Phi Beta Iota: The DNI's staff is taking fluff to new heights–naturally with the best of intentions, but some pretty profound ignorance for that level, as well as neutering in place. There is no security to speak of, anywhere, there is no defensive counterintelligence worthy of the name, and there is assuredly zero offensive counterintelligence. We observe with studied dismay the directive shows no evidence of understanding the fact that defensive counterintelligence and security should be under the same leadership, and that offensive counterintelligence and clandestine operations under the same leadership. There is no opening in all this for getting it right unilaterally, and there appears to be no possibility at all of exploring multinational variations on the theme. DHS, DIA, and SOCOM are all going to screw this up, very expensively, and all those responsible for sustained failure will be long retired before anyone actually itemizes the many expensive ways in which they failed.
Most of my liberal friends reluctantly support President Obama's re-election, because the alternative is so much worse. Invariably, they invoke the effects of a Romney presidency on judicial appointments, especially those to the Supreme Court (ironically, Obama's two appointees just voted with the majority to decline to hear the Guantanamo case, if effect, putting another nail in the coffin that is burying habeas corpus). For those few still on the fence, the attached article by one of the President's former law professors provides useful food for thought.
Chuck Spinney
San Remo, Italy
JUNE 20, 2012Obama's Former Law Prof Declares: “Obama has failed the progressive cause.”Why Obama Must be Defeatedby RUSSELL MOKHIBERNot Ralph Nader. Not Amy Goodman. Not Noam Chomsky. Not Chris Hedges. Not Cornel West. Not Alexander Cockburn. Not one of the great left critics in the United States have dared say what Harvard Law School Professor Roberto Unger said last week. “President Obama must be defeated in the coming election.”In 1976, at age 29, Roberto Unger became the youngest tenured professor at Harvard Law School. Obama took two classes from Unger – Jurisprudence and Reinventing Democracy. During the 2008 campaign, Unger was reportedly in frequent contact with candidate Barack Obama via email and Blackberry.But here he is today saying that “President Obama must be defeated in the coming election.”
Revelations by The New York Times that President Barack Obama in his role as commander in chief ordered the Stuxnet cyberattack against Iran's uranium-enrichment facility two years ago in cahoots with Israel is generating controversy, with Washington in an uproar over national-security leaks. But the important question is whether this covert action of sabotage against Iran, the first known major cyberattack authorized by a U.S. president, is the right course for the country to take. Are secret cyberattacks helping the U.S. solve geopolitical problems or actually making things worse?
Bruce Schneier, noted security expert and author, whose most recent book is “Liars and Outliers,” argues the U.S. made a mistake with Stuxnet, and he discusses why it's important for the world to tackle cyber-arms control now in an interview with Network World senior editor Ellen Messmer.
The question is going to be debated whether Stuxnet was a good tactic to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon by sabotaging its facility through a malware attack in a covert action that was ultimately discovered. In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News last night, former National Security Agency director, retired Gen. Michael Hayden, said he thought it amounted to “taunting Iran.” Based on the mix of military leadership, governmental leadership and ethical questions it raises, is Stuxnet a suitable approach?
ROBERT STEELE: Bruce Schneier is wrong. This is not something that can be micro-managed. The UN is largely worthless, and so are most international organizatiions (with several being totally toxic). The only solution to cyber-security is going with Open Source Everything.
At a time when corporate America is exploring and exploiting its new Supreme-Court-bestowed role in the management of American election results, an earlier transformation in the composition and political role of American business leadership should be recalled. This was the replacement of the Gilded Age capitalists and industrialists—audacious, rapacious and innovative, who created the post-Civil War American industrial economy—by the early 20th-century professional managers who took their place.
Paul Wilson, in his review of Madeleine Albright’s Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937–1948 [NYR, June 7], sensibly puts quotation marks around the word “success” in referring to the seventy-eight-day NATO bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999, hailed at the time by John Keegan as “proof positive that wars can be won by airpower alone.” As Wilson correctly observes, the war “transformed liberal attitudes to military intervention,” its legacy celebrated in subsequent campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and, perhaps in the near future, Syria and Iran.
The Path to War with Iran is an analysis by Robert Merry, editor of The National Interest and a historian. (I reformatted it to highlight its main points but did not change any words or the order of his words.) Merry analogizes the current situation with that facing FDR in the late 1930s, and he introduces a fascinating vignette, which if true, adds substance to those who claim Roosevelt was trying to push the Japanese into war. But the analogy is really beside the point. Merry's focuses the substance of his argument entirely on the nuclear question. At first glance, this appeared to me to be very well argued and important, but for some reason, I was a little uneasy about it. So, I forwarded to my good friend Pierre Sprey and asked him for his take on Merry’s argument. Pierre has a very different view; he thinks a war with Iran is very unlikely for reasons unrelated to the nuclear question. In effect, nucs may be a red herring that keeps populations lathered up and distracted from more fundamental issues. For the record, I agree and am familiar with Pierre’s arguments “a” (about the war weariness) and “b.” — the fact that I needed to be reminded of these more fundamental issues is a yet another example of how nucs can capture one’s thinking.
I urge readers to think about both points of view.
Chuck Spinney
Menton, France
——[Response from Pierre Sprey]——-
Chuck,
Most interesting (and new to me) is Merry's vignette of FDR deliberately moving to lock up all the Japanese-Americans on the same day that he pushed the Japanese government over the brink–just one more testimonial to FDR's boundless lust for power and utter cynicism when it came to right, wrong, justice or causing the death of millions. Reminds you of LBJ, doesn't it?
U.S. veterans have told the Japan Times that the Marine Corps buried a massive stockpile of Agent Orange at the Futenma air station in Okinawa, Japan. This buried stockpile has possibly poisoned the base's former head of maintenance and is potentially contaminating the ground beneath the base, as well as nearby residents. The former mayor of the nearby town of Ginowan said local authorities had never been told of the 1981 Agent Orange find, and that he was worried about the potential level of contamination in the ground water and land, which consists of many caves and natural springs. ‘If the dioxin is still in the soil, then we can confirm its presence with sampling. But the Japanese government won't grant permission to conduct such tests within U.S. installations in Okinawa,' Iha said. 20 schools and 109 more elementary schools are in close proximity to the barrels' location…
. . . . . . . .
Under Japanese law, the U.S. military is not responsible for cleaning up former bases returned to civilian usage, and apparently has a bad track record of polluting its installations in Okinawa.
ROBERT STEELE: Marines like to claim they are the “gold standard” for integrity. This is delusional idiocy. The fact is that the entire US Government, each Cabinet Department, each agency, each service, have devolved into little cesspools of fraud, waste, and abuse. There is neither intelligence nor integrity in the US Marine Corps, or the rest of the US Government. A Director of National Intelligence (DNI) with integrity would insist–demand–and implement an intelligence program that began with “Ground Zero.” Until we get the truth on the table about what, when, where, why, and how of our past crimes against humanity and the Earth, we will not be in a position to deal with it. Absent that truth as a starting point–and absent strategic intelligence that is holistic (ten threats, twelve policies, eight demographics)–the US Government cannot–even with the best of intentions that are nowhere apparent–act in the public interest.
