Ineptitude – Page 105 – Public Intelligence Blog

Some odds and ends, quick reads.

2013 Incomplete Intelligence Reform: Why the US Intelligence Community Needs an Empowered DNI Michael Rettig in Diplomatic Courier (12 February 2013)

Bottom line: DNI has been neutered from day one — no budget authority, no operational authority, a staff of over a thousand promoted beyond their abilities.

2012 The Next Four Years: Intelligence Community Reform – Refining not Rebooting Frank B. Strickland in IBM Business of Government Blog (18 October 2012)

2012 A Personal Perspective The Evolution of Intelligence Reform, 2002–2004 Phillip Zelikow in Studies in Intelligence (17 October 2012)

Amid all the particular issues, what stood out was the emphasis both Rice and Hadley placed—with support from others—on integrating intelligence, on a fusion of information available to all.

Claims the reforms have improved management, bridged the fault line between foreign and domestic, improved the integration of major analytic assessments, and made the National Counterterrorism Center an important innovation.

2012 Reforming Intelligence vs.Intelligent Reforms Zenpundit (5 December 2012)

Worth reading. First comment by J. Scott Shippman: The IC should consider themselves in good company, as no one in DC is held accountable, and adults seem to be an endangered species.

Continue reading “Dolphin: Intelligence Reform? Not Here, Not Now…”

2013/03/272013/03/27

Round-Up: Global Trends 2030 at PBI/PBI

Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Earth Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude

2011 Robert Steele: Global Trends 2030 – Gaps + RECAP

2012 Global Trends 2030: Review by Robert Steele — Report Lauds Fracking as Energy Solution, Disappoints on Multiple Fronts

Graphic: Global Trends 2030 Elements of Country Power

Graphic: Global Trends 2030 US GDP Comparative Collapse

Graphic: Global Trends 2030 Water Stress

NIGHTWATCH: Restrospective Review of Global Trends 2010

Review: Global Trends 2030 – Alternative Worlds [Paperback, Well Priced]

Review: Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds – American Intelligence Agency Report on the Megatrends, Gamechangers, and Black Swans of the Future, the Rise of China, Alternative World Scenarios

Tom Engelhardt: Tough Love Indictment of the US Intelligence Community — Global Trends 2030 as Poster Child for Expensive Idiocy

2013/03/232013/03/26

Winslow Wheeler: GAO (A Legislative Entity) Plays Courtesan to Lockheed, DoD, and the Congressional Recipients of Lockheed Largesse + F-35 RECAP

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military

DOD is circling the wagons to keep the F-35 propped up in the declining Pentagon budget. Importantly, as noted by a prime Lockheed mouthpiece offering his thankfulness for it, GAO's newest report on the F-35 offers a conclusion that the F-35 is on track for improvement–the data notwithstanding. In point of fact, what the GAO conclusion does show is that some long term negative–and management induced–trends have gone viral in the investigatory agency where I once worked. As a result, DOD has been allowed unseen influence on a GAO report. Skeptical? The latter half of a new piece at Foreign Policy explains.

The magazine's title for my article only off-handedly hints at the nature of the problem; it is not so much a “conspiracy” as the effects of an equal relationship between GAO and DOD. The piece is available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/22/error_report and below:

Foreign Policy

Error Report

Is there a government conspiracy to save the F-35?

BY WINSLOW WHEELER | MARCH 22, 2013

Until recently, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter had been having a pretty rough time.

In 2012, its estimated average “program acquisition unit cost” was reported to have doubled, from the $81 million per copy anticipated in 2001 to $161 million, flight tests revealed deficiencies in achieving the F-35's modest performance requirements, and scheduled full-rate production was delayed to 2019.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: GAO (A Legislative Entity) Plays Courtesan to Lockheed, DoD, and the Congressional Recipients of Lockheed Largesse + F-35 RECAP”

2013/03/212013/03/26

David Isenberg: GWOT Has Shredded CIA’s Focus and Utility – Plus Renaissance References

Government, Ineptitude

Intelligence

WOT distorting focus, resource allocation of U.S. intelligence community: experts

The U.S. Intelligence Advisory Board, a panel of fourteen highly regarded and experienced experts, many of whom past holder of high-level national security positions, has submitted a secret report to President Obama in which they say that the intense, 12-year focus of the intelligence community on finding and fighting terrorism has distorted the priorities, resource allocation, and training within that community. Former Senator David Boren, a member of the panel, asks: “in the long run, what’s more important to America: Afghanistan or China?”

Continue reading “David Isenberg: GWOT Has Shredded CIA's Focus and Utility – Plus Renaissance References”

2013/03/202013/03/26

SchwartzReport: Prison Profiteers Are Neo-Slaveholders and Solitary Is Their Weapon of Choice

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement

Prison Profiteers Are Neo-Slaveholders and Solitary Is Their Weapon of Choice

By Chris Hedges,

Truthdig | Op-Ed, 18 March 2013

If, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” then we are a nation of barbarians. Our vast network of federal and state prisons, with some 2.3 million inmates, rivals the gulags of totalitarian states. Once you disappear behind prison walls you become prey. Rape. Torture. Beatings. Prolonged isolation. Sensory deprivation. Racial profiling. Chain gangs. Forced labor. Rancid food. Children imprisoned as adults. Prisoners forced to take medications to induce lethargy. Inadequate heating and ventilation. Poor health care. Draconian sentences for nonviolent crimes. Endemic violence.

Read full article.

See also:

Torture in United States Prisons

2013/03/192013/03/26

Steve Aftergood: Drake Classification Complaint Dismissed and Court Severely Critical of Executive Over-Classification, Arbitrary Classification, and Lack of Accountability for Same

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, IO Secrets, Military

CLASSIFICATION COMPLAINT ARISING FROM THOMAS DRAKE CASE DISMISSED

In July 2011, J. William Leonard, a former director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), took the extraordinary step of filing a formal complaint with the Office he once led charging that a document used to indict former NSA official Thomas Drake under the Espionage Act had been wrongly classified in violation of the executive order on classification. (“Complaint Seeks Punishment for Classification of Documents” by Scott Shane, New York Times, August 2, 2011; “Ex-federal official calls U.S. classification system ‘dysfunctional'” by Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, July 21, 2012)

Last December, in a newly disclosed response, John P. Fitzpatrick, the current ISOO director, concluded that Mr. Leonard's complaint did not warrant the sanctions that Mr. Leonard had urged. Neither the original classification of the NSA document, titled “What a Wonderful Success,” nor its continued classification “rise to the level of willful acts in violation of the Order,” Mr. Fitzpatrick wrote in his December 26, 2012 response.

With that, the matter was officially closed. But the divergent views underlying the complaint remain unresolved and continue to fester.

“I have devoted over 34 years to Federal service in the national security arena, to include the last 5 years of my service being responsible for Executive branch-wide oversight of the classification system,” Mr. Leonard wrote in his 2011 complaint. “During that time I have seen many equally egregious examples of the inappropriate assignment of classification controls to information that does not meet the standards for classification; however, I have never seen a more willful example.”

Continue reading “Steve Aftergood: Drake Classification Complaint Dismissed and Court Severely Critical of Executive Over-Classification, Arbitrary Classification, and Lack of Accountability for Same”

2013/03/192013/03/26

Paul Craig Roberts: Iraq Invasion at 10 Years — The legacy of “the war on terror” is the death of liberty.

08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Media, Military, Peace Intelligence

March 19, 2013. Ten years ago today the Bush regime invaded Iraq. It is known that the justification for the invasion was a packet of lies orchestrated by the neoconservative Bush regime in order to deceive the United Nations and the American people.

The US Secretary of State at that time, General Colin Powell, has expressed his regrets that he was used by the Bush regime to deceive the United Nations with fake intelligence that the Bush and Blair regimes knew to be fake. But the despicable presstitute media has not apologized to the American people for serving the corrupt Bush regime as its Ministry of Propaganda and Lies.

It is difficult to discern which is the most despicable, the corrupt Bush regime, the presstitutes that enabled it, or the corrupt Obama regime that refuses to prosecute the Bush regime for its unambiguous war crimes, crimes against the US Constitution, crimes against US statutory law, and crimes against humanity.

In his book, Cultures Of War, the distinguished historian John W. Dower observes that the concrete acts of war unleashed by the Japanese in the 20th century and the Bush imperial presidency in the 21st century “invite comparative analysis of outright war crimes like torture and other transgressions. Imperial Japan’s black deeds have left an indelible stain on the nation’s honor and good name, and it remains to be seen how lasting the damage to America’s reputation will be. In this regard, the Bush administration’s war planners are fortunate in having been able to evade formal and serious investigation remotely comparable to what the Allied powers pursued vis-a-vis Japan and Germany after World War II.”

Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: Iraq Invasion at 10 Years — The legacy of “the war on terror” is the death of liberty.”