The inescapable circularity of spytalk

In my response ("Whiff of a conspiracy", June 2001) to Subir Bhaumik's "Conspirators' cauldron" (May 2001), I had pointed to certain well-known criteria that distinguish journalism from intelligence-gathering. In his rejoinder "Indian wheat and Bangla chaff" (July 2001), Bhaumik returns to the fray armed with more classified information from secret files, some grand claims about his proximity to intelligence sources and his facility in dealing with their murky ways and a bit of tasteless abuse of Bangladeshi journalists. I feel properly chastised. Obviously, when journalists like Bhaumik are about, sermonising on this or that issue concerning Bangladesh, it is best for Bangladeshis to retire en masse and listen with rapt attention so that they equip themselves to understand their own country a little better.

But Bhaumik's omniscience notwithstanding, he has failed to respond to the substantive queries I had raised. I therefore feel constrained to remind him of the fundamental distinction between a reporter and a spy.  A media report is a verifiable account that belongs in the public domain and is therefore as much available to the undercover agent as it is to the ordinary citizen. Freely available, verifiable public information is not what the undercover agent deals in. By definition, the intelligence report must concoct a world of conspiracies, machinations and intrigue, based on "secret, unverifiable sources". That is its professional compulsion. The spy's report is not open to corroboration nor is it governed by any code of ethics. Granted there are conspiracies that affect the public domain. But then the intelligence agency involved in uncovering it does not usually make it public precisely because it is also involved in the conspiracy as a counter-conspirator.