The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
This bill was NOT introduced, it was a variation of a much simpler bill created by Congressman Rob Simmons' staff. A version went into the book THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest that enjoys a Foreword from Congressman Simmons, and there is today a 2009 version of the Act that has facotred in the needs of Homeland Security and the opportunities in Civil Affairs and in Multinational Information-Sharing and Sense-Making.
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.
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.
2002 FAILURE of 20th Century Intelligence
2004 COLLECTION: Know Who Knows
2004 PROCESSING: Make the Most of What You Know
2004 ANALYSIS: All-Source Analysis, Making Magic
2004 NEW RULES for the New Craft of Intelligence
Note: Ms. Carol Dumaine of CIA's Global Futures Partnership was also invited and authorized by CIA to present at the same two-day session.
This Foreword, the first one done by Congressman Rob Simmons of Connecticutt for any handbook or book in the larger Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) arena, would be revised and used for others publications, but in its time, in 2004, this was the first-ever deep high-level statement of both need and opportunity with respect to OSINT as a separate discipline.
