Commerce – Page 298 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/09/27

AFIO: Bizarre System of Hiring Intelligence Contractors

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

The Bizarre System of Hiring Intelligence Contractors

Joshua Foust – Joshua Foust is a fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net.

The Atlantic, 20 September 2011

This morning I testified at the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs' Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia (a mouthful, I know) about how we can better manage and administer contractors within the intelligence community. I'm pasting a brief excerpt of my written testimony below, followed by a link to the full text of my remarks.

Every contract the government issues for a company to perform work is defined by the Statement of Work (SOW). This is a document that defines the parameters of the work the contractor will perform, including a description of the project, expected duties the contractor must fulfill, and the outputs and metrics by which performance will be measured. These are often poorly written, kept intentionally vague, and wind up not actually addressing the stated intent of the contracts.

As one example, every SOW I've had to either administer, edit, review, or write has stated as a basic metric of performance the number of employees the contractor should hire. That is, the basic means by which the government measures the contractor's performance is based first and foremost on the number of people hired to work on the contract. This has two serious consequences that affect the contracting environment: it removes the distinction between employees that would make work products better, and it confuses the number of employees with contract performance.

The frankly bizarre system of hiring intelligence contractors is born from several interdependent processes: getting a security clearance, getting hired, and getting “read on” to work at a government site. The system of getting a clearance is structured such that those with clearances are given preference above those without clearance, regardless of the relevant experience of either employee. In other words, if two candidates are competing for a job with a contractor, and one has deep relevant experience but no clearance, she will most likely lose to a candidate with less relevant experience but a current and active security clearance.

There is a great deal more to this, and I would suggest anyone interested in this topic to download both my own testimony (At SCRIBD, or PDF here), and checking out the Hearing page, which includes written remarks from Daniel Gordon from the Office of Management and Budget, DHS Chief of Intelligence Charles E. Allen, Scott Amey from the Project on Government Oversight, and Dr. Mark Lowenthal.

2011/09/252011/09/25

Robert Steele: Ignored 1994, Ignored 2011–Deja Vu

07 Other Atrocities, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, Hill Letters & Testimony, IO Impotency, Legislation, Military, Policies, Standards, Technologies

steele smiling final — Robert David STEELE Vivas

One of our contributors passed this to me and asked me to comment in relation to the alarm that Winn Schwartau, Bill Caeli, Jim Anderson, and I sounded in 1994, in writing, to Marty Harris, then head of the National Information Infrastructure (NII).

First, the item.

From the man who discovered Stuxnet, dire warnings one year later

Mark Clayton

Christian Science Monitor, 22 September 2011

Stuxnet, the cyberweapon that attacked and damaged an Iranian nuclear facility, has opened a Pandora's box of cyberwar, says the man who uncovered it. A Q&A about the potential threats.

EXTRACT:

CSM: How would you characterize the year since Stuxnet – the response by nations, industry and government?

LANGNER: Last year, after Stuxnet was identified as a weapon, we recommended to every asset owner in America – owners of power plants, chemical plants, refineries and others – to make it a top priority to protect their systems…. That wakeup call lasted only about a week. Thereafter, everybody fell back into coma. The most bizarre thing is that even the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Siemens [maker of the industrial control system targeted by Stuxnet] talked about Stuxnet being a wakeup call, but never got into the specifics of what needed to be done.

Continue reading “Robert Steele: Ignored 1994, Ignored 2011–Deja Vu”

2011/09/252011/09/25

Chuck Spinney: Radioactive Rice, Big Time….

05 Energy, 07 Health, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

Radioactive Rice “Far Exceeding” Safe Levels Found in Japan

Published on Saturday, September 24, 2011 by Reuters

by Chikako Mogi

TOKYO – Japan found the first case of rice with radioactive materials far exceeding a government-set level for a preliminary test of pre-harvested crop, requiring thorough inspection of the rice to be harvested from the region, the farm ministry said late on Friday.

Read full article.

2011/09/242011/10/17

Koko: Wall Street Occupation Continues, Ignored by Media

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Mobile, Policies, Threats

Occupy Wall Street Protest Being Systematically Ignored by Mainstream Media

Even a rather non-observant person would have noticed by now that the Occupy Wall Street protest is being ignored by the mainstream media, or at least not taken seriously. Corporate-owned media knows its masters well.

DJ Pangburn

Death & Taxes, 23 September 2011

Read full report.

Phi Beta Iota: The Wall Street Occupation, now going into its second week, with many additional demonstrations planned across the USA for 6 October 2011, is being ignored by the elite and their media sock-puppets. This is one reason most do not realize that the “Day of Rage” is about electoral reform and a non-violent repossession of the US and the US Government.

See Also:

2008 ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig

DefDog: PSYOP Reading List for Citizens

Journal: Third Party Desired by 58% in America + ReCap

Koko: Day of Rage 17 September–How Will it End?

John Robb: Anonymous on Wall Street Occuption

Paul Fernhout: Global Groundswell Mad as Hell

Review (Guest): Confidence Men – Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

Review: Grand Illusion–The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny

Review: Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

Review: Rebooting the American Dream–11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country

Review: Running on Empty–How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It (Paperback)

Review: The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown–Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash

Robert Steele: Day of Rage = Electoral Reform & Integrity Plus General RECAP on Purple Public & Third Party Rising

Steven Aftergood: Obama Ambivalent on Open Government

2011/09/192011/09/19

Chuck Spinney: Economic Costs of Warmongering

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

Below is a dynamite op-ed on the cost of the so-called war on terror by Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz. Without being critical, I think at least two additional aspects to these costs make the picture even worse than they say.

1. Some people in this [let them eat] cake walk became — and are still becoming — filthy rich spending other people's money and spilling other people's blood — the acknowledgement of which takes one into the murky question of what moral values are shaping this political-economic meltdown.

2. While not directly caused by the war on terror, the ramping up of defense expenditures magnified the the rate of distorting spillovers (the Melman* effects) that the MICC's politicization of R&D and manufacturing have on diminishing America's overall commercial manufacturing efficiency and industrial competitiveness. The costs may be incalculable, but that does not make them less real.

* Professor Seymour Melman of Columbia University documented these effects in his voluminous writings, two of his most important books being The Permanent War Economy and Profits Without Production.

Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2011

America's Costly War Machine

Fighting the war on terror compromises the economy now and threatens it in the future.

By Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz

Ten years into the war on terror, the U.S. has largely succeeded in its attempts to destabilize Al Qaeda and eliminate its leaders. But the cost has been enormous, and our decisions about how to finance it have profoundly damaged the U.S. economy.

Many of these costs were unnecessary. We chose to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan with a small, all-volunteer force, and we supplemented the military presence with a heavy reliance on civilian contractors. These decisions not only placed enormous strain on the troops but dramatically pushed up costs. Recent congressional investigations have shown that roughly 1 of every 4 dollars spent on wartime contracting was wasted or misspent.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: We judge defense to be 75% fraud, waste, and abuse (3 out of 4 dollars, not 1 out of four). The infantry is 4% of the force, suffers 80% of the casualties, and receives 1% of the budget. Our starting position is that 20% of the Pentagon budget can be justified in conference, everything else is on the table for draconian cuts toward a balanced budget. Agriculture, energy, and health are documented at 50% waste–the Pentagon is much less relevant to the society and the economy than those three, ergo we speculate that defense is half again as wasteful as these other core sectors.

2011/09/19

John Robb: Anonymous on Wall Street Occuption

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government

From Anonymous (original sponsor of Day of Rage):

This statement is ours, and for anyone who will get behind it. Representing ourselves, we bring this call for revolution.

We want freedom for all, without regards for identity, because we are all people, and because no other reason should be needed. However, this freedom has been largely taken from the people, and slowly made to trickle down, whenever we get angry.

Money, it has been said, has taken over politics. In truth, we say, money has always been part of the capitalist political system. A system based on the existence of have and have nots, where inequality is inherent to the system, will inevitably lead to a situation where the haves find a way to rule, whether by the sword or by the dollar.
We agree that we need to see election reform. However, the election reform proposed ignores the causes which allowed such a system to happen. Some will readily blame the federal reserve, but the political system has been beholden to political machinations of the wealthy well before its founding.

We need to address the core facts: these corporations, even if they were unable to compete in the electoral arena, would still remain control of society. They would retain economic control, which would allow them to retain political control. Term limits would, again, not solve this, as many in the political class already leave politics to find themselves as part of the corporate elites.

We need to retake the freedom that has been stolen from the people, altogether.

If you agree that freedom is the right to communicate, to live, to be, to go, to love, to do what you will without the impositions of others, then you might be one of us.
If you agree that a person is entitled to the sweat of their brows, that being talented at management should not entitle others to act like overseers and overlords, that all workers should have the right to engage in decisions, democratically, then you might be one of us.
If you agree that freedom for some is not the same as freedom for all, and that freedom for all is the only true freedom, then you might be one of us.
If you agree that power is not right, that life trumps property, then you might be one of us.
If you agree that state and corporation are merely two sides of the same oppressive power structure, if you realize how media distorts things to preserve it, how it pits the people against the people to remain in power, then you might be one of us.

And so we call on people to act

We call for protests to remain active in the cities. Those already there, to grow, to organize, to raise consciousnesses, for those cities where there are no protests, for protests to organize and disrupt the system.
We call for workers to not only strike, but seize their workplaces collectively, and to organize them democratically. We call for students and teachers to act together, to teach democracy, not merely the teachers to the students, but the students to the teachers. To seize the classrooms and free minds together.
We call for the unemployed to volunteer, to learn, to teach, to use what skills they have to support themselves as part of the revolting people as a community.
We call for the organization of people's assemblies in every city, every public square, every township.
We call for the seizure and use of abandoned buildings, of abandoned land, of every property seized and abandoned by speculators, for the people, for every group that will organize them.

We call for a revolution of the mind as well as the body politic.

2011/09/172011/10/22

Robert Steele: US Day of Rage = Electoral Reform & Integrity Plus General RECAP on Purple Public & Third Party Rising

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Threats

I've been driving the 1964 MGB (my last remaining possession, it needs $5,000 of underbody work to survive the winter) around New England and am in New York now. I've been following the US Day of Rage plans (they were also announced here) but have been surprised to find a number of normally intelligent middle-class men I have met along the way to be timid about the US Day of Rage movement. They cannot get past the name and of course never get to the part about non-violent demands for electoral reform and integrity.

So here is my short brief on US Day of Rage, perhaps it can help get past these perceptual barriers. I do recommend that US Day of Rage create an alternative web site, American for Electoral Integrity–kind of like the Silicon Valley Hackers Conference also calls itself the THINK Conference for the green eyeshade types without a clue. I'll be attending this year, 4-6 November in San Francisco area.

MEMORANDUM

Subject: US Day of Rage for the USA—Who, Why, What, When, Where, How

Date: 17 September 2011

IMPORTANCE: Understanding the US Day of Rage is vital to understanding the deeper mood of the public.

1. Who. US Day of Rage is an informal, social network based movement that started as a protest against Wall Street with a planned occupation today, and rapidly morphed into a cross-country network of mini-demonstrations. The “US Day of Rage” is being supported by internet groups who oppose corruption in the government such as Adbusters, Culture Jammers, and Anonymous. The original call to occupy Wall Street was put out by Adbusters, and the US Day of Rage and NYC General Assembly have since joined.

2. Why. Their capital demand is fair and free elections to overcome the special interest takeover of Congress and the Executive. Please note that there is real convergence and resonance between the Day of Rage network and the Tea Party/Sarah Palin remonstrations against “crony capitalism.”

Continue reading “Robert Steele: US Day of Rage = Electoral Reform & Integrity Plus General RECAP on Purple Public & Third Party Rising”