Category: Law Enforcement

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Journal: Intelligence Priority Theater, Weak Strategy

08 Wild Cards, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Reform

China Removed As Top Priority For Spies

The decision downgrades China from “Priority 1” status, alongside Iran and North Korea, to “Priority 2,” which covers specific events such as the humanitarian crisis after the Haitian earthquake or tensions between India and Pakistan.

One new area that has been given a higher intelligence priority under the Obama administration is intelligence collection on climate change, a nontraditional mission marginally linked to national security. The CIA recently announced that it had set up a center to study the impact of climate change.

Phi Beta Iota: The priorities are primarily influential on collection by the National Security Agency (NSA), determining whether the “system” stays on Beijing or goes to Central Asia instead, and this is probably the heart of the matter.  HOWEVER, in combination with the DoD concerns that CIA is totally ineffective with respect to China, Afghanistan, or anything else of immediate concern (e.g. Somalia, Sudan, Yemen), and the idiocy of creating a Climate Change Center rather than restructuring to attack all ten high-level threats to humanity, this latest “theater” must be labeled for what it is–naked Emperors parading their very expensive rags.  CIA is an utter travesty in all respects.  The DNI is treading water for lack of vision, understanding, authority, and the will to confront “the system.”  DoD is not much better–paper-pushing stuffed shirts and politically-correct uniforms disconnected from ground truth and the real needs of policy directors, acquisition managers, and operational commanders down to the company level.  Not pretty at all.

See also:

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Journal: Europe is Reading….

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement
Berto Jongman Recommends...

Suggestions to improve American intelligence: think as a brain

What’s wrong with American intelligence?

In sum, the thinking goes, we need to gather more information, then work harder to connect the dots.

Those impulses are understandable, but they miss the most important problem. From studying many individual cases, and conducting detailed post-mortems of US intelligence failures in the cases of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, I have found that many common assumptions about why our intelligence fails are misguided.

Open Source On the Table

The problems with our intelligence system aren’t primarily problems with information. They are problems with how we think.

Interpol Project White Flow!!!!  convergence of drug trtade and terrorism (Skip Blank Screen Upper Right)

(Associated Press Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) LYON, France_Interpol has seen no proof so far that terror groups like al-Qaida are profiting from big-money ransoms paid out to pirates operating off eastern Africa, the international police group's No. 2 said Tuesday.

Jean-Michel Louboutin spoke to The Associated Press as Interpol opened a closed-door, two-day conference at its Lyon headquarters on tackling the money trail in piracy.

Interpol will create a task force to crack down on maritime piracy “in all its facets,” said Interpol Secretary-General Ronald K. Noble in a statement Tuesday. It did not elaborate.

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Journal: Second Amendment versus “Police Pirvacy”

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Peace Intelligence, Real Time
Rodney King Video Wiki Page

Police fight cellphone recordings: Witnesses taking audio of officers arrested, charged with illegal surveillance

Crooked cops in Boston arresting citizens for recording misconduct with cellphones

Don't Tase Me Bro Wiki

Phi Beta Iota: The police will not only lose this one, we anticipate that one day the Second Amendment will apply to radar detectors and other forms of defense against state excesses.  Certainly the public needs to take its right to be armed–both with weapons and with hip-pocket recording devices, with the utmost seriousness.

Three observations:

1.  Society has forgotten how to be civil at the same time that government has forgotten how to govern (satisfy most of the people most of the time, deal humanely with the rest).

2.  Police have become increasingly militarized and the 9/11 pork has made them more so, at the same time that the FBI and similar forms of authority have forgotten how to do arrests without a SWAT team crashing through the door first.

3.  If you tell the truth and act according to the truth, such counter-surveillance is utlimately beneficial to the truth teller rather than the abuser.

Ultimately, in our view, public use of public technologies to create public intelligence about police abuse and government waste and corporate externalizations of cost (Taiwan now pays for citizen cell recordings of pollution discharges), will be a beneficial means of restoring the public's power over “it's” police forces.

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Journal: CIA as Poster Child For Dull US Intelligence

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

Terrorism Fight Requires Intelligence Accountability (Senator John Kerry)

Frankly, we don’t need more commissions or bureaucracies. We do need intelligence professionals and their managers who are committed to a new culture of quality, cooperation, and accountability.

Two attacks highlight counterterrorism's bureaucratic bog (David Ignatius)

Talking to veteran counterterrorism officers, I hear a common theme that unites these two disastrous lapses: The CIA has adopted bureaucratic procedures that, while intended to avoid mistakes, may actually heighten the risks. In the words of one CIA veteran, “You have a system that is overwhelmed.”

But those standard agent-handling rules have been violated routinely, in Iraq and now Afghanistan, because senior officials have concluded it's too dangerous outside the wire. “At least 90 percent of all agent meetings are conducted on bases,” estimates one CIA veteran. The agency wants to protect its people, understandably — but the system actually works to increase vulnerability.

The Khost tragedy shows that the CIA needs to take the counterintelligence threat from al-Qaeda more seriously. Intelligence reports over the past year have warned that groups linked with al-Qaeda were sending double agents to penetrate CIA bases in Afghanistan.

The brave CIA officers serving overseas deserve a better system than this.

CIA Director Leon Panetta should use these searing events to foster a culture of initiative and accountability at a CIA that wants to do the job — but that needs leadership and reform.

Holes For The CIA To Close (David Ignatius)

A replay of long-standing criticisms of CIA's short-tours, lack of memory, refusal to take counterintelligence seriously, and general ineptitude outside the Embassy cocktail circuits.

Confusion Grows Over How Bomber Infiltrated CIA Base (Los Angeles Times)

A CIA inquiry is focused on two main questions: why the bomber was not more thoroughly screened and where he received the training and explosives used in the attack.

Deja Vu Stories

U.S. Saw A Path To Qaeda Chiefs Before Bombing

Suicide bomber who attacked CIA post in Afghanistan was trusted informant from Jordan

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Reference: WH CT Summary, POTUS Directive, DNI Blurb

08 Immigration, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Analysis, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Office of Management and Budget, Policy, Reform
White House Summary

EDIT of 9 Jan 10: Note seven comments from retired senior officers.

Critique of the CT Summary for the White House

This is a negligent piece of work that fails to include all that is known merely from open sources of information, but more importantly its judgments are misdirected.  This incident remains incompletely investigated until the person who video-taped events on the airplane comes forward and is identified.

Where we differ:

1. It was passengers who restrained the individual, not the flight crew, as is stated in the first paragraph.

1)  Does not identify the primary error.  The Embassy officer (or CIA officer) who interviewed the father did not elevate the matter.  The same kind of mistake occurred when the Taliban walked in and offered us Bin Laden in hand-cuffs.

2)  The absence of a machine-speed cross-walk among US and UK visa denials is noted, but the weakest link is overlooked.  The Department of State either didn’t check their visa files or, as has been remarked, may have failed to get a match because of misspelling.  The necessary software is missing. State continues to be the runt in the litter (we have more military musicians than we have diplomats) and until the President gets a grip on the Program 50 budget, State will remain a dead man walking.

3)  Another point glossed over: the intelligence community, and CIA in particular, did not increase analytic resources against the threat.  Reminds us of George Tenet “declaring war” on terrorism and then being ignored by mandarins who really run the place.

4)  “The watchlisting system is not broken” (page 2 bottom bold).  Of course it is broken, in any normal meaning of the word “system”.  John Brennan is responsible for the watchlisting mess, and this self-serving statement is evidence in favor of his removal.  If we are at war, we cannot have gerbils in critical positions (quoting Madeline Albright).

5)  “A reorganization of the intelligence or broader counterterrorism coummunity is not required…” at the bottom of page 2.  Reorganization, in the sense of moving around blocks on a chart, may not be required, but the entire system is broken and does need both principled redesign and new people the President can trust with the combination of balls and brains and budget authority to get it right.  Thirteen years after Aspin-Brown we still have not implemented most of their suggestions; the U.S. intelligence community is still grotesquely out of balance; and the Whole of Government budget is still radically misdirected at the same time that our policies in the Middle East are counterproductive.

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Worth a Look: Rahm Emanuel conducting pogroms within Obama administration and Democratic Party

Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement

Phi Beta Iota: This is a replay of a Wayne Madsen report.  Over lunch we checked with our most connected consultant and learned that this is roughly half right, with some of the specifics names and methods not right, but that over-all there is general consensus on three points:  Rahm is playing dirty “within and against the Democratic family”; Rahm is a big problem for the President; Rahm has to go (along with Brennan and if it were up to us, Axelrod would also be moved out of the White House).  The President needs a neutral professional Chief of Staff, someone like General Jones, who is the perfect Presidential-level administrator.  The President needs a national STRATEGY & POLICY advisor that can restore Whole of Government balance, an Office of Management and Budget director that can MANAGE, and a Director of National Intelligence–Admiral Blair deserves first shot–with AUTHORITY.  The below material is replayed to provoke reflection, nothing more.

Emanuel conducting pogroms within Obama administration and Democratic Party

WMR's White House press sources have revealed that President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is conducting a virtual political pogrom within the administration and the Democratic caucus in Congress. WMR has learned that the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, once known as STELLAR WIND but changed after the classified code name was leaked to the media, is being used by Emanuel to force administration officials and Democrats in Congress to “toe the line” in their support of Obama's policies, including health care. the surge in Afghanistan, and the bail out of Wall Street.

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Journal: Historian’s View of CIA, Yemen, and Air Threat

03 India, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, IO Secrets, Law Enforcement, Peace Intelligence
Webster Griffin Tarpley

Russia Times Lead Story

Detroit jet terrorist attack was staged – journalist

The recent failed attack on a US passenger jet traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit was a set-up provocation controlled by US intelligence, author and journalist Webster Tarpley stated to RT.

“[The terrorist’s] father, a rich Nigerian banker, went to the US embassy in Nigeria on November 19 and said ‘my son is in Yemen in a terrorist camp, do something about this.’ Nevertheless, the son is allowed to buy a ticket in Ghana, paying cash, $2,800, for a one-way ticket,” Tarpley said.

After that, a mentally deficient young man who doubtfully could make it from one gate to another managed to illegally enter Nigeria and get on a plane to Amsterdam.

“There was a well-dressed Indian man who brought him to the gate and said, ‘my friend does not have a passport, get him on, he is Sudanese, we do this all the time – that is impossible!” said Tarpley.

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