October 23rd, 2003, 12:52 am

Prank to Policy

Imagine hating your job, your superiors, the ridiculous chain of command that left your intelligence ignored, while the ill-founded assertations of your less-informed colleagues recieved all the ink. Imagine hating that job, and the corruption of something you deeply believed in, enough to play a teeny tiny practical joke. Punting a political goldmine, a story you knew the bosses would run with. A story you made up. Imagine the tiny joy you’d get every time the bigshots referenced the phony story. Smile to yourself, daydreaming about them getting called out - about making your bosses look like jackasses. And then imagine waking up one morning, and seeing that teeny tiny revenge prank played out loud in the national media, as no less than the President of the United States references your bullshit in a State of the Union address. This is just one of the scenarios reported by Seymour Hirsch’s brilliant piece in the New Yorker, “The Stovepipe.” The author explores an intelligence culture corrupted by high-ranking war hawks, the causes the misinformation serves, and the process of stovepiping: where even the flimsiest forgery finds itself shipped past objectioners straight into the hands of waiting hawks.