Fasbruner Letters

29 Jan 2014

My dear Fasbruner,

Under absolutely no conditions did I suggest that you exploit the discovery of ethical problems in other Services to merely deflect attention from your recent unpleasantness. That’s an amateur’s trick and, while it offers a brief distraction, it holds the potential that the generally incompetent do-goods may accidentally see the linkages that allow them to understand the scope of the problem. I am not sure whether you received my last letter before you embarked upon this tactic but cease immediately and commit your efforts to consuming the public mind with banal details. Remember, “designs well hidden are tediously revealed” and public scrutiny lasts but a few months (more likely weeks). Already, you are surely working on the next distracting crisis (aren’t you?). With spring budget defense rolling out soon there is an endless parade of bogeymen to capture the public mind.

Time and purpose are your friends. Elected officials flit from crisis to crisis and few prefer purposeful progress over dramatic displays of effort. Your goal is not to suppress truth; despite any length of effort, that tends to be a futile activity. Your goal is to control the tempo and intensity of the discourse. Investigative findings that could be shocking while the crisis is fresh are merely upsetting if the wound has had time to scab (or better, scar). I’ve seen you many times receive findings that contained some dangerously concentrated insights and – through brilliant staff work – neither make the finding go away nor deflect it but ensure the findings become so watered down that they are essentially harmless.

My favorite is watching your use of “critical” findings on draft reports that waste days and weeks of research time, and generally control the approval tempo such that only a watered down version can make the reporting deadline. In this way key principles, officials and the public believe they have been informed and look elsewhere for the root of the problem, not realizing they’ve just beheld some part of it. Let me not hear again about how you’re trying to deflect attention. Capture it, and feed it absolutely unsatisfying truths.

Your affectionate mentor,

Uncle Mic