Fixing Intel II: Seven Precepts (PORTAL)
Whoever Donald Trump picks as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), that person will be a placeholder and incapable of supporting the President with decision-support across all threats, policies, and budgets absent a Presidential decision to completely re-build and re-direct the the US Intelligence Community (US IC). As now constituted the US IC is an achipelago of out-of-control dysfunctional fiefdoms whose sole purpose in life is to keep the secret money moving while providing a foundation for Deep State operations against US politicians including the President and inclusive of the active protection of criminals and terrorists as well as the leveraging of US military assets and bases overseas to run drugs, guns, money, and children.
Below should be read with my more recent open letter to the President and my new book on REINVENTING INTELLIGENCE: 30 Years in the Wilderness.
The US IC — because it refuses to be serious about Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), the discipline that I founded in 1988 (which CIA calls “open sores”) — deals with at best 10% of the relevant information in all languages and mediums, and it provides “at best” 4% of what the President or a major commander needs, and nothing for everyone else. We cannot do evidence-based decision-making in the public interest until we get a grip on intelligence (decision-support) as the single most cost-effective foundation for executive and legislative effectiveness. The US IC is the single most expensive, pretentious collection of overpaid ignorant individuals on the planet — they have no idea how to deal with “information pathologies” because “it's not our job.” That mind-set is the first thing that has to go.
Before I itemize seven specific recommendations based on 40 years of experience as a spy, as the co-creator of the Marine Corps Intelligence Center, as the founder of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) discipline that is called “open sores” by those who are incapable of serving the President with integrity, as the most published intelligence reformer in the English language, let's focus on three FACTS:
01 The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been spying on US politicians including presidential candidates and serving presidents, with impunity.
02 NSA and CIA use their capabilities for political and financial effect in favor of Wall Street elites and their own offshore black budget building, rather than in public service focused on eliminating the thousands of US citizen traitors among us, most of them with Top Secret /Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS-SCI) clearances and access, or on providing decision-support to the President and the Cabinet across all Congressional jurisdictions. At the same time the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is not allowed to do its job — it is “shackled” with particular respect to elites in NYC and traitors in Washington, DC and limited to going through the motions across the country.
03 In combination, the US IC provides “at best” 4% of what the President or a major commanders needs, and nothing for the Cabinet officials outside of national security, nothing for the lower-level Assistant Secretaries and front line action officers, nothing for domestic counterintelligence, and nothing helpful to Congressional jurisdictions that oversee and partner with their corresponding elements of the executive.
The recent mis-behavior by John Brennan, lying to the press and the public about the Russians “hacking” the US electorate in an effort to support the equivalent of jury tampering with the Electoral College, merely emphasizes what I and others have been saying for decades: CIA is an empty shell — there is nothing behind the curtain other than good people going through the motions. John Brennan is the poster child for everything that is wrong with the US IC — with Jim Clapper as his enabler. The $75 billion a year ($120 billion a year when certain black programs are included) is not yielding any return of note.
Below I offer seven harsh but necessary first steps toward making the US IC a professional community in service not only to the President but to all Cabinet elements and to the Congress and to the public at large. Intelligence, properly understood (see my Philosophy of Intelligence) is about decision-support — it is not about spies and secrecy and mass surveillance that is not processed. Today the US IC lacks both intelligence and integrity — it is dysfunctional, unconstitutional, and not worth what we pay for it.
01 Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). Create the Open Source Agency (OSA) championed since 1988 by Robert Steele as an element of the Executive Office of the President (EOP), perhaps reporting to the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and inclusive of a presidentially-controlled element located in the White House. The OSA will be responsible for a presidential “dashboard” and Public Daily Brief that covers all threats, all policies, all budgets at the strategic, operational, and technical acquisition levels.
It will support “Trump Channel” broadcasts to the public, and proper public polling (not the crap we get now from corrupt media enterprises) so that the President can both educate and learn from the public going forward. OSINT can provide 80-90% of all needed decision-support for the President, Cabinet, and Congress for under $3B a year. The OSA will also do what NSA has refused to do and both NSA and the Cyber-Command are incapable of doing: secure our national communications and computing infrastructure using blockchain and open source security with no piss-ant backdoors provided by NSA and accepted by CEOs from AT&T, Dell, IBM, Google, HP, Microsoft, and others who are complicit in this treason and in gross violation of their fiduciary duties to their stakeholders.
02 Counterintelligence (CI). Clean house at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) beginning with an independent task force able to investigate, polygraph, and interrogate under oath all senior FBI officers so as to weed out all those who are responsive to financial, religious, and criminal networks that have avoided justice because the two-party “Establishment” has been bribed to keep the FBI in a strait-jacket. We must also put a stop to the theatrical and dishonest practices that lead the FBI to be the primary instigator of so-called “terrorist” plots in the US, all of them a budget-building exercise. Once cleaned up, we should triple the FBI’s budget to support three presidential counterintelligence priorities: a) the elimination of traitors within the US Government (USG) and particularly within the US Departments of State and Defense; b) the neutralization of NYC and other elites manipulating interest and foreign exchange rates, financing regime change and other destabilizing initiatives, and engaged in other practices including pedophilia that are inimical to the peace and prosperity of the USA; and c) the neutralization of both state and non-state actor espionage against US commercial, scientific, and technical networks. The FBI will focus on the human counterintelligence challenge.
03 Analysis. Enough already with the child analysts, and the obstacles thrown up that do not allow these children to interact with subject matter experts regardless of citizenship, location, and clearance status. Establish a task force to first cut the CIA analytic core and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in half, then cut the Service and Cabinet agency intelligence centers in half, and then build out DIA as the new National Analysis Center (NAC) responsible for classified analysis of all threats in support of all policies against all foreign actors (both state and non-state), not just the handful that CIA thinks are important.
All new hires will be world-class authorities in their respective domains based on either citation analysis or field renown and all new hires will be able to do holistic analytics rooted in true cost economics, something no one in the USG does today. The National Intelligence Council (NIC) will move to the EOP and be a direct report to the Deputy Director of Management at OMB, with tasking authority to the CIA, OSA, FBI, and NAC as well as the Cabinet Departments and Independent Agencies. The NIC will become good at something it does not do now which Ellen Siedman, then on the President’s National Economic Council (NEC) pointed out was not available within the USG: “compare and contrast” intelligence analysis showing clearly how our domestic industries and policies and budgets compare with those of other countries with whom we are competing commercially.
04 Geospatial and Processing. Cut the NGA in half, immediately dismissing the legions of failed military officers who have “burrowed in,” retiring everyone that is eligible for retiring, and splitting what remains in two. The classified half will become the National Processing Agency (NPA) and be responsible for near-real-time processing of all-source classified and open source information on a geospatial foundation. With the assistance of the OSA, which will provide secure cloud blockchain and open source security assistance not now available within the classified world, the NPA will be responsible for creating a new distributed processing capability that can be used by an infinite variety of contributing sources and end-users. The map-making half will be transferred to the US Geological Survey (USGS) together with the funds needed to rapidly update all 1:50,000 combat charts with the ten years of cultural features (bridges, buildings, roads, port improvements, airfield changes) not now available from NGA; and to be able to print 1,500 copies of any needed maps overnight.
05 Signals and Imagery Intelligence. NSA spying on US politicians including the president, on judges, on Wall Street, and on US citizens will cease immediately [please note, Congress is NSA's highest priority, spying on Congress is not “incidental” to spying on allies or enemies]. All senior NSA officials will be placed under a CI microscope to flush out the offshore bank accounts, the agents of foreign powers, and those who are selling NSA capabilities to Wall Street. The NSA whistle-blowers, notably William Binney and Thomas Drake, will be brought into service as trustees for a transition in which NSA – which has no Congressional mandate – is eliminated as an agency, with the 20% of NSA worth saving being transferred to the CIA as a new Directorate for Signals Intelligence (DS). The new DS will emphasize Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) support to domestic counterintelligence and overseas clandestine Human Intelligence (HUMINT) against all threats in all countries. The National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) will be placed in an interim status as a dysfunctional agency, with the best 20% transferred immediately to CIA as a new Directorate for Imagery Intelligence (DM). The balance of the NRO will be phased out over four years.
06 Human Intelligence & Covert Operations. CIA is completely dysfunctional across all aspects of HUMINT, with particular scorn and disdain for its mismanagement and incapacity with respect to both clandestine HUMINT, and overt HUMINT. CIA is also the syphilitic sore in the US Government (USG), responsible for ill-advised regime change operations and a drone assassination program that kills 98 innocents for every 2 ostensibly legitimate human targets. Effective immediately the CIA drone program is cancelled and all individuals working on that program retired. Effective immediately the CIA Covert Action Staff (CAS) is placed in dormant status. Effective immediately the Open Source Enterprise (OSE) is placed under the authority of the OSA, with the expectation that most of the OSE personnel will be retired.
Effective immediately the CIA’s prohibition against “active” OSINT is rescinded; the OSA will be sole authority for overt HUMINT and active OSINT. Effective immediately a presidential task force is established to create a five-part approach to clandestine operations that emphasizes a mix of multinational clandestine operations, third country and US mid-career non-official cover hires, and one-time “it’s just business” transactions. The bulk of CIA’s clandestine service is over-due for retirement – a completely fresh start is required, one that focuses on mid-career hires who are already in place with the language and cultural skills needed to be effective over the long-term. The use of official cover will be sharply reduced; existing CIA spaces in official installations will be turned over to the OSA for use by inter-agency Collection Requirements and Evaluation Staff (CRES) nodes and multi-disciplinary analytic teams providing both direct support to the Country Teams and strategic support to Washington decision-makers.
07 Management. Plan for the elimination of the office of the DNI and its dysfunctional staff of double-dipping retirees and rotations who cannot find work in their own agencies. When the DNI has accomplished their mission, the DNI can become the first Undersecretary General of the United Nations for Decision-Support, while the Deputy DNI becomes the Associate Deputy Director of OMB for Decision-Support, and oversee a CRES within OMB that assures that the decision-support needs of every element of the government are met, across all Cabinet Departments, at all levels, in relation to strategy, policy, operations, and acquisition. In their new capacities, the DNI will be responsible for harvesting all information the UN touches while eliminating the 80% waste in UN programs and imposing an Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE) approach to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in a fraction of the time at 10-25% of the cost of the now disfunctional industrial paradigm — this keeps all those pesky illegal aliens gainfully employed in their home countries; and the Deputy DNI will be explicitly responsible for decision-support focused on eradicating the 50% waste that is characteristic of every aspect of the USG. The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) should be reinstated but as the Director of Classified Intelligence (DCI) with absolute control over the budgets, security, and personnel systems of all classified intelligence elements, and no authority whatsoever over the OSA or the FBI.
See Especially:
1989 Commandant of the Marine Corps Al Gray on Intelligence Challenges
1990 Robert Steele on Six Challenges for US Intelligence (Still Not Addressed Today)
Intelligence for Earth: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability
Intelligence for the President – AND Everyone Else
Intelligence Scorecards — Deja Vu
New Rules for the New Craft of Intelligence
Open Source Intelligence Done Right
Open Source (Technologies) Agency
On Defense Intelligence – Seven Strikes
The Evolving Craft of Intelligence
Who Is Robert David STEELE Vivas?
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Tip of the Hat to General Mike Flynn, co-author of Fixing Intel (I), he was too important to completely ignore at the time, so Jim Clapper brought him to the DNI's staff, quieted him down, gave him DIA to keep him busy, and then happily stabbed him in the back when the time came that Presidential support was on tap to execute the one guy telling the truth about the embedded fraud across the entire US secret world.
