Robert Smith - The Planner

Katherine started laughing, “No. Wow, Robert, I didn’t know you were into conspiracy theories?”

“Ok. End of experiment,” he said.

“I hope it worked! Sorry I’ve got to go. You can explain it to me another time, it sounds complicated. Speak to you tomorrow, I hope.”

“Ok,” he said, feeling foolish. “I look forward to it. Bye.”

* * * *

This was to be a busy day: Bates had lined up visits to three operations: Carrot, Hollywood and Las Vegas. Fortunately they were all in the same building.

He arranged to meet the Carrot representatives, Melvin and Jenny, in a small office within WTC7 at 8.00am alone since Bates had already met the Carrot team and felt he was more gainfully employed setting up the other two meetings of the day.

Melvin, mid-fifties, black suit, and Jenny, ginger-haired, late-thirties, smart scarlet business suit, made an excellent impression, as if they were selling a billion dollar business deal rather than a billion dollar disaster. After efficient introductions, and fifteen minutes of discussion, Melvin stood, pen in hand, by a matrix of numbers on a whiteboard.

Planner recapped what he just heard, “So you’re telling me that BE2 will be self financing. From untraceable bond sales, sale of gold and silver, and from the stock market 67?”

“Partly,” Carrot smiled. “The current funding is all through DoD. That is a sunk cost. The bond sales, also a sunk cost, we just need to make them untraceable for political reasons. No, the bonus values are from stock trading and precious metal sales. You’ll need to talk to Operation Vegas about insurance recovery. That’s excluded from Carrot calculations. That’s an important boundary line between the two operations,” said Melvin getting into increasing levels of digression, before returning to his main point. “No what I was pointing out was that all Phase C operations will be financed from these bonus funds. Phase A and B will be covered by DoD budgets…”

“But basically,” interrupted Planner again. “It will build up a huge cash fund to finance the aftermath.”

“Yes. Basically,” smiled Melvin with a fake smile.

“Who will administer the fund?” said Planner, making some notes in his filofax.

“It will continue to be administered from this unit,” said Melvin matter-of-factly. “But Operation Carrot is not solely a gravy train for internal participants. There are not just incentives…”

“…there is also some stick”, interrupted Jenny smoothly. She exhibited a broad red-lipped smile with eerily white teeth.

“Stick?” asked Planner.

“Disincentives,” she replied with edge. “For participants both internal and external, we have a treatment plan to modify unsupportive behaviour.”

“I’m familiar with Psychological Operations 68, media campaigns aimed at communities, but I haven’t seen it applied down to an individual level,” said Planner. “So how does that work?”

“Computers systems enable us this fine control,” smirked Jenny. She stood and went to the whiteboard as if to give a lecture. Melvin cleaned off his figures and sat down. “I presume you have come across CRM? Customer Relationship Management software?”

“Sorry, no,” said Planner.

“I guess not your speciality,” she said, twisting on her hips in a rocking motion. “It is standard off-the-shelf software in the business world, used to provide better customer service, ha-ha,” she explained with little mirth, but obvious enjoyment. “CRM is used to figure out whether a company’s advertising and marketing is working and sales are being generated. It was able to spot trends and types of people: drive customer demand with targeted marketing messages and identify high-value customers… and make them loyal. Oh what qualities,” she sighed. “Well it wasn’t long before these tools were being used in other areas. They were just what were required for managing offenders on probation! CRM became Criminal Relationship Management systems. And so it was soon being used by probation agencies. And then by prisons for managing inmates as part of their panopticon…”

“And now to determine the success of covert operations?” concluded Planner.

“Indeed. We could call it a Covert-agent Relationship Management system. After all, they are high value and we want them loyal. We can measure whether our marketing campaign has worked. Rather, whether our indoctrination has worked; you can thank Edward Bernays for the overlap between marketing and propaganda 69.” She laughed to herself again before continuing. “So we can start with a standard CRM product; enact a generic or even specific management plan; specific to individuals. We do actually called them treatment plans,” she said and paused to look for a reaction from Planner.

“How does it work?” continued Jenny rhetorically since Planner was silent and merely twirling his pen, “Say we have a journalist that, for example, is challenging the official story of the Event… First he is guided by a generic treatment plan, a series of gentle reminders pointing out the error of his ways perhaps, how it goes against advertising sponsors, editorial guidelines and so on which escalates upwards.” She wrote “Reporter” on the whiteboard and a zigzag to represent a staircase. She continued, “So for journalists, if soft measures like the authority of their bosses doesn’t work, then the subject goes onto hard-measures: maybe a career change…” She then drew two further zigzag staircases and underneath wrote “Spy” and “Politic”. “There is an escalation process, for each profession.” For the staircase marked “Politic” she removed some of the steps. She said with conviction, “We find simple bribery works best for politicians, but other people are less predictable, so we escalate up the steps, with job loss, marriage, health… and so on, until we achieve the desired outcome.”

“Up to the maximum… sanction,” asked Planner carefully.

“There’s a risk assessment process. The greater the risk, the more persuasion will be applied. But, yes, up to the maximum sanction. The good news being if the participant changes his, or her, ways, they’ll immediately be rewarded. This works like a pavlovian reaction, 99 % of the time…”

“I thought it only worked for dogs,” sighed Planner. “Ah well, we live and learn. And the one percent?”

Jenny looked at Planner directly. “Actually it is much, much less than one percent. But yes, the exceptions…” she grimaced and acted out a chop across the neck.

* * * *

Planner returned to the Rainbow office and went to Bates’ cubicle in the open plan section of the office.

“How did that go?” asked Bates, looking up from his laptop.

“Disconcerting,” replied Planner.

“Why’s that?”

“More cancer to fight cancer,” said Planner.

They hushed as workmen walked past, carrying a ladder and tools.

“We should talk over lunch,” said Bates. “We have Operation Hollywood to visit and then the rest of the afternoon with Las Vegas team.”

In the Hollywood office Planner and Bates shook hands with a spiky blonde haired thirty-something man wearing large glasses. On the wall was a large poster for the “Pearl Harbor” movie.

“Hi, I’m Planner.”

“Bates.”

“I’m Nigel. Hi. Thanks. Do sit down,” said Nigel nicely in a British accent.

“Hopefully we won’t take up too much of your time,” said Planner.

“Thanks. All the noise in the office stops us from recording master tapes so we are just rehearsing at the moment. I really am a scriptwriter. Just finished on Pearl Harbour… Ben Affleck…” said Nigel, pointing to the poster.