Key Players – Page 253 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/06/012010/06/01

NIGHTWATCH Extract: US-Israel-Turkey-Hamas

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices

Israel-Turkey-Hamas: Four ships from the Gaza-bound flotilla that was raided on 31 May Israeli naval forces have arrived at the port of Ashdod, Israel, accompanied by Israeli warships, Al Jazeera reported.

According to Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli soldiers that intercepted the Gaza-bound aid flotilla acted in self-defense, and violence aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of the aid ships, was instigated by those aboard the ship, The Jerusalem Post reported 31 May. Ashkenazi said passengers aboard most of the ships were activists but the Mavi Marmara, the only ship on which violence took place, was sponsored by what he termed an “extremist organization” the Turkish non-governmental organization Insani Yardim Vakfi.

International Reaction: Every country in the world that pays attention to the Middle East or contains a mosque has condemned or denounced Israel. Pakistan has called for Muslim countries to act in concert in peaceful coercion of Israel.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: NightWatch assesses that US diplomacy for a Middle East peace plan is the actual target of the Israeli naval action. Israel has just demonstrated that the US cannot control Israel, undermining any confidence Arab countries place in US promises relating to Israeli behavior. Israel refuses to be bound by US promises.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Extract: US-Israel-Turkey-Hamas”

2010/05/312010/05/31

Journal: Dropping COIN–McChrystal Returns to His Roots

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Military, Peace Intelligence

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch, 27 May 2010

FULL STORY ONLINE

For the past several years Americans have been inundated by reams of journalistic puff pieces extolling the virtues of the new US Counterinsurgency (COIN) Strategy documented by General Petraeus in his much ballyhooed COIN manual — which for the most part was a merely regurgitation of the failed thinking of French Marshal Lyautey's ink spot strategy (that counterinsurgent forces should aim to secure an ever expanding geographic zone of security with each new area secured providing a basis for further spreading, and so on.)
It is becoming clear, however, the showpiece of this new strategy, the Marjah operation, has failed to deliver on the promised security improvements to the people, and in the words of the theater commander, General Stanley McChrystal, has become a “bleeding ulcer.”
Coupled with the deadlines imposed by President President Obama, when he approved McChrystal's ill-thought out plan last Fall, notwithstanding the cogent misgivings expressed by Ambassador Eikenberry, it is now clear that McChrystal is under mounting pressure to deliver some progress by the end of the year.

Indeed, hair may be on fire at McChrystal's Bagram headquarters. Rumors are circulating in military circles of backbiting and finger pointing, as well as complaints that MacChrystal is being set up as a fall guy, while his boss, General Petraeus, skates to a Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Continue reading “Journal: Dropping COIN–McChrystal Returns to His Roots”

2010/05/312010/05/31

Reference: ClimateGate Tree Ring Debacle

05 Energy, Articles & Chapters, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Key Players, Threats

Below is an important presentation by Steve McIntyre to the Heartland Conference on the history of the tree ring shenanigans of Jones, Briffa and Mann, as well as the phony efforts to investigate the dispute. It is a very good dispassionate summary of how the hockey stick cape job was perpetrated in IPCC Report, IMO.

McIntyre does not address the issue of how or whether this behaviour is shaped by the need to acquire grant money. Chuck

Reference: Strategic Asymmetry–with Comment

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Geospatial, History, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Key Players, Policies, Policy, Reform, Research resources, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, True Cost

: Full Source Online

Dr. Steve Metz was published on this topic by the Military Review in July-August 2001. A great deal of original thinking came out of the U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) in the aftermath of the 1998 Army Strategy Conference, and sadly, none of it has gained any traction with any Secretary of Defense (or State) since then. Should Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) actually be selected to be the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), this is a concept he is going to have to integrate into his thinking.

Although Dr. Metz fully understands the asymmetry of will and touches on the asymmetry of morale, he does not address the core intelligence question of our century: the asymmetry of morality. Will & Ariel Durant understood this and highlighted the strategic value of being “in the right” in their capstone work, The Lessons of History. Others, including Buckminster Fuller in Critical Path and Dr. Robert Ackoff (see first link below), understood that context matters, and within context, morality and doing the right thing.

Morale is not the same as moral, and the “collateral advantage” that allows one to harness the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth–to receive unsolicited warnings large and small, to receive unsolicited good ideas large and small–comes ONLY when one holds the moral high ground. It merits stressing that CONSENSUS is most easily achieved when those striving to achieve consensus share a common faith in integrity–in morality.

America is in the wrong today, because the US Government is imposing on both the domestic public and on humanity at large the wrong policies, the wrong programs, and the wrong acquisitions–as well as the wrong distribution of US taxpayer funds in the service of dictators, cartel leaders, and predatory immoral banks and businesses not at all interested in earning legal ethical profit fully compliant with true cost economics also known as the triple bottom line.

If the next DNI is to be successful, they must:

Continue reading “Reference: Strategic Asymmetry–with Comment”

2010/05/302010/05/30

Journal: With No Successor In Sight, Intelligence Czar Departs

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Geospatial, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Maps, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Research resources, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, True Cost

FULL STORY: Declassified (newsweek.com/blogs)

May 28, 2010

By Mark Hosenball

On Dennis Blair’s last day in office as director of national intelligence, the Obama administration seems more stymied than ever in its efforts to replace him.

Following a torrent of criticism from Capitol Hill—apparently touched off by this Declassified interview with Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Republican—the candidacy of James Clapper looks doubtful to say the least. On top of Hoekstra’s criticism of the retired three-star general, who currently serves as the Defense Department’s intelligence chief, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s leaders are now also publicly saying they think he’s the wrong man for the job.

. . . . . .

The latest boomlet in speculation on potential candidates is centered on Michael Vickers, a former Green Beret and CIA operative who has been the Defense Department’s top civilian in charge of counterterrorism and special-operations programs slnce late in the Bush administration. Vickers was one of 15 potential DNI candidates we identified when news of the job opening broke….

. . . . . . .

But other names keep coming up. Some, such as Homeland Security undersecretary Rand Beers, Joint Chiefs of Staff Deputy Chairman Gen. James Cartwright, and outgoing Sen. Evan Bayh, have surfaced before (one former official who worked in national security positions with Beers describes him as “indefatigable”). But others are new to this particular search, including Rep. Jane Harman, former Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, and former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin.

Phi Beta Iota: Worth a complete read. Here are the fifteen potential DNI's they identified earlier:, followed by our picks.

Political and bureaucratic heavyweights:
FBI Director Robert Mueller
CIA Director Leon Panetta
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg
Marine Gen. James Cartwright, deputy chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Intelligence and defense technocrats:
Lt. Gen. Jim Clapper, currently Defense Department intelligence supremo;
Michael Vickers, assistant defense secretary for special operations;
John Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary;
Harvard academic Joseph Nye, also a former senior Pentagon official; and
John McHugh, a former GOP congressman whom Obama named as secretary of the Army.

High-profile intelligence politicos:
John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism and Homeland Security supremo; or
Rand Beers, a former career intelligence official who left his job as a senior counterterrorism adviser in the George W. Bush White House to become national security adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, and now serves as undersecretary of Homeland Security

High-profile politicos:
former Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican close to Obama; former congressman and
intelligence-reform campaigner Lee Hamilton;
former Indiana senator Evan Bayh; and
former representative Tim Roemer (another intel-reform campaigner who is now U.S. ambassador in India)

Phi Beta Iota: Everyone in the above lists is a ridiculous untenable suggestion with one exception: Senator Chuck Hagel. His combination of integrity, substantive experience, standing on the Hill, and general non-partisan common sense, is ideal. What he lacks is a kick-ass deputy who actually understands all the crap that the agencies–and their den mother Jim Clapper–put forward. Leon Panetta would actually be very good as the Deputy, responsible for turning off all funds to all agencies at 20% a year (10% a year restored for new initiatives; savings to education and national research under DNI oversight as provided for in the Smart Nation-Safe Nation Act) but Hagel is going to need a kitchen cabinet of truth-tellers and we are pretty sure he is not even aware of who they might be. That is his sucking chest wound–if he solves that he will not only earn Obama a second term, he will transcend politics and impact directly on the totality of all budgets–US, state & local, other nations, corporations, NGOs. Jack Devine is in the wings in New York, the Trilateral Commission's choice for either DNI or Director of Central Intelligence, he has our vote for the latter position.

The problem President Obama has is in the White House is that no one working for him actually “gets it” with respect to 21st Century governance–between his pogomist and his pollster and his talented but oblivious others, he is running on fumes, will not get a second term, and is simply counting the days to when he can follow Bill Bradley, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton in Goldman Sachs honey-land–and screw the American public, they were never the intended beneficiaries of all this in the first place.

References for any future DNI:

Human Intelligence (HUMINT): All Humans, All Minds, All the Time (SSI, 2010)
The Smart Nation Act: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest (OSS, 2006)
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time (OSS, 2006)
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political (OSS, 2002)
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA, 2000; OSS, 2001)

and for the really big picture:

Intelligence for Earth: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (EIN, 2010)
Collective Intelligence: Crating a Prosperous World at Peace (EIN, 2008)
Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future (OSS, 2003)

2010/05/302010/09/04

Reference: UnityNet — an M4IS2 Option

08 Wild Cards, About the Idea, Analysis, Augmented Reality, C4/JOE/Software, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, DoD, Ethics, Geospatial, Handbook Elements, Historic Contributions, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Maps, Methods & Process, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Real Time, Research resources, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, True Cost

Journal: HOUSE TO CONSIDER GAO AUDITS OF INTELLIGENCE

08 Wild Cards, Collective Intelligence, Government, Peace Intelligence

Full Secrecy News Online

Defying a previous veto threat from the White House, the House of Representatives will consider an amendment to bolster intelligence oversight by requiring intelligence agencies to cooperate with the Government Accountability Office when it performs audits that are requested by a congressional committee with jurisdiction over intelligence.

In general, the amendment (pdf) states, “the Director of National Intelligence shall ensure that personnel of the Government Accountability Office designated by the Comptroller General are provided with access to all information in the possession of an element of the intelligence community that the Comptroller General determines is necessary for such personnel to conduct an analysis, evaluation, or investigation of a program or activity of an element of the intelligence community that is requested by one of the congressional intelligence committees.”

The amendment to the FY2011 Defense Authorization Act (HR 5136) was sponsored by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and several colleagues.

When a similar amendment was included in the FY2010 Intelligence Authorization Act, which is still pending, it prompted a veto threat from the Obama White House. But the White House opposition was based on an erroneous interpretation of the law, the Acting Comptroller of the GAO told Congress.

Somewhat surprisingly, given the likelihood of a renewed veto threat, the House Democratic leadership ruled that the Eshoo amendment was “in order,” and it will therefore be considered on the House floor, perhaps today or tomorrow.

Back when he was a Congressman in 1987, CIA Director Leon Panetta introduced a bill called the “CIA Accountability Act” (pdf) that would have reinforced GAO oversight over the Central Intelligence Agency.

Phi Beta Iota: Tip of the hat to Secrecy News for the above lead story. The secret world is long overdue for GAO oversight, and we have stated in writing before that the first decision by any Director of National Intelligence (DNI) with even a modicum of ethics (we're not holding our breath) should be to create an integrated IG/GAO office and put the entire secret intelligence world under a GAO microscope. It is our judgement that 90% of the contract positions should be eliminated, and at least 50% of the so-called government employee positions, most of which are very highly paid clerical positions, nothing more. The budget should be cut back to $25 billion a year, with the proviso that the other $50 billion remains under the DNI's purview for redirection toward education, research, and a global multinational multiagency multidisciplinary multidomain information sharing and sensemaking (M4IS2) grid focused on creating a prosperous world at peace. Budget intelligence, and the eradication of corruption at all levels by combining true cost intelligence with the exposure of blatantly stupid acquisition decisions, some but not all also corrupt acquisition decisions (most just uninformed), is the single best thing intelligence can do for the government; creating a Smart Nation is the ONLY thing that should be on the next DNI's mind. If Obama is dumb enough to keep John Brennan at the White House, he is assuredly dumb enough to move Jim Clapper or Leon Panetta to the DNI position and lose all hope of ever getting anything serious out of the secret world in the little time he has remaining. No one now serving is capable of serving the public interest–Panetta had a shot, but if he cannot handle CIA he assuredly cannot handle Jim Clapper and the Clapper Harem.