Agent 711 was one of the most effective and least known spies in our nation's history. He used dead drops to communicate about enemy plans. He used secret chemical processes to create new forms of invisible ink. He spread disinformation to disguise his own troops' movements and confuse the enemy. The year was 1778. Agent 711 was George Washington. He was our nation's first spymaster, and his network of informants was the Culper spy ring. It was one of several that he ran through the war and also during his time as president. Washington's army was undermanned, underfunded, frequently on the run. He knew he needed an edge, and he found it with intelligence. A British intelligence officer later said Washington did not really outfight the British — he simply outspied us.
At the same time, as a young nation was leaning heavily into its very first intelligence community, Thomas Paine was inspiring a nation to democracy. He had ideas about equality, rights, and the limits of government — revolutionary ideas for the time. He had ideas about power: it was not a divine right handed down to a monarch, but power rested in the hands of the people. Government borrows that power for a time, within limits. The representatives of that government are meant to be of the people and return to lives among the people, not to be separate or above or disconnected from what's going on among them.
Thus, our nation was born, not out of a tension between intelligence and democracy, but as an alchemical mix of both. We carry these ideas forward into a modern context. Power rests with the people. They loan it to the government. We trade some of our liberty for things that no one person can provide — roads, the power grid, police, submarines, national security. In exchange, we demand things of our government: accountability, adjustments, change, transparency. But we also demand security, and we demand economic prosperity. That's the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness part.
It's easy to forget that there are still those in the world who wish to take these things away from us. It's also in part generational — today’s college graduates were not alive during 9/11 or had maybe just been born. There are still terrorists and cartels who wish to take life. China seeks to take liberty — they want to subjugate people to their will, as they've done in Tibet, in Hong Kong, as they're attempting to do in Taiwan. Russia wants to end the pursuit of happiness. Some men truly do just want to watch the whole world burn to make themselves feel better, and Putin is one of those. Rather, they want happiness on their terms. This looks like power for the elite few oligarchs around Vladimir Putin, while he sends the poor to fight his war in Ukraine. It looks like the ruling elite of the CCP and their little princelings. They want order. They want to take liberty to hold power. The state has shown, in their case, security, but only for the few.
Why? Because liberty is messy. It is a struggle. It's making our own way while everyone else does the same. It's making space for ourselves and for each other, and when those spaces conflict, we figure it out. Thomas Paine wrote that “when we speak of rights, we ought always to unite them with the idea of duties — rights become duties by reciprocity: the right which I enjoy becomes my duty to guarantee to others, and he to me.” So today we are the guarantors of each other's rights. In Paine's time that looked like representative democracy and a little bit of revolution. Today, specifically with regard to spy work, it is a hard concept to wrap your head around — it's actually protection of rights by proxy.
In my pocket I carry a coin — the first one made for the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which I served for six years. On one side is Washington's seal, to represent our very first spymaster and to honor the intelligence officers who were so instrumental to the birth of this nation. But there are also two sets of stars on this coin. There's a set of 15 around the outside that represents the 15 members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who represent the entirety of the Senate. And then on the other side there are a hundred stars representing the Senate as a whole.
Why are there two layers? The 100 senators represent the entire country. The 15 members of the committee represent the Senate. Just as Washington went to great pains to encode secret messages and hide what he knew from the British army, secrets today must stay secret — the more people who know a thing, the less likely something is to stay secret. The intel committees are there to be the eyes and ears of the entire Senate or the House, and by extension the nation. These committees were designed to bring things back into balance.
During the 1960s and 1970s, another time of intense national upheaval, the IC got way out of hand — spying on political figures like Martin Luther King, attempting assassinations of foreign leaders, and engaging in massive propaganda campaigns. The Church and Pike committees united to investigate and create both the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, to provide permanent, comprehensive oversight to keep this balance.
People who don't know intelligence work think that it's all-powerful and full of abuse. They see the spy thrillers that are in the movies. They think the 1970s continue today. But people who do know it, know it's a microcosm of liberty. It's messy. It's flawed. But it's also full of checks, balances, and people doing the right thing. These are my friends and former colleagues. They look like me. They look like you. They miss dinners with families. They put themselves in harm's way. They don't get parades. They don't get early boarding on flights. They don't get military discounts. They just do the work.
For us as a country, I fear there are rough seas ahead. We face two revisionist powers that, like King George III, believed that one person should be in charge through might alone. These people want to set up a false choice: freedom or security, not both. But the truth is that freedom and security are deeply intertwined. It is fear that leads to that false choice. On the one hand, dictators fear chaos — they think that people will come to understand that their oppressive dear leader does not, in fact, have their interests at heart. The supposed strongman is actually terrified. He's desperate to hold on to power. On the other hand, amongst some, there is fear the security mission will take over and become too big, too powerful, lodged in the hands of someone who is too power-hungry. But the goal is balance. We need Washington's spy ring. We also need Paine's ideals. And we need them working together.
One further reflection on that Paine quote: the rights I enjoy, I also guarantee to others. This is perhaps most true for those who operate in the shadows. They guarantee the rights of fellow citizens day in and day out, with a million small decisions, even when no one is watching. Democracy enables good spy work — only in a democracy can you walk into the Oval Office and deliver truly terrible news to power, tell the president things have gone sideways, and work together to fix it.
Spy work also makes democracy possible. I look forward to a day where there are no enemies; no one who seeks to assert ultimate power over others. That day I will have happily worked myself out of a job. But it is not today. Today I am fully employed attempting to create deterrence, know our adversaries, create a future of peace through strength. I have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution four times in my life, and hopefully one day I'll do it a fifth, but inside government or out, trying to work for democracy, for freedom, for a secure America and a secure world is the mission.
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