Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.
And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so.
How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.
Julius Caesar
The most famous of all counter-espionage operations in the Soviet Union was the Trust.
Dzerzhinsky took over anti-terrorism duties in the newly-emerged Russia at the end of the First World War when the country was riven with revolt and violence. He realised that he had no chance of identifying all the terrorist threats and those planning to perpetrate them. Instead he developed a questionable technique that has become part of espionage theory throughout the international intelligence community: you lure the terrorist to you.
The Trust appeared to be a huge anti-Bolshevik organisation working from Moscow to overthrow the Communists and reverse the revolution. Instead,Dzerzhinski used it to identify anti-communists. All he needed to do was set up the organisation and wait to see who joined it. He could then choose when to roll it up and arrest its members or whether to let it run in the hope of revealing bigger prey.
In intelligence circles the Trust became a textbook operation and its principles copied worldwide. But to be most effective required a ruthlessness that Western services often felt unable to carry out. For instance, if the authenticity of a front organisation was questioned, the KGB did not hesitate to initiate a terrorist incident to reinforce the organisation's reputation. So the Trust would plant bombs that would kill innocent people just so that possible recruits would think it a genuine organisation.
Learn how a Soviet approach was recently used in the West – and what the consequences are: Phillip Knightley
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Harlan Ellison