Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 2894 – Public Intelligence Blog

When is intelligence really intelligence, and when is it merely “atmospherics”? It may sound abstract, but it goes to the heart of a New York Times scoop about a defense official who apparently set up an off-the-books intelligence operation in Afghanistan.

On Monday, the Times ran a story about Michael Furlong, the Defense Department official being investigated over an ad hoc spy ring. The piece raised more questions than it answered, and Washington Post intelligence columnist David Ignatius is now filling in some of the blanks.

In a column today, Ignatius distills the story. “Under the heading of ‘information operations’ or ‘force protection,’ he writes, “the military has launched intelligence activities that, were they conducted by the CIA, might require a presidential finding and notification of Congress. And by using contractors who operate ‘outside the wire’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the military has gotten information that is sometimes better than what the CIA is offering.”

Ignatius also unpacks some of the curious semantics around this, noting that reports by contractor (and CIA veteran) Duane “Dewey” Clarridge were labeled “force protection atmospherics,” not intelligence, and that sources were called “cooperators.” It’s a key distinction: By avoiding the vocabulary of intelligence collection, Clarridge’s network evidently tried to avoid crossing the line into Title 50 activities (i.e., covert action).

Phi Beta Iota: There are five elements here:

Continue reading “Journal: OUT OF CONTROL–The Demise of Responsible Government “Intelligence” I”

2010/03/182010/03/22

Worth a Look: Campaign to End Bottled Water Waste

12 Water, Worth A Look

This is an extremely righteous example of citizen intelligence–a brilliant compilation of FACTS presented in a compelling manner intended to inspire ACTION by hundreds of millions of independent citizens whose governments cannot be relied upon to produce public intelligence in the public interest.

– Much of the water is tapped water rather than spring water–both are contaminated from the overflow of chemicals that we allow to freely enter our groundwater sources.

– More water is used in the manufacture and transport of bottled water than is contained in the bottles themselves.

– There is no regulatory oversight beyond ONE person on the safety of this water.

2010/03/18

Journal: Bush-Era Cover-Up on 9-11 Interrogations

Ethics, Government

Revealed: Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld warned 9/11 Commission about ‘line’ it ’should not cross’

Posted on March 17, 2010 by willyloman

by Sahil Kapur, Raw Story

Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.

The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney.

EXTRACT:

Eventually, the commission’s co-chairs harshly criticized the administration for having purportedly “destroyed” tapes of its interrogations with terror suspects, as Raw Story reported last year.

9/11 Commission members Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton wrote that although US President George W. Bush had ordered all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the probe, “recent revelations that the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot.”

“Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.”

They continued: “There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the CIA — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot.

“Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations,” Kean and Hamilton wrote.

The letter can be found on page 26 of the ACLU’s set of unveiled documents.

2010/03/182010/09/03

Handbook: Democide–Internal Murder by Regimes

05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, Threats/Topical

This is a virtual handbook, an online compilation of a new broader concept, democide, that encompasses genocide but focuses on what be called “death by power” or “killed because they could” at the hands of authoritarian regimes. The term does not include those killed by the USA or other countries engaged in foreign wars in which civilians are “collateral damage,” in the case of the Global War on Terror, along the lines of 10 to 1 by the USA and 100 to 1 by those who plant bombs to terrorize publics (some of the bombs appear to be planted by Blackwater and their like, sponsored by the Joint Special Operations Group (JSOC) and/or the Centeral Intelligence Agency (CIA) to justify further militarization of a given conflict. The US secret world can no longer be trusted to act in the public interest, nor to be effective in support of legitimate campaign needs such as those of our commanders in Afghanistan.

On genocide, see Dr. Greg Stanton's Genocide Watch.

On 44 dictators, 42 of them “best pals” of the US Government, see Ambassador Mark Palmer's two contributions:

2004 Palmer (US) Achieving Universal Democracy by Eliminating All Dictators within the Decade

Review: Breaking the Real Axis of Evil–How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025

2010/03/172010/09/03

Handbook: Joint Operating Environment 2010

C4/JOE/Software, Government, Military, Military

This is an absolutely world-class document, and to the best of our recollection, the single best formulation we have seen. The perspectives, insights, professional approach, and over-all treatment of the challenges of the future are truly first class, and superior to CIA's Global Trends and other such offerings in relation to the needs of the military.

It does have flaws that are not the fault of the author's or the Command, but of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, neither of whom know anything at all about Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). Supplemental Observation

The document missed Indonesia as a demographic powerhouse; does not fully understand water; understates the DoD share of the US budget by 50%; ignores Operations Other Than War (OOTW) and especially the vital role that the military can play with the Army Civil Affairs Brigade as a hub, ignores multinational outreach in other than liaison terms, and under-studies defense acquisition which is not a hiring problem, it is a mind-set and information problem.

Despite these flaws, which are beyond the control of the author's since they did not receive any intelligence support worthy of the name, this is a phenomenal document with enormous potential for the future of Whole of Government Operations across the spectrum of high-level threats from Poverty to Crime.

It's time to drain the DoD intelligence swamp, that will actually fix acquisition and support to operations in the real-world at the same time.

Graphic: OSINT DOSC MDSC as Kernel for Global Grid to Meet Stabilization & Reconstruction as Well as Whole of Government Policy, Acquisition, and Operations Support

2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

Journal: DoD Mind-Set Time Lags Most Fascinating

Journal: Intelligence & Innovation Support to Strategy, Planning, Programming, Budgeting, & Acquisition

2010/03/16

Worth a Look: Recent Additions

Worth A Look

Phi Beta Iota dates materials such as handbooks to their date of original publication. When warranted, we will highlight new additions that are not visible to visitors because of our practice.

See for instance:

Handbook: Criminal Justice Responses to Terrorism (UNODC, April 2009)

Handbook: Open Source Intelligence Professional Handbook, Joint Military Intelligence Training Center, Defense Intelligence Agency, October 1996

2010/03/162010/03/16

Journal: Joe Mazzafro, USN (Ret), on IC Performance

10 Security, Government, Threats

How Should We Measure Intelligence Community Performance?, by Joseph Mazzafro. As the Congress and the DC dignitary debate if health care is affordable given the nation's first trillion dollar annual debit incursion, I am wondering where the money would come from should the United States need to defend its national interests against another Al Qaeda attack or worse. The President has already frozen budgetary growth for all discretionary spending not related to national security, but can the Defense Department and Intelligence Community remain fenced for much longer given the increasing national debt – the size of which already is a national security concern in its own right?

Continue reading “Journal: Joe Mazzafro, USN (Ret), on IC Performance”