notes@ucbcad.UUCP (11/01/83)
#R:yale-com:-229900:ucbesvax:32500003:000:4161 ucbesvax!turner Oct 31 21:02:00 1983 Re: DeBenedictus' questions on Turing's "chemical castration", etc. The article I read was not specific on this point. I imagine there where ways to simply suppress male sex-drives--I would be horrified but not surprised if such techniques were derived from Nazi concentration-camp research on the subject (that being one "final solution" under consider- ation at the time.) Certainly the OSS had captured documents to this effect. As for the specific charges, I am still unclear. There can be no doubt, however, that there were provisions by then for dealing with intelligence workers who concealed their homosexuality. This was shortly after the Kim Philby incident, where a handful of "moles" defected over the course of a few years. All of these defectors were gay, or thought to be gay. So when they found out about Turing, they jumped to an obvious (but certainly wrong) conclusion: that he was a likely candidate for defection, if not a mole himself. To prove otherwise, he had to undergo forms of humiliation that would have sent many others packing off to the USSR. The legal pretexts for his treatment are probably still on the books, and take many forms in the U.S. as well: "lewd behavior", etc. Some details of the history of the post-War intelligence community can be found in last month's "Harper's", in the article on the Great Mole Contro- versy. One interesting sidelight is the relationship between the literary academics of the 30's and the patterns of recruitment in British intelligence. While rife with avowed Communists, many of whom were gay (Stephen Spender, et al.), this generation of essayists, novelists and poets had considerable skill at subterfuge, and the rooting out of ambiguity. These were found to be excellent qualities in an intelligence analyst. And there, perhaps, the trap was set: young British gays, having nothing more to lose in terms an image of masculinity that the public school system both consecrated and undermined, chose to study literature. The sharpening of their subtle and clever minds with Marxist dialectic and French poetry turned them into high-quality fodder for the spy mills. Then, faced with a choice between loyalty to a nation that rejected their sexuality, and loyalty to a nation that seemed to embrace their old- school-crowd ideology (and didn't give much of a hoot about their sexuality), they defected. The rather ambiguous value of gays as spies was evidenced by the radical change of style that ensued among Russian intelligence operatives. Prior to Kim Philby's defection, there was a lot to the Boris Badonov stereotype of the Russian spy: lurking around in the embassy wings in bulky black trenchcoats was their trademark. This changed under Philby (who is even now, high in the KGB command, with the ear of Andropov). Russians became conspicuous by their excellent taste in clothes and cultivated manner--a style no doubt derived from the Oxford literary set, and thus indirectly from a tradition that probably dates back to Oscar Wilde. And then, of course, there came the grosser backlash, probably reaching its peak with Joe McCarthy's "Queers -> Commies" illogic. The repercussions are felt even today. About a month ago, there were pickets here at the U.C. Berkeley law school, Boalt Hall. The CIA recruits heavily from graduating classes of lawyers (the reasons should be clear from the fore- going discussion), but still considers gays a security risk, supposedly because they can be blackmailed into defecting. The campus employment office had an agreement with the university that it did not have to pro- vide its facilities to employers who discriminated against gays. Somehow, a loophole was arranged for the CIA. While recruiters did not actually pursue their quarry on campus (they don't like the fuss that their appearance kicks up at still-radical U.C. Berkeley) they DID make use of employment-office computer files. Well, I didn't mean to ramble on . . . in any case, it's interesting to see Turing's persecution in historical perspective. Perhaps someday there will be a book about it all. --- Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)