During 2001-2002, I was a Scholar-in-Residence at the Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis, the “think tank” attached to the CIA’s training center for analysts. The CIA has long used such scholars as expert analysts, but the Kent Center wanted to try something new: using an outside scholar to study the process of analysis itself. In particular, I was charged with looking at how the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) uses information technology (IT), and how it might use this technology more effectively.
The Intelligence Community’s Neglect of Strategic Intelligence
Commonly misunderstood, we neglect it at our peril. The architects of the National Security Act of 1947 would be greatly surprised by today’s neglect of strategic intelligence in the Intelligence Community.
I have never, in 18 years of OSINT advocacy, seen a more professional and intelligent endeavor to understand and report on what we are trying to do. This is absolutely world-class, and my admiration is unbounded. This creative individual has a lifetime free pass to our conferences. His technical, legal, and people skills are of the highest order.
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Kent's photo links to the ten video interviews he did at OSS '06, the last conference before it was stolen and consequently destroyed by an individual that broke his promise (one of several) and is fortuitously no longer responsible for anything of significance. All of the interviews are recommended, but then Congressman Simmons, now running for Senator in place of Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticutt, is especially noteworthy. No one in government has, in the twenty one years we have been fighting this fight, gotten a better grip not just on the idea of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) as a separate discipline, but on OSINT as a means of revitalizing American education, improving decision-support to every Congressional jurisdiction (most get NOTHING from the secret intelligence world), and helping the President and the Cabinet Secretaries manage Whole of Govenrment Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Operational Campaigns.
Among those interviewed that we hold in very high esteem are Michael Andregg, Carolyn Stewart, Mats Bjore, Ralph Peters, Robert Young Pelton, Stephen E. Arnold, and Peter Morville. There is also an interview with Robert Steele, who is not tagged within this website.
Below is a direct link to Kent Bye and a collage of clips from each of the people he interviewed. We consider this the single best most brilliant piece of citizen journalism on the concept of OSINT.
Overview Video
Below are the currently available links for audio only for all those interviewed:
Below links directly to the Simmons interview, use the photograph link above to select any of the others. NOTE: the video portion appears to have been disabled for all of them, you get audio only right now, we are working on this with Kent, it is vastly better to see these individuals in full multi-media form.
NOTE: By “off the record” Dr. Markowitz has clarified that this information may be shared as we are sharing it, but those benefiting from our sharing should treat the knowledge as if they had acquired it “off the record,” as personal views that should not be attributed nor accepted as anything other than background perceptions.
Joe Markowitx
PLATINUM LIFETIME AWARD, Dr. Joseph Markowitz
Dr. Joseph Markowitz is without question the most qualified Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) pioneer in the ranks of those presently in or retired from U.S. government service. As the only real chief of the Community Open Source Program Office (COSPO) he tried valiently to nurture a program being systematically undermined by both the leadership and the traditional broadcast monitoring service. When he moved on to advise the Defense Science Board, he served America well by helping them fully integrate the need for both defense open source information collection and exploitation, and defense information sharing with non-governmental organizations. His persistent but diplomatic efforts merit our greatest regard.
Peter Morville, resident in the US, is an information architect, pathfinder (we lose as much as we create), and visualizer of how best to connect dots to dots, dots to people, and people to people in the context of sharing information.
Below are the slides from his presentation to OSS '06.
Boyd Sutton was one of a handful of great intelligence community leaders who understood how to handle and get the most out of what CIA described as “self-starters” (they have up the idea after half of both classes quit within give years–go along bureaucrats are still the norm). He also had a huge mind, and went form being in charge of the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) vault dealing with all external technical programs (the Advanced Program and Evaluation Group) to being a senior executive at the National Reconaissance Office (NRO), and then a retiree consultant charged by then DNI George Tenet with establishing the requirements for Global Coverage–the answer: $10 million for each of 150 “lower tier” countries and issues including non-state actors and emerging threats, or $1.5 billion a year year–today that would be $3 billion. Boyd's contribution of the unclassified version of his study to the public, in the public interest, is a significant example of individual integrity in the service of the Republic.
Boyd Sutton
Click on the Frog to connect to his original 1997 study slides and full text, all unclassified as released.
Challenge of Global Coverage Study for the DCI 1997
