Government – Page 686 – Public Intelligence Blog

Libya:Multiple sources have reported more details on the events that led to the death of Ambassador Stephens. The details suggest this was another case of well-intentioned but misguided hubris by Americans, as to their own safety, and well-aimed and well- targeted attacks by the Muslim attackers. This appears, in fact, to have been a deliberate assassination of an effective diplomat, within the cover of an anti-US demonstration in Benghazi.The reporting indicates that the number of fundamental US security and intelligence lapses, blunders and examples of ineptitude make the efforts of Libyan security and of a local, loyal militia force to protect the US Consulate look heroic by comparison.

Comment: The State Department admitted that the Ambassador and an information management officer – an ex-US Air Force veteran – were killed. Foreign media reported two US Marines also were killed.

The website for gateway pundit carries video images of US Ambassador Stevens' body being dragged through the streets of Benghazi by his Muslims miscreant murderers. All mainstream US media failed to report that the Muslim miscreants not only killed the US ambassador, they defiled his body.

Note to analysts: It is important for intelligence analysts to never forget that the fundamental purpose of US intelligence, as stated in the legislative history of the US National Security Act of 1947, is to keep the US, its persons, property and its interests safe. Yesterday, US intelligence apparently did none of them.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Silence of the Diplomatic Gerbils, Failure of US Intelligence & USMC”

2012/09/11

Mini-Me: US Fuel Records for $475M in Fuel to Karzai Forces “Shredded”

Corruption, Government, Military

Huh?

IG: Afghan fuel records go missing

Aaron Mehta

Center for Public Integrity, 11 September 2012

What happened to almost $475 million worth of oil destined for the Afghan National Army – that’s what the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) would like to know.

Unfortunately, the inspectors may never find out. According to the report released Monday, more than four years of financial records that the Department of Defense was supposed to keep to track this spending are either missing or so poorly kept that even gathering basic information, such as the location and size of fuel sites, was not possible.

The report concludes that the Department of Defense agency in charge of tracking the oil “does not have accurate or supportable information on how much U.S. funds are needed for [Army] fuel, where and how the fuel is actually used, or how much fuel has been lost or stolen.”

Inspectors found that records from October 2006 to March 2011 were shredded improperly, a violation of DOD policies that made it impossible for auditors to track what happened to the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of oil. DOD also “could not provide more than half” of the documents requested from March 2011 onward.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: On 10 September, the day before 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld was being grilled by Cynthia McKinney and other Members of Congress on 2.3 TRILLION in unaccounted for DoD funds. On 9/11, whatever kit the Pentagon allegedly destroyed the computers holding the forensic accounting. INTEGRITY is a holistic concept. What we buy, how we buy it, how much we spend on people versus hardware, how much we spent on loyal uniformed forces versus mercenary contractors, how much we spend on coalition partners known to be deeply corrupt from the President on down–all of this challenges our integrity. Fuel records are not normally shredded. This reeks of a cover-up; $475 million is a serious amount of money. The Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) merits public applause for singling this specific corruption of process and finance.

2012/09/112012/09/13

Who’s Who in Public Intelligence: Mark Lombardi

Alpha I-L, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Economics/True Cost, Government, Knowledge, Money, P2P / Panarchy, Politics

Wikipedia Snap-Shot

Mark Lombardi (March 23, 1951 – March 22, 2000) was an American Neo-Conceptualist and an abstract artist who specialized in drawings attempting to document financial and political frauds by power brokers, and in general “the uses and abuses of power.

Lombardi called his diagrams Narrative Structures.. They are structurally similar to sociograms – a type of graph drawing used in the field of social network analysis, and to a lesser degree by earlier artists like Hans Haacke. Other important influences on Lombardi were philosopher Herbert Marcuse,, and visualization expert Edward Tufte

In Lombardi's historical diagrams, each node or connection was drawn from news stories from reputable media organizations, and his drawings document the purported financial and political frauds by power brokers. For instance, his 1999 drawing George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens, ca 1979–90 shows alleged connections between James Bath, the Bush and bin Laden families, and business deals in Texas and around the world.

The Essence of Lombardi's Work

The small circles in his drawings identified the main players — individuals, corporations and governments — along a time line. The arcing lines showed personal and professional links, conflicts of interest, malfeasance and fraud.

Solid lines traced influence, dotted lines traced assets and wavy lines traced frozen assets. Final denouements like court judgment, bankruptcy and death were noted in red.

Reading several newspapers a day, he culled his information entirely from published sources, keeping track of the articles with a card file that eventually held over 12,000 cards.

Continue reading “Who's Who in Public Intelligence: Mark Lombardi”

2012/09/112012/09/11

Yoda: Mind-Mapping Advances–Listening Does Not

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Crowd-Sourcing, Government, IO Impotency, IO Mapping, P2P / Panarchy

yoda with light saber — Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Behold the Awesome Science of Mind-Mapping An Instructionalicious Guide

Mindmapping is a very serious and well researched subject, or art … or something . Whatever it is a map of the mind is definately something to be valued and this ‘instructionalicious' guide is no exception. Allow this infographic to simultaneously blow and map your mind.

DuckDucklGo Mind-Mapping

Phi Beta Iota: Tens of billions of dollars are being spent on covert surveillance including the recording of all emails, telephone conversations, and other forms of exchange, but most of this is not being processed. Worse, it is not being processed toward making sense in the public interest. It is one thing to focus on the needle in the haystack threat warning. It is quite another to focus on harnessing the distributed intelligence of the public. That will be the next big leap for “national intelligence.”

2012/09/112012/09/11

Paul Craig Roberts: 9/11 – Reviewing the UnCredible Once Again

Advanced Cyber/IO, Corruption, Government, Knowledge

The 11th Anniversary of 9/11 ~ Paul Craig Roberts

The article below was written for the Journal of 9/11 Studies for the eleventh anniversary of September 11, 2001, the day that terminated accountable government and American liberty. It is posted here with the agreement of the editors.

In order to understand the improbability of the government’s explanation of 9/11, it is not necessary to know anything about what force or forces brought down the three World Trade Center buildings, what hit the Pentagon or caused the explosion, the flying skills or lack thereof of the alleged hijackers, whether the airliner crashed in Pennsylvania or was shot down, whether cell phone calls made at the altitudes could be received, or any other debated aspect of the controversy.

You only have to know two things.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: 9/11 – Reviewing the UnCredible Once Again”

2012/09/102012/09/11

Bin Laden Show #89 – Conflicting Accounts of the Kill

Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Economics/True Cost, Government, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy, Politics

Navy SEAL: Why We Shot Osama Bin Laden on Sight

Lee Ferran

ABC News, 10 Sep 2012

As top American officials and a Navy SEAL who was on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden grapple over whether the al Qaeda leader “resisted” before he was shot, the SEAL said in a recent interview that in the heat of battle, the men on the ground weren't going to take any chances with their target.

It wasn't until other members of the team entered the room and saw a man twitching on the ground that they realized he had been hit in the head. Then, after shooting the man in the chest a few more times until he stopped moving, they realized it was bin Laden, the book says. America's most wanted man was unarmed and though there was a rifle and a handgun in a room nearby, neither had a bullet loaded in the chamber.

“He hadn't even prepared a defense. He had no intention of fighting,” Owen writes.

Read full article (two screens)

Continue reading “Bin Laden Show #89 – Conflicting Accounts of the Kill”

2012/09/102012/09/10

Steve Aftergood: Legality of Targeted Killing of Suspected Terrorists Reviewed by CRS

Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Military

CRS REVIEWS LEGALITY OF TARGETED KILLING OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS

The legality of targeted killing of suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, was examined in a memorandum prepared for members of Congress by the Congressional Research Service.

The U.S. practice of targeted killing raises complex legal issues because it cuts across several overlapping legal domains. To the extent that the U.S. is actually at war with the targeted persons, the “law of armed conflict” would provide the appropriate legal framework, though the relevance of this framework far from a “hot battlefield” is disputed. Outside of armed conflict, the U.S. could be acting under the related but distinct laws of “self-defense.” The use of lethal force in law enforcement operations offers another way of conceiving of and evaluating anti-terrorist strikes. In all cases, the sovereignty of the nation where the strike occurs adds a further layer of legal complexity. With respect to targets who are U.S. citizens, the applicability of the U.S. Constitution is yet another urgent issue.

Obama Administration officials have discussed targeted killing in several public speeches since 2010, but have evaded detailed public questioning on the subject. The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel has prepared a memorandum on the targeting of suspected terrorists who are U.S. citizens, as reported by the New York Times, but it has refused to release the OLC memorandum or even to publicly acknowledge that it exists. Meanwhile, Congress has been largely silent and acquiescent.

The CRS memorandum, entitled “Legal Issues Related to the Lethal Targeting of U.S. Citizens Suspected of Terrorist Activities,” was prepared in May 2012 by legislative attorney Jennifer K. Elsea. It presents an overview of the pertinent legal context, and then carefully parses official Administration statements in an attempt to infer a detailed legal rationale for lethal targeting. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News.

Continue reading “Steve Aftergood: Legality of Targeted Killing of Suspected Terrorists Reviewed by CRS”