Operations Department Quotes

I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it. I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear dagger proof tunics, and as a dagger proof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguised and until every home is rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where we once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively. I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and now matter how I am discovered after what happens to me as I am discovering this.

TF-16 returned to Pearl Harbor on May 26 in good order, with one huge exception: Admiral Halsey, the sixty-year-old commander, arrived back completely exhausted and ill. After six months of intense underway operations, culminating in the fruitless 7000-mile mission across the Pacific to the Coral Sea and back, Halsey had lost twenty pounds and had contracted a serious case of dermatitis. Nimitz took one look at him and sent him straight to the Pearl Harbor hospital. The Navy’s most experienced and highly regarded carrier force commander would sit out the Battle of Midway. The ultimate sea warrior, Halsey would watch from his hospital window as the two task forces departed Pearl Harbor for Midway.

In the City Market is the Meet Café. Followers of obsolete, unthinkable trades doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, pushers of souped-up harmine, junk reduced to pure habit offering precarious vegetable serenity, liquids to induce Latah, Tithonian longevity serums, black marketeers of World War III, excusers of telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit, investigators of infractions denounced by bland paranoid chess players, servers of fragmentary warrants taken down in hebephrenic shorthand charging unspeakable mutilations of the spirit, bureaucrats of spectral departments, officials of unconstituted police states, a Lesbian dwarf who has perfected operation Bang-utot, the lung erection that strangles a sleeping enemy, sellers of orgone tanks and relaxing machines, brokers of exquisite dreams and memories tested on the sensitized cells of junk sickness and bartered for raw materials of the will, doctors skilled in the treatment of diseases dormant in the black dust of ruined cities, gathering virulence in the white blood of eyeless worms feeling slowly to the surface and the human host, maladies of the ocean floor and the stratosphere, maladies of the laboratory and atomic war... A place where the unknown past and the emergent future meet in a vibrating soundless hum... Larval entities waiting for a Live One...

Finally, and definitely the coolest part, is that you get a card from the State Department that gives you diplomatic immunity. I wasn't exactly sure what diplomatic immunity meant, so I asked around to see if I could kill someone. Not someone important, of course, but someone normal - like Doug. I never got a call back on the question so I'm operating under the assumption that I can.

We conquer the Independence Day aliens by having a Macintosh laptop computer upload a software virus to the mothership (which happens to be one-fifth the mass of the Moon), thus disarming its protective force field. I don’t know about you, but back in 1996 I had trouble just uploading files to other computers within my own department, especially when the operating systems were different. There is only one solution: the entire defense system for the alien mothership must have been powered by the same release of Apple Computer’s system software as the laptop computer that delivered the virus.

Nothing in this world operates the way you think it does. Banks do not loan money, governments are not empowered to protect you, the police department is not there to serve you, institutions of higher learning, colleges and educational institutes, are not there to educate you. The entire superstructure of civilization in the Western world is a combination of brilliantly put together and planned, well-planned, schemes to direct the minds of the people in such a way as to serve their masters.

It is very extraordinary, if the head of the money department of a country, being unprincipled enough to sacrifice his trust and his integrity, could not have contrived objects of profit sufficiently large to have engaged the co-operation of men of far greater importance than Reynolds, and with whom there could have been due safety, and should have been driven to the necessity of unkennelling such a reptile to be the instrument of his cupidity.

...as of this moment there's the police department way, the federal law enforcement way, the military way... and my way. If you want me to function at my best then you're going to have to accept that I'm going to have to make up some of my own rules. I don't know enough about your playbook and, quite frankly, I don't like the way you operate. If I'm not a cop anymore then I'm something else, something new. Okay, then from here on out I'll decide what that is; and that includes building, shaping, and leading my team. My team, my rules.

The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighborly Disputes (SO-30) and going onto Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, although it was common knowledge that the ChronoGuard was SO-12 and Antiterrorism SO-9. It is rumored that SO-1 was the department that polices the SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone's guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-military or ex-police and slightly unbalanced. 'If you want to be a SpecOp,' the saying goes, 'act kinda weird...

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Surveyor, in your thoughts you may be reproaching Sordini for not having been prompted by my claim to make inquiries about the matter in other departments. But that would have been wrong, and I want this man cleared of all blame in your thoughts. One of the operating principles of authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity. So Sordini couldn’t inquire in other departments, besides those departments wouldn’t have answered, since they would have noticed right away that he was investigating the possibility of an error.” “Chairman, allow me to interrupt you with a question,” said K., “didn’t you mention a control agency? As you describe it, the organization is such that the very thought that the control agency might fail to materialize is enough to make one ill.” “You’re very severe,” said the chairman, “but multiply your severity by a thousand and it will still be as nothing compared with the severity that the authorities show toward themselves. Only a total stranger could ask such a question. Are there control agencies? There are only control agencies. Of course they aren’t meant to find errors, in the vulgar sense of that term, since no errors occur, and even if an error does occur, as in your case, who can finally say that it is an error.

Undersecretary of State Robert Lansing, number two man in the State Department, tried to put this phenomenon into words in a private memorandum. “It is difficult, if not impossible, for us here in the United States to appreciate in all its fullness the great European War,” he wrote. “We have come to read almost with indifference of vast military operations, of battle lines extending for hundreds of miles, of the thousands of dying men, of the millions suffering all manner of privation, of the wide-spread waste and destruction.” The nation had become inured to it all, he wrote. “The slaughter of a thousand men between the trenches in northern France or of another thousand on a foundering cruiser has become commonplace. We read the headlines in the newspapers and let it go at that. The details have lost their interest.

The majority of the employees here are civilians," explained my Alderman guide/protector/companion/would-be-executioner as we strode without a word to the security guards through the foyer towards the lifts. "They conduct themselves within perfectly standard financial services and regulations. There is one specialist suboperational department catering to the financing of more...unusual extra-capital ventures, and the executive assets who operate it have to undergo a rigorous level of training, psyche evaluation, personality assessment, and team operational analyses." We stared at him, and said, "We barely understood the little words." "No," he replied, "I didn't think you would.

We are not told of things that happened to specific people exactly as they happened; but the beginning is when there are good things and bad things, things that happen in this life which one never tires of seeing and hearing about, things which one cannot bear not to tell of and must pass on for all generations. If the storyteller wishes to speak well, then he chooses the good things; and if he wishes to hold the reader’s attention he chooses bad things, extraordinarily bad things. Good things and bad things alike, they are things of this world and no other. Writers in other countries approach the matter differently. Old stories in our own are different from new. There are differences in the degree of seriousness. But to dismiss them as lies is itself to depart from the truth. Even in the writ which the Buddha drew from his noble heart are parables, devices for pointing obliquely at the truth. To the ignorant they may seem to operate at cross purposes. The Greater Vehicle is full of them, but the general burden is always the same. The difference between enlightenment and confusion is of about the same order as the difference between the good and the bad in a romance. If one takes the generous view, then nothing is empty and useless.

America, secure in its fortress of neutrality, watched the war at a remove and found it all unfathomable. Undersecretary of State Robert Lansing, number two man in the State Department, tried to put this phenomenon into words in a private memorandum. “It is difficult, if not impossible, for us here in the United States to appreciate in all its fullness the great European War,” he wrote. “We have come to read almost with indifference of vast military operations, of battle lines extending for hundreds of miles, of the thousands of dying men, of the millions suffering all manner of privation, of the wide-spread waste and destruction.” The nation had become inured to it all, he wrote. “The slaughter of a thousand men between the trenches in northern France or of another thousand on a foundering cruiser has become commonplace. We read the headlines in the newspapers and let it go at that. The details have lost their interest.

Ian also had issues with Elizabeth’s management, especially the way she siloed the groups off from one another and discouraged them from communicating. The reason she and Sunny invoked for this way of operating was that Theranos was “in stealth mode,” but it made no sense to Ian. At the other diagnostics companies where he had worked, there had always been cross-functional teams with representatives from the chemistry, engineering, manufacturing, quality control, and regulatory departments working toward a common objective. That was how you got everyone on the same page, solved problems, and met deadlines.

In Japan, no one could dictate effectively to either army or navy. To an extraordinary degree, the two services—each with its own air force—pursued independent war policies, though the soldiers wielded much greater clout. The foremost characteristic of the army general staff, and especially of its dominant operations department, the First Bureau, was absolute indifference to the diplomatic or economic consequences of any military action. Mamoru

The State Department received detailed reports of the extent and nature of the Army operations as killings began in Java. A “Moslem Youth Leader” reported that “assistants” were accompanying troops on sweeps that led to killings.

The United Front Department (UFD) is a key section in the Workers’ Party, responsible for inter-Korean espionage, policy-making and diplomacy. Since 1953, Korea has been divided by an armistice line known as the Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), held in place by military force on each side. The division of the Korean peninsula is not based on a difference in language, religion or ethnicity, but on a difference in political ideology. The North Korean version of Socialism, founded as it is on the maintenance of absolute institutional unity, regards pluralism and individual determination as its greatest enemy. The Workers’ Party has therefore been active and diligent in psychological warfare operations aimed at Koreans in both

I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is any thing but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the fact, there could be no doubt; and, examining myself and others, I was led to conclusions in reference to the effect of public office on the character, not very favorable to the mode of life in question. In some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it here to say, that a Custom-House officer, of long continuance, can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his business, which—though, I trust, an honest one—is of such a sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind. An effect—which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the position—is, that, while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self-support. If he possess an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer—fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling world—may return to himself, and become all that he has ever been. But this seldom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of life as he best may. Conscious of his own infirmity,—that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost,—he for ever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself. His pervading and continual hope—a hallucination, which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief space after death—is, that, finally, and in no long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to office. This faith, more than any thing else, steals the pith and availability out of whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise and support him? Why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle's pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam's gold—meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman—has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the Devil's wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.

After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of today are still in the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but a little department of the field of human disease, but even so, it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they can. We improve our favourite plants and animals--and how few they are--gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organized, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies.

To think of food as a weapon, or of a weapon as food, may give an illusory security and wealth to a few, but it strikes directly at the life of all. The concept of food-as-weapon is not surprisingly the doctrine of a Department of Agriculture that is being used as an instrument of foreign political and economic speculation. This militarizing of food is the greatest threat so far raised against the farmland and the farm communities of this country. If present attitudes continue, we may expect government policies that will encourage the destruction, by overuse, of farmland. This, of course, has already begun. To answer the official call for more production -- evidently to be used to bait or bribe foreign countries -- farmers are plowing their waterways and permanent pastures; lands that ought to remain in grass are being planted in row crops. Contour plowing, crop rotation, and other conservation measures seem to have gone out of favor or fashion in official circles and are practices less and less on the farm. This exclusive emphasis on production will accelerate the mechanization and chemicalization of farming, increase the price of land, increase overhead and operating costs, and thereby further diminish the farm population. Thus the tendency, if not the intention, of Mr. Butz confusion of farming and war, is to complete the deliverance of American agriculture into the hands of corporations.

The literatures of Greece and Rome comprise the longest, most complete and most nearly continuous record we have of what the strange creature known as Homo sapiens has been busy about in virtually every department of spiritual, intellectual and social activity. That record covers nearly twenty-five hundred years in an unbroken stretch of this animated oddity’s operations in poetry, drama, law, agriculture, philosophy, architecture, natural history, philology, rhetoric, astronomy, logic, politics, botany, zoölogy, medicine, geography, theology,—everything, I believe, that lies in the range of human knowledge or speculation. Hence the mind which has attentively canvassed this record is much more than a disciplined mind, it is an experienced mind. It has come, as Emerson says, into a feeling of immense longevity, and it instinctively views contemporary man and his doings in the perspective set by this profound and weighty experience. Our studies were properly called formative, because beyond all others their effect was powerfully maturing. Cicero told the unvarnished truth in saying that those who have no knowledge of what has gone before them must forever remain children; and if one wished to characterise the collective mind of this present period, or indeed of any period,—the use it makes of its powers of observation, reflection, logical inference,—one would best do it by the one word immaturity.

Another view of the Constitution was put forward early in the twentieth century by the historian Charles Beard (arousing anger and indignation, including a denunciatory editorial in the New York Times). He wrote in his book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution: Inasmuch as the primary object of a government, beyond the mere repression of physical violence, is the making of the rules which determine the property relations of members of society, the dominant classes whose rights are thus to be determined must perforce obtain from the government such rules as are consonant with the larger interests necessary to the continuance of their economic processes, or they must themselves control the organs of government. In short, Beard said, the rich must, in their own interest, either control the government directly or control the laws by which government operates. Beard applied this general idea to the Constitution, by studying the economic backgrounds and political ideas of the fifty-five men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to draw up the Constitution. He found that a majority of them were lawyers by profession, that most of them were men of wealth, in land, slaves, manufacturing, or shipping, that half of them had money loaned out at interest, and that forty of the fifty-five held government bonds, according to the records of the Treasury Department. Thus, Beard found that most of the makers of the Constitution had some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government: the manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slaveowners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds. Four groups, Beard noted, were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women, men without property. And so the Constitution did not reflect the interests of those groups. He wanted to make it clear that he did not think the Constitution was written merely to benefit the Founding Fathers personally, although one could not ignore the $150,000 fortune of Benjamin Franklin, the connections of Alexander Hamilton to wealthy interests through his father-in-law and brother-in-law, the great slave plantations of James Madison, the enormous landholdings of George Washington. Rather, it was to benefit the groups the Founders represented, the “economic interests they understood and felt in concrete, definite form through their own personal experience.

At the Minsk tractor factory I was looking for a woman who had served in the army as a sniper. She had been a famous sniper. The newspapers from the front had written about her more than once. Her Moscow girlfriends gave me her home phone number, but it was old. And the last name I had noted down was her maiden name. I went to the factory where I knew she worked in the personnel department, and I heard from the men (the director of the factory and the head of the personnel department): “Aren’t there enough men? What do you need these women’s stories for? Women’s fantasies…” The men were afraid that women would tell about some wrong sort of war. I visited a family…Both husband and wife had fought. They met at the front and got married there: “We celebrated our wedding in the trench. Before the battle. I made a white dress for myself out of a German parachute.” He had been a machine gunner, she a radio operator. The man immediately sent his wife to the kitchen: “Prepare something for us.” The kettle was already boiling, and the sandwiches were served, she sat down with us, but the husband immediately got her to her feet again: “Where are the strawberries? Where are our treats from the country?” After my repeated requests, he reluctantly relinquished his place, saying: “Tell it the way I taught you. Without tears and women’s trifles: how you wanted to be beautiful, how you wept when they cut off your braid.” Later she whispered to me: “He studied The History of the Great Patriotic War with me all last night. He was afraid for me. And now he’s worried I won’t remember right. Not the way I should.” That happened more than once, in more than one house.

month later, on July 9, 2012, Stevens and the embassy’s security staff, led by DS agent Eric Nordstrom, asked the State Department to extend the presence of a Site Security Team, or SST, that consisted of sixteen active-duty military special operators. The Defense Department’s Africa Command, which oversaw the unit, was willing to extend the team’s stay in Tripoli. But State Department officials decided that DS agents and locally hired guards could do the job, and that the SST operators weren’t needed. In the weeks that followed, General Carter Ham, head of Africa Command, twice asked Stevens if he wanted the SST to remain in Libya. Despite his earlier request to extend the team’s stay, Stevens wouldn’t buck the decision of State Department officials in Washington. He declined Ham’s offers and the SST left Libya, even as Stevens moved forward with plans to visit the restive city of Benghazi.

[ Dr. Lois Jolyon West was cleared at Top Secret for his work on MKULTRA. ] Dr. Michael Persinger [235], another FSMF Board Member, is the author of a paper entitled “Elicitation of 'Childhood Memories' in Hypnosis-Like Settings Is Associated With Complex Partial Epileptic-Like Signs For Women But Not for Men: the False Memory Syndrome.” In the paper Perceptual and Motor Skills,In the paper, Dr. Persinger writes: On the day of the experiment each subject (not more than two were tested per day) was asked to sit quietly in an acoustic chamber and was told that the procedure was an experiment in relaxation. The subject wore goggles and a modified motorcycle helmet through which 10-milligauss (1 microTesla) magnetic fields were applied through the temporal plane. Except for a weak red (photographic developing) light, the room was dark. Dr. Persinger's research on the ability of magnetic fields to facilitate the creation of false memories and altered states of consciousness is apparently funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency through the project cryptonym SLEEPING BEAUTY. Freedom of Information Act requests concerning SLEEPING BEAUTY with a number of different intelligence agencies including the CIA and DEA has yielded denial that such a program exists. Certainly, such work would be of direct interest to BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA and other non-lethal weapons programs. Schnabel [280] lists Dr. Persinger as an Interview Source in his book on remote viewing operations conducted under Stargate, Grill Flame and other cryptonyms at Fort Meade and on contract to the Stanford Research Institute. Schnabel states (p. 220) that, “As one of the Pentagon's top scientists, Vorona was privy to some of the strangest, most secret research projects ever conceived. Grill Flame was just one. Another was code-named Sleeping Beauty; it was a Defense Department study of remote microwave mind-influencing techniques ... [...] It appears from Schnabel's well-documented investigations that Sleeping Beauty is a real, but still classified mind control program. Schnabel [280] lists Dr. West as an Interview Source and says that West was a, “Member of medical oversight board for Science Applications International Corp. remote-viewing research in early 1990s.

when Herbert Hoover was elected U.S. president in 1928, Henry Stimson—Hoover’s new secretary of state—was shocked to learn that Yardley’s bureau was penetrating the private diplomatic missives of other countries. Stimson in 1929 shuttered the operation, cutting off State Department funding and primly explaining that gentlemen do not read one another’s mail—something European gentlemen did all the time, of course, and had been doing for hundreds of years.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration of the Washington establishment is remarkable by any standard. Former FBI Special Agent John Guandolo noted in October 2011: “What we’re seeing not just inside the White House, but inside the government entities, the national security entities, the State Department – is a strong push by the Muslim Brotherhood to get their people not just into operational positions, but policy positions – deeper, long term, bureaucratic positions.”67

The answer was Stellar Wind. The NSA would eavesdrop freely against Americans and aliens in the United States without probable cause or search warrants. It would mine and assay the electronic records of millions of telephone conversations—both callers and receivers—and the subject lines of e-mails, including names and Internet addresses. Then it would send the refined intelligence to the Bureau for action. Stellar Wind resurrected Cold War tactics with twenty-first-century technology. It let the FBI work with the NSA outside of the limits of the law. As Cheney knew from his days at the White House in the wake of Watergate, the NSA and the FBI had worked that way up until 1972, when the Supreme Court unanimously outlawed warrantless wiretaps. Stellar Wind blew past the Supreme Court on the authority of a dubious opinion sent to the White House the week that the Patriot Act became law. It came from John Yoo, a thirty-four-year-old lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel who had clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas. Yoo wrote that the Constitution’s protections against warrantless searches and seizures did not apply to military operations in the United States. The NSA was a military agency; Congress had authorized Bush to use military force; therefore he had the power to use the NSA against anyone anywhere in America. The president was “free from the constraints of the Fourth Amendment,” Yoo wrote. So the FBI would be free as well.

This problem,” Rick said, “stems entirely from your method of operation, Mr. Rosen. Nobody forced your organization to evolve the production of humanoid robots to a point where—” “We produced what the colonists wanted,” Eldon Rosen said. “We followed the time-honored principle underlying every commercial venture. If our firm hadn’t made these progressively more human types, other firms in the field would have. We knew the risk we were taking when we developed the Nexus-6 brain unit. But your Voigt-Kampff test was a failure before we released that type of android. If you had failed to classify a Nexus-6 android as an android, if you had checked it out as human—but that’s not what happened.” His voice had become hard and bitingly penetrating. “Your police department—others as well—may have retired, very probably have retired, authentic humans with underdeveloped empathic ability, such as my innocent niece here. Your position, Mr. Deckard, is extremely bad morally. Ours isn’t.

In the end, thirty-four people and three companies were indicted or pleaded guilty in the attack on the 2016 election or its cover-up, including Papadopoulos, Manafort, Manafort’s partner Rick Gates, Flynn, Kilimnik, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, twelve Russian intelligence operatives, thirteen Russian nationals, and three Russian companies. Before he left office, Trump pardoned those who had refused to cooperate with the Department of Justice: Flynn, Stone, Manafort, and Papadopoulos.

The only healthcare available to Native people living on reservations is provided by the Indian Health Service (IHS), an operating division within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that’s consistently rated as the worst healthcare provider in America. IHS is also grossly underfunded: in 2016, Congress allotted $4.8 billion for IHS, which came out to approximately $1,297 per person. For comparison, each inmate in the federal prison system receives an average of about $6,973 in healthcare each year.

You want to leave the moat, to go back to the room; you’re already turning and trying to find the door, covered with fake leather, in the steep wall of the moat, but the master succeeds in grabbing your hand and, looking straight in your eyes, says: Your assignment: describe the jaw of a crocodile, the tongue of a hummingbird, the steeple of the New Maiden Convent, a shoot of bird cherry, the bend of the Lethe, the tail of any village dog, a night of love, mirages over hot asphalt, the bright midday in Berezov, the face of a flibbertigibbet, the garden of hell, compare the termite colony to the forest anthill, the sad fate of leaves to the serenade of a Venetian gondolier, and transform a cicada into a butterfly, turn rain into hail, day into night, give us today our daily bread, make a sibilant out of a vowel, prevent the crash of the train whose engineer is asleep, repeat the thirteenth labor of Hercules, give a smoke to a passerby, explain youth and old age, sing a song about a bluebird bringing water in the morn, turn your face to the north, to the Novgorodian barbicans, and then describe how the doorman knows it is snowing outside, if he sits in the foyer all day, talks to the elevator operator, and does not look out the window because there is no window; yes, tell how exactly, and in addition, plant in your orchard a white rose of the winds, show it to the teacher Pavel and, if he likes it, give the white rose to the teacher Pavel, pin the flower to his cowboy shirt or to his dacha hat, bring joy to the man who departed to nowhere, make your old pedagogue—a joker, a clown, and a wind-chaser—happy.

Over the years Tomsen had concluded that America’s failed policies in Afghanistan flowed in part from the compartmented, top secret isolation in which the CIA always sought to work. The agency saw the president as its client. By keeping the State Department and other policy makers at a distance, it preserved a certain freedom to operate. But when the agency was wrong—the Bay of Pigs, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—there was little check on its analysis. Conversely, when it was on the right track—as with Massoud in the late 1990s—it often had trouble finding allies in political Washington.11

Funding for the Special Operations Network comes directly from the government. Most work is centralized, but all of the SpecOps divisions have local representatives to keep a watchful eye on any provincial problems. They are administered by local commanders, who liaise with the national offices for information exchange, guidance and policy decisions. Like any other big government department, it looks good on paper but is an utter shambles. Petty infighting and political agendas, arrogance and sheer bloody-mindedness almost guarantees that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.

Before 1969 came to an end, Palestinian terrorists trained at the KGB’s Balashikha special-operations school east of Moscow had hijacked their first “Zionist” El Al plane and landed it in Algeria, where its thirty-two Jewish passengers were held hostage for five weeks. The hijacking had been planned and coordinated by the KGB’s Thirteenth Department, known in Soviet bloc intelligence jargon as the Department for Wet Affairs (wet being a KGB euphemism for bloody). To conceal the KGB’s hand, Andropov had the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (created and financed by the KGB) take credit for the hijacking. The

Marshall was more effective at his job because of his ability to focus on important issues—giving each full attention before moving on to the next. If he had instead accepted the status quo of the War Department operation, with sixty officers pulling him into their decision making and hundreds of commands looking for his approval on routine activity, he would have fallen into the frantic and predictably busy whirlwind familiar to most managers, and this almost certainly would have harmed his performance. Indeed, if something like a hyperactive hive mind workflow had persisted in the 1940s War Department, we might have even lost the war.

guarded that information jealously to maintain his own power. Podesta was also wary of at least one member of Hillary’s State Crew. When the e-mail scandal first burst into the open, Philippe Reines, who had a rare direct line to the boss after running her media operations at the State Department and in the Senate, went to war with Jennifer Palmieri, the new communications director for the campaign, over how to respond. Reines, highly obsessive, ultraloyal to Hillary, and possessed of an acid tongue, pointed his finger at Palmieri when Hillary complained that deliberations about the timing of her first public remarks on the e-mail server were leaking to the media.

1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation

There has been so much misinformation spread about the nature of this interview that the actual events that took place merit discussion. After being discreetly delivered by the Secret Service to the FBI’s basement garage, Hillary Clinton was interviewed by a five-member joint FBI and Department of Justice team. She was accompanied by five members of her legal team. None of Clinton’s lawyers who were there remained investigative subjects in the case at that point. The interview, which went on for more than three hours, was conducted in a secure conference room deep inside FBI headquarters and led by the two senior special agents on the case. With the exception of the secret entry to the FBI building, they treated her like any other interview subject. I was not there, which only surprises those who don’t know the FBI and its work. The director does not attend these kinds of interviews. My job was to make final decisions on the case, not to conduct the investigation. We had professional investigators, schooled on all of the intricacies of the case, assigned to do that. We also as a matter of procedure don’t tape interviews of people not under arrest. We instead have professionals who take detailed notes. Secretary Clinton was not placed under oath during the interview, but this too was standard procedure. The FBI doesn’t administer oaths during voluntary interviews. Regardless, under federal law, it would still have been a felony if Clinton was found to have lied to the FBI during her interview, whether she was under oath or not. In short, despite a whole lot of noise in the media and Congress after the fact, the agents interviewed Hillary Clinton following the FBI’s standard operating procedures.

Psychological safety is broadly defined as a climate in which people are comfortable expressing and being themselves. More specifically, when people have psychological safety at work, they feel comfortable sharing concerns and mistakes without fear of embarrassment or retribution. They are confident that they can speak up and won't be humiliated, ignored, or blamed. They know they can ask questions when they are unsure about something. They tend to trust and respect their colleagues. When a work environment has reasonably high psychological safety, good things happen: mistakes are reported quickly so that prompt corrective action can be taken; seamless coordination across groups or departments is enabled, and potentially game-changing ideas for innovation are shared. In short, psychological safety is a crucial source of value creation in organizations operating in a complex, changing environment.

That City of yours is a morbid excrescence. Wall Street is a morbid excrescence. Plainly it's a thing that has grown out upon the social body rather like -- what do you call it? -- an embolism, thrombosis, something of that sort. A sort of heart in the wrong place, isn't it? Anyhow -- there it is. Everything seems obliged to go through it now; it can hold up things, stimulate things, give the world fever or pain, and yet all the same -- is it necessary, Irwell? Is it inevitable? Couldn't we function economically quite as well without it? Has the world got to carry that kind of thing for ever? "What real strength is there in a secondary system of that sort? It's secondary, it's parasitic. It's only a sort of hypertrophied, uncontrolled counting-house which has become dominant by falsifying the entries and intercepting payment. It's a growth that eats us up and rots everything like cancer. Financiers make nothing, they are not a productive department. They control nothing. They might do so, but they don't. They don't even control Westminster and Washington. They just watch things in order to make speculative anticipations. They've got minds that lie in wait like spiders, until the fly flies wrong. Then comes the debt entanglement. Which you can break, like the cobweb it is, if only you insist on playing the wasp. I ask you again what real strength has Finance if you tackle Finance? You can tax it, regulate its operations, print money over it without limit, cancel its claims. You can make moratoriums and jubilees. The little chaps will dodge and cheat and run about, but they won't fight. It is an artificial system upheld by the law and those who make the laws. It's an aristocracy of pickpocket area-sneaks. The Money Power isn't a Power. It's respectable as long as you respect it, and not a moment longer. If it struggles you can strangle it if you have the grip...You and I worked that out long ago, Chiffan... "When we're through with our revolution, there will be no money in the world but pay. Obviously. We'll pay the young to learn, the grown-ups to function, everybody for holidays, and the old to make remarks, and we'll have a deuce of a lot to pay them with. We'll own every real thing; we, the common men. We'll have the whole of the human output in the market. Earn what you will and buy what you like, we'll say, but don't try to use money to get power over your fellow-creatures. No squeeze. The better the economic machine, the less finance it will need. Profit and interest are nasty ideas, artificial ideas, perversions, all mixed up with betting and playing games for money. We'll clean all that up..." "It's been going on a long time," said Irwell. "All the more reason for a change," said Rud.

Members of this body, with the full authority of my government, I hereby declare the withdrawal of the United States of America from this organization. My nation will no longer be a member of the United Nations. Furthermore, please consider this official notice that all non-American citizens have 10 days to leave our country. This very building will be occupied by the New York City Police Department after that time, and anyone remaining will be arrested and deported. My nation has had enough of the parasitic governments represented by this body. In addition, I would like to take this opportunity to announce our withdrawal from NATO. All American military units will be recalled immediately. Our naval carrier battle groups and all associated support operations are being ordered home as well. All air wings of the United States Air Force are being recalled from foreign lands. God help all of you – you are on your own.

A businessman buys a business and tries to operate it. He does everything that he knows how to do but just cannot make it go. Year after year the ledger shows red, and he is not making a profit. He borrows what he can, has a little spirit and a little hope, but that spirit and hope die and he goes broke. Finally, he sells out, hopelessly in debt, and is left a failure in the business world. A woman is educated to be a teacher but just cannot get along with the other teachers. Something in her constitution or temperament will not allow her to get along with children or young people. So after being shuttled from one school to another, she finally gives up, goes somewhere and takes a job running a stapling machine. She just cannot teach and is a failure in the education world. I have known ministers who thought they were called to preach. They prayed and studied and learned Greek and Hebrew, but somehow they just could not make the public want to listen to them. They just couldn’t do it. They were failures in the congregational world. It is possible to be a Christian and yet be a failure. This is the same as Israel in the desert, wandering around. The Israelites were God’s people, protected and fed, but they were failures. They were not where God meant them to be. They compromised. They were halfway between where they used to be and where they ought to be. And that describes many of the Lord’s people. They live and die spiritual failures. I am glad God is good and kind. Failures can crawl into God’s arms, relax and say, “Father, I made a mess of it. I’m a spiritual failure. I haven’t been out doing evil things exactly, but here I am, Father, and I’m old and ready to go and I’m a failure.” Our kind and gracious heavenly Father will not say to that person, “Depart from me—I never knew you,” because that person has believed and does believe in Jesus Christ. The individual has simply been a failure all of his life. He is ready for death and ready for heaven. I wonder if that is what Paul, the man of God, meant when he said: [No] other foundation can [any] man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he should receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire (1 Cor. 3:11-15). I think that’s what it means, all right. We ought to be the kind of Christian that cannot only save our souls but also save our lives. When Lot left Sodom, he had nothing but the garments on his back. Thank God, he got out. But how much better it would have been if he had said farewell at the gate and had camels loaded with his goods. He could have gone out with his head up, chin out, saying good riddance to old Sodom. How much better he could have marched away from there with his family. And when he settled in a new place, he could have had “an abundant entrance” (see 2 Pet. 1:11). Thank God, you are going to make it. But do you want to make it in the way you have been acting lately? Wandering, roaming aimlessly? When there is a place where Jesus will pour “the oil of gladness” on our heads, a place sweeter than any other in the entire world, the blood-bought mercy seat (Ps. 45:7; Heb. 1:9)? It is the will of God that you should enter the holy of holies, live under the shadow of the mercy seat, and go out from there and always come back to be renewed and recharged and re-fed. It is the will of God that you live by the mercy seat, living a separated, clean, holy, sacrificial life—a life of continual spiritual difference. Wouldn’t that be better than the way you are doing it now?

Despite the fact that Uncle Rulon and his followers regard the governments of Arizona, Utah, and the United States as Satanic forces out to destroy the UEP, their polygamous community receives more than $6 million a year in public funds. More than $4 million of government largesse flows each year into the Colorado City public school district—which, according to the Phoenix New Times, “is operated primarily for the financial benefit of the FLDS Church and for the personal enrichment of FLDS school district leaders.” Reporter John Dougherty determined that school administrators have “plundered the district’s treasury by running up thousands of dollars in personal expenses on district credit cards, purchasing expensive vehicles for their personal use and engaging in extensive travel. The spending spree culminated in December [2000], when the district purchased a $220,000 Cessna 210 airplane to facilitate trips by district personnel to cities across Arizona.” Colorado City has received $1.9 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pave its streets, improve the fire department, and upgrade the water system. Immediately south of the city limits, the federal government built a $2.8 million airport that serves almost no one beyond the fundamentalist community. Thirty-three percent of the town’s residents receive food stamps—compared to the state average of 4.7 percent. Currently the residents of Colorado City receive eight dollars in government services for every dollar they pay in taxes; by comparison, residents in the rest of Mohave County, Arizona, receive just over a dollar in services per tax dollar paid. “Uncle Rulon justifies all that assistance from the wicked government by explaining that really the money is coming from the Lord,” says DeLoy Bateman. “We’re taught that it’s the Lord’s way of manipulating the system to take care of his chosen people.” Fundamentalists call defrauding the government “bleeding the beast” and regard it as a virtuous act.

The legislative department derives a superiority in our governments from other circumstances. Its constitutional powers being at once more extensive, and less susceptible of precise limits, it can, with the greater facility, mask, under complicated and indirect measures, the encroachments which it makes on the co-ordinate departments. It is not unfrequently a question of real nicety in legislative bodies, whether the operation of a particular measure will, or will not, extend beyond the legislative sphere. On the other side, the executive power being restrained within a narrower compass, and being more simple in its nature, and the judiciary being described by landmarks still less uncertain, projects of usurpation by either of these departments would immediately betray and defeat themselves. Nor is this all: as the legislative department alone has access to the pockets of the people, and has in some constitutions full discretion, and in all a prevailing influence, over the pecuniary rewards of those who fill the other departments, a dependence is thus created in the latter, which gives still greater facility to encroachments of the former. I

What this reveals about our universities is the operation of a pathological element. One need not ban the American flag from most of our campuses. It is more useful to deceive the world by allowing that flag to fly in a place where, all things being equal, its meaning and spirit has been abolished. In the Humanities and Social Science departments, where freedom of thought is of central importance, the American flag is more hated than loved by the faculty and the graduate students. I know this from firsthand because I was a graduate student at UC Irvine from 1986-1989. Professors there promoted Marxism, engaged in active recruitment of students amenable to Marxist ideas, and damaged the careers of those who were anti-Marxist. In those days it was done very quietly, administratively. If you dared speak up for America or economic freedom, you were persecuted. Your reputation was ruined. It is preferable to avert one’s eyes from such a situation, and very unpleasant to experience it directly; that is why those singled out for persecution were never defended. They were hung out to dry, and nobody dared interfere. Who, after all, wants trouble? This is the beauty of a quiet and selective intimidation.

There can be no fear of this infinite, universal God. When you study scripture and see how the Hebrews lived their lives in fear of God’s punishment, and then turn to the New Testament and realize that the Master gave as one of his reasons for being on earth, the forgiveness of sin and sinners, you know there is no reason under the sun for continuing to fear punishment for your sins of omission or commission. As a matter of fact, even if some of those sins should be continuing into our present experience, even if we have not reached the spiritual elevation in which all sin has departed from us–and who has?–even then we are to know we are not under the law of punishment but under the law of grace, under forgiveness, under God’s grace, which not only wipes out the penalty for sin but wipes out the capacity for sin. Sometimes sin lingers on even after the penalty has been wiped out, but it isn’t any different from the chicken that runs around after its head is cut off. It’s just fooling us for a little while; it’s dead but it doesn’t know it. So, too, our past is dead, even if some sins are temporarily being continued in the present. Why is our past dead? Because we acknowledge there are not two powers operating. There is only one.

His message delivered, Gabriel departed, leaving the chosen Virgin of Nazareth to ponder over her wondrous experience. Mary's promised Son was to be "The Only Begotten" of the Father in the flesh; so it had been both positively and abundantly predicted. True, the event was unprecedented; true also it has never been paralleled; but that the virgin birth would be unique was as truly essential to the fulfilment of prophecy as that it should occur at all. That Child to be born of Mary was begotten of Elohim, the Eternal Father, not in violation of natural law but in accordance with a higher manifestation thereof; and, the offspring from that association of supreme sanctity, celestial Sireship, and pure though mortal maternity, was of right to be called the "Son of the Highest." In His nature would be combined the powers of Godhood with the capacity and possibilities of mortality; and this through the ordinary operation of the fundamental law of heredity, declared of God, demonstrated by science, and admitted by philosophy, that living beings shall propagate—after their kind. The Child Jesus was to inherit the physical, mental, and spiritual traits, tendencies, and powers that characterized His parents—one immortal and glorified—God, the other human—woman.

FACT 3 – In 1969, the combined agencies of the CIA, Army and FBI were put into full operational use. The Sharon Tate-La Bianca murders were committed in August 1969. The Altamont violence occurred four months later. CIA The CIA prepared for defense against domestic unrest in 1965, coinciding with Camelot and Politica. The CIA joined forces with the FBI and the Army. By August 1967, a special operations group went after the youth. By July 1968, Operation Chaos, identical to the Chilean “Chaos,” clamped down on “restless youth.” This wasn’t a study. It was an attack. Mid-summer of 1969, one month before the Manson Family massacres, Operation Chaos entered a phase of tight security. From 1956-63, the Agency had produced enough LSD to incite every violent act associated with the chaos in Los Angeles or at Altamont. It was identical to handing out poison candy at Halloween. LSD was the moving force, the cause for the Sharon Tate-La Bianca slaughters. It was a steady diet at the Spahn ranch. LSD was the catalyst of the Altamont killing. Thousands of tablets were distributed to the Hell’s Angels, who then went totally berserk and started cracking skulls. FBI May 1964, after the JFK assassination, the FBI instituted COINTELPRO. July 1968, explicit orders went out to proceed, accompanied with instructions, to neutralize segments of American society, including those “restless youth.” By 1969, the Special Services Staff (SSS) of the FBI teamed up with the Justice Department and the CIA’s Operation Chaos.

It’s a heady question, how women balance these concerns. Recently, the question has found its way back to the center of a contentious and very emotional debate. If you’re Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook and author of Lean In, you believe that women should stop getting in their own way as they pursue their professional dreams—they should speak up, assert themselves, defend their right to dominate the boardroom and proudly wear the pants. If you’re Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former top State Department official who wrote a much-discussed story about work-life balance for The Atlantic in June 2012, you believe that the world, as it is currently structured, cannot accommodate the needs of women who are ambitious in both their professions and their home lives—social and economic change is required. There’s truth to both arguments. They’re hardly mutually exclusive. Yet this question tends to get framed, rather tiresomely, as one of how and whether women can “have it all,” when the fact of the matter is that most women—and men, for that matter—are simply trying to keep body and soul together. The phrase “having it all” has little to do with what women want. If anything, it’s a reflection of a widespread and misplaced cultural belief, shared by men and women alike: that we, as middle-class Americans, have been given infinite promise, and it’s our obligation to exploit every ounce of it. “Having it all” is the phrase of a culture that, as Adam Phillips implies in Missing Out, is tyrannized by the idea of its own potential.

She stole surreptitious glances at Christopher, as she had been doing all evening, mesmerized by the sight of him. He was tawny and sun glazed, the candlelight finding threads of gold in his hair. The yellow glow struck sparkling glints in the new growth of bristle on his face. She was fascinated by the raw, restless masculinity beneath his quietness. She wanted to revel in him as one might dash out-of-doors in a storm, letting the elements have their way. Most of all she longed to talk with him…to pry each other open with words, share every thought and secret. “My sincere thanks for your hospitality,” Christopher finally said at the conclusion of the meal. “It was much needed.” “You must return soon,” Cam said, “especially to view the timber yard in operation. We have installed some innovations that you may want to use at Riverton someday.” “Thank you. I would like to see them.” Christopher looked directly at Beatrix. “Before I depart, Miss Hathaway, I wonder if you would introduce me to this notorious mule of yours?” His manner was relaxed…but his eyes were those of a predator. Beatrix’s mouth went dry. There would be no escaping him. That much was clear. He wanted answers. He would have them either now or later. “Now?” she asked wanly. “Tonight?” “If you don’t mind,” he said in a far too pleasant tone. “The barn is but a short walk from the house, is it not?” “Yes,” Beatrix said, rising from her chair. The men at the table stood obligingly. “Excuse us, please. I won’t be long.” “May I go with you?” Rye asked eagerly. “No, darling,” Amelia said, “it’s time for your bath.” “But why must I wash if I can’t see any dirt?” “Those of us who have a difficult time with godliness,” Amelia replied with a grin, “must settle for cleanliness.

Managerial abilities, bureaucratic skills, technical expertise, and political talent are all necessary, but they can be applied only to goals that have already been defined by military policies, broad and narrow. And those policies can be only as good as strategy, operational art of war, tactical thought, and plain military craft that have gone into their making. At present, the defects of structure submerge or distort strategy and operational art, they out rightly suppress tactical ingenuity, and they displace the traditional insights and rules of military craft in favor of bureaucratic preferences, administrative convenience, and abstract notions of efficiency derived from the world of business management. First there is the defective structure for making of military decisions under the futile supervision of the civilian Defense Department; then come the deeply flawed defense policies and military choices, replete with unnecessary costs and hidden risks; finally there come the undoubted managerial abilities, bureaucratic skills, technical expertise, and political talents, all applied to achieve those flawed policies and to implement those flawed choices. By this same sequence was the fatally incomplete Maginot Line built, as were all the Maginot Lines of history, each made no better by good government, technical talent, careful accounting, or sheer hard work. Hence the futility of all the managerial innovations tried in the Pentagon over the years. In the purchasing of weapons, for example, “total package” procurement, cost plus incentive contracting, “firm fixed price” purchasing have all been introduced with much fanfare, only to be abandoned, retried, and repudiated once again. And each time a new Secretary of Defense arrives, with him come the latest batch of managerial innovations, many of them aimed at reducing fraud, waste, and mismanagement-the classic trio endlessly denounced in Congress, even though they account for mere percentage points in the total budget, and have no relevance at all to the failures of combat. The persistence of the Administrator’s Delusion has long kept the Pentagon on a treadmill of futile procedural “reforms” that have no impact at all on the military substance of our defense. It is through strategy, operational art, tactical ingenuity, and military craft that the large savings can be made, and the nation’s military strength greatly increased, but achieving long-overdue structural innovations, from the central headquarters to the combat forces, from the overhead of bases and installations to the current purchase of new weapons. Then, and only then, will it be useful to pursue fraud, waste, and mismanagement, if only to save a few dollars more after the billions have already been saved. At present, by contrast, the Defense Department administers ineffectively, while the public, Congress, and the media apply their energies to such petty matters as overpriced spare parts for a given device in a given weapon of a given ship, overlooking at the same time the multibillion dollar question of money spent for the Navy as a whole instead of the Army – whose weakness diminishes our diplomatic weight in peacetime, and which could one day cause us to resort to nuclear weapons in the face of imminent debacle. If we had a central military authority and a Defense Department capable of strategy, we should cheerfully tolerate much fraud, waste, and mismanagement; but so long as there are competing military bureaucracies organically incapable of strategic combat, neither safety nor economy will be ensured, even if we could totally eliminate every last cent of fraud, waste, and mismanagement.

In short the only fully rational world would be the world of wishing-caps, the world of telepathy, where every desire is fulfilled instanter, without having to consider or placate surrounding or intermediate powers. This is the Absolute's own world. He calls upon the phenomenal world to be, and it IS, exactly as he calls for it, no other condition being required. In our world, the wishes of the individual are only one condition. Other individuals are there with other wishes and they must be propitiated first. So Being grows under all sorts of resistances in this world of the many, and, from compromise to compromise, only gets organized gradually into what may be called secondarily rational shape. We approach the wishing-cap type of organization only in a few departments of life. We want water and we turn a faucet. We want a kodak-picture and we press a button. We want information and we telephone. We want to travel and we buy a ticket. In these and similar cases, we hardly need to do more than the wishing—the world is rationally organized to do the rest. But this talk of rationality is a parenthesis and a digression. What we were discussing was the idea of a world growing not integrally but piecemeal by the contributions of its several parts. Take the hypothesis seriously and as a live one. Suppose that the world's author put the case to you before creation, saying: "I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own 'level best.' I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?" Should you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were proposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? Would you say that, rather than be part and parcel of so fundamentally pluralistic and irrational a universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of nonentity from which you had been momentarily aroused by the tempter's voice? Of course if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing of the sort. There is a healthy- minded buoyancy in most of us which such a universe would exactly fit. We would therefore accept the offer—"Top! und schlag auf schlag!" It would be just like the world we practically live in; and loyalty to our old nurse Nature would forbid us to say no. The world proposed would seem 'rational' to us in the most living way. Most of us, I say, would therefore welcome the proposition and add our fiat to the fiat of the creator. Yet perhaps some would not; for there are morbid minds in every human collection, and to them the prospect of a universe with only a fighting chance of safety would probably make no appeal. There are moments of discouragement in us all, when we are sick of self and tired of vainly striving. Our own life breaks down, and we fall into the attitude of the prodigal son. We mistrust the chances of things. We want a universe where we can just give up, fall on our father's neck, and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water melts into the river or the sea. The peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments is security against the bewildering accidents of so much finite experience. Nirvana means safety from this everlasting round of adventures of which the world of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist, for this is essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life. And to men of this complexion, religious monism comes with its consoling words: "All is needed and essential—even you with your sick soul and heart. All are one

This book has pushed back against the randomness thesis, emphasizing instead the skill in venture capital. It has done so for four reasons. First, the existence of path dependency does not actually prove that skill is absent. Venture capitalists need skill to enter the game: as the authors of the NBER paper say, path dependency can only influence which among the many skilled players gets to be the winner. Nor is it clear that path dependency explains why some skilled operators beat other ones. The finding that a partnership’s future IPO rate rises by 1.6 percentage points is not particularly strong, and the history recounted in these pages shows that path dependency is frequently disrupted.[5] Despite his powerful reputation, Arthur Rock was unsuccessful after his Apple investment. Mayfield was a leading force during the 1980s; it too faded. Kleiner Perkins proves that you can dominate the Valley for a quarter of a century and then decline precipitously. Accel succeeded early, hit a rough patch, and then built itself back. In an effort to maintain its sense of paranoia and vigilance, Sequoia once produced a slide listing numerous venture partnerships that flourished and then failed. “The Departed,” it called them. The second reason to believe in skill lies in the origin story of some partnerships. Occasionally a newcomer breaks into the venture elite in such a way that skill obviously does matter. Kleiner Perkins became a leader in the business because of Tandem and Genentech. Both companies were hatched from within the KP office and actively shaped by Tom Perkins; there was nothing lucky about this. Tiger Global and Yuri Milner invented the art of late-stage venture capital. They had a genuinely novel approach to tech investing; they offered much more than the equivalent of another catchy tune competing against others. Paul Graham’s batch-processing method at Y Combinator offered an equally original approach to seed-stage investing. A clever innovation, not random fortune, explains Graham’s place in venture history.

The Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve Bank was founded in 1913. Most people think that this bank is an American Federal Company. That is just as wrong as the conviction that the Bank of England belongs to the British Crown or to the whole of England. The Federal Reserve is in the hands of the Rothschilds and company. In his speech before the Senate, on December 15, 1987, Senator Jesse Helms said: “The principal instrument of the control over the American economy and money is the Federal Reserve System.” The Federal Reserve has a monopoly over the expenditure of the dollar as a world currency and determining the interest rate, and it disposes of a lot more monopolies. How does the Federal Reserve Bank operate? Suppose the United States government needs a couple of billion dollars for its expenses that cannot be paid with taxes income. At that moment it addresses the Federal Reserve Board. Then government bonds for the needed billion dollars are printed in the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. After these bonds are handed over to the bankers of the Federal Reserve, the board grants a loan to the government in the amount of the bond issue. The Federal Reserve draws interest from the government from the day the bonds are delivered. From that day on the government is allowed to draw checks against the Federal Reserve for the amount of the bonds. What are the consequences of this incredible transaction? The government simply saddles the people with a billion dollar debt to the Federal Reserve Bank, apart from the interest on interest that also has to be paid by “ordinary people”. What does the Federal Reserve have to say about “their” money? “Neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities. Intrinsically, a dollar bill is just a piece of paper, deposits merely book entries.”[76] When the Federal Reserve needs new, or more, currency to transact its business, it takes the bonds over to the United States Treasury for safekeeping and asks the Treasury Department for the billions of dollars of new currency it needs. The Bank is accommodated on condition that it will pay the printing bill. It only pays for the expenditure costs of the banknotes, which are no more than a mere 500 dollars for ink and paper!

Why, he asked, do all of our policing efforts have to be so reactive, so negative, and so after the fact? What if, instead of just focusing on catching criminals—and serving up ever harsher punishments—after they committed the crime, the police devoted significant resources and effort to eliminating criminal behavior before it happens? To quote Tony Blair, what if they could be tough on crime but also tough on the causes of crime?3 Out of these questions came the novel idea for Positive Tickets, a program whereby police, instead of focusing on catching young people perpetrating crimes, would focus on catching youth doing something good—something as simple as throwing litter away in a bin rather than on the ground, wearing a helmet while riding their bike, skateboarding in the designated area, or getting to school on time—and would give them a ticket for positive behavior. The ticket, of course, wouldn’t carry a fine like a parking ticket but instead would be redeemable for some kind of small reward, like free entry to the movies or to an event at a local youth center—wholesome activities that also had the bonus of keeping the young people off the streets and out of trouble. So how well did Richmond’s unconventional effort to reimagine policing work? Amazingly well, as it turned out. It took some time, but they invested in the approach as a long-term strategy, and after a decade the Positive Tickets system had reduced recidivism from 60 percent to 8 percent. You might not think of a police department as a place where you would expect to see Essentialism at work, but in fact Ward’s system of Positive Tickets is a lesson in the practice of effortless execution. The way of the Nonessentialist is to go big on everything: to try to do it all, have it all, fit it all in. The Nonessentialist operates under the false logic that the more he strives, the more he will achieve, but the reality is, the more we reach for the stars, the harder it is to get ourselves off the ground. The way of the Essentialist is different. Instead of trying to accomplish it all—and all at once—and flaring out, the Essentialist starts small and celebrates progress. Instead of going for the big, flashy wins that don’t really matter, the Essentialist pursues small and simple wins in areas that are essential.

five commandments: 1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.

Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics.

Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.

I became a broken record on the algorithm,” Musk says. “But I think it’s helpful to say it to an annoying degree.” It had five commandments: 1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.

told my people that I wanted only the best, whatever it took, wherever they came from, whatever it cost. We assembled thirty people, the brightest cybersecurity minds we have. A few are on loan, pursuant to strict confidentiality agreements, from the private sector—software companies, telecommunications giants, cybersecurity firms, military contractors. Two are former hackers themselves, one of them currently serving a thirteen-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Most are from various agencies of the federal government—Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA. Half our team is devoted to threat mitigation—how to limit the damage to our systems and infrastructure after the virus hits. But right now, I’m concerned with the other half, the threat-response team that Devin and Casey are running. They’re devoted to stopping the virus, something they’ve been unable to do for the last two weeks. “Good morning, Mr. President,” says Devin Wittmer. He comes from NSA. After graduating from Berkeley, he started designing cyberdefense software for clients like Apple before the NSA recruited him away. He has developed federal cybersecurity assessment tools to help industries and governments understand their preparedness against cyberattacks. When the major health-care systems in France were hit with a ransomware virus three years ago, we lent them Devin, who was able to locate and disable it. Nobody in America, I’ve been assured, is better at finding holes in cyberdefense systems or at plugging them. “Mr. President,” says Casey Alvarez. Casey is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in Arizona to start a family and built up a fleet of grocery stores in the Southwest along the way. Casey showed no interest in the business, taking quickly to computers and wanting to join law enforcement. When she was a grad student at Penn, she got turned down for a position at the Department of Justice. So Casey got on her computer and managed to do what state and federal authorities had been unable to do for years—she hacked into an underground child-pornography website and disclosed the identities of all the website’s patrons, basically gift-wrapping a federal prosecution for Justice and shutting down an operation that was believed to be the largest purveyor of kiddie porn in the country. DOJ hired her on the spot, and she stayed there until she went to work for the CIA. She’s been most recently deployed in the Middle East with US Central Command, where she intercepts, decodes, and disrupts cybercommunications among terrorist groups. I’ve been assured that these two are, by far, the best we have. And they are about to meet the person who, so far, has been better. There is a hint of reverence in their expressions as I introduce them to Augie. The Sons of Jihad is the all-star team of cyberterrorists, mythical figures in that world. But I sense some competitive fire, too, which will be a good thing.

He ran long at the White House, and arrived late to his next meeting with Hillary Clinton, Jake Sullivan and Frank Ruggiero—their first major strategy session on Taliban talks after the secret meeting with A-Rod. She was waiting in her outer office, a spacious room paneled in white and gilt wood, with tasseled blue and pink curtains and an array of colorfully upholstered chairs and couches. In my time reporting to her later, I only ever saw Clinton take the couch, with guests of honor in the large chair kitty-corner to her. She’d left it open for him that day. “He came rushing in. . . . ” Clinton later said. “And, you know, he was saying ‘oh I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’ ” He sat down heavily and shrugged off his coat, rattling off a litany of his latest meetings, including his stop-in at the White House. “That was typical Richard. It was, like, ‘I’m doing a million things and I’m trying to keep all the balls in the air,’ ” she remembered. As he was talking, a “scarlet red” flush went up his face, according to Clinton. He pressed his hands over his eyes, his chest heaving. “Richard, what’s the matter?” Clinton asked. “Something horrible is happening,” he said. A few minutes later, Holbrooke was in an ambulance, strapped to a gurney, headed to nearby George Washington University Hospital, where Clinton had told her own internist to prepare the emergency room. In his typically brash style, he’d demanded that the ambulance take him to the more distant Sibley Memorial Hospital. Clinton overruled him. One of our deputies on the SRAP team, Dan Feldman, rode with him and held his hand. Feldman didn’t have his BlackBerry, so he scrawled notes on a State Department expense form for a dinner at Meiwah Restaurant as Holbrooke dictated messages and a doctor assessed him. The notes are a nonlinear stream of Holbrooke’s indomitable personality, slashed through with medical realities. “Call Eric in Axelrod’s office,” the first read. Nearby: “aortic dissection—type A . . . operation risk @ > 50 percent”—that would be chance of death. A series of messages for people in his life, again interrupted by his deteriorating condition: “S”—Secretary Clinton—“why always together for medical crises?” (The year before, he’d been with Clinton when she fell to the concrete floor of the State Department garage, fracturing her elbow.) “Kids—how much love them + stepkids” . . . “best staff ever” . . . “don’t let him die here” . . . “vascular surgery” . . . “no flow, no feeling legs” . . . “clot” . . . and then, again: “don’t let him die here want to die at home w/ his fam.” The seriousness of the situation fully dawning on him, Holbrooke turned to job succession: “Tell Frank”—Ruggiero—“he’s acting.” And finally: “I love so many people . . . I have a lot left to do . . . my career in public service is over.” Holbrooke cracked wise until they put him under for surgery. “Get me anything you need,” he demanded. “A pig’s heart. Dan’s heart.

A man decides to be a lawyer and spends years studying law and finally puts out his shingle. He soon finds something in his temperament that makes it impossible for him to make good as a lawyer. He is a complete failure. He is 50 years old, was admitted to the bar when he was 30, and 20 years later, he has not been able to make a living as a lawyer. As a lawyer, he is a failure. A businessman buys a business and tries to operate it. He does everything that he knows how to do but just cannot make it go. Year after year the ledger shows red, and he is not making a profit. He borrows what he can, has a little spirit and a little hope, but that spirit and hope die and he goes broke. Finally, he sells out, hopelessly in debt, and is left a failure in the business world. A woman is educated to be a teacher but just cannot get along with the other teachers. Something in her constitution or temperament will not allow her to get along with children or young people. So after being shuttled from one school to another, she finally gives up, goes somewhere and takes a job running a stapling machine. She just cannot teach and is a failure in the education world. I have known ministers who thought they were called to preach. They prayed and studied and learned Greek and Hebrew, but somehow they just could not make the public want to listen to them. They just couldn’t do it. They were failures in the congregational world. It is possible to be a Christian and yet be a failure. This is the same as Israel in the desert, wandering around. The Israelites were God’s people, protected and fed, but they were failures. They were not where God meant them to be. They compromised. They were halfway between where they used to be and where they ought to be. And that describes many of the Lord’s people. They live and die spiritual failures. I am glad God is good and kind. Failures can crawl into God’s arms, relax and say, “Father, I made a mess of it. I’m a spiritual failure. I haven’t been out doing evil things exactly, but here I am, Father, and I’m old and ready to go and I’m a failure.” Our kind and gracious heavenly Father will not say to that person, “Depart from me—I never knew you,” because that person has believed and does believe in Jesus Christ. The individual has simply been a failure all of his life. He is ready for death and ready for heaven. I wonder if that is what Paul, the man of God, meant when he said: [No] other foundation can [any] man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he should receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire (1 Cor. 3:11-15). I think that’s what it means, all right. We ought to be the kind of Christian that cannot only save our souls but also save our lives. When Lot left Sodom, he had nothing but the garments on his back. Thank God, he got out. But how much better it would have been if he had said farewell at the gate and had camels loaded with his goods. He could have gone out with his head up, chin out, saying good riddance to old Sodom. How much better he could have marched away from there with his family. And when he settled in a new place, he could have had “an abundant entrance

It’s not always so easy, it turns out, to identify your core personal projects. And it can be especially tough for introverts, who have spent so much of their lives conforming to extroverted norms that by the time they choose a career, or a calling, it feels perfectly normal to ignore their own preferences. They may be uncomfortable in law school or nursing school or in the marketing department, but no more so than they were back in middle school or summer camp. I, too, was once in this position. I enjoyed practicing corporate law, and for a while I convinced myself that I was an attorney at heart. I badly wanted to believe it, since I had already invested years in law school and on-the-job training, and much about Wall Street law was alluring. My colleagues were intellectual, kind, and considerate (mostly). I made a good living. I had an office on the forty-second floor of a skyscraper with views of the Statue of Liberty. I enjoyed the idea that I could flourish in such a high-powered environment. And I was pretty good at asking the “but” and “what if” questions that are central to the thought processes of most lawyers. It took me almost a decade to understand that the law was never my personal project, not even close. Today I can tell you unhesitatingly what is: my husband and sons; writing; promoting the values of this book. Once I realized this, I had to make a change. I look back on my years as a Wall Street lawyer as time spent in a foreign country. It was absorbing, it was exciting, and I got to meet a lot of interesting people whom I never would have known otherwise. But I was always an expatriate. Having spent so much time navigating my own career transition and counseling others through theirs, I have found that there are three key steps to identifying your own core personal projects. First, think back to what you loved to do when you were a child. How did you answer the question of what you wanted to be when you grew up? The specific answer you gave may have been off the mark, but the underlying impulse was not. If you wanted to be a fireman, what did a fireman mean to you? A good man who rescued people in distress? A daredevil? Or the simple pleasure of operating a truck? If you wanted to be a dancer, was it because you got to wear a costume, or because you craved applause, or was it the pure joy of twirling around at lightning speed? You may have known more about who you were then than you do now. Second, pay attention to the work you gravitate to. At my law firm I never once volunteered to take on an extra corporate legal assignment, but I did spend a lot of time doing pro bono work for a nonprofit women’s leadership organization. I also sat on several law firm committees dedicated to mentoring, training, and personal development for young lawyers in the firm. Now, as you can probably tell from this book, I am not the committee type. But the goals of those committees lit me up, so that’s what I did. Finally, pay attention to what you envy. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire. I met my own envy after some of my former law school classmates got together and compared notes on alumni career tracks. They spoke with admiration and, yes, jealousy, of a classmate who argued regularly before the Supreme Court. At first I felt critical. More power to that classmate! I thought, congratulating myself on my magnanimity. Then I realized that my largesse came cheap, because I didn’t aspire to argue a case before the Supreme Court, or to any of the other accolades of lawyering. When I asked myself whom I did envy, the answer came back instantly. My college classmates who’d grown up to be writers or psychologists. Today I’m pursuing my own version of both those roles.

A particularly gruesome hunt targeted the basking shark, the second-largest fish in the world. At one time these creatures, which may reach fifteen metres in length, were abundant along the coast. For all their size they are peaceable giants, feeding on zooplankton in the nutrient-rich ocean waters close to the surface. They do not eat salmon or any other fish, but fishermen considered them a nuisance because they often became entangled in fishing gear. In 1949 the Department of Fisheries labelled them a "destructive pest" and in 1955 the department was persuaded to take aggressive action against the sharks in Barkley Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where they were especially prevalent. A large triangular cutting blade was mounted on the bow of a fisheries patrol vessel, the Comox Post. This knife could be lowered just below the surface of the water. When the vessel drove straight into a lounging shark, the blade sliced the animal in half. Between 1955 and 1969, when the blade was in use, hundreds of sharks were slaughtered in the sound. "The great shark slaughter began at noon and continued for hours," wrote a reporter who witnessed one of these excursions in 1956. "We littered the beaches with their livers and the bottom with their carcasses." Other fisheries vessels that were not equipped with the knife had orders to simply ram any sharks they encountered in the hope of killing them. Basking sharks are today almost never encountered in Barkley Sound or anywhere else on the coast.

Holder’s department orchestrated the astounding “Fast and Furious” operation, in which large quantities of firearms were knowingly sent to vicious drug gangs in Mexico.

The goal was a U.S. Gestapo. Senator Ervin described the espionage squad inside the White House as a “gestapo mentality.” J. Edgar Hoover refused any part of the gestapo, saying the secret Domestic Intelligence operations “denied our civil liberties.” The Inter-Agency Group (IAG) on Domestic Intelligence and Internal Security includes members from the FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, Counter-Intelligence agencies of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Police Departments.

Security Division of NASA: Headed by Werner von Braun. Nazi headquarters were moved to the Caribbean after World War II. The National Security Council, patterned after Hitler’s intelligence apparat, provided the framework inside the White House for political assassinations, Watergate “Plumbers” and election manipulations. Agents from military intelligence and the armed forces were concealed inside defense projects. The Syndicate worked with the Defense Industrial Security Command. Robert Sheridan, appointed by George McGovern to “investigate Watergate for the Democrats,” was the direct liaison to departments involved in the Kennedy assassination. The Watergate parallels are too great to not suspect a continuous working of this operation.28

The fascination with automation in part reflected the country’s mood in the immediate postwar period, including a solid ideological commitment to technological progress. Representatives of industry (along with their counterparts in science and engineering) captured this mood by championing automation as the next step in the development of new production machinery and American industrial prowess. These boosters quickly built up automation into “a new gospel of postwar economics,” lauding it as “a universal ideal” that would “revolutionize every area of industry.” 98 For example, the November 1946 issue of Fortune magazine focused on the prospects for “The Automatic Factory.” The issue included an article titled “Machines without Men” that envisioned a completely automated factory where virtually no human labor would be needed. 99 With visions of “transforming the entire manufacturing sector into a virtually labor-free enterprise,” factory owners in a range of industries began to introduce automation in the postwar period. 100 The auto industry moved with particular haste. After the massive wave of strikes in 1945–46, automakers seized on automation as a way to replace workers with machines. 101 As they converted back to civilian auto production after World War II, they took the opportunity to install new labor-saving automatic production equipment. The two largest automakers, Ford and General Motors, set the pace. General Motors introduced the first successful automated transfer line at its Buick engine plant in Flint in 1946 (shortly after a 113-day strike, the longest in the industry’s history). The next year Ford established an automation department (a Ford executive, Del S. Harder, is credited with coining the word “automation”). By October 1948 the department had approved $ 3 million in spending on 500 automated devices, with early company estimates predicting that these devices would result in a 20 percent productivity increase and the elimination of 1,000 jobs. Through the late 1940s and 1950s Ford led the way in what became known as “Detroit automation,” undertaking an expensive automation program, which it carried out in concert with the company’s plans to decentralize operations away from the city. A major component of this effort was the Ford plant in the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park, a $ 2 billion engine-making complex that attracted visitors from government, industry, and labor and became a national symbol of automation in the 1950s. 102

Ramsay had dubbed it Operation Dynamo, partly after the machine which hummed away in his cave providing him with electricity. But it was a well-chosen name, because somehow the nation would have to generate unprecedented energy if they were going to escape. He could look down from the Igloo that morning at Dover Harbour, packed with former cross-Channel ferries, begged, borrowed and stolen from other departments and commands, and mainly manned by civilian crews. There were navy destroyers, cargo ships, minesweepers and MTBs, plus a shabbier collection of Dutch and Belgian coasters and British fishing boats, plus ammunition and stores ships tied up ready for unloading, and four powerful tugs, Simla, Gondia, Roman and Lady Brassey fussing around the harbour mouth, ready to guide the big ships on their way.  Operation Dynamo was given the go-ahead a few minutes before 7pm, though Ramsay had been anticipating the order for some hours.

The United States government had no mechanism to punish China for forced abortions, so instead it pummeled UNFPA. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan reduced funding for it. Then George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush both eliminated U.S. funding for the agency. Representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, led the fight against UNFPA. He’s a good man who genuinely cared about Chinese women and was horrified by coerced abortions. He wasn’t trying to score cheap political points in criticizing UNFPA, since most New Jersey voters had never heard of the agency. This was an issue that Smith genuinely cared about. The reality, though, was that while the Chinese abuses were real, UNFPA was not a party to them. After giving the gold medal to Qian, the UN turned around and became an important brake on Chinese behavior. A State Department fact-finding mission sent to investigate by the George W. Bush administration reported back: “We find no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in the People’s Republic of China.” In the thirty-two counties in China where UNFPA operates pilot programs, it has reduced abortion rates by 40 percent, to a rate lower than that in the United States.

Finally there was the lingo of the squad room. Dispatcher terminology was terse and correct, with no exposition to help a listener understand it. The faithful came to know that an APB was an all-points bulletin, and running a car through DMV meant checking with the Department of Motor Vehicles. When officers were sent on a 211, a 484, a 459, a 390, a 415, or a 311, that meant robbery, theft, burglary, a drunk, disturbing the peace, or lewd conduct, the numbers corresponding to the real sections of the penal code. R&I meant Record and Identification; a suspect’s physical characteristics were recorded on his I-sheet. MO was method of operation. And so it went, the terms washing over a listener in a way that was strangely enhanced by not being explained and completely understood.

As I turned to the chapters dedicated to operations in North Vietnam, the ridiculous gave way to the absurd. I couldn’t discern whether the enemy was the North Vietnamese or the U.S. Navy. The enemy might just as easily have been the State Department or even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They all seemed to have a voice in the ROE, and the tone of the voice was seldom in favor of winning the war, defeating the enemy, or even ensuring the fighter pilot’s chances of survival.

The techniques used by the SAVAK, many borrowed from the Nazis and then passed along to the SAVAK by the CIA,10 were uniquely grisly and terrible. The SAVAK operated much like the Gestapo, entering a person’s home at night, hauling the person away and many times disappearing that person forever. A quite ominous State Department cable (from Wikileaks), dated March 7, 1975, describes such an event: NYMAN INFORMS THAT WHEN ARRESTED MAJID WAS AT HIS FAMILY HOME IN TEHRAN (118 AVENUE GHAANI—FORMERLY TIR). HIS FATHER HADI GHAVAM INFORMED DAUGHTER (MRS. NYMAN) THAT FIVE SAVAK MEN ENTERED HOME AT 10 P.M. AND TOOK AWAY MAJID AND FOUR OF HIS BOOKS. HE HAS NOT BEEN HEARD FROM SINCE. FATHER ALSO SAID FAIRLY LARGE NUMBER OF KARAJ STUDENTS ARRESTED AROUND SAME TIME.11 This is all the cable says. Most likely, Majid was taken to a prison and tortured, and very well could have died under torture as so many Iranians did at the hands of the SAVAK.

Within an organization, design opportunities can be found in the company’s name or brand, its mission statement, its corporate strategy (the overall objectives of the company), its business strategy (the department-level objectives that support the corporate strategy), or its operational strategy (project-level objectives).

Rich dad advised that Mike and I groom ourselves. Many corporations do the same thing. They find a young bright student just out of business school and begin grooming that person to someday take over the company. So these bright young employees do not specialize in one department. They are moved from department to department to learn all the aspects of business systems. The rich often groom their children or the children of others. By doing so, their children gain an overall knowledge of the operations of the business and how the various departments interrelate.

To deepen alignment across specialties, the Apple organizational structure was very different from that of most other firms. There were no product divisions that were their own profit centers. “We run one P&L for the company,” said operations head Tim Cook (who became CEO after Jobs’s death).8 Thus, divisions did not compete against each other for customers or worry about "cannibalization.” This proved a huge competitive advantage when Apple introduced the iPod and iTunes. Rival Sony, rich in assets that could have given Apple a run for its money, was undermined by their organization structure, which was divided into profit centers that drove focus on product lines but hampered collaboration across these lines. Sony’s music division and their consumer electronics division were never able to successfully join forces to compete against Apple. Conversely, at Apple, all departments could celebrate a sale, whether a consumer chose to download music through their iPod or iPhone, or send emails using an iPad or MacBook.

It was true, so she bought it and nodded her head. In Crystal Falls a fax was high-tech. We had one only because last time I was in Boise I stopped at an Office Depot and picked one up. My money, not department funds, which were non-existent. My salary and Janie's were about all the operating capital allotted law enforcement

I For Marcel Proust. - The son of well-to-do parents who, whether from talent or weakness, engages in a so-called intellectual profession, as an artist or a scholar, will have a particularly difficult time with those bearing the distasteful title of colleagues. It is not merely that his independence is envied, the seriousness of his intentions mistrusted, and that he is suspected of being a secret envoy of the establishE:d powers. Such suspicions, though betraying a deepseated resentment, would usually prove well-founded. But the real resistances lie elsewhere. The occupation with things of the mind has by now itself become 'practical', a business with strict division of labour, departments and restricted entry. The man of independent means who chooses it out of repugnance for the ignominy of earning money will not be disposed to acknowledge the fact. For this he is punished. He is not a 'professional', is ranked in the competitive hierarchy as a dilettante no matter how well he knows his subject, and must, if he wants to make a career, show himself even more resolutely blinkered than the most inveterate specialist. The urge to suspend the division of labour which, within certain limits, his economic situation enables him to satisfy, is thought particularly disreputable: it betrays a disinclination to sanction the operations imposed by society, and domineering competence permits no such idiosyncrasies. The departmentalization of mind is a means of abolishing mind where it is not exercised ex officio, under contract. It performs this task all the more reliably since anyone who repudiates the division of labour - if only by taking pleasure in his work - makes himself vulnerable by its standards in ways inseparable from elements of his superiority. Thus is order ensured: some have to play the game because they cannot otherwise live, and those who could live otherwise are kept out because they do not want to play the game. It is as if the class from which independent intellectuals have defected takes its revenge, by pressing its demands home in the very domain where the deserter seeks refuge.

His features were Middle Eastern, his eyes haunted but also defiant. They were all defiant, Gray had found. When he looked at someone like al-Omari, Gray couldn’t help but think of a Dostoyevsky creation, the displaced outsider, brooding, plotting and methodically stroking a weapon of anarchy. It was the face of a fanatic, of one possessed by a deranged evil. It was the same type of person who’d taken away forever the two people Gray had loved most in the world. Though al-Omari was thousands of miles away in a facility only a very few people even knew existed, the picture and sound were crystal clear thanks to the satellite downlink. Through his headset he asked al-Omari a question in English. The man promptly answered in Arabic and then smiled triumphantly. In flawless Arabic Gray said, “Mr. al-Omari, I am fluent in Arabic and can actually speak it better than you. I know that you lived in England for years and that you speak English better than you do Arabic. I strongly suggest that we communicate in that language so there is absolutely no misunderstanding between us.” Al-Omari’s smile faded, and he sat straighter in his chair. Gray explained his proposal. Al-Omari was to become a spy for the United States, infiltrating one of the deadliest terrorist organizations operating in the Middle East. The man promptly refused. Gray persisted and al-Omari refused yet again, adding that “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “There are currently ninety-three terrorist organizations in the world as recognized by the U.S. State Department, most of them originating in the Middle East,” Gray responded. “You have confirmed membership in at least three of them. In addition, you were found with forged passports, structural plans to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and bomb-making material. Now you’re going to work for us, or it will become distinctly unpleasant.” Al-Omari smiled and leaned toward the camera. “I was interrogated years ago in Jordan by your CIA and your military and your FBI, your so-called Tiger Teams. They sent females in wearing only their underwear. They wiped their menstrual blood on me, or at least what they called their menstrual blood, so I was unclean and could not perform my prayers. They rubbed their bodies against me, offered me sex if I talk. I say no to them and I am beaten afterward.” He sat back. “I have been threatened with rape, and they say I will get AIDS from it and die. I do not care. True followers of Muhammad do not fear death as you Christians do. It is your greatest weakness and will lead to your total destruction. Islam will triumph. It is written in the Qur’an. Islam will rule the world.

trouble than she’s worth … but all the same, Bagman ought to be trying to find her. Mr Crouch has been taking a personal interest – she worked in our department at one time, you know, and I think Mr Crouch was quite fond of her – but Bagman just keeps laughing and saying she probably misread the map and ended up in Australia instead of Albania. However,’ Percy heaved an impressive sigh, and took a deep swig of elderflower wine, ‘we’ve got quite enough on our plates at the Department of International Magical Co-operation without trying to find members of other departments too. As you know, we’ve got another big event to organise right after the World Cup.’ He cleared his throat significantly and looked down towards the end of the table where Harry, Ron and Hermione were sitting. ‘You know the one I’m talking about, Father.’ He raised his voice slightly. ‘The top-secret one.’ Ron rolled his eyes and muttered to Harry and Hermione, ‘He’s been trying to get us to ask what that event is ever since he started work.

The Department of Justice report makes compelling and disturbing reading. It lays bare a policing operation totally focused on the wrong mission and exercising little or no control over the means used to achieve the goals set for that mission.

He never apologized to us. He never apologized for putting us in that position. He lied out of both ends of his mouth, blaming the Secret Service while saying he wanted to be forthcoming but couldn’t—two lies in one! He and his staff created the Protective Function Privilege. He was the one who did the deed, committed the misconduct. He was the one who lied. Not only did he never apologize for costing the taxpayers, the Justice Department, the Secret Service, his staff, his constituents, or anyone for putting them through the ringer, endangering our careers, and our very lives. He wanted us to believe that he was sorry for embarrassing his family, Chelsea and Hillary. (I can understand about Chelsea.) In typical Billary fashion, they claimed they hadn’t created the problem. The media had, the Republicans, the lawyers—anyone but them. He was sorry, he said.

A Justice Department lawyer soon explained to me that his department technically hadn’t lied. Nobody technically lies in this game, it seems. The department didn’t release the tapes to the public, but it knew damn well that it was going to release all its evidence to Congress, and once Congress got its own hands on the evidence, it would release as much or as little of it as it pleased. Congress released our tapes and more than three thousand pages of the Starr investigation’s findings.

As I listened to his cunning, scripted message, I became even angrier. He never apologized to us. He never apologized for putting us in that position. He lied out of both ends of his mouth, blaming the Secret Service while saying he wanted to be forthcoming but couldn’t—two lies in one! He and his staff created the Protective Function Privilege. He was the one who did the deed, committed the misconduct. He was the one who lied. Not only did he never apologize for costing the taxpayers, the Justice Department, the Secret Service, his staff, his constituents, or anyone for putting them through the ringer, endangering our careers, and our very lives. He wanted us to believe that he was sorry for embarrassing his family, Chelsea and Hillary. (I can understand about Chelsea.)

the Treasury Department evoked the Presidential Protective Function Privilege knowing full well it wouldn’t work. I suspected it was a part of Mrs. Clinton’s “just get it done” leadership style: She didn’t care how, didn’t know if it would even work, and didn’t get personally involved. She prided herself on plausible deniability, which is how she and her husband gained the presidency by ducking their scandals in Arkansas.

Tripp somehow manipulated Monica into giving her the infamous blue dress. Nel and I hadn’t cleaned up everything. The president had “deposited” somewhere besides White House towels. The biggest security leak in history was the one that Monica wore into the White House and then strutted out with—right past us. There was no way to spin it. Either the president had mysteriously gone around the White House ejaculating on people’s clothing, or he and Monica had a taxpayer-funded affair for which he committed perjury. It also proved what I damn well knew, that Monica was easily manipulated, either by the likes of a higher-up like President Clinton or a lower-down like Linda Tripp. She had no business playing in a high-stakes environment within arm’s reach of intelligence of the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, and the Department of Defense. I mean, the spook shit that moved and was approved through the White House was the most sensitive intel in existence. Actionable intel is power. How could anyone in the Secret Service be expected to do his or her job if the Americans allowed people like the Clintons to assume national leadership? People still think the Lewinsky affair was one political party making a big deal over a little extra pie on the side; it wasn’t. What Starr proved was that the president had engaged in inappropriate sexually related workplace conduct with an intern/employee, as he had with other women. Some women, such as Juanita Broaddrick, even alleged he had assaulted them. He had zero integrity in this area, and that made everything he did suspect and untrustworthy. It revealed his real character. The president of the United States believed that he was above the law. He perjured himself and convinced others to perjure themselves to try to save his carefully crafted image. He created a spirit of corruption that infected the White House, the Secret Service, the whole government. Bill Clinton endangered us all by serving himself.

Stellar Wind blew past the Supreme Court on the authority of a dubious opinion sent to the White House the week that the Patriot Act became law. It came from John Yoo, a thirty-four-year-old lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel who had clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas. Yoo wrote that the Constitution’s protections against warrantless searches and seizures did not apply to military operations in the United States. The NSA was a military agency; Congress had authorized Bush to use military force; therefore he had the power to use the NSA against anyone anywhere in America. The

Officials in the state’s Department of Public Safety executed an operation that, at a stroke, seized more than $1.6 billion in drugs from organized crime. The operation was notable for its stealthiness. It was carried out without a single shot being fired, or a single person being hurt. In fact, no officers even had to get up from their desks, let alone draw their weapons. The billion-dollar bust was made when officials decided that instead of calculating the value of the drugs they seized at the border using wholesale prices, they would instead calculate them using much higher retail prices. With a single tweak to a spreadsheet, the value of drugs intercepted in the state shot up from $161 million to $1.8 billion. Conveniently, the tenfold upward revision came just a week before the department was due to hand in a performance review.

records in any form I request under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act within thirty days and for a reasonable handling and processing fee. If this material is not quickly forthcoming, I will file a complaint with the federal Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, which prosecutes HIPPA violations. Sincerely, 3. TO CHALLENGE OUTRAGEOUS CHARGES/BILLING ERRORS Dear Sirs or Madam: I’m writing to protest what I regard as excessive charges for my operation/hospitalization/procedure at your medical facility. The operation/hospitalization/procedure was billed to my insurer/me at $__________,__________. This total included several itemized charges that were well above norms for our nation and our region, such as a $__________,__________ charge for __________ and a $__________,__________ charge for __________. The Healthcare Bluebook says a “fair price” is $__________,__________ and $__________,__________. Likewise, my bill includes entries for treatments I simply did not receive, such as $__________ for __________ and $__________ for __________. Before sending in any payment, I’m requesting that your billing and coding department review my chart to revise the charges, or explain to me the size and the nature of such entries. I have been a loyal customer of your hospital for many years and have been happy with my excellent medical care. But if these billing issues are not resolved, I feel compelled to report them to the state attorney general/consumer protection agency, to investigate fraudulent or abusive billing practices. Sincerely,

Recession, advertising slow-downs, media spin-offs, procurement department investigations, client globalization initiatives, fee-based remuneration schemes and holding company ownership added significant complexity to ad agency operations by 1990. The simplicity of the Golden Age and the Creative Revolution was long gone, whether recognized or not.

Accountability for agency operations is fragmented. Each office in a network is a separate profit center. Each department in an office self-defines its missions. Creative heads focus on creativity; finance directors focus on headcounts, overhead and budgeted/ actual costs and profits; client heads manage the service that they provide to their ‘disorganized’ clients and keep them coming back for more. (Despite this there seem to be very few happy clients.) Managing

The whole place is now beginning to close down. At some of the booths the flares have been extinguished, and the occupants are busy packing up their wares and taking down their tents and wooden stalls. Huge vans have appeared upon the scene, and men in shirt sleeves are busily engaged in packing them. We accost a small dirty youth and ask him if the fair is moving. ‘We’ll be on the road in twa hours,’ he replies briefly. ‘What a life!’ ejaculates Tony. ‘Aye, it’s a fine life,’ echoes the boy. ‘Ye get seeing the wurrld in a fair.’ All mystery has departed from the fortune teller’s tent; it is merely a heap of dirty canvas. A large, fat woman with greasy black hair, and a red shawl pinned across her inadequately clad bosom, is dancing about with a flaming torch in her hand, directing operations in a shrill shrewish voice. ‘Guthrie’s sybil!’ says Tony sadly. ‘I’m afraid we’ve stayed too long at the party.’ ‘I think it is rather fun,’ I reply. ‘I like seeing things that I’m not meant to see

The scale of U.S. military operations is remarkable. The U.S. Department of Defense has (as of a 2014 inventory) 4,855 military facilities, of which 4,154 are in the United States; 114 are in overseas U.S. territories; and 587 are in forty-two foreign countries and foreign territories in all regions of the world.2 Not counted in this list are the secret facilities of the U.S. intelligence agencies. The cost of running these military operations and the wars they support is extraordinary, around $900 billion per year, or 5 percent of U.S. national income, when one adds the budgets of the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, homeland security, nuclear weapons programs in the Department of Energy, and veterans’ benefits. The $900 billion in annual spending is roughly one-quarter of all federal government outlays.

The operator refused point blank to turn over the key to Captain Comstock as directed by me, stating that his orders from the War Department were not to give it to anybody—the commanding general or any one else. I told him I would see whether he would or not. He said that if he did he would be punished. I told him if he did not he most certainly would be punished. Finally, seeing that punishment was certain if he refused longer to obey my order, and being somewhat remote (even if he was not protected altogether from the consequences of his disobedience to his orders) from the War Department, he yielded. When I returned from Knoxville I found quite a commotion. The operator had been reprimanded very severely and ordered to be relieved. I informed the Secretary of War, or his assistant secretary in charge of the telegraph, Stager, that the man could not be relieved, for he had only obeyed my orders. It was absolutely necessary for me to have the cipher, and the man would most certainly have been punished if he had not delivered it; that they would have to punish me if they punished anybody, or words to that effect.

The second-effort pulse of organization alignment work—to move down the road in the new direction—involves organizing choices that are more detailed, more process-oriented, and that involve managers and contributors who actually perform the work that needs to change. The scope narrows to individual functions, processes, departments, and teams. It is often led by third- and fourth-level leaders in their new seats but can be carried out at any level. Because the focus is tighter, we call this micro alignment. Because it is in this pulse that the day-to-day work routines, jobs, decision-making realities, information tools, reward systems, and other policies really take on new forms, another term that describes this level of alignment is operational alignment. Micro design is absolutely the real work of mid-level leaders because it is essentially innovative and operational in nature.

The casualty section received a curt order: “Insert the following entry70 in the next suitable casualty list ‘Tempy Captain, (Acting Major) William Martin, R.M.’ This should appear at the earliest possible moment.” But it was not so easy to slip a false death past the authorities. The Department of the Medical Director-General later demanded to know whether Major Martin had died in action and if so, how. The navy’s legal department wanted to know if the gallant major had left a will “and, if so, where was it?”71 Both departments were politely, but firmly, told to mind their own business.

Everyone knows that surgeons use instruments to operate and everyone sees on television, through the news and various other shows that medical technology is expanding by leaps and bounds with each passing year. Yet very few people realize that all this expensive new instrumentation needs to be cleaned and reprocessed following each and every surgery. And because of that, even fewer can fathom that there is an entire department that focuses on the cleaning and sterilization of surgical instruments. We are in effect an invisible department.