Dear Cryptonym,

Thank you for your note about the code meaning. It rings a bell. In my old age, I have forgotten what I have learned and often do not remember what I have not. In my misspent youth I was forced to read the Gallic wars in Latin, and Xenophon's invasion of Persia in Attic Greek. (anabasis and katabasis). I have forgotten that too. The only useful thing I have learned is to be humble. Life is balance.

My inclination is to be useful to society. I have a small ability to understand and to teach. On the other hand, people like us are sworn not to teach, but to keep our expertise secret. Was it Voltaire or Rousseau who said "genius is the ability to live within two extremes without losing your sanity." Life is balance.

I must be thickheaded, as I risk all this without pay. I see my job as a balance between the imperative of secrecy and the necessity of democracy. I doubt that I have it right, but here is how I see it.

My clients from the intelligence community (who pay me the magnificent sum of one dollar each to preserve the attorney client privilege) tell me important things. I then try to find open source material or to convince an appropriate agency to declassify those topics about which, in my bumbling opinion, the public must be taught.

Despite my strict adherence to the open source doctrine, I often fear that I might inadvertently do more harm than good. You know about mosaic intelligence, and how an informed person might use public pieces of the puzzle to wreck a secret advantage, even inadvertently. I live in fear that I might do some accidental harm. I live in doubt, in the terror of saying too much.

On the other hand, I suspect that if the cardinal sin of statesmanship is naivete, the mortal sin of intelligence is excessive secrecy. In historical terms, far more damage has been done by not sharing information, than in preserving compartmentalisation. Life is balance. I dance on the edge of the blade.

My rules are that I must never seek political advantage or personal profit. John Batchelor paid me the highest compliment when he said that I was "post-partisan." Giving my best judgment as to what must not be said, I then must speak, and say "Tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may." It is old school, but a good rule.

Yours sincerely,

WWW.John-Loftus.com

Postscript: Here is what the anonymous spy wrote:

"IMPDET" was used on embassy cable traffic originating from the Chief of Station.

It stood for "Impossible to determine". Generally used on a header to determine the declassification schedule.

"A man must do his duty and let other things trouble him not, because they are things without rhyme, or things without reason, or things that have rambled and know not the way."

Marcus Aurelius, Commander of the Legion