This is a companion piece to Chuck vs. the Journal. That piece contains Chuck's journal, which he was required to write by the government, to evaluate his mental well-being. This story contains the analysis of the journal. It won't make sense unless you've read the journal.
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Case #:
Date: Jan. 6, 2009
Report:
Abstract: Using civilians as intelligence assets or as agents has a checkered past. Often, an intelligence agency's greatest highs and lowest lows can be tracked to the mercurial mental state of untrained, undisciplined individuals. This is the final report in an on-going examination of a civilian asset who is presumed to be valuable.
Introduction: Our only interaction with the subject was through a series of journal entries. He was required to log at least 500 words daily for a month (31 days of December). The procedure provided us with a clearer view into the current mental state of the subject. This current state is explored in this work, from multiples angles. A set of recommendations, designed to increase the overall performance of the subject in conforming to agency expectations, is presented at the end of this report.
Methodology: The final report includes both our human observations, based on our experience and correlation with other journals, and an analysis of the word choice selection and the patterns that are detected. These provide two reasonably independent views of the psychological make-up and the current mental state of the subject. This method has proven successful in the past, in garnering additional value from subjects ranging from civilians to intelligence agents to government officials [1].
Final Human Observations: The subject continued to fixate on Agent Walker. Six of his final fifteen entries were solely dedicated to his thoughts and desires regarding her. This level of obsession with a single person is unhealthy and indicative of potentially serious issues. Some of the actions and words are consistent with an unrequited crush – fresh fascination, while others are somewhat consistent with an existing relationship. The conflict between the two viewpoints is also understood by the subject, but he appears to have not reconciled them.
The subject also was very consumed by concern about his future. He had multiple entries in which he was trying to figure out what he was going to do with his life. This is not an uncommon reaction shortly after a significant change or for individuals in mid-life. Given the fact that the change in status happened approximately 15 months ago and the age of the subject, we find this to be somewhat disturbing. We believe that this indicates that the subject has not yet adapted to the changes which brought him into contact with the agencies. This level of inflexibility and clinging to old ways is not good for individuals affiliated with espionage.
The subject's sanity and humanity are unquestionable. The variety of topics discussed and different literary forms makes the likelihood of artificial intelligence creating the reports negligible. We see no signs of schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, severe depression, or any other severe mental abnormality.
Word Choice Observations: At a mere 7% of the word choice, the subject uses "I" and "me" significantly less than most writers. This was the writer's most striking divergence from the norms we have developed in years of data accumulation. This, along with other factors, indicates that the subject has an exterior locus of control – that is, the subject tends to believe that factors outside of his control are responsible for positive and negative results in his life. This correlates to increased likelihood for depression and other mental illnesses. It has also proven to be an aspect of personality incompatible with undercover work.
Variety of word choice and grammatical composition of sentences has been shown to correlate to intelligence [2]. The data indicates the subject's IQ to be between 120 and 160. Given the ability to write 500-word entries which read naturally, we believe the upper end of that spectrum to be the better estimate. Eidetic memory was probably present in childhood and may still persist.
The subject's most frequent non-trivial word was "real" (73 instances). This word correlates with a desire to understand the situation, a compunction for solid facts on which to ground an understanding of the world, and is typically associated with engineers. This indicates an individual who will continue to experiment until his surroundings make sense, which may never happen. Experimentation in life is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a luxury that agents and others in life-and-death situations cannot afford.
One of the standard goals of the word choice observations work is to find other individuals with similar viewpoints or situations (as evidenced by phrasing and word choice) whose progress has been tracked over years. This normalization allows us to make estimates of the likely general trend which a subject will take in the future, by comparing the paths of similar subjects from the past. The current subject proved to be an outlier, however, and we cannot find enough matches sufficiently close to his values to justify making any predictions, based purely on word choice and phrasing. This is unfortunate, as this methodology has proven very successful in the past, albeit with large error margins [3]. In this particular case, the error margins grew so large as to completely distort any possible information which could be gleaned.
Recommendations: The subject has provided a fairly comprehensive picture of his strengths and weaknesses in his journal. Both of these could and should be used to encourage him to act in a manner commensurate with our expectations. He has provided us enough leverage that ordering most of his actions should be straightforward. The largest wildcard is Agent Walker.
From our perspective, we cannot adequately judge the relative worth of Agent Walker and the subject. If Agent Walker is more valuable, she should be immediately reassigned. While the odds of her being compromised are relatively small (no greater than 20%, we judge), the likelihood will increase with time, as the subject has vowed to make her his. A longer-than-normal psychological debrief and evaluation should be scheduled with her in this case.
If the subject is more valuable than Agent Walker, then we recommend a shift in duties and an increase in her level of interaction with the subject. A third agent could be assigned, to work with Agent Casey on the violent aspects of the job, while Agent Walker assumes more of a babysitting role with the subject. This will increase the safety of the subject, while not increasing his problems with the situation, as he will presumably feel joy at additional time with Agent Walker. His safety will be guaranteed, then, as he will not be tempted to risk his value trying to save Agent Walker. A danger of this is an increased likelihood of compromise of Agent Walker, through either disgust at the appearance of being benched and forced to babysit or through romantic interest in the subject.
Regardless, the subject should be outfitted with more than one tracking device. He is intelligent and aware of the standard tracking device which surely has been implanted in his watch. He will attempt to flee detection, at some point. His location should be constantly monitored, through remote electronic means of which he is unaware. This secondary method should be discrete and implanted into any jewelry or clothes that he consistently wears but would not suspect. One or more K733 tracking device(s) should be used for this purpose.
To minimize the likelihood of compromise, the subject's feelings of loyalty to the agency should be strengthened. The easiest way of doing this, while eliminating one source of leverage for others who might wish to utilize the subject, is to pay him. Financial concerns are evident throughout his writings and something as simple as payment would serve the dual purposes of limiting the efficacy of that tactic in compromising the subject and of increasing the subject's loyalty and cooperation. The method of payment should be circumspect. A blog with paid advertising would be inappropriate, as the subject does not seem to limit information flow well. Perhaps an ambiguous software consulting role (with heavy hints about gaming) would serve, additionally providing suitable excuses for absences during missions. This had the added benefit of helping make the subject's cover to family and friends more believable.
The strengthening of attachment should be accentuated by showing the subject the very real consequences of his actions. We recommend using any of the multiple levers he has provided (either agent, his family, his co-workers) as an example, whenever he next knowingly jeopardizes the success of a mission or his own safety. The mission must be carefully architected so that the subject will know it was his error that caused the danger and discomfort, but so that the agency is not implicated in the actual danger/discomfort. This should further encourage him to follow orders.
Additionally, the subject seems unaware of the rationale behind decisions. While agents and military officers are trained to accept orders without question, civilians generally like to understand the rationale behind certain decisions. This tendency is correlated with intelligence and should be especially pronounced in the subject. A few minutes of explanation, even reasons that have been explained before, will probably ease his mind and make him more pliable.
We also recommend limiting the damage a compromise would bring. The subject is susceptible to multiple compromises on multiple levels through many angles. Limiting the amount of sensitive information which he knows would limit the desire to make the compromise and the cost to the agency of a successful compromise. Given the level of paranoia around this project, this recommendation may be too late, but the problem should not be compounded by continuing to provide sensitive information to the subject.
Similarly, we can in no way recommend the subject for consideration as an intelligence agent. His numerous control levers, his inability to keep secrets, his locus of control, and a host of other factors argue against his capability in an agent's role. Were he requesting higher clearance, we would probably also recommend against that. His profile is simply too erratic to safely assign significant responsibility.
Finally, we recommend that the subject be encouraged to continue to write out and express his feelings and emotions. While many excellent agents do not appear to need this release, civilians generally do. He should be trained in how to securely create and subsequently to delete/destroy a single journal entry The mere effort of writing should be encouraged and will hopefully help continue to ground the subject. We believe real progress was shown in the month of entries. Without continued outlet, however, the probability of backsliding is high.
References:
[1] Foreman, Kazlowski. "Report on Efficacy of Journaling-Based Analysis of Word Selection and Grammar." Joint Agency Special Report. May, 2005.
[2] Gardner, Pardi. "Estimating Intelligence from Written Words and Grammar". Special commissioned study. September, 2003.
[3] Kazlowski. "Revised Method for Studying Subjects Without Interaction". NSA Brief. September, 1989.
[4] Subject's journal. December, 2008.
The weird numbers are MD5 hashes of the subject. So MD5("Chuck Bartowski") (in ASCII) yields the number 32e22… I honestly don't remember exactly which other report was which, but I know one was Roan Montgomery, one was Bryce Larkin, and one was George Bush. Thanks to all who attempted to solve the impossible riddle.
As always, R&R is appreciated.