[SAMWolf]

Intelligence gathering, something the Liberals need to learn about.

[Iris7]

"Intelligence gathering, something the Liberals need to learn about."

President Washington had a fund of one million dollars at his disposal for intelligence purposes, a truly vast sum in those days. Making a guess using Web sources, the 1790 $1,000,000 is something like $700,000,000 today. These numbers are very broad estimates, to be sure. Still, we are looking at the yearly cash income of something like a million citizens.

Nowadays this sort of expenditure would be called "bribery". May I ask, how are you going to develop foreign intelligence without the cooperation of foreigners? Do you figure that foreigners will run terrible risks for their whole families because they just "love" the United States so much? Fat chance, hey?

Now, sizable cash payments, those work quite often.

You want somebody to do something that you want, you have to do something that he wants. Either that, or both he, and you, make the transaction out of love, or, if otherwise, through violence or the threat of violence. There are no other ways.