The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
We would never have gotten a Commissioner from the European Union without the help of Madame Judge Danielle Cailloux, investigative judge and lead oversight entrepreneur for the Belgian intelligence community. Many do not realize that information is like a work of art, and its provenance and security are vital to its INTEGRITY. Europe has been far ahead of the USA in its mindfulness of the value of regulation that combines integrity and insight.
The below reference and article was drafted by Robert Steele with some editorial assistance from Mark Lowenthal, who was briefly an employee of OSS before jumping to SRA International. The article draws on the experience of the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (MCIC) that was established by General Al Gray, USMC, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, largely to support expeditionary acquisition. The Army, the Navy, and the Air Force are all “big system” services, and while the Army has begun to learn how to “eat the tail” and reduce the logistics footprint (as well as the ground convey exposure and expense), the reality is that DoD acquisition remains totally hosed today, and 20,000 new people (as planned by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) are not going to be effecive for three reasons:
1. DoD makes policy without regard to strategy or intelligence
2. DoD acquires systems without regard to strategy, lacking a strategic analytic model
3. DoD is long over-due for massive changes to Title 109 such that we have four proponents for Big War, Small War, Peace War, and Homeland Defense (each of the Services could be redirected appropriately) but–big but–the regional combatant commanders become BOTH the hubs for Whole of Government inter-agency planning, programming, and budgeting AND the primary proponents for what is needed in their theaters.
Should it not be crystal clear, the “butts in seats” approach in which contractors cost the taxpayer 250% of their salary is not sanctioned by this early article on how to fix intelligence support to acquisition. Small cells, a global grid of multinational sharing and sense-making partners, and the ability to “know who knows,” to apply strategic analytic tradecraft, and to produce “just enough, just in time, just right” Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) that either stands on its own or radically enhances all-source intelligence production, are the way to go. No one now providing OSINT under OMB Code M320 understaqnds how to do that.
This is one of the important papers from the 1990's. The European Union (EU) never really got its intelligence act together, and shows no signs of doing so today as this is loaded (2009). Editor Alessandro Politi coined the term “intelligence minuteman” in 1992, and is one of the leading minds in Europe on intelligence with integrity.
Eventually we must have a global intelligence network and policy, perhaps rooted in a United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN).
In the meantime, this paper is as good a review as any of why regional intelligence policies matter and are needed.
Arnie Donahue, until 1997 the Chief of the C4I Branch in the National Security Division led by Don Gessaman, moved in retirement to the National Academy of Public Administraiton (NAPA) where he continued to engage in investigative surveys at the classified level. Below is one of the first reports that he helped administer. It makes the important point that information that is collected, processed, produced, and exploited by both producers and consumers of intelligence cannot be “isolated” into a single agency. It must be handled as a grid or service of common concern. This reference was among the first to suggest to us that Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is a “hybrid” in that is is an intelligence discipline in its own-right, with its own Human, Signals, Imagery, and other sub-components; it is a targeting and validation and contextual sub-element of each of the traditional classified intelligence collection elements (through badly abused and not at all understood by any of them), and finally, it is a consumer-driven source of first resort that has special cachet when shared in a multinational fashion. Geospatial information is OSINT on steroids–so fundamental across so many boundaries that on the one hand, the reports suggests the need for the inegration of the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Geospaital Agency, while also recognizing that like air and water, geospatial data can be used but not controlled.
PLATINUM LIFETIME AWARD Arnold, Mr. Stephen E. Arnold
For his constant demonstration of the utility of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) in the understanding of social networks, emerging technologies, and cultural realities. As a world-renowned authority on information and communications, with a deep understanding of the public policy value of open source information, he has made himself available around the world, and had much more influence than most realize. His publication of the book, The Google Legacy, is a mere milestone in one of the most distinguished information careers in the world.
Mr. Arnold has been the sole repeat speaker at OSS from 1997-2006. He displaced In-Q-Tel when the particiapnts expressed a preference for only one technologies briefing. He is one of the most gifted patent and primary (direct voice) researchers we have ever encountered. His second book, Google- 2.0: The Calculating Predator, nails the future. Below is his first presentation to the multinationla public intelligence network.
