Historic Contributions – Page 11 – Public Intelligence Blog

GOLDEN CANDLE AWARD: Mr. Paul van Tongeren

OSS '04: To Mr. Paul van Tongeren, leader, educator, advocate, and pioneer in the prevention and resolution of conflict. As Executive Director of the European Centre for Conflict Prevention, his is a critical voice in facilitating peace through hinter-disciplinary study, cross-cultural communication, and the creation of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).

The ECCP received its own award in 2002:

GOLDEN CANDLE AWARD: European Centre for Conflict Prevention, The Netherlands

OSS '02: European Centre for Conflict Prevention. For their consistent and superior efforts to make open sources of information more readily available to those who deal with conflicts and humanitarian emergencies, to include their surveys of conflict prevention and peacebuilding activities, and their lessons learned. Their web site, www.conflict-prevention.net, is a global resource.

Below is the outline of the speaker's remarks to OSS '04.

2004/12/112009/08/02

2004 Vlahos (US) The Muslim Renovatio and US Strategy

02 Diplomacy, 04 Indonesia, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Historic Contributions

GOLDEN CANDLE AWARD: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

OSS '04: To the JHU-APL, and especially to Capt Joseph Mazzafro, USN (Ret) and Dr. Michael Vlahos, for sustained excellence in the integration of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) into their complex all-source analytic efforts in support of the Department of Defense. Aided by the Gibson Library, they have set a new standard.

Michael Vlahos is an iconoclast and a free-thinker.

The transmittal memorandum below, and the paper, each shown for separate access, represent an update on his views as expressed in his seminal monographs,“Culture’s Mask: War and Change After Iraq” (62-page pdf), Johns Hopkins (2004) and“Terror’s Mask: Insurgency Within Islam” (34-page pdf), Johns Hopkins University (2002), and new thinking that has NOT been understood by either the outgong Bush-Cheney Administration or the incoming Obama-Biden Administration.

The U.S. Intelligence Community and its policy and operational consumers do not “do” culture and are seriously challenged at geo-anything. Michael Vlahos, in our view, has ably articulated the central lens by which we should be crafting our collection, policy, trade, and operational strategies with respect to the rising tide of Islam (India, Indonesia, Iran, and pockets everywhere else).

2004/12/092009/08/02

2004 Wiebes (NL) Intelligence and the war in Bosnia 1992 – 1995 The role of the intelligence and security services

Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Historic Contributions, Peace Intelligence

This extraordinary scholar benefits from being given access by an enlightened secret intelligence service whose Parliament demands full transparency as required. His book is one of those very, very few that can legitimately claim to be fully informed from a full examination of all classified messages and archives, as well as the usual unclassified or publicly available information, and the author is himself an extraordinary scholar and a founding member of the Netherlands Intelligence Studies Association, which which his photo connects absent an English-language biographic page.

This book is worth getting at any price from any source–we have urged the author to send us the book for a reprint at cost if his publisher will not do it imemdiately. It should not be out of print.

Below left are his remarks on the book and his investigation as made to OSS '04.

2004/09/032009/08/03

2004 Simmons (US) Draft Legislation Smart Nation Act

Historic Contributions, Legislation

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.

2004/07/222009/08/07

2004 Simmons (US) to Schoomaker (US) Concern of Army Mis-Definition of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) as a Category of Information Instead of a Transformational Discipline in its Own Right

Historic Contributions, History of Opposition, Policy

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.

2004/07/212009/08/03

2004 Simmons (US) & Schoomaker (US) Hearing on Army Transformation Remarks on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)

Historic Contributions, Legislation

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.

2004/07/162010/11/12

2004 Simmons (US) Foreword to the Special Operations Forces (SOF) Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Handbook

Hill Letters & Testimony, Historic Contributions, Military

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.

Category: Historic Contributions

2004 Tongeren (NL) A Need for a Global Alliance for Human Security