Open Sources for the Information Age: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Unclassified Data
By James M. Davitch
Joint Force Quarterly 87
Is it really possible that this author — who has done a superb “current thinking” piece — completely missed the 30 years during which I and 7,500 others have been fighting CIA and NSA to do exactly as he recommends? I was recommended for the Nobel Peace Prize for that 30 years fight. It troubles me that such an excellent article would be blind to, among any other references I wrote, the NATO OSINT Handbook, the Special Operations Forces OSINT Handbook (strawman), and most recently, The Open Source Everything Manifesto. The IC sucks at OSINT because CIA insists that OSINT is passive social media monitoring and active OSINT (overt human engagement) is forbidden and the preserve of the clandestine service of which I was once a high-performance member (5X the regional recruiting average). Absent integrity in the upper ranks of the IC, secret intelligence will continue to be 70% waste, 26% evil, and 4% (General Tony Zinni's number) useful.
