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WALKING_BACK

                                             December 1, 2011

  "Walking back the cat" is an
  interesting concept (if not a very
  engaging phrase) used by John le Carre
  in one of the later Smiley stories...

  At that point in the tale: British intelligence
  has been completely taken by suprise by the
  highly placed mole (ala the actual events with
  Kim Philby)...

  Everyone is stunned at the realization that
  everything they've been doing for years is
  fatally flawed, no one knows what direction to
  go... and George Smiley is once again
  (temporarily) put back in charge.

     And he immediately, calmly begins putting
     everyone to work on an analysis that
     he calls "walking back the cat".

     Now that they know how they were being
     manipulated, they can look over the
     history of events in a different light,
     and ask themselves why the opposition
     did what they did at various stages.

     What exactly do their actions imply?

     Does it have any present day significance?

            This idea might be applied to
            the study of the various
            political flacks our fair
            democracy is afflicted with.
                                               
            Once you've got someone pegged as          
            conduit from the enemy, can you infer      
            something about the enemy's strategy       
            from what the conduit has been saying?     
                                                       
         THE_ROVERS         BAD_SEED
                                         
              Can you send a message back up
              the conduit in an attempt at  
              manipulating the enemy?            
                                                 
                                                 
                                                
              The abyss gazes also...
              so be the abyss.


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