becomes almost a villain in some cases. Have
you seen society gradually changing the boundaries of ethics now?

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Well, you know see and now I grew up with
Batman and Superman, and I'll even say that if you
want to look at sports. You know, I grew up
in New York City. Mickey mannl was my hero. I
had no idea he was an alcoholic. But then you know,
today you learn about all these sports heroes that these

(20:21):
kids have, and then you find out that we're coming
out with Lebron James, which I have great respect for
his supportive Black lives matter. The politics of society has
now infiltrated into sports, and I think that's a good
thing because politics has always been a part of sports.
And you can go back to the Olympics in nineteen

(20:43):
sixty eight when they held the I can't remember the
Carlos held up the blackfist and then was banned from
the Olympics for winning the gold medal. I don't know
if you remember that or even you want to talk
about the Israeli team being was it nineteen seventy two

(21:05):
when the Palestinians entered and murdered the Israeli athletes. So
politics and you know, society, we can't isolate ourselves. I
would say, though, in looking at intelligence, the due intelligence
go to war at all courts is really we're backing off.

(21:29):
And while Batman may find torture good because the Hollywood,
you know, believes this is what the audience wants, the
reality is, you know, in nineteen forty In one of
my books, Ethics of Spying, Volume two, I have the
US Naval document when in nineteen forty two, I'm sorry

(21:53):
nineteen forty because it was just before Pearl Harbor, the
US Navy decided they were going to establish an intelligence
unit to go out and collect and do intelligence operation.
And it was from February nineteen forty yeah, and I'm

(22:14):
sorry February nineteen forty one, because Pearl Hobber occurred on
December seventh, nineteen forty one. And what they were looking
for the Navy was individuals who were, let's see, maladjusted.
I'm using their words maladjusted, psychopaths, immigrants, and revolutionaries. And

(22:40):
these are the people that they believe have no conscience.

Speaker 5 (22:45):
That and I say this because they're including immigrants in this,
but that they have no conscience, and that whatever the
Navy wants them to do, they will do it.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
And they said, these are the kind of people we
want in the US Navy Intelligence unit. And this was
in nineteen forty two, before Pearl Harbor. Well we go
fast forward, and quite frankly, if you look at the
intelligence community, we don't need psychopaths. If anything, we want

(23:20):
immigrants because they speak the language, they know the culture.
But I mean, as far as you know malcontents, which
I believe is they also I label. I mean, you know,
you have to have a security clearance, you have to
have trust, you know, these are the people that we
will rely on. And I would say that you look
at special operations, you know, military operations, there's a lot

(23:43):
of overlay with intelligence. But then the thing about intelligence
is we're involved in peace time, not just wartime, when
it comes to actively operating in this kind of environment,
and we deal with diplomat and citizens, and you know,
we run the gamut because that's where the information is.

(24:06):
That's who you have to deal with. But you know,
taking on the ethics or doing as the Romans would
do right, right, It's just it can be up to
a point to make you part of that society. But
one of the things that.

Speaker 6 (24:26):
Makes the US so great is that I still believe
that we are that shiny beacon on the hill, and
that given the values and.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
The morals.

Speaker 7 (24:39):
Of the people that make up the armed services, the
intelligence community, that we will continue to do what we
believe is the right thing to do without it becoming immoral.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Look, I think it's a great spot to end folks again.
And you can get doctor Goldman's books Ethics of Spying
Volume one and two from Amazon. Highly recommend it if
you're inter intelligence, if you're into the world of spying.
This is another arena that you don't always talk about.
I know, we like all those fun stories and those
are in there too, but looking at the ethical sides
are important.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Thank you doctor Goldman for joining us.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Thank you Thank you everyone for joining us as well.
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