Resignation

The following are personal opinions of Will Jackson, and do not reflect the official or unofficial positions of the World Information and Coordination Organization, its personnel, or any of its affiliates.

I resigned from WICO last Saturday after refusing to give up writing my blog. “The Execution group runs a tight ship,” Victor Lansing told me, “and it must speak with one voice. That is especially true for our education component, since it has direct contact with the public. As a well-known member of my team, what you say to others has the weight of being part of that program, and must be subject to the same controls as the rest of the deployment.” He offered me the option of using the blog as an official announcement platform for the team, but I chose not to. “You are either a journalist or a team player, but you cannot be both. Since it is against WICO policy to fire someone for exercising free speech, Ambassador Lazlo might be amenable to assigning you to a position in a different group, just not this one.”

The ultimatum came at the end of his briefing, which had proved Samantha correct in her expectation that there could be no creative modification of the program by me or anyone else. The “field testing” he wanted would be mostly a means of tweaking efficiency based on assumptions already locked into the program. I asked if the assumptions had been tested by members of the test communities who were in the brainstorming sessions, but he refused to answer (in my personal and professional opinion, that meant “no”).

Samantha was disappointed but not surprised by my resignation. She thanked me for my service, and added that no one within WICO will be allowed to share any non-public information with me. I was, however, encouraged to take any steps on my own to further the goals of the strategy and encourage others to do the same. This post is the first such step.

Reality Check

My experience with real projects and vision of what drives Will overrode my inclination to keep him in WICO. Also, he can now return to reporting events outside of his job focus.