Communities of Practice – Page 6 – Public Intelligence Blog

2004/12/142009/08/01

2004 Seagrave (US/FR) Interview with Sterling and Peggy Seagrave on Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Historic Contributions, Law Enforcement

We met the authors at their Knight Templar fortress overlooking a southern French bay, where they are in voluntary exile. What they have revealed about the US theft of the gold stolen by Japen from China, and the subsequent use of that gold to bribe both US Presidents and foreign government leaders, is quite intriguing–precisely the kind of information the public needs to know.

Below is the written record of their DVD interview as shown at OSS '04.

We strongly recommend their books on the corrupt Taiwanese government (Chang Kai Skek was a warlord and crime lord to the end of his days) but for our concerns about the integrity of the Wall Street-White House axis of secrecy, we particularly recommend Gold Warriors, below.

Earth-Shattering, Faith-Shaking, Well-Documented Deceit, September 25, 2003

Few realize that China (the one China, the People's Republic of China) did NOT sign the San Francisco treaty and has NOT given up the right to demand reparations of both the Japanese and of the United States of America. By rights, most of the gold the USA took out of the Philippines–and all of the cultural treasures stolen by the Japanese from China–are the legitimate historical property of China, and we anticipate that “truth and reconciliation” will one day bring the above book center stage again.

2004/12/132009/08/02

2004 (US) Spinney Water and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

06 Genocide, 12 Water, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Government, Historic Contributions, Military, Peace Intelligence

Chuck Spinney, who contributes highlighted items to the Journal of Public Intelligence, wrote the original modern book on defense waste and the plans/reality mismatch, shown below with a link to its Amazon Page.

Although not a professional intelligence analyst, Spinney is a deeply-experienced real-world analyst and understands the lunacy of building a strategy, a force structure, a foreign policy, or a campaign plan on ideological fantasies and misrepresentations. Israel and Palestine is a WATER issue, nothing more, nothing less. Below is his briefing to OSS '04 to that effect–prepare to be shocked at how Israel is stealing water from the Arab aquifers, and how Israeli agruculture is using 50% of the regions water to produce less than 5% of the Israeli GDP, all the while denying Palestinians their own water. The Arab govenrments, and the US Government, “go along” because they do not yet place proper emphasis on human rights and especially on the rights of indigenous peoples.

2004/12/122009/08/02

2004 Tongeren (NL) A Need for a Global Alliance for Human Security

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Historic Contributions

GOLDEN CANDLE AWARD: Mr. Paul van Tongeren

OSS '04: To Mr. Paul van Tongeren, leader, educator, advocate, and pioneer in the prevention and resolution of conflict. As Executive Director of the European Centre for Conflict Prevention, his is a critical voice in facilitating peace through hinter-disciplinary study, cross-cultural communication, and the creation of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).

The ECCP received its own award in 2002:

GOLDEN CANDLE AWARD: European Centre for Conflict Prevention, The Netherlands

OSS '02: European Centre for Conflict Prevention. For their consistent and superior efforts to make open sources of information more readily available to those who deal with conflicts and humanitarian emergencies, to include their surveys of conflict prevention and peacebuilding activities, and their lessons learned. Their web site, www.conflict-prevention.net, is a global resource.

Below is the outline of the speaker's remarks to OSS '04.

2004/12/112009/08/02

2004 Vlahos (US) The Muslim Renovatio and US Strategy

02 Diplomacy, 04 Indonesia, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Historic Contributions

GOLDEN CANDLE AWARD: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

OSS '04: To the JHU-APL, and especially to Capt Joseph Mazzafro, USN (Ret) and Dr. Michael Vlahos, for sustained excellence in the integration of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) into their complex all-source analytic efforts in support of the Department of Defense. Aided by the Gibson Library, they have set a new standard.

Michael Vlahos is an iconoclast and a free-thinker.

The transmittal memorandum below, and the paper, each shown for separate access, represent an update on his views as expressed in his seminal monographs,“Culture’s Mask: War and Change After Iraq” (62-page pdf), Johns Hopkins (2004) and“Terror’s Mask: Insurgency Within Islam” (34-page pdf), Johns Hopkins University (2002), and new thinking that has NOT been understood by either the outgong Bush-Cheney Administration or the incoming Obama-Biden Administration.

The U.S. Intelligence Community and its policy and operational consumers do not “do” culture and are seriously challenged at geo-anything. Michael Vlahos, in our view, has ably articulated the central lens by which we should be crafting our collection, policy, trade, and operational strategies with respect to the rising tide of Islam (India, Indonesia, Iran, and pockets everywhere else).

2004/12/092009/08/02

2004 Wiebes (NL) Intelligence and the war in Bosnia 1992 – 1995 The role of the intelligence and security services

Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Historic Contributions, Peace Intelligence

This extraordinary scholar benefits from being given access by an enlightened secret intelligence service whose Parliament demands full transparency as required. His book is one of those very, very few that can legitimately claim to be fully informed from a full examination of all classified messages and archives, as well as the usual unclassified or publicly available information, and the author is himself an extraordinary scholar and a founding member of the Netherlands Intelligence Studies Association, which which his photo connects absent an English-language biographic page.

This book is worth getting at any price from any source–we have urged the author to send us the book for a reprint at cost if his publisher will not do it imemdiately. It should not be out of print.

Below left are his remarks on the book and his investigation as made to OSS '04.

2004/07/162010/11/12

2004 Simmons (US) Foreword to the Special Operations Forces (SOF) Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Handbook

Hill Letters & Testimony, Historic Contributions, Military

This Foreword, the first one done by Congressman Rob Simmons of Connecticutt for any handbook or book in the larger Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) arena, would be revised and used for others publications, but in its time, in 2004, this was the first-ever deep high-level statement of both need and opportunity with respect to OSINT as a separate discipline.

2004/01/222019/12/08

2004 Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Speech to the Security Affairs Support Association (SAS) on Need for Universal Coverage at the Neighborhood Level of Granularity

About the Idea, Briefings (Core), Historic Contributions, Military

Dr. Stephen Cambone was a fine Undersecetary of Defense for Intelligence (USD(I)) given the context he was in and the policy personalities he was dealing with. His most brilliant moment, for the public interest, came on 22 January 2004 when he spoke to the Security Affairs Support Association (SASA) about the need for universal coverage at the neighborhood level of granularity. When combined with Boyd Sutton's findings on the Challenge of Global Coverage (Frog Left), and the 9-11 Commission depiction of an independent Open Source Agency (OSA) on page 413 of its report (Frog Right), the stage is now set for the present USD(I) to finally get moving on this program with an Initial Operating Capability (IOC) of no less than $125 million a year, as has been agreed to by OMB principals and key staff on successive occasions.

The other two legs of the DoD OSINT stoolare below. Note that the 9-11 Commission did not have time to fully understand the OSA it was recommending; all serious practitioners have agreed that it cannot be within the secret intelligence world, but rather outside the wire, perhaps under joint Defense Intelligence (DIA) and Civil Affairs (CA) proponency, the first responsible for firehosing all OSINT to the high-side, building the bridge from Intelink-U to the SIPR Net; the second responsible for both ingesting all open source information from multinational partners including Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO), and for multi-national information-sharing and sense-making at the unclassified level, all of which is both shared liberally without secret world constraints, and also feed immediately to the high-side for further explotation by all-source analysts with access to all available classified information.

DOC (8 Pages): Cambone Speech to SASA 22 Jan 04