In one passage of her book The Passion of Ayn Rand, Barbara Branden relates the story of how Rand, after her publication of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, was able to arrange for the visit of her sister to New York City. Rand had not seen her sister, who was still living in Russia, in decades.

Of course Rand was very excited about the visit from her sister and arranged to pick her sister up by limousine from the airport. Once they were comfortably in the limousine headed into Manhattan and to Rand's apartment, Rand started peppering her sister with questions. All the sister would do is nod toward the limousine driver. Rand at first laughed before realizing that her sister was serious about not talking in front of this potential informant. Rand told her that it was all right to talk in front of the driver in America. You see, there were no informants back then in the United States. But the sister still refused to talk. Decades of living under the watchful eye of the Soviet Union had built into her sister's psyche a cautiousness and suspicion of others that even Rand, living in the then-informant-free America, had long forgotten about.

It was the same at Rand's apartment. Rand introduced her sister to the housekeeper and again, in front of the housekeeper, Rand's sister was very cautious in her conversation. It was only after the housekeeper left that the sister opened up and told Rand of the goings on back in Russia.

It has to be an awful way to live when there are informants all around and you never know who is going to turn you in for what. You learn to talk and share your thoughts only when no one other than your closets friends and family are in earshot. I believe it stifles life and living to always be required to be so on alert.

It is an important battle to keep such snooping out of the United States. The recent news of a Bush Administration attempt to launch Operation TIPS deserved the fierce attack that was launched against it, including the excellent column from Root Striker Amanda Bowen and some guy's quick-thinking move to grab the web addresses www.operationtips.com and www.operationtips.org.

AS Justin Raimondo pointed out, such an informant program would have launched a million busybodies and the vengeful. I believe it would have also proved to be a tool of the calculating.

It is the schemers and the calculating who survive when governments are powerful, snooping and totalitarian.

Many years back, I met a man I will call Mr. H.  He was one of the most interesting men I have ever known. When I first met him, he sought me out to do some business consulting for him. I agreed to visit him at his office in the garment district in New York City. When I arrived at his office building, I was somewhat disappointed and thought that I had perhaps made a mistake in scheduling the visit. The building was very old. The elevator was very small, and for a brief moment I even wondered if it was safe. But I proceeded up to his office. The office itself was very modest; about the most you could say for it was that it was clean. There were about a dozen employees.

I talked with Mr. H for some time, and I told him what I thought I could do for him on a particular project. He seemed to like my advice and invited me to visit him at his apartment for a further meeting.

About a week later, I proceeded to visit him at his Fifth Avenue apartment. To say there was a contrast between his office and his apartment certainly understates the situation. His apartment was at most three blocks from The Plaza Hotel. When I entered the lobby and was announced to Mr. H by the doorman, I had no fears of stepping onto this elevator. It had beautiful polished wood with gold leaf trim. When the door opened to Mr. H's floor, it opened onto his foyer. His apartment was the entire floor.

The living room of his apartment there was a beautiful view of Central Park. The dinning area could easily seat about 40, and stretched half the way to Madison Avenue (that's a half a city block)! His kitchen was bigger than the apartment I had at that time. His apartment was filled with Rembrandts, Renoirs etc. The living room also had tiny little bells on the end tables. You could ring the bells and a butler and hostess, both in uniforms, would appear.

The contrast between Mr. H's apartment (I later learned he also owned a house in Switzerland) and his office was spectacular, and it had to have shown on my face. Mr. H said to me, in explanation, "Just because you have a stick of butter doesn't mean you should take it out into the sun."

After getting to know Mr. H over the years, it became obvious how he gained his wealth. He was a very shrewd and calculating operator.

Mr. H was also a German Jew who was in his twenties when Hitler was in power. In the year before Mr. H died, he did a deal with a group that had as a member a German who was not a Jew. This German was about the same age as Mr. H and came from a town near where Mr. H grew up. He whispered to others in the deal that the only way Mr. H could have survived in Germany at that time was if he had been an informant.

There is no way I personally know how Mr. H survived in Germany during the Hitler years--perhaps he was an informant. He was a very calculating man, and perhaps if he saw other Jews being shipped off in railroad cattle cars, then maybe he made a decision that would be tough for a lot of people to make.

I have often wondered how you become an informant under those circumstances. I guess you don't necessarily turn in your best friends but perhaps you turn in enemies, competitors and those you know only casually.

When the very calculating billionaire financier Michael Milken was harassed by the government and decided to plead guilty to financial securities charges, part of the guilty plea required Milken to cooperate with the government in revealing any wrongdoing on Wall Street that he was aware of. In other words, Milken would have to become an informant. But did Milken inform the government about any wrongdoing by his friends and business partners? No he did not. The only information Milken provided was about some deals his chief competitor Merrill Lynch had worked on.

The government was not really much interested in going after Merrill Lynch, but Milken did have enough dirt on Merrill that some investigating did take place and Merrill ended up paying a fine.

When the very calculating financier and former fugitive Marc Rich sought his controversial pardon from then-President Bill Clinton, Rich had the Israeli government put enormous pressure on Clinton.

The Israelis advised Clinton that Rich, through his vast international contacts, provided the Israelis with much valuable information. Knowing a bit about Marc Rich, it would be very interesting to know just how often the information Rich provided to the Israelis also coincided with a benefit to Rich's business operations.

The most recent headline-making United States government informant is Abu Zubaydah, the captured chief of operations for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. It appears that Zubayadah is making a total fool out of those interrogating him.

Time magazine reported that, "Intelligence sources have told various newspapers that interrogators are using sophisticated mind games to coax tidbits of information from Zubaydah . . . . Zubaydah, sources said, revealed that a U.S. citizen would try to plant a radioactive 'dirty bomb' in the country; with this tip . . . U.S. intelligence arrested Jose Padilla as he stepped off a plane from Pakistan."

I wonder who is playing the mind games.

Zubayadah was responsible for that ridiculous alert that went out advising Americans to be on alert for Middle Eastern men in rubber skin-diving suits. One thing you have to say about Zubayadah is that the man has a sense of humor. There may be terrorists plots going on here in the United States, but you won't see any Middle Eastern terrorists in rubber skin-diving suits.

Zubayadah's coupe de grace, as far as ridiculous information he is putting out, has to be his fingering of Jose Padilla as a terrorist plotting to set off a dirty bomb in the United States.

Now you have to really think about this. You had Padilla, a Puerto Rican from a Chicago street gang, walking into a terrorist camp in Afghanistan proclaiming he wants to take part in the Jihad against America. Do you think Zubayadah then just opens up all his books on all his cells and sits down with Padilla to discuss strategy? No, he does what the mafia does with someone they don't know very well.

The mafia has you kill someone to prove you are not a government plant. Zubayadah has you go out and try to nuke a United States city to prove you are not a plant.

So now Zubayadah is captured and knows he has to give up something or the electric prods are going to be coming out. Does he give up some elaborate scheme the terrorists are cooking up? No, he gives up a guy, Padilla, who has as much knowledge of the inner workings of al Qaeda as I do.

So the United States arrests Padilla, hails it as a great breakthrough in the fight against terrorism and locks him up somewhere without access to a lawyer. Great country this is becoming. It is doubtful Padilla can program a VCR, never mind execute a plan to dirty bomb a city.

When it’s not the calculating informants, it is Raimondo's busybodies. But all informants stifle the lifeblood out of a country. They result in making everyone super careful and cautious. They push a country towards great restrictions on the free flow of actions, information and ideas. It is an ugly business. But now when we think of the ugly word "informant," we must not only think of Hitler or the Soviet Union. We must think of George Bush.

It appears that public outcry will halt the implementation of Operation TIPS that was proposed by the Bush Administration. But that the Bush Administration would even attempt such a plan is an indication of how totalitarian in thinking they are. They will be back at us with other attempts to secure informants and control us, and we must be ready to shut them down again.