Category: Government

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Journal: US Secret Intelligence Tasking US Diplomats

02 Diplomacy, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Secrets, Methods & Process, Officers Call
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Insofar as I know, the DoD military Services remain under broad and explicit proscription from accessing the Wikileaks site or the Wikileaks releases in any form.  Some of the Service directives are very intimidating, threatening court martials for military members, loss of security clearances, etc., etc.  From the broadcast media, it appears that major lockdowns of information will shortly follow.  And SPC Bradley Manning, currently confined at Quantico, will probably walk as, I suspect, will Hasan at Fort Hood.  MA

Phi Beta Iota: This demonstrates that the National Clandestine Service (NCS) is completely ignorant of what can be known through open sources, and that the Secretary of State is not doing her job of assuring that diplomacy is not micro-tasked into what are clearly clandestine and covert operations support functions absolutely not appropriate to diplomatic status.  These people should not have message release authority.  The US Government needs a total make-over.  First, however, CIA needs a director that is fully capable on day one.

U.S. Expands Role of Diplomats in Spying

By MARK MAZZETTI

November 28, 2010

WASHINGTON — The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the United Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries.

Revealed in classified State Department cables, the directives, going back to 2008, appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies.

The cables give a laundry list of instructions for how State Department employees can fulfill the demands of a “National Humint Collection Directive” in specific countries. (“Humint” is spy-world jargon for human intelligence collection.) One cable asks officers overseas to gather information about “office and organizational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cellphones, pagers and faxes,” as well as “internet and intranet ‘handles’, internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent-flier account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information.”

Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, on Sunday disputed that American diplomats had assumed a new role overseas.

Read the rest of this sad story….

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Journal: CIA Spastic, Kill It or Fix It (Panetta Goes…)

Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

(1) Not sure there's anything new here; (2) not sure the establishment agrees.  MA

Phi Beta Iota: If President Obama wishes to change the game, he needs to change his core staff including the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OPM), appoint the Coalition Cabinet he has been playing kitchen with, and slam Congress with the Electoral Reform Act (1 page, 9 points) in celebration of President's Day in February 2011.  Anyone voting no in a roll call vote will be scheduled for a recall initiative in their home state or district.   Similarly, if Director Clapper wishes to change the game to something that meets the needs of 100% of his legitimate clients 90% of the time (instead of just meeting the needs of the top tier 4% of the time), he needs to demand the right to appoint a new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), someone who is a kick-ass Big Picture thinker with both service across CIA, across the military intelligence functions (rank is a disqualifier) and with outside the wire experiences ideally including direct exposure to 66 countries interested in learning about Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), with M4IS2 deeply embedded as the next big thing “central” to “intelligence,” and a deep commitment to doing the right thing, not doing the wrong thing righter.  CIA could be the turning point for the Obama presidency.  How CIA goes in the next 180 days could well determine whether there is or is not a second Obama Administration.  The chances of anything good happening are under 30%.

CIA Ground Truth

Essay

C.I.A. Agents, Blowing Their Own Cover

By ALEX BERENSON

November 26, 2010

This summer, a former spy who calls himself ­Ishmael Jones got into trouble with his old bosses at the Central Intelligence Agency.

No, the agency didn’t put out a contract on his life or ship him to Guantánamo. Instead, in July, it sued Jones, the author of “The Human Factor: Inside the C.I.A.’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture,” accusing him of breaking his secrecy agreement and failing to get the required approval to publish. If the C.I.A. intended to make the book disappear, it failed. When the suit was reported last month, the book — a modest seller when first published in 2008 — shot up the Amazon rankings.

. . . . . .

Such cases [child wanna-bees that self-destruct] are common, Charles Faddis, a case officer for 20 years, argues in “Beyond Repair.” Faddis describes the agency as rife with incompetence at every level and compares its leadership training unfavorably with that of the military. “Sixty years after its founding,” he writes, the agency “has never developed any system for the selection, training and cultivation of leaders.” Even the Sept. 11 attacks did not produce meaningful change. Faddis argues that adding a director of national intelligence to oversee the agency simply imposed another layer of bureaucracy. Of the 4,000 new employees in the director’s office, “not a single one of them runs operations. Not a single one of them recruits assets or produces intelligence. What they do produce, however, is process, lots of it.”

The Real CIA

See Also:

2010 M4IS2 Briefing for South America

2000 ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World

Journal: Taliban Laughing–the Clowns Dance On…

Reference: Panetta Puts Lipstick on the Pig (Again)

Secrecy New Headlines–Over-Classification, Leaks, CIA Sues Author of The Human Factor

Journal: Chavez versus CIA–No Contest

Reference: Retired CIA officer–Fix the Agency

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Intelligence (Lack Of)

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Reference (2): United Nations Intelligence in Haiti

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Ethics, Government, Historic Contributions, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Real Time
Peace Operations: Seeing

MajGen Eduardo ALDUNATE Herman, Chilean Army (Ret), served as the Deputy Force Commander of the United Nations Force in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in the earliest rounds, and was instrumental in both sponsoring the Joint Military Intelligence Analysis Center (JMAC) concept in its first modern field implementation, but also in evaluating most critically both the lack of useful intelligence from allies relying on secret sources and methods that did not “penetrate” to achieve gangs and neighborhoods; and the astonishing “one size fits all” propensity of the allies to treat every “threat” as one that could be addressed by force.

His contributions are helpful in understanding the more recent failure of allied relief operations in Haiti that again assumed that the use of armed bodies would address the problem, without making provision for real-world ground truth intelligence (CAB 21 Peace Jumpers Plus) or intelligence-driven harmonization of non-governmental assistance (Reverse TIPFID).

See Also:

Reference: Walter Dorn on UN Intelligence in Haiti

Reference: Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC)

2003 PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: Emerging Concepts for the Future

Books: Intelligence for Peace (PKI Book Two) Finalizing

Reference: Intelligence-Led Peacekeeping

Review: International Peace Observations

Search: UN intelligence peace intelligence

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Journal: Taliban Laughing–the Clowns Dance On…

07 Other Atrocities, Government, Intelligence (government)
DefDog Recommends...

Taliban commanders in Afghanistan reacted with amusement this weekend to
news of an impostor who, by claiming he was a senior Taliban leader,
managed to fool NATO officials and get invited to high-level peace talks.

“Imagine,” Mohammad Hafiz, a senior Taliban commander, told The Daily
Beast, “if a shopkeeper from Quetta can make a fool of them and keep them
engaged in talks for months, how do they believe they can defeat the
Taliban?”

MORE @
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-26/after-revelation-of-taliban-negotiation-imposter-taliban-commanders-laughs-at-us/?om_rid=NUPZQA&om_mid=_BM8R$eB8V8yUK1

NOTE:  I always find it amusing that reporters can get access to these guys
on a regular basis but our IC could not find them if their lives depended
upon it….  DefDog Sends

See Also:

LINKS: Clowns in Arrears (CIA)

Journal: CIA Does It Again….

Journal: Can’t Get No Satisfaction from US Intelligence Community…

Reference: American Tragedy–Another Free Ride for Pentagon

Journal: Death by a Thousand Cuts? Or Deliberate Elite Murder of the USA?

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Journal: Can’t Get No Satisfaction from US Intelligence Community…

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Strategy
Richard Wright

Dowd says it pretty well. My guess is that because CIA connsiders ISI an “asset”, they insist that no one including themsleves target the ISI. This of course means that ISI can continue using CIA and the U.S. as pawns in thier undeclared cold war against India.
Op-Ed Columnist

The Great Game Imposter

By MAUREEN DOWD

The New York Times

Published: November 23, 2010

And we wonder why we haven’t found Osama bin Laden.

Though we’re pouring billions into intelligence in Afghanistan, we can’t even tell the difference between a no-name faker and a senior member of the Taliban. The tragedy of Afghanistan has descended into farce.

. . . . . . .

Just as with Saddam and W.M.D., or groping and the T.S.A., we get no satisfaction for the $80 billion a year we spend on intelligence. Or we get fake information like Curveball that leads us into spending trillions more on a trumped-up war. Last year, seven top C.I.A. officials were fooled by a Jordanian double-agent who got onto an American base in Khost and blew all of them up. Our agents in the “wilderness of mirrors” may not be up to le Carré, but can’t they learn to Google, or at least watch “The Ipcress File”?

Who knows? Maybe we’ve been dealing with bin Laden all along. Maybe he’s been coming and going under a different moniker. As far as our intelligence experts are concerned, a turban and beard are just a turban and beard.

Read entire article…highly recommended.

Phi Beta Iota: What is not properly emphasized above is that most of the budget is spent on technical collection and beltway bandit vapor ware, with no one held accountable for massive failures, be they by Lockheed, SAIC, CSC, or what-have you.  CIA is at best $10 billion, of which at least 75% is sheer waste, fraud, and abuse.  What it does in the way of “intelligence” we could do for $100 million a year, and we could do it faster, better, cheaper and for 1000 times more individual consumers.  Neither are intelligence officials held accountable for failure (96% of the time) by Congress or the White House because both the Intelligence Community and the Pentagon are nothing more than pork gone rancid.  Leon Panetta could have been the greatest director of CIA in history with his unique background as White House Chief of Staff, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Representative.  Similar Jim Clapper could have been the first real Director of National Intelligence.  The lack of vision, initiative, accountability, and productivity at the top of the US secret world is quite extraordinary.  This is how the White House and Congress want it to be.  This is “blessed dysfunctionality” profitable for those who feast at the taxpayer's expense, and most assuredly not in the public interest.  That's how it is.  That is how it will remain absent President Obama choosing to remake himself, or America demanding Electoral Reform, a Coalition Cabinet, and a Balanced Budget in 2010.  We are in the Dark Ages of modern American faux-governance.

See Also:

Journal: CIA Does It Again….

Reference: American Tragedy–Another Free Ride for Pentagon

Journal: Death by a Thousand Cuts? Or Deliberate Elite Murder of the USA?

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Journal: China & Russia Dump US Dollar in Bi-Lateral Trading

02 China, 06 Russia, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Strategy
DefDog Recommends...

China, Russia quit dollar

By Su Qiang and Li Xiaokun (China Daily)

Updated: 2010-11-24 08:02

St. Petersburg, Russia – China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday.

Chinese experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their domestic economies.”About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies,” Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St. Petersburg.

. . . . . .

Premier Wen Jiabao shakes hands with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on a visit to St. Petersburg on Tuesday.ALEXEY DRUZHININ / AFP

The documents covered cooperation on aviation, railroad construction, customs, protecting intellectual property, culture and a joint communiqu. Details of the documents have yet to be released.

. . . . . .
Wen said at the press conference that the partnership between Beijing and Moscow has “reached an unprecedented level” and pledged the two countries will “never become each other's enemy”.
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Journal: Deficit Reduction Plan Hoses Everyone BUT the 10% at the Top

03 Economy, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off....

Hint: if you are in lower 90% of income earners, just look in the rear view mirror — because S-B is about to sell you the same ideological snake oil that got America into its current economic mess.

My good friend Jeff Madrick, a old fashioned liberal in the best sense of the term, dissects the Simpson-Bowles cape-job in the article attached below.

In my opinion, the litmus test for measuring the seriousness of the Simpson – Bowles recommendations will be what if anything the commission recommends for containing the Pentagon's out-of-control  budget.  At a minimum, the defense budget  should be frozen (for reasons cited here) in current dollar terms until the Pentagon can pass the audits legally required by the Chief Financial Officer Act of 1990, not to mention the the letter and original intent of the Accountability and Appropriations Clauses of the Constitution — a document that every officer in the US government has taken an unconditional oath to protect and uphold.

My personal view is that the Pentagon's budget can and should be placed on a downward path glide path of 2-3% reduction per year in current dollars.  One way for doing this, while forging a more sensible and responsive national military strategy, is described here.  But, of course, that kind of hard decision making is simply not going to happen in the Hall of Mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac.  Indeed, even the generous constraint of a current dollar freeze to a defense budget, which is now at the highest level since the end of WWII, is likely to be a pipe dream, because as Jeff points out, the evidence to date suggests that Simpson – Bowles is likely to give the Pentagon a free ride … again.  Maybe we will be surprised, but don't bet your diminished net worth on it.

Chuck Spinney

Is Simpson-Bowles Balanced? Take a Look at its Supporters.

New Deal 2.0 11/18/2010

Jeff Madrick

http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/11/18/is-simpson-bowles-balanced-take-a-look-at-its-supporters-27552/

The enthusiasm from moderate to hardcore conservatives for the deficit reduction plan underscore what’s wrong with it.

Read rest of original article…

noble gold