Journal: US Government Still Inept at 183 Languages, 33 of them Core (including 12 distinct dialects of Arabic)

Originally published 04:45 a.m., August 31, 2009,

EXCLUSIVE: Lack of translators hurts U.S. war on terror

The necessary cadre of U.S. intelligence personnel capable of reading and speaking targeted regional languages such as Pashto, Dari and Urdu “remains essentially nonexistent,” the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence wrote in a rare but stark warning in its 2010 budget report.

Phi Beta Iota: This is, eight years after 9-11 and 21 years after General Al Gray called for redirection toward the Third World in his article “Global Intelligence Challenges in the 1990's,” a failure of leadership in Congress, the White House, and of course within the US IC. It is also a failure of imagination. The private sector works in 183 languages–33 of them core languages including 12 distinct dialects of Arabic. Anybody who thinks they can solve this problem with language training for native Americans who qualify for clearances should not be in a leadership position. And if Leon Panetta thinks “doubling” anything from a base of less than ten is significant, he needs a new staff. OSS/EIN can solve this problem in under 90 days. This will not happen because the lack of integrity in this town, combined with the lack of imagination and the lack of accountability, leaves the beltway bandit mafia as the sole beneficiary of the hard-earned taxpayer dollars (and the newly-printed leap of faith dollars). Our domestic enemies are now a much greater threat to the Republic than any combination of foreign enemies.

2009/08/312009/09/06

Journal: Why Do We Need a CIA At All?

10 Security, Government

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Monday, August 31, 2009

By Adam Goldman and Pamela Hess

Secret CIA program used Blackwater recruits

“The question remains: Why do we need Blackwater?” said Charles Faddis, a former department chief at the CIA's Counter-terrorism Center who retired in 2008 and was not involved in the secret program. “I remain mystified. This is quintessential CIA work. You wonder what it means that the CIA has to rely on Blackwater? Why are we still funding the CIA?”

Phi Beta Iota: Restore CIA ownership of the South-Central Campus (or give it back to the estate that granted it to CIA in perpetuity); three SMALL towers there with an over-arching top floor: DNI; Open Source Agency; Multinational Decision-Support Agency. Turn CIA HQS into a technical collection agency with one floor per discipline. Split the CIA analysts between DIA (two all-source analytic centers per floor in now vacated DNI spaces) and Open Source Agency. End all contracting of inherently-governmental functions. Re-boot the clandestine service with an emphasis on multinational clandestine operations run out of regional multinational field stations. CIA has been so badly-managed by a series of Directors going back to George Bush the Pater, it might as well not have existed all these years. How's that for an epitaph?

2009/08/312009/08/31

Journal: US Foreign Policy Toward Honduras Uninformed, Intrusive, Embarassing

02 Diplomacy, Government

US prepares further sanctions against Honduras

Phi Beta Iota: This borders on infantile idiocy. Honduras has a Supreme Court ruling against the ousted President. What we have here is the US still having a big stick but having lost its mind. The Department of State is either embarrassingly stupid, or so politicized that ideological bullies in the partisan ranks are calling the shots. Either way, we all lose.

2009/08/302009/08/30

Worth a Look: Free Currencies Flow Project Now Open

Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Methods & Process, Policies, Reform

With a tip of the hat to Jean-Francouis Noubel, a pioneer of both Collective Intelligence and Open Money, we point today to the just-launched FLOWPLACE.

Do not fail to listen to the short briefing. The money economy, based on secrecy, scarcity, and information asymmetries, is on the way out. The open economy, empowering the five billion poor with transparent open means of creating, recording, sharing, and exchanging value, is on the way in.

Four briefings by Robert Steele that might help understand the enormity of the possibilities are Open Everything (GNOMEDEX), Open Everything (UNICEF), The Ultimate Hack (Engineers), and The Ultimate Hack (Denmark).

2009/08/302009/08/30

Journal: Human Terrain Team (HTT) Project Now Dabbling in Propaganda

Academia, Military, Peace Intelligence

The Numbers

A Run at the Latest Data from ABC's Poobah of Polling, Gary Langer

. . . . . . .

One of these polls was released Aug. 9 by an outfit called Glevum Associates, which appears from its website to be a military contractor engaged in producing psychological operations data as part of a U.S. Army counterinsurgency program, the Human Terrain System. The New York Times identified its poll as “financed by the United States government,” with no details; AP and Reuters did similarly.

Glevum did not return our repeated calls and e-mails for details, both methodological and in terms of the survey’s sponsorship, at the time of its release. Its methodological statement sounds satisfactory, but leaves some questions unanswered. Its poll was done July 8-17, more than a month before the election. Its full questionnaire, essential in discerning bias, was not released (rather, we got a PowerPoint summary).

. . . . . . . .

Phi Beta Iota:

Read the full story online to get a sense of how Human Terrain Team (HTT) Psychological Operations (PSYOP) is blowing back into US media, something specifically prohibited by legislation.

Continue reading “Journal: Human Terrain Team (HTT) Project Now Dabbling in Propaganda”

2009/08/302009/09/06

Journal: Loch Johnson on It’s Never a Quick Fix at the CIA

09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Policy, Reform, Strategy

Professor Loch Johnson is one of two people who have served on both the Church Committee and the Aspin-Brown Commission. The other is Britt Snider, Esquire.

Today he examines the lack of integrity on the Hill, or totthless, inattentive oversight. He does not address two factors that we comment on below the fold:

1. There are five CIAs, and as long as the Wall Street and White House CIAs are doing what they are told to do, no one really cares about the integrity or the pathos of the other three.

2. Leon Panetta could have been the greatest Director in history, just as Barack Obama could have been the George Washington of this century, but both sacrificed their integrity for partisan gain, deliberately ignoring the urgent calls for both reform at CIA and non-partisan reality-based policy-making in the White House. Phi Beta Iota

By Loch K. Johnson

Sunday, August 30, 2009

skip sad story . . . . . . .

The Church Committee discovered that intelligence abuses ran far deeper than initially reported. The CIA had indeed spied on Vietnam War dissenters at home, but the FBI had gone further, disrupting the lives of antiwar protesters and civil rights activists. It was “a road map to the destruction of American democracy,” committee member Walter Mondale said during a public hearing.

Church was equally appalled by the overseas excesses of the CIA, including covert actions against democratic regimes — such as Chile's — and assassination plots. He blasted the agency for “the fantasy that it lay within our power to control other countries through the covert manipulation of their affairs.”

Continue reading “Journal: Loch Johnson on It's Never a Quick Fix at the CIA”

2009/08/282009/08/29

Journal: Tyranny Looms Large–First the Internet, then the Guns, then Liberty Lost

09 Justice, 10 Security, Ethics, Government

Impeach Jay Rockefeller — Impeach Them All

Tyranny looms large in America, because We the People have become ignorant, inert, and too subject to mass deception. Read the headline and first pargragraph, then (below the fold) the Phi Beta Iota comment, and then the full story online. One bird, two wings. Time to retire this turkey, starting with Rockefeller, Webb, and Warner. The Internet is resilient against everything EXCEPT domestic treason.

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

Continue reading “Journal: Tyranny Looms Large–First the Internet, then the Guns, then Liberty Lost”