In a key scene, our hero narrowly avoids being arrested by the head of the CIA's Office of Security, who has taken over a crime scene investigation in the Capitol building. Unless I am misinformed, the Office of Security has -- in the real world -- no authority to arrest American citizens. The best description of the OS may be found in Jim Hougan's Watergate classic, Secret Agenda.
The reputation of the Office of Security tends to be that of a guard service staffed by gumshoes and technicians whose principal tasks are to conduct background investigations, enforce security regulations and protect the agency's property. In reality, however, the Office of Security is far more complex, and even mysterious. Its broad responsibilities -- to protect CIA assets, operations and personnel -- require it to maintain close liaison with any number of police departments, to operate wherever the agency has "assets," and to maintain more than 1.7 million security files on individuals who are, for one reason or another, legitimately or not, of interest to the CIA. The OS is also responsible for housing and guarding defectors, for helping to establish their bona fides, and for assisting in their debriefing. Similarly, it is the Office of Security that debriefs retiring agency employees and administers the sometimes embarrassing polygraph tests that are a part of the CIA's routine. By no means finally, the inviolability of all classified information within the domain of the CIA is ultimately the responsibility of the OS.Keep in mind that this book was published in 1984; undoubtedly, changes have occurred. But I still doubt that the OS chief can simply take over a murder/kidnapping investigation being handled by the Capitol Police, especially when the victim is not CIA. The OS has always maintained cordial relationships with the DC cops. In the book, the OS head is about as cordial as napalm.
By the very nature of its work, the Office of Security has domestic responsibilities that go far beyond those of any other CIA component. If, for example, a CIA officer falls afoul of the local police, it is the OS that will handle (or manipulate) the matter to ensure that no secrets are compromised. Similarly, if a CIA officer suffers a mental breakdown, it is the OS that will take charge of him, consult its list of approved psychiatrists and, if necessary, bundle the patient off to a CIA sanatorium. And, of course, if a staff member is suspected of leaking secrets, whether to the press or to the enemy (often no distinction is made between the two), is is the Office of Security that will investigate the matter, conduct physical surveillance and, if necessary, break into his home in order to install eavesdropping devices, which the Office of Security will then proceed to monitor.
Brown probably knows this stuff. We must grant an author the right to fudge the facts in order to make the gears of the plot keep turning.
Here, Kitty: Perhaps I may say a few words about one of the most charming legends ever told about our nation's capitol. Early on in The Lost Symbol, Robert Langdon contemplates the ghost lore surrounding the Capitol building. The list of specters includes "the most famous apparition of all, reported numerous times in the Capitol basement -- an ephemeral black cat that prowled the substructure’s eerie maze of narrow passageways and cubicles."
Brown leaves out the best part of the story. The cat is known as the Demon Cat -- DC for short. According to legend, it appears first as a normal-sized feline. Then, as it charges toward the onlooker (usually a janitor), it grows to the size of a saber-tooth, only to disappear just before contact. An appearance by DC is said to presage a great national tragedy. Alas, I know of no reports that he showed up for 9/11, for Dubya's ghastly peanut encounter, or for the unveiling of the Baucus plan. (In fact, the most recent DC report known to me occurred in the 1970s.)
Incidentally: Jim Hougan and his wife Carolyn -- jointly using the name "John Case" -- write thrillers that are just as compelling as Dan Brown's. Check 'em out!
4 comments:
Interesting information as to the Duties of the OC. I think you meant Pretzel encounter instead of Peanut encounter.
Hmmmmmm I have to say that I tried, desperately, to read "The Da Vinci Code" and found it impossible. The turgid prose, the abounding cliches, the poor tortured English language, how it suffered at Brown's hands! Excruciating, really. I don't know how anyone got through ten pages of it, let alone the whole six thousand (or whatever it was) pages.
And this isn't literary snobbism by any means, I read fun, trashy novels too, but even those I want to be well-written and entertaining. Brown was neither.
I love john case.
I didn't know they had any other books, other than The First Horseman(which I though was going to be a series) and The Genesis Code, which I found at a college book fair, and, hilariously, it had all the cuss words marked out for the first 30 pages! I guess it was some bothersome Christian, since my college was heavy in those. I just get the giggles trying to think what finally drove them away from the book. Was it the Opus Dei knockoff? Good thing they didn't stick around for the cloned Jesus.
Case is now only Jim Hougan, since Carolyn passed away some time back. Hard to believe that Secret Agenda is a quarter century old -- there are many choice bits in this classic non-fiction thriller, but one nearly throw-away vignette comes to mind. H tells the tale of the curious death of former CIA spook John Paisley, death in a small boat, by impossible suicide. Paisley , of course, had worked at some point for the center of post-war spook gravity, Jim Angleton. His departure bore striking similarities to the disappearance of William Colby, Angleton's great agency rival. A was dead by the time of Colby's passing, but there are many mansions etc.
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