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The spying trade
间谍这一行
Success by stealth
“隐”者为赢
What business executives can learn from intelligence officers
企业管理者所能从情报官身上学到的
Work Like a Spy: Business Tips From a Former CIA Officer. By J.C. Carleson.
书名：《像间谍一样工作：前 CIA 特工教你“生意经”》作者：J.C. Carleson
Trading Secrets: Spies and Intelligence in an Age of Terror. By Mark Huband.
书名：《行业秘密：恐怖时代的间谍和情报》作者：Mark Huband
SPIES are often wrongly presumed to work in a shadowy and exotic world. In fact they are more like unusually crafty bureaucrats than James Bond. Their skills would be quite handy for business executives, according to J.C. Carleson, a former CIA officer. In “Work Like a Spy”, her gripping layman's guide to spycraft, she shows how adopting an intelligence officer's mindset can make managers more efficient and better at handling people.
人们常常认为间谍这份工作神神秘秘、认为他们总是活动于异国他乡，其实这种想法是错误的。实际上，与詹姆斯-邦德相比，他们更像是狡诈非凡的官员。前CIA 特工J.C. Carleson认为，间谍所掌握的技巧对于企业管理者来说相当受用。在《像间谍一样工作》一书中，她为大众介绍了间谍所掌握的技能，内容十分引人入胜。她为我们讲述了运用情报官的思维方式是如何会让管理者更有效率、更好地管理人力资源的。
In her eight years undercover, Ms Carleson ran agents in hostile countries, getting them to risk their lives to steal secrets for America. Targeting and recruiting such people offers lessons in what might be called “strategic networking”: gaining information about customers and competitors. How do you make contact without seeming pushy? What is the hook, and what are the incentives? It turns out that offering consultancy fees and lavish entertainment rarely works; appealing to the ego is far more effective.
在她八年的卧底行动中，Carleson带领特工在敌国活动，她让手下冒着生命危险为美国窃取机密。这些特工人选的寻找过程和招募过程会给我们些许启示，这些启示在管理中可被叫做“战略性人脉网”，即了解有关顾客和竞争者的信息。如何在不显得莽撞的前提下与人沟通？引鱼上钩的“钩”是什么？鼓励对方进一步配合的措施是什么？结果证明：提供好处费或奢侈的款待很少能奏效；投其所好远远更加有效。
While steering clear of real secrets, Ms Carleson gives an accurate account of how intelligence officers operate. Her “strategic elicitation exercise”, in which she pushes readers to get random information from a stranger, is particularly well described.
尽管Carleson绕开了真正的秘笈不谈，但她准确地描述了情报官是怎么工作的。她对“战略导出练习”的描述尤其出色，在这种练习中，她迫使读者从陌生人那里获取任意信息。
In a trade in which deceit is a tool, knowing when to be honest is important. Ms Carleson describes the ideal CIA officer as a “Boy Scout with a secret dark side”. Her terse remarks on ethics sound convincing, not preachy. She explains, for example, why fiddling expenses leads to instant dismissal in the CIA: if you cheat your country out of money, you may betray its secrets too. Readers doing business in places where sleaze is endemic will find these points instructive. It is wise to work out in advance the red lines you and your company will not cross—and make sure everyone involved knows what they are.
在以欺骗为手段的间谍行业中，知道何时诚实很重要。Carleson把理想的中央情报局官描述为“表面老实，但有着不为人知的阴暗面”。她对伦理学所做的简洁评论听起来很有说服力，但并无说教意味。比如说，她解释了为什么在中央情报局，如果一个人在公司开支上做手脚，就会被立即开除—因为如果一个人骗了国家的钱，他就可能也会泄露国家的机密。如果你经商的地方欺诈行为泛滥，你就会感觉这些观点很有启发性。事先制定好你和你的公司不会超越的“红线”—并且确保所有规定涉及到的人知道这些“红线”是什么，才是明智的做法。
While Ms Carleson's book highlights the skills of individual intelligence officers, Mark Huband's “Trading Secrets” gives a glimpse of what spy agencies actually do and how they are evolving to combat new 21st-century threats. A former journalist who now runs a security consultancy, he argues that undercover agents are often most useful not when they are spying on a country's enemies, but when they are talking to them. He gives new details about the role that Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, commonly called MI6) played in opening channels of communication with the IRA in Northern Ireland, and with Colonel Qaddafi's regime in Libya.
Carleson的书突出了单个情报官的技能；至于间谍机构到底是干什么的、又是怎样参与到打击21世纪人们所面临的新威胁中的，Mark Huband所著的《行业秘密》让读者得以一窥其貌。曾经是一名记者的Mark Huband现在正经营一家安全咨询公司。他认为通常来说，卧底最有用的时候，不是他们暗中监视一个国家的敌人之时，而是他们与其交谈的时候。对于英国秘密情报局在与北爱尔兰的爱尔兰共和军和与利比亚的卡扎菲政权打开了信息交流的渠道中所起的作用，作者给出了新的细节。
Mr Huband also deals with fiascos, such as the political misuse of the sketchy intelligence available about Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes. Spies rarely provide solid answers, he says, but offer confusing bits of a jigsaw puzzle of unknown size and shape. At best, secret intelligence removes an element of surprise from foreign affairs, but it rarely makes it clear what to do.
Huband也会谈到失败的例子，像对于萨达姆的武器计划，情报人员得到的情报并不完全，结果这些情报被政府误用了。他说，间谍很少会提供可靠的答案，他们只会提供零零碎碎的令人困惑的信息，至于那些零零碎碎的信息所拼成的“拼图”有多大、是什么形状，谁也不知道。至多，秘密情报能让外事工作少遇到一些意料之外的事情，但很少会让人清楚该做什么。
The picture he paints is tantalisingly incomplete. His reporting, based on his years as a journalist, hops across decades and between fronts, chiefly in the “war on terror” . He concludes that spooks are “awash with more information, insight and knowledge than ever before”, but that the “intrinsic power” of intelligence has waned. One reason is that some of the finest spies are being lured away by the private sector. It greatly rewards those with a background in secret government service—and not only because spycraft has given them exceptional people skills.
Huband所描绘的图景并不完整，但很有诱惑力。他的报道基于他多年当记者的经历，内容跨越数十年、穿梭于不同的战线、主要集中在“反恐战争”方面。他得出的结论是：“现在的间谍所能获取的信息、所具备的洞察力和知识比以往任何时候都要多”，但是情报的“内在力量”已经衰减。原因之一是有些最出色的间谍被私营部门挖走了。私营部门会特别奖励那些有在秘密政府机构工作背景的人—不只是因为间谍工作赋予了他们超乎常人的与人相处的技巧。
