Roger Jorgensen is the head of the Electronic Arts Unit, and he aims to make the gamers rise up.
Gamers Rise Up
- Thread starter mouli
- Start date
- Post-1900
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 24
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 2
-
Statistics (2 threadmarks, 7.4k words)
User Total mouli 2
(I) Pride and Accomplishment
mouli
Terrible QM
- Location
- United States
AN: This is the timeline the gamers want 
U.S. Senate, 2023
Washington D.C.
I've always had mixed feelings about the Senate. I've known more than a few at the Agency who think they're a bunch of old farts telling us at the tip of the spear how to do our jobs, how to defend the democracy that they harp on and on about. There are others who are more dedicated to the ideal, who talk about how we all serve the Constitution and that Congress is part of it all. Those guys end up in upper management more often than not, I'll say that much. Me? I wound up in middle management, at the tippy-top of what's left of Central Intelligence's Cultural Operations units. Right as the game's begun to wind down, here in 2023. Fair's fair, mind – we all saw the way the wind was blowing a few years ago, as the game turned against us.
So now I'm here in front of Senate Intelligence, and asking them not to cut my budgets pretty please, because Cultural Ops is key to this new cold war that the Russians are fighting us on. Russians and Chinese, all over again just like Ike. Some things change, most stay the same, I guess.
Which is why I'm here watching some Senate staffer run through the security checklist for a confidential briefing room, where four Senators from the Intelligence Oversight Committee are staring at me like I'm some sort of demon from the depths of Moscow. Some gratefulness we at the Agency get here on Capitol Hill, after all we've done for them. This room with its mahogany paneling and its expensive marble floors, its long table with Senators behind it staring at me standing behind a lectern, none of that would be here if the Bear hadn't been pushed back in the 1980s. If the Russians hadn't pulled out of their puppets in the name of perestroika in the 1990s. A pity they didn't collapse, but that's the way the fat lady sings sometimes. Sometimes, the fat lady sings in Russian.
The Intel Committee probably also wishes they collapsed in the 1990s. Easier for all of us. Severe-faced Senator Feinstein there would've had her pet projects and her funding cuts a hell of a lot sooner if there wasn't a Soviet Union to fight, and she knows that. Even if it is just a Russian rump now, it's still a hell of a thing to face. Senator Hatch there, old and wrinkled, a frowning Mormon to the bone and happy to be the Agency's backer on the committee, wishing we were more 'godly' in our tactics. We might have been able to afford that luxury if we weren't facing the KGB. Senator number three is Senator Cotton, a real gamer of a man. The one unequivocal backer we have in Cultural Ops. Committed to the culture war against Communism, if a bit too direct in what he advocates. Four Senators from the Intel Committee here to hear my last appeal – I couldn't even get the full committee. All I did was get the attention of Senator number four, who I didn't want here. Marianne Williamson, the weirdo crystal woo-woo lady, the nutter who has the damn Scientologists in her back pocket. Why she's here I don't know and don't want to know. Eh. I've dealt with worse back when I did field ops, running contraband through Afghanistan into Soviet Central Asia in the 90s. I can deal with crystal lady.
Opening formalities take a while. I end up swearing on the Bible for my testimony, gets me some brownie points with Hatch even if it isn't the Book of Mormon. The initial stuff takes a while longer, Feinstein acting the lawyer and making me state all my damn details again. Name? Roger Jorgensen. Age? 49. Here for? Testifying about CIA Cultural Ops. And so on, and so forth. Courtroom rigamarole is more boring than unnerving for me by now, but the Senate likes to use it to intimidate by formality and dignity.
"Rank and position?" Feinstein glares at me here like I personally killed her dog or something. Given what our man in Los Angeles has been doing lately for us, she probably really does detest me. But Jeffrey's a good ally to have and a bad enemy, so we can't really dump him. So I smile and look the Senator in the eye as I remind myself that half the committee is in my back pocket, answering as smoothly and calmly as I can.
Poker face, Roger. "Deputy Director of Cultural Operations," is the first position, and the senior one since there's no director there anymore, "and Supervisor for the Electronic Arts Unit of Cultural Operations."
"Let's start with that, shall we?" Williamson kicks things off with a glare, the anger real under the nice-wine-mom mask she likes to wear. Her bunch has never liked Cultural Ops, thinks we're creepy. "For the record, Mr. Jorgensen, what is the purpose of Cultural Operations? What are you even doing, with Electronic Arts?" As though she doesn't know or she wants to use something here to cut the budget.
Not a hard answer to give, but leading up to something.
I get a small nod from Senator Cotton on the panel, he has my back. And besides, I can't play the questions too much here. Not in the Senate before Oversight. I take a long look at the ceiling and at the pantings behind the long table where the Senators sit, then answer. Familiar or not, I want this answer to seem like it takes thought. "Central Intelligence's Cultural Operations focus on undermining Communism by taking out its foundations. We bring the marketplace of ideas to Communist Russia, by smuggling in banned Western media and banned Western products. A good example of this is the fury raised by the Solzhenitsyn book that we managed to smuggle in a while back. We deal damage to their legitimacy, since the Soviets rely so much on control of the media and control of the police. They don't have freedom, even after glasnost and perestroika. We aim to educate the Soviet people so they take up freedom themselves. Not a shot fired, Senators."
"All well and good," says Dianne Feinstein as she looks down at a paper before her – notes, probably – and comes up with the follow-on for Williamson. "But what has that accomplished? Propaganda is propaganda, what has yours managed to do?"
"They did 1991." Cotton interrupts me and the rest of the table, staring down the rest of his panel. "The Agency has defended us covertly and done so well, Senators. And the culture war against Marxism is the tip of the spear in the cold war. The Agency managed to get the Soviet people to rise in 1991, it got the satellite states of the Warsaw Pact to revolt, it caused the retreat of Communism in Europe. All that, for the price of some books and jeans and letters. I think that's a bargain, frankly."
"We aren't denying that part of things, Tom." Hatch raises a hand, wheezing a little as he speaks. An old man, and right now only tepidly on-side. "But that was with actual culture for the culture war. Books, reports, unbiased news from Voice of America. That's different from what they're doing now. Tell us, Mr. Jorgensen, about these electronic arts of yours."
Orrin Hatch is the definition of the term 'old fart', bless his heart. Dianne Feinstein isn't much better. As far as they're concerned, games are things done on the playground and with little wooden figurines, probably in some log cabin up on the Great Lakes or something. Or in the case of Hatch, probably at around the time Washington camped at Valley Forge. Me? I was born in 1988, and I remember better things than they do. Not hard to do when you don't have dementia. "Well, Senators, those are the things that powered the internet revolution. People spend more time on electronic entertainment than they do on books, on movies and on listening to Voice of America. That entertainment is often story-driven, and often carries overtones of national values. In the case of the Soviets, that means it's become a medium of propaganda. Look at the Soviet kids who grow up driving video game tanks in multi-player battles, for instance."
"And we have our own games, I know that much." Feinstein's voice is sardonic and sharp, her pen tapping a soft rhythm on the table as she speaks, "We've had plenty of discussions about violent video games on Capitol Hill, Supervisor. So what stops us from just selling games to the Soviets? Why is the CIA even involved here?'
"Well, Senator, a lot of games tend to be developed by those who might not have the right view of the United States Government and the right sort of views for selling ideas to the Russians." I shrug a little, smiling politely on the outside and wishing I didn't have to make this point again on the inside. But just like old man Tenet used to say back when he sold arms to Ismail Khan in the 1990s, sometimes you have to spoonfeed the political leadership. So that's what I do, leaning on the polished wood of the lectern and taking a sip of water before speaking. Nice and cool, refreshing and a distraction from the panel for a blessed moment. It helps with the sweat beading my neck and forehead, too. "A good analogy here is if we let the pinkos in the Weather Underground take part in sending literature to the USSR. We have only so much throughput to get things direct and uncensored to the Russians, and we're not wasting that on things that don't reflect American values. Like those violent video games, Senator."
Tom Cotton grunts again, wiping his pasty face with a handkerchief in the cold AC air of the Senate briefing room. His eyes are like a shark's just like the time he took five grand off me in Vegas and blew it all on hookers. Not that I'd be telling the press about that little Agency junket. "He's right. We're in a culture war here and that means measures that the Democrats might find difficult. You have to see this from an American standpoint."
That, predictably enough, makes the Democrats' hackles rise. Feinstein raps the table for order, Williamson glares at the two Republicans and looks as if she's going to curse them with crystals, and Orrin Hatch decides that further questions are the better part of valor. Poor bastard. "So tell me, ah," Takes a moment to check his sheets for my name again, why does Utah elect him I do not know, "Mr Jorgensen, what sort of restrictions does the CIA put on game development and why does the Cultural Operations Unit spend most of its cash domestically if they're working to get the right sort of ideas to the Soviets? Surely you'll be smuggling this stuff over the Iron Curtain."
The Iron Curtain fell in 1991, and right now there's a whole shitload of 'neutral' states in between Russia and the EU. Between the USSR and the EU, that is. Not as if the Baltics made it free. Hatch is an old fart, maybe he didn't get that memo from forty years ago. "Well, Senator, we primarily do delivery over the internet to the Russians. Support for that sort of thing is done in the States, finding ways around their firewalls and national internet boundaries. It's easier to send games that way than to bribe some Pashtun to take a Toyota over the Uzbek border." And boy, do I know that well. Sometimes I still have the runs from what the driver swore was chicken. "Besides that, the Agency works to incentivize and aid our partners in the private sector, and that represents a substantial chunk of our funding. The same way the Agency worked to fund a great deal of the cultural sphere during the high Cold War." Of course, now that they cut that funding, we have more games and less magazines coming out. Not my problem, though, that's one that the politicians can haggle over.
"But now the Russians have opened up a great deal more," says Williamson, now civil and polite and probably suppressing the murderous rage the way most wine moms her age do, "They're working with us on open markets, on climate change, on lots of things. They've recognized national identities in the Baltic States, they allow language learning in Central Asia. They're embracing freedom, and that means we already won, right? After all those students protested in Moscow in 1991, Supervisor Jorgensen, I don't see what more can be done. So why are you here, appealing for a unit that's accomplished its objective?" All compassionate and warm and attempting to congratulate me on firing myself. Damn, this woman's good.
Well, here we go. Four Senators, one on my side, two on the other side and Orrin Hatch only a possible because I'm not sure how much he'll even remember. At least this is just a grilling by some of the committee, instead of the entire damn body staring me in the face. Deep breath, Roger, deep breath and complete confidence. Just like Afghanistan. "Senators, I'm here because the CIA faces the greatest threat to the American moral fabric since the pornography scares of the early 2000s. Our funding has been cut and redirected to the China theater, where Cultural Operations has been shut out entirely. The belief seems to be that since the Russians wear our blue jeans and listen to our music, since the Chinese come here to study and buy our luxuries, that we won the cultural side of the Cold War. I can understand that view, superficial thought it is. But with all due respect, Senators, that view is wrong."
"A bold statement to make, considering the way things are." Just as bold as yours, Senator Williamson, talking about crystal healing on CNN. Or maybe things are easier where you get elected. "Elaborate. How are we, as you are saying, losing the culture war with the Communists?" That last word is drawn out mockingly, and her eyes dare me to say one thing wrong. This senator has it in for me, I'll say it that much.
"Look at kids these days on those gotcha games of theirs. They're all gambling their lives away on that stuff, on those scantily clad pictures no less. And all that funding headed straight to the KGB." Tom Cotton means well, bless his incredibly small shriveled heart, but this is already a touchy point. "That alone should tell us that we need to step things up."
"And what? You want an American gambling game?" Hatch doesn't like that, but then he wouldn't. "No, we can't have that either. We have standards here, even if the Soviets don't." Nods all 'round, even from Williamson and Feinstein. Maybe their kids played those games, blew a few hundred on them. That might've done it.
That just makes things easier. "We have to make something that'd pull our children off those games, Senator. That means some sort of game that'd be good enough to compete, and that means making one with government support. Unless you want some pinko European game company dominating the American market and cutting off Cultural Ops?" The question isn't something that I'm supposed to do, and I get both glares and a gaveling on the Senators' panel table from the chair – Feinstein.
"We will be asking the questions, Supervisor." Her words are crisp and cold, and I already gave up any thought of reaching her directly. But Feinstein can't afford to be too weak on national security, and there's my in with her – a weak one, but one that's all I've got. No, the uncertainty here is from Orrin Hatch. And from the way he nodded along when I talked about the Europeans, he's onboard. Cotton is already. Now, hopefully, it's a game of standing my ground and making sure I don't fuck up the remaining questions. There's some whispering from the panel, Hatch asking Williamson something under his breath, and I take the chance to loosen my collar a little and drink some more water. I'm sweating here, despite the AC. Goddamn suits, too many layers for indoors.
Marianne Williamson decides to throw me a softball, or maybe from the grimace that she gives me, Hatch has convinced her to do it. Either way, that thin, high voice is one of the better things I've heard recently. "So what you're saying is that we're losing here and you want more money to put us back ahead. Why should we fund Cultural Ops at all, then? Why not fold your organization and personnel into the State Department's foreign outreach arm? Why bother with the Agency? It isn't as if you're generating intelligence, you're spreading propaganda."
"The Agency might be more than a mill for national security estimates every quarter, Supervisor, but we have yet to see that. After the last few fuckups in North Korea and the fact that you somehow leaked the entire cyber-intrusion toolkit five years ago." Feinstein is every bit the iron-hard bitch that a senior Senator from California and a woman in politics has to be, and goddamn if she doesn't know where to stick the needle.
It stings. We lost God knows how many good men when that nutter Snowden decided that the best thing to do was to leak the hacking tools we used for onsite penetration, the same kit developed by the NSA. We lost God knows how much prestige when the North Korean intrusions were found and the agents executed. And this woman brings it up here, in a budgetary inquiry session. It takes me a moment to clear my throat, and my voice is as carefully controlled as I can make it while answering. "With all due respect, Senator, there is an ongoing inquiry into those incidents that I would ask the panel not prejudice." We were already raked over the coals for that, and you want more? "The mentioned incidents were not from my division or department, and I would note that they are not germane to the Cultural Operations Unit. Or its objectives."
"Not germane?" Orrin Hatch knows a dodge when he sees it, and that one was a dodge. This time, he won't give me a pass. The Snowden incident made him see red, made half the Republicans see red. Not that it's very hard to do that, just mention the word 'socialism'. They'll see more red in the air than there is at a Crayola factory. "The same procedures followed for covert intrusion are used by the Cultural Operations Unit. Or if not – if all you do is by this 'internet' and all you're doing is picking winners in the private sector, why not cut out the middleman? Why shouldn't we just hand the cash to Big Tech and get the government out of business?"
Because, Senator, that business is propaganda and intel. That isn't something that the private sector does well. But what do I know? I shake my head at Hatch, disagreeing politely and not voicing what I'm thinking. "Well, Senator, that's because this is a long war. It's been going on since before there was a Silicon Valley, and it'll be there for a while yet. We just beat back the Bear, but it isn't gone. And then there's the Chinese on top of that." The red-baiting won't win me points with the Democratic side of the aisle, but at this point I don't need that. I need Orrin Hatch. And that means painting everything redder than a Mormon's blushing at a whorehouse. "This side of things, the Electronic Arts side of things, started in 1995 when our man in Kabul stabilized things enough for us to send goods through the Kazakhstan. And since then we've done a great deal. Our objective is still in sight, Senators, and the good work done by the rest of Cultural Ops aids us further."
"Your final goal, the cultural change in Russia?" Tom Cotton of all people steeples his hands on the table and looks down at me as if he's some sort of mastermind. Mastermind, he is not, sadly – otherwise he'd be much more free of STDs. "I mean, that's a worthy goal and all, but is that even achievable? Is it cost-effective? What's your view on it, Supervisor?" He wants to have raised some question and sounded smart, so he asks this of all things. I like Tom, bless his heart, but God he needs some brains. Handsome face, good white-boy looks, brain smaller than a lobbyist's conscience.
Still a Senator, though. "Well, Senator," I say, talking more to the office than the man, "Before I begin with the timeline of accomplishments of our unit, I'll do the bottom line up front. What we aim to achieve, as stated earlier, and in more detail." I get a nod and a wave of the hand that says get on with it from Feinstein, and that gives me the permission I'd need. "We want the youth of Russia believing in freedom and liberty and American values. It was the youth of the 1960s who powered the revolutions in the 1990s, who made things so much more liberal in the Soviet Union in 1991 when they pulled back from the Warsaw Pact. We want another such shift, this time more explicitly democratic and if possible capitalist. The USSR is ripe for that now that the bulk of its puppets are gone and its constituent republics more loosely bound to the center."
"You want to take advantage of the Gorbachev reforms."
Right on the money, crystal lady. Williamson can be perceptive sometimes. "Indeed, ma'am. The Gorbachev reforms targeted the economy, and part of that was the cutting of aid from Moscow. That made the outlying republics far poorer and the trade made was more self-government. That, and the later devolution of power in terms of municipal government – the local Party cadre empowerment – made it so that we have a ready base to tap outside Moscow. The Internet is global, after all." A moment here to pause for effect, since they already know my pitch – like any salesman, I have to say it anyways. And I aim to say it well. "Senator, just as Western art and literature and movies made Moscow rise and made the Soviet youth change their nation, we aim to do the same in the length and breadth of the Soviet Union. With the right resources, Senators, the Electronic Arts Unit aims to make the gamers rise up."
AN: Feedback welcome. Other projects moving very slowly. Memes are rewarded, discussion generates more memes.
Gamers Rise Up: A Shitpost In Five Parts
(I) Pride And Accomplishment
(I) Pride And Accomplishment
U.S. Senate, 2023
Washington D.C.
I've always had mixed feelings about the Senate. I've known more than a few at the Agency who think they're a bunch of old farts telling us at the tip of the spear how to do our jobs, how to defend the democracy that they harp on and on about. There are others who are more dedicated to the ideal, who talk about how we all serve the Constitution and that Congress is part of it all. Those guys end up in upper management more often than not, I'll say that much. Me? I wound up in middle management, at the tippy-top of what's left of Central Intelligence's Cultural Operations units. Right as the game's begun to wind down, here in 2023. Fair's fair, mind – we all saw the way the wind was blowing a few years ago, as the game turned against us.
So now I'm here in front of Senate Intelligence, and asking them not to cut my budgets pretty please, because Cultural Ops is key to this new cold war that the Russians are fighting us on. Russians and Chinese, all over again just like Ike. Some things change, most stay the same, I guess.
Which is why I'm here watching some Senate staffer run through the security checklist for a confidential briefing room, where four Senators from the Intelligence Oversight Committee are staring at me like I'm some sort of demon from the depths of Moscow. Some gratefulness we at the Agency get here on Capitol Hill, after all we've done for them. This room with its mahogany paneling and its expensive marble floors, its long table with Senators behind it staring at me standing behind a lectern, none of that would be here if the Bear hadn't been pushed back in the 1980s. If the Russians hadn't pulled out of their puppets in the name of perestroika in the 1990s. A pity they didn't collapse, but that's the way the fat lady sings sometimes. Sometimes, the fat lady sings in Russian.
The Intel Committee probably also wishes they collapsed in the 1990s. Easier for all of us. Severe-faced Senator Feinstein there would've had her pet projects and her funding cuts a hell of a lot sooner if there wasn't a Soviet Union to fight, and she knows that. Even if it is just a Russian rump now, it's still a hell of a thing to face. Senator Hatch there, old and wrinkled, a frowning Mormon to the bone and happy to be the Agency's backer on the committee, wishing we were more 'godly' in our tactics. We might have been able to afford that luxury if we weren't facing the KGB. Senator number three is Senator Cotton, a real gamer of a man. The one unequivocal backer we have in Cultural Ops. Committed to the culture war against Communism, if a bit too direct in what he advocates. Four Senators from the Intel Committee here to hear my last appeal – I couldn't even get the full committee. All I did was get the attention of Senator number four, who I didn't want here. Marianne Williamson, the weirdo crystal woo-woo lady, the nutter who has the damn Scientologists in her back pocket. Why she's here I don't know and don't want to know. Eh. I've dealt with worse back when I did field ops, running contraband through Afghanistan into Soviet Central Asia in the 90s. I can deal with crystal lady.
Opening formalities take a while. I end up swearing on the Bible for my testimony, gets me some brownie points with Hatch even if it isn't the Book of Mormon. The initial stuff takes a while longer, Feinstein acting the lawyer and making me state all my damn details again. Name? Roger Jorgensen. Age? 49. Here for? Testifying about CIA Cultural Ops. And so on, and so forth. Courtroom rigamarole is more boring than unnerving for me by now, but the Senate likes to use it to intimidate by formality and dignity.
"Rank and position?" Feinstein glares at me here like I personally killed her dog or something. Given what our man in Los Angeles has been doing lately for us, she probably really does detest me. But Jeffrey's a good ally to have and a bad enemy, so we can't really dump him. So I smile and look the Senator in the eye as I remind myself that half the committee is in my back pocket, answering as smoothly and calmly as I can.
Poker face, Roger. "Deputy Director of Cultural Operations," is the first position, and the senior one since there's no director there anymore, "and Supervisor for the Electronic Arts Unit of Cultural Operations."
"Let's start with that, shall we?" Williamson kicks things off with a glare, the anger real under the nice-wine-mom mask she likes to wear. Her bunch has never liked Cultural Ops, thinks we're creepy. "For the record, Mr. Jorgensen, what is the purpose of Cultural Operations? What are you even doing, with Electronic Arts?" As though she doesn't know or she wants to use something here to cut the budget.
Not a hard answer to give, but leading up to something.
I get a small nod from Senator Cotton on the panel, he has my back. And besides, I can't play the questions too much here. Not in the Senate before Oversight. I take a long look at the ceiling and at the pantings behind the long table where the Senators sit, then answer. Familiar or not, I want this answer to seem like it takes thought. "Central Intelligence's Cultural Operations focus on undermining Communism by taking out its foundations. We bring the marketplace of ideas to Communist Russia, by smuggling in banned Western media and banned Western products. A good example of this is the fury raised by the Solzhenitsyn book that we managed to smuggle in a while back. We deal damage to their legitimacy, since the Soviets rely so much on control of the media and control of the police. They don't have freedom, even after glasnost and perestroika. We aim to educate the Soviet people so they take up freedom themselves. Not a shot fired, Senators."
"All well and good," says Dianne Feinstein as she looks down at a paper before her – notes, probably – and comes up with the follow-on for Williamson. "But what has that accomplished? Propaganda is propaganda, what has yours managed to do?"
"They did 1991." Cotton interrupts me and the rest of the table, staring down the rest of his panel. "The Agency has defended us covertly and done so well, Senators. And the culture war against Marxism is the tip of the spear in the cold war. The Agency managed to get the Soviet people to rise in 1991, it got the satellite states of the Warsaw Pact to revolt, it caused the retreat of Communism in Europe. All that, for the price of some books and jeans and letters. I think that's a bargain, frankly."
"We aren't denying that part of things, Tom." Hatch raises a hand, wheezing a little as he speaks. An old man, and right now only tepidly on-side. "But that was with actual culture for the culture war. Books, reports, unbiased news from Voice of America. That's different from what they're doing now. Tell us, Mr. Jorgensen, about these electronic arts of yours."
Orrin Hatch is the definition of the term 'old fart', bless his heart. Dianne Feinstein isn't much better. As far as they're concerned, games are things done on the playground and with little wooden figurines, probably in some log cabin up on the Great Lakes or something. Or in the case of Hatch, probably at around the time Washington camped at Valley Forge. Me? I was born in 1988, and I remember better things than they do. Not hard to do when you don't have dementia. "Well, Senators, those are the things that powered the internet revolution. People spend more time on electronic entertainment than they do on books, on movies and on listening to Voice of America. That entertainment is often story-driven, and often carries overtones of national values. In the case of the Soviets, that means it's become a medium of propaganda. Look at the Soviet kids who grow up driving video game tanks in multi-player battles, for instance."
"And we have our own games, I know that much." Feinstein's voice is sardonic and sharp, her pen tapping a soft rhythm on the table as she speaks, "We've had plenty of discussions about violent video games on Capitol Hill, Supervisor. So what stops us from just selling games to the Soviets? Why is the CIA even involved here?'
"Well, Senator, a lot of games tend to be developed by those who might not have the right view of the United States Government and the right sort of views for selling ideas to the Russians." I shrug a little, smiling politely on the outside and wishing I didn't have to make this point again on the inside. But just like old man Tenet used to say back when he sold arms to Ismail Khan in the 1990s, sometimes you have to spoonfeed the political leadership. So that's what I do, leaning on the polished wood of the lectern and taking a sip of water before speaking. Nice and cool, refreshing and a distraction from the panel for a blessed moment. It helps with the sweat beading my neck and forehead, too. "A good analogy here is if we let the pinkos in the Weather Underground take part in sending literature to the USSR. We have only so much throughput to get things direct and uncensored to the Russians, and we're not wasting that on things that don't reflect American values. Like those violent video games, Senator."
Tom Cotton grunts again, wiping his pasty face with a handkerchief in the cold AC air of the Senate briefing room. His eyes are like a shark's just like the time he took five grand off me in Vegas and blew it all on hookers. Not that I'd be telling the press about that little Agency junket. "He's right. We're in a culture war here and that means measures that the Democrats might find difficult. You have to see this from an American standpoint."
That, predictably enough, makes the Democrats' hackles rise. Feinstein raps the table for order, Williamson glares at the two Republicans and looks as if she's going to curse them with crystals, and Orrin Hatch decides that further questions are the better part of valor. Poor bastard. "So tell me, ah," Takes a moment to check his sheets for my name again, why does Utah elect him I do not know, "Mr Jorgensen, what sort of restrictions does the CIA put on game development and why does the Cultural Operations Unit spend most of its cash domestically if they're working to get the right sort of ideas to the Soviets? Surely you'll be smuggling this stuff over the Iron Curtain."
The Iron Curtain fell in 1991, and right now there's a whole shitload of 'neutral' states in between Russia and the EU. Between the USSR and the EU, that is. Not as if the Baltics made it free. Hatch is an old fart, maybe he didn't get that memo from forty years ago. "Well, Senator, we primarily do delivery over the internet to the Russians. Support for that sort of thing is done in the States, finding ways around their firewalls and national internet boundaries. It's easier to send games that way than to bribe some Pashtun to take a Toyota over the Uzbek border." And boy, do I know that well. Sometimes I still have the runs from what the driver swore was chicken. "Besides that, the Agency works to incentivize and aid our partners in the private sector, and that represents a substantial chunk of our funding. The same way the Agency worked to fund a great deal of the cultural sphere during the high Cold War." Of course, now that they cut that funding, we have more games and less magazines coming out. Not my problem, though, that's one that the politicians can haggle over.
"But now the Russians have opened up a great deal more," says Williamson, now civil and polite and probably suppressing the murderous rage the way most wine moms her age do, "They're working with us on open markets, on climate change, on lots of things. They've recognized national identities in the Baltic States, they allow language learning in Central Asia. They're embracing freedom, and that means we already won, right? After all those students protested in Moscow in 1991, Supervisor Jorgensen, I don't see what more can be done. So why are you here, appealing for a unit that's accomplished its objective?" All compassionate and warm and attempting to congratulate me on firing myself. Damn, this woman's good.
Well, here we go. Four Senators, one on my side, two on the other side and Orrin Hatch only a possible because I'm not sure how much he'll even remember. At least this is just a grilling by some of the committee, instead of the entire damn body staring me in the face. Deep breath, Roger, deep breath and complete confidence. Just like Afghanistan. "Senators, I'm here because the CIA faces the greatest threat to the American moral fabric since the pornography scares of the early 2000s. Our funding has been cut and redirected to the China theater, where Cultural Operations has been shut out entirely. The belief seems to be that since the Russians wear our blue jeans and listen to our music, since the Chinese come here to study and buy our luxuries, that we won the cultural side of the Cold War. I can understand that view, superficial thought it is. But with all due respect, Senators, that view is wrong."
"A bold statement to make, considering the way things are." Just as bold as yours, Senator Williamson, talking about crystal healing on CNN. Or maybe things are easier where you get elected. "Elaborate. How are we, as you are saying, losing the culture war with the Communists?" That last word is drawn out mockingly, and her eyes dare me to say one thing wrong. This senator has it in for me, I'll say it that much.
"Look at kids these days on those gotcha games of theirs. They're all gambling their lives away on that stuff, on those scantily clad pictures no less. And all that funding headed straight to the KGB." Tom Cotton means well, bless his incredibly small shriveled heart, but this is already a touchy point. "That alone should tell us that we need to step things up."
"And what? You want an American gambling game?" Hatch doesn't like that, but then he wouldn't. "No, we can't have that either. We have standards here, even if the Soviets don't." Nods all 'round, even from Williamson and Feinstein. Maybe their kids played those games, blew a few hundred on them. That might've done it.
That just makes things easier. "We have to make something that'd pull our children off those games, Senator. That means some sort of game that'd be good enough to compete, and that means making one with government support. Unless you want some pinko European game company dominating the American market and cutting off Cultural Ops?" The question isn't something that I'm supposed to do, and I get both glares and a gaveling on the Senators' panel table from the chair – Feinstein.
"We will be asking the questions, Supervisor." Her words are crisp and cold, and I already gave up any thought of reaching her directly. But Feinstein can't afford to be too weak on national security, and there's my in with her – a weak one, but one that's all I've got. No, the uncertainty here is from Orrin Hatch. And from the way he nodded along when I talked about the Europeans, he's onboard. Cotton is already. Now, hopefully, it's a game of standing my ground and making sure I don't fuck up the remaining questions. There's some whispering from the panel, Hatch asking Williamson something under his breath, and I take the chance to loosen my collar a little and drink some more water. I'm sweating here, despite the AC. Goddamn suits, too many layers for indoors.
Marianne Williamson decides to throw me a softball, or maybe from the grimace that she gives me, Hatch has convinced her to do it. Either way, that thin, high voice is one of the better things I've heard recently. "So what you're saying is that we're losing here and you want more money to put us back ahead. Why should we fund Cultural Ops at all, then? Why not fold your organization and personnel into the State Department's foreign outreach arm? Why bother with the Agency? It isn't as if you're generating intelligence, you're spreading propaganda."
"The Agency might be more than a mill for national security estimates every quarter, Supervisor, but we have yet to see that. After the last few fuckups in North Korea and the fact that you somehow leaked the entire cyber-intrusion toolkit five years ago." Feinstein is every bit the iron-hard bitch that a senior Senator from California and a woman in politics has to be, and goddamn if she doesn't know where to stick the needle.
It stings. We lost God knows how many good men when that nutter Snowden decided that the best thing to do was to leak the hacking tools we used for onsite penetration, the same kit developed by the NSA. We lost God knows how much prestige when the North Korean intrusions were found and the agents executed. And this woman brings it up here, in a budgetary inquiry session. It takes me a moment to clear my throat, and my voice is as carefully controlled as I can make it while answering. "With all due respect, Senator, there is an ongoing inquiry into those incidents that I would ask the panel not prejudice." We were already raked over the coals for that, and you want more? "The mentioned incidents were not from my division or department, and I would note that they are not germane to the Cultural Operations Unit. Or its objectives."
"Not germane?" Orrin Hatch knows a dodge when he sees it, and that one was a dodge. This time, he won't give me a pass. The Snowden incident made him see red, made half the Republicans see red. Not that it's very hard to do that, just mention the word 'socialism'. They'll see more red in the air than there is at a Crayola factory. "The same procedures followed for covert intrusion are used by the Cultural Operations Unit. Or if not – if all you do is by this 'internet' and all you're doing is picking winners in the private sector, why not cut out the middleman? Why shouldn't we just hand the cash to Big Tech and get the government out of business?"
Because, Senator, that business is propaganda and intel. That isn't something that the private sector does well. But what do I know? I shake my head at Hatch, disagreeing politely and not voicing what I'm thinking. "Well, Senator, that's because this is a long war. It's been going on since before there was a Silicon Valley, and it'll be there for a while yet. We just beat back the Bear, but it isn't gone. And then there's the Chinese on top of that." The red-baiting won't win me points with the Democratic side of the aisle, but at this point I don't need that. I need Orrin Hatch. And that means painting everything redder than a Mormon's blushing at a whorehouse. "This side of things, the Electronic Arts side of things, started in 1995 when our man in Kabul stabilized things enough for us to send goods through the Kazakhstan. And since then we've done a great deal. Our objective is still in sight, Senators, and the good work done by the rest of Cultural Ops aids us further."
"Your final goal, the cultural change in Russia?" Tom Cotton of all people steeples his hands on the table and looks down at me as if he's some sort of mastermind. Mastermind, he is not, sadly – otherwise he'd be much more free of STDs. "I mean, that's a worthy goal and all, but is that even achievable? Is it cost-effective? What's your view on it, Supervisor?" He wants to have raised some question and sounded smart, so he asks this of all things. I like Tom, bless his heart, but God he needs some brains. Handsome face, good white-boy looks, brain smaller than a lobbyist's conscience.
Still a Senator, though. "Well, Senator," I say, talking more to the office than the man, "Before I begin with the timeline of accomplishments of our unit, I'll do the bottom line up front. What we aim to achieve, as stated earlier, and in more detail." I get a nod and a wave of the hand that says get on with it from Feinstein, and that gives me the permission I'd need. "We want the youth of Russia believing in freedom and liberty and American values. It was the youth of the 1960s who powered the revolutions in the 1990s, who made things so much more liberal in the Soviet Union in 1991 when they pulled back from the Warsaw Pact. We want another such shift, this time more explicitly democratic and if possible capitalist. The USSR is ripe for that now that the bulk of its puppets are gone and its constituent republics more loosely bound to the center."
"You want to take advantage of the Gorbachev reforms."
Right on the money, crystal lady. Williamson can be perceptive sometimes. "Indeed, ma'am. The Gorbachev reforms targeted the economy, and part of that was the cutting of aid from Moscow. That made the outlying republics far poorer and the trade made was more self-government. That, and the later devolution of power in terms of municipal government – the local Party cadre empowerment – made it so that we have a ready base to tap outside Moscow. The Internet is global, after all." A moment here to pause for effect, since they already know my pitch – like any salesman, I have to say it anyways. And I aim to say it well. "Senator, just as Western art and literature and movies made Moscow rise and made the Soviet youth change their nation, we aim to do the same in the length and breadth of the Soviet Union. With the right resources, Senators, the Electronic Arts Unit aims to make the gamers rise up."
AN: Feedback welcome. Other projects moving very slowly. Memes are rewarded, discussion generates more memes.
(II) They Targeted Gamers
mouli
Terrible QM
- Location
- United States
AN: As before, none of the views here are mine. Especially not the Wall Street Journal.
Washington DC, 2023
There's an obvious place to start this story, the path that the Electronic Arts Unit took to become what it is. That place and time is when we really kicked things up in terms of output, and coincidentally happens to be my tenure – not start to finish, God no, but I was involved at the beginning and I'll be damned if the Senate won't let me be involved till the end. That's why I take a long look at the Senate panel, and I know where to begin – and where to embellish a little bit. No lies, not under oath and in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee's designated representatives – Ollie North might've managed that, I freely admit I don't have his gigantic brass balls. "Senators," I say carefully now that the dramatic salesperson pitch is done, "The EAU came into its own as a part of the Cultural Operations Unit back in the 1990s, when computer gaming began to rise as a pastime among the children of the influential in the USSR, and the EAU took advantage of this through Afghanistan."
"The heroin routes." Feinstein knows this, and she's trying to tie me to drug smuggling. God, I wish she'd just retire already, she's past 80 by now. Wizened old goddamn Californian that she is.
I nod instead, politely acknowledging that she read her briefing documents, and at her age managed to remember them. No small feat in and of itself. "The same routes into the Soviet Union, yes, but we shipped electronic games, literature and movies banned in the USSR. The sort of thing that they'd call subversive, that sells at high prices within the Union. The Kazakhs were desperate once the aid taps from Moscow were cut back, so we had an in through them. Comrade Nursultan remains our finest partner in the region."
Hatch snorts a little, "Comrade Nazarbayev, you mean. Ridiculous that a major party leader is working with us, how'd you manage that?"
I grin back, confident in this one. Satisfied. The best piece of work I'd seen in ages, and done perfectly. "He thinks he's working with the Afghan smugglers, who work with greedy Americans. No trace of the US Government." The rest of the table smiles at that, even Williamson. They can respect a good piece of tradecraft, at least. Approving smiles at the minimum for keeping the White House's (debatably) good name out of the espionage business while still being involved. "Anyways, Senators, it's in Afghanistan that all this began…" And so I am away, more than twenty years in the past and a young man of twenty-five...
Afghan-Kazakh Border,
Afghanistan, 1998
1998. Roger thinks to himself that he should have been back at home and halfway to a million by now, taken that job with Merrill Lynch and got a nice desk in New York. Shouldn't have listened to that smiling man from the Agency who came to his career fair, sketching visions of changing the world and fighting Communism in service of the nation. All nice words, but nice words don't keep you warm in the cold. Roger shivers for a moment, cursing the winter wear that the Agency sent. Afghanistan is cold in winter. Colder than the Cold War, at least. His eyes can see the evidence of that war, sitting here waiting for tea in what used to be some mujahideen camp. Felt tents, old UN canvas shelters still stamped with refugee aid logos, a battered Pakistani flag someone hung on the side of their tent-shelter. Whether to insulate or out of some loyalty, Roger doesn't know.
He does know that the Pashtuns here are from both sides of the border. The Pakistani government in Islamabad doesn't mind that, not as long as Afghanistan remains on their side. It lets them concentrate on the Indians.
So what else is here? The tea comes with a Pashtun glaring at Roger, handing him a clay cup with steam curling up from it. Roger drops a dollar into the plate he's holding, near the other cups of tea. Overcharging, but then it's a warzone out here. The dollar joins ranks with a few rubles, a few Pakistani rupees and a lone Afghani. A regular old confederation of rogues, thinks Roger Jorgenson. Here at the tip of the spear against Communism, running propaganda and contraband over the Soviet border.
"Ready?" The question comes from Mohammed Zaheer, probably fake name, driver and smuggler and representative of one of the northern smuggler groups. Roger's contact, and the one who's supposed to take him north. He's tall and thin with a thick, bristling red-tinted beard, wrapped in a warm shawl and grinning at Roger's discomfort. Roger flushes a little. He isn't used to being the soft American. "We leave in fifteen minutes, American."
Roger just nods at him, taking a sip of the tea and agreeing to be there. By the Toyotas and the gun-toting mujahideen. Fifteen minutes is enough time to take a leak and get his stuff in order, enough time to mentally riffle through mission objectives. Not much, really. Eyewitness work on the border crossings and what sort of system the Afghans have in place on the Kirghiz border, here in the mountains. See if the Russians are sniffing around – not fucking likely, thinks Roger. Economics mean that the tap was turned off on Central Asia. That means the smuggling's gone easy the last few years. Russia's busy internally right now, and the Agency wants to push that a little.
Which is why Roger is here with a Hilux full of games and literature and a Pashtun waiting at the wheel, with a full load of contraband for the Soviet Union.
The pickup looks like it went through the Soviet occupation with a drunken conscript at the wheel, scratches and dents on the bumper just the start of what Roger's mind sees, registers, and then consciously tries to forget. There's a groaning as Roger settles into the shotgun seat, Zaheer next to him grinning as the American visibly double-takes at the fact that the door's sagging and has a hole in it. Roger swallows, straightens in the seat, and nods at his Afghan guide determinedly. "So let's head out, then. What are we even waiting for?"
Mohammed Zaheer smiles at him, waves a hand out the window at the convoy behind them, and off goes the Toyota with a roar that sounds to Roge like some sort of asthmatic dinosaur. All coughs and misfires and everything in the same damn gear. The drive goes just like that, with Mohammed pointing out hairpin bends and telling Roger all about how the last convoys lost a truck there because the engine failed as they were turning. Or how a Pathan blood feud was settled by triggering a landslide and crushing the intended victim. A shitload of tall tales that sound to Roger Jorgenson as if they come from the Wild West or something, all with that broad smile and an AK-47 tucked away in the back of the cab. Roger can't tell if the man's fucking with him or being serious, and all the while there's the radio playing some sickly-sweet Urdu film songs that sound like a crooner being strangled in a basement full of syrup. In between the static.
Tip of the spear, Roger reminds himself. Fighting Communism.
"Border post in twenty kilometers, Mister Smith," says Mohammed Zaheer as he looks at Roger. The name's as fake as anything else, but then Roger's bet is that Zaheer's name is also fake. Everything fake here but the goddamn contraband as the sun sinks beneath the Hindu Kush. "The trucks go in after we do, and I'll arrange the introduction here. Colonel Karimov is on our payroll now." A border troops colonel on payroll, impressive. And better than the Agency expected.
So why's he being introduced to the American? Are the Afghans going to hand him over? Roger swallows for a moment, remembers the comforting weight of the Glock in his jacket, and decides to make conversation.
"So what else is in the trucks?" Roger's Arabic is hoarse and halting, but it's enough. He can understand more than he can speak anyways. As if to underline his remark, the trucks behind blare out their horns as they round the hairpin bend that the Toyota screamed around at forty an hour or more. Brightly painted fronts, a big blocky LEYLAND on the front of the trucks, and jingling bells or decorations all over the cab and the front bumpers. Four trucks like that one, and Roger knows that the games and electronics fill just one of those trucks.
Mohammed shrugs at the wheel, the truck swerving for a moment at the movement. "This and that. Whatever our friends in Kazakhstan want. Some local handicrafts, some electronics, some clothes." He turns to Roger and smiles, lying through his teeth. "The usual Western stuff from Karachi, Mister Smith. We are not smuggling drugs on CIA trucks and with CIA guns."
Roger doesn't believe a word of that. He writes it down anyways. It's on the record. Local affiliates verify no involvement in drug trade looks good to the Senate that's been rubberstamping intelligence work in Central Asia for a long, long time now.
The Soviet border post is a single booth on the road, a barrier manned by a few Kazakh OMON and KGB border troops stretched across it and barbed wire on either side for a few hundred meters. Given that this is a mountain road and the hills drop off on either side, Roger can see why the post is so lightly manned. Who'd bother bringing forces in via the Hindu Kush? Nobody on earth, nobody sane at least. And so for the price of a few Toyotas and a few old guns, the Agency has its supply line into the Soviet Union. Propaganda and money flows north, information comes south. And all it takes to keep moving is Roger making sure the damn thing works as intended.
The booth is concrete with a big painted sword-and-shield on one side. KGB. Roger swallows again.
"Relax, Mister Smith," says Mohammed Zaheer, "The captain is a friend. The colonel is a friend. The Kazakhs have been forgotten since Gorbachev. They know they need friends. Wealthy ones."
Even so, thinks Roger. It's a far cry from smuggling, meeting an American. Even if the American claims to be the Afghans' banker and financier. A paper-thin mask, but enough of one for everyone's consciences. Sometimes that's all it takes in this business. "So," says Roger as the Toyota halts at the barrier and one of the border troops manning an MG in the guardhouse shouts for a superior, "Have they tightened spot-checks here?" Roger's Arabic is halting and slow, and his stomach is queasy. Nauseous. The border checkpoint doesn't mix well with the tea and curry he had before leaving. He does his best not to let it show.
The window rolls down, agonizingly slowly, and a bearded Kazakh border guard looks inside the cab. His eyes pass over the Pashtun smuggler with a flicker of recognition, look boredly at the white man next to him, and slide over the AK-47 in the back of the cab with nary a pause. "Papers please." That's all he says, eyes blank and neutral as his hands rest on the window-opening. His uniform's green tabs remind Roger that this is the KGB, or at least its anoited representative. He looks young and probably nervous, if Roger's any judge. "Here," says Mohammed Zaheer as he hands over a thick file of paperwork stamped with the same hammer and sickle as the truck's license plates, and there's the fluttering paper bookmarks of banknotes in the file. "Just us as usual. The standard consignment. You know what to put in, no?"
"Yes, yes." The boy riffles through the file, pockets the notes for later and takes the paperwork inside. There's a quick patter of Russian from the guardhouse, and Roger just looks back at Mohammed, flabbergasted.
"That's it?" Roger Jorgenson is new to fieldwork, this is his first time off the Agency leash. But this can't be usual. "No checks?"
Zaheer shrugs, thick beard moving with his jacket's collar and his eyes on the guardhouse where the Kazakh border troops are still talking. "Sometimes. Sometimes not. It used to be easier, back in the 1990s. We would pay off the border troops and drive on through. Now they have tightened it, but they haven't paid the border troops any more than they used to. So we gamble. Sometimes they are afraid of Moscow, sometimes not." Fear and greed, thinks Roger. The two motivators that every Agency man knows all too well. It works in the White House and the Capitol, no reason why it won't work here.
"Heroin scares again?" Roger's tempted to light up a cigarette, he knows he has some somewhere in the jacket. Norm Wilson lent it to him back in Washington and Norm smokes like a chimney. His hands shake for a moment as two greatcoated KGB border troops come back out of the guardhouse, "Or is it something else?" His eyes are busy tracking the Kazakhs, and Zaheer seems faintly amused by the American's tension. The sun's setting, red bleeding over the mountaintops and the border post on the mountainside road seeming almost lonely as dusk comes to Central Asia.
"Papers." One of the guards comes around to Roger's window, hands rapping on the window and demanding Roger's passport when the window rolls down. Roger hands him the passport he brought – a fake British one under the name Wilson Smith. The guard glances at it, looks at Roger – the photos match, the CIA made damn sure of that – and hands it back. Zaheer says something in Pashto to the infantryman and gets a surly answer back. The corporal in charge of the guardhouse barks something at the other two as he comes out, and Roger's interrogator heads back towards him while the other border trooper stands in the Toyota's path with a hand on his AK.
Zaheer just shakes his head. "They think we're smuggling something more valuable now. Western tooling or something for the KGB. They'll want a higher bribe. Heroin is easier, Mister Smith. Heroin is fungible, we just give the border troops their cut of the product. But contraband is harder to move."
"Sells for more, though."
The Afghan in the cab grunts in agreement, nodding at Roger and then taking another envelope out of his jacket. "Stay here, Mister Smith. And you'll owe me more than the agreed amount now that we've burned some more on border guards." The Toyota's rusty door slams shut, leaving Roger inside the cab as the three KGB troopers cluster around the Afghan smuggler, leaving the trucks behind the Toyota standing still in the sunset. Heroin would be easier, thinks Roger as he remembers the briefing that the Agency gave back in '88. But heroin is viewed as an escalation by the Soviets, any American aid to the drug trade in Afghanistan means the KGB might do the same in Colombia or Mexico. An uneasy standoff. And so now the Afghans trade in opium and heroin on the side, running CIA-subsidized contraband into the USSR and bringing out the occasional defector or critical piece of intel.
So now there's the trade in illicit goods. Roger smiles and nods at the guard who hands back his British passport, and slips him a hundred-ruble note. Expenses budgeted for this anyways, why not spend? Zaheer comes back smiling as well, clearly having negotiated his way past the roadblock and, as he puts it, not having to share his product. "They don't want electronics and jeans and TVs to sell. They want one each and the rest in cash. Easy." A sidelong look at Roger after that, calculating and cold despite the burly Afghan's bluff demeanor, "Not games, though. None of those things you have me hand off to your contact to sell to the Party children. Nothing like that. Some of the more intelligent among us are wary of the KGB cracking down on deviance, Mister Smith." Roger just nods. The KGB does like to bring the hammer down on low level corruption these days – especially ideological deviance in Central Asia. When the aid taps were turned down in the 1990s the republics became poorer and poorer – and the whip substituted for bribes.
Still – that they're making the border troops scared to own a game or two? The KGB really are going after gamers, thinks Roger. The reports didn't lie after all.
"Your TVs and your jeans are headed for Almaty then?" Roger's question is deliberately idle, but the Agency wants to know where things are being sold. Where there's money, in other words. Almaty, capital of the SSR, is a safe bet. "Even with this game crackdown?"
Mohammed shrugs as he fires up the engine, the old Toyota coughing and coughing and struggling to start. He curses in Pashto before answering, slamming a hand on the wheel. "We send them all over the place. Almaty among others. Ismail Khan has fixed it for us, your man in Kabul you call him." Roger nods, well aware that Ismail Khan in Kabul is the warlord in charge and at this point playing the CIA off against the Iranians and the KGB. There's no way the Agency's getting the smuggling network out of Ismail Khan. Still, as Zaheer says, "Ismail Khan gets a cut, even of your game sales. I would suggest you negotiate directly with him." Roger whistles, imagining the money flowing in – and it's good advice, money's a safe topic to bring up with Ismail Khan.
Suddenly there's a rapping on the hood of the Toyota and a smiling man outside the truck pointing at Roger. He wants the American to come out. There's a KGB colonel's insignia on his uniform. Zaheer freezes, completely still, and hisses to Roger to "Get out now. You wanted a meeting, this is a meeting. This is a new colonel. Russian. Be careful, but you'll be out alive. Comrade Nazabayev knows you're here." The rapping on the hood is more peremptory now, and one of the Kazakh border troops is holding his AK now instead of letting it dangle.
Roger steps out of the truck.
The KGB man smiles again, perfectly happy now that he's got what he wanted. "Excellent. Mister Smith, yes?" Roger nods again, keeping his hands where the colonel can see them. His throat's dry, and he doesn't speak to answer. "Good," smiles the colonel, "You wanted a meeting, yes? I'm the new colonel here for the border region command." He's speaking in flawless Russian, ethnic Russian to the tips of his toes. Here in Kazakhstan.
"I didn't expect to meet someone so senior," says Roger Jorgenson as he races through the possibilities. He relaxes minutely when he remembers that Comrade Nazarbayev knows he's here. The Party boss for the region knows a CIA man is here. And the Agency will burn him if he lets Roger die.
"Well, now you have." The colonel gestures to the guardhouse, and raps on the hood of the Toyota again. Zaheer rolls off in a cloud of dust, the AK in the back with the Pashtun at the wheel, a crate of Duke Nukem CDs smiling out at Roger from the pickup's bed. The KGB colonel looks out as the rest of Mohammed's convoy rumbles past, and offers Roger a cigarette.
"No thanks," says Roger Jorgenson, "I quit a while back." He's nervous enough to pick it up again. He's not sure why he said no. Maybe the manuals about accepting Communist generosity? Roger isn't sure at this point.
The colonel shrugs, green jacket with its border troops tabs all too obvious. "Your loss. Now then, Mister Smith," he smiles with a distinctly vulpine cast, "I think we can benefit one another. My name is Putin, V.V. Putin. And I am the one in charge of Electronic Disinformation Suppression here in Kazakhstan. You understand what I'm talking about, yes?"
Roger just nods. This just got much, much more important. And Roger Jorgenson's ambition kindles to life – this cannot be allowed to pass.
AN: This is mostly buildup. As before, I have a work deadline in early October and am mostly offline, being unable to run quests until my work's less stressful.
(II) They Targeted Gamers
ELECTRONIC DISINFORMATION SUPPRESSION UNITS: The Soviet Union seeks to suppress free speech and electronic media through the use of the KGB's Electronic Disinformation Units, which make sure that the electronic media every person in the USSR consumes is tailored to the totalitarian landscape of the Soviet Union. They're the anti-gamers. Notable are the recent reports of purges among border troops in Central Asia, demotions and denial of social services for ideological deviation. The cause? Use of banned games from America, games that the USSR calls violent. Maybe Duke Nukem is violent, but the Soviets are violent people...
-Editorial from the Wall Street Journal, gaming and electronics 'popular' section, 1994
ELECTRONIC DISINFORMATION SUPPRESSION UNITS: The Soviet Union seeks to suppress free speech and electronic media through the use of the KGB's Electronic Disinformation Units, which make sure that the electronic media every person in the USSR consumes is tailored to the totalitarian landscape of the Soviet Union. They're the anti-gamers. Notable are the recent reports of purges among border troops in Central Asia, demotions and denial of social services for ideological deviation. The cause? Use of banned games from America, games that the USSR calls violent. Maybe Duke Nukem is violent, but the Soviets are violent people...
-Editorial from the Wall Street Journal, gaming and electronics 'popular' section, 1994
Washington DC, 2023
There's an obvious place to start this story, the path that the Electronic Arts Unit took to become what it is. That place and time is when we really kicked things up in terms of output, and coincidentally happens to be my tenure – not start to finish, God no, but I was involved at the beginning and I'll be damned if the Senate won't let me be involved till the end. That's why I take a long look at the Senate panel, and I know where to begin – and where to embellish a little bit. No lies, not under oath and in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee's designated representatives – Ollie North might've managed that, I freely admit I don't have his gigantic brass balls. "Senators," I say carefully now that the dramatic salesperson pitch is done, "The EAU came into its own as a part of the Cultural Operations Unit back in the 1990s, when computer gaming began to rise as a pastime among the children of the influential in the USSR, and the EAU took advantage of this through Afghanistan."
"The heroin routes." Feinstein knows this, and she's trying to tie me to drug smuggling. God, I wish she'd just retire already, she's past 80 by now. Wizened old goddamn Californian that she is.
I nod instead, politely acknowledging that she read her briefing documents, and at her age managed to remember them. No small feat in and of itself. "The same routes into the Soviet Union, yes, but we shipped electronic games, literature and movies banned in the USSR. The sort of thing that they'd call subversive, that sells at high prices within the Union. The Kazakhs were desperate once the aid taps from Moscow were cut back, so we had an in through them. Comrade Nursultan remains our finest partner in the region."
Hatch snorts a little, "Comrade Nazarbayev, you mean. Ridiculous that a major party leader is working with us, how'd you manage that?"
I grin back, confident in this one. Satisfied. The best piece of work I'd seen in ages, and done perfectly. "He thinks he's working with the Afghan smugglers, who work with greedy Americans. No trace of the US Government." The rest of the table smiles at that, even Williamson. They can respect a good piece of tradecraft, at least. Approving smiles at the minimum for keeping the White House's (debatably) good name out of the espionage business while still being involved. "Anyways, Senators, it's in Afghanistan that all this began…" And so I am away, more than twenty years in the past and a young man of twenty-five...
Afghan-Kazakh Border,
Afghanistan, 1998
1998. Roger thinks to himself that he should have been back at home and halfway to a million by now, taken that job with Merrill Lynch and got a nice desk in New York. Shouldn't have listened to that smiling man from the Agency who came to his career fair, sketching visions of changing the world and fighting Communism in service of the nation. All nice words, but nice words don't keep you warm in the cold. Roger shivers for a moment, cursing the winter wear that the Agency sent. Afghanistan is cold in winter. Colder than the Cold War, at least. His eyes can see the evidence of that war, sitting here waiting for tea in what used to be some mujahideen camp. Felt tents, old UN canvas shelters still stamped with refugee aid logos, a battered Pakistani flag someone hung on the side of their tent-shelter. Whether to insulate or out of some loyalty, Roger doesn't know.
He does know that the Pashtuns here are from both sides of the border. The Pakistani government in Islamabad doesn't mind that, not as long as Afghanistan remains on their side. It lets them concentrate on the Indians.
So what else is here? The tea comes with a Pashtun glaring at Roger, handing him a clay cup with steam curling up from it. Roger drops a dollar into the plate he's holding, near the other cups of tea. Overcharging, but then it's a warzone out here. The dollar joins ranks with a few rubles, a few Pakistani rupees and a lone Afghani. A regular old confederation of rogues, thinks Roger Jorgenson. Here at the tip of the spear against Communism, running propaganda and contraband over the Soviet border.
"Ready?" The question comes from Mohammed Zaheer, probably fake name, driver and smuggler and representative of one of the northern smuggler groups. Roger's contact, and the one who's supposed to take him north. He's tall and thin with a thick, bristling red-tinted beard, wrapped in a warm shawl and grinning at Roger's discomfort. Roger flushes a little. He isn't used to being the soft American. "We leave in fifteen minutes, American."
Roger just nods at him, taking a sip of the tea and agreeing to be there. By the Toyotas and the gun-toting mujahideen. Fifteen minutes is enough time to take a leak and get his stuff in order, enough time to mentally riffle through mission objectives. Not much, really. Eyewitness work on the border crossings and what sort of system the Afghans have in place on the Kirghiz border, here in the mountains. See if the Russians are sniffing around – not fucking likely, thinks Roger. Economics mean that the tap was turned off on Central Asia. That means the smuggling's gone easy the last few years. Russia's busy internally right now, and the Agency wants to push that a little.
Which is why Roger is here with a Hilux full of games and literature and a Pashtun waiting at the wheel, with a full load of contraband for the Soviet Union.
The pickup looks like it went through the Soviet occupation with a drunken conscript at the wheel, scratches and dents on the bumper just the start of what Roger's mind sees, registers, and then consciously tries to forget. There's a groaning as Roger settles into the shotgun seat, Zaheer next to him grinning as the American visibly double-takes at the fact that the door's sagging and has a hole in it. Roger swallows, straightens in the seat, and nods at his Afghan guide determinedly. "So let's head out, then. What are we even waiting for?"
Mohammed Zaheer smiles at him, waves a hand out the window at the convoy behind them, and off goes the Toyota with a roar that sounds to Roge like some sort of asthmatic dinosaur. All coughs and misfires and everything in the same damn gear. The drive goes just like that, with Mohammed pointing out hairpin bends and telling Roger all about how the last convoys lost a truck there because the engine failed as they were turning. Or how a Pathan blood feud was settled by triggering a landslide and crushing the intended victim. A shitload of tall tales that sound to Roger Jorgenson as if they come from the Wild West or something, all with that broad smile and an AK-47 tucked away in the back of the cab. Roger can't tell if the man's fucking with him or being serious, and all the while there's the radio playing some sickly-sweet Urdu film songs that sound like a crooner being strangled in a basement full of syrup. In between the static.
Tip of the spear, Roger reminds himself. Fighting Communism.
"Border post in twenty kilometers, Mister Smith," says Mohammed Zaheer as he looks at Roger. The name's as fake as anything else, but then Roger's bet is that Zaheer's name is also fake. Everything fake here but the goddamn contraband as the sun sinks beneath the Hindu Kush. "The trucks go in after we do, and I'll arrange the introduction here. Colonel Karimov is on our payroll now." A border troops colonel on payroll, impressive. And better than the Agency expected.
So why's he being introduced to the American? Are the Afghans going to hand him over? Roger swallows for a moment, remembers the comforting weight of the Glock in his jacket, and decides to make conversation.
"So what else is in the trucks?" Roger's Arabic is hoarse and halting, but it's enough. He can understand more than he can speak anyways. As if to underline his remark, the trucks behind blare out their horns as they round the hairpin bend that the Toyota screamed around at forty an hour or more. Brightly painted fronts, a big blocky LEYLAND on the front of the trucks, and jingling bells or decorations all over the cab and the front bumpers. Four trucks like that one, and Roger knows that the games and electronics fill just one of those trucks.
Mohammed shrugs at the wheel, the truck swerving for a moment at the movement. "This and that. Whatever our friends in Kazakhstan want. Some local handicrafts, some electronics, some clothes." He turns to Roger and smiles, lying through his teeth. "The usual Western stuff from Karachi, Mister Smith. We are not smuggling drugs on CIA trucks and with CIA guns."
Roger doesn't believe a word of that. He writes it down anyways. It's on the record. Local affiliates verify no involvement in drug trade looks good to the Senate that's been rubberstamping intelligence work in Central Asia for a long, long time now.
The Soviet border post is a single booth on the road, a barrier manned by a few Kazakh OMON and KGB border troops stretched across it and barbed wire on either side for a few hundred meters. Given that this is a mountain road and the hills drop off on either side, Roger can see why the post is so lightly manned. Who'd bother bringing forces in via the Hindu Kush? Nobody on earth, nobody sane at least. And so for the price of a few Toyotas and a few old guns, the Agency has its supply line into the Soviet Union. Propaganda and money flows north, information comes south. And all it takes to keep moving is Roger making sure the damn thing works as intended.
The booth is concrete with a big painted sword-and-shield on one side. KGB. Roger swallows again.
"Relax, Mister Smith," says Mohammed Zaheer, "The captain is a friend. The colonel is a friend. The Kazakhs have been forgotten since Gorbachev. They know they need friends. Wealthy ones."
Even so, thinks Roger. It's a far cry from smuggling, meeting an American. Even if the American claims to be the Afghans' banker and financier. A paper-thin mask, but enough of one for everyone's consciences. Sometimes that's all it takes in this business. "So," says Roger as the Toyota halts at the barrier and one of the border troops manning an MG in the guardhouse shouts for a superior, "Have they tightened spot-checks here?" Roger's Arabic is halting and slow, and his stomach is queasy. Nauseous. The border checkpoint doesn't mix well with the tea and curry he had before leaving. He does his best not to let it show.
The window rolls down, agonizingly slowly, and a bearded Kazakh border guard looks inside the cab. His eyes pass over the Pashtun smuggler with a flicker of recognition, look boredly at the white man next to him, and slide over the AK-47 in the back of the cab with nary a pause. "Papers please." That's all he says, eyes blank and neutral as his hands rest on the window-opening. His uniform's green tabs remind Roger that this is the KGB, or at least its anoited representative. He looks young and probably nervous, if Roger's any judge. "Here," says Mohammed Zaheer as he hands over a thick file of paperwork stamped with the same hammer and sickle as the truck's license plates, and there's the fluttering paper bookmarks of banknotes in the file. "Just us as usual. The standard consignment. You know what to put in, no?"
"Yes, yes." The boy riffles through the file, pockets the notes for later and takes the paperwork inside. There's a quick patter of Russian from the guardhouse, and Roger just looks back at Mohammed, flabbergasted.
"That's it?" Roger Jorgenson is new to fieldwork, this is his first time off the Agency leash. But this can't be usual. "No checks?"
Zaheer shrugs, thick beard moving with his jacket's collar and his eyes on the guardhouse where the Kazakh border troops are still talking. "Sometimes. Sometimes not. It used to be easier, back in the 1990s. We would pay off the border troops and drive on through. Now they have tightened it, but they haven't paid the border troops any more than they used to. So we gamble. Sometimes they are afraid of Moscow, sometimes not." Fear and greed, thinks Roger. The two motivators that every Agency man knows all too well. It works in the White House and the Capitol, no reason why it won't work here.
"Heroin scares again?" Roger's tempted to light up a cigarette, he knows he has some somewhere in the jacket. Norm Wilson lent it to him back in Washington and Norm smokes like a chimney. His hands shake for a moment as two greatcoated KGB border troops come back out of the guardhouse, "Or is it something else?" His eyes are busy tracking the Kazakhs, and Zaheer seems faintly amused by the American's tension. The sun's setting, red bleeding over the mountaintops and the border post on the mountainside road seeming almost lonely as dusk comes to Central Asia.
"Papers." One of the guards comes around to Roger's window, hands rapping on the window and demanding Roger's passport when the window rolls down. Roger hands him the passport he brought – a fake British one under the name Wilson Smith. The guard glances at it, looks at Roger – the photos match, the CIA made damn sure of that – and hands it back. Zaheer says something in Pashto to the infantryman and gets a surly answer back. The corporal in charge of the guardhouse barks something at the other two as he comes out, and Roger's interrogator heads back towards him while the other border trooper stands in the Toyota's path with a hand on his AK.
Zaheer just shakes his head. "They think we're smuggling something more valuable now. Western tooling or something for the KGB. They'll want a higher bribe. Heroin is easier, Mister Smith. Heroin is fungible, we just give the border troops their cut of the product. But contraband is harder to move."
"Sells for more, though."
The Afghan in the cab grunts in agreement, nodding at Roger and then taking another envelope out of his jacket. "Stay here, Mister Smith. And you'll owe me more than the agreed amount now that we've burned some more on border guards." The Toyota's rusty door slams shut, leaving Roger inside the cab as the three KGB troopers cluster around the Afghan smuggler, leaving the trucks behind the Toyota standing still in the sunset. Heroin would be easier, thinks Roger as he remembers the briefing that the Agency gave back in '88. But heroin is viewed as an escalation by the Soviets, any American aid to the drug trade in Afghanistan means the KGB might do the same in Colombia or Mexico. An uneasy standoff. And so now the Afghans trade in opium and heroin on the side, running CIA-subsidized contraband into the USSR and bringing out the occasional defector or critical piece of intel.
So now there's the trade in illicit goods. Roger smiles and nods at the guard who hands back his British passport, and slips him a hundred-ruble note. Expenses budgeted for this anyways, why not spend? Zaheer comes back smiling as well, clearly having negotiated his way past the roadblock and, as he puts it, not having to share his product. "They don't want electronics and jeans and TVs to sell. They want one each and the rest in cash. Easy." A sidelong look at Roger after that, calculating and cold despite the burly Afghan's bluff demeanor, "Not games, though. None of those things you have me hand off to your contact to sell to the Party children. Nothing like that. Some of the more intelligent among us are wary of the KGB cracking down on deviance, Mister Smith." Roger just nods. The KGB does like to bring the hammer down on low level corruption these days – especially ideological deviance in Central Asia. When the aid taps were turned down in the 1990s the republics became poorer and poorer – and the whip substituted for bribes.
Still – that they're making the border troops scared to own a game or two? The KGB really are going after gamers, thinks Roger. The reports didn't lie after all.
"Your TVs and your jeans are headed for Almaty then?" Roger's question is deliberately idle, but the Agency wants to know where things are being sold. Where there's money, in other words. Almaty, capital of the SSR, is a safe bet. "Even with this game crackdown?"
Mohammed shrugs as he fires up the engine, the old Toyota coughing and coughing and struggling to start. He curses in Pashto before answering, slamming a hand on the wheel. "We send them all over the place. Almaty among others. Ismail Khan has fixed it for us, your man in Kabul you call him." Roger nods, well aware that Ismail Khan in Kabul is the warlord in charge and at this point playing the CIA off against the Iranians and the KGB. There's no way the Agency's getting the smuggling network out of Ismail Khan. Still, as Zaheer says, "Ismail Khan gets a cut, even of your game sales. I would suggest you negotiate directly with him." Roger whistles, imagining the money flowing in – and it's good advice, money's a safe topic to bring up with Ismail Khan.
Suddenly there's a rapping on the hood of the Toyota and a smiling man outside the truck pointing at Roger. He wants the American to come out. There's a KGB colonel's insignia on his uniform. Zaheer freezes, completely still, and hisses to Roger to "Get out now. You wanted a meeting, this is a meeting. This is a new colonel. Russian. Be careful, but you'll be out alive. Comrade Nazabayev knows you're here." The rapping on the hood is more peremptory now, and one of the Kazakh border troops is holding his AK now instead of letting it dangle.
Roger steps out of the truck.
The KGB man smiles again, perfectly happy now that he's got what he wanted. "Excellent. Mister Smith, yes?" Roger nods again, keeping his hands where the colonel can see them. His throat's dry, and he doesn't speak to answer. "Good," smiles the colonel, "You wanted a meeting, yes? I'm the new colonel here for the border region command." He's speaking in flawless Russian, ethnic Russian to the tips of his toes. Here in Kazakhstan.
"I didn't expect to meet someone so senior," says Roger Jorgenson as he races through the possibilities. He relaxes minutely when he remembers that Comrade Nazarbayev knows he's here. The Party boss for the region knows a CIA man is here. And the Agency will burn him if he lets Roger die.
"Well, now you have." The colonel gestures to the guardhouse, and raps on the hood of the Toyota again. Zaheer rolls off in a cloud of dust, the AK in the back with the Pashtun at the wheel, a crate of Duke Nukem CDs smiling out at Roger from the pickup's bed. The KGB colonel looks out as the rest of Mohammed's convoy rumbles past, and offers Roger a cigarette.
"No thanks," says Roger Jorgenson, "I quit a while back." He's nervous enough to pick it up again. He's not sure why he said no. Maybe the manuals about accepting Communist generosity? Roger isn't sure at this point.
The colonel shrugs, green jacket with its border troops tabs all too obvious. "Your loss. Now then, Mister Smith," he smiles with a distinctly vulpine cast, "I think we can benefit one another. My name is Putin, V.V. Putin. And I am the one in charge of Electronic Disinformation Suppression here in Kazakhstan. You understand what I'm talking about, yes?"
Roger just nods. This just got much, much more important. And Roger Jorgenson's ambition kindles to life – this cannot be allowed to pass.
AN: This is mostly buildup. As before, I have a work deadline in early October and am mostly offline, being unable to run quests until my work's less stressful.
Last edited: