Budgets & Funding – Page 38 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/05/302010/05/30

Journal: With No Successor In Sight, Intelligence Czar Departs

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Geospatial, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Maps, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Research resources, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, True Cost

FULL STORY: Declassified (newsweek.com/blogs)

May 28, 2010

By Mark Hosenball

On Dennis Blair’s last day in office as director of national intelligence, the Obama administration seems more stymied than ever in its efforts to replace him.

Following a torrent of criticism from Capitol Hill—apparently touched off by this Declassified interview with Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Republican—the candidacy of James Clapper looks doubtful to say the least. On top of Hoekstra’s criticism of the retired three-star general, who currently serves as the Defense Department’s intelligence chief, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s leaders are now also publicly saying they think he’s the wrong man for the job.

. . . . . .

The latest boomlet in speculation on potential candidates is centered on Michael Vickers, a former Green Beret and CIA operative who has been the Defense Department’s top civilian in charge of counterterrorism and special-operations programs slnce late in the Bush administration. Vickers was one of 15 potential DNI candidates we identified when news of the job opening broke….

. . . . . . .

But other names keep coming up. Some, such as Homeland Security undersecretary Rand Beers, Joint Chiefs of Staff Deputy Chairman Gen. James Cartwright, and outgoing Sen. Evan Bayh, have surfaced before (one former official who worked in national security positions with Beers describes him as “indefatigable”). But others are new to this particular search, including Rep. Jane Harman, former Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, and former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin.

Phi Beta Iota: Worth a complete read. Here are the fifteen potential DNI's they identified earlier:, followed by our picks.

Political and bureaucratic heavyweights:
FBI Director Robert Mueller
CIA Director Leon Panetta
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg
Marine Gen. James Cartwright, deputy chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Intelligence and defense technocrats:
Lt. Gen. Jim Clapper, currently Defense Department intelligence supremo;
Michael Vickers, assistant defense secretary for special operations;
John Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary;
Harvard academic Joseph Nye, also a former senior Pentagon official; and
John McHugh, a former GOP congressman whom Obama named as secretary of the Army.

High-profile intelligence politicos:
John Brennan, the White House counterterrorism and Homeland Security supremo; or
Rand Beers, a former career intelligence official who left his job as a senior counterterrorism adviser in the George W. Bush White House to become national security adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, and now serves as undersecretary of Homeland Security

High-profile politicos:
former Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican close to Obama; former congressman and
intelligence-reform campaigner Lee Hamilton;
former Indiana senator Evan Bayh; and
former representative Tim Roemer (another intel-reform campaigner who is now U.S. ambassador in India)

Phi Beta Iota: Everyone in the above lists is a ridiculous untenable suggestion with one exception: Senator Chuck Hagel. His combination of integrity, substantive experience, standing on the Hill, and general non-partisan common sense, is ideal. What he lacks is a kick-ass deputy who actually understands all the crap that the agencies–and their den mother Jim Clapper–put forward. Leon Panetta would actually be very good as the Deputy, responsible for turning off all funds to all agencies at 20% a year (10% a year restored for new initiatives; savings to education and national research under DNI oversight as provided for in the Smart Nation-Safe Nation Act) but Hagel is going to need a kitchen cabinet of truth-tellers and we are pretty sure he is not even aware of who they might be. That is his sucking chest wound–if he solves that he will not only earn Obama a second term, he will transcend politics and impact directly on the totality of all budgets–US, state & local, other nations, corporations, NGOs. Jack Devine is in the wings in New York, the Trilateral Commission's choice for either DNI or Director of Central Intelligence, he has our vote for the latter position.

The problem President Obama has is in the White House is that no one working for him actually “gets it” with respect to 21st Century governance–between his pogomist and his pollster and his talented but oblivious others, he is running on fumes, will not get a second term, and is simply counting the days to when he can follow Bill Bradley, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton in Goldman Sachs honey-land–and screw the American public, they were never the intended beneficiaries of all this in the first place.

References for any future DNI:

Human Intelligence (HUMINT): All Humans, All Minds, All the Time (SSI, 2010)
The Smart Nation Act: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest (OSS, 2006)
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time (OSS, 2006)
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political (OSS, 2002)
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA, 2000; OSS, 2001)

and for the really big picture:

Intelligence for Earth: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (EIN, 2010)
Collective Intelligence: Crating a Prosperous World at Peace (EIN, 2008)
Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future (OSS, 2003)

2010/05/142010/05/14

Search: OSINT software

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Ethics, Geospatial, InfoOps (IO), International Aid, Key Players, Methods & Process, Policies, Searches, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, True Cost

The search term brings up appropriate results, but the fact of the search gives us an opportunity to provide comment.

1) Nothing now being used by governments, and certainly not iBase or Palantir, both aging technologies that do not scale and have too many fat-finger handicaps, fulfills the originial requirements documents crafted in the late 1980's.

Worth a Look: 1989 All-Source Fusion Analytic Workstation–The Four Requirements Documents

2) The ONLY programs that have gotten anywhere close are COPERNICUS plus plus, and SILOBREAKER. However, both of these have been slow to recognize the urgency of integrating–fully integrating–capabilities that address each of the eighteen functionalities. Below is the list of softwares now in use by US Special Operations Command J-23 Open Source Intelligence Branch along with the STRONG ANGEL TOOZL and a couple of other things.

Memorandum: USSOCOM Software List and STRONG ANGEL TOOZL

Reference: Intelligence Reform Death Notice

10 Security, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Commissions, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Ethics, Government, Hill Letters & Testimony, Law Enforcement, Legislation, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Threats

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”

2010/02/122010/02/12

Journal: Taming Twitter–Emergence of Baby World Brain?

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Ethics, Geospatial, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Technologies, Threats, Tools

Taming Twitter’s Streams With Automated Web Sites

Unlike Facebook, whose builders strive to make it an ever more organized social network, Twitter seems to thrive on being a jumble. It is an egalitarian sort of mess: Twitter does not sort its users into categories, does not tag some as celebrities, does not map out who does lunch with whom in the real world. You and Shaquille O’Neal are Twitter equals, only he has an extra 2.8 million followers.

There is also a Web site, Listorious listorious.com where volunteers publish personally chosen lists of posters to follow based on specific themes. But it is hit or miss. The Best of Photography list is a sharp collection of 29 eye-catching feeds, but Tech News People is a pile of 499 journalists for you to sort through.

So, how do you figure out who to follow? Start with a sweeping generalization: Twitter users can be grouped into different categories. For each, there is an automated site somewhere that lets you follow the genre without having to find and follow dozens, or even hundreds, of individual Twitter streams.

Phi Beta Iota: This article provides an extraordinary bridge to the future, when Twitter could become the real-time feed for inputs easily sorted in an infinite number of “back offices” that remix the information by threat, policy, player, and zip code. The difference between Google and Twitter is that Twitter empowers the end-user, Google ravages the end user (intellectually and metaphorically speaking).

2010/02/11

Journal: US Rubin-Summers Tungsten Gold Round II

02 China, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Phi Beta Iota: We first displayed a post on the US cheating others with gold wrapped around tungsten on 18 November 2009, at Journal: Fake Gold Bars from China to India, Made in the USA–Federal Reserve and Bank of NY Accused–Meanwhile, Prison Planet and Bullion Vault Say No. The story is now resurfacing, and in the course of looking it over (with some skepticism, but confident that the matter has not been properly investigated by the US Government which is evidently culpable on multiple fronts.

Is the Dollar “Good as Tungsten”? (FOFAO,November 15, 2009)

This is the best overall summary we have found, with devastating looks at Larry Summers' past published speculation on how manipulating the gold price downwards could improve the value of Treasury issues, the connections with Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin–it all hangs together and is elegantly brought together.

2010/02/03

Journal: New QDR–Pentagon Goes Intellectually AWOL

10 Security, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Ethics, Military, Reform, Strategy, Threats

The New QDR

The Pentagon Goes Intellectually AWOL

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

Monday, February 1, 2010, was a day that should live in budgetary infamy. The Defense Department released its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and its accompanying Fiscal Year 2011 budget request, which is the first year of the Fiscal Year 2011-2015 five year plan (2011-2015 FYDP). These documents are available on the internet and can be downloaded in PDF format here: QDR and the FY 2011 budget.

Even by the dismal intellectual standards of Pentagon bureaucracy, the QDR and the FY 2011 budget, taken together, establish a new standard of analytical vacuity, psychological denial, and just plane meaningless drivel. I will keep this short by using just one important case to prove my allegation. Judge for yourself if it is necessary and sufficient to make the point.

. . . . . . .

The chaos in the accounting system provides the intellectual “grease” to lubricate the engine driving narrow bureaucratic agendas that are causing the force structure meltdown. Senior decision makers can not possibly understand the trade offs they are really making when they put together a budget, assuming they wanted to, which is also in doubt.

Phi Beta Iota: The Pentagon is only as competent as the combination of three factors:

Continue reading “Journal: New QDR–Pentagon Goes Intellectually AWOL”

2010/02/022010/02/02

Journal: Politics of Fear–Spending on National Insecurity

10 Security, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Military, Peace Intelligence, Reform, Threats

Answer: It all depends on what you think should be included, but once this is clear — this spending will be be exempt from any cutbacks needed to reduce the deficit.

The Table prepared by Winslow Wheeler, Director, Straus Military Reform Project within the Center for Defense Information.

Chuck