There is a lot of misinformation in the article about Project Thin Thread, an information management scheme that was virtually worthless, but had a number of defenders at the agency of which Drake was the most prominent. The author of the article also knows nothing about Trailblazer which was NOT a replacement for Thin Thread, but a much broader, if ill defined, modernization program.
This earlier article is relevant to the Priest series because as Trailblazer continued to founder NSA hired more and more contractors to try get the program on track. Both programs provide striking evidence of failures of technical leadership and incompetent project management which appear to endemic at NSA.
Incidentally several unnamed sources at the Fort contacted for article continue to argue that Trailblazer produced some worthwhile results. This is nonsense.
I served the Trailblazer program both as an NSA senior analyst and later as a contractor so observed the Trailblazer debacle from inside and outside.
The nation's spy world is anxiously — certainly not eagerly — anticipating a Washington Post series looking at CIA and Pentagon contractors, according to insider reports. And the intelligence community has been preparing for an expected offensive by plotting its defense.
The Atlantic has posted a memorandum, “Internal Memo: Intelligence Community Frets About Washington Post Series,” sent by Art House, the media manager for the Director of National Intelligence. He outlines what he thinks the series will say about the “IC” (intelligence community) and offers talking points for press aides.
Here are some of the highlights of the memo:
Themes
While we can't predict specific content, we anticipate the following themes:
*The intelligence enterprise has undergone exponential growth and has become unmanageable with overlapping authorities and a heavily outsourced contractor workforce.
*The IC and the DoD have wasted significant time and resources, especially in the areas of counterterrorism and counterintelligence.
*The intelligence enterprise has taken its eyes off its post-9/11 mission and is spending its energy on competitive and redundant programs.
Management of Responses
We do not know which agencies will receive attention, and each agency will need to manage its own responses. …
It might be helpful as you prepare for publication to draw up a list of accomplishments and examples of success to offer in response to inquiries to balance the coverage and add points that deserve to be mentioned. In media discussions, we will seek to garner support for the Intelligence Community and its members by offering examples of agile, integrated activity that has enhanced performance. We will want to minimize damage caused by unauthorized disclosure of sensitive and classified information. …
House's conclusion: “This series has been a long time in preparation and looks designed to cast the IC and the DoD in an unfavorable light. We need to anticipate and prepare so that the good work of our respective organizations is effectively reflected in communications with employees, secondary coverage in the media and in response to questions.”
Keep your eyes peeled for this blockbuster.
Phi Beta Iota: Panetta had a chance to get it right and blew it. Clapper will finish the job of destroying whatever integrity is left in the US Intelligence Community. This is not news, but the Washington Post has finally caught up with the rest of us.
Attached is somewhat dated; you may or may not have seen. But the basic message almost certainly remains valid. For LTG Hughes' part, he was certainly part of the problem. At the time he retired out of DIA, 15 months or so before 9/11, one of the key operational support elements of his in-house HUMINT organization was commanded by an O-6 who was totally unqualified by temperament and background. This unfortunate situation was the product of an accommodation arrangement with one of the military Services which was short of O-6 command slots for, shall we say, an asshole geek
Phi Beta Iota: We don't have leaders. We have pandering clerks. What especially irritates us is how they get all holier than thou after retirement. There isn't a spine connected to a brain in the whole bunch. Intelligence is a mess–so is the political process, and the policy process simple does not exist, it has never recovered from Dick Cheney.
One of the simplest and most effective ways to strengthen congressional oversight of intelligence agencies would be to task cleared staffers from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which is the investigative arm of Congress, to undertake specific audits or investigations of intelligence programs. Perhaps the clearest indication of the power of this approach is the fact that the intelligence agencies hate the idea and the White House has threatened a veto if it is adopted by congress.
Senate intelligence committee leaders have already yielded to executive branch opposition on this point, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insisting that the GAO has a role to play in intelligence oversight, and she says she is trying to ensure that Congress does not willingly surrender one of its most sophisticated oversight tools. See “Pelosi Faces Off with Obama on CIA Oversight” by Massimo Calabresi, Time, June 25 and “Acting Spy Chief Plans Departure” by Siobhan Gorman, Wall Street Journal, June 25.
An unreleased opinion from the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel reportedly holds that intelligence programs are outside the purview of the Government Accountability Office and that intelligence agencies should therefore not cooperate with the GAO.
Although the GAO previously reviewed FBI counterterrorism programs prior to the 2004 intelligence reform legislation, “GAO has been essentially blocked from conducting its current work,” complained Sen. Charles Grassley (R-ID). “The DoJ Office of Legal Counsel is arguing that GAO does not have the authority to evaluate the majority of FBI counterterrorism positions, as these positions are scored through the National Intelligence Program (NIP) Budget.”
The FBI confirmed that the GAO's access to some previously auditable programs has been denied. “With the post-2004 inclusion of FBI counterterrorism positions in the Intelligence Community, aspects of the review GAO proposed in 2009 would have constituted intelligence oversight,” the FBI told Sen. Grassley (at pdf pp. 67-68). “It is the longstanding position of the Intelligence Community to decline to participate in GAO reviews that evaluate intelligence activities, programs, capabilities, and operational functions.”
I recently discussed the question of GAO oversight of intelligence with colleagues from the Project on Government Oversight, which published the conversation as a podcast here.
Phi Beta Iota: Let's not quibble here. CIA and FBI and anyone else that is refusing GAO oversight are committing treason, plain and simple. The US Government is out of control, and if Congress does not start living up to its Article 1 Constitutional responsibilities, there is a very real possibility of a complete over-turning of Congress along with multiple states actively nullifying federal taxation as well as as federal regulation, and some states starting with Vermont seceeding from the Union. The Executive is betraying the public trust and not working in the public interest. It's time We the People pulled the plug with a tax revolt that explicits demands a cessation of funding for both the Pentagon and the secret IC, until such time as they can present to congress a responsible holistic strategy and force structure that produces desired outcomes, not merely a transfer of wealth to Lockheed executives and the banks behind them. ENOUGH!
The financial costs of national security classification-related activities continued to rise in 2009, reaching a record high of $9.93 billion for the combined costs of protecting classified information in government and industry, the Information Security Oversight Office reported today (pdf).
Classification-related costs include not simply the act of classification, but also everything that follows from it: physical security for classified materials, computer security for classified information systems, personnel security, and so forth. “The agencies also reported a modest, but welcome increase in spending on declassification programs,” wrote ISOO Director William J. Bosanko in his transmittal letter to the President.
The newly reported cost data do not include classification-related costs for CIA or the large Pentagon intelligence agencies — since those costs are themselves considered to be classified. This means that the costs incurred by the most classification-intensive agencies are outside the scope of the published report, which significantly limits its value. See “Report on Cost Estimates for Security Classification Activities for Fiscal Year 2009,” Information Security Oversight Office, June 25, 2010.
Phi Beta Iota: These costs are severely understated and probably come closer to $15 billion a year than $10 billion. However, taking $10 billion at face value, this means that the costs of secrecy completely apart from the sources and methods in being, are now at least 14% of the total budget for secret intelligence (itself moderately if not substantially understated since DoD concealed a great deal from the DNI in the last 2-3 years). This is flat out NUTS. It is unprofessional, irresponsible, and should at a minimum be grounds for Congressional refusal to fund the secret intelligence community until a 150-250 person GAO Special Intelligence Audit (SIA) unit is formed and given full access.
Event infoEmpire Challenge (EC) is an annual joint and coalition intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) interoperability demonstration sponsored by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD/I) that showcases emerging ISR capabilities, and provides vital lessons learned to improve joint and combined ISR interoperability to support warfighters at the tactical edge.
EC10, which runs July 26-Aug. 13, focuses on near-term capabilities that can be delivered rapidly to Afghanistan. Requirements from Afghanistan will drive the event schedule, venues and scenarios, which are conducted through a combination of modeling and simulation, laboratory and live events.
USJFCOM will host EC10 at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., and Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif., with locations at the Joint Intelligence Lab and Joint Systems Integration Center in Suffolk, Va.; the Combined Air Operations Center-X at Langley Air Force Base, Va.; service Distributed Common Ground/Surface System (DCGS) labs; coalition sites in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia; and the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency in the Netherlands.
EC10 participants include the Joint Staff, combat support agencies, services, coalition partners, academia and industry. During EC10, live and virtual capabilities will be demonstrated as they typically would be by a real-world combined joint force.
The demonstration will evaluate the effectiveness of proposed ISR solutions to warfighter requirements identified by combatant commanders, services and coalition partners.
EC10 Purpose
Demonstrate and assess interoperability of the DCGS enterprise
Evaluate sensor developers on data intake into DCGS and coalition ground station/enterprise
Demonstrate and assess coalition interoperability
Demonstrate and evaluate multinational data sharing
Explore emerging ISR capabilities that can address warfighter requirements
Explore joint and coalition ISR interoperability with command and control from national operations centers to deployed warfighters
EC10 Objectives
Provide assessments of the DCGS enterprise, the capability-based interoperability of multinational systems, and the quality of intelligence support to command and control
Enable a quick reaction capability and optimize the live-fly phase of EC
Power depends upon context, and the rapid growth of cyber space is an important new context in world politics. The low price of entry, anonymity, and asymmetries in vulnerability means that smaller actors have more capacity to exercise hard and soft power in cyberspace than in many more traditional domains of world politics. Changes in information has always had an important impact on power, but the cyber domain is both a new and a volatile manmade environment. The characteristics of cyberspace reduce some of the power differentials among actors, and thus provide a good example of the diffusion of power that typifies global politics in this century. The largest powers are unlikely to be able to dominate this domain as much as they have others like sea or air. But cyberspace also illustrates the point that diffusion of power does not mean equality of power or the replacement of governments as the most powerful actors in world politics.
Phi Beta Iota: The author served as deputy director of the National Intelligence Council and as an Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. He coined the term “soft power” and is arguably the most astute and coherent observer and analyst of traditional relations among nations now serving in the upper ranks of the elite that pupport to be serving the public interest.
Rotting Oder of Pentagon Info Op Signals Effort to Shore Up its Great Game in the Hindu Kush
On 13 June, James Risen of the New York Times conveniently (at least for the Pentagon and the war party) reported that the “United States has discovered $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan [also attached below for your convenience]. I say convenient, because time is running out for the Pentagon in Afghanistan, and this report introduces a ‘new’ reason for occupying Afghanistan. The timing of this report was noticed very quickly by several skeptical commentators ( e.g., here and here).
But there is more. The NYT report has the rotting odor of yet another Pentagon misinformation operation to lather up the masses using the willing offices of the tired old Gray Lady of journalism. The oder is intense, because Risen’s Pentagon-inspired geological report coincides with the growing disenchantment with Afghan adventure. And more people are coming to appreciate the disconnect between (1) a spate of credible reports (e.g., here) describing the lack of progress in Afghanistan, particularly the failure of the showcase Marja COIN strategy to deliver its predicted result and (2) the requirement imposed by President Obama to show progress by the end of this summer. Bear in mind, Obama’s ‘requirement’ was imposed on the Pentagon when he improved the flawed McChrystal/Petraeus surge plan and sold it to the American people last fall. The military and spokesmen for the Obama administration began immediately to back away from the deadline shortly after its inception, and it has already been stretched to coincide with the mid-term elections in November — which goes to show that domestic politics do not end at the water’s edge?
Although the several commentators expressed their justifiable skepticism about the timing of the NYT report, to the best of my knowledge, none have addressed the substance of the mineral estimate. Shortly after it was published, my good friend and colleague Pierre Sprey, who has been called a vampire because he does his best work in the dark after midnight, got to the heart of the latter question and put the entire story together in an elegantly brief email that he distributed in the dark early hours of 14 June.
Attached for your reading pleasure is Pierre’s incisive critique:
Pierre Sprey
U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan
Pierre Sprey 14 June 2010
The timing of this release of ancient mining news–especially when floated with Petraeus' name plastered all over it in a tried-and-true government propaganda outlet like the N.Y. Times–smells to me like a last ditch attempt to invent an economic justification for hanging on many more years in the hopeless Afghani morass.
Note that the now sacrosanct 1980s Russian mineral survey was “stumbled on” six years ago in 2004 by an American reconstruction team foraging in the Afghan Geological Survey Library. Then, according to the Times' (read Petraeus and DoD) spin, nothing happened until two years later when the U.S. Geological Survey launched a 2006 aerial mineral survey followed by another in 2007, supposedly yielding all-new evidence of astonishing mineral wealth (iron, gold, copper, lithium, supposedly a trillion dollar's worth) just waiting to be tapped. Supposedly, this astonishing new evidence was then ignored by all until a Pentagon business development task force “rediscovered” the ignored USGS mineral data in 2009.
This spin is quite untrue: in 2005, the Afghan government, quite aware of their mineral resources, opened bidding on copper mining leases in Logar Province, bidding that was won by the Chinese in 2007. As for the reliability of the USGS data, note that they report 1.8 billion tons of potential lithium deposits (lithium is very trendy with the greens these days) but only a puny 111 million tons in proven or probable deposits.
But none of this purportedly astonishing USGS aerial survey data has raised much dust in the international mining world, despite the fact that the entire current New York Times scoop was thoroughly covered by Reuters and Mining Exploration News a year ago in April of 2009.
So what turned the ho-hum Reuters news of April, 2009 into a hot Times scoop in June of 2010? Is there any connection with the desperate need of McChrystal, Petraeus and Gates for a life jacket, now that the Afghan surge they floated is sinking so rapidly?
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
Chapter 20, “21st Century Counterintelligence: Evaluating the Health of the Nation,” especially Dereliction of Duty (Defense); Disinformation, Other Information Pathologies, & Repression; Emprire as a Cancer including Betrayal & Deceit; Impeacahable Offenses (Modern); Institutionalized Ineptitude; and Intelligence (Lack Of), all in the online hyperlinked version of INTELLIGENCE for Earth: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (pages 179-205, in Part III.
