Cultural Intelligence – Page 980 – Public Intelligence Blog

PSYOP has long had problems being PSYOP. Overseas they often work as “Military Information Support Teams” (MISTs). If you want to get them significantly spun up, try to discuss with them “perception management” or “deception.” Try that and they tend to go to ground very quickly. As for nefarious, spooky, and master manipulators, US PSYOP has always been dwarfed by the British; e.g., “Soldatensender Calais,” documented in Sefton Delmer's “Black Boomerang.” Personally, I just don't think the current Executive Branch of the USG has the will to play a full-up, full-spectrum game in the national security/foreign policy arena. Now, soon, or later, we will pay for that in needless loss of life. Remember always John Stewart Mill: “War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things. …”

“Psychological Operations” Are Now “Military Information Support Operations”

3 July 2010

By Kevin Maurer
Associated Press
July 2, 2010

The Army has dropped the Vietnam-era name “psychological operations” for its branch in charge of trying to change minds behind enemy lines, acknowledging the term can sound ominous.

The Defense Department picked a more neutral moniker: “Military Information Support Operations,” or MISO.

U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw said Thursday the new name, adopted last month, more accurately reflects the unit’s job of producing leaflets, radio broadcasts and loudspeaker messages to influence enemy soldiers and civilians.

“One of the catalysts for the transition is foreign and domestic sensitivities to the term ‘psychological operations’ that often lead to a misunderstanding of the mission,” McGraw said.

Fort Bragg is home to the 4th Psychological Operations Group, the Army’s only active duty psychological operations unit. Psychological operations soldiers are trained at the post.

The name change is expected to extend to all military services, a senior defense official said in Washington. The official, who has direct knowledge of the change, spoke on condition of anonymity because not all services have announced how they will revamp or rename their psychological operations offices.

The change was driven from the top, by Pentagon policymakers working for Defense Secretary Robert Gates. It reflects unease with the Cold War echoes of the old terminology, and the implication that the work involved subterfuge.

The change, however, left some current practitioners of psychological operations cold. Gone is the cool factor, posters to online military blogs said. With a name like MISO, one wrote, you might as well join the supply command.

Alfred H. Paddock, Jr., a retired colonel who was Director for Psychological Operations in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 1986 to 1988, said the term has always had some baggage and been difficult to explain.

“Somehow it gives a nefarious connotation, but I think that this baggage can be overcome,” said Paddock, who also served three combat tours with Special Forces in Laos and Vietnam.

He said the military was giving in to political correctness by changing the name.

Psychological operations have been cast as spooky in movies and books over the years portraying the soldiers as master manipulators. The 2009 movie “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” staring George Clooney, was about an army unit that trains psychic spies, based on Jon Ronson’s nonfiction account of the U.S. military’s hush-hush research into psychic warfare and espionage.

But the real mission is far more mundane. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, psychological operations units dropped leaflets urging Iraqis to surrender.

In Vietnam, a psychological operations effort called the Open Arms Program bombarded Viet Cong units with surrender appeals written by former members. The program got approximately 200,000 Viet Cong fighters to defect.

McGraw said the name change was approved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Eric Olson, the Special Operations commander, in mid-June.

Many in the psychological operations community, including Paddock, dislike the new name.

“Military Information Support Operations, or MISO, is not something that rolls off the tip of your tongue,” Paddock said. “It makes it even more difficult for psychological operations personnel to explain what they do. That they still have the capability to employ programs and themes designed to influence the behavior of foreign target audiences.”

Original Source

Phi Beta Iota: PSYOP is 80% fraud, waste, and abuse, and that percentage is kind. They are still teaching enlisted people at Fort Bragg how to load aircraft propaganda cannisters to deliver leaflets to people who by and large cannot read. 80% of PSYOP billets, dollars, and facilities should be immediately transferred to the Civil Affairs Corps, and used to transition to the regional brigades that include a single multinational Civil Affairs Brigade for each region, along with direct support multinational battalions for military police, combat engineers, medical, and organic land, sea, and air units, all built around a US C4I hub with both regional and donor country (e.g. Nordics) participation.

2010/07/042010/07/04

Journal: Continuity of Gerbil Operations

08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

COMMENTS:

1. The “fact of” PDB distribution is well known; Administrations influence who is on the distro list.

2. Of the principals showcased here, some are (at least sort of) competent patriotic and some…well…

3. This article is, perhaps unknowingly, deceptive in that it creates an impression that USG is postured to continue mission 24/7 from wherever necessary. Not necessarily so. There is a long established and openly acknowledged “Continuity of Operations” (COOP) program and a related personnel program, “telework,” that are essentially broken — misunderstood and pitifully under-resourced. At least within DoD, the COOP programs are inextricably trapped in Cold War mentalities where the principal threat was nuclear strikes on key command and control nodes. The concept was that a very small and elite segment of the workforce evacuated to predesignated facilities to sustain a very small set of “mission essential functions” for a relatively short period (say less than 30 days) after which the survivors emerge from their smoking holes and restart the world. That mindset endures. COOP and the people running it have not been able to transition to the idea that contingencies now exist that require USG to sustain a much greater fraction (say; 90%) of normal day to day functions for much longer periods (say 270 cumulative days over an 18-24 month period) and do it from distributed locations in order to intentionally avoid concentrating the workforce. Inflexible security policies retard achievement of that standard as does misconstruction of “telework,” which is cast as a personnel benefit program, intended as a reward for a picked set of supposed high performing employees, and hampered by traditional information security strictures, computer security strictures, and pervasive management concerns about how to intensively manage and supervise teleworkers in order to ensure that they do not defraud the government. Some of the policy documents governing telework are mind-boggling garbage. Further, the overriding intent is that the teleworking employee financially support telework, particularly internet access back to the employing agency and in many cases basic hardware and software.)

President Obama's nighthawks: Top officials charged with guarding the nation's safety

By Laura Blumenfeld Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, July 4, 2010; A01

Headlights approach on an empty road. A government agent steps out of an armored SUV, carrying a locked, black satchel.

“Here's the bag,” the agent says, to the intelligence official. “Here's the key.”

The key turns, and out slides a brown leather binder, gold-stamped TOP SECRET. The President's Daily Brief, perhaps the most secret book on Earth.

The PDB handoff happens in the dead of every night. The book distills the nation's greatest threats, intelligence trends and concerns, and is written by a team at CIA headquarters.

FULL STORY ONLINE

Phi Beta Iota: The President's Daily Brief (PDB) costs $75 billion a year to produce, and provides the President and senior commanders with “at best” 4% of what he needs to know. The US Intelligence Community lacks a strategic analytic model and does nothing of consequence for Cabinet Secretaries, regional and functional Assistant Secretaries, or individual action officers (e.g. the one deep Energy officer responsible for proliferation). Madeline Albright it right when she described herself and others as “gerbils on a wheel.”

2010/07/02

Journal: Wrong War, Wrong Strategy, Wrong ….

08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military

Chuck Spinney Recommends

Against counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

BY HUGH GUSTERSON, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1 JULY 2010

It says something about American politics that Gen. Stanley McChrystal was not fired because U.S. casualties in Afghanistan are running at record levels, because the much vaunted Marja initiative has failed, or because the Kandahar offensive is already in trouble during its preliminary rollout. No, he was fired because he and his team embarrassed the White House with carelessly frank talk to a journalist. “This is a change in personnel, but not a change in policy,” said President Barack Obama in announcing General McChrystal's dismissal. Or, in the words of Rep. James McGovern, we have the “same menu, different waiter.”

But you could put Mother Teresa in charge of Afghanistan and, with flows of resources of that magnitude, she would be unable to prevent the kind of corruption we see in Afghanistan today.

FULL STORY ONLINE

2010/07/012010/07/01

Journal: William Polk on Afghanistan Non-Strategy Plus Consolidated Journal, Review, and Reference Links for Afghanistan

08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends

William R. Polk recently sent out the attached letter to his distribution list. It is a very comprehensive and I believe important review of Afghanistan. I urge you to take the time to read it. Appended to the end are a series of notes he used in the construction of his letter. Polk know of which he speaks: his book Violent Politics (Harper Collins, 2007) is one of the very best books on guerrilla warfare, insurrection, and terrorism I have ever read. You can learn more about Polk and his writings by visiting his website http://www.williampolk.com/

Chuck Spinney, Kalamata, Greece

William R. Polk [personal web site]
669 Chemin de la Sine, 06140 Vence, France
williamrpolk@post.harvard.edu
(33) 493581627

June 27, 2010

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

On June 24, the International Herald Tribune published an editorial from its parent, The New York Times, entitled “Obama’s Decision.” Both the attribution – printing in the two newspapers which ensures that the editorial will reach both directly and through subsidiary reprinting almost every “decision maker” in the world – and the date – just before the appointment of David Petraeus to succeed Stanley McChrystal – are significant. They could have suggested a momentary lull in which basic questions on the Afghan war might have been reconsidered.

That did not happen. The President made clear his belief that the strategy of the war was sound and his commitment to continue it even if the general responsible for it had to be changed.

The editorial sounded a different note arising from the events surrounding the fall of General McChrystal: Mr. Obama, said The Times, “must order all of his top advisers to stop their sniping and maneuvering” and come up with a coherent political and military plan for driving back the Taliban and building a minimally effective Afghan government.”

In short, Mr. Obama must get his team together and evolve a plan.

Unfortunately, the task he faces is not that simple.

Continue reading “Journal: William Polk on Afghanistan Non-Strategy Plus Consolidated Journal, Review, and Reference Links for Afghanistan”

2010/06/30

Journal: Farce on Farce…and Contempt for Obama

06 Russia, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement

COMMENT: Ten years the FBI has been watching this do-nothing network and this breaks now? The contempt for Obama appears to have reached uncontrollable levels. Fact #1: the network was launched ten years or more ago. Fact #2: the network has not actually done any spying. The timing of this action appears extraordinarily contemptuous of the White House.

Why Roll Up the Russian Spy Network Now?

U.S. Charges 11 in Russian Spy Case

Alleged Russian Spies: A Novel Idea?

2010/06/202010/06/20

Poli-Tricks: The Life and Death of Brothel Madams of New Orleans and D.C.

Crime (Government), Cultural Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

DEATH BY CLIENT LIST – One was murdered for revealing the client list (Deborah Jeane Palfrey), and one currently lives (and not in jail) because she did not reveal the client list (Jeanette Maier).

This weekend in Brooklyn, NY was the premiere of the film the “Canal Street Madam” about the life of Jeanette Maier and an FBI raid on her infamous family-run brothel in New Orleans. She appeared for the screening and after wards was on a panel for Q & A.

Mentioned in the film was the “DC Madam” (Deborah Jeane Palfrey) and audio of her being interviewed by Alex Jones that she would not commit suicide.

Telephone conversations used in the film were from FBI wiretaps. The FBI used 10 agents taking turns listening to calls for 4 months (5,000 calls). Jeanette Maier said during the Q & A panel that the FBI was wiretapping her phone while she was watching the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and that those tax dollars could have been spent helping keep the country safer.

Background on the Jeanette Maier case and family business:
+ Part One
+ Part Two
+ Part Three

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