Journal: CIA and the Culture of Corruption

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Intelligence (government), Methods & Process

CIA and the Culture of Corruption

by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

John Brennan.
CIA Deputy Executive Director John Brennan. (Photo: CSIS: Center for Strategic & International Studies / Flickr)

Last month, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a blistering report that documented a secret drug interdiction program in Peru that was responsible for the death of an American missionary and her infant daughter in 2001. The report provided a detailed study of the efforts of senior CIA leaders, including Deputy Director John McLaughlin and Deputy Executive Director John Brennan, to cover up the crime by stonewalling the White House, the Congress and the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the flaws of the interdiction program.

Brennan, who was President Obama's original choice to be CIA director until the report complicated the confirmation process, is currently the deputy director of the National Security Council (NSC).McLaughlin was the “villain” in the politicization of intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the “slam-dunk” briefing to the president in January 2003. Nevertheless, the Obama administration named McLaughlin to lead the internal investigation of the CIA's intelligence failures in the attempted bombing of a commercial airliner and the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

The detailed report on Peru documents a culture of corruption and deceit at the highest levels of the CIA as well as the interventions of CIA lawyers to stop the DOJ from pursuing prosecutions in the case. The CIA office of general counsel's aggressive campaign to prevent a criminal prosecution of the agency officers culminated with Deputy Director McLaughlin's letter to the assistant attorney general that promised “significant disciplinary action” if CIA officers “lied or made knowingly misleading statements” to the Congress, DOJ, the NSC or office of inspectors general (OIG) investigators. The report carefully documents the lies and the stonewalling, but there was never any genuine punishment.

Read rest of this detailed article….

Melvin A. Goodman is national security and intelligence columnist for Truthout. He is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. His 42-year government career included service at the CIA, State Department, Defense Department and the US Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

See Also:

Journal: Mel Goodman on CIA Myths

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Intelligence (Lack Of)

and especially;

Continue reading “Journal: CIA and the Culture of Corruption”

Journal: WikiLeaks Collaboration, WikiLeaks Attacked + CYBER RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Cyberscams, malware, spam, InfoOps (IO), IO Multinational, Standards, Technologies
DefDog Recommends...

Respected media outlets collaborate with WikiLeaks (NewsMeat)

WikiLeaks turned over all of the classified State Department cables it obtained to Le Monde, El Pais in Spain, The Guardian in Britain and Der Spiegel in Germany. The Guardian shared the material with the New York
Times, and the five news organizations have been working together to plan the timing of their reports.

They also have been advising WikiLeaks on which documents to release publicly and what redactions to make to those documents, Kauffmann and others involved in the arrangement said.

WikiLeaks switches to Swiss domain after attacks (NewsMeat)

Wikileaks was forced Friday to switch over to a Swiss domain name,
wikileaks.ch, after a new round of hacker attacks on its system prompted its American domain name provider to withdraw service.

WikiLeaks' U.S. domain name system provider, EveryDNS, withdrew service to the wikileaks.org name late Thursday, saying it took the action because the new hacker attacks threatened the rest of its network.

“Wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure,” EveryDNS said in a statement.

Phi Beta Iota: The first story represents the emergence of hybrid governance and hybrid capabilities networks that will over time displace the inherently corrupt hierarchical stovepipes of the Industrial “Rule by Secrecy” era.  The second story represents both the emergence of jackals in cyber-space, attacking “because they can,” and the abject failure of both the Internet Service Providers (ISP) and the US Government to provide order, discipline, and security in cyberspace.  We recommend that WikiLeaks seek severe financial damages from both Amazon and EveryDNS–both have failed to be honest and diligent.  At the same time, this is an opportunity: any country, such as Chile, that can integrated unlimited low-cost renewable energy, massive data storage & services, and multinational intelligence, all in a cyber-cocoon of absolute confidence immune to attack, will bury the US and EU ISP and telecommunications industries.

See Also:

Reference: Bruce Schneier on Cyber War & Cyber Crime

Journal: Cyber-Heist 2nd Generation

Journal: Pentagon Network Attacks–Cloud Truth?

Journal: Who Controls (and Secures) the Internet?

Journal: US Research & Development in the Toilet

Journal: Army Industrial-Era Network Security + Cyber-Security RECAP (Links to Past Posts)

Reference: General David Petraeus–An Examination

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

David Petraeus — Hero Celebrity

By Michael Brenner (Senior Fellow, the Center for Transatlantic Relations) – Huffington Post – December 2, 2010

There is one celebrity with the makings of a national hero, someone who has the qualities that might carry him right into the White House. It is David Petraeus. He is almost universally credited with the brilliant achievement of saving American honor and gaining an approximation of ‘victory' in Iraq. President Obama himself is in awe of this warrior-intellectual to whom he defers on all matters in the Greater Middle East. Petraeus' mythic standing is a perfect example of how the compelling demand for a hero creates the illusion that indeed a savior has arrived.

Read the balance of the article…

Journal: Wikileaks Exposes How NYT and Washington Post Shill for US Government on Iran Missile “Threat”

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Media, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Iranians (Persians) have viewed Russia (Soviet Union) with distrust and as a menace or outright threat for hundreds of years, at least since the Russian Tsars cemented their expansion into Turkestan (or the Turkic countries in what is now called Central Asia).  The fact that Iran sits on top of one of the world's largest reservoirs of oil and gas adds to their fears. Russia is also much closer to Iran than the United States.  So from a Russian perspective, the emergence of an Iranian nuclear delivery capability would be a far more dangerous ramifications for Russia than for the US, at least in raw geopolitical terms.

With this in mind, the attached report by Gareth Porter begs the question: Why are the Russians less concerned about the so-called Iranian ballistic missile/nuclear threat than the United States?  Why would the Washington Post and New York Times bias their reporting in a way that downplays the Russia's more moderate view?

To ask this question is to answer it. (hint: Simply ask what other country is most obsessed by Iran?)  Chuck

December 1, 2010

Documents Show NYT and Washington Post Shilling for US Government on Iran Missile “Threat”

Wikileaks Exposes Complicity of the Press

By GARETH PORTER

Counterpunch

A diplomatic cable from last February released by Wikileaks provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists on the Iranian ballistic missile program refuted the U.S. suggestion that Iran has missiles that could target European capitals or intends to develop such a capability.

In fact, the Russians challenged the very existence of the mystery missile the U.S. claims Iran acquired from North Korea.

But readers of the two leading U.S. newspapers never learned those key facts about the document.

The New York Times and Washington Post reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such missiles – supposedly called the BM-25 – from North Korea. Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the U.S. view on the issue or the lack of hard evidence for the BM-25 from the U.S. side.

Read the rest of this article….

Citizen Command Center Humanitarian Relief Database for Action

02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Gift Intelligence, International Aid, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence
quickstart link

http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/quick/start
The purpose of this site is to provide a central location to find resource status information for disaster zones and to help regions prepare for disaster.

  • Disaster Response
  • Disaster Preparedness
  • On-going Human Services

We aim to enter command & control information for regions IN ADVANCE of a disaster, AND immediately following, so as to help relief groups hit the ground running, and to help survivors immediately locate services and supplies in the event of a disaster in their region. This command & control information might be as simple as entering the name and cell phone for groups that are prepared to be first responders in a region. Or if a region's disaster community chooses, it can mean entering a list of disaster response units and/or facilities that are on “standby” for disaster response activity. There are many disaster response “command and control” systems in use by VOADs and EMA organizations. We hope to compliment what these established systems offer and we hope to offer unaffiliated groups a method for tracking their own needs and resources.

Reference: No Labels “Non-Party” = “Four More Years” for Wall Street

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Analysis, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Media Reports, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Open Government, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy

No Labels Best Links

Wikipedia Overview

No Labels Home Page

See Also:

The founding fathers had no labels (San Diego Examiner)

WARNING NOTICE:  http://www.taylormarsh.com has a major virus.  Do NOT go to their story on the Houston meeting (apart from its being hype, now it's just plain dangerous).

Phi Beta Iota: We believe the following:

1.  Michael Bloomberg wants to be President.

2.  Wall Street wants Michael Bloomberg to be President not because Barack Obama has failed them, but because he has so visibly pandered to them.  The elite mob includes Burson-Marsteller, the Clintons and Joe Lieberman as well as Peter Peterson and David Walker (former Comptroller General who declared US insolvent in 2007 without being witting of financial crimes legalized by the Clintons and sanctified by Bush II and then Obama).

3.  Two groups have been started, one on the West Coast, one on the East Coast, both focused on convergence in the middle, with Michael Bloomberg as the “natural” anti-thesis to the Republican and Democratic alternatives.  Both are eligible for and will channel massive funding from corporations exercising their ill-gotten “personality” rights.

Continue reading “Reference: No Labels “Non-Party” = “Four More Years” for Wall Street”

Reference: Crash Course on Reality

07 Other Atrocities, Blog Wisdom, Briefings (Core), Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, IO Sense-Making, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Movies, Officers Call, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy, True Cost
Chris Martenson Home

Chris Martenson not only paid attention to all of the early warning signals, but acted upon them, leaving a Fortune 50 job, selling his Connecticut home, getting out of the stock market, and buying gold and silver.  Now he has produced the single best, down-to-earth, detailed free video (38 minutes), inexpensive video (208 minutes), forthcoming book, and a 50 hour week-end course for concerned citizens.  This is essential education for all–it also demonstrates the fraud, waste, and abuse inherent in the continued support by the two-party tyranny of Wall Street.  Wall Street STILL OWES twice the capital it actually has–the bail-out was a flim-flam to perpetuate the short-term bonuses and positions of the criminals who have looted America and the rest of the world.

Short Free Video

Amazon Page
  • Crash Course by Chris Martenson – 38 minute condensed version
  • DVD Release Date: March 5, 2009
  • Run Time: 203 minutes
Amazon Page
  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 22, 2011)

Phi Beta Iota: In a perfect demonstration of the Hacker Principle that for every piece of information you share, you get back 100 pieces of which 10 are priceless (10:1 noise to signal and 10:1 return on investment), the below was brought to our attention by Dr. James C. Spohrer, Director, IBM University Programs World-Wide (IBM UP), IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120 USA.  We like IBM, we like it even more after seeing that this kind of thinking is well-understood by IBM.  Bottom line: a number of others have sounded the alarm, Chris Martenson does it better than everyone else, in the most concise non-partisan manner possible.  He is the Paul Revere of the Republic, the Commonwealth.

noble gold