And now something on recruitment – Nicola Perugini wries in the London Review of Books:

“In a cafe in Ramallah recently, an interesting page in Arabic popped up on my computer while I was reading the news. ‘The chance of your life’, it said. There were scrolling photomontages of a man with an earpiece, an intelligence room, an aerial picture of a targeted assassination; wads of dollars; a handshake, between two piles of passports; a man wearing a hoodie, his face obscured, in a virtual tunnel of binary numbers. I carried on reading: Do you have any information? We can help you! [Call] 1-800-800-319 Who We Are Our responsibility towards the two peoples [Israelis and Palestinians] is to preserve security and safety. We want to ensure a life of dignity and freedom for all.
Our goal is to fight all forms of terrorism and violence, and to promote peace. We have considerable capabilities, most importantly our human resources.
What We Request You have the chance to earn a lot of money if you will provide us with information about: 1. Terrorist activities
2. Tunnels under borders
3. Planned attacks
4. Hostages and missing people.”

Read the article here.

See also here

The war against poverty is an elegant euphemism for spy agencies.
Once upon a time I met an author who insisted that many writers were spooks, but I’m afraid that the spook/author is a thing of the past. Nowadays the author is a businessman; to be a spook requires a certain amount of intelligence.
In times of democracy and business models authors, artists and politicians are willing to forfeit intelligence in order to be successful.