The Borne Curiosity

August 13, 2007 9:02 AM

At the beginning of "The Borne Identity", why did Jason have a bank account number implanted in his hip?

I'm late to the game on the Borne series, but finally watched the first two last night. I am confused about a crucial detail, however.

At the beginning of "The Borne Identity", Jason is fished from the sea with two bullets in his back and a Swiss bank account number implanted in his hip.

Why was there a Swiss bank account number implanted in his hip?

1.) According to "The Borne Supremacy", Jason is the first Treadstone agent to be stricken with amnesia, so it would make little sense for Treadstone to implant it as a safety precaution. ("If you happen to lose your brain -- though it has never happened before -- just remember to carve into your hip and get the account number and figure things out.")

2.) It makes little sense for the CIA to have implanted it as standard operating procedure. ("We always implant super-secret Swiss bank account info in laser pointers (!) in our super-secret agents' bodies. It just makes sense!")

3.) It makes little sense for Jason to have implanted the device himself. ("Just in case my photographic memory fails -- as I have noticed it starting to do -- I will surely remember to carve into a random point in my body and dig out a Swiss bank account number and piece everything together.")

4.) If it WAS implanted for amnesiac reasons, why not stick a note in the box stating, "By the way, in case you forget everything, your name is Bill Smith and you work for the CIA. Call Sally at 555-555-5555.")

5.) If it was implanted to aide fellow agents in "cleaning up" the details of a covert agent's life in the event he is KIA, why? Since the CIA likely would have done the implanting, they already know the number, or could get it with little difficulty. Plus they've already got a guy working in the bank for convenience. ("Agent X, this is Agent Y. Agent Z is dead. Since you work at the bank, call Langley, get his account number, and empty his box.") But since we already know that Treadstone agents work alone, it should not have been implanted for this reason, anyway.

6.) Why implant a laser pointer beneath the skin FOR ANY REASON?? ("Er, did my account end in a 1 or a 7? Time to break out the machete and start digging!")

---

I did enjoy the films very much, but my satisfaction would double if a convincing reason for that implant could be offered. Perhaps from the book? Or a line in the movie I missed? Something logical, that's just made up?

HELP!

posted by rentalkarma to grab bag (33 comments total)

Suspension of disbelief is what keeps movie studios in the black.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:07 AM on August 13, 2007

I was going to write a more detailed response, but I'm going to just extend on what Burhanistan said and say:

BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME.

Seriously, how cool is that? You find a Swiss Bank Account number implanted in your hip? Then you go there and you find guns and money and passports??? AWESOME.
posted by atomly at 9:12 AM on August 13, 2007 [4 favorites]

If I recall, in the book it was microfilm. Had to update that tech for the movies (plus it gives a really cool visual).

It could be that the hip beacon is treated as a emergency failsafe. If you run into problems out in the field, you know there is contact details stored in your person that you can use. Why he doesn't just rely on his super-awesome memory? Well accidents do happen. :)
posted by mmascolino at 9:13 AM on August 13, 2007

Interesting! I hadn't caught that before - but if I remember correctly from the first film, only Bourne knew about the account - the CIA finds out he's missing because of the failed assassination attempt, but because they get pinged for a bank account being accessed.

SPOILERS FOR THE SEQUELS BELOW...

I suspect the most logical answer would be that Bourne did it himself, as an escape route (all those extra passports) if he ever found a way out of Treadstone. In the third movie they make some references to "resistance during initiation" and I think in one of the flashbacks, Bourne (then still Daniel Webb) says or tries to say "No" when asked if he will give himself to the program. So maybe he always wanted to get out... That's kind of reaching though, and they don't make that connection clearly in the movie. But that's my best guess.
posted by nelleish at 9:15 AM on August 13, 2007

Burhanistan: Indeed, which is why I accept that no bullet will hit our hero's vital organs, and no fall will leave him paralyzed from the neck down. But the catalyst for the film needs at least a sliver of justification, no?
posted by rentalkarma at 9:17 AM on August 13, 2007

I assumed it was sort of an "In case of emergency, break glass" kind of thing. You know, in case you've exhausted all your other resources, you still have this to fall back on. Why is it embedded in his body? So it can't be easily found or removed by his enemies. Why doesn't he just memorize it? Because if he knew the number, there's always the possibility, slim though it might be, that he could disclose it accidentally or through torture or somesuch.
posted by cerebus19 at 9:17 AM on August 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

sigh.. that should say "NOT because they get pinged..."

My point being it could have been Bourne, unless I'm remembering wrong and the CIA did also know about the account, in which case I have no clever explanation for you. Guess I'll have to rewatch the movies!
posted by nelleish at 9:17 AM on August 13, 2007

I've not read the book, but I figure it was, as mmascolino suggests, an emergency measure.

He needs a secure place to keep important info that he wouldn't lose if strip-searched, hence the under-the-skin implant. The fact that the fisherman/doctor found it PDQ upon examination does question just how covert it was, though.

As for why he would need it, if he has a photographic memory? Hell, I'd do the same, but then, I do tend to over-plan some things... :-)
posted by Nice Guy Mike at 9:17 AM on August 13, 2007

I was always under the impression that Bourne created that himself.

He didn't know he would lose his memory, but there are other reasons to store some information on yourself that you might not be able to remember or you might not want to be able to remember (if coerced).

He didn't himself try to memorize the number, and he didn't look at it so that he couldn't reveal it unintentionally later. The laser part would be so that he could read it without special equipment, or even with poor eyesight. Additionally, it couldn't be read without taking it out of his meat, using Xray or CT.

I think it was his way of keeping a house key hidden under a rock.
posted by cmiller at 9:23 AM on August 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

I'd ditto the emergency failsafe. It's probably not meant to be used in case of amnesia, but rather in case you're stripped of all your possessions in the field, or need a new identity, or some other contingency plan I haven't thought of because I don't write spy novels.

About why he doesn't just remember the bank account number, to expand further on mmascolino's answer: there are many good reasons, but there's also a lack of compelling reasons why you would ask an agent to remember a failsafe account number instead of implanting it somewhere that's unlikely to be found without surgical intervention. The chance that you'd need the stuff in the safety deposit box is low, but if you do happen to need it someday it'll be extremely important. You don't want to leave that to someone's memory if you don't have to, right?
posted by chrominance at 9:27 AM on August 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

At the end of the Swiss deposit box sequence in the first film, we do see a bank employee making a covert communique to, I believe, the Chris Cooper character.
posted by blueshammer at 9:28 AM on August 13, 2007

(haven't seen the film but) if he's worried about being coerced into revealing the number, why wouldn't he also be worried into being coerced about revealing that he had the number implanted?
posted by andrew cooke at 9:30 AM on August 13, 2007

why wouldn't he also be worried into being coerced about revealing that he had the number implanted?

Well, aside from that, there's also the question of why would someone be asking him where he keeps his secret stash of vacation passports. And the likelihood that if they knew enough about him to know about the stash, they'd probably know where he kept the laser pointer. And gee, isn't that a lot of work to go through for a bunch of passports anyways? So I doubt the torture/interrogation scenario somewhat.
posted by chrominance at 9:34 AM on August 13, 2007

I'm going with emergency plan plus advantageous ignorance.

It's value as an emergency plan is pretty obvious. If you find yourself alone, with no memory to speak of, and without tools wouldn't something like that be exactly what you would want? I know I'd be happy about it. As a bonus it would show up as an unusual anomaly on x-rays so even if you forget that it's there, there is a decent chance a well meaning doctor will find it for you.

Not knowing what the information is, is a viable and effective way to thwart interrogation. If the CIA can make you forget who you are, it's pretty reasonable to suppose that the KGB, or suitable others, could make you divulge any information that you know. This method is likely to lessen the chance that they will learn all of the agent's secrets yet still give the agent a fighting chance to get out of serious trouble.

In other words, it's meant to be safe way to keep your agents from being totally screwed if a mission goes badly. Is it the best way to do this? I don't know. But it's at least a plausible explanation.
posted by oddman at 9:35 AM on August 13, 2007

On further reflection, did he know it was there or was it found for him? If the latter then the implantation method is foolproof against interrogation. If the former, then at least Bourne can't divulge the information in the implant because he doesn't know it. I don't think many interrogators would ask something like "are you implanted with anything?" I mean that's just an odd question. Further, the CIA likely understands that it's not perfect. Of course, if a defector is interrogating you, he's going to know about the implant, but in that scenario there's really nothing the CIA could do to help the agent.

Like I said earlier the implant is a lower-risk emergency tool. It's not perfect, but it's probably better in just about every respect to any scenario in which the agent knows the account codes and the content of the box.
posted by oddman at 9:42 AM on August 13, 2007

In the book, I suspect that the account functioned as a contingency fund; Bourne was probably expected to amass his own resources wherever possible, to minimize any possible exposure to his superiors or government. In that case, it's reasonable to expect that he would need to jump through some hoops - i.e. decipher the microfilm - to access the money.
posted by The Confessor at 9:45 AM on August 13, 2007

I didn't read the other comments so I don't Ultimatum spoiled for me, so here's my two cents:

3) It makes little sense for Jason to have implanted the device himself. ("Just in case my photographic memory fails -- as I have noticed it starting to do -- I will surely remember to carve into a random point in my body and dig out a Swiss bank account number and piece everything together.")

It makes sense for him to implant it there just in case. The spy business (as we have learned) isn't really good for your general health and well-being. He's a precautious guy. I doubt he was predicting losing his memory, but more anticipating being cut off from Treadstone/CIA. The fact that he found it was something of a lucky stroke anyway, thus implying that he implanted it himself without assuming he would lose his memory.
posted by slimepuppy at 9:47 AM on August 13, 2007

At the end of the Swiss deposit box sequence in the first film, we do see a bank employee making a covert communique to, I believe, the Chris Cooper character.

This is a reference to the book, that the bank account has an attached fiche confidentiale. Meaning, when the bank agent pulls up the file, it immediately says "If anyone asks about this account, please call XXX-XXX-XXXX and let us know someone is trying to access the account." The bank doesn't know anything about Bourne or the account. They just blindly follow the instructions.

In the book, the girl, Marie, is a finance expert and helps Bourne deal with this issue.

This ruins the "Bourne did it himself" theory.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:59 AM on August 13, 2007

my money's on the failsafe. guys working black ops would be disavowed by the government if things go wrong and they're found out on a mission. if all of a sudden they're left with no more paycheck or country to go home to, that's exactly what someone would need. enough passports to give someone options of where to go next, since you can't know who'll figure out his identity. enough cash for early retirement. i also think it's due to the interrogation angle, it's small enough to expect that people won't just stumble upon it. the guy on the boat got lucky. maybe he even has more then one, maybe he's got ten of the little things all over the place in case one gets found or he's in other parts of the country. if he's in southeast asia it's his left ass cheek, south america, his taint (that would suck), etc. anyway, these guys need an out if say a newspaper or country figures them out, cause uncle sam will just say, "never heard of the guy, see, no record of him either."

and what burhanistan said.
posted by andywolf at 10:00 AM on August 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

I don't think many interrogators would ask something like "are you implanted with anything?"

wtf? you think it's semantic games? i suspect that if you were being waterboarded and had an implanted number that someone wanted, it wouldn't help one diddly squat that they didn't ask for "an implant" - you know what would make them stop, in either case.

it's very curious - as if people are happier to confuse themselves than admit it's just a story. hmmm. perhaps not so odd. i guess this is how stories work.
posted by andrew cooke at 10:06 AM on August 13, 2007

Just take the Contact approach with the NASA suicide pill (paraphrase):

There are a million reasons we can imagine you would need this, but we give it out especially for those we can't.

The OCD nerdy contingency planners at the CIA passed this idea down. You just can't resist the spook logic if you're career CIA. This is why the Treadstone agent in Supremacy had the "deactivate alarm but really spring it" code for his alarm. It's just good spooking. It's like writing your name on a sock. Only the sock is alive. And you write with "lasers."
posted by cowbellemoo at 10:25 AM on August 13, 2007

Don't assume the contents of the vault are only to be used in an emergency. Remember how many passports and what not were in there? He probably used that all the time. Now...

Have you ever stood there staring at the ATM pad trying to remember a PIN number you've used thousands of times? That's why. People forget, especially account numbers that long, and these guys may be in situations where they can't afford to call the bank and go through some identity verification process. Ripping the thing out of their thigh may be easier given how small of a circumference it was. Make a tiny hole, push it out, and put a band-aid over it. Done.
posted by jwells at 10:38 AM on August 13, 2007

Since an x-ray machine wasn't required for the fishing boat doctor to find the implant, we have to assume that it was pretty easily found. I mean, the doctor seemed to be working by candlelight!

Further, did you see the size of that thing? You can't tell me that a flawlessly athletic man with lacking a cell of body fat would not notice the pain of such an implant, or the bulge in his leg it was producing.

So he certainly knew about it, which makes the "fear of coercion" argument pretty weak. Once bad guys started prying off fingernails, he might not know the number, but his mind would be moving to the device pretty quickly. Once they started prying off fingers, he might just say, "Hey guys, there's a conspicuous bulge on the side of my leg! Maybe we should check it out!"

And so what? There's nothing important in the box, anyway. As chrominance stated, that's far too elaborate a hiding scheme for a few passports and a stack of cash.

It makes perfect sense for a spy to have a Swiss account with emergency provisions. It makes no sense to hide in in a giant leg capsule, when you've got a photographic memory.

And preparing in advance for the one-in-a-zillion chance of amnesia seems like a reach. But even if you knew about your impending amnesia, why not just write the account number on a Post-It and put it in your wallet? (I KNOW the bad guys might find it, but as I just stated, they're going to get it anyway. And then see point 4 in the original question.)

"I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside."

Superspies with photographic memories don't "just forget" his or her only lifeline. That account number wouldn't be his ATM code; it would be his 9-1-1.

---

Great discussion so far, but so far the only thing that really stands up to scrutiny is: Nobody in the CIA could think of anything good, so we just injected a capsule devised by a committee. This is the federal government we're talking about.
posted by rentalkarma at 10:55 AM on August 13, 2007

I'd ditto the emergency failsafe. It's probably not meant to be used in case of amnesia, but rather in case you're stripped of all your possessions in the field, or need a new identity, or some other contingency plan I haven't thought of because I don't write spy novels.

About why he doesn't just remember the bank account number, to expand further on mmascolino's answer: there are many good reasons, but there's also a lack of compelling reasons why you would ask an agent to remember a failsafe account number instead of implanting it somewhere that's unlikely to be found without surgical intervention. The chance that you'd need the stuff in the safety deposit box is low, but if you do happen to need it someday it'll be extremely important. You don't want to leave that to someone's memory if you don't have to, right?

I agree with chrominance and andywolf. I think the fact that the account was flagged by the CIA supports this view. If an agent can't be paged on his cellphone or is otherwise out of communication, notification that his doublesupersecret Swiss bank deposit box has been accessed would signal that something has gone very wrong but that the agent is still alive. Either that, or the agent is dead and implanted laser doohickey has fallen into the wrong hands.

Sweet question. It's one that's plagued me in the past.
posted by roomwithaview at 11:29 AM on August 13, 2007

laser doohickey has fallen into the wrong hands.

You may remember that having the wrong hands will get you rejected from the bank (palm scanner!).
posted by cowbellemoo at 11:47 AM on August 13, 2007

Was the implant in a place he could access easily by himself?
posted by kirkaracha at 11:49 AM on August 13, 2007

Superspies with photographic memories don't "just forget" his or her only lifeline.

In the book, his wounds included a head wound that caused the selective amnesia (I can remember how to be a bad-ass martial artist, but I don't remember my own name).

IIRC, also in the book, there was another layer of brainwashing at work. David Webb was brainwashed into believing he was Jason Bourne, who was in turn brainwashed into believing he was international terrorist Carlos the Jackal, in the hopes of drawing the real Carlos into the open where he could be killed. Bourne's problem is that he doesn't know who he is, and two different groups of people are after him for two different reasons.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:56 AM on August 13, 2007

You can't tell me that a flawlessly athletic man with lacking a cell of body fat would not notice the pain of such an implant, or the bulge in his leg it was producing.

Yes, I can, because I have an artificial implant in me (no, dammit, it's not a Swiss Bank number). Not that I'm flawlessly athletic or anything, but you really can't feel it. Now, the placement - near the skin, on top of muscle - might be unworkable; but it'd certainly be possible to put an implant like that somewhere in the body such that it would only take a few minutes and a local anesthetic to remove it. I'd imagine if you're some badass secret agent, and you're desperate, you could skip the anesthetic, too.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 12:04 PM on August 13, 2007

Okay - I respectfully withdraw my "It's a personal escape stash" theory as clearly the CIA knew about it. I like the comparison to the astronaut suicide pills and the distinction that it's not an ATM: it's a true emergency stash that his superiors would know about - and his accessing it would mean he was in a dangerous position.

I don't think it can be argued this account was an emergency fall back for amnesia in particular - either by the CIA or Bourne himself. The shadow government doesn't come after Bourne to bring him back into the fold and restore his memories, they want to kill him and cover their tracks in a messy attempted assassination news story by nailing what they see to be a rogue agent: he's failed a mission, hasn't reported in, but has accessed his Super Secret Stash that would enable him to flee.

I agree that the federal government's love of Standard Operating Procedures holds up the best... "We do this because we do this, and hey it might come in handy, should an agent be stripped of all of their possessions and left for dead. These guys assassinate foreign leaders for us without question, so they probably won't mind us sticking a lump of metal in them either."
posted by nelleish at 12:18 PM on August 13, 2007

I think it was because it was a swiss bank account number. If I remember right from the book (read when I was, like, 12), these special bank accounts are no questions asked-type accounts. You know then number, it must be you. ID neither required, nor desired.

So you would want a crazy-hard-to-guess number, which would also make it a hard-to-remember number. Now, you obviously would not want the bad guys getting a hold of that number if you were captured or searched for whatever reason. So you can't keep it on a card in your wallet. You also wouldn't want to rely on it being stashed somewhere that could later be staked out, etc. It might be inconvenient to go back there.

My guess is that he had the number either memorized or put away somewhere in a secret hiding spot, but also had that, just in case he needed it in an emergency. Having lost his memory, that turned out to be all he had.

And microfilm is so stone-age. Who has a reader for that crap?
posted by ctmf at 4:19 PM on August 13, 2007

Given spaceman spiff's testimony about the non-detectability of such a thing, it just raises another question. If a small thingy would be undetectable, and if the agency had the opportunity to implant one such device, why wouldn't the agency have saved themselves a world of (potential, future) trouble by also tagging him with some kind of embedded superspy locator/tracking device?
posted by juv3nal at 4:29 PM on August 13, 2007

juv3nal: then you have to deal with power requirements. And any transmitter small enough to be unobtrusive in the body is probably not going to have much of a range, either.

An implant wouldn't really be undetectable, now that I think about it - just look for the insertion scar. But it would fit the story; I have a scar behind my ear from my cochlear implant, but I probably wouldn't notice it quickly if I didn't know it was there (and wasn't reaching behind my ear to put on the external bit). Nor would a casual look notice it; you'd have to actually look at the skin just behind my ear. A scar on the leg like Bourne would have would be more obvious, but unless you knew there was an implant there, why would you assume it was anything other than an old injury?

Now I have to kill you all. You know too much.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 5:01 PM on August 13, 2007

After having watched the first film again, I'm starting to be of the opinion that it's a CIA thing. The books already refer to the fiche confidentiale - and there's a quick reference that the CIA knew about the box Bourne had; back at Langley one of the characters says that he accessed the account and the box.

There's some similarity as well to the box/assortment of odds and ends that Bourne had in the box that the other Treadstone agents have when they're activated to go after him.

If the implant was put there by the CIA, it's not to far to go from there to assume that it was a "in case of emergency, here's your backup" that he could go to and that it might as well have had a transponder in it so they knew where he was. With hindsight, I'd imagine that's something you'd want of all of your circa $30m weapons in Treadstone.
posted by danhon at 6:31 AM on August 15, 2007