Trailers, Secrets And Los Alamos

[Urbane Guerrilla]

As a former intelligence professional, I'd say contractor understanding of information security is still not uniformly good -- putting it mildly. We had this kind of problem with "The Falcon and the Snowman," too.

Fundamentally, security, OPSEC, and the like are accomplished by the integrity of the employees: even the security measures in place at NSA Fort George G. Meade could have been defeated by a determined effort to smuggle data out. For a time, anyway. But what's routine is something like the Vegas tagline -- what's in NSA, stays in NSA.

Intelligence work is like a specialized form of journalism: you assemble the information, organize it intelligibly -- but you're very much pickier about who your customers are.

You want secret keepers, you screen for personal integrity.