Schoomaker – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/09/222009/09/24

Journal: Government Corruption and Inattention; Foreign Influence and Access: Religious Counterintelligence

Phi Beta Iota: We started thinking about religious counterintelligence in 2003, after reading Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul, at which point we concluded that we not only needed an FBI division for commercial counter-espionage, but a religious division as well, one able to track not just Islamic support to terrorism, but Jewish, Catholic, Mormon and other penetrations of the U.S. Government working against the public interest. This all has to be understood in the context of a government that has sold out deliberately at the political level to 42 or 44 dictators and particularly to Israel and Saudi Arabia–regardless of which party is in power, they are not being held accountable for their broad betrayals of the public trust, hence, if the FBI won't do it, this needs to be a public intelligence initiative, with a special focus on dual citizens of Israel and USA (see below the fold).

We were looking at Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. They had a list of individuals in the Pentagon broken down by access to certain types of information. Some of them would be policy related, some of them would be weapons-technology related, some of them would be nuclear-related. Perle and Feith would provide the names of those Americans, officials in the Pentagon, to Grossman, together with highly sensitive personal information: this person is a closet gay; this person has a chronic gambling issue; this person is an alcoholic. The files on the American targets would contain things like the size of their mortgages or whether they were going through divorces. One Air Force major I remember was going through a really nasty divorce and a child custody fight. They detailed all different kinds of vulnerabilities.

The epicenter of a lot of the foreign espionage activity was Chicago.

Continue reading “Journal: Government Corruption and Inattention; Foreign Influence and Access: Religious Counterintelligence”

2004/08/132012/10/10

Graphic: OSINT Support to Four Levels of Analysis

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Balance, Innovation, Leadership-Integrity, Multinational Plus, Reform, Strategy-Holistic Coherence

OSINT Four Levels — Click on Image to Enlarge

This is the slide that grabbed General Peter Schoomaker, USA (Ret), the ONLY Army flag officer that has ever understood OSINT in detail. General Schoomaker's intelligence and integrity are the sole reason the U.S. Government has today exactly ONE serious OSINT capability as represented by J-23 at the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). Everything else is fluff, lip service, and broken promises.

2004/07/222009/08/07

2004 Simmons (US) to Schoomaker (US) Concern of Army Mis-Definition of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) as a Category of Information Instead of a Transformational Discipline in its Own Right

Historic Contributions, History of Opposition, Policy

General Schoomaker and Congressman Rob Simmons understood each other. The letter below, from Congressman Simmons to General Schoomaker, was intended to give General Schoomaker an opportunity to instruct LtGen Keith Alexander, then Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence , as to his duties. A change in Army doctrine resulted, and separate Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)doctrine was developed, but developed very badly. The Army G-2 mafia never took OSINT serioiusly as a separate discipline, and together with the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) never growing past its broadcast monitoring role, was a severe impediment to progress in this arena. LtGen Alexander, today the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) understood how to use OSINT in support of ABLE DANGER and in support of NSA missions, but he never understood the urgency of making OSINT a discipline in its own right that could be used to support all of the Army's mission areas, Whole of Government inter-agency planning, programming, and campaign execution, and even less so, coalition and multinational multifunctional operations with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO), such as the Defense Advanced Programs Agency (DARPA) has consistently supported with its annual STRONG ANGEL exercise.

When Congressman Simmons lost by 80 votes in 2006, in large part because two newspapers in his District did not do their homeword and turned against him for not having “big ideas”–nothing could have been further from the truth–the Army G-2 mafia immediately down-graded OSINT, relegating it to contractors who know nothing of OSINT and refuse to sub-contract experts who do. With the exception of the OSINT unit at the US Special Operations Command, Army OSINT is totally hosed today, and much in need of a G-2 that understands both “full-spectrum” HUMINT and “full-spectrum” OSINT. They have no bench from which to find such a person.

2004/07/212009/08/03

2004 Simmons (US) & Schoomaker (US) Hearing on Army Transformation Remarks on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)

Historic Contributions, Legislation

General Peter Schoomaker, USA (Ret), brought back from retirement to be Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, was among a tiny handful of seniors who understood the importance of moving ahead with Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), having himself created the first modern “full spectrum” OSINT unit at the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) in 1997. In the below exchange led by Congressman Rob Simmons of Connecticutt, the two are executing a public “dance” that moves OSINT up the priority ladder.

2003/12/232009/07/30

2003 Hardee (US) Special Operations Panel on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)

Historic Contributions, Military

Jim Hardee was the senior civilian in the Joint Intelligence Center (JIC) of US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) during the 1990's, and was instrumental in ensuring that General Peter Schoomaker, then Commander-in-Chief of USSOCOM, received a briefing from Robert Steele in 1997, at which point General Schoomaker ordered the creation of the USSOCOM Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Branch, today still the only truly effective OSINT unit inthe US Government, with global reach across all languages and mediums. In our view, Mr. Hardee's contributions to the establishment of OSINT as a foundation for today's all-source analysis have not been properly recognized by his Command or his Government. He is one of a tiny handful of original pioneeers still standing and we hold him in the very highest regards. Below are the slides he used in introducing a panel on the application of OSINT to special force needs.

2003/12/172009/07/31

2003 Medina (US) 21st Century Analysis–The Coming Revolution in Intelligence Analysis: What to do when the Traditional Model Fails

Analysis, Government, Historic Contributions

Carmen Median retired–her brilliance and innovative spirit surfaced at the top too late in the game. She is, however, like General Peter Schoomaker, USA (Ret), one of those bright lights that in our view should be brought back in to manage a global multinational information sharing and sense-making grid. She is not forgotten, and we hold her in the very highest esteem.

Below is the presentation she made to OSS '03, and a link to the article in Studies in Intelligence that remains, along with everything written by Jack Davis, seminal.

Carmen Medina What to Do When Traditional Models Fail