The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Phi Beta Iota: With a tip of the hat to Marcus Aurelius, this document is provided for information. On balance it is rich with insights that are not available elsewhere and consequently must be very highly regarded as a baseline for where US intelligence reform (and US intelligence) are today: dead, with a $75 billion a year casket that shows no signs of atrophy. Below are summary extracts both positive and negative.
Continue reading “Reference: Intelligence Reform Death Notice”
This document is an official report on the failed effort of the combined resources of the US Government to kill Osama Bin Laden. He was found, and also followed for four days as he marched out to Jalalabad and then to sanctuary in Waziristan. Below we provide links to the reviews of books cited in the report, which also contains some excellent graphics and a couple of a ppendices.
Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander’s Account of the Hunt for the World’s Most Wanted Man
First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA
Inside CentCom: The Unvarnished Truth About the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
Key Finding:
A successful immediate replication of the Minuteman Project would require an average 12 –24 enforcement personnel per mile, or around 36,000 total additional personnel to adequately secure the entire 2,000 mile southern border. An additional 12,000 support personnel may be necessary to provide services over an extended deployment.
This Foreword, the first one done by Congressman Rob Simmons of Connecticutt for any handbook or book in the larger Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) arena, would be revised and used for others publications, but in its time, in 2004, this was the first-ever deep high-level statement of both need and opportunity with respect to OSINT as a separate discipline.
We must “recognize that 80% of what we consider intelligence–decision-support–is now either erroneously classified or not done at all, and this is the fundamental weakness of our national intelligence community.
The three references:
1996 Testimony to Moynihan Commisson
1993 TESTIMONY on National Security Information
1992 E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & intelligence (An Alternative Paradigm)
As Presented:
OSS1997-03-03 Secrecy Primer Moynihan Commission
The protection of “sources & methods” is a political gambit, not a legitimate claim for immunity. This testimony to the Moynihan Commission on Secrecy lays out the hypocricy in detail.
See Also:
1992 E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & intelligence
RELATED:
Worth a Look: Books on Government Secrecy
GOLDEN CANDLE AWARD: CONGRESSMAN ROB SIMMONS (R-CT-02)
IOP '06. To Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), who, as a pioneer in the 1990’s, won his first Golden Candle as a Lieutenant Colonel commanding an open source unit, later officially recognized as the “Best Small Unit in the US Army Reserve. As a Congressman, elected in 2000, he has been diligent and faithful to the Republic in pressing for open source intelligence (OSINT) reform across both the defense and the homeland security communities. There is no more influential champion for public intelligence and open source information exploitation serving the U.S. Government today.
Below is the paper Rob Simmons, as gentle and intelligent a Member as we have ever encountered, wrote in 1995 as a Major in the Post Graduate Intelligence Program.
