MEDIUM RARE

Military intelligence, according to the late great Rod Dula, essayist, pundit, and travel writer, is an oxymoron. Morons probably don’t know it, but an oxymoron is a figure of speech in which the words that form it are contradictory to each other, as in “deafening silence.”

Going by that definition, the military and intelligence (as in information gathering, checking, verification) cannot exist together. Be that as it may, let us go with the flow because confidential and intelligence funds for public officials were a hot topic last week.

Intelligence is important to the people upstairs because they have to know what’s happening “on the ground,” including gossip, rumor, threats real and unreal, who is the enemy and what the people are thinking and saying. Know thy enemy. Even the military strategist Sun Tzu went by that law.

In the White House of the president of the United States, the first order of the day is a security briefing for his eyes and ears only. Depending on the character and preferences of the president, the briefing could be in the form of a closed-door meeting or the notes could be summarized in one page. For obvious reasons, presidents, including ours, are not in the habit of talking about their security briefings, not until someone writes about them after they have left office.

In the Republic of Marites, cops are a great, fun source of intel. Not always reliable because unverifiable, but entertaining just the same, the information they gather is passed on to their chief, friends in media, and the mayor. Their main interest are celebrities – because a celebrity is someone who is celebrated for his or her being famous – especially when the celebs are on the brink of committing a scandal or crime. It goes without saying, policemen are not bound by the laws of slander and libel.

Reporters who are palsy-walsy with the cops on their beat would get an earful if they hung around the police station. In the old days before internet, police reporters had the best intel, because the more unprintable the news, the more there was to share with their editors as soon as they were back in the office. Ah, for the good old days of tabloids!