The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
In the 1990's there was a group that included Parker Rossman focused on the World Brain and the possibilities inherent in the proper integration of human and machine intelligence. OSS '97 was fortunate to have a member of this group present some ideas.
Gifford Pinchot captivated several hundred mid-career profressionals from around the world at OSS '97. He was so compelling that the long break was cancelled to give him overtime. Below is a copy of his presentation. See also the review of the book, The End of Bureaucracy, a copy of which was provided to each participant.
Without the leadership of then Capt Patrick Tyrrell, RN OBE, these handbooks would not exist today. He started the ball rolling, BGen Jim Cox, CA, then NATO and SHAPE Deputy J-2 organized a lecture to all the flag officers in charge of military intelligence, and finally directed SACLANT, then led by General William Kernan, USA, to create these first multinational doctrinal guides. Under the direct supervision of Admiral Sir William Pewone, RN, this was done over the course of two years. Below is the white paper and lecture that started it all.
DOC: Creating a Bare Bones OSINT Capability
When Paul Wallner, on rotation from DIA to CIA, first attempted to establiksh an Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) concept of operations, this was the first paper delivered to him. At the same time, he gave OSS a fair shot at business with ten trial weekly reports spanning everything from medical to regions to logistics. What we did not discover until a few years ago is that a sergeant, then on reserve duty and billing himself as an OSINT expert, was throwing away our analytic summaries and loading the carefully sorted headines associated with each analytic summary into the DIA “bin” willy-nilly. Our attempt to show DIA that OSINT could be done as a low-cost out-sourced activity that did not require legions of contractors or “butts in seats,” died from this one specific pattern of misbehavior, a lack of intelligence and integrity on the part of one individual so shocking as to defy understuanding. Neither Wallner nor Steele knew about this until years later.
Above links to the slides (over 100) as provided to then DCI George Tenet. Click on the icon below for the full text of the report that was immediately locked up “never to be spoken of again.”
This is one of two seminal documents in circulation in the Spring and Summer of 1997. The financial numbers in this document were vetted and modified as necessary by Don Gessaman and Arnie Donahue–they are suitable for a President or a Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and still valid today adjusted for inflation. The other is the study done by Boyd Sutton on The Challenge of Global Coverage (click on the frog to go directly to that study. In both instances, because the recommendations were at odds with the conventional bureaucratic desire to increase secret technical intelligence capabilities, the reports were ignored.
