..that was another lecture Bachmann would have dearly loved to give to
these swiftly risen managers of the post-9/11 boom market in
intelligence and allied trades... It warned them that however many of
the latest spies' wonder toys they had in their cupboards, however many
magic codes they broke and hot-signals chatter they listened to, and
brilliant deductions they pulled out of the ether regarding the enemy's
organizational structures, or lack of them, and internecine fights they
had, and however many tame journalists were vying to trade their
questionable gems of knowledge for slanted tip-offs and something for
the back pocket, in the end it was the spurned imam, the love-crossed
secret courier, the venal Pakistani defense scientist, the
middle-ranking Iranian military officer who's been passed over for
promotion, the lonely sleeper who can sleep alone no longer, who among
them provide the hard base of knowledge without which all the rest is
fodder for the truth benders, ideologues and politopaths who ruin the
earth.
-- John le Carre. A Most Wanted Man, (chapter 12) (2008)