Category: References

I will not replicate all that is at www.oss.net and to a much lesser extent, www.earth-intelligence.net, but do want to recognize a handful of extraordinary individuals by isolating their especially meritorious contributiions to the long-running debate about national intelligence reform and re-invention.

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Steven Aftergood: CRS on Transparency

Congressional Research Service, Transparency
Steven Aftergood

THE MEANING OF TRANSPARENCY, AND MORE FROM CRS

President Obama's declared goal of making his “the most transparent Administration in history” generated successive waves of enthusiasm, perplexity, frustration, and mockery as public expectations of increased openness and accountability were lifted sky high and then — often, not always — thwarted.

Every Administration including this one presides over the release of more government information than did its predecessors, if only because more information is created with the passage of time and there is more that can be released.  But President Obama seemed to promise more than this.  What was it?

Part of the problem is definitional.

“Although there are laws that affect access to government information, there is no single definition for what constitutes transparency– nor is there an agreed upon way to measure it,” observes a new report from the Congressional Research Service.

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Marcus Aurelius: Superficial Cuts at Defense

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, DoD, Government, Military
Marcus Aurelius

There is a lot of waste in the defense budget, much of it inserted by Congress for pork reasons, but DoD is also used to mask many other non-Defense programs, not just intelligence but in energy, health, foreign aid, etcetera.  Breaking the bargain with military retirees on health care is both a major betrayal, and a window into an alternative, a national health care service that does not pay full price for pharmaceutical that rarely work.

Deficit Cutters Look To Pentagon Budget

By Donna Cassata, Associated Press

WASHINGTON–One war is done, another is winding down and the calls to cut the deficit are deafening. The military, a beneficiary of robust budgets for more than a decade, is coming to grips with a new reality — fewer dollars.

The election accelerated an already shifting political dynamic that next year will pair a second-term Democratic president searching for spending cuts with tea partyers and conservatives intent on preserving lower tax rates above all else, even if it means once unheard of reductions in defense.

President Barack Obama and Congress have just a few weeks to figure out how to avert the automatic cuts to defense and domestic programs totaling $110 billion next year. Those reductions are part of the so-called fiscal cliff of expiring Bush-era tax cuts and the across-the-board cuts that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned would be devastating to the military.

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Graphic: Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax

03 Economy, 11 Society, Ethics, Government, Office of Management and Budget
Click on Image to Enlarge

SHARE THIS WITH TINY URL  “APTNow”:  http://tinyurl.com/APTNow

Dummy Version:  Generates $4 trillion a year without borrowing and allowing the elimination of ALL other taxes beginning with personal income taxes.  Allows for the recapitalization of our labor pool, our domestic infrastructure, and our Department of Defense (450-ship Navy, long-haul Air Force, air-liftable Army, Marines back on the boats).

Formal Description and References Below the Line

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Lou Dobbs: Bloomberg “Talk to the Hand” and Obama/Panetta Fail to Perform — Where are the GP Tents with Heaters, the Field Kitchens, the Medical Triage?

07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, DoD
Lou Dobbs

Speaking on Fox News today Lou Dobbs blasted the Obama Administration and Mayor “Talk to the Hand” Bloomberg.  While he exaggerates in relation to Katrina and Bush being blasted (Sandy is 40,000 displaced persons, Katrina was 700,000), he does make the obvious point upon which we elaborate–where is the US military with General Purpose (GP) tents, cots, oil stoves, field kitchens, medical triage, and Internet cafes (many of the displaced have no power for their cell phones and their home phones are gone).

If Leon Panetta wanted to be useful today, both to the public and to the President facing defeat tomorrow, he could order the service chiefs to put every single displaced person under a warm GP tent before nightfall.  If he and they cannot do that, we will have taken the measure of DoD here at home, and found it wanting.

We are waiting for a Situation Report from Col GI Wilson, USMC (Ret) and Team Rubicon, which received on demand mapping support from our network, instantly.

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Mini-Me: WIll De-Classified Watergate Archives Document CIA Orders to Murder US Citizens Including Jack Anderson, and CIA Break-Ins Within the USA?

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Judge Orders DOJ to Justify Secrecy of Watergate-era Wiretaps

The BLT Blog of Legal Times, November 02, 2012

A federal judge in Washington today ordered the U.S. Justice Department to justify the continued need for secrecy over certain Watergate-era wiretap and grand jury records that remain sealed in a high-profile criminal prosecution.

Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia told the government to send him copies of documents placed under seal in the criminal case against G. Gordon Liddy, charged in connection with the burglary at the Watergate Hotel in Washington. The sealed records include grand jury information and “documents reflecting the content of illegally obtained wiretaps.”

Government lawyers oppose the public disclosure of any papers about illegally obtained wiretaps tied to the Watergate scandal. The Justice Department this summer, in response to a demand for those records, argued there's no First Amendment or public right of access to illegally obtained wiretaps. Historical or scholarly interest, the government said, doesn't justify discretionary disclosure.

DOJ lawyers said in their brief to Lamberth that “we are unaware of any court that has unsealed previously undisclosed illegal wiretap content for reasons for historical interest.”

Lamberth's ruling today was issued in a case in which a historian of the presidency of Richard Nixon requested access to court documents that were sealed in the Liddy case in Washington's federal trial court. Liddy was convicted in 1973 on charges that included burglary and conspiracy rooted in the Watergate Hotel break-in.

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DefDog: CIA offers detailed account of attack in Libya

DoD, Government
DefDog

CIA rushed to save diplomats as Libya attack was underway

Greg Miller

Washington Post, 1 November 2012

The CIA rushed security operatives to an American diplomatic compound in Libya within 25 minutes after it had come under attack and played a more central role in the effort to fend off a night-long siege than has been publicly acknowledged, U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday.

The agency mobilized the evacuation effort, took control of an unarmed U.S. military drone to map possible escape routes, dispatched an emergency security team from Tripoli, the capital, and chartered aircraft that ultimately carried surviving U.S. personnel to safety on Sept. 12, U.S. officials said.

. . . . . . .

Instead, U.S. intelligence officials insisted that CIA operatives in Benghazi and Tripoli made decisions rapidly throughout the assault with no interference from Washington, even while acknowledging that CIA security forces were badly outmatched and largely unable to mobilize Libyan security teams until it was too late.

Among the new disclosures is that the CIA station chief in Tripoli sent an emergency security force, with about a half-dozen agency operatives as well as two U.S. military personnel, to Benghazi aboard a hastily chartered aircraft while the attack was underway.

Read full article.

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