Notes on 'The Report'

Bullshit is the hallmark of the present age. Consider: fake news; alternative facts; gaslighting; trolldom; corporate journalism; social engineering. It is impossible to engage with the news, log in to social media, or function as a person in the world without wading in some degree of bullshit. By calling bullshit what it is we assert, in a small way, that there is still an objectively knowable reality.

Bullshit is a distinct category of thing, and there are distinct types of bullshit. One of the most persistently pernicious types is what I will simply call spy agency bullshit. While there are corollaries for direct action, the classic formulation goes something like this:

1. All information is knowable;

2. There is information we do not possess; ergo:

3. You need to let us do {thing} in order to obtain that information

This is an inherently dangerous style of argument to make for two reasons. First is a basic matter of epistemology: if gathering information is what you do for want of knowing, it follows that even after gathering the information, you still do not know. The likelihood that, once possessed, one particular piece of information will yield knowledge is infinitesimally small. Intelligence analysis is a probabilistic exercise, not a deterministic one. We can therefore reject the initial premise out of hand: some things are not possible to know. To imagine otherwise is to suppose an efficacy beyond human capacity. To imagine otherwise is to traffic in bullshit.

The second reason is that nothing an intelligence agency does is strictly legal. It wiretaps, intercepts, purloins, recruits, cajoles, and surveils at the direction of the President, who provides the necessary legal authorization. Outside of this context all of these activities would be illegal. Marginally increased illegality in the service of obtaining previously unknown information can therefore seem like a fair tradeoff. The danger arises when this impulse is not checked--when no one calls the agency on its bullshit.

'The Report' is fundamentally a catalog of these excesses. After 9/11 the CIA convinced first itself and then the Bush Administration that it could obtain more previously unknown information more quickly if only it was allowed to commit crimes against humanity. The necessary legal opinions to underwrite this activity were duly prepared. In a staggeringly cruel irony, by the Agency's own estimation these practices yielded little to no information of value. The whole exercise was, in the end, bullshit.

As much as it catalogs the excess itself, 'The Report' documents the failures of two presidencies to fully contend with it. The Bush Administration authorized torture and constructed justifications for its legality: it bought a bullshit argument and then went about constructing an edifice of bullshit to support that argument. The Obama Administration failed to hold any individual directly accountable or responsible for partaking in crimes against humanity. Though the proximate failure does not reside with Obama, to leave in place the bullshit architects (one of whom is now CIA Director) was a dramatically disappointing decision.

For all this, 'The Report' is not a great movie. It simply lacks the high drama of other whistleblower tales like 'Spotlight' or 'All the President's Men'. But as an adaptation of a 500-page summary of a classified report that the American public may never get a chance to read, it succeeds wildly. When future generations study the post-9/11 era as history rather than lived experience, they will watch this film. And hopefully they will learn to spot the bullshit for what it is so that the abuses never happen again.