Government – Page 653 – Public Intelligence Blog

If the Acting Director can be lied to so easily, why should he be trusted to oversee an out of control agency? Below from Senator Feinstein's web page.

Feinstein, McCain, Levin Ask CIA for ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Documents

Concerned that CIA’s cooperation was inappropriate, potentially misled filmmakers

Washington—Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Senate Armed Service Committee Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) have sent two letters to Acting CIA Director Michael Morell seeking information provided to the filmmakers of the film Zero Dark Thirty and clarification of comments made to CIA employees related to the use of coercive interrogation techniques on CIA detainees.

In the first letter, dated December 19, 2012, Feinstein, McCain and Levin stated their concern that “given the CIA’s cooperation with the filmmakers [of the film Zero Dark Thirty] and the narrative’s consistency with past public misstatements by former senior CIA officials, that the filmmakers could have been misled by information they were provided by CIA” and requested “all information and documents provided to the filmmakers by CIA officials.” The film credits CIA detainees subjected to coercive interrogation techniques as providing lead information on the courier that led to the UBL compound.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s recently-adopted Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation program concluded that the CIA did not first learn about the existence of the bin Laden courier from CIA detainees subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and that the CIA detainee who provided the most accurate information about the courier provided the information prior to being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques.

The senators sent a second letter to the CIA on December 31, 2012, following a message the Acting Director sent to CIA employees on December 21. In his message, Acting Director Morell stated that “Some [intelligence related to bin Laden’s location] came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques, but there were many other sources as well.” The senators’ letter asks Acting Director Morell to provide information obtained from CIA detainees subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques and whether such information was provided prior to, during, or after the detainee was subjected to such techniques.

Full text of both letters follows:

Continue reading “Marcus Auerelius: Mike Morell Has No Clue…CIA is Brain Dead and Morally Disengaged”

2013/01/04

SchwartzReport: Fractose = Overeating = Obesity = Government Lacking in Intelligence and Integrity

Corruption, Government, Knowledge

Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE and MIKE STOBBE
AP Medical Writers

This is your brain on sugar – for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

Read full article.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Fractose = Overeating = Obesity = Government Lacking in Intelligence and Integrity”

2013/01/032013/01/03

Yoda: Best Video of and Best Article on Chuck Hagel

Ethics, Government, Military

Honest, he is….

‘Before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment.'

A multimedia exploration of Chuck Hagel's historic moment, and what it means for a declining presidency. Read the story. See the videos. Watch history happen.

EXTRACT:

He's out of patience with the young cheerleaders of this war, the chickenhawks at places like The Weekly Standard who once called him part of an “axis of appeasement.” He is out of patience with think-tank cowboys and talk-show Napoleons. “I'm always taken aback by that certain cavalier manner, not connecting at all with that human loss,” he says. “I do think of those guys, kicking doors down, walking target practice for snipers.

Read full article (4 screenes)

On January 24, 2007, Sen. Chuck Hagel spoke about the war in Iraq. Watch the 8 minutes and 21 seconds that rocked Congress. Via YouTube.com.

Phi Beta Iota:

2013/01/032013/01/03

DefDog: Hagel Would Be First EM to Run DoD

Ethics, Government, Military

Doesn't get any better! AND a Senator.

Hagel Would Be First Former Enlisted Soldier To Run Pentagon

by Tom Bowman

NPR, December 24, 2012

Former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is said to be on President Obama's short list to be the next defense secretary. But even the possibility of his nomination has stirred up opposition — particularly from members of his own political party.

If Hagel can survive a political ambush in Washington, he would be the first Pentagon chief who saw combat as an enlisted soldier.

The blunt-spoken Hagel favors deeper cuts in military spending and is wary of entangling America in long overseas missions.

In January 2007, Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were fighting President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq. Hagel was the only Republican to join them, and he blasted those who refused to take a stand.

“Why are you elected?” Hagel asked. “If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes. This is a tough business. But is it any tougher, us having to take a tough vote, express ourselves, and have the courage to step up, than what we're asking our young men and women to do? I don't think so.”

Lessons From Vietnam

Hagel knew better than most what America was asking of its young men and women. Forty years earlier he'd fought in Vietnam with his brother Tom.

They served in the same unit. On patrol one morning in 1968, Chuck was hit by shrapnel in the chest, and Tom rushed to help him. A month later, Chuck saved Tom, pulling him from a burning vehicle. Between them the two brothers earned five Purple Hearts.

Read full article and listen to interview.

2013/01/032013/01/03

Reference: CRS Understanding Defense Acquisition

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military, Uncategorized

PDF (20 Pages): 2012 CRS Understanding Defense Acquisition

Phi Beta Iota: This CRS report comes at a very important time. As with all CRS reports, its describes the process without being starkly prejudicial. The report addresses the attempts to shift from a threat-based requirements system to a capabilities system. What the report does not do–and perhaps another report is needed–is point out that the acquisition is totally disconnected from a national Whole of Government and national military strategy — neither exist (what we have is political fluff, not real strategy).

2013/01/032013/01/03

Tom Engelhardt: Tough Love Indictment of the US Intelligence Community — Global Trends 2030 as Poster Child for Expensive Idiocy

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

BOTTOM LINE ON GLOBAL TRENDS 2030:

“As a portrait of American power gone remarkably blind, deaf, and dumb in a world roaring toward 2030, it provides the rest of us with the functional definition of the group of people least likely to offer long-term security to Americans.”

Part I: The Visible Government [Supersizing Secrecy]

How the U.S. Intelligence Community Came Out of the Shadows

Part II: The U.S. Intelligence Community’s New Year’s Wish

Megatrends, Game-Changers, Black Swans, Tectonic Shifts, and a World Not That Different From 2012

Think of it as a simple formula: if you’ve been hired (and paid handsomely) to protect what is, you’re going to be congenitally ill-equipped to imagine what might be. And yet the urge not just to know the contours of the future, but to plant the Stars and Stripes in that future has had the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) in its grip since the mid-1990s. That was the moment when it first occurred to some in Washington that U.S. power might be capable of controlling just about everything worth the bother globally for, if not an eternity, then long enough to make the future American property.

Ever since, every few years the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the IC’s “center for long-term strategic analysis,” has been intent on producing a document it calls serially Global Trends [fill in the future year]. The latest edition, out just in time for Barack Obama’s second term, is Global Trends 2030. Here’s one utterly predictable thing about it: it’s bigger and more elaborate than Global Trends 2025. And here’s a prediction that, hard as it is to get anything right about the future, has a 99.9% chance of being accurate: when Global Trends 2035 comes out, it’ll be bigger and more elaborate yet. It’ll cost more and still, like its predecessor, offer a hem for every haw, a hedge for every faintly bold possibility, a trap-door escape from any prediction that might not stick.

Continue reading “Tom Engelhardt: Tough Love Indictment of the US Intelligence Community — Global Trends 2030 as Poster Child for Expensive Idiocy”

2013/01/032013/01/03

Paul Craig Roberts: Does Truth Have a Future in America?

Corruption, Government

Does Truth Have A Future In America?

EXTRACT:

Hope or no hope, truth is becoming harder to come by. During the Vietnam war when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, the New York Times published them. However, during the Iraq war when a National Security Agency whistleblower leaked the information to the New York Times that the Bush regime was spying on Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court as required by law, the New York Times told the White House and sat on the story for one full year until Bush was reelected. The newspaper might even have turned in the whistleblower. When the Guardian and other newspapers were threatened by the US government, they turned on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, the suppliers of their headline stories.

To see the fate of whistleblowers, read Sibel Edmonds’ book, Classified Woman. Few people are willing to undergo such wear and tear in an effort to get truth to the American people.

There is another constraint on revealing truth. The human capital of people with inside knowledge is destroyed if they speak out. Position, contacts, invitations, income, and social life are all forfeited when an insider becomes a dissenter or a truth-teller.

Read full article with links.