The Buzz

Spies Vs. Spies

Former CIA officer Michael Scheuer's Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror (Potomac Books, 2004)-a work highly critical of both the intelligence community and the Bush administration-sent the agency's publications review board into high gear last year rewriting the rules governing what CIA employees can and cannot publish. The board hasn't responded to queries about when revised regulations will take effect or exactly what they will say. But in May, a handful of CIA officers got a potential taste of things to come. The current crop of CIA officers-in-residence, who teach classes on national security policy at U.S. colleges and universities, were back at headquarters for a program meeting. Not only were they reminded not to say or write "anything detrimental to the interests of the agency," but they were told that they would have to submit their lecture notes for approval.

According to a source familiar with the meeting, the officers not only were appalled, but they might have convinced the CIA to back down. "It was pointed out that not only was this not in line with the academic freedom policies of universities, but that as soon as it ended up on a campus paper's front page or in The New York Times, there would effectively be no OIR program, because it wouldn't have any credibility and officers would be shown the door," says one of the officers, who asked to remain anonymous. "Their reaction was 'Oh,' like this hadn't occurred to them, and it seemed to drop."

"We went through almost the exact same thing in the mid-1980s," says a contractor who helped design the OIR program. "Apparently, no one there remembers we've been over this ground before."

A Yen for Private Mail

In Japan, they take postal reform to heart. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has campaigned for postal privatization during most of his political career. His proposal is making headway in parliament. And it got a lift from well-known European lingerie manufacturer Triumph International, which launched a special product just to promote the plan: the Post Privatization Total Surprise Bra.

Here in the United States, postal change is getting less support. Reform bills repeatedly fail to get through Congress. Measures were passed by the House Government Reform and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees this spring, but they are likely to languish, as did similar measures that were stalled last year by Bush administration opposition.

Meanwhile, the Japanese parliament is teetering on the brink of privatizing the country's postal system. Legislation to sell off the service passed by a narrow margin in the lower house of parliament July 5. At press time, it awaited action in the upper house. Koizumi said that if the current bills fail, he will dissolve parliament and force new elections.

What makes the plan risky and exceptionally attractive to the private sector is that Japan's postal service isn't only a mail delivery business. It's also a savings bank and insurance firm, holding more than $3 trillion in deposits-making it the world's largest financial institution.

Beginning in 2007, Koizumi's plan would separate the postal service into four businesses: mail delivery, banking, insurance and counter service at 25,000 post office branches. The proposal sent thousands of postal workers and wives of postmasters into the streets to demonstrate their opposition.