ZOMG! The national security world is totally as petty, gossipy and vicious as a pack of 13 year old girls. Just look at the hysteria surrounding supposed Twitter spy "Shawna Gorman."

Wired.com has a fascinating rundown on the intrigue around Gorman, aka @PrimosEra, aka "the 1st Lady of Missiles," aka @LadyCaesar, aka Shawna Felchner, aka Shawn. It's fascinating not because Gorman is an actual foreign agent — the evidence is thin to non existent on that count — but because of all the melodramatic accusations and cloak and dagger surrounding her positively quotidian online communication .

Gorman has apparently built up quite a clique of admirers in the defense community, mainly older men drawn to her combination of missile talk, drone jokes, and bikini pictures. (Always irresistible.) One counterterrorism and "asymmetrical engagement " buff told her he'd like to paint her picture on the side of a strategic bomber. Awww.

Then there are the haters, who think she's an ominous threat to U.S. interests at home and abroad. Like, uh, @FrostinaDC, a Defense Department contractor and self-described "National Security Analyst" who warned in a chilling series of tweets that "I have intel that @PrimorisEra is a Honey Pot & if you're in my field you know what that means;" that the @PrimorisEra Twitter account was of questionable "validity;" and that "a bikini perpetuates your [@PrimorisEra's] fake persona & makes the boys want to screw you." OMFG no she did NOT just imply Gorman is an agent of a foreign power using her sexy sexual sexiness to extract national security secrets! (Yes, she totally did.)

@FrostinaDC gossiped with her girlfriends — sorry, "women national security experts" — about how Gorman is, like, a total tramp, and seriously for real everyone agreed, so @FrostinaDC actually turned in @PromorisEra for a Pentagon investigation. Ha, so best. Here is the dossier of Very Compelling And Serious Evidence against this probable lady spy:

  • In a direct message Twitter chat with an active soldier, she asked where he was stationed and where he was deploying. "He thought she should know better not to ask for sensitive specifics like that."
  • In a conversation about helping a guy get a job, when the guy dropped the first name of a possible job contact, she asked for the last name of his job contact, even though she had been told the contact "is known around Langley" where the CIA is based. Do we have to spell it out for you? This contact might or might not be acquaintances with one or more employees of the CIA (!!). And @PromorisEra is just shamelessly digging for more info on her, like her name. Shameless.
  • Made this "joke" tweet (sure) to an account belonging to an unmanned aerial drone: "@SexyRavenUAV women are dangerous creatures… you & I know this prolly better than most men." Dead giveaway!
  • There is no fourth piece of evidence or, indeed, any more evidence at all.

There's also a whole section where Wired.com tries to interview @PromorisEra but ends up talking to some older dude who just happens to know a lot about "her" and "her" thinking and who is authenticated as her spokesman on Facebook by the password "Tabasco" (seriously) and who then puts "her" on the phone for a brief chat. All that's missing to make this completely Middle School are some Trapper Keepers, elaborately folded paper notes and a hall monitor to break everything up when the school bell rings.

[Photo via Twitpic]