Many moons ago, I spent more than a few years in the military intelligence community, mostly in the Far East. The "spook" world is intriguing, as it manages to blend the cerebral and the visceral into a tight-knit intellectual/warrior culture. On the one hand, studying the enemy requires high-level analytic ability but, on the other hand, the purpose of all the academic pursuit is to more accurately target lethal force, to put "steel on target", as they say.
This is all kept under wraps, of course, for good reason. One interesting glimpse into this world is in today's NYT, with an article about patches created by various "black ops" organizations like the National Reconnaisance Office and various stealth military units (mostly U.S. Air Force). The picture above is from Skivvy Nine, the "legendary" USAF unit in the Republic of Korea. One key to the code: the knight is a chess reference; intelligence, like the knight, is the most unpredictable force on the battlefield.
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