Betrayal of the State

By LUAN RAMA

I am not inclined to consider, let alone believe, everything being written and said about the former director of the state’s secret service, but if what is being served to the public through various media originates from SPAK’s files, then her entire conduct and activity as director of the State Intelligence Service is nothing but BETRAYAL OF THE STATE.

Not only chosen, but also trusted by Prime Minister Edi Rama to serve at the head of the foremost agency among the state’s vital services — the State Intelligence Service — Vlora Hyseni needed to embody certain special qualities and abilities, which anyone assuming that duty must possess in particular, to understand and then fulfill the enormous weight of responsibility.

Accused of “supporting the perpetrator of a crime” and “disclosing secret acts or data,” due to the special qualities and responsibilities inherent in the duty of intelligence service director, the charge is not equivalent to that of any other suspect or accused, whether they are leaders at various levels in the State Police, the Scientific Police Institute, or elsewhere.

If the director of the State Intelligence Service, through her actions or inaction, supported the perpetrator of a crime or disclosed acts and data of a secret nature, she committed BETRAYAL OF THE STATE.

The attempt to see it differently or to relativize everything connected to her, considering it merely “individual responsibility,” is an attempt to justify a grave crime unprecedented at these levels of state responsibility.

Because this is not simply about an individual who broke the law.

It is about a high state official to whom the state entrusted a duty that, at its core, exists to protect the state itself.

An ordinary official may answer for a violation committed in the exercise of his duty. But the head of the intelligence service carries a responsibility that stems directly from the special nature of the function he exercises. He does not merely administer documents, does not merely lead employees, and does not merely make administrative decisions.

He administers the state’s trust.

And this trust has a concrete content: safeguarding information, protecting sources, protecting national security interests, and using every secured piece of data solely in service of the mission for which the institution exists.

It is precisely for this reason that the individual cannot be artificially separated from the office he holds.

Because in such a duty, the power the individual holds is not personal power. It is power delegated by the state.

The information at his disposal is not personal information. It is state information.

The secret he guards is not his secret. It is the state’s secret.

And the trust placed in him is not a personal privilege. It is very high state responsibility.

This is also why every personal relationship, every communication, and every action of such a leader must be judged in relation to the duty he has undertaken. Not because the head of an institution cannot have a personal life, friendships, or human relationships, but because there is a line that cannot be crossed: personal interest cannot enter the space reserved for state interest.

There are several high state duties, including that of the head of the Intelligence Service, in which the leader’s relationship with the high responsibility he exercises is regulated, besides by law, by several codes sacred and non-negotiable with anyone. Not even with oneself.

The trust for what one learns through duty, the oath not to share what one knows with anyone, the fanatical preservation of relations with subordinates, partners, and heads of other institutions that make up the chain of the state’s vital institutions, the protection of sources and information, integrity, self-restraint, loyalty, the primacy of mission over personal interest, the avoidance of any conflict of interest, and the preservation of the impassable boundary between duty and personal relations are the foundation of the culture of serving the state with the highest loyalty.

Any deviation from these codes and their violation constitute BETRAYAL OF THE STATE.

These are not qualities that can be demanded according to circumstances. They are the very conditions upon which the state’s trust in the one entrusted with such a duty is built.

Therefore, any conscious deviation from these codes and any violation of them is not and cannot be merely “individual responsibility.”

Only those who have no idea how the state is built and how it functions, or others who deliberately want to impose a different line of conduct for law enforcement bodies, could consider the SHISH director’s conduct in office as such.