Month: July 2010

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Journal: Netanyahu, Israel, Oslo, Playing US

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Government, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney Recommends

The attached very important report is by Jonathan Cook, a freelance resporter based in Nazareth in the occupied West Bank and one of the most intrepid reporters covering the Israel's occupation policies, is — or should be — a long overdue wakeup call to the US people, the US media, and the US government, but don't count on it.

Netanyahu admits on video he deceived US to destroy Oslo accord

Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent

The National,  July 18. 2010 1:02AM UAE

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100718/FOREIGN/707179891/1135

NAZARETH // There is one video Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, must be praying never gets posted on YouTube with English subtitles. To date, the 10-minute segment has been broadcast only in Hebrew on Israel’s Channel 10.

Its contents, however, threaten to gravely embarrass not only Mr Netanyahu but also the US administration of Barack Obama.

The film was shot, apparently without Mr Netanyahu’s knowledge, nine years ago, when the government of Ariel Sharon had started reinvading the main cities of the West Bank to crush Palestinian resistance in the early stages of the second intifada.

At the time Mr Netanyahu had taken a short break from politics but was soon to join Mr Sharon’s government as finance minister.

On a visit to a home in the settlement of Ofra in the West Bank to pay condolences to the family of a man killed in a Palestinian shooting attack, he makes a series of unguarded admissions about his first period as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999.

Seated on a sofa in the house, he tells the family that he deceived the US president of the time, Bill Clinton, into believing he was helping implement the Oslo accords, the US-sponsored peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, by making minor withdrawals from the West Bank while actually entrenching the occupation. He boasts that he thereby destroyed the Oslo process.

He dismisses the US as “easily moved to the right direction” and calls high levels of popular American support for Israel “absurd”.

FULL ARTICLE ONLINE

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Comment: NSA, Trailblazer, Thin Thread

10 Security, Budgets & Funding, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda

I noted on Phi Beta the piece on Dana Priest and your comment, which appears sadly right on the mark. You may want to check the 14 July article in the Post about former NSA senior Thomas Drake who is being indicted for spelling the beans on Trailblazer to the Baltimore Sun.

There is a lot of misinformation in the article about Project Thin Thread, an information management scheme that was virtually worthless, but had a number of defenders at the agency of which Drake was the most prominent. The author of the article also knows nothing about Trailblazer which was NOT a replacement for Thin Thread, but a much broader, if ill defined, modernization program.

This earlier article is relevant to the Priest series because as Trailblazer continued to founder NSA hired more and more contractors to try get the program on track. Both programs provide striking evidence of failures of technical leadership and incompetent project management which appear to endemic at NSA.

Incidentally several unnamed sources at the Fort contacted for article continue to argue that Trailblazer produced some worthwhile results. This is nonsense.

I served the Trailblazer program both as an NSA senior analyst and later as a contractor so observed the Trailblazer debacle from inside and outside.

SOURCE REDACTED

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Journal: Dana Priest Strikes Again…

Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Technologies
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

On Deadline (USAToday.com)
July 16, 2010

By Michael Winter

The nation's spy world is anxiously — certainly not eagerly — anticipating a Washington Post series looking at CIA and Pentagon contractors, according to insider reports. And the intelligence community has been preparing for an expected offensive by plotting its defense.

Politico says in “Jitters over WaPo intel series – Explosions rock Iranian mosque – What's Petraeus thinking? – McChrystal's retirement – ‘Monkey Terrorist' update,” that the series, by Dana Priest, is scheduled to appear “in the next few days and that public affairs officers have been preparing how to handle the resulting media onslaught.

The Atlantic has posted a memorandum, “Internal Memo: Intelligence Community Frets About Washington Post Series,” sent by Art House, the media manager for the Director of National Intelligence. He outlines what he thinks the series will say about the “IC” (intelligence community) and offers talking points for press aides.

Here are some of the highlights of the memo:

Themes

While we can't predict specific content, we anticipate the following themes:

*The intelligence enterprise has undergone exponential growth and has become unmanageable with overlapping authorities and a heavily outsourced contractor workforce.

*The IC and the DoD have wasted significant time and resources, especially in the areas of counterterrorism and counterintelligence.

*The intelligence enterprise has taken its eyes off its post-9/11 mission and is spending its energy on competitive and redundant programs.

Management of Responses

We do not know which agencies will receive attention, and each agency will need to manage its own responses. …

It might be helpful as you prepare for publication to draw up a list of accomplishments and examples of success to offer in response to inquiries to balance the coverage and add points that deserve to be mentioned. In media discussions, we will seek to garner support for the Intelligence Community and its members by offering examples of agile, integrated activity that has enhanced performance. We will want to minimize damage caused by unauthorized disclosure of sensitive and classified information. …

House's conclusion: “This series has been a long time in preparation and looks designed to cast the IC and the DoD in an unfavorable light. We need to anticipate and prepare so that the good work of our respective organizations is effectively reflected in communications with employees, secondary coverage in the media and in response to questions.”

Keep your eyes peeled for this blockbuster.

Phi Beta Iota: Panetta had a chance to get it right and blew it.  Clapper will finish the job of destroying whatever integrity is left in the US Intelligence Community.  This is not news, but the Washington Post has finally caught up with the rest of us.

See Also:

2000 ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA, OSS, EIN)

2002 THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political (OSS, EIN)

2003 PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: Emerging Concepts for the Future (OSS, EIN)

2006 INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time (OSS, EIN)

2006 THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest (OSS, EIN)

2008 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace (OSS, EIN)

2009 Intelligence for Peace (PKI Book Two) Finalizing (OSS,EIN)

2010 INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH (OSS, EIN)

And Reviews of Books by Others:

Congress (Failure, Reform) (108)

Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback (160)

Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform) (156)

Intelligence (Government/Secret) (292)

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Journal: USG as Theater–Very BAD Theater

03 Economy
Chuck Spinney Recommends

Tim Geithner’s Ninth Political Life

By Simon Johnson, Baseline Scenario, 16 July 2010

In modern American life, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner stands out as amazingly resilient and remarkably lucky – despite presiding over or being deeply involved in a series of political debacles, he has gone from strength to strength.  After at least eight improbably bounce backs, he might seem unassailable.  But his latest mistake – blocking Elizabeth Warren from the heading the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – may well prove politically fatal.

Geithner was a junior but key member of the US Treasury team that badly mishandled the early days of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and received widespread criticism (Life #1).  He was promoted as a result and thereafter enjoyed a meteoric rise.

As President of the New York Federal Reserve from 2003, and de facto head of the government’s financial intelligence service, he completely failed to spot the problems developing in and around the country’s financial markets; nothing about this embarrassing track record has since stood in his way (Life #2).  He subsequently became Hank Paulson’s Wall Street point person for one of the most comprehensively bungled bailouts of all time – the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, which in fall 2008 first appalled Congress with its intentions and then wasn’t used at all as advertised (Life #3).

FULL ARTICLE ONLINE

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Journal: Conflicted Loyalties

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Marcus Aurelius Recommends

(COMMENT:  Not a good day for the DGI…)

US analyst, wife sentenced for spying for Cuba

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer Pete Yost, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 13 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The 73-year-old great grandson of Alexander Graham Bell was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole for quietly spying for Cuba for nearly a third of a century from inside the State Department. His wife was sentenced to 5 1/2 years.

Retired intelligence analyst Kendall Myers said he meant his country no harm and stole secrets only to help Cuba's people who “have good reason to feel threatened” by U.S. intentions of ousting the communist Castro government.

FULL STORY ONLINE

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Journal: The Fall of Obama–30 Years in the Making

03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards

CounterPunch Diary

The Fall of Obama

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Counterpunch

The man who seized the White House by fomenting a mood of irrational expectation is now facing the bitter price exacted by reality. The reality is that there can be no “good” American president. It’s an impossible hand to play. Obama is close to being finished.

The nation’s first black president promised change at the precise moment when no single man, even if endowed with the communicative powers of Franklin Roosevelt, the politic mastery of Lyndon Johnson, the brazen agility of Bill Clinton, could turn the tide that has been carrying America to disaster for 30 years.

This summer many Americans are frightened. Over 100,000 of them file for bankruptcy every month. Three million homeowners face foreclosure this year. Add them to the 2.8 million who were foreclosed in 2009, Obama’s first year in office. Nearly seven million have been without jobs in the last year for six months or longer. By the time you tot up the people who have given up looking for work and the people on part-time, the total is heading toward 20 million.

Fearful people are irrational. So are racists. Obama is the target of insane charges. A hefty percentage of Americans believe that he is a socialist – a charge as ludicrous as accusing the Archbishop of Canterbury of being a closet Druid. Obama reveres the capitalist system. He admires the apex predators of Wall Street who showered his campaign treasury with millions of dollars. The frightful catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico stemmed directly from the green light he and his Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, gave to BP.

It is not Obama’s fault that for 30 years America’s policy – under Reagan, both Bushes and Bill Clinton – has been to export jobs permanently to the Third World. The jobs that Americans now desperately seek are no longer here, in the homeland, and never will be. They’re in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, Indonesia.

FULL ARTICLE ONLINE

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