It's been almost two years since a young American citizen decided to share a trove of documents with journalists and the world. We cannot even begin to list the tons of paper and terabytes of articles, postings and tweets that sloshed around the planet on the subject since.
Yet, one aspect nobody has written about is this: how do secrets feel to those who work with them, what - if any - are the psychological effects of this kind of work on those who perform it? Are there differences between countries and cultures, as frequently claimed as a result of Germany's two regimes in the 20th century?
If you have synesthesia, the condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway, you could say, for example, this or that document tastes like strawberries while that one tastes like a hotdog.
But that's not what we mean. We mean how do secrets feel to all the Joe Normals and the Jane Does who handle them on a daily basis?
There is no single standard correct answer but a few points are common enough.
First of all, there is a process involved in obtaining the authorization to work with the stuff, the background check. Seen as an administrative process, it means forms to fill out, signing a ton of disclosure authorizations, asking friends or relatives if they are willing to talk to officials, having an interview or two, maybe a polygraph in some jurisdictions.
The psychology of this, however, is very much like an initiation ritual. It may or may not involve mild jokes from said friends as in "really?", "so you gonna save the world now?".
There may be moments you feel like the first time you took a shower at school after PE.
When your boss explains the process, he or she may sound a bit like a parent alluding to changes to your teenage self a few years ago without going into details.
Let's assume the process is uneventful.
There are known instances when it was not, for example, as we recounted elsewhere, in the case of Old Mustached German (OMG) who was told by two of his references how a bored East German intelligence guy barged into an intimate telephone conversation they had a few months after OMG's intensive check for a top secret clearance had started.
Usually the process ends with more paperwork. Boring but important stuff like you stating that nothing which could impact the clearance has happened since the background check started, a list of obligations and of bad things that could happen if you don't keep your mouth shut.
The first week or so, a document with the stamp will probably elicit curiosity, even a tingling feeling of expectation but this goes away quickly once you realize that the stamp says nothing at all about the importance of the contents. One document might decide a war if it got into the wrong hands, another of the same classification is utter trash concocted by a self-important boss.
Some people, mostly male and mostly with a military background, hang on to the cowboy good guy image forever. Take the colonel at the cage, for example, who loudly complimented the private in the cage for telling him "sir, you are not authorized for access" despite the fact that he, the colonel, had not attempted to access the floor behind the cage.
"I was transferred effective yesterday", the colonel boomed, "and look how they are on the ball." What other verifiable effects or issues are there?
Would it be correct or incorrect to claim that some of the selection and self-selection for these jobs is a bit flawed in the direction of clearance trumps qualifications? Or could it just be a subset of the generic personality trumps qualifications?
In politics, of course, stamping stuff secret has many mind blowing advantages, including the option of withholding information from rivals, buying journalists with leaks, and deniability in the form of wonderful statements along the lines of "I'd love to talk about this and share details but, unfortunately, this information is classified."
Can we measure effects on the personality of people who work with secrets all the time? Why not run a bunch of them through an MRI to see how they tick? We have done it with taxi drivers and people engaged in intercourse, with workers doing night shifts for a decade and a whole host of others, so give us some science.
And finally, a practical question: How should average civilians like us handle people who claim prior work under the shield of the stamp or the cover sheet?
The answer to this is very simple: ask for a photocopy of the badge or "the" paper.
Ever since the advent of the photocopier, very few people have been able to resist making a copy of the badge or "the" paper. Just ask, unless you know his or her name from the newspaper.
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