At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours — enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.
In the world of security clearances for access to classified information, the term “reciprocity” is used to indicate that one executive branch agency should ordinarily recognize and accept a security clearance that has been granted by another executive branch agency.
This is not just a nice, cost-efficient thing to do, it is actually a requirement of law. Under the 2004 intelligence reform law, “all security clearance background investigations and determinations… shall be accepted by all agencies.”
This requirement for mutual recognition and acceptance applies equally to the higher order clearances of the intelligence community, where reciprocity is intended to promote employee “mobility” throughout the intelligence system, according to the 2009 Intelligence Community Directive 709.
So possessing a clearance from one agency should simplify the process of access approval at another agency. But the opposite is not supposed to be true. If an agency refuses for some reason to recognize the clearance granted by another agency, that refusal is not supposed to incur loss of clearance in the original agency.
Officially, such “negative reciprocity” is not an authorized, legitimate security clearance practice. And yet there are signs that it is being adopted within the Department of Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals (DOHA), which rules on contested security clearance cases.
A new paper by attorney Sheldon I. Cohen describes a series of DOHA rulings in which a perverse form of negative reciprocity has been used to justify the denial or revocation of a security clearance, to the obvious detriment of due process.
“While the burden of proof has always been placed on the employee by the DOHA Appeal Board to show why he or she should be granted a security clearance, until now there was a modicum of a right to confrontation, and a right to challenge the evidence presented by the government,” Mr. Cohen wrote.
But in a ruling he describes, “anonymous redacted reports and other agency's decision are enough to deny or revoke a DoD clearance regardless of contrary evidence.”
Every war is hell, particularly for civilians. And while every war produces deadly familiar impacts on the civilian population whether it is death and injuries due to combat or subsequent illness and death due to destruction of infrastructure sometimes the impact can be unique.
Sadly, such seems to be the case in Iraq which links the past war there with a “staggering” increase in birth defects in areas of the country where bombing and heavy fighting occurred.
A recent study, titled “Metal Contamination and the Epidemic of Congenital Birth Defects in Iraqi Cities” was underwritten by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan and which was published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, focused on the cities of Basra and Fallujah, where serious fighting occurred during the war. According to the study:
Peter W. Singer is the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. Singer’s research focuses on three core issues: the future of war, current U.S. defense needs and future priorities, and the future of the U.S. defense system. Singer lectures frequently to U.S. military audiences and is the author of several books and articles, including Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.
Editor's Note: In the following article, which appeared as a five-part series for Time Magazine's Battleland blog, Peter W. Singer attempts to dive deeper into the issue of sequestration and what it might really mean for U.S. military spending and power projection across the globe. A version of this article was presented at a private event at Brookings organized by the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies and the 21st Century Defense Initiative.
A shocking new Federal Security Service (FSB) report circulating in the Kremlin today alleges that an entire American family that sought Russian protection from the Obama regime was massacred by US intelligence agents within hours of their planned escape from the United States.
According to this report, on 22 September a woman who indentified herself as Kathleen Peterson visited the Russian Centre for Science and Culture in Washington D.C. under the pretense of signing up to take a course titled Russian Language Express Course A-1 for beginners set to begin on 26 September whereupon she approached director Yuriy Zaytsev and “slipped into his hand,” while shaking it, an encrypted computer thumb drive covered in a small note that said “please help us we’re in danger.”
Following “standard protocols” for such instances, when Russian officials are approached on American soil by US citizens, this report continues, the note and thumb drive in question were “processed” according to “established procedures” and revealed the plans of Mrs. Peterson, her husband Albert [both pictured 2nd photo left], and their two children, Mathew and Christopher, to leave Washington D.C. on 23 September on a flight to Paris where it was requested they be met by Russian security personal as this family feared their lives were in danger.
Within 24 hours of Mrs. Peterson passing her information to Russian officials, this report says, she, her husband and two children were violently gunned down in their Fairfax County Virginia home on 23 September with this massacre being blamed by US police officials on a murder-suicide plot initiated by her husband, Albert, with at least one Western news source, quoting a source indentified only as “Maggie L.”, stating this tragedy was due to his, Albert’s, fears over Obama being reelected as US President.
According to US news sources, Albert Peterson was a longtime employee of the US defense giant Northrop Grumman until he resigned in 2009, and Kathleen Peterson was employed by the US defense contracting firm Blackbird Technologies located in Herndon, Virginia.
. . . . . . . .
This FSB report further notes Blackbird Technologies “tracking and tagging” of those US citizens destined to be placed in America’s most feared prisons called Communication Management Units, or CMU’s. These secretive political prisons for “domestic terrorists” radically restricts prisoner communications with the outside world to levels that rival, or exceed, the most restrictive facilities in the country, including the dreaded “Supermax”, and any other such prison operating in the Western world.
DOD SECURITY POLICY IS INCOHERENT AND UNMANAGEABLE, IG SAYS
“DoD security policy is fragmented, redundant, and inconsistent,” according to a new report from the Department of Defense Inspector General. This is not a new development, the report noted, but one that has persisted despite decades of criticism.
There are at least 43 distinct DoD security policies “covering the functional areas of information security, industrial security, operations security, research and technology protection, personnel security, physical security, and special access programs,” the Inspector General report noted.
“The sheer volume of security policies that are not coordinated or integrated makes it difficult for those at the field level to ensure consistent and comprehensive policy implementation.”
