Category: 08 Wild Cards

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Reference: WH CT Summary, POTUS Directive, DNI Blurb

08 Immigration, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Analysis, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Methods & Process, Military, Office of Management and Budget, Policy, Reform
White House Summary

EDIT of 9 Jan 10: Note seven comments from retired senior officers.

Critique of the CT Summary for the White House

This is a negligent piece of work that fails to include all that is known merely from open sources of information, but more importantly its judgments are misdirected.  This incident remains incompletely investigated until the person who video-taped events on the airplane comes forward and is identified.

Where we differ:

1. It was passengers who restrained the individual, not the flight crew, as is stated in the first paragraph.

1)  Does not identify the primary error.  The Embassy officer (or CIA officer) who interviewed the father did not elevate the matter.  The same kind of mistake occurred when the Taliban walked in and offered us Bin Laden in hand-cuffs.

2)  The absence of a machine-speed cross-walk among US and UK visa denials is noted, but the weakest link is overlooked.  The Department of State either didn’t check their visa files or, as has been remarked, may have failed to get a match because of misspelling.  The necessary software is missing. State continues to be the runt in the litter (we have more military musicians than we have diplomats) and until the President gets a grip on the Program 50 budget, State will remain a dead man walking.

3)  Another point glossed over: the intelligence community, and CIA in particular, did not increase analytic resources against the threat.  Reminds us of George Tenet “declaring war” on terrorism and then being ignored by mandarins who really run the place.

4)  “The watchlisting system is not broken” (page 2 bottom bold).  Of course it is broken, in any normal meaning of the word “system”.  John Brennan is responsible for the watchlisting mess, and this self-serving statement is evidence in favor of his removal.  If we are at war, we cannot have gerbils in critical positions (quoting Madeline Albright).

5)  “A reorganization of the intelligence or broader counterterrorism coummunity is not required…” at the bottom of page 2.  Reorganization, in the sense of moving around blocks on a chart, may not be required, but the entire system is broken and does need both principled redesign and new people the President can trust with the combination of balls and brains and budget authority to get it right.  Thirteen years after Aspin-Brown we still have not implemented most of their suggestions; the U.S. intelligence community is still grotesquely out of balance; and the Whole of Government budget is still radically misdirected at the same time that our policies in the Middle East are counterproductive.

Continue reading “Reference: WH CT Summary, POTUS Directive, DNI Blurb”

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Journal: Selected MILNET Headlines

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Reform

O's ‘Fixes' Will Fail:Feeding more fat to obese US intelligence (Ralph Peters)

None of these people, including our president, took what almost happened on Christmas seriously — until the public outcry spooked them.

To energize the bureaucratic proles, you have to chop off aristocratic heads. But President Obama won't use the guillotine. He's protecting incompetents. At our nation's expense.

The corrective measures announced Thursday boil down to two things: Buy more stuff (additional computer systems, full-body scanners, etc.), and re-arrange the deck chairs.

That won't do it. These measures don't address the two enduring handicaps our intelligence community (and our government) suffers in our duel with Islamist terrorists.

Yemen's Al Qaeda Scam (Robert Haddick)

It seems that whenever the international community discovers another al Qaeda franchise, a financial reward to the host seems to follow. Pakistan has perfected how to profit from this perverse incentive. Yemen is now showing itself to be an able student of the same technique.

U.S. Army In Africa: Dodging The Continent's Worst Wars (David Axe)

The U.S. Army’s role in all of this is to help strengthen the capabilities and capacity of our land force partners … so they can help protect their people, secure their borders, support development, contribute to better governance and help achieve regional stability.

Except, apparently, in cases where there’s too much terrorism, violent extremism, cyber attacks, piracy, illicit trafficking, crime, corruption, disease and displaced people.

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Journal: Weak Signals–Global Middle Class Populism

03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence
Full Story Online

A Call to the People of the World to Support Iceland Against Financial Blackmail

Birgitta Jónsdóttir
Infowars.com
January 6, 2009

InfoWar Editor’s note: Birgitta Jónsdóttir is the leader of The Movement, a group within the Icelandic Parliament which has emerged from the mass struggle of Icelanders against the financial blackmail brought to bear against their country by the governments in London and The Hague, with the backing of the IMF, in the wake of the insolvency of three large Icelandic banks in the midst of the Lehman Brothers-AIG world financial panic of September-October2008. Birgitta Jonsdottir is a courageous leader in the fight for national sovereignty, independence, dignity, and the economic well-being and future of her country.

Phi Beta Iota: This story is being ignored in the mainstream media, which is a mistake.  This is an early signal of the populism that will come like a tsunami over the next few yeras.  People of good will and common sense are beginning to recognize that governments are no longer working in their interests, and are making decisions that may be legally binding under the old paradigm, but are questionable in terms of sustainability of the commonwealths the governments are supposed to be protecting and nurturing.  In the end, as both Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and Howard Zinn and Joanathan Schell all agree, demography rules.

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Journal: National Intelligence or National Goat-F…?

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics

Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first president to take office in the Age of Terrorism. He inherited two struggles — one with Al Qaeda and its ideological allies, and another that divides his own country over issues like torture, prosecutions, security and what it means to be an American. The first has proved to be complicated and daunting. The second makes the first look easy.

NATO official: US spy work lacking in Afghanistan

Eight years into the war, the U.S. intelligence community is only “marginally relevant” to the overall mission in Afghanistan, a senior intelligence official for the international forces wrote in a report released less than a week after seven CIA employees died in a suicide attack.

Intelligence Overhaul Ordered For Afghanistan

The overhaul announced Monday will broaden the scope of intelligence gathering from hunting down extremists to gathering information about local attitudes, concerns, people and leaders as part of an effort to win over the Afghan population.

Webster Tarpley on Nigerian Staging by Rogue Moles in US Intelligence

Officials in the Obama White House are considering the possibility that the Christmas day attempt by Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Mutallab to blow up an airliner about to land in Detroit was deliberately and intentionally facilitated by unnamed networks inside the US intelligence community. This was the gist of a report by Richard Wolffe delivered in this evening’s edition of cable network MSNBC’s Countdown program, hosted by Keith Olbermann: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#34694889.

Continue reading “Journal: National Intelligence or National Goat-F…?”

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Journal: Death of CIA Personnel in Afghanistan

05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Government

UPDATE: Journal: CIA’s Poor Tradecraft AND Poor Management

UPDATE:  Bomber was Jordanian doctor & Jordanian intelligence asset

Phi Beta Iota: This keeps getting worse.  We wonder if CIA contractors get stars on the wall–4 employees including the one who was over-ruled by Berger, Tenet, and Brennen in taking Bin Laden out unilaterally; 3 guards, and a Jordanian intelligence officer who was probably “handling” the asset that did not get searched coming into a “safe” area.  So now we have analysts as chiefs of base (or visiting) on the front line; Jordanian “case officers” providing the language, tradecraft, and other services, and “flipped” assets not validated who get to waltz inside our lines without being searched.   Still unclear is whether the Atlanta detective until recently a UN security officer was an employee or a contractor.

The only thing worse than what CIA is doing in AF and IQ is what the military is evidently unable to do: combat intelligence and counter-intelligence.

See also the Sanity Check comments associated with this posting.

UPDATE:  CIA invited suicide bomber on base as a potential informant

Phi Beta Iota:  The informant was not searched prior to being brought into the “safe” area.  This is what happens when you have inexperienced people too focused on convenient debriefings and not focused enough on counterintelligence.  The Cubans and the Soviets have been running rings around CIA for decades with walk-ins, and CIA now has a whole new crop of folks with no idea how to operate in the field.  We are reminded of the two CIA case officers that went nuts in Somalia.  Somebody needs to  tell Panetta he's in charge of Clowns in Action.  Similarly, the first CIA casualty in Afghanistan was killed because CIA got into the prison business and had no clue on the fundamentals, such as searching prisoners before putting them into group confinement.  This is a tragedy that could have been avoided.

Continue reading “Journal: Death of CIA Personnel in Afghanistan”

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Journal: Resistance to Federal Mandates Grows

08 Wild Cards, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Policies, Real Time, Threats

Resist DC: NH Legislators Look to Nullify Federal Gun Laws

While the bill’s title focuses on federal gun regulations, it has far more to do with the 10th Amendment’s limit on the power of the federal government. It states, in part:

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution for the United States guarantees to the states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in the constitution and reserves to the State and people of New Hampshire certain powers as they were understood at the time that New Hampshire ratified the Bill of Rights, particularly the Tenth Amendment in 1790. The guaranty of those powers is a matter of contract between the State and people of New Hampshire and the several States comprising the United States as of the time that the compact was agreed upon and adopted by New Hampshire and the several States comprising the United States.

The regulation of inter-state commerce was delegated by the People of the Several States to the federal government in the US Constitution. Since the regulation of intra-state commerce was not delegated to the federal government, this authority, as codified in law by the 10th Amendment, remains with the State governments or the People themselves.

Continue reading “Journal: Resistance to Federal Mandates Grows”

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Journal: Selected MILNET Headlines

08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism

The New Rules Of Engagement: Nine imperatives for our post-9/11 world

Statutory rules to authorize preventive detentions;

Adoption of the isolation-and-quarantine statute;

Establish new laws to govern the use of federal troops (domestically)

Major-General Andrew Mackay Says MoD Is ‘Institutionally Incapable' In Afghanistan

“From the top of the MoD through to the Army’s staff colleges, the structures, despite the best will in the world, are institutionally incapable of keeping pace with rapid change and the associated willingness to adapt — and quickly — at the same time,” the paper says.

Mobility Helps Al Qaeda Extend Reach

Al Qaeda's decentralized structure across the Middle East is proving one of its biggest advantages over American firepower.

Terrorism's Triumphant Techniques:Why the US is behind the power curve (Ralph Peters)

The terrorists are “inside the wire.” Everywhere. From eastern Afghanistan to Texas. And we're stalled. For all of our wealth, technology and power, our enemies have the strategic and psychological initiative.

Our enemies have done what we refuse to do. They've analyzed the problem objectively and engineered ruthless solutions.

EDITORIAL: Obama's failed freshman year

President Obama's freshman-year foreign policy was the worst in living memory. At the dawn of 2010, the United States finds itself noticeably weaker in international affairs than it was when Mr. Obama took office, and there are no signs of improvement in the year ahead.

Use of potentially harmful chemicals kept secret under law

Of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States — from flame retardants in furniture to household cleaners — nearly 20 percent are secret, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, their names and physical properties guarded from consumers and virtually all public officials under a little-known federal provision.