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Contact Report

Annals of Intelligence

Volume 2

The Covert Comic

The following information is classified Third Eye Only.

There are fewer things too strange to happen, than things too strange not to.

The contact report is a contact sport. – contact report

Intelligence is far too important to be left to the intelligent.

Secret 135.406. The recruitment of a single asset begins with a thousand drinks.

Secrets have no morals, but not vice versa.

A covert op is only as effective as its worst operative. Therefore, the worse your worst operative, the more effective your covert operation.

Subject and I had philosophical differences. His philosophy was that he should continue breathing. – contact report

Remember, vast government conspiracies create jobs.

Secret 100. Never assume your briefing audience is less intelligent than you. Carefully vet and edit the invitation list to make sure.

'Open secret' isn't an oxymoron, it's a redundancy.

My view on CIA torture? It depends on who at CIA you're talking about torturing.

Subject told me not to be afraid, as she didn't bite.

Luckily I'd been briefed that she constricts and swallows whole. – contact report

Covert action is diplomacy carried to its logical contusion.

Secret 80916003. If it doesn't hurt when they snatch it, it isn't worth dangling.

When writing a contact report, the term 'intense vocalization' should be used in place of words like 'moan,' 'pant' and 'sigh.' - contact report guidelines

Never put off until tomorrow what you can schedule a series of monthly meetings to evolve a framework for a plan to address next year today.

My asset looked more dead than alive. Which, given that he was in fact dead, lent the scene a certain credibility. – contact report

I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories unless they include the swimsuit issue for free.

Secret 251170. Never let power go to your head. There are much better parts of you for power to go to.

The Key Judgments in this National Intelligence Estimate completely contradict each other. That said, this NIE is not without its flaws. –

Didn't see my therapist today. The shower cam was too foggy.

An unparalleled restorative is the best tonic.

Secret 3963. It's only a sucking chest wound if you're not the shooter.

Too much groundbreaking leaves nothing but dirt.

Secret 146250. A fool and his assets aren't soon parted.

I hate speaking in public, unless I'm the one talking.

FORTUNECOOKINT of the Week: The paper this fortune is printed on contains more nutrients than the cookie it came in.

Sometimes, what seems like an evil is really the good in disguise (which, if you think about it, is kind of evil of the good).

SpookSpeak. Zombieline n. A deadline that moves under its own power in search of live brains to consume. Also known as an undeadline.

I'm not necessarily saying polygraphers are bad people, I just feel that monographous relationships are healthier for everyone involved.

The foot is nobler than the shoe. But the shoe is nobler than the clown shoe.

We need a sanity check.

… Yep, still insane.

Life is like a kumquat: some parts are sweet, some parts are bitter, and its name sounds funny.

During my first TDY, my COS told me "Your contact reporting needs more glandularity."

I said "You mean granularity?"

He said "That too."

Whatever doesn't annoy me makes me nicer.

I never blink in the face of danger. I clear out long before danger gets that close.

Doing is one thing, saying is your cover.

Let the facts speak for themselves, and they'll usually plead the Fifth.

Misery loves the Company.

Who says you can't negotiate with terrorists? I just traded one for a deputy foreign minister and cash! – contact report

The low-hanging fruit acquires the fungal propagules.

I never read the whole Zen koan – I just skip ahead to the end to find out if the monk attained enlightenment.

Director's cut? Let's hope it's a major artery.

Secret 14001. Best practices, good enough does.

Lying in politics isn't as old as the hills; lying in politics created them.

By stripping it of natural moisturizers, ethnic cleansers leave your ethnicity dry, wrinkled and flaky.

What we need is a multidisciplinary approach to counterintelligence. The more frequently a CI officer gets paddled, the better.

We don't have to live in fear. We can move out to the suburbs and commute to fear instead.

Bishop Fulton Sheen

If not for his call to priesthood

The Bishop Fulton Sheen

Might have been a five-star general

Or even a famed drag queen

In a recent poll, 62% of CIA officers were willing to donate their bodies to science, if granted immunity from prosecution.

It bothers me when I hear people making negative comments about my religion. I worked hard to found that religion.

E = SL^L

Energy equals staff times the speed of life scared.

America has never lost a war. We just misplaced a couple temporarily.

In the part of CIA where I work, ‘safe house' and ‘one-time pad' mean the same thing.

One compromises much to remain uncompromising.

As thou stoneth the martyr, so thou martyreth the stone.

You can't lose face if you don't have one.

When is the lessons learned review on the lessons learned review?

All I need to recruit an asset is a bag full of money and a beautiful woman (and maybe something for that asset).

The Nobel Prize for Irony is won every year by Alfred Nobel.

The TSA confused a bottle of perfume with a hand grenade. Talk about an embarrassing mistake – everybody knows perfume is way more lethal.

Whenever I see a picture of an animal staring through cage bars, I always imagine it's sad because it can't let me out.

If each of us learned to want less, we would all have so much more ... which would be sad, because we wouldn't want it.

When I was a kid, a teacher wrote on my homework "You can't be serious." For years after that, I thought it was an official rule.

Subject executed a moving dead drop. It nearly brought me to tears. – contact report

To be naïve is to be alaïve.

The future is not googleable. I found that on Google.

Secret 18033-3. If the key to her heart is 128 bits or greater, you're probably wasting your time.

Aphorism: a type of joke featuring a setup in the form of a brief observation, followed by a punch line consisting of a random person's name.

That ‘If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention' sticker on my bumper isn't a political statement, it's a comment about my car.

Social media doesn't cause suicide, so much as articulate it.

Kids today want the world handed to them on a silver platter. Back when I was young, we expected nothing less than a platter made of gold.

There's a little bit of James Angleton in every CIA officer. Counterintelligence implants a sequence of Angleton's DNA in each employee when they EOD.

People who are needed by people who need people aren't the luckiest people in the world.

I know how twisters feel – I've touched down in trailer parks and wished I could do the exact same thing.

Question authority. Ask authority if it's lost weight or been working out recently, because it's really looking great.

Misogynist es tusogynist.

People will forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you made them veal. – Cooking with Maya Angelou

Secret 4.1.85921. Just because it's thrown into the burn bag doesn't mean it ends up in the furnace.

I used to wonder why somebody didn't do something for peace.

Then I realized I am somebody.

So now I know why somebody doesn't do something for peace.

She gives good head of state. – contact report

In cyber espionage, the cloak and the dagger are one and the same.

The latest technology, besides raising troubling ethical questions, can post those questions to multiple social media with a single click.

My problems are now in denial about me.

When the good die, their goodness does not perish with them, but instead continues on, to wander the earth undead, preying on the living.

"I thought you were the one," I told her sadly.

"You were close," replied Theone.

In an opposite universe, the wider you spread it, the thicker it gets. – Why We Couldn't Possibly Be Living in an Opposite Universe, Reason 90812192

Motivational Secret of the Week. There are no menial jobs. But you're welcome to check back next month.

The statement ‘We couldn't conceive of a miracle if one had never happened' is that miracle.

It never hurts to ask – you're dead before you finish the question.

Sometimes escape velocity is a negative number.

As long as you have two or fewer, your ducks are always in a row.

When opportunity NOCs, it makes no sound.

Redaction marks are the truth dressed in black burqa.

Successfully resisted a honeypot approach by Russian intelligence.

One lingering concern: how did the Russians find out I like honey? – contact report

I can pass any polygraph, as long as it's cut up into small enough bites.

Extraordinary Claims

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Extraordinary evidence requires extraordinary research

Extraordinary research requires extraordinary funding

Extraordinary funding requires extraordinary claims

Paradigm shift: does that come before swing shift or after?

You run away to join another circus.

I don't mind being a tool of my tools, as long as I'm kept well oiled.

Where I work, you're not considered an expert on global affairs until you've had at least one on every continent.

If living well is the best revenge, and revenge is a dish best served cold, living well must be ice cream!

I had a hidden agenda, but I forgot where I hid it.

Too bad for a lot of people that beauty isn't skin wide.

They say God always bats last. If I never had to play a road game, I bet I'd have a pretty good won-lost record too.

SpookSpeak. Irony n. That which results from any attempt to employ the word 'ironic' in a sentence.

Secret 241045. 'Talk is cheap' is talk.

Never be afraid to stand up for what you believe in. If people get angry, you can always pretend you were just standing up to stretch.

We'll know we've built a machine that's truly alive when it commits suicide.

If brevity is the soul of wit, why does it have more syllables?

The Law of Fads. By day 30 of any fad, a 102-year-old woman will have participated in it successfully, and a teenager will have died trying.

Restricted Rhymes

The heart of the man who said

'Bury my heart at Wounded Knee'

Is buried 6.7 miles from

The Dunkin' Donuts in Stonington, CT

When they say 'You can't legislate morality,' do they mean it's against the law?

A quote about Burundi is a quote about Burundi. But a quote about America is a quote about the quotee.

Fall seven times, stand up eight? In that order?

Don't touch me – I don't know where I've been.

First tour, huh?

If it fits in a frame, it isn't the big picture.

The expert crowd is adept at blending into a spy.

A double standard is an outrage. A single standard is an atrocity.

HUMINT is like truffles: it's expensive, to get it requires digging up dirt, and you spend most of your time working with pigs.

Attempted to delicately change the subject. But despite being soiled, subject loudly resisted. – contact report

I wouldn't object to being conscious during brain surgery, as long as someone told me where to cut.

To grab a redaction officer by the head and scribble all over his or her face with a black felt-tip marker isn't funny after a while. –

No easy answers? I know plenty of answers that'll do it on the first date.

We're all divorced from reality. The only question is whether you're paying alimony or receiving it.

Ask not what your country can do for you, lest your country get ideas.

Aim for the stars. Even if you miss, you may hit an executive producer.

Secret 72910141. Dangle perilously from the escarpment, or not at all.

Oh for a book and a shady nook? Oh for a shady bookie and some nookie.

Every great summer song was recorded the previous winter.

When media distorts the truth, it's only responding in kind.

Refutation of Baldy's Law

Baldy's Law: Some of it, plus the rest of it, is all of it.

1. Suppose some of it + the rest of it = all of it.

2. By Job's Rule¹, there's always more of it.

3. Accordingly: all of it – (some of it + the rest of it) > 0.

4. Adding some of it + the rest of it to both sides of the relation, we have:

All of it – (some of it + the rest of it) + (some of it + the rest of it) > some of it + the rest of it.

Or equivalently:

5. Some of it + the rest of it < all of it.

From which it follows that:

6. Some of it + the rest of it ≠ all of it.

Thus, for all values of it, it is never the case that some of it, plus the rest of it, is all of it.

__________

^{^[1]} Jb 15, 9

Is it true that if you have to ask, you'll never know? - Zen polygraph test

At CIA we're not above criticism. More like in a back alley on the other side of town.

'Scarface' is a redundancy.

Robot analysts?

... You mean up to now they weren't???

Intelligence is its own euphemism.

Kiss the girls and make them neither confirm nor deny.

The enemy of my enemy, and my enemy, are both on the payroll.

Plenty of honey, judging from the size of the pot. – contact report

All is not lost – so why the hell should it stop to ask for directions???

It's not he who laughs last, but he whose laugh lasts.

The lessons-never-learned review is way more useful.

Mistaken identity? As if every identity isn't a mistake.

In the final analysis, it's even money whether they'll use the phrase 'in the final analysis.'

There are no secrets. (TS/ORCON/NOFORN/NOCONTRACTOR)

Mirror, mirror on the wall, please point your cam at the shower stall. –

NOC, NOC, who isn't there?

If the CIA isn't a force for truth, what is it good for? (Truth, I mean, not the CIA.)

Nothing lasts forever. Nothing's that brief.

It's not what you know or who you know, it's how to look like you don't know anything.

The world is one big back room.

If you couldn't ask God just one question, what would it be?

I said I knew what I was doing. I never said I knew what would happen after I did it.

When laughing because you must not cry, can you please not make that snorting sound?

The meaning of life is .

… Redaction mark? What redaction mark?

The Covert Comic isn't like you. The Covert Comic is love you.