Category: 10 Security

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Journal: Covert War in Pakistan–Lessons Not Learned

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Military
Thomas Leo Briggs

Something caught my eye while reading a Slate item written by Tom Scocca and posted on December 20, 2010, “Two Ways of Looking at Our Covert War in Pakistan.”

Mr. Scocca wrote:

“There are diplomatic tensions because we are fighting a full-on undeclared war on the territory of a country with which we are an ally, using covert agents as the commanding officers”.

So what’s new?  Didn’t we fight a full-on undeclared war on the territory of Laos from about 1961 to 1973?  Wasn’t Laos an ally while trying to maintain the fig-leaf of neutrality?  Wasn’t the United States government using ‘covert agents as commanding officers’?

Moreover the New York Times published an article by Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins the same day titled “U.S. Military Seeks to Expand Raids in Pakistan”.

In particular I noticed the following that Mazzetti and Filkins attributed to senior military commanders in Afghanistan.

Continue reading “Journal: Covert War in Pakistan–Lessons Not Learned”

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Journal: Denial of Service Attacks on Humanitarian Sites

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Computer/online security, Gift Intelligence, IO Multinational, Non-Governmental
Berto Jongman Recommends...

DDoS Attacks Continue to Plague Human Rights Sites

By: Chloe Albanesius

PC Magazine, 12.22.2010

WikiLeaks and Operation Payback have put distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in the news recently, but independent media and human rights Web sites have been battling these attacks on a consistent basis with no easy solution in sight, according to a Wednesday study.

While major sites can fend off a DDoS or recover quickly, smaller sites can be crippled by these attacks, which often hit in conjunction with other attacks like filtering, intrusions, and defacements, according to the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

“DDoS is an increasingly common Internet phenomenon capable of silencing Internet speech, usually for a brief interval but occasionally for longer,” the report said. “Our report offers advice to independent media and human rights sites likely to be targeted by DDoS but comes to the uncomfortable conclusion that there is no easy solution to these attacks for many of these sites, particularly for attacks that exhaust network bandwidth.”

The report's authors suggest that DDoS attacks will become more common amidst news about similar WikiLeaks and Operation Payback attacks. Even before that, however, DDoS attacks on independent media and human rights sites were quite common during the last year, happening even outside of major events like elections, protests, and military operations.

These sites are being hit with two types of DDoS: application and network. Application attacks exhaust local server resources and can usually be rectified with the help of a skilled system admin. Network attacks, however, exhaust network bandwidth and can usually only be fixed with the (costly) help of a hosting provider.

Read rest of article….

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Journal: Israel Persists on Polard–an Information Operations (IO) Case Study

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making, Military, Officers Call
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

In Wash Post article on CIA's Wikileaks TF, passed u/s/c, the following quote closes the piece, “the former high-ranking CIA officer said. “Nobody could carry out enough paper to do what WikiLeaks has done.””  Not sure that's true.  Open source reporting not long after his trial indicated that Pollard hand carried tremendous volumes of paper documents out of his office to the Israelis; if memory serves, it amounted to hundreds of cubic feet.  Volume was so great that the Israelis set up a safesite equipped with a copying machine of significant capability so that they could quickly copy Pollard's offerings and let him carry them back to the office.

New York Times December 22, 2010 Pg. 6

Israel Plans Public Appeal To Ask U.S. To Free A Spy

By Isabel Kershner

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel will officially and publicly appeal to President Obama in the coming days for the release of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the American serving a life term in a North Carolina prison for spying for Israel, Mr. Netanyahu’s office announced Tuesday.

Read rest of article that makes clear Israel believes it can win on this perfidious demand.

Phi Beta Iota: The facts are clear.  Pollard approached other governments before he approached Israel.  His elevation into a national hero to be brought home to accolades is perfectly consistent with what every Jewish male cutting a swath through Christian girls accepts as his mantra: “Chiksas don't count.”  Evidently the crew and families of the USS Liberty don't count either.  We strongly support the US Intelligence Community's view that Pollard is a traitor and should die in prison.  We also strongly support the need to for a comprehensive review of how every US taxpayer dollar is spent in the Middle East, with the objective of ending military support to dictators and financial support to Israel.  Creating a regional water and educational trust makes more sense to us.  At the same time, the fact is that at least three quarters of what we have classified should not be classified, and we are out of touch with unclassified reality across all ten high-level threats.  We need to heal ourselves before we attempt to heal others, Pollard is an excellent case study of how out of touch both Israel and the White House are with reality.

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Reference: Private Military Corporations–A Non-State Actor-Nuclear Terror Nexus?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Full Paper Online
Private Military Corporations: A Non-State Actor-Nuclear Terror Nexus?

Robert L. Brown
Temple University

August 16, 2010

Abstract:

The risk of nuclear terrorism is hyped by some as possible and high consequence (Allison 2006) while others dismiss the strategy as too difficult and too risky for terrorist organizations (Jenkins 2008). However, analysts have no data from which to directly analyze the probability of terrorist acquisition and use. One methodological solution is to extend the range analysis to include analogous cases: private military corporations (PMCs) are one class of non-state actors (NSAs) who may possess the capacity and autonomy to pose a risk of nuclear terrorism for their state masters. I find that the while the technical and military capabilities of PMCs may be greater than those of terrorist organizations with respect to nuclear weapon construction or delivery, they are still be insufficient (and PMCs must also somehow acquire fissile materials). Also, PMCs benefit from agency slack, as demonstrated by Blackwater’s performance in Iraq, but this autonomy does not appear sufficient to carry out an illicit nuclear plot. Therefore, PMCs may be more capable than most terrorist organizations if they sought to acquire nuclear weapons but they are still unlikely to succeed.

Keywords: Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, Private Military Corporations, Blackwater, Xe

Working Paper Series
Brown, Robert L., Private Military Corporations: A Non-State Actor-Nuclear Terror Nexus? (August 16, 2010). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1659785

See Also:

David Isenberg, Jack Bauer Beats Blackwater, Huffington Post 20 december 2010

Journal: Near-Term Demise of Private Military Contractors

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Journal: Near-Term Demise of Private Military Contractors

10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
DefDog Recommends...

Former Blackwater Bought By Investment Group

by The Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. December 17, 2010, 10:38 am ET

An investment group with ties to the founder of the company formerly known as Blackwater announced Friday that it has bought the security firm, which was heavily criticized for its contractors' actions in Iraq.

USTC Holdings said in a statement that the acquisition of the company now called Xe Services includes its training facility in North Carolina.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But the statement said owner and founder Erik Prince will no longer have an equity stake and no longer be involved in Xe's management or operations. The company will be managed by a board appointed by the equity holders and will include independent, unaffiliated directors, the statement said.

The ownership group is led by two private equity firms, including New York-based Forte Capital Advisors. Forte managing partner Jason DeYonker has been a longtime financial adviser to Prince, helping him expand the Moyock, N.C., training grounds and negotiating Blackwater's first training contracts with the U.S. government.

“The future of this industry belongs to those companies with the highest standards of governance, transparency, and performance,” DeYonker said.

Read rest of article (includes photos)…

Phi Beta Iota: Winston Churchill is known for saying Americans always do the right thing, they just try everything else first.  Similarly, Russell Ackoff is known for saying that we have to stop doing the wrong things righter, and instead do the right thing.  Private Military Contractors (PMC) are the wrong thing!  Multinational hybrid task forces are the right thing–cheaper, faster, better in all respects.  All we need to bring is integrity and intelligence (decision-support).  PMC's loot our own highly qualified human resources; cheat the taxpayer twice over (the government does it once first by hiring them in the first place); and are one step short of air dropping liquid feces over an entire area of responsibility (AOR).  Not cool at all.  Everyone means well, but this is about as dumb as it gets on all levels of thinking.

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Journal: US Southern Command New “Campus”

04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, 11 Society, Methods & Process, Military
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

For those of us who served at Quarry Heights….

….and shared the one outdoors faucet to “bathe” after noon hour PT!

Miami Herald

December 18, 2010

Southern Command Opens New HQ

Military brass and local dignitaries cut the ribbon on the Pentagon's new campus-style Southern Command headquarters.

By Carol Rosenberg

The Air Force staged an F-16 flyover. A Navy chaplain declared it a place of “justice” and “peace.” And military brass joined with local leaders Friday to officially open the Pentagon's $402 million state-of-the-art Southern Command headquarters in Doral.

The new hub for military and diplomatic operations in Latin America and the Caribbean has been years in the making, noted a succession of speakers.

Some thanked special guest Archbishop Thomas Wenski for lining up picture-perfect weather for the event, attended by several hundred guests.

Others paid tribute to former Gov. Jeb Bush and the South Florida Congressional delegation (none present), for lining up the finances and 55 acres of state-leased land for the Category 5 hurricane-proof facility.

It has a maze of specially secured offices, built next to the 13-year-old original building, plus a gym, small clinic and commissary. It also has a 200-seat auditorium in a structure called the Conference Center of The Americas, with technology to enable multilingual meetings that bring together military officers from the region.

Featured speaker Adm. James Stavridis, the previous Southcom chief, came from his current post as Supreme Allied Commander of Europe to declare the new facility a place of “partnership” and “promise.”

About 2,300 people work there, mostly members of the U.S. military; other U.S. government agencies and Latin American nations also send military and civilian liaisons to the facility.

Continue reading “Journal: US Southern Command New “Campus””

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Journal: Understanding Iran…and the future of IO

02 Diplomacy, 05 Energy, 10 Security, 11 Society, 12 Water, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Strategy, Threats

Stakelbeck on Terror | Inside Iran's Revolutionary Guards

CBN (Christian Broadcast Network), 14 December 2010

On this week's special edition of Stakelbeck on Terror, CBN News goes inside Iran's fearsome Revolutionary Guards Corps with Reza Khalili, a former member who worked undercover for the CIA to bring down the Iranian regime.

The Revolutionary Guards Corps is the most powerful and influential force behind Iran's secretive and radical regime.

Over the past 30 years, its structure has been nearly impossible for Western intelligence agencies to penetrate. Yet, Khalili put his life on the line to gather sensitive information for the CIA about the inner workings of the Iranian regime.

Watch as he shares his story in an exclusive interview with Stakelbeck on Terror.  Khalili also wrote about the experience in his book,

A Time to Betray.

Because of the nature of his work, Khalili is forced to disguise his identity and alter his voice for safety reasons.

Visit article to view an extremely thoughtful interview.

Phi Beta Iota: There is a remarkable coincidence of message between this specific witness/author and the work in the 1990's of Steve Emerson, whose 1994 PBS video on the domestic threat exposed both the ignorance of the US Government about what was going on within the US homeland, and the naivete of the US Government with respect to intentions.  Now we are seeing a persistent ignorance at the highest levels of the deeply-rooted messianic nature of the Iranian regime, a persistent naivete of the deep corruption within the arab countries as well as Israel, a persistent and blissfully self-destructive refusal to embrace Turkey as a a stabilizing Islamic power….and on and on and on.  The US Government is, in one word, IGNORANT with arrogance driving incoherence rooted in ideological naivete.  Iran (and China) should be the focus on a 360 degree “whole of government” Information Operations (IO) campaign intended to explore and then develop concepts, doctrine, plans, programs, and budget for fully integrated intelligence, information operations, operations support to multinational hybrid task forces, and communications.  The problem that we see immediately, apart from the US Government being incompetent–not trained, equipped nor organized for inter-agency or multinational operations–is that there is severe confusion, even denial, about where cyber starts and stops.  Cyber is not about bits and bytes running through computers.  It is about the mind of man–the mind of entire cultures, tribes, and regions.  In that context, cyber should be the “driver” for all kinetic plans, programs, and budgets, by dictate with the US Government and by use of shared information and shared intelligence (decision-support) across all eight tribes and all other nations both allied and not.

See Also:

18 Dec  Journal: Spies, Lies, and Diplomatic Disorder

21 Aug Odierno weighs in on Iraq's immediate future, Iran's intentions

30 Mar Iran's Intentions Are Clear

03 Feb Obama Carries Forward Carter’s Failed Iran Policy

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