A secret agent is another word for spy: a word that used to have an almost entirely negative connotation. Though he later changed his tune, at the beginning of World War Two no less a security fiend than J. Edgar Hoover himself found it impossible to trust any information imparted by a spy since he felt that anyone who worked in that capacity was untrustworthy by definition. It should be noted that prior to WW2 the U.S. did not have a spy network at all. The only time spies had been used were in the two wars fought on our own soil: the Revolutionary and the Civil wars. And even then the thinking was that to engage in espionage was to give away the moral high ground. Far from being any kind of honorable, knight in shining armor type of move, spying was considered to be a low, despicable act. One used spies only as an act of desperation. By a sort of gentleman's agreement on the rules of conduct that ought to govern nations at war it was tacitly understood that any one who was caught in the act of spying would be executed. Furthermore, there was a real concern that if your side won by using spies and word got out, then history would judge you and you would be found wanting in the eyes of your fellow man. (No kidding, the U.S. government used to actually care about such things.)

So how do you justify the explosion in peacetime of the very thing once understood as so morally repugnant that it was the one thing GUARANTEED to get you shot in wartime? Well, here's my thinking: Once our good buddy the Atomic Bomb made its debut in 1945 it was felt that since there might not be a future, then History As Judge could take a flying leap. As Barry McGuire sang in "Eve of Destruction:"

There'll be no one to save/with the world in a grave/take a look around ya boy/it's bound to scare ya boy

YAP! You said it, Barry! Our leaders took a look around 'em - and boy, were they scared! When World War II was still on we had to worry about Germany getting the bomb before we did - can't think too much about ethics in a situation like that! And after the war? "What if Russia gets an Atomic Bomb? Better beef up security! And what about China?" Needless to say, despite increased funding for the Secret Service, Russia and China both got the A-bomb. Oh well. Late forties/early fifties: "What if there are Communists in our government? Expand the Secret Service!" Then the whole drama repeated itself with the H-bomb. With the sixties came along all that "unrest" what with Vietnam War protest and the civil rights movement and everything so - who you gonna call? James Bond, Matt Helm, and the Man from U.N.C.L.E. - whose real life equivalents, far from being the romantic, dashing heroes we all know and love from the movies and TV, are basically a bunch of "don't rock the boat" bureaucrats who spend one-third of their time making tapes of people going to the bathroom, one third entering this "data," and one third of their time ordering lunch and getting drunk by the hotel pool. But, unfortunately, they're not just a bunch of drunken, overpaid voyeurs - they're a bunch of DANGEROUS, drunken, overpaid voyeurs. Given their access to all sorts of secret files, not to mention weapons from small arms to the deadliest biochemicals and the Devil only knows what else, a crisis is as likely as not to originate with the Secret Service because, to their mentality (Get Smart notwithstanding) More Chaos EQUALS More Control. After all, the more problems there are to deal with, the more measures have to be taken and, like a good gourmet meal at poolside, "measures" cost money.

Which brings me to the one and only verifiable statistic in this otherwise completely subjective article: By 1993 the CIA's budget was 28 billion dollars a year. That's a lotta sashimi, doc. In fact, upscale snacks & spirits aside, the figure represents the current status of the ever-growing snowball of justifications for every abuse of the security wing of our government after 55 years of virtually unchecked expansion - starting from the birth of the original terror that the A-bomb released into the world. Each new, floundering, numbskulled misuse of state power could be traced back to the moral shock which our leaders (the poor, panic stricken fools) experienced when they first realized they had let the dragon out of the box, or the demon out of the pit or the orangutan out of the broom closet, or whatever the phrase might be. That's if you want to be charitable. But here's the problem: such things as "fear of the atomic bomb" or "fear of terrorism" are literally bottomless, so if that kind of fear is setting your limits then that means that whatever "security" method you adopt to deal with that fear has no theoretical limit; and once you remove the "barrier" of individual rights then it has no actual limit. At which time you find yourself living in William Burroughs' nightmare America of the future: Annexia, Freeland, Interzone. A place where anybody's rights may be violated at any time, in the interest of "security." There's nothing wrong with being scared shitless, of course, but when you start letting your own fear dictate public policy...! Well, finally, you and me, our leaders and good ol' Jimmy Bondovich will be living in Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville - a place where, because of so many behind the scenes science fictionesque shenanegans and so many unseen violations of the human spirit people find it real difficult to achieve things like walking, thinking and that old popular pastime, breathing.

That's my take on the state of the free West circa right about now. All together now: "YOU'RE PARANOID!"

No, things really are that bad and getting worse, but don't worry - a spectacular Hero will save us all! Things are so weird at this point, the fact that he's completely imaginary shouldn't matter one bit. (That's a joke, dummy.)