Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 2, 2010
The news broke around 1 p.m. with a few sketchy details. Gunman. Shots. Hostages. Discovery building.
Within minutes, there were photos, including an astonishing one of a man clad in shorts, carrying a rifle and stalking through what looked like an office courtyard.
The news of a gunman at the Discovery Channel's headquarters in Silver Spring indeed traveled fast on Wednesday, but none of it came through radio, TV or newspaper Web sites, at least not at first. As it has with other breaking news events — the landing of a jet on the Hudson River in 2009, the 2008 massacre in Mumbai — the story unfolded first in hiccupping fits and starts on Twitter, the much-hyped micro-blogging service that has turned millions of people into worldwide gossips, opinion-mongers and amateur news reporters.
When police arrested Anthony Graber for speeding on his motorbike, the 25-year-old probably did not see himself as an advocate for police accountability in the age of new media.
But Graber, a sergeant with the Maryland Air National Guard, is now facing 16 years in prison, not for dangerous driving, but for a Youtube video he posted after receiving a speeding ticket.
Phi Beta Iota: A society with a sense of humor would establish a monthly “film the police” day. Such lunacy. When the law gets really stupid it is time to change the law, e.g. it used to be legal to abuse women and people of color.
Mexico: BBC reported on 8 August police officers in Ciudad Juarez in northern Mexico detained their commander at gunpoint, accusing him of corruption and links to drug gangs. More than 200 federal police agents raided the hotel where their commander was staying and accused him of planting drugs on police officers to blackmail them into carrying out extortion. Some of the agents were injured when officers loyal to the commander defended him.
While some agents blocked off nearby streets to prevent their commander from escaping, others moved into the hotel where he was staying. They raided his room, where they say they found weapons and drugs. The federal officers allege that they were part of a stash, which their commander would plant on officers who refused to take part in his corrupt dealings. They say he would then blackmail the agents into carrying out extortion and other crimes.
The police officers held their commander captive until the Federal Police Commissioner General agreed to suspend him, pending an investigation. One of the policemen who took part in the protest told the Associated Press corruption in the higher ranks was putting them in danger. “We risk our lives, we leave families behind and it's the fault of those officers that we go down,” he said.
Phi Beta Iota: The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) has been a success story, despite some internal issues that are under investigation. What we are seeing across Central America, with El Salvador recently joining the fray, is the emergence of an anti-corruption culture that sees the value of self-policing. Four challenges remain:
Fairfax County is seeking bidders for a new contract that injects private sector intelligence analysts into regional law enforcement and homeland security efforts.
The county began working with intelligence analysts five years ago, and the existing contract with Fairfax-based ManTech International Corp. is set to expire at the end of the year.
Under the agreement, the defense contractor has provided eight analysts who work to identify terrorist threats in the national capital region and also provide support for more bread-and-butter police work.
India: In eastern India, the Maoist insurgents have neutralized yet another large police contingent. About 70 police personnel are missing on 4 August in the Chhattisgarh forests following a gunfight between heavily-armed Maoists and police in Dantewada area, India, The Times of India reported. Maoists reportedly attacked a search party of the state police in a heavily forested region of Gumiapal, near Kirandul.
The key point of the item is that the India state police forces seem incapable of learning. The location of the attack is the same set of forests where hundreds of police have been killed this year, almost in defiance of central government warnings and advisories. Counterinsurgency means something entirely different in India than it does at Fort Leavenworth.
The Indians continue to rely on policemen and law enforcement forces to handle people who break the law. They consider Army forces and other armed services not appropriate or trained for handling law breakers.
Phi Beta Iota: No government has achieved “whole of government” intelligence, which is a precursor to whole of government planning, programming, and budgeting, and of course to whole of government policy, acquisition, and operations. See the Graphics, especially on Intelligence (Im)Maturity and Whole of Government. Collated graphics at Information Sharing and at Connecting the Dots.
“The 10th annual Trafficking in Persons Report outlines the continuing challenges across the globe, including in the United States. The Report, for the first time, includes a ranking of the United States based on the same standards to which we hold other countries. The United States takes its first-ever ranking not as a reprieve but as a responsibility to strengthen global efforts against modern slavery, including those within America. This human rights abuse is universal, and no one should claim immunity from its reach or from the responsibility to confront it.”
Phi Beta Iota: The Department of State has so much potential, if they could just get a grip on the fact that the only thing standing between them and owning the Open Source Center with the Multinational Decision-Support Centre embedded, is the fact that her gate-keepers are blocking every piece of paper on this 9-11 Commission recommended new agency because CIA “claims” it and no one at State is willing to stand up to them. Human trafficking, like other kinds of smuggling including narcotics and arms and blood diamonds, cannot be addressed in stove-pipes. It can be represented by stove-pipes, but the collection and analysis must be REGIONAL. Neither CIA nor any other part of the US get that yet–the Joint Intelligence Centers at the theaters are travesties, just look at the travesty of USSOUTHCOM pretending to help Haiti. The Nordics and the Netherlands have it right–Multinational, Multifunctional Information-Sharing and Sense-Making Centres is the only way to go–Centres that do both the all-source integrated processing the secret world cannot do, and do not lose sight of the human factor working in 183 languages the US secret world, at least, does not speak.
In my opinion the Washington Post series that exposed the exponential increase in the size and cost of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) was not taken seriously by official Washington and is considered a minor nuisance. That is why the only response to the series, as crafted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), was largely vintage intelligence agency boilerplate with a few bizarre additions such as the claim that the collection and analysis of intelligence are not essential government functions of intelligence agencies and so can be left to contractor personal. The series did not merit a serious response in the thinking of the Executive Branch and Intelligence Community.
In fact the series, although much touted, was a huge disappointment to readers expecting a more deeply researched and in-depth look at the IC. Clearly the craft of investigative journalism has fallen on hard times.
Also it is the case that in this country quantity always trumps quality. The growth in the size of the Intelligence Community is taken by official Washington as a priori evidence of the value it has provided since 9/11. The facts that the current IC is ruinously expensive to operate, is producing largely worthless intelligence, and has frequently failed even in the most basic warning functions are irrelevant. A bloated IC serves as ‘proof’ that political Washington is serious about protecting American citizens from terrorist threats. As with quantity, in the political arena form always trumps substance.
