Weaponizing Anthropology. David H. Price
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the radical shift in militaristic foreign and domestic policy and the ascendancy of unchecked powers for U.S. intelligence agencies quelled Flattes’ desire to work in any national security capacity after 9/11.
When Flattes completed his Master’s degree in June 2001, he posted his resume as he was required to do under the guideline and he went on to other things. Flattes had no further contact with NSEP until 2008, when he received a letter from the Department of Defense (eventually forwarded from a decade-old address) notifying him that he must either begin work for a U.S. agency involved in national security work, or repay the cost of his scholarship along with penalties. As the parent of a young child, Flattes worked part time and lived on limited income. Upon receiving the letter, he contacted NSEP and tried to work out a five-year payment plan but was told he could either begin work at a national security related position (which would both forgive the debt and provide a salary), or he must repay his loan over a two-year period. After some discussion, he was told he could pay off his loan in three years. Flattes could afford a four-year repayment schedule, but on his budget a three-year schedule was impossible.
NSEP personnel told Flattes that a four-year repayment plan was out of the question, and that if he did not meet NSEP’s demands he would have to pay a 28 per cent penalty, could have his wages garnished, and collections would be turned over to a private collection agency. Flattes says he left messages for Boren Scholarship and Fellowship Director Christopher Powers, saying he was sending the first of his four-year payments. Flattes described a bizarre episode that occurred after he sent the first of his four-year payments via Canadian Registered Purolator service, when he received a frightening phone call from someone claiming that FBI and D.C. police were investigating the letter he’d sent as a suspected anthrax scare, and they demanded to know the contents of the envelope. The check Flattes sent to NSEP was never signed for, and he believes this was done to produce a trail of plausible deniability, allowing NSEP to claim he was in default so that they could increase pressure on him to seek national security related work.
After NSEP failed to accept his payment, Flattes received a letter from the Treasury Department demanding repayment of his NSEP scholarship with an added 28 per cent penalty. Flattes’ believed that NSEP “had no intention of setting up a payment plan and wanted to turn the matter over to another agency as soon as possible.” Flattes told me he felt like he was “being shaken down by a loan shark in a government suit,” but instead of being given the choice between paying up now or taking a tire-iron to his kneecap, he was told he could either come up with payments beyond his budget, sell his skills for national security work as part of a terror war he does not support, or he could have his credit rating decimated. Not pleasant choices for a man with a conscience and a child to feed. Flattes acknowledged that he must pay back his scholarship funds. What he objected to is NSEP’s harsh tactics and their efforts to pressure him into national security work.
Flattes questioned what events triggered the push for him to fulfill his service requirement at this particular point in time. The NSEP service agreement he signed in 1998 did not specify when this service must be completed (today, the program requires services within three years of graduation). Because Flattes served as a Cryptologic Technician Technical in the U.S. Navy from 1985-1989, he believed the NSEP’s actions could be an effort designed to press him back into service involving intelligence work. In the Navy, Flattes specialized in Electronic Intelligence where he obtained “a security clearance that was two levels above Top Secret which is rare for enlisted personnel. This field has definite links and cooperation with U.S. intelligence agencies. Basically you work for one, you work for all in a sense.” Flattes says he had specialized training in areas that would now be of direct interest to intelligence agencies regardless of specific changes over the last two decades, and he can’t help but wonder if his NSEP debt was being used to try and leverage him into intelligence work that he is unwilling to undertake in the political setting of post 9/11 America.
The significance of the NSEP’s pressure on Flattes is not that he has to pay back his scholarship funds: he contractually agreed to do this when he signed his NSEP contract. The significance of Flattes’ account is threefold: first, Flattes raises the possibility that NSEP may be using his debt to pressure him to get him to do classified national security work; second, it documents the forms of coercion awaiting participants in intelligence and national security payback scholarship programs, who come to think better of working in national security settings once they finish their education; finally, his treatment counters claims that scholars participating in NSEP will not later be forced to either complete their national security requirements or pay back funds with penalties.
Perhaps the most unusual element of Flattes’ case is that we, the public, have some knowledge of it. Flattes’ willingness to speak out helps establish how the coercive potential of NSEP and other national security linked payback programs leverage scholars into governmental service supporting policies that they personally oppose. Because of the private nature of the repayment demands, it is unknowable how routine such high-pressure demands are.
Institutional privacy policies prevented Boren Scholarship Director, Christopher Powers, from commenting on the specifics of Flattes’ case, but he did tell me that the “vast majority of [NSEP funded scholars] to date have fulfilled the program’s service requirement through a variety of jobs throughout the federal sector and in higher education.” But the public does not know how many former NSEP recipients have caved to the program’s demands and quietly slunk off to work for the CIA, NSA, FBI, Homeland Security or other agencies designated to meet contractual obligations of servitude. We don’t know how many NSEP scholarship recipients later work in intelligence or national security settings. That some meet their payback requirements in ways that have little or nothing directly to do with national security does not diminish the significance of those who do, and such connections between scholars and national security are the stated reason for NSEP’s existence.
Because NSEP’s “payback” is always distant, fluid and ill-defined at the time that students join the program, participants cannot know what they are agreeing to do when they receive these funds. Faculty advisors at students’ institutions often play a key role in students’ NSEP decisions.
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