[HN Gopher] Invisible Ink: At the CIA's Creative Writing Group
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Invisible Ink: At the CIA's Creative Writing Group
Author : ynac
Score : 57 points
Date : 2024-01-10 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theparisreview.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theparisreview.org)
| acheron wrote:
| I once talked to a guy who worked at the CIA who said "when
| people ask me what movie most accurately reflects working at the
| CIA, I say _Office Space_ ".
| tptacek wrote:
| There are over 21,000 people working there, so I assume the
| overwhelming majority of the work must be pretty boring.
| laserstrahl wrote:
| i need that muffin recipe.
| jll29 wrote:
| What if that muffin recipe, if read backwards, was a report in
| Russian about foreign policy plans? (And would a _lawyer_ be
| the right person to review/decide?)
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| The part about the parking snafu is just hilarious. Government
| bureaucracy's true genius is in crafting catch-22s within its own
| rules.
|
| Also this reminds me of a similar article from shortly after
| 9/11: https://www.wired.com/2002/10/i-fought-the-future-for-the-
| ci...
| pphysch wrote:
| > The CIA officer seated next to me asked if I thought it was
| worth getting a literary agent. I said yes, and she seemed
| skeptical.
|
| > "In my other work," she explained, "I can get movie people
| attached."
|
| Is she implying that getting an agent is a possibly waste of time
| because she _is_ the agent, so to speak, with direct access to
| industry insiders /plants/assets (albeit in the movie industry)?
| ynac wrote:
| That was my first impression as well - "attaching" is a term
| I've heard used in the film industry to not only say a star /
| asset is involved, but also a verb to be used as shorthand for
| "I can make it happen".
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| It's only after reading this comment that I realized that
| Invisible Ink is a group of CIA agents who formed a writing
| club, and not a dedicated CIA creative writing task force.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Isn't the creative writing task force the remote viewing
| program?
| ynac wrote:
| I had two interesting lists to compile after reading this
| article:
|
| First is books written by former diplomats / intel opporatives.
| SO many greats!
|
| Second, the intelligence officer's book shelf. In other words,
| book lists for people studying the various arts of intelligence.
| Fascinating stuff.
| mdhb wrote:
| I feel like most people maybe aren't aware that this is a thing
| but here are hundreds of book reviews by the CIA
| https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/book-reviews-by-title/
| mesofile wrote:
| Sounded interesting, but 1) the titles don't link to reviews
| as I expected, am I missing something? and 2) it appears to
| be an inactive project - I've only clicked through a sample
| of the full list but the majority of titles reviewed date
| from the 1960s & 70s, and I haven't found any more recently
| published than 1995.
| ynac wrote:
| https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/an-intelligence-profes...
|
| The magazine was a new discovery for me as well as the annual
| reading list.
| slim wrote:
| this is hilarious because the author antagonistically made sure
| to write about every detail he can remember in this cold report
| about the secret agency
| paxys wrote:
| The story is supposed to be about a crazy visit experience to the
| CIA (and the author does a good job of writing it), but reading
| through it I couldn't help but think multiple times that if you
| replaced "CIA" with "generic big corporation" everything would
| still make perfect sense. Random employee social group organizing
| a talk, visitor/escort experience, VIP parking, confused
| officials/security people, getting multiple badges, long-tenured
| employee who has no idea how many people work at the
| company...yep you are at Google.
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