Spycraft - Melton [215]
The best graphological analysis required a page or more of current handwriting for comparison against a similar amount of writing from some years earlier. Rarely did the graphologist have the luxury of being in possession of that much information and at times had to lower his expectations of the science. When presented with a collection of Stalin’s doodles after the dictator’s meeting with U.S. diplomats in the early 1950s, one TSS graphologist declined to provide a current psychological assessment. The sketches were clearly depictions of wolves, the graphologist commented, but he could offer nothing more than conjecture as to how those reflected Stalin’s mental state.
In another instance, during the summer of 1983 a graphologist was given the handwritten signature of Soviet Communist Party General Secretary (and former director of the KGB) Yuri Andropov. Comparing the recent signature with previous Andropov signatures, the graphologist concluded that the writer had an inflexible commitment to ideological ends and little interest in compromise. At a time when the U.S. government questioned whether Andropov represented a “new, more Western” type of Soviet leader and was uncertain whether his health would limit his tenure as the Soviet head of state, the graphologist added that the handwriting comparisons showed evidence of increasing stress and difficultly in controlling moods. Causes of the stress and the reaction could, she concluded, be related to physical health or pressure of the position or both. In fact, Andropov’s subsequent policies did not demonstrate new flexibility and, less than six months later, he died.
More recently, in the early 1990s, a classic handwriting analysis occurred when a CIA officer unexpectedly received a folded piece of silk from a fellow parishioner at a Catholic mass in Rangoon, Burma. The message, whispered the parishioner, had been written by a political prisoner who arranged to have it smuggled out of the heavily guarded prison and intended it to be given to the U.S. government. When the message on silk arrived at Headquarters, an OTS graphologist was asked to assess the writing but was given no information about the author or the circumstances of its acquisition. She studied the writing for several days, applying the standard techniques of letter and stroke measurements, and reported: “The writer possesses the genuine humility of those who are truly at peace and genuinely altruistic. Independent and individualistic, the writer is a true visionary . . . extraordinarily idealistic but at the same time sophisticated, manipulative, savvy, and subtle. Peaceful conflict resolution is a forte.”
What the graphologist did not know was that her work was playing a key role in a major foreign policy decision. The assessment request came from a presidential envoy who was considering whether to meet with Burmese prodemocracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The meeting eventually occurred and afterward the diplomat credited the analysis with preparing him for an encounter with “a skilled, dynamic leader with keen political instincts and a flair for the dramatic” and, who “through courage and determination had repeatedly faced down the Burmese military and endured.” Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000.
The introduction to a 1954 national security assessment prepared for President Eisenhower titled “Report on the Covert Activities of the Central Intelligence Agency” asserted: “If the U.S. is to survive, long-standing American concepts of ‘fair play’ must be reconsidered. . . . We must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people will be made acquainted with, understand, and support this fundamentally repugnant