From: "Rich Gauszka" 

 Academians really need a reality check.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/politics/28ethics.html?hp&ex=1138510800&en=e1
0857156eadd05c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 - Is there such a thing as an ethical spy?

A group of current and former intelligence officers and academic experts
think there is, and they are meeting this weekend to dissect what some
others in the field consider a flat-out contradiction in terms.

The organizers say recent controversies over interrogation techniques
bordering on torture and the alleged skewing of prewar intelligence on Iraq
make their mission urgent. At the conference on Friday and Saturday in a
Springfield, Va., hotel, the 200 attendees hope to begin hammering out a
code of ethics for spies and to form an international association to study
the subject.

Conference materials describe intelligence ethics as "an emerging
field" and call the gathering, not sponsored by any government agency,
the first of its kind. The topics include "Spiritual Crises Among
Intelligence Operatives," "Lessons From Abu Ghraib,"
"Assassination: The Dream and the Nightmare" and "The
Perfidy of Espionage."

Organizers said conferees would ponder such timely issues as how many
civilian deaths can be justified in a C.I.A. Predator missile strike to
kill a known terrorist, or what legal assurances a National Security Agency
eavesdropper should demand before singling out the phone calls of an
American who was linked to Al Qaeda.

"As an intelligence officer, you are confronted with ethical dilemmas
every day," said Melissa Boyle Mahle, who retired from the Central
Intelligence Agency in 2002 after 14 years as a case officer, much of it
under cover in the Middle East.

Ms. Mahle, now a foreign policy consultant, was scheduled to speak Saturday
on the practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are seized abroad
and delivered either to trial in the United States or to imprisonment in
other countries.

But in a required security review, the C.I.A. refused to clear about
one-fourth of her proposed 23-page text, Ms. Mahle said Friday. She said
the deletions "gutted" the paper and made it impossible to
deliver. She decided to attend the conference anyway, because she believes
its goal is "so important."

While she had received C.I.A. training on agency rules and the law, Ms.
Mahle recalled that she got "none whatsoever" in ethics. But she
found that her work demanded constant moral balancing.

Ms. Mahle said she came up with her own ad-hoc ethical checklist, including
imagining what her mother would say about a proposed action or how she
herself would feel if it were described on the front page of an American
newspaper. But she believes any officer would benefit from more rigorous
training in moral decision-making.

"You're the point of the spear, and no one's going to be there to make
decisions for you," she said.

Not all agree. "It doesn't make much sense to me," said Duane R.
Clarridge, who retired in 1988 after 33 years as a C.I.A. operations
officer and who will not attend the conference. "Depending on where
you're coming from, the whole business of espionage is unethical."

To Mr. Clarridge, "intelligence ethics" is "an
oxymoron," he said. "It's not an issue. It never was and never
will be, not if you want a real spy service." Spies operate under
false names, lie about their jobs, and bribe or blackmail foreigners to
betray their countries, he said.

"If you don't want to do that," he added, "just have a State
Department."

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5