Posted by
Boris Tiraspolsky on Saturday, March 27, 2010 5:10:08 PM
"The Byzantines had good spies, but no intelligence bureaucracy at all. Officials involved in the management of espionage performed these functions along with other duties. They never had a bureaucratic hierarchy of intelligence and never thought to create one. In America, we've had an intelligence bureaucracy only since the CIA's creation in 1947. We need spies, but we don't need an intelligence bureaucracy."
What the Byzantines Can Teach Us about Our National Security
By Ishmael Jones
Civilization in the city of Rome was extinguished by the year 476, but scholars today recognize that the Roman Empire continued to thrive in its eastern capital of Constantinople, in what we call the Byzantine Empire. As Edward Luttwak notes, the Byzantines did not use the word "Byzantine." They called themselves Romans, and their enemies called them Romans as well. The Byzantine Empire carried on Roman traditions of civilization, commerce, law, and education for nearly a thousand years until they met a heroic end in the Muslim conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
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