Journalists are merely spies who want to see their names in print.

In fact, some of the best information available can be found via newspapers, television, the Internet, even the public library. Tsar Nicholas I of Russia once declared, “We have no need for spies. We have The Times.”

Spies call that stuff Open Source Intelligence, or OSINT. Of all the raw information the CIA collects, guess what percentage is openly available?

Eighty percent.

In fairness to the spies, though, that high percentage includes plenty of stuff that nobody wants but we get anyway. For example, try to purchase a newspaper without including in the purchase all of those uninteresting articles and advertisements that you’ll never read.

You can’t. It’s all or nothing. Same problem.

The existence of an acronym should tell you just how valuable OSINT is. Still, there are spies who loath OSINT. They believe that secrets, deeply secretive secrets, secrets which they can steal secretly, are really sexy. Maybe so. But if you think OSINT isn’t sexy, you’re not looking in the right magazines.

Perhaps the spies who loath OSINT fear the sentiments of a guy like Richard Nixon. President Nixon once complained that the CIA “tells me nothing I don’t read three days earlier in The New York Times… What the [expletive] do those clowns do out there in Langley? What use are they? They’ve got 40,000 people over there reading newspapers!”

Well, a bit more than merely reading them. In the hands of someone trained to “read between the lines” — keeping a sharp eye out for that conspicuous omission, that screaming silence — even a printed platform of preposterous propaganda can become as informative as a university coffeehouse, or a barbershop of busybodies, or a pub full of professional wannabes.

In other words, even a newspaper can reveal a few facts.

And it must be true. After all, it’s in the newspapers.

Respectfully (because all my readers deserve respect),

Reginald Dipwipple

Secret Agent Extraordinaire