Word: humanity
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...keep track of what is going on in Cuba, the U.S. employs both the most advanced and the most ancient technology: ELINT (electronic intelligence) and HUMINT (human eyes and ears). Apparently there was not enough of either in the case of the belatedly discovered Soviet brigade...
Despite all the electronic wizardry, human snooping is still needed to fill in gaps. But the task of infiltration is formidable in a tightly controlled garrison state like Cuba, where local security forces are reinforced by Soviet ones. Not even Cubans are allowed to go near the Soviet command post, east of Havana...
Footnote-minded historians, to be sure, try to keep alive even the most obscure human misadventures. Yet certain cases thrive quite apart from the historical impulse that might keep them stirring in the public imagination. It is not mere fascination with history that has kept the British forever trying to solve the murders by Jack the Ripper in 1888, or Americans perennially intrigued with the fate of Amelia Earhart, the aviation heroine whose plane disappeared in the Pacific in 1937. Various speculations have made butcherous Jack out to be a perverted prince of British royalty or a deranged midwife...
...event carries some content of morality or ideology or suspense or horror or romance, some ambiguity, even an engaging murkiness, he, she or it is claimed by the public and used as a source of everything from mythmaking to sheer entertainment. The phenomenon provides glimpses of the subtle human chemistries from which folklore is manufactured. To know how such mythmaking works is to be freed of all surprise when dramatic events evoke numberless theories to account for them or produce songs, plays and novels to celebrate, rehash and elaborate them...
True, most cases do get closed, passing into history and out of memory. That so many linger, alive and kicking, speaks mainly of the human urge not only to look at the past but to lug it into the present, reshaping it into folklore. Which is always handy to have around for nourishment and entertainment, Alger Hiss in case the present goes dry.- Frank Trippett