I remember getting an appointment with a superior officer just to be sure he understood the scenario at my unit where technical competence was just as weighty as the demands of military life and that I needed to be allowed a reasonable adjustment period to reorganize for the sudden reassigments of any in my staff otherwise we get nothing accomplished.. It was just supposed to be a brief knock-knock-“got a minute?” encounter since we were both of the same rank but he had this higher level admin.job because of more years he clocked. What followed afterwards was this monologue I had to hear from him about the lack of decorum in my unit (Whatt??) and why things are generally slipshod. Forty-five minutes of that and not being able to get thru (I still wonder what ticked that off) and I was convinced that he was more interested in getting some heat off his chest than listening to me. We don’t usually salute if we just have brief exchanges in the office, but this time, I felt I had to mark my exit. Before I could do that, he tells me to wait for his call in my office as he had some deadlines to meet. The call, of course, never came. Even after three days. (patient guy, aren’t I?)
So, I just had to conveniently skirt this jerk’s office and get my message to the top by knocking a higher level door. Despite differences in rank, the more senior officer called me by first name, listened to me intently, asked what my plans were and before 15 minutes were up, I knew I was understood. I knew I had come across.
The following day, I meet the jerk at the canteen smiling at me saying, “Hey, I kept calling you, but you weren’t always in your office” (Yeah, sure). I told him that since he was so busy, I was able to get my message thru to a more approachable senior officer.
Most institutions are just one bureaucratic mess and if you really think of communication as vital to any unit, the longer the bureaucratic layers, the more the probability of not getting the right information thru. (Read intel info)
One only needs to be reminded of the intel info that first exposed the conspiracy against the World Trade Center in 1995 which was sparked by a Filipina policewoman (she’s retired now, but you should hear her tell her story) who investigated a reported "fire" in an Apartment complex near Taft Ave., Manila which was caused by two arabs trying to make decoctions of chemicals by cooking them on several hot plates in their apartment. One of them, Ramzi Yousef, already revealed on questioning the use of planes to crash down on the Twin Towers. According to her , the findings were sent to the FBI. Whether or not it did reach the FBI is academic now, the point I’m trying to make here is field operatives seem better off blogging their reports selectively (w/out necessarily compromising identities, dates ,unit strengths and weaknesses) and creatively rather than using the traditional channels. That way, when their reports stand naked to the world they’re not only assured that their messages got through but that they were ,at the very least, understood.
Which reminds me, I have this problematic verbal info picked up about a few (2 ?) weeks back during the time some container ports in Manila South harbor were being scrutinized for chemicals. The info mentioned …”lead-lined container… number 38 (or 83?) now safely in water..” Unverified source as of yet. Where? Here in Manila or somewhere in Southeast Asia? Not verified. A hoax? Well, we’ve been there before. How do I treat this? If I keep it with me until I have A-1 verification, will I be blaming myself for concealing vital info in case something does happen? (Now I understand how queasy those WMD informants were, but their info were nevertheless handled for them.) So when I place this info with a qualifier (“unverified”)in my blog then the whole world knows how I interpret the info and no jerk is going to manipulate that.
