Gina Haspel, the first female nominee to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is going to face some very tough questions in her confirmation hearing.
She has my support on five conditions:
01 She acknowledges the moral and practical errors of the past, inclusive of the rendition & torture program and the drone assassination program;
02 She acknowledges that much of what CIA does is not worth the money we pay for it, and CIA is severely deficient by virtue of its providing, “at best,” 4% of what the President or a major national security leader needs (and nothing for everyone else). She outlines a path toward fixing all of these shortfalls.
03 She explicitly repudiates the asinine unconstitutional pathological idea of privatizing covert and clandestine operations.
04 She points out that “central” intelligence is an oxymoron in our present state where, for example, NSA processes 1% of what it collects and does not provide meaningful persistent signals intelligence support to military operations abroad, clandestine operations, or counterintelligence operations.
05 She agrees to support the Open Source Agency as a Presidential Initiative to be resident within the Executive Office of the President (EOP), while she takes on the task of consolidating the 30% of the entire secret world that is useful in an expanded Classified Intelligence Agency (CIA).
I realize it is completely unrealistic for me to expect Director-Designate Gina Haspel to break with the “go along to get along” past, but I was there for the rail-roading of Janine Brookner, with whom I served overseas, and I understand just how badly women are treated at CIA, particularly in the Clandestine Service. She did what she had to do to get to the top of a very sordid dysfunctional cabal dominated by overweight white men with zero ethics.
Put simply, Director-Designate Haspel has an opportunity to thread the needle — pass confirmation hearings with a balanced acknowledgement of past misdeeds combined with a provocative offering of glorious future possibilities, and then go “do it.” William Binney and I are in complete agreement, 70% of the CIA as well as the technical intelligence agencies should be de-funded (with a one year soft landing — one year salary and one year re-training – for all employees and contractors displaced by the house cleaning) — at the same time that the 30% worth saving from the NSA, NRO, NGA, and DIA are folded into a re-vitalized CIA that is capable of managing a global non-official cover unilateral clandestine service; a global multinational collaborative clandestine service program; a global all-source 100% processing program emphasizing meta-data rather than blind vacuuming of content; and a global all source multi-lingual multi-cultural analytic program. The Open Source Agency will be Director-Designate Gina Haspell’s safety net and firestop — not under her control but absolutely loyal to the motto, “the truth at any cost lowers all other costs” (as well as risks).
UPDATE: The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) should be tasked by the President to gracefully and quickly abolish his job after helping the new DCI (Director of Classified Intelligence) absorb the 30% of each agency that is worth saving, and liquidating the 70% of each agency that is not. The DNI has never been more than another layer of worthless bureaucracy whose sole purpose in life has been to further expand the classified intelligence budget.
Intelligence, integrity, imagination. I pray that Director-Designate Gina Haspel has the wit to break with the past and lead us into the future.
Gina Haspel Bios
01 CIA Crimes Against Humanity
The New C.I.A. Deputy Chief’s Black-Site Past
Steele, Robert. “Rigging Elections – and Worse! The Americans Rigged Our Election, Bribed Our Government, Stole Our Gold, Killed Our Men, Raped Our Women, and Poisoned our Air, Water, and Earth – and You Want to Blame Something on the Russians?” Russian International Affairs Association, March 11, 2018.
Steele, Robert, “Privatizing Covert Operations – The Most Asinine, Unconstitutional, Unethical Idea of the 21st Century,” Defence and Intelligence Norway, December 5, 2017.
Steele, Robert. “Book Reviews: Rebutttal-Lies Presented as Truth; BROKEN – The Truth as Fiction,” Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 18, Number 2, 2016, pp. 163-166.
Steele, Robert. “Review Essay: UNHINGED: drone assassination – American suicide,” Intelligence and National Security, 33/1, March 2017, pp. 145-150.
Steele, Robert. “Talking Points ‘Secrecy and Accountability in U.S. Intelligence’,” Washington, DC: Center for International Policy, October 9, 1996.
Steele, Robert. “SOURCES AND METHODS: A PRIMER FOR CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRY,” Washington, DC: US Senate, The Moynihan Commission on Protecting and Reducing Secrecy, March 16, 1996.
02 The Need for Reform Across the Secret Intelligence Community
Steele, Robert. “On Defense Intelligence: Seven Strikes,” CounterPunch, July 2, 2014.
Steele, Robert. “Rethinking Intelligence: Seven False Premises Blocking Intelligence Reform,” Reality Sandwich, January 7, 2014.
Steele, Robert. “The Battle for the Soul of the Republic,” Reality Magazine, April 10, 2012
Steele, Robert. Intelligence for Earth: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability, Earth Intelligence Network, January 20, 2010. 288 pages. HARDCOVER $19.95.
Steele, Robert. Human Intelligence: All Humans, All Minds, All the Time, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Press, June 3, 2010.
Steele, Robert. “Fixing the White House and National Intelligence,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 23: 353-373, Spring 2010.
Steele, Robert, “Intelligence for the President–AND Everyone Else,” CounterPunch, March 1, 2009.
Steele, Robert. Information Operations: Putting the “I” Back Into DIME, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Press, February 1, 2006.
Steele, Robert. “Crafting Intelligence in the Aftermath of Disaster [9/11],” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 15/2 161-178, Summer 2002.
Steele, Robert. The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen’s Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption, Open Source Solutions, Inc., April 8, 2002.
Steele, Robert. The New Craft of Intelligence: Achieving Asymmetric Advantage in the Face of Nontraditional Threats, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Press, February 1, 2002.
Steele, Robert. On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World, Open Source Solutions, Inc., November 22, 2001. 495 pages.
Steele, Robert. “SPECIAL FEATURE: Creating a Smart Nation–Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information,” Government Information Quarterly, pp. 159-173
03 Open Source Agency — the Trump Card
Steele, Robert. For the President of the United States of America Donald Trump: Subject: EradicatingFake News and False Intelligence with an Open Source Agency That Also SupportsDefense, Diplomacy, Development, & Commerce (D3C) Innovation to Stabilize World. Earth Intelligence Network, 2017.
Steele, Robert. “Healing the Self & Healing the World: The Open Source Way,” Defence and Intelligence Norway, September 13, 2017.
Steele, Robert. “Augmented Intelligence with Human-Machine Integrity: Future-Oriented Hybrid Governance Integrating Holistic Analytics, True Cost Economics, and Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE),” forthcoming in Daniel Araya. Augmented Intelligence: Smart Systems and the Future of Work and Learning. Bern, CH: Peter Lang Publishing.
Steele, Robert. “Foreword,” in Stephen E. Arnold, CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access, Harrods Creek, KY: Arnold Information Technology, 2015.
Steele, Robert. “The Evolving Craft of Intelligence,” in Robert Dover, Michael Goodman, and Claudia Hillebrand (eds.). Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies, Oxford, UK: Routledge, July 31, 2013.
Steele, Robert. “The Ultimate Hack: Re-Inventing Intelligence to Re-Engineer Earth,” in U. K. Wiil (ed.), Counterterrorism and Open-Source Intelligence, Lecture Notes in Social Networks 2, Springer-Verlag/Wien, 2011.
Steele, Robert. “Open Source Intelligence (Operational),” in Loch Johnson (ed.), Handbook of Intelligence Studies, NY: Routledge, 2008, Chapter 10, pp 129-147.
Steele, Robert. “Creating a Smart Nation” in Mark Tovey (ed.), Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, Oakton, VA: Earth Intelligence Network, 2008, pp 107-130.
Steele, Robert. “World Brain as Earth Game,” in Mark Tovey (ed.), Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, Oakton, VA: Earth Intelligence Network, 2008, pp 389-398
Steele, Robert. “Open Source Intelligence (Strategic),” in Loch Johnson (ed.), Strategic Intelligence: The Intelligence Cycle, Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, Chapter 6, pp. 96-122.