Spytainment: Fake Spies and Real Intelligence Policy with Amy Zegart

Spy-themed entertainment has skyrocketed since 9/11, often blurring the lines between fact and fiction. What's real and what isn't in Zero Dark Thirty? How has the television show 24 influenced training at West Point? How is spytainment affecting public opinion about wiretapping, torture, and other controversial intelligence issues?

Amy Zegart, MA '93, PhD '96 is a senior fellow, Hoover Insitution and co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation. She is also Professor of Political Economy, by courtesy, at the Graduate School of Business. Her research examines the organizational deficiencies of American national security agencies and she is the author of two award-winning books. Flawed by Design and Spying Blind. Zegart was featured by the National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in intelligence reform. She served on the Clinton administration's National Security Council staff and as a foreign policy adviser to the Bush-Cheney 2000 presidential campaign. Her commentary has been featured on national tv and radio shows and in the NY Times, Washington Post, and LA Times.

This Classes Without Quizzes lecture was filmed on location at Stanford Reunion Homecoming 2013 by the Stanford Alumni Association.

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You should have read the CIA/OTS paper 1979 “Telecommunications Europe 2000.” In it we Stated that by the year 2000 all digital telephone calls would be encrypted. This put NSA in a tizzy.

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Your lecture is very entertaining! My tenth grade history class was looking at the new Soviet missiles every week through the paradigm of mutual assured destruction. We used to talk about whether it made sense to marry or even have children. I became an organic synthetic chemist who tried to help my country become a winning experiment. How about you?

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First law of all bureaucracies survive. As the Cold War was winding even OTS could get that highly prized NSA air time on a satellite to test a new communication method by encrypted laptop to satellite. This was 1981-2 time frame. Real Buck Rogers stuff for back then. The fact that time was even available on those assets meant NSA was not very busy, and searching for customers.

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T.S. Eliot said “As only the Christians and the Communists, all education is religious education.” Some get their religious education from Television.

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Hi Amy,
Frank Anderson and Jack Downey we the good looking Cold War ops officers.
Our universities are not even teaching the foundations of government. I was a technical officer
Working with guys like Tony Mendez. I developed secret writing messages from Vietnam POW’s
And trained stay behind agents in Cambodia and Vietnam.
Humint plans and intentions have proliferated to the point of the rediculous.
If someone did have important information, how would they get it to the right source?

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Why the army field manual? What was the date of publication of Army field manual? What was the moral environment of that date of publication.

In this postChristian era when compliance instead Ethics is the basis for action, how can you create a moral high ground? The American Experiment was based on moral virtue that came from a Christian Worldview. You cannot create a moral high ground on the 2000 Humanist Manifesto.