The story of a proud and loyal U.S. spy that speaks to the sanctity of secrets, both governmental and personal…
by: Sean Ryan
I don’t remember when I heard that Grandfather used to work for the National Security Agency (NSA). I know now that he was an analyst during the 1950s. He’d gone into the Air Force, because he was going to be drafted, and he figured that he’d have more of a say about where he ended up if he went in voluntarily. My grandmother said that he didn’t want to be a soldier. By this, she meant, he didn’t want to be out there in the line of fire. What he wanted, as most people would, was to be behind a desk somewhere with paperwork to keep him busy. He got his wish.
We, the family, don’t fully know what he did in his time at NSA. The only person who might have some clue, about the details, as they are, is my grandmother. She worked at NSA, at the same time, as a secretary. The both of them, he as an analyst, and she a secretary, were thought, by the family, to perhaps know some things about the workings of the government that regular civilians do not.
I know that Grandfather had a top-secret clearance. I hear and read things that say that top-secret isn’t even the highest that the government has to offer. A friend of mine, who had a “cosmic” clearance, (look it up), in the Navy, told me that the government wants you to think that top-secret is the highest, but he assured me that it’s not.
Whatever the highest clearance is my grandfather was somewhere in the middle of all of this. He is dead now, and I can’t very well go and ask him about anything related to what he did, and my grandmother is rather tight-lipped. It’s funny to be in the car with her, while she’s driving, and broach the subject of Grampa at NSA. She starts to weave and bob, as it were, and her mind slows down considerably. She is usually right there, right quick, with words to match your questions, but about NSA she has got nothing to say.
The joke about NSA is that it stands for ‘No Such Agency’. That may very well be true, in the sense that it’s meant to be conveyed, but NSA, of course, is much more than a non-existent agency. It is the most powerful intelligence agency in this country, if not the world. I can’t give you facts and figures about budgets and number of employees, mostly, because that information is classified, but I can say that as far as NSA goes, and intelligence in general, Grampa was the reason that I got into spy thrillers by John le Carre, Graham Greene, Robert Littell, and others.
When you have a grandfather who worked in military intelligence, it makes you feel a connection to intelligence, real and imagined, and it can create a supercharged battery of excitement that propels you through endless pages of dense narrative about spies and what appears to be mostly normal lives. The spy books of Ian Fleming are notorious for events and personages which do not accurately represent a real spy. Of course, a real agent in the field will be trained to be unrecognizable and never garner the eye of suspicion. It’s these types of spies that Graham Greene and John le Carre wrote about. It was these “real spies” that I have been interested in.
I have done my fair share of readings of spy memoirs, not the least of which was one entitled, The Ultra Secret by F.W. Winterbotham. He was a British intelligence agent who wrote a history of intelligence that people thought gave away all the secrets.
The truth is that most people will not have much interest in the spy books of John le Carre. They would rather see the James Bond movies that are filled with endless shootouts, explosions and plenty of sex. That’s not to say that real spies don’t use sex as a tactic. It is called “sexpionage,” and, yes, it is a very real part of espionage.
I have heard some stories about espionage from people I think I can trust, but I would never repeat them here. I find that when one is trusted with something that they know is a secret, they must never revoke that trust. In daily life, when people tell us things, horrid opinions about people, they are telling us as a way to grow closer to us, but we know, or are expected to know, what we can and can’t pass on.
Having a top-secret clearance, one would think, means that certain details of your work are secret. It means that if you tell people what you know that you know you shouldn’t tell you are in trouble. In a certain sense, we all know this, and that is why my grandfather was just a man shrouded in mystery. He was never going to be one of those dying old men who told secrets about the existence of aliens on his deathbed because he knew that there was no way that his government could make him pay for his breach.
My grandfather, from what I could tell, respected his government and knew that most of what he had in life was due to the government. The places that the government placed him and the positions he was able to attain were not totally unrelated to his time in the Air Force and, later, NSA.
Why I have chosen to write about this topic, I must say, is that I find it intriguing that my grandfather worked for an intelligence agency and that I have since done some research into intelligence and found that secrecy is a complicated matter that is not easily explainable. What I mean is that my grandfather’s history made its way into my family through lore and legend, but that the actual details are so complex, or small parts of a complicated picture, that no amount of information will accurately and sufficiently describe just what goes on in the offices of NSA.
The truth is that people who want to know what goes on at CIA, NSA, FBI, and other agencies like, ATF, need only talk to agents who have worked for those places. Most of them, of course, are forthcoming with details as what they do is interesting, and, most of what they do, is not secret. Of course, the secrets come from details of operations and people under investigation. The secret and top-secret classification has to do with ongoing operations and details about so-called “National Security” which would be harmful to said security were certain details to get out.
We can all remember the Edward Snowden case and what that did to the country. In a very real way, it turned many people actively against their own government. I think that people suspected, for some time, that the government was spying on its own people, but the Snowden case, along with Wikileaks, showed that people really could no longer believe what their government told them.
I do not believe what the government says in official briefings and other press interviews. The reason one cannot believe what these people say is that they are mostly interested in keeping the people under the control and guiding hand of the government. On top of that, it would appear, without being insulting, that most people would not really be able to see the bigger picture of what is really going on behind the scenes, but that’s what I learned from Grampa.
In his own silent way, with the TV on, sitting next to his recliner, as he took his afternoon nap, I knew this man is regal. This man is a real gentleman. This man knows that the integrity of one’s life is all that matters. He had learned, early on, that if one cannot respect himself then he is doomed to a life of hell on earth. I had my troubles, early on and later in life, but I have come to understand the secret nature of life on this planet and what I have learned, I could compile into a top-secret dossier.
This dossier would have all the so-called knowledge that I think I have gleaned from hundreds of thousands of pages which I have read and written. I have come to understand the value of information, and I have come to respect that certain information is off limits. A sordid history of my secrets, the nitty-gritty that I keep to myself, would serve to ruin my self-image, and, again, that is another thing that I have come to learn about intelligence and spies. They adore their self-image and they do whatever it takes to keep it intact. Just as I would not want certain people to know certain secrets, others, I am sure, would be more forgiving of my breach of information than I would be. In my own mind, my secrets are part of my self-image, and I am content to keep them to myself. I am happy to keep the secrets I hold off of pieces of paper and off of thumb drives that are password protected.
The secrets and the agencies that hold them are all part of a nation’s mystique and identity. Just as my own personal secret history is something that I keep to myself, a nation, I believe, is entitled to secrets of their own. I know that much of this may seem controversial, as many people believe, rightly, that the government should serve the people and that the fact that our government keeps secrets from us is a problem. Of course, the umbrella that this secrecy is held under is called, national security and this is what has happened to international politics and life in this country. We all live in a national security state and we are all constipated with information and misinformation and that’s just the way that the governments of the world want it.
What the CIA has in their files, I am sure, is information that the people in the know believe is legitimate and trustworthy, but what you will find, often times, on the internet, is nothing more than conspiracy and blatant untruth, and when I talk about it, to be fair, I’m not really an insider either.
My grandfather was an insider to the whole intelligence network and he connected me to various other sources, simply through his influence and guiding hand, but I have to say that I could not imagine my life without having read the books and seen the programs that I’ve seen. I find the whole subject enormously fascinating, but, to a large degree, I think I’ve lived through this period of my life and I’m saying goodbye to it through this essay.
I said goodbye to my grandfather in May of 2015. He was a great man in every sense that I can imagine. He taught me things, often through a veil of silence, that I will never forget. What he had, more than anyone I can imagine, was an emanation of feeling or intrigue that came from his body and communicated the secrets to anyone who was sensitive to receive it. It was in this way, I have found, that having been around my grandfather, who was imbued with secrets, that I have really had the knowledge passed into me, but since it was secret, it is inaccessible. The secrets that he knew, from words and documents and codes, passed to me, through my grandfather’s secret frequency. I’m a different person than I would have been had he not worked for NSA.
I used to think about working for an intelligence agency, but then I got too old and I’d worn out my usefulness. I used to hear about people being recruited into intelligence while they were at university, and I secretly, in my own delusional way, used to think that it might happen to me. I thought I had certain qualifications the spooks needed. I wanted to be able to say to myself that I have been worthy of possessing the secrets of my country, but I already have them through my grandfather. I don’t know what they are, but they have changed me in ways that I have been able to notice. Of course, I pass on information to those I come into contact with and we all, eventually, hold a little piece of the greater secret force that is intelligence.
Nobody is completely devoid of secrets and secret knowledge. We all, through some cosmic force, hold insights and justifications that we cannot rightly explain, but which come to us, I believe, through the men and women whose lives have been spent in the service of a master called intelligence.
My story of intelligence and intrigue is over, for now, and I write this in the afternoon, in California, and I’m just one part of the cosmic wheel. I’ll likely never experience any real intelligence through reading of documents that are top-secret still, but I know that there are men and women, deep underground, high up in unmarked buildings, who are reading those things, and they are busy acquiring the information to assure that the proper signals are sent out in the world. We are all part of the bigger picture and those who take in the original secrets are those whose lives will forever be altered, by the simple realization that — they were the chosen few.
My grandfather was a chosen one and he changed my life through his capacity to understand and share with me that great understanding.
Sean Ryan lives with a diagnosed disability but the effects of it have morphed so many times he doesn’t even remember the bad days. He lives with a positive mental outlook and runs on high energy. He lives in San Diego, CA.
