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  3. Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who built the Office of Strategic Services in World War

Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who built the Office of Strategic Services in World War

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问题     Wild Bill Donovan would have loved the Internet. The American spymaster who built the Office of Strategic Services in World War II and later laid the roots for the CIA was fascinated (使着迷) with information. Donovan believed in using whatever tools came to hand in the "great game" of espionage—spying as a "profession". These days the Net, which has already re-made such everyday pastimes as buying books and sending mail, is reshaping Donovan’s vocation as well.
    The latest revolution isn’t simply a matter of gentlemen reading other gentlemen’s e-mail. That kind of electronic spying has been going on for decades. In the past three or four years, the World Wide Web has given birth to a whole industry of point-and-click spying. The spooks (间谍) call it "open-source intelligence" , and as the Net grows, it is becoming increasingly influential. In 1995 the CIA held a contest to see who could compile the most data about Burundi. The winner, by a large margin, was a tiny Virginia company called Open Source Solutions, whose clear advantage was its mastery of the electronic world.
    Among the firms making the biggest splash in this new world is Straitford, Inc., a private intelligence-analysis firm based in Austin, Texas. Straitford makes money by selling the results of spying (covering nations from Chile to Russia) to corporations like energy-services firm McDermott International. Many of its predictions are available online at www. straitford. com.
    Straiford president George Friedman says he sees the online world as a kind of mutually reinforcing tool for both information collection and distribution, a spymaster’s dream. Last week his firm was busy vacuuming up data bits from the far corners of the world and predicting a crisis in Ukraine. "As soon as that report runs, we’ll suddenly get 500 new Internet sign-ups from Ukraine," says Friedman, a former political science professor. "And we’ll hear back from some of them." Open-source spying does have its risks, of course, since it can be difficult to tell good information from bad. That’s where Straitford earns its keep.
    Friedman relies on a lean staff of 20 in Austin. Several of his staff members have military-intelligence backgrounds. He sees the firm’s outsider status as the key to its success. Straitford’s briefs don’t sound like the usual Washington back-and-forthing, whereby agencies avoid dramatic declarations on the chance they might be wrong. Straitford, says Friedman, takes pride in its independent voice.
The phrase "making the biggest splash" (Para. 3) most probably means_________.
选项 A、causing the biggest trouble
B、exerting the greatest effort
C、achieving the greatest success
D、enjoying the widest popularity
答案C
解析 词汇题。文章第二段末提到，在中央情报局举办的一个竞赛中，以绝对优势赢得比赛的公司的明显优势是它对电子世界的精通。接着第三段首句提到了电子领域的另一家公司(Straiford公司)，句中make the biggest splash被用来描述该公司在电子领域里的现状。第五段第三句(He sees the firm’s outsider status as the key to its success．)暗示该公司已经取得了成功。由此可推知make the biggest splash在文中表示“取得最大的成功”的意思，故C项为正确答案。
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