Gender, Sexuality, and Intelligence

Studies: The Spy in the Closet 1st ed.

Edition Mary Manjikian
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/gender-sexuality-and-intelligence-studies-the-spy-in-t
he-closet-1st-ed-edition-mary-manjikian/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and

Canadian Politics 1st ed. Edition Manon Tremblay

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-palgrave-handbook-of-gender-
sexuality-and-canadian-politics-1st-ed-edition-manon-tremblay/

Pluralistic Struggles in Gender, Sexuality and

Coloniality: Challenging Swedish Exceptionalism 1st ed.
Edition Erika Alm

https://ebookmass.com/product/pluralistic-struggles-in-gender-
sexuality-and-coloniality-challenging-swedish-exceptionalism-1st-
ed-edition-erika-alm/

Gender and Sexuality in Stoic Philosophy 1st Edition

Malin Grahn-Wilder (Auth.)

https://ebookmass.com/product/gender-and-sexuality-in-stoic-
philosophy-1st-edition-malin-grahn-wilder-auth/

LGBT Victorians: Sexuality and Gender in the

Nineteenth-Century Archives Simon Joyce

https://ebookmass.com/product/lgbt-victorians-sexuality-and-
gender-in-the-nineteenth-century-archives-simon-joyce/
Yemoja: Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in the
Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas

https://ebookmass.com/product/yemoja-gender-sexuality-and-
creativity-in-the-latina-o-and-afro-atlantic-diasporas/

Affect, Gender and Sexuality in Latin America Cecilia

Macón

https://ebookmass.com/product/affect-gender-and-sexuality-in-
latin-america-cecilia-macon/

ISE Identities and Inequalities: Exploring the

Intersections of Race, Class, Gender, & Sexuality 4th
Edition David M. Newman

https://ebookmass.com/product/ise-identities-and-inequalities-
exploring-the-intersections-of-race-class-gender-sexuality-4th-
edition-david-m-newman/

Body, Gender, and Sexuality in Latin American Cinema:

Insurgent Skin Juli A. Kroll

https://ebookmass.com/product/body-gender-and-sexuality-in-latin-
american-cinema-insurgent-skin-juli-a-kroll/

America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and

Sexuality at the Movies 2nd Edition, (Ebook PDF)

https://ebookmass.com/product/america-on-film-representing-race-
class-gender-and-sexuality-at-the-movies-2nd-edition-ebook-pdf/
Gender, Sexuality,
and Intelligence
Studies
The Spy in the Closet

Mary Manjikian
Gender, Sexuality, and Intelligence Studies
 Mary Manjikian

Gender, Sexuality, and

Intelligence Studies
The Spy in the Closet
Mary Manjikian
Regent University
Virginia Beach, VA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-39893-4    ISBN 978-3-030-39894-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39894-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To Ara
 Acknowledgments

This volume grew out of a panel discussion presented at the International

Studies Association Annual Conference in San Francisco in April 2017.
The panel, on gender and intelligence, represented the first cosponsored
panel by two diverse groups within the International Studies Association—
the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies group and the Intelligence
Studies group. It also served as a reminder of the ways in which intelli-
gence studies itself is moving into a more interdisciplinary space, with
intelligence studies borrowing and learning from fields as diverse as gen-
der studies, literary theory, and critical theory approaches within interna-
tional relations.
For this reason, I would like to acknowledge the pioneering efforts in
this regard of scholars like Stephen Marrin at James Madison University,
Jan Goldman at The Citadel, and Cristina Matei of the Naval Postgraduate
School. Your insights have helped to shape my thinking and hopefully
helped me to produce a better book.
I’d also like to thank, as always, our hardworking library staff at Regent
University, including Harold Henkel in particular. In addition, I am grate-
ful to my research assistant Brian Lennart for his editorial assistance.
Finally, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who provided
early and later feedback on this manuscript. Their comments have chal-
lenged me and helped me to clarify my thinking on several matters, par-
ticularly in regard to how this work does and does not fit into the larger
project of queer theory. (More on that in Chap. 1!)
Any errors in the manuscript are of course my own.

vii
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
Why Don’t IR Scholars Study Intelligence?   3
Bringing Intelligence Back In: To the Study of International
Relations   6
Bibliography  16

2 The Queerness of Intelligence 19

Asking Queer Questions About Intelligence  20
Intelligence Activity as the Third Way  33
The Queer Mission of the Intelligence Community  40
Accepting the Reality of Our Queer Foreign Policy  53
Bibliography  62

3 Queer Spies 67
Intelligence Agents: Bodies Behaving Queerly in Space  68
The State as Container/State as Vault: The Spy’s Queer
Moral Status  77
Her Naked State/Our Naked State: The Myth of Artemis and
the Ethics of Spying  80
Bibliography  97

4 Treason, Agency, and Sexuality101

The Prevailing Orthodoxy About Treason 102
Three Narratives About Homosexuality 108
Bibliography 139

ix
x Contents

5 Queerness, Secrecy, and Revelation143

Intelligence and Secrecy 145
What Is a Secret Society? 148
The Mythology of the Intelligence Community 156
Parallel Organizations as a Violation of Statecraft 157
Intelligence, Stigma, and the Wall of Separation 166
Accountability, Performativity, and the Wall of Separation 170
Outing, Policing, and Disciplining Intelligence Activities 176
Bibliography 185

6 Coming Out as an Intelligence Agent189

Memoirs as Sourcebooks 192
The Silence of the Spy and the Ability to Tell His Story 193
Other Types of Queerness: The Double Agent and the Torturer 205
Coming Out as a Spy 207
Conclusion 212
Bibliography 216

7 The Politics of Covert Activity219

IR Theory and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” of Covert Activity 223
Queer Presidents/Queer Precedents 238
Rescuing the State by Blaming the Intelligence Community 251
Queer Behavior and the Theater of Accountability 253
Conclusion 255
Bibliography 260

8 The Future Is Queer: New Developments in Intelligence

Activity263
Prying Open the Closet: The Erosion of Secrecy in an Era of Big
Data 265
Join Us in the Closet: Adding New Actors to the Intelligence
Community 267
Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Bots, and Spies 273
Normalization: Spying Emerges from the Closet 274
Bibliography 277
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Among all the functions which governments—both authoritarian and

democratic—engage in, intelligence activities are often the least discussed
and least understood, both by the general public and by academics. Rather,
the existence of covert and clandestine activities such as government pro-
grams to support candidates in foreign elections or training and equipping
foreign fighters functions as something of a “dirty little secret” both in
Washington and surely in other national capitals as well. Politicians, news
media, and the general public—as well as academic analysts—are aware
that such activities do occur, but prefer not to look too closely at them or
to acknowledge what they are seeing.
And even though the United States spends nearly one trillion dollars
annually on national security programs and agencies, and that intelligence
functions are routinely carried out by seventeen federal agencies, along
with state and local intelligence fusion centers,1 the study of these activities
and functions is particularly poorly integrated within the discipline of
international relations. Indeed, while almost five million Americans (nearly
two percent of our population) now hold security clearances, as Christopher
Andrew noted in 2004, “intelligence … is all but absent in most contem-
porary IR theory,” including, tellingly, in theorizing about the Cold War.2
Here one might begin to address this conundrum by asking why the
work produced by intelligence studies scholars is not better integrated
into the study of international relations. Indeed, the intelligence studies
community—both in the United States and in other English-speaking

© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. Manjikian, Gender, Sexuality, and Intelligence Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39894-1_1
2 M. MANJIKIAN

countries—appears to function as its freestanding entity, with its own jour-

nals, its jargon, and its own set of accepted assumptions and theories,
many of which are unique to itself. It is indeed striking to see the degree
to which the intelligence studies community has developed largely in isola-
tion, unaffected by and perhaps even hostile to trends within the larger
international relations discipline—such as an attempt to move beyond
Western and American-centric analyses, to include voices of the subaltern,
or to consider the contingent nature of knowledge itself.3
Even today, intelligence studies analyses focus almost exclusively on the
Western intelligence tradition, with an emphasis on the rise and practice of
intelligence in the United States and England, along with some compara-
tive work on Western Europe. And literature produced by the academic
intelligence studies community (which often includes retired intelligence
practitioners among its ranks) tends to fit into one of four formats: Analysts
have taken an institutional approach in considering the structures of the
intelligence community, how they function and how they are policed or
regulated by other actors. In addition, analysts have produced case studies
that have been historical in nature, examining phenomena like how par-
ticular leaders have utilized intelligence or the circumstances which led to
intelligence failures. Also, there is a growing literature that is method-
ological, asking questions about how one might articulate and test assump-
tions or identify bias in carrying out intelligence analysis, including some
which is interdisciplinary.
Finally, if intelligence studies have been integrated into larger studies
within international relations, it has often been through the utilization of
a “crime frame,” thus establishing intelligence as a sort of deviant interna-
tional relations.4 Elizabeth Anderson, a former National Security Agency
analyst who later became an academic, has faulted the scholarship pro-
duced by practitioners as “journalistic in nature,” since what is produced
is often simply a narrative of the events themselves from an operational
perspective which focuses, in her words, on “action, adventure, and scan-
dal.”5 That is, intelligence scholars have sought to understand events like
the 1985 Iran-Contra scandal, which occurred under then-president
Ronald Reagan not as one of many ways in which states practice politics—
but as a “scandal”—because to acknowledge intelligence activity as inter-
national relations would upset many of our long-standing (and
unquestioned) assumptions about what does and does not constitute nor-
mal international relations.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

Why Don’t IR Scholars Study Intelligence?

At the same time, academics within the larger discipline of political science
have tended not to include intelligence studies as a variable within tradi-
tional international relations analyses, nor to include organizations like the
Central Intelligence Agency within a study of public administration
bureaucracies, and not to include studies of the intelligence community
within larger studies of, for example, foreign policy elite decision-makers.
Here, one can certainly identify legitimate logistical or practical reasons
why academics might avoid adding intelligence agencies to their data sets
or cases for comparison. First, the closed nature of the intelligence com-
munity and its overwhelming emphasis on secrecy (often for real reasons
of national security) make it particularly challenging to study. Analysts
become used to working with sources where keywords—including dates,
names of places, and names of individuals—have been redacted through a
publication review process, even when a successful Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) request has been filed. In cases where documents have been
released, or an official has been compelled to speak with an academic inter-
locutor, problems may arise concerning the representativeness of the
information being made available. Is it possible that the organization has
safeguarded its image through redacting information of an embarrassing
nature, rather than merely withholding that which is strategically necessary?
Historian Kaeten Mistry presents this perspective in describing the dif-
ficulties she encountered in researching the part which the US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) played in attempting to influence Italy’s elec-
tions in the aftermath of World War Two. She writes:

None of this is to imply that the CIA did not channel covert funds … Rather,
it emphasizes the difficulties in authoritatively supporting claims dependent
on evidence that is withheld, inaccurate, or perhaps non-existent. Agency
records could settle such scores, particularly in curtailing the useful myths
surrounding critical and triumphant interpretations. Yet with the declassifi-
cation process in statis, it poses a dilemma for historians.6

As a result of these difficulties, she argues that much of what the aca-
demic intelligence community accepts as “knowledge” is deeply inter-
twined with mythologies about agencies like the CIA, along with wishful
thinking, rumors, and even conspiracy theories. For this reason, she
4 M. MANJIKIAN

s­ uggests that the study of intelligence is often rather divorced from other
types of academic endeavors.
A second compelling reason for this academic divorce is that the intel-
ligence agencies are often regarded as so unique in their culture, their
leadership styles, and their missions that analysts may conclude that it
makes little sense to include them in a more general database of agencies
or agency activities and that it also may be pointless to generalize about
the behavior of, for example, the Central Intelligence Agency in making a
statement about how agencies behave. Here, intelligence scholars them-
selves point to the phenomenon of “intelligence exceptionalism” in argu-
ing that the intelligence community has unique or distinctive rules, values,
and procedures. As Turner notes, intelligence activities may differ from
other traditional activities of foreign policy since the guiding principle is
secrecy, the activities may include illegal activity including violating other
nation’s laws, and the use of techniques like deception and deniability by
those producing information creates problems for analysts regarding the
credibility of information obtained.7 Proponents of this “exceptionalism”
viewpoint argue that analysts, lawmakers, and the general public should
not expect the intelligence organizations to behave like any other govern-
ment agency since they have a unique mission. Furthermore, proponents
argue that an intelligence agency does and must have special or unique
powers and policies, including less oversight of its practices by the legisla-
tive branch, more secrecy in the conduct of its affairs, fewer budget con-
straints, and less transparency overall regarding its budget, as well as an
acceptance of the understanding that such powers may and often do vio-
late legal and/or ethical understandings in areas such as transparency and
public oversight of the agency’s practices and policies. In this way, the lit-
erature on “intelligence exceptionalism” can be read as a sort of defense of
the IC and its practices, created from within the IC itself, in order to
establish conditions for what Nathan refers to as a “dispensation”8—a jus-
tification for why the IC should not be held to the same standards with
reference to adherence to regime sovereignty or understandings in the
areas of transparency, constitutionality, or adherence to human rights
regimes.
However, I contend that it is not logistical capabilities or even method-
ological concerns alone which cause traditional international relations to
give short shrift academically to the phenomenon of intelligence. Rather,
it is because there is something subversive about the practices and values
of intelligence which both cause it to fit awkwardly, if at all, into traditional
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

international relations theoretical paradigms, and furthermore, because a

full-fledged analysis of the role of intelligence in international relations
threatens to destabilize some of the understandings which form a sort of
ground truth for a mainstream international relations scholar. In examin-
ing the discourse of intelligence studies, we encounter a reflection of this
assumption about the subversiveness of intelligence. In scholarly histories
of the organization, we encounter language describing the CIA as having
“siphoned off money” from legitimate organizations and operations, or
having performed an “end-run around” legitimate politics and
procedures.9
As Daugherty has noted in describing public attitudes towards the
Central Intelligence Agency:

In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate … the very idea of spying and acting
covert became disreputable … For most of my adult life, any mention of the
spy Agency has prompted suspicion of unlawful meddling, dirty tricks, scan-
dal, and a kind of bullet-headed redneck American approach to for-
eign policy.10

That is, there appears to be something unseemly or perverse about the

activities of the intelligence community in particular. As an example, we
may consider the claims that Russia, led by its intelligence community,
succeeded in penetrating US domestic politics through interfering in our
2016 presidential elections. The crime which America’s president and his
administration are accused of is collusion, which is defined by
Dictionary.com as:

1. A secret agreement, especially for fraudulent or treacherous purposes;

conspiracy and 2. Law: a secret understanding between two or more persons
to gain something illegally, to defraud another of his or her rights, or to
appear as adversaries though in agreement (i.e., collusion of husband and
wife to obtain a divorce).11

That is, collusion—a type of irregular politics and irregular interstate

relations—is described in terms which are overwhelmingly not political or
legal, but rather both ethical and moral. While an armed intervention
might be described in language derived from international law and mili-
tary agreements, there is no similar body of language used to describe
actions by intelligence agents. Instead, the language—as seen in the
6 M. MANJIKIAN

e­ tymology of the term “collusion”—is drawn from criminal law and eth-
ics. It is not neutral but highly normative. Collusion and espionage, while
they may be the bread and butter of activities for the intelligence commu-
nity not only in the United States but internationally, are described not as
part of international relations but instead as something unseemly, dirty,
and rotten. They are described in terms that present them as fraudulent
activities—unnatural, unreal, and twisted, rather than straightforward.
Thus, in a discipline like international relations, which focuses on iden-
tifying and upholding the rules of the international system, it is difficult to
know where to place an organization or set of organizations that appear to
be plagued by scandal and allegations of corruption, whose very existence
feels somewhat disreputable. Perhaps to admit certain truths about intel-
ligence would thus mean admitting certain truths about the discipline and
practice of international relations as a whole—including identifying the
problems which it has failed to solve, the gaps which it leaves in our knowl-
edge about the international system as a whole, and ultimately the hypoc-
risy of certain types of statements which we make about state behavior
while ignoring other ways in which states behave.

Bringing Intelligence Back In: To the Study

of International Relations

In this work then, I interrogate exactly this understanding—that there is

something dirty, disreputable, and “queer” in the activities of intelli-
gence—in order to better integrate intelligence into the study of interna-
tional relations as a whole. Here, queer theory is deployed as part of the
newly emerging field of critical intelligence studies.
In a recent essay about this subfield, Hamilton Bean presents critical
intelligence studies as concerned with apprehending and considering the
“forces of domination and subordination in both societies and organiza-
tions” with an overall mission of emancipation, a breaking free from tradi-
tional understandings and a breaking down of those understandings which
are proven to be false or predicated upon a faulty foundation. Here, he
notes that critical studies—of whatever field we choose to examine—often
have a goal of “problematizing” the understandings that we accept
unquestioningly within our fields. Here Bean identifies a largely unques-
tioned consensus that the goal of intelligence studies is to improve intel-
ligence analysis. However, as he points out, there is a significant divide
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

between the projects of improving intelligence analysis and of problema-

tizing intelligence analysis. Problematizing intelligence analysis involves
reconsidering the categories and methodologies we use, and also includes
asking why we adopted such methodologies and categories in the first
place. Problematizing a field may lead to the jettisoning of previously
unexamined assumptions, methodologies, and findings.12
This work, therefore, has several goals: First, to advance critical intelli-
gence studies through showing how queer theory and gender theory help
us to apprehend the spy and how his identity has been constructed both
internally within the intelligence community and externally (from with-
out) by other branches of the defense community, as well as by main-
stream and popular cultural representations of this individual. Utilizing
memoirs, in particular, I show how intelligence community practitio-
ners—both individually and in the aggregate—have created their brand of
identity politics. To be a spy is to be many things—to present one face to
the world while simultaneously maintaining a different interior and pro-
fessional identity, as well as to “play with” identities through sharing some
facets of one’s true self with one’s family and community while keeping
other facets hidden. In Chap. 5, I consider how the ideas of performativity
and the closet can lead to a richer understanding of what it is to be a mem-
ber of the intelligence community’s clandestine services.
But in this work, I examine not only the figure of the intelligence ana-
lyst but also the role and agency of the intelligence community within
international relations. Here, I claim that there is something fundamen-
tally queer about espionage, as well as clandestine and covert activity
(terms which I define later in this work). In establishing this claim, I show
how spies thus exist as part of what Puar has termed the “queer assem-
blage” in international relations.13

Queer Phenomenology
The claim that intelligence is queer is not a claim about sexuality—either
of the intelligence community (IC) itself or of the sexuality of a particular
agent. Instead, we are asking, as Daggett does, how a phenomenon is
queered within international relations. Phenomenology is a branch of phi-
losophy dedicated to the study of “phenomena”—which includes how
things appear, as well as how they appear in our experience. Phenomenology
is thus concerned with how we experience things and how we attach
meaning to things that we experience.14 Daggett asks us to consider the
8 M. MANJIKIAN

queer phenomenology of the drone—how drone warfare is considered

relative to traditional forms of warfare, and how traditional gendered
notions of warfare are and are not relevant in considering drone warfare.15
Similarly, we can consider intelligence’s queer phenomenology. We
might begin with the claim (often made by intelligence practitioners) that
intelligence is “the world’s second oldest profession.”16 In making this
claim, practitioners rightly acknowledge that as long as people have formed
societies, they and their leaders have engaged in practices like intelligence
collection—usually to identify and respond to threats. (While today intel-
ligence activities are largely the province of the state, in the past, a leader
might have had his own intelligence arm—whose aim was to identify and
perhaps neutralize threats to his power position.)
But the linguistic phrase “world’s second oldest profession” also calls to
mind prostitution, the world’s oldest profession. In attaching this label to
intelligence, then, practitioners are also implicitly making an analogy:
Prostitution is to marriage as intelligence is to legitimate state foreign
policy practices. Just as prostitution (or paying for sex) is regarded as a
deviant sexual practice—in contrast to the norm in which one doesn’t pay
for sex but has it with a partner in the context of an ongoing relation-
ship—intelligence can be viewed as a deviant set of practices within inter-
national relations in contrast to the legitimate foreign policy practices of
actors like the defense or diplomatic communities.
In her seminal work on queer phenomenology, Ahmed introduces the
notion of “orientation”—or how objects are situated in relation to one
another to create a space. One could situate objects, she notes, to create
either a dining table or an eating table. The placement of objects thus
encourages certain types of activities while constraining others.
Phenomenology, she argues, thus includes “how bodies are turned toward
the objects around them and how this ‘direction’ matters in understand-
ing orientation.”17 One’s “orientation” may be regarded as normative,
while another may be regarded as non-normative or in Cynthia Weber’s
terminology, “perverse.”
In this volume, then, we consider how intelligence activity—including
covert activity—has been situated in relation to “normal international
relations.” Normal international relations practices are overt, in keeping
with acknowledged international law including the law of armed conflict,
and are “owned” and acknowledged by the state. In contrast, states (and
policymakers) may conduct intelligence operations in secret—engaging in
practices that deviate from “normal international relations,” including
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

v­ iolating the sovereignty of other states through interfering in domestic

elections, assassinating other world leaders, and funding domestic insur-
gencies. If a state is asked to account for its participation in such activities,
it may deny knowledge of the activity or its part in the activity.
Here, we can consider, for example, a verbal exchange that occurred
during the first series of televised electoral debates in the United States in
the summer of 1960. Before the debate, democratic candidate John
F. Kennedy received an intelligence briefing in which (according to many
historians) he was made aware of ongoing American plans to carry out
covert operations in Cuba aimed at overthrowing the regime of Communist
Fidel Castro. However, such plans were classified and not a matter of pub-
lic knowledge at that time. During the debate, Kennedy called out then-­
president Nixon, accusing him of being “soft on communism” and
demanding to know what, if anything, Nixon planned to do in response to
the rise of Castro. In memoirs later written by members of the Nixon
Administration, these officials fault Kennedy for having put Nixon in an
impossible situation.18 Nixon knew full well that there were plans under-
way for an armed invasion of Cuba, but he was forbidden to say anything
publicly about these plans—particularly in such a public setting as a televi-
sion broadcast where all of his utterances would be “on the record.”
Kennedy knew that Nixon would be unable to respond truthfully and fully
in this public setting and thus was able to humiliate him, making him look
weak and as if he had no plan when in point of fact he did. That is, Nixon
was forbidden to speak of his nation’s queer foreign policy since the terms
of the debate were such that only normal foreign policy could be uttered
and spoken about.
We might also consider recent impeachment proceedings in the United
States, in which diplomats, congresspeople, and the press also grasped for
language which they might use to describe and label the activities of indi-
vidual associates of President Trump, who traveled abroad to Ukraine
beginning in the summer of 2016. A situation in which American officials
who work for the president, rather than for the state, and who hold no
formal diplomatic credentials seek to meet with foreign officials was
described as “a backchannel” or an “irregular channel”—in contrast to a
regular or official channel in which legitimate diplomats with diplomatic
accreditation and official titles carried out official activities with their offi-
cial counterparts abroad.19 Describing these events required creating a
new set of understandings and new set of juxtapositions between the
10 M. MANJIKIAN

a­ ctivities of official and unofficial actors, and between official (normative)

and unofficial (non-normative) practices.
In this volume, then, the claim that intelligence is “queer” is not meant
to imply that unofficial, sub-rosa intelligence practices themselves are
somehow emancipatory or liberating, either to the international system or
to those who live in a world in which power and justice claims are often
inequitably distributed and responded to. Indeed, one can easily claim
that unofficial, sub-rosa forms and variations of state activity are perhaps
more unjust and more illegitimate than official forms of state intervention
by great powers within the international system. Thus, some may fault the
author for not using “queer” in the usual sense—which carries with it this
emancipatory or liberatory thrust, or the notion that queer analysis (along
with queer activism) should ultimately seek to liberate subjects from the
oppressive patriarchal state, creating new modes of organization and being.
In terms of whether it is appropriate to use queer theory in a way which
may imply a degree of sympathy or understanding for those who work
directly within and for the intelligence community—an organization
which is often described as a tool of oppression and brutality—I believe
that if recent American political experiences like the Congressional testi-
mony of American ambassadors like Marie Yovanovitch and Phil Reeker
have shown anything, it is that the “faceless bureaucrats” who serve within
government structures are in many ways as powerless as those who exist
outside the state and its structures, as subject to the whims of their state’s
leaders and as voiceless to resist or dissent as anyone else. And just as dis-
empowered individuals may join the military as a way of procuring access
to goods (like education) which may be scarce or out of reach for certain
members of society, individuals may join the intelligence community for a
variety of reasons. It is, I feel, too simplistic to say that organizational
members are always “all in” with the goals of the state, or that those
within an organization form a monolithic bloc of individuals who mind-
lessly follow orders and do not think critically. It is thus well worth consid-
ering the motives, lives, and voices of those within an organization like the
intelligence community.
Furthermore, I believe that in seeking to make the practices of intelli-
gence visible both in their own right and also in relation to more “legiti-
mate” forms of foreign policy, the project of political emancipation may be
brought forward—since it is necessary to know and name a phenomenon
fully in order to question its claims and indeed even its existence. And in
making visible the sub-rosa, non-normative ways in which states act, we
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

can interrogate states’ own claims that they are law-abiding upholders of
the international system, by calling attention to the hypocrisy which often
accompanies these claims.
Thus, in this volume, I suggest that intelligence activities have existed
as a sort of “third option”; that is, they are described by Powers as a tool
of middle resort (available to US presidents), “lying somewhere between
a note of diplomatic protest and sending in the Marines.”20 The intelli-
gence community, then, can be understood as a sort of transgressive actor
which refuses to be located neatly between either of the existing binary
identities commonly found in international relations (the hard power of
the military intervention or the soft power of the note of diplomatic pro-
test), and its activities can be said to occupy a similar queer space.
Thus, making such activities visible allows the reader to also rethink the
myths of the unitary state and the unitary foreign policy of that state. I
take up these themes in my analysis of paramilitary, covert, and clandestine
operations undertaken by the United States in particular, through consid-
ering how presidents have exercised their prerogative to undertake such
relations as well as how they have read the environment and defending the
legitimacy of such operations.21 In this section, I introduce the figure of
the individual who openly presents one’s self as heterosexual while engag-
ing in occasional homosexual acts “on the down-low,” unable to reconcile
the two halves of one’s self and not altogether comfortable with their
covert desires. Similarly, it can be suggested that states may have an open
or public foreign policy with which they pursue their normal, more accept-
able desires within the international system (i.e., to strengthen structures
of international economic cooperation) while simultaneously having a sec-
ond foreign policy “on the down-low” with which they pursue the desires
which—though they violate norms and propriety—nonetheless still mani-
fest and perhaps are even necessary for state survival (i.e., the need to
control a specific natural resource or ensure the outcome of another coun-
try’s internal elections).
In my work, I demonstrate that the US foreign policy, in particular, has
always been queer through inviting the reader to look within the state—to
examine both our overt and our closeted US foreign policy, in particular,
to consider both the overt hegemonic masculine military and the closeted
arm of covert affairs. In this way, I seek to continue what Weber has
described as a rapprochement between different schools of
IR—“disciplinary, critical, and/or feminist IRs and queer work.”22 Here,
she notes that even mainstream IR theorists are coming to acknowledge
12 M. MANJIKIAN

that ignoring queer international theories and practices “risks undermin-

ing its own claimed expertise in its core areas of interest – state and nation
formation, war and peace and international political economy.”23 In
understanding the queerness of all these phenomena, it is of crucial impor-
tance to consider the figure of the spy, the intelligence community, and
the implementation of covert activities as part of a queer foreign policy.
The plan for the book is as follows:
In Chap. 2, I explore more fully the theme of how intelligence activities
and operatives have been ignored and silenced in contemporary interna-
tional relations scholarship, suggesting that the actions of intelligence
operatives have a queer ontological status, since such events are often not
made a part of a nation’s formal history, are often covered over, and are
somehow treated as less real than the formal politics of treaties and
invasions.
In Chap. 3, I argue that intelligence operatives themselves are queer
due to the liminal space they occupy within the structures of foreign pol-
icy, as well as the liminal status which all members of the IC have, regard-
less of their sexuality. That is, we consider the spy and their queer vocation,
how the queerness of the spy calls into question other aspects of IR which
we might otherwise have taken as given—how they present themselves as
being a particular nationality, including the performance of that nationality.
In Chap. 4, I focus on the specific crime of treason and how homosexu-
ality, in particular, has long been understood as a security threat. Here I
examine more closely the relationship between sexuality, secrecy, trust,
and betrayal, as it has traditionally been understood within the intelligence
community. We also consider another type of spy—specifically, the double
agent. We also consider how new attitudes within the United States about
queer people, including the acceptance of queer employees at intelligence
organizations like the CIA, have in some instances led to the cooptation
of the queer within the national security apparatus. Drawing upon the
work of Jasbir Puar, we consider what it means for this to occur.24 I also
briefly introduce the debate about whether “passing” as queer helps one
to “pass” as a spy or whether it is instead a factor which affects one’s pro-
ductivity and serves as a distraction.
In Chap. 5, I turn away from the figure of the intelligence operative to
consider the intelligence community as a whole. Here I apply the notion
of a secret society—drawing upon the work of sociologist Georg Simmel—
to explain how such organizations are configured and how secrecy can act
as a source of power or internal social capital. The model of the CIA as a
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

secret society helps to explain why they are sometimes regarded as a sort
of parallel structure in foreign policy, carrying out a “parapolitics” which
both is and is not foreign policy. Here, I advance the claim that it is neces-
sary for political structures like the president and the legislature to con-
duct hearings in which the IC is regularly called upon the carpet to justify
and explain those of its actions in the international system, which might be
construed as illegal both domestically and internationally. In this way, the
formal actors in international relations (like the president) enact a pageant
aimed at distancing themselves and the sovereign state from the messy
politics of the intelligence community, since being too closely associated
with such a subversive actor is bad for a state’s image internationally. The
IC is thus necessary—while simultaneously being stigmatized, denied, and
silenced.
In Chap. 6, we return to the figure of the individual spy, specifically
through analyzing memoirs written by intelligence operatives themselves.
Here we consider how agents have both outed themselves and been outed
and the goals achieved through outing oneself as a member of the intelli-
gence community.
In Chap. 7, we turn more specifically to the politics of covert activity.
In this chapter, I offer a queer reading of both covert activity itself and the
mainstream narratives regarding covert activity as a practice that exists in
contemporary international relations theory. In particular, I suggest that
each of these narratives serves to “rescue the state” from charges that it is
queer or that the state has a queer foreign policy—through deflecting the
charges of queerness to another actor. Thus, the first narrative posits the
state may engage in queer behavior (such as conducting covert activities
against even its democratic allies) from time to time (on the down-low),
but that doesn’t make it queer; indeed, there are situations where the
international community can benefit from a decision to collectively ignore
queer behavior. In this way, one can argue that in certain situations, the
international community adopts a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it
comes to the subject of such queer behavior. The second narrative sug-
gests that the state may appear to be queer in its foreign policy from time
to time, but that is because the president, independently, behaved queerly,
and such behavior is therefore not indicative of the state’s identity. The
third narrative suggests that from time to time, the intelligence commu-
nity itself oversteps its role, leading to the carrying out of activities which
might create the impression that the state has a queer foreign policy—but
14 M. MANJIKIAN

this is due to an agency refusing to perform its expected role, rather than
because the state itself is queer.
Finally, in Chap. 8, I conclude by arguing that the US foreign policy
has been and will continue to be “queer” due to tensions between diplo-
macy, military, and intelligence as well as between the presidency, the leg-
islature, and intelligence. In making this claim, I remind the reader of the
ways in which nonstate actors such as corporations have historically been
involved in American foreign policy from our earliest founding history, as
well as the possibility that the “wall of separation” which is purported to
exist between the intelligence community and other players like the presi-
dency,25 the state department, and the military is in fact an illusion or a
construct, rather than reality. Here, I suggest that this wall is perhaps com-
ing down, as new technologies and forces of globalization will inevitably
lead to a blurring between official and unofficial (or covert) foreign policy,
as well as the ability to hide state activities, through new types of transpar-
ency and surveillance.26

Notes
1. Michael German, “The US Intelligence Community Is Bigger Than Ever
But Is It Worth the Cost?” in “Rethinking Intelligence,” special issue,
Defense One, February 6, 2015, accessed August 8, 2018, https://www.
defenseone.com/ideas/2015/02/us-intelligence-community-bigger-ever-it-
worth-it/104799/?oref=d-river
2. Christopher Andrew, “Intelligence, International Relations and ‘Under-­
theorization,’” Intelligence and National Security 19, no. 2 (2004):
170–184.
3. However, this is changing somewhat. Here, see Mary Manjikian,
“Positivism, Post-Positivism, and Intelligence Analysis,” International
Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 26, no. 3 (2013): 563–582.
4. See, for example, Eveline Lubbers, “Undercover Research: Corporate and
Police Spying on Activists. An Introduction to Activist Intelligence as a
New Field of Study,” Surveillance & Society 13, no. 3/4 (2015): 338–353.
5. Elizabeth E. Anderson, “The Security Dilemma and Covert Action: The
Truman Years,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
11, no. 4 (2010): 403–427.
6. Kaeten Mistry, “Approaches to Understanding the Inaugural CIA Covert
Operations in Italy: Exploding Useful Myths,” Intelligence and National
Security 26, no. 2–3 (2011): 225.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

7. Michael A. Turner, “A Distinctive U.S. Intelligence Identity,” International

Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 17, no. 1 (2004): 50.
8. Laurie Nathan, “Intelligence Bound: The South African Constitution and
Intelligence Services,” International Affairs 86, no. 1 (2010).
9. Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York, NY:
Doubleday, 2007).
10. William J. Daugherty, Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency
(Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2004), p. xi.
11. “Collusion,” Dictionary.com. Available at https://www.dictionary.com/
browse/collusion
12. Hamilton Bean. “What is Critical Intelligence Studies?” LinkedIn. July
23, 2019. Available at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-critical-
intelligence-studies-hamilton-bean/
13. For more on this point, see also Cynthia Weber, Queer International
Relations (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 143.
14. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2003. “Phenomenology.” Available
at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
15. Cara Daggett. 2015. “Drone Disorientations: How ‘unmanned’ weap-
ons queer the experience of killing in war,” International Feminist
Journal of Politics 17(3), 361–379. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461674
2.2015.1075317
16. See, for example, Joe Mazzafro, “The Second Oldest Profession,” Signal
Magazine. April 30, 2012. https://www.afcea.org/content/second-oldest-
profession?page=1
17. Quoted in Dai Kojima. 2008. “A Review of Sara Ahmed’s Queer
Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others.” Phenomenology and Practice
2(1), 89.
18. See, for example, H.R. Haldeman with Joseph Dimona. 1978. The Ends of
Power. New York: New York Times Books, 39.
19. See, for example, Gabriella Munoz. “Irregular Channel: Impeachment
Probe zeroes in on Trump Fixer Rudy Giuliani,” The Washington Times,
November 11, 2019. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/
nov/11/rudy-giuliani-ukraine-irregular-channel-center-don/
20. Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the
CIA (New York, NY: Alfred Knopf, 1979), 7; John Jacob Nutter, The
CIA’s Black Ops: Covert Action, Foreign Policy and Democracy (Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books, 2000).
21. Bob Jessop, “The Gender Selectivity of the State: A Critical Realist
Analysis,” Journal of Critical Realism 3, no. 2 (2004): 21–29.
22. Cynthia Weber. “What is told is always in the telling: Reflections on Faking
It in 21st century IR/Global Politics.” Millennium 45, no. 1 (2016):
119–130.
16 M. MANJIKIAN

23. Cynthia Weber, “‘What is Told is Always in the Telling’ Reflections on

Faking It in 21st Century IR/Global Politics,” Millennium 45, no. 1
(2016): 119–130.
24. Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times
(London, UK: Duke University Press, 2007), 27.
25. Samuel J. Rascoff, “Presidential Intelligence,” Harvard Law Review 129,
no. 3 (2016): 84.
26. For more on this point, see Jack Goldsmith, “Secrets in a Transparent
World,” in “Intelligence and Cyberwar,” special issue, Hoover Digest 4,
October 16, 2015, 1–5.

Bibliography
Anderson, Elizabeth. 2010. The Security Dilemma and Covert Action: The
Truman Years. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 11
(4): 403–427.
Andrew, Christopher. 2004. Intelligence, International Relations and ‘Under-­
Theorization’. Intelligence & National Security 19 (2): 170–184.
Bean, Hamilton. 2019. What Is Critical Intelligence Studies? LinkedIn, July 23.
Available at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-critical-intelligence-stud-
ies-hamilton-bean/. Accessed 24 July 2019.
Daugherty, William J. 2004. Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency.
Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
German, Michael. 2015. The US Intelligence Community Is Bigger Than Ever
But Is It Worth the Cost? In “Rethinking Intelligence”, special issue. Defense
One, February 6. https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/02/us-intelli-
gence-community-bigger-ever-it-worth-it/104799/?oref=d-river. Accessed
8 Aug 2018.
Goldsmith, Jack. 2015. Secrets in a Transparent World. In “Intelligence and
Cyberwar”, special issue. Hoover Digest 4, October 16: 1–5.
Jessop, Bob. 2004. The Gender Selectivity of the State: A Critical Realist Analysis.
Journal of Critical Realism 3 (2): 21–29.
Lubbers, Eveline. 2015. Undercover Research: Corporate and Police Spying on
Activists. An Introduction to Activist Intelligence as a New Field of Study.
Surveillance & Society 13 (3/4): 338–353.
Manjikian, Mary. 2013. Positivism, Post-Positivism, and Intelligence Analysis.
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 26 (3): 563–582.
Mistry, Kaeten. 2011. Approaches to Understanding the Inaugural CIA Covert
Operations in Italy: Exploding Useful Myths. Intelligence and National Security
26 (2–3): 246–268.
Nathan, Laurie. 2010. Intelligence Bound: The South African Constitution and
Intelligence Services. International Affairs 86 (1): 195–210.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

Nutter, John Jacob. 2000. The CIA’s Black Ops: Covert Action, Foreign Policy and
Democracy. Amherst: Prometheus Books.
Powers, Thomas. 1979. The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the
CIA. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Puar, Jasbir K. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times.
London: Duke University Press.
Rascoff, Samuel J. 2016. Presidential Intelligence. Harvard Law Review 129
(3): 634–716.
Turner, Michael. 2004. A Distinctive U.S. Intelligence Identity. International
Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 17 (1): 42–61.
Weber, Cynthia. 2002. Queer International Relations. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
———. 2016. What Is Told Is Always in the Telling: Reflections on Faking It in
21st Century IR/Global Politics. Millennium 45 (1): 119–130.
Weiner, Tim. 2007. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York: Doubleday.
 CHAPTER 2

The Queerness of Intelligence

While the previous short introduction provided a brief overview of the

project of this book—namely, the integration of intelligence studies more
clearly into IR theory through the use of queer theory—this chapter delves
more specifically into the philosophy of queer theory, including its meth-
odologies and its epistemological stances, while seeking to apply these
ideas to the phenomenon of intelligence activity. It is meant to serve as a
bridge for readers from two diverse constituencies. The chapter thus seeks
to introduce the intelligence community reader more generally to queer
theory while also acquainting the reader from the field of gender studies
and queer theory to key concepts in intelligence studies.
The chapter begins by arguing that intelligence is a set of activities
(including clandestine and covert activities) that exist in international rela-
tions’ “interstitial spaces,” forming part of what McCoy has termed a
“covert netherworld.”1 In this way, intelligence activities are understood
to share common ground with other netherworld activities like arms traf-
ficking, drug trafficking, and human trafficking. Intelligence activities, I
argue, exist as part of an invisible geography which seldom appears on
maps and which is often treated by analysts as being less ontologically real
than ideas like the state, though in point of fact that state is equally as
much a construct whose existence rests upon our willingness to recognize
it as such.
I then go on to locate queer theory in what Ling and Agathangelou
have termed the “house of IR,” showing why queer theory, in particular,

© The Author(s) 2020 19

M. Manjikian, Gender, Sexuality, and Intelligence Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39894-1_2
20 M. MANJIKIAN

relies on ideas which are destabilizing for the discipline of IR as a whole—

such as the idea that the ontological hierarchy of the state over other
phenomena is actually a matter of our accepting it as such, rather than a
fact that it is somehow more real and worthy of study.2 Next, I introduce
the specific ideas of queer theory which I will utilize in analyzing the phe-
nomenon of covert activity, in particular, showing that “queer” can refer
to a politics of (homo)sexuality, as well as a more general politics of things
which are contingent, stigmatized, and treated as ontologically less real.
In the fourth section, I consider the queer mission of intelligence and
the hierarchy which exists between diplomacy, military activity, and intel-
ligence. Here, I introduce the notion of intelligence as a “third way” of
achieving goals in the international system.

Asking Queer Questions About Intelligence

In an essay on the politics of knowledge, the analyst J Gibson-Graham
suggests that when we imagine any subject to be part of a monolithic
social formation and refuse to acknowledge that there might be variations
or deviations from that concept, then we lose out on an opportunity to
better understand and to create new knowledge. She quotes seminal theo-
rist Eve Sedgwick, who references the “Christmas effect”—the idea that in
December, our society is saturated with the phenomenon of Christmas,
and it may feel like there is little room for anything else or any alternate
modes of being or imaging the social life taking place at that time. Rather,
everything coalesces into the one phenomenon, tends to be understood as
part of that phenomenon, and is subsumed by that phenomenon.
She then goes on to ask:

What if … there were a practice of valuing the ways in which meanings and
institutions can be at loose ends with each other? …What if we were to
depict social existence at loose ends with itself, in Sedgwick’s terms, rather
than producing social representation in which everything is part of the same
complex and therefore ultimately ‘means the same thing’ (e.g., capitalist
hegemony)?3

For the analyst interested in how intelligence activity functions in inter-

national relations, we might propose that the realist perspective on inter-
national relations provides a sort of “Christmas effect,” which allows
analysts to dismiss intelligence activities as “not part of international
 2 THE QUEERNESS OF INTELLIGENCE 21

r­elations.” Instead, realist theories of international relations rest on the

assumption (derived from Max Weber’s 1918 essay “Politics as a voca-
tion”) that the state is the only legitimate actor in international relations
and that it alone can claim a monopoly on the use of violence. The state
utilizes its authority to inflict violence when necessary to produce the
order upon which the international system is created. Professional soldiers
are ceded this authority by the state to engage in what is regarded as lawful
and legitimate violence.
However, as critics have pointed out, this framework does not acknowl-
edge nor account for the plethora of actors we can identify who participate
in conflict today—including paramilitary organizations like the organized
crime brigades who control the drug activities in Mexico,4 nonstate actors
like Al Qaeda, and private military contractors like Blackwater (later
renamed Xe Services), which functioned in Iraq and Afghanistan in the
aftermath of 9/11. Since the monopoly of legitimate power belongs to
the state, actors who reside outside the state structures—like criminals,
terrorists, and pirates—are said to be the illegitimate wielders of unauthor-
ized violence.5
But what of the intelligence community—whose meddling and “adven-
tures” often seem to feel illegitimate, sordid, and even seedy? How are we
to regard activities like paramilitary operations, covert operations, and
clandestine operations, which do not fit the criteria of legitimate war, and
thus do not share the legal and ethical claims of the Law of Armed Conflict,
or the criteria for just war? Here one might argue that the intelligence
community and its operations are a subset of activities that fall under the
umbrella of (legitimate) state activities since a nation’s intelligence com-
munity (IC) acts at the behest of its state. Indeed, within the United
States, the 1947 National Security Act has provided for the establishment
of a foreign intelligence service, noting that this body is granted authority
through the president, as well as through the president’s National Security
Council, which can task it with a variety of functions in the fields of both
intelligence collection and activity.
But at the same time, however, this legislation affords a fair amount of
discretion to the head of the Central Intelligence Agency in particular,
including a significant amount of financial autonomy for the agency as well
as autonomy in determining how operations are to be undertaken and
how much information regarding these information needs to be shared. In
an article which ran in The Saturday Evening Post in May 1967 entitled
“I’m Glad the CIA is Immoral,” a former CIA operative named Thomas
22 M. MANJIKIAN

Braden described how his organization had penetrated and helped to fund
a variety of student organizations throughout Western Europe in the
aftermath of World War Two. To build a network of organizations that the
CIA could later use to combat Soviet influence in the region, the CIA
worked with a variety of organizations and actors (including people alleged
to be Nazi war criminals), not all of whose interests aligned specifically
with US interests. Funding was generally in cash, and subterfuge or decep-
tion was used in recruiting allies, not all of whom knew they were working
with the CIA. Braden defended such actions in utilitarian ethical terms,
noting that the payoff in terms of the long-range interests of the United
States was far greater than any costs associated with temporary departures
from US policy would be.6
However, on the surface, an analyst would likely see only the fact that
an organization that was ostensibly part of the US foreign policy establish-
ment appeared to be pursuing policies that were both illegal and at odds
with the state’s publicly stated policies. States, no matter how ostensibly
noble their aims, do not have the authority under international law to
interfere in the sovereign affairs of other states, including seeking to alter
the outcome of the state’s sovereign internal elections. Such an act is seen
as violating the United Nations Charter, as well as the international law
principle of domaine reserve.7 And traditional international paradigms, like
realism, do not seem capable of absorbing or explaining such actions.
The intelligence community has thus historically occupied an ambiva-
lent position—in which it appears to sometimes share legitimate authority
with the state in the conduct of its operations, while at other times, it has
been accused (both internationally and within the United States) of grossly
overreaching in carrying out operations which have violated both domes-
tic and international laws and norms.8 In such situations, the sources of
that legitimate authority—including the president and the National
Security Council—may disavow knowledge of the operations conducted,
distancing themselves in a narrative in which the intelligence community
is described as having “gone rogue” or “behaved like a rogue elephant”
through acting on its own authority in contravention of explicitly stated
US and international policies.9 In situations where such labels are applied,
intelligence activities may be described by policymakers and academics as
a type of illegitimate politics, taking place without authority or authoriza-
tion. And if these activities pose such a challenge to conventional under-
standings of what it is and what it means to do international relations that
they cannot be reconciled, then they have been, for the most part, ignored.
 2 THE QUEERNESS OF INTELLIGENCE 23

In recent times, we can point to the example of the revelations which

emerged as a result of the June 2013 classified materials leaks carried out
by Edward Snowden, a CIA contractor. Because of this leak, the interna-
tional community became aware of a National Security Agency program
codenamed “Blarney,” which utilized commercial partnerships with
groups like international telecommunications company AT&T to carry
out surveillance of telephone and Internet communications. The program
operated for several years, obtaining information on individuals working
at the World Bank, the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and
for the European Union. The information obtained as a part of this sur-
veillance was routinely included in the President’s Daily Brief, delivered to
the US president by the intelligence community.10 In this way, the exis-
tence of these activities, which violate the norms of international coopera-
tion, as well as the charters of organizations like the United Nations, was
a sort of “open secret.” Key players in the US government were aware that
some sectors of the US government were engaging in activities that vio-
lated official policies, but they managed to live with the moral, political,
and legal ambiguity created by the situation. Others sought to paper over
the ambiguities through arguing that such activities constituted a possible
norm violation, perhaps, but that they were not, in fact, illegal. Still others
described the norm of citizen privacy as a norm which was already in
decline or decay and, therefore, no longer relevant as a consideration in
assessing the propriety of a state’s behavior.11

Intelligence, Queerness, and Interstitial Spaces

So how are international relations scholars meant to integrate insights
about the role of intelligence organizations into theories about how states
behave? In an article which appeared in 2016 in Comparative Studies in
Society and History, historian Alfred McCoy introduced the idea of a
“covert netherworld” which he described as all of those elements which
are not integrated into either state-level politics or the politics of the inter-
national system but which exist nonetheless. He referred to such activ-
ities as:

a clandestine domain, an invisible interstice in the world order … where an

interstice is defined as “a small or narrow space or interval between things or
parts, especially when one of a series of alternating uniform spaces and
parts” such as the spaces which exist between the slats of a fence.12
24 M. MANJIKIAN

The term derived from architecture is widely used today by critical

geographers who may refer to interstitial spaces in societies and politics.
Here, interstitial space refers to “an intermediate space located between
regular-use floors, commonly located in hospitals and laboratory-type
buildings to allow space for the mechanical systems of the building.”13
Interstitial spaces are thus spaces which exist, but of which few of us are
aware. They fulfill a function (indeed, one could not hold up a building
without interstitial spaces), but yet few individuals feel that their existence
warrants further exploration or discussion. Activities that occur in intersti-
tial spaces occur, as McCoy points out, largely in an autonomous fashion.
These activities are governed by their own systems, are self-sustaining, and
are not well integrated into other activities which may be occurring in the
main spaces of the buildings—though activities which exist in interstitial
spaces may overlap with activities occurring in the main space, such as
when heating or cooling systems in the interstitial spaces provide ventila-
tion or cooling to those carrying out parallel activities in other parts of the
building. Indeed, we may only become aware of them when they fail to
function—that is, when the heating system fails in a building or when an
intelligence failure occurs in society.
The NSA surveillance of United Nations communications was thus an
interstitial activity which fed into legitimate activities, like the President’s
Daily Brief. Indeed, most intelligence activities exist in this interstitial
space. “Black ops” and institutions like “black prisons” occur and exist in
interstitial spaces within the international system—including tribal areas
and ungoverned, failed states, along borders which are poorly marked and
policed, and in enclaves within nations. As Nutter writes, these operations
“are conducted outside the light of day, away from and deniable by the
more ‘civilized’ bureaucracies.”14
Similarly, among the actors, processes, and arrangements associated
with intelligence which exist interstitially (and are therefore not captured
in the literature of traditional international relations), we can point to the
use of individual intelligence assets, such as those recruited often through
the use of financial incentives, to provide human intelligence. We can
point as well to front organizations, such as those created during the Cold
War, to combat Soviet influence in Western Europe, Latin America, and
Africa. These organizations included student groups, political influence
groups and foundations, and organizations which operated on university
campuses in the United States and abroad. We can also include political
parties and candidates who received foreign subsidies. Among events
 2 THE QUEERNESS OF INTELLIGENCE 25

caused by or associated with intelligence, we can include the provision of

access to restricted technologies, undocumented and unrestricted foreign
military sales, the carrying out of coups d’état, and the creation of foreign
paramilitary units to implement them.15 Today we might add other actors
to this list—including the creation of so-called troll farms in Russia and
elsewhere to interfere with another state’s domestic affairs through manip-
ulating their voters on social media, or the meddling of agents of foreign
influence in events like fundraisers for political parties.
Such activities and actors function largely autonomously, but often in
concert with or parallel to the activities of legally recognized entities such
as the military forces and diplomatic staffs. They also occur in concert with
other types of clandestine actors who occupy interstitial space within the
international system, carrying out what Eric Wilson has referred to as
“parapolitics.” He uses the term to describe a “strange, powerful, clandes-
tine and structural relationship between state security intelligence appara-
tuses, terrorist organizations, and transnational organized crime
syndicates.”16
In describing informal, nonbinding intelligence-sharing activities that
occur between the security services of cooperating nations, Elizabeth
Sepper recounts the following events which have occurred sub-rosa,
among these members, often without the knowledge or permission of
other parts of the states involved—including the legislature or head of
state. She writes:

In 1954, for example, the Danish intelligence chief approved and then cov-
ered up United States intelligence reconnaissance flights across Danish ter-
ritory, which could not be cleared through diplomatic channels.
Similarly, Turkish government leaders were not informed of the secret
agreement between Turkish and American military intelligence agencies to
gather SIGINT. More recently, the Lithuanian state security service gave
permission to the CIA to run a secret prison in the country, without inform-
ing the president or the prime minister.17

Thus, intelligence operatives and activities play a vital but often unre-
marked upon role in international politics. They do not belong within any
of the categories of normal politics, and it, therefore, seems appropriate to
utilize queer theory to consider this phenomenon, which Rao has termed
“unbelonging.”18 These activities, which do not belong to traditional
IR—which concerns itself with treaties and diplomatic agreements,
26 M. MANJIKIAN

i­nternational working groups, and declared wars—thus occupy a “queer

space” in the international system and enjoy a queer relationship with
other traditional actors in the international system. My aim is thus to bring
our understanding of intelligence activity out of the shadows and into the
mainstream of international relations theorizing, utilizing the mechanism
of queer theory.

Intelligence, Queer Theory, and the House of IR

Writing in 2004, scholars Agathangelou and Ling described what they
termed the “house of IR.”19 In this article, they invited the reader to imag-
ine the discipline of international relations as a colonial household with
standard or normative members playing the role of the heterosexual fam-
ily—father realism, mother liberalism, and the daughters neoliberalism,
liberal feminism, and standpoint feminism. In this house, we can identify
a place for such rebel sons as Marxism and postmodern IR, as well as for
fallen daughters like postmodern feminism and queer studies. However,
we also recognize the ways in which these errant children risk disrupting
the entire household since those in the heteronormative family share a set
of assumptions regarding what a state is, how it behaves, and how its
behavior should be explained, as well as the tools which are appropriate to
use in explaining state behavior. The more recalcitrant members of the
family may disregard or refuse to use some of these tools and may not buy
into all of the family assumptions. And as Agathangelou and Ling point
out, the “traditional” members share normative assumptions and/or an
agenda about how the international system should look (though they may
not be voiced explicitly), while rebel members of the household may ques-
tion or even oppose these assumptions and this agenda. As Nayak writes:
“The house itself is a construction, an edifice that seems sturdy, unques-
tionable, hetero-and cis-normative, with clear boundaries … but is actu-
ally on shaky ground.”20
One of the dissident “children” whose activity threatens to destabilize
the house of IR is the queer theorist. As Cynthia Weber, a scholar best
known for “doing IR queerly,” has noted, traditional IR tends to disown
queer scholarship or to evidence a type of amnesia, either ignoring events
which do not fit into traditional IR assumptions and methodologies or
acting as though they are too peripheral to matter in the analysis of big
questions like war and peace, conflict and cooperation.21 Here Richard
Ashley has referred to a silencing of dissident voices, noting that for many
 2 THE QUEERNESS OF INTELLIGENCE 27

years, approaches like Marxism, as well as work which explicitly queried

the role of capital and class, were excluded from traditional realist IR
scholarship. In an analysis of his work, Laffey writes:

The production of subjects entails the drawing of a line, the marking off on
one thing from another, and the deployment of a variety of techniques in
order to manage and maintain those boundaries.22

The agenda of queer theory can be understood as having three parts: In

some instances, scholars of Queer IR Theory engage specifically with the
politics of (homo)sexuality itself, asking questions about queer people
(both in popular culture and among elites) as well as the policies and
norms that have existed and arisen governing the behavior and rights of
those with non-normative sexual identities in societies globally. In this
way, the “thing which one declines to say or is forbidden to name”23 is
brought front and center into international relations scholarship, rather
than being marginalized, peripheralized, or ignored.
A second group of analysts has engaged with politics on the interstate
level through examining the “queer logic of statecraft” or sexualized log-
ics of masculinity and femininity in international relations. As Leigh states,
“by examining sexualized logics rather than sexualized—and specifically
human—subjects, we might further ask ‘what’ counts as queer in IR.”24
Here, they have also engaged with the notion of performativity—examin-
ing how individuals, groups, and even states have performed gender or
gendered activities, with Weber, in particular, suggesting that states may
engage in activities which allow them to seem masculine, here engaging
with Butler’s notion of “drag,” in which people may present themselves as
members of a different gender.10
In the third set of instances, queerness has been defined still more
broadly. Here analysts such as Wilcox11 and Daggett12 use “queerness” to
denote categories of political subjects and events whose meanings are con-
tingent or unstable, or whose status (morally, legally, or ethically) is
ambiguous or murky. Such subjects are often rendered invisible using tra-
ditional approaches to political analysis since they often do not fit neatly
into existing categories but rather often fall between or across categories—
into that so-called interstitial space.
28 M. MANJIKIAN

Open Secrets: A Diversity of Queer Practices

in International Relations
My aim in this work is thus to use queer theory to examine the activities
of the intelligence community, both in the United States and internation-
ally, in order to “shake up” the traditional view of international relations,
with its emphasis on states as unitary rational actors, acting largely accord-
ing to established norms and laws which govern international conflict,
through carrying out actions which are state sanctioned and carried out by
official actors acting on behalf of the state. Although it is a neat fiction, in
point of fact, an examination of the recent history of US intelligence activ-
ities, including covert and clandestine activities carried out, suggests that
states are far from unified in their foreign policies and that unofficial activi-
ties may have a significant effect on the international system. In the same
way, we can consider the arguments put forth by Eve Sedgwick in her
1990 work, Epistemology of the Closet, where she counterposes to a hetero-
normative discourse of sexuality the “obviousness” of the great and exist-
ing diversity of people’s relations to sex. There is perhaps a similar
“obviousness” about how the Unites States has always utilized, relied
upon, and supported covert and clandestine activities to achieve foreign
policy goals—suggesting that there is a greater diversity of foreign policy
activities than simply a binary of diplomatic and military activities. There
is also perhaps a need for more than these two simple tools and both inter-
nal and external support for the use of additional diverse tools in achieving
foreign policy goals. Indeed, Nutter suggests that the US Central
Intelligence Agency was the only organization equipped to confront the
dangers which America faced in the aftermath of World War Two. Also, he
argues that the utilization of covert action provided a way around having
to come up with a bipartisan solution to foreign policy problems. He
notes that the president was most likely to act unilaterally to take executive
action in situations where he knew that he could not work with Congress.25
In addition to interrogating and unmasking the fiction of state as a
unitary rational actor, a study of the queer politics of intelligence can help
to undermine the fiction that states most often act lawfully and in concert
with international norms. An examination of the role of the intelligence
community instead demonstrates that rules and laws, including basic prin-
ciples like sovereignty, are frequently violated, and it is often unclear
exactly where the intelligence community fits—perched as it is halfway
between diplomacy and military activity.
 2 THE QUEERNESS OF INTELLIGENCE 29

The Queer Activities of Intelligence

In this work, I focus predominantly on intelligence activities and actors as
they exist within the American political system, though I will also occa-
sionally consider the roles and actions of other actors, including Great
Britain and the United States. My emphasis is also predominantly on the
operational (clandestine or covert) side of the intelligence community and
its personnel, rather than on the roles played by those who work in intel-
ligence collection and analysis.
Here, covert activities are defined in the 1947 National Security Act of
the United States, which established the Central Intelligence Agency, as:

… an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence

political, economic, or military conditions abroad where it is intended that
the role of the US Government will not be apparent or acknowledged
publicly.39

Covert activity is thus an activity where the intent is not to conceal the
fact that the activity occurred, but rather to conceal the particulars regard-
ing who carried out or sponsored the act. (That is, the citizens of a nation
may be aware that someone has placed mines in their nation’s harbors,
making it difficult for them to engage in trade or military maneuvers—but
the identity of the actor who placed the mines would be a secret.) In con-
trast, clandestine activities are defined as “… an operation sponsored or
conducted by government departments or agencies in such a way as to
assure secrecy or concealment of the operation itself.”26 Clandestine activi-
ties may include “clandestine diplomacy,” which allows for the making of
overtures to adversaries which are unofficial and which could be denied if
discovered publicly.44 In another instance, a world leader might pass away
from what people assume are natural causes while in point of fact he may
have been poisoned by an outside organization.
Intelligence activities also include intelligence-sharing arrangements
between nations and organizations, most often of an ad hoc or temporary,
informal nature (vs. the moral traditional formal agreements between
states codified in a Memorandum of Understanding or treaty).27 Here too,
such arrangements form a “complex web of unseen agreements and net-
works,” whose existence is not formally acknowledged or publicized.28 In
these relationships, it is also not always clear whether the intelligence
agency itself is acting in support of or against the publicly declared ­interests
30 M. MANJIKIAN

of its own state, and the activities of the intelligence service (e.g., the US
IC working together with Pakistani intelligence in the days following
9/11) are not alluded to or necessarily aligned with official foreign policy
statements such as the White House National Security Strategy. That is,
they exist outside of normal diplomatic agreements and may even, in some
cases, contradict them.
Intelligence activities have also historically included assassination. In his
analysis of the norms governing the practice of assassination, Thomas calls
our attention to a claim by a former member of Britain’s intelligence ser-
vice MI5 that in 1996, Her Majesty’s Secret Service created plans to assas-
sinate Muammar Gaddafi, who was then the leader of Libya. He argues
that over time international society has developed an understanding that a
state’s sovereign is not merely an individual but someone who represents
the state within the international community. Therefore, he argues, most
states now understand that it is inappropriate to murder an individual in
retribution for the actions perpetrated by a state. Here he writes that by
1632, within the international community, there was a collective under-
standing that “the appropriate and legitimate means of dealing with for-
eign antagonists was to send armies, rather than assassins, against them,”
adding that allegations that a state had behaved inappropriately could
damage the state’s reputation. However, he points out simultaneously that
the inappropriateness of murder rests largely on a social construct or con-
sensus which upholds the military values of valor, honor, and force while
stigmatizing the practice of assassination as a tool of legitimate for-
eign policy.
For this reason, he implies, most states behave as though assassination
does not exist as a tool of foreign policy (Israel is the exception) and as
though assassinations do not occur. However, he notes, in point of fact,
one can point to the 1960 assassination of Jordanian Prime Minister
Hazzah Majali, which has been traced back to Egypt’s then-president
Gamal Nasser; the British attempt on the life of Muammar Gaddafi; an
alleged attempt by the CIA to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the Soviet-­
friendly leader of Congo; and a plane crash which occurred in 1994 which
took the lives of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, which some ana-
lysts believe was caused by the government of France.29 Assassination is
thus yet another sort of “queer practice” which is not fully acknowledged
as belonging to the arsenal of foreign policy tools at a state’s disposal. Its
existence is often denied, and even in cases where states are alleged to have
 2 THE QUEERNESS OF INTELLIGENCE 31

participated in this activity, its existence is seen as somehow peripheral to

their state identities.
In addition, as Shpiro has described, there are numerous documented
instances of the intelligence community utilizing weapons which have for-
mally been banned by the international community through the auspices
of the United Nations, since 1925. In his extensive survey of the use of
chemical and biological weapons for assassination, he points to their use
by intelligence forces of the United States, the United Kingdom, South
Africa, Russia, Bulgaria, Cuba, Palestine, and Iraq. Here, he argues that by
looking the other way or tacitly accepting their use by the intelligence
community in limited circumstances, policymakers nonetheless under-
mine the credibility of such agreements in the international system.30 The
use of chemical and biological weapons thus represents a case of the inter-
national community’s unwillingness or inability to enforce a norm, thus
weakening the norm.
Finally, we can consider the role that national intelligence agencies have
often played in verifying whether or not nations are complying with the
terms of international arms control agreements that they may have signed.
They may collect information regarding alleged violations of these agree-
ments often through committing illegal acts of trespass and theft, in addi-
tion to violating national sovereignty.34 This information is subsequently
shared with organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), and one could easily make the argument that such activities form
the backbone of the agreements themselves, which would be rendered
essentially meaningless were it not for the actions of national intelligence
agencies. The role of intelligence in verifying treaty compliance does not
appear in the organization charts of the international organizations that
have created treaties in these areas and is therefore not openly sanctioned,
legalized, or regulated by the international community. At the same time,
it is an open secret that the IC engages in such activities, despite the lack
of any official mandate or permission to do so. Such activities have an
ambiguous status that defies categorization, straddling the boundaries
between legal and illegal activities within the international system.
In situations where it has been alleged that covert or clandestine activi-
ties have broken the law, either within a state or the international com-
munity, political leaders often invoke the doctrine of plausible deniability
to shield or obfuscate their role in ordering others to carry out these activ-
ities. Here, plausible deniability is defined as “circumstances where a denial
of responsibility or knowledge of wrongdoing cannot be proved as true or
32 M. MANJIKIAN

untrue due to a lack of evidence proving the allegation … It also refers to

any act that leaves little or no evidence of wrongdoing or abuse.”46
Through the “doctrine of plausible deniability,” a leader can allow the
intelligence community to carry out activities such as interfering in a for-
eign election, working with personnel from countries where we technically
have no diplomatic relations, and offering bribes or even engaging in the
assassination of world leaders—without “owning” these activities as part
of either their identities as leaders or the identity of the nation as part of
official foreign policy. It allows for a politics of complicity, in that one can
(both personally and on a national level) support nondemocratic values
and institutions while keeping at arm’s length from such policies in terms
of official public support or official financial support. As McAndrew notes,
both covert and clandestine activities may be used when, in his words,
there are “overriding national interests that have to be dealt with outside
the framework of international law and normal state-to-state relations,
without resort to the use of official military force.”41
Other queer practices which may not be fully owned by a state’s citizens
or its leadership include activities like surveillance or the use of drones to
carry out extrajudicial assassinations. The Project on Government
Oversight, an NGO whose mission is to investigate covert and clandestine
activities of the US government, has made the claim that President Obama,
in particular, maintained a “hit list” of American citizens (such as the head
of Al Qaeda’s public information arm, Anwar al-Awlaki) who he had
authorized the intelligence community to kill when they were located,
without providing a trial. (Thus, such activities would be categorized as
extrajudicial assassinations.) However, the project alleges that Obama
“stonewalled” when it came to sharing this information with relevant
members of Congress, including the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence. Such activities are described as taking place “off the books”
or away from Congressional oversight. They thus constitute an embarrass-
ing secret—something which a president perhaps feels that he must do,
but that he does not want others to associate with him, since being accused
of human rights violations and the breaking of international laws would
tarnish his image as president, as well as the image of the United States in
the international system.31
Furthermore, as Goldman has pointed out, even if such activities as
espionage, using chemical weapons or carrying out assassinations, might
be justified as legal in theory (e.g., due to overriding national security
concerns), they are still not viewed as acceptable or legitimate by the
 2 THE QUEERNESS OF INTELLIGENCE 33

c­ itizens of a society. Rather, they are, as he notes, “profoundly contested.”

Concerning actions carried out by the intelligence community regarding
counterterrorism measures, he writes:

institutions of oversight closely supervised these programs (drones, surveil-

lance), and their legality has been evaluated by rigorous government pro-
cesses … but some important segments of the American population still
perceive them as illegitimate.32

Thus, the use of drones represents a type of illegitimate foreign policy

which is treated as both not quite real and also profoundly embarrassing
by those who espouse legitimate foreign policy. It must remain closeted if
one’s image is to be preserved.

Intelligence Activity as the Third Way

In comparison to traditional modes of IR such as diplomacy or military
activity, such activities may represent a “third path,” whose status may
again be both morally and legally ambiguous within the international sys-
tem. That is, it is not illegal to carry out either covert or clandestine activi-
ties, provided that specific procedures are adhered to, including informing
the US Congress of the activity and seeking presidential approval. Yet, at
the same time, both types of activities can and do violate international
laws, since they may violate national sovereignty or meet the definitions of
an act of war.43 In this way, they have a “queer” legal and ethical status,
which can change depending on environmental factors.
Indeed, commissions of inquiry, which have been asked to evaluate a
state’s activities in the domain of covert affairs, have often tended to dis-
count such activities as an aberration. That is, in situations where empirical
evidence has been presented that a state which identifies itself as demo-
cratic actually has attempted (or succeeded) in throwing an election,
fomenting a coup, or assassinating a leader, theorists and policymakers
have been quick to explain away such activities as aberrant impulses or
one-time deviations from the norm.33 In this way, the undertaking of such
an activity is seen as merely one deviant impulse within an otherwise nor-
mal, rational foreign policy or alternately the product of poor decision-­
making by one individual (usually the president) whose behavior is in no
way indicative of the larger values and identity of the nation as a whole. In
other words, a state and its officials might accept that they had “acted
34 M. MANJIKIAN

queerly” (or “gone rogue”) at one point in time, without necessarily

acknowledging that the state is queer or that the state, in fact, has a queer
foreign policy—which includes elements of both legitimate and illegiti-
mate behaviors according to the formal norms of the international system.
That is, within nations identified as democratic, we can identify an unwill-
ingness to recognize practices that violate norms as indicative of an iden-
tity as someone who violates norms since to do so would make one a
pariah state, stigmatized by the international community.
To maintain such a fiction, however, it is necessary to create a clear
distinction both institutionally and in the public understanding between
the actions and activities of the military, the Department of State, and the
intelligence community. In doing so, a state’s leaders can continue to state
(and perhaps to believe) that actions undertaken through the auspices of
the intelligence community do not represent a state’s ontologically real
foreign policy, interests, or values. That is, in contrast to traditional or
“normal” IR activities, these activities are presented as outside the realm
of “normal” political activity, somewhat vaguely defined, and unacknowl-
edged (or even publicly disavowed) by the states that support them.
Here, as Andrew points out, academic analysts—like policymakers—
must engage in “cognitive dissonance” in acknowledging the importance
of covert and clandestine activities to alter relations between states, but
also behaving as though such events are not a part of formal international
relations. And in her work, Anderson describes how covert actions are
regarded as “adjuncts to policy rather than tools of policy,” thus reinforc-
ing the notion that they only support real, official policy—rather than
being policy itself.34 Such actions are thus “hidden in plain sight—acknowl-
edged as existing, but not acknowledged as important.”45
However, throughout this work, I draw upon the insights of intelli-
gence practitioners themselves—many of whom openly challenge the
assumption that covert activity, in particular, is merely an adjunct to real
foreign policy, as well as the assumption that it has not played a decisive
role in altering events within the international system. In 2014, British
scholar Richard Aldrich wrote—about a volume on the role of the CIA in
Cambodia, before the outbreak of the Vietnam War:

This work challenges the official assertion … that the CIA was merely a
secret service that implemented policy on behalf of other US government
agencies. In fact … in locations such as Laos and Cambodia, the CIA had
 2 THE QUEERNESS OF INTELLIGENCE 35

clearly drawn up alongside the State Department and the Pentagon in the
worlds of strategy and operations.35

And in her memoir of serving as the National Security Advisor during

the Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice describes the role which the
CIA played concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She argues that the
CIA was “more suited” to dealing with “shadowy figures” such as mem-
bers of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. She writes:

The Palestinian security forces operated in a shadowy manner. They were

essentially intelligence forces that looked quite a ‘bit like mafia bosses’ or
perhaps street gangs. Needless to say, it was a world in which the CIA was
more capable than the State Department or the Pentagon.36

In addition, Michael Hermann voices the opinion that the Cold War
was to some degree created by the actions of the intelligence services of
the United States and the Soviet Union. He suggests that the hostility
between these two actors was not so much ideological, as much as it
stemmed from what he terms “the accumulated weight of almost daily
clashes between the two side’s intelligence systems and intelligence activi-
ties.” In addition, he argues that the fear of penetration of Soviet society
by seemingly vast armies of US-led spies (as the paranoid Soviet leadership
saw the situation) served as a justification for the Soviet regime’s institu-
tion of repressive measures against its citizens, including political
dissidents.37
That is, the existence of such activities may constitute an “open
secret”—where the government might formally disavow any connection
to such activities, while the press might publicly speculate about US gov-
ernment influence and interest in the activity without necessarily reaching
definitive conclusions about the actors and policies behind the activities
themselves. Nonetheless, events like the Bay of Pigs, the existence of
covert diplomacy by the United States in the Middle East, or US covert
involvement in Vietnam have had far-reaching effects within the interna-
tional system, altering the nature of relationships between states and influ-
encing events through coups and assassinations.
The amount of cognitive dissonance generated is significant here—
since pretending that covert activity either doesn’t exist or isn’t a signifi-
cant factor in a nation’s foreign policy involves ignoring the huge outlay
of fiscal and organizational resources which the United States, in p
­ articular,
36 M. MANJIKIAN

has invested in planning and implementing covert activities, as well as

ignoring the huge numbers of individuals who are involved in the carrying
out of these activities. Until the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden, the
specific budgetary expenditures associated with supporting and maintain-
ing the intelligence establishment in America had not been publicly
revealed. However, as a result of the leaking of intelligence community
documents, the so-called Black Budget was discussed in the American
media, with The Washington Post, in particular, preparing a special section
that laid out these figures in detail.
As a result, the American public is now aware that the CIA has a budget
of 2.5 billion dollars annually for the conduct of covert operations and
that over 100,000 people are employed in activities related to the conduct
of these activities.38 And as a result of information provided by the US
Agency Voice of America, Americans are aware of details regarding four-
teen covert actions carried out by the United States since the end of World
War Two, including one influence operation (attempts to influence elec-
toral outcomes throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War Two),
six coups or coup attempts (Albania, 1949; Iran, 1953; Guatemala, 1954;
Cuba, 1959–1960s; Cuba, 1961; Chile, 1973), and seven instances of aid
to domestic insurgents (Philippines, 1948–1954; Laos, 1964; Vietnam,
1945–1973; Angola, 1975; Nicaragua, 1981; Afghanistan, 1979;
Afghanistan, 2001–present).44
That is, the size and scope of this unacknowledged set of US foreign
activities are as large and significant as the set of overt activities that are
acknowledged. Here we can consider as well the existence of the proprie-
tary organizations which were created to support the implementation of
covert activity, particularly in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and the 1970s.
In his work, Kerby describes the existence of this vast network of contrac-
tors who worked to support covert activities carried out by the CIA and
the Department of Defense—through carrying personnel, military equip-
ment, and mail—as an “open secret.” He argues that while these opera-
tions had actually been formally acknowledged in articles in trade
publications such as Aviation Week & Space Technology, the CIA presence
in Southeast Asia was also the subject of rumors and gossip, with activities
sometimes being attributed to the CIA which were not actually their oper-
ations, as well as a failure to publicly acknowledge operations which were.
Those who worked for proprietary companies may not have been entirely
clear themselves who they were working for, and analysts suggest that the
financial dealings of these operators were similarly opaque. In this sense,
 2 THE QUEERNESS OF INTELLIGENCE 37

they were regarded somehow as not “real corporations” since they were
not required to be profitable, and their financial information was likely not
accurate. Employees were not “real employees” since it was unclear who
they were working for, and military transfers between nations which were
carried out through the auspices of proprietary corporations were not
“real military transfers” since they were largely undocumented and not
carried out according to existing regular procedures.
Kerby describes the differences between the “real” pilots who flew for
the military organizations and the irregulars who flew for Air America, a
corporation financed by the CIA which flew missions in Southeast Asia
throughout the Vietnam War period in the following terms:

Service pilots were supposed to be military. Air America’s crews, on the

other hand, were supposed to be twentieth-century aerial guerillas: mufti
gray outfits, baseball caps, cowboy boots, instinct, and initiative. They flew
in somebody else’s airspace, like fishes in the ocean of the sky. And although
their blue yonder was much wider than the Air Force’s, they got away
with it.39

In his work, he engages as well with the rumors that Air America, a
corporation created to receive contracts in order to carry mail to US sol-
diers serving in Southeast Asia and later playing a valuable role in retriev-
ing downed military pilots in the region, may have been involved in
smuggling shipments of opium in and out of Southeast Asia.40
The organization, thus, straddled the line between publicly acknowl-
edged legal activity and unacknowledged illegal activity, and in its day-to-­
day operations dealt both with publicly facing legal officials and individuals
who made up part of the shadowy underworld of drug smugglers, human
smugglers, and illegal gun runners. Analysts point to the real and signifi-
cant influence of this organization –in terms of both its footprint in the
region and the operations which it supported, including supplying arms to
Hmong tribesmen in Laos and serving a crucial role in the evacuation of
the remaining Americans from South Vietnam in April 1975. It changed
the geography of Southeast Asia through creating airstrips in a region that
spanned from Tibet to Indonesia and at its height employed more than
three hundred crews.41 The organization which was formally disbanded in
1972 by CIA director Richard Helms, and closed in 1974, is thus treated
as a sort of minor footnote in the history of US activity in Vietnam, but its
activities are treated as separate from the official diplomatic initiatives and
38 M. MANJIKIAN

skirmishes which existed in the region, since it does not fit neatly into any
of our categories of international activity.
In her work, analyst Kaeten Mistry describes how the most prosaic facts
about the intelligence community and its activities may be either disputed
or refuted, arguing that, in essence, it is difficult to distinguish between
actual history and “myths” or stories about the intelligence community as
an actor. In an article that appeared in one of the most prestigious aca-
demic journals in the field of intelligence in 2011, she explored the ongo-
ing debate about how exactly the US intelligence community financed its
clandestine and covert activities in the aftermath of World War Two in
Western Europe. Here she notes that there is a widespread mythology
regarding how the American intelligence community “meddled” in the
1948 Italian domestic elections, financing its preferred candidates to
ensure that Soviet-backed candidates did not win. Here there is an official
skeletal record of what transpired since actions were undertaken in accor-
dance with National Security Directive 1/3, which directed that the
United States would “immediately provide campaign funds from unvouch-
ered and private sources” to anti-communist Italian groups.
However, as Mistry notes, the exact mechanics of what transpired is the
subject of both academic and professional disputes. We do know that
money was funneled to candidates and parties through backchannels, uti-
lizing front organizations and presumably cash. In addition, we know that
in some instances, CIA funds were given to individuals who then made
their contributions look like private donations. However, as she points
out, documents related to these events were not declassified until 1994,
nearly fifty years later. In the interim, she argues, an imprecise documen-
tary record meant that there were myths and contrasting interpretations
about what exactly had transpired. Here she refers to a “mythical” ten
million dollar figure regarding how much aid was given to Italian political
parties as well as to debates about the role of US counterintelligence oper-
ative James Jesus Angleton in the operations.42 If one cannot precisely
corroborate details regarding the amounts of money devoted to an opera-
tion, its exact timeline, or even the names of the players involved, the
event itself, therefore, acquires a “queer status.” The failure of any organi-
zation to own the event or corroborate details allows it to exist in a murky
zone where it is not quite real since there is a lack of consensus regarding
which aspects of the event did and did not happen. It is also difficult to
make a definitive statement about the significance of such activities, in
comparison to regularized activities like economic development or
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Female affection
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Female affection

Author: Basil Montagu

Release date: May 13, 2022 [eBook #68068]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: J. Bohn, 1815

Credits: Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FEMALE

AFFECTION ***
FEMALE AFFECTION.
BY
BASIL MONTAGU.

LONDON:
J. BOHN, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND.
MDCCCXLV.
 LONDON:
WILLIAM STEVENS, PRINTER, BELL YARD,
TEMPLE BAR.
 TO HIS DEAR EDITH, FROM HER
AFFECTIONATE GRANDFATHER.—B. M.
 PREFACE.

There are certain properties of the female mind upon which doubt
has existed, and may, possibly, long exist.
1. Women are said to be fond of ornament—an evil against which
they were thus warned by St. Paul—“I will that women adorn
themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety,
not with embroidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array, but
which becometh women professing godliness, with good works.”
2. Women are said to be fond of gaiety:
“Some men to business, some to pleasure take,”—
but the ruling passion of woman is not the love of business.
3. It is said that women act more from impulse than from foresight:
“Men have many faults, women have only two,—”
of which the want of foresight is one.
4. Women, it is said, are variable:
——“Varium et mutabile semper
Fœmina.”
Women are fond of intellect, of courage, of virtue; and are capable of
the most heroic acts.
Such are properties of the female mind, upon which doubt may be
entertained; but there is one property upon which doubt cannot exist
—it is the nature of woman to be affectionate.
B. M.
 FEMALE AFFECTION.

THE PLEASURES OF AFFECTION.

The pleasures of the affections are Love, Friendship, Gratitude, and
general Benevolence.
“For the pleasures of the affections,” says Lord Bacon, “we must
resort to the poets, for there affection is on her throne, there we may
find her painted forth to the life.”
Instead of referring us to the poets, he might, according to his own
admonitions, have referred us to the certain mode of discovering
truth, by observing facts around us, and particularly by observing the
nature sought, where it is most conspicuous.
In searching, for any nature, observe it, he says, where it is most
conspicuous; as, in inquiring into the nature of flame, observe the
sudden ignition and expansion of gas—these are what he calls
“glaring instances.”
The glaring instance of affection is Female Affection; there indeed
she is on her throne, there we may find her painted forth to the life. It
is the nature of woman to be affectionate.
 § I.
FEMALE AFFECTION IN GENERAL.
MUNGO PARK.
When stating the miseries to which he was exposed in Africa,
Mungo Park says, “I never, when in distress and misery, applied for
relief to a female, without finding pity,—and if she had the power,
assistance.” And he thus mentions one instance,—“I waited,” he
says, “more than two hours for an opportunity to cross that river, but
one of the chief men informed me that I must not presume to cross
without the King’s permission; he therefore advised me to lodge at a
distant village, to which he pointed, for the night. I found to my great
mortification that no person would admit me into his house;—I was
regarded with astonishment and fear, and was obliged to sit all day
without victuals in the shade of a tree; and the night threatened to be
very uncomfortable, for the wind rose, and there was great
appearance of a heavy rain; and the wild beasts are so very
numerous that I should have been under the necessity of climbing up
the tree and resting among the branches. About sunset as I was
preparing to pass the night in this manner, and had turned my horse
loose that he might graze at liberty, a woman, returning from the
labours of the field, stopped to observe me, and perceiving that I was
weary and dejected, inquired into my situation, which I briefly
explained to her; whereupon, with looks of great compassion, she
took up my saddle and bridle, and told me to follow her. Having
conducted me into her hut, she lighted a lamp, spread a mat on the
floor, and told me I might remain there for the night. Finding that I
was hungry, she gave me a very fine fish for my supper; and pointing
to the mat, and telling me I might sleep there without apprehension,
she called to the female part of her family, who had stood gazing on
me all the while in fixed astonishment, to resume their task of
spinning cotton, in which they continued to employ themselves great
part of the night. They lightened their labour by songs; one of which
was composed ex-tempore—for I was, myself, the subject of it: it
was sung by one of the young women, the rest joining in a sort of
chorus. The air was sweet and plaintive; and the words, literally
translated, were these:—
“The winds roared, and the rains fell,—the poor white man, faint and
weary, came and sat under our tree,—he has no mother to bring him
milk,—no wife to grind his corn.—Chorus—Let us pity the white man,
—no mother has he!” &c.

GRIFFITH.
“On the northern side of the plain we had just entered, was a large
encampment of these people. Being in absolute want of milk, I
determined to solicit the assistance of these Turcomans.
Approaching their tents, with gradual step, and apparent
indifference, I passed several, without observing any probability of
succeeding: children, only, were to be seen near the spot where I
was, and men with their flocks, at a certain distance; advancing still
farther, I saw a woman, at the entrance of a small tent, occupied in
domestic employment. Convinced that an appeal to the feelings of
the female sex, offered with decency, by a man distressed with
hunger, would not be rejected, I held out my wooden bowl, and
reversing it, made a salutation according to the forms of the country.
The kind Turcomannee covered her face precipitately, and retired
within the tent. I did not advance a step; she saw me unassuming,—
my inverted bowl still explained my wants. The timidity of her sex,
the usages of her country, and, even the fear of danger, gave way to
the benevolence of her heart: she went to the tent again; returned
speedily with a bowl of milk, and, advancing towards me with a
glance more than half averted, filled my bowl to the brim, and
vanished.”

LEDYARD.
“I never addressed myself in the language of decency and
friendship to a woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving
a decent and friendly answer. With man it has often been otherwise,
—in wandering over the barren plains of inhospitable Denmark,
through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland,
unprincipled Russia, and the wide-spread regions of the wandering
Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has ever been friendly
to me,—and uniformly so; and to add to this virtue, so worthy the
appellation of benevolence, these actions have been performed in so
kind a manner, that if I was dry, I drank the sweet draught,—and if
hungry, ate the coarse morsel with a double relish.”

PHARAOH’S DAUGHTER.
“And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a
daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and
when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three
months. And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him
an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put
the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And
his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him. And the
daughter of Pharaoh came down to the river; and her maidens
walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among
the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it,
she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had
compassion on him, and said,—This is one of the Hebrews’ children.
Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and call to
thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for
thee?’ And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Go.’ And the maid went
and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her,
‘Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy
wages.’ And the woman took the child, and nursed it.”
 § II.
DIFFERENT FORMS OF FEMALE
AFFECTION.
The nature of female affection may be seen in a variety of forms,—in
Infancy, in the sweet love of Youth, of a Wife, of a Mother, of a
Daughter, of a Widow.

INFANCY.
The following is an account which I somewhere read of Nell Gwynn,
when a child:—“My first love, you must know, was a link-boy,”—“A
what?”—“’Tis true,” said she, “for all the frightfulness of your what!—
and a very good soul he was, too, poor Dick! and had the heart of a
gentleman; God knows what has become of him, but when I last saw
him he said he would humbly love me to his dying day. He used to
say that I must have been a lord’s daughter for my beauty, and that I
ought to ride in my coach; and he behaved to me as if I did. He, poor
boy, would light me and my mother home, when we had sold our
oranges, to our lodgings in Lewknor’s Lane, as if we had been ladies
of the land. He said he never felt easy for the evening ’till he had
asked me how I did, then he went gaily about his work; and if he saw
us housed at night, he slept like a prince. I shall never forget when
he came flushing and stammering, and drew out of his pocket a pair
of worsted stockings, which he brought for my naked feet. It was
bitter cold weather; and I had chilblains, which made me hobble
about ’till I cried,—and what does poor Richard do but work hard like
a horse, and buy me these worsted stockings? My mother bade him
put them on; and so he did, and his warm tears fell on my chilblains,
and he said he should be the happiest lad on earth if the stockings
did me any good.”
When the Commissioners visited the Penitentiary at Lambeth, where
the prisoners are punished by solitary confinement, they found in
one cell a little girl, between eleven and twelve years of age. This
child must have spent many hours every day in the dark; was poorly
clad, and scantily fed, and her young limbs were deprived of all the
joyous modes of playful exercise, so necessary and so pleasant to
that age: she asked neither for food, nor clothes, nor light, nor liberty,
—all she wished for was “a little doll, that she might dress and nurse
it.” Her innocent and child-like request put an end to this cruel
punishment for children.
“I yesterday took my dear grand-daughter to see Westminster Abbey.
She is between seven and eight years of age, and is one of the
sweetest angels that ever existed on earth. It was a bitter cold
morning: on the tomb of Mrs. Warren, who was a mother to poor
children, there is a beautiful statue of a poor half-clothed Irish girl,
with her little naked baby in her arms;—my dear little child looked up
at me, and, through her tears, earnestly said, ‘How I should like to
nurse that little baby!’”

YOUTH.
Of the influence of love upon youth and inexperience, it can scarcely
be necessary to adduce any instances. I must, however, mention
one fact which occurred during the rebellion in ’45.
“When I was a young boy, I had delicate health, and was somewhat
of a pensive and contemplative turn of mind: it was my delight in the
long summer evenings, to slip away from my companions, that I
might walk in the shade of a venerable wood, my favourite haunt,
and listen to the cawing of the old rooks, who seemed as fond of this
retreat as I was.
“One evening I sat later than usual, though the distant sound of the
cathedral clock had more than once warned me to my home. There
was a stillness in all nature that I was unwilling to disturb by the least
motion. From this reverie I was suddenly startled by the sight of a tall
slender female who was standing by me, looking sorrowfully and
steadily in my face. She was dressed in white, from head to foot, in a
fashion I had never seen before; her garments were unusually long
and flowing, and rustled as she glided through the low shrubs near
me as if they were made of the richest silk. My heart beat as if I was
dying, and I knew not that I could have stirred from the spot; but she
seemed so very mild and beautiful, I did not attempt it. Her pale
brown hair was braided round her head, but there were some locks
that strayed upon her neck; altogether she looked like a lovely
picture, but not like a living woman. I closed my eyes forcibly with my
hands, and when I looked again she had vanished.
“I cannot exactly say why I did not on my return speak of this
beautiful appearance, nor why, with a strange mixture of hope and
fear, I went again and again to the same spot that I might see her.
She always came, and often in the storm and plashing rain, that
never seemed to touch or to annoy her, looked sweetly at me, and
silently passed on; and though she was so near to me, that once the
wind lifted those light straying locks, and I felt them against my
cheek, yet I never could move or speak to her. I fell ill; and when I
recovered, my mother closely questioned me of the tall lady, of
whom, in the height of my fever, I had so often spoken.
“I cannot tell you what a weight was taken off my spirits when I learnt
that this was no apparition, but a most lovely woman; not young,
though she had kept her young looks,—for the grief which had
broken her heart seemed to have spared her beauty.
“When the rebel troops were retreating after their total defeat, a
young officer, in that very wood I was so fond of, unable any longer
to endure the anguish of his wounds, sunk from his horse, and laid
himself down to die. He was found there by the daughter of Sir
Henry Robinson, and conveyed by a trusty domestic to her father’s
mansion. Sir Henry was a loyalist; but the officer’s desperate
condition excited his compassion, and his many wounds spoke a
language a brave man could not misunderstand. Sir Henry’s
daughter with many tears pleaded for him, and promised that he
should be carefully and secretly attended. And well she kept that
promise,—for she waited upon him (her mother being long dead) for
many weeks, and anxiously watched for the first opening of eyes,
that, languid as he was, looked brightly and gratefully upon his
young nurse. You may fancy, better than I can tell you, as he slowly
recovered, all the moments that were spent in reading, and low-
voiced singing, and gentle playing on the lute; and how many fresh
flowers were brought to one whose wounded limbs would not bear
him to gather them for himself; and how calmly the days glided on in
the blessedness of returning health, and in that sweet silence so
carefully enjoined him. I will pass by this, to speak of one day, which,
brighter and pleasanter than others, did not seem more bright or
more lovely than the looks of the young maiden, as she gaily spoke
of ‘a little festival, which (though it must bear an unworthier name)
she meant really to give, in honour of her guest’s recovery;’—‘and it
is time, lady,’ said he, ‘for that guest, so tended and so honoured, to
tell you his whole story, and speak to you of one who will help him to
thank you—may I ask you, fair lady, to write a little note for me,
which, even in these times of danger I may find some means to
forward?’ To his mother, no doubt, she thought, as with light steps
and a lighter heart she seated herself by his couch, and smilingly
bade him dictate: but, when he said ‘My Dear Wife,’ and lifted up his
eyes to be asked for more, he saw before him a pale statue, that
gave him one look of utter despair, and fell (for he had no power to
help her) heavily at his feet. Those eyes never truly reflected the
pure soul again, or answered by answering looks the fond inquiries
of her poor old father. She lived to be as I saw her,—sweet, and
gentle, and delicate always, but reason returned no more. She
visited, ’till the day of her death, the spot where she first saw that
young soldier, and dressed herself in the very clothes he said so well
became her.”

THE WOMAN IN WHITE.

“In walking through a street in London, I saw a crowd of men women
and children hooting and laughing at a woman, who, looking neither
to the right-hand nor to the left, passed through the midst of them in
perfect silence; upon approaching her, I saw that all this derision was
caused by her dress, which, equally unsuited to the weather and her
apparent rank in life, was from head to foot entirely white,—her
bonnet, her shawl, her very shoes were white; and though all that
she wore seemed of the coarsest materials, her dress was perfectly
clean. As I walked past her, I looked stedfastly in her face. She was
thin and pale, of a pleasing countenance, and totally unmoved by the
clamour around her. I have since learnt her story:—The young man
to whom she was betrothed died on the bridal-day, when she and
her companions were dressed to go to church: she lost her senses,
—and has ever since, to use her own words, been ‘expecting her
bridegroom.’ Neither insult or privation of any kind can induce her to
change the colour of her dress; she is alike insensible of her
bereavement by death, or of the lapse of time,—‘she is dressed for
the bridal, and the bridegroom is at hand.’”
Such is the nature of Woman’s Love—continuing in imagination,
when reality is no more:
“As once I knew a crazy Moorish maid,
Who dressed her in her buried lover’s clothes,
And o’er the smooth spring in the mountain’s cleft
Hung with her lute, and played the selfsame tune
He used to play, and listened to the shadow
Herself had made.”—Coleridge.
Such is the tenderness, such the intensity of the love of innocence. It
has for ever existed, and will for ever exist,—from Eve, on the first
day of her creation, to the many whose hearts at this moment beat
with affection and love:
“All thoughts, all passions, all desires,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.”

WIFE.
Let us now consider affection where it appears in one of its sweetest
forms,—in the love of a wife,—love, in the strength of which, hoping
all things, she does not hesitate to quit her father and her mother
and all dear to her to share the joys and sorrows of her husband. In
prosperity she delights in his happiness, in sickness she watches
over him, feeling more grief than she shows.
A young soldier, thus speaks of the affection of his wife:—
“For five campaigns
Did my sweet Lucy know
Each hardship and each toil
We soldiers undergo.
Nor ever did she murmur,
Or at her fate repine,
She thought not of her sorrow,
But how to lessen mine:
In hunger, or hard marching,
Whate’er the ill might be,
In her I found a friend,
Who ne’er deserted me:
And in my tent when wounded,
And when I sickening lay,
Oft from my brow with trembling hand,
She wiped the damps away.
And when this heart, my Lucy,
Shall cease to beat for thee,
Oh! cold, clay cold,
Full sure this heart must be.”

THE ROBBER.
“A friend of mine who had long struggled with a dangerous fever,
approached that crisis on which his life depended, when sleep,
uninterrupted sleep might ensure his recovery;—his wife, scarcely
daring to breathe, sat by him; her servants, worn out by watching,
had all left her; it was past midnight,—the room door was open for
air; she heard in the silence of the night a window thrown open
below stairs, and soon after footsteps approaching; in a short time, a
man came into the room—his face was covered with a black crape:
she instantly saw her husband’s danger; she pointed to him, and,
pressing her finger upon her lip to implore silence, held out to the
robber her purse and her keys: to her great surprise he took neither;
he drew back, and left the room,—whether he was alarmed, or
struck by this courage of affection cannot now be known; but, without
robbing a house sanctified by such strength of love—he departed.”

SENECA.
How well did the artist to whom we are indebted for the celebrated
picture of the Death of Seneca, understand this deep feeling of
female affection! It may be said of Seneca, as he said of a friend, “I
have applied myself to liberal studies, though both the poverty of my
condition, and my own reason might rather have put me upon the
making of my fortune. I have given proof, that all minds are capable
of goodness; and I have illustrated the obscurity of my family by the
eminency of my virtue. I have preserved my faith in all extremities,
and I have ventured my life for it. I have never spoken one word
contrary to my conscience, and I have been more solicitous for my
friend, than for myself. I never made any base submissions to any
man; and I have never done any thing unworthy of a resolute, and of
an honest man. My mind is raised so much above all dangers, that I
have mastered all hazards; and I bless myself in the providence
which gave me that experiment of my virtue: for it was not fit,
methought, that so great a glory should come cheap. Nay, I did not
so much as deliberate, whether good faith should suffer for me, or I
for it. I stood my ground, without laying violent hands upon myself, to
escape the rage of the powerful; though under Caligula I saw
cruelties, to such a degree, that to be killed outright was accounted a
mercy, and yet I persisted in my honesty, to show, that I was ready to
do more than die for it. My mind was never corrupted with gifts; and
when the humour of avarice was at the height, I never laid my hand
upon any unlawful gain. I have been temperate in my diet; modest in
my discourse; courteous and affable to my inferiors; and have ever
paid a respect and reverence to my betters.”
Such was the man whom the tyrant murdered. He is represented by
the artist, bleeding to death, the punishment to which he was