The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
(COMMENT: SECDEF may be approaching culmination….)
Andrea Stone Senior Washington Correspondent
AOL News
WASHINGTON (Aug. 16) — Robert Gates has a lot on his to-do list: Wind down two wars. Trim a bloated budget. Push through a nuclear treaty. End the ban on openly gay service members. And convince himself that this time he really will retire.
FULL STORY ONLINE
Foreign Policy Interview in Full Continue reading “Journal: State of Defense…”
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
** WHO IS AN INTELLIGENCE EMPLOYEE?
** WIKILEAKS: GIVING LEAKS A BAD NAME
** HUGE COMMERCIAL SAT IMAGERY CONTRACTS AWARDED
** ODNI ADVISORS ON BIO SCIENCES KEEP LOW PROFILE
** REVIEWS OF FOREIGN INVESTMENT IN US REMAIN “OBSCURE”
WHO IS AN INTELLIGENCE EMPLOYEE?
Could someone be considered an intelligence community employee even if his salary is not paid out of the intelligence budget? Intelligence officials say yes, claiming that a person's status as an intelligence employee can be based on an “assessment of the functions [he] performs.” This novel approach conveniently allows agencies to curtail oversight of such employees' activities.
In a letter sent to the Government Accountability Office last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation articulated its position that the GAO is generally not entitled to review intelligence community information and, in particular, that the GAO would not be granted access to information about vacancies in the FBI counterterrorism program that could be considered intelligence jobs.
Section I – INTELLIGENCE HIGHLIGHTS
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** GAO ACCESS TO INTEL OBSTRUCTED BY 1988 OLC OPINION
** ETHICS OFFICE PUTS LIMITS ON CIA LOBBYING (2006)
** REPORT SEES SUCCESSES AND GAPS IN INFO SHARING
Secrecy News Home (each item above linked directly)
Phi Beta Iota: From an objective third-party stand-point, the US intelligence community appears to believe that it is above all laws including our own–Article 1 of the Constitution does not apply (separation and balance of powers including power of the purse and audit for Congress); that it can “lobby” (never mind the 5% “cut” that all intelligence contractors find a way to deliver to each Member that runs an earmark); and that there have been any successes in information sharing when the IC is spending $75 billion a year to produce “at best” 4% of what the President needs and nothing of substance for anyone else. The complacency, hubris, & utter blindness to their betrayal of the public trust is breath-taking. These people mean well, they simply don't have a clue.
EXTRAJUDICIAL TARGETING OF AMERICANS CHALLENGED
Two civil liberties organizations said they will file a legal challenge against the government's suspected targeting for assassination of an American supporter of Al Qaeda, arguing that under the U.S. Constitution no citizen can be “deprived of life… without due process of law.”
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights first filed suit against the Treasury Department, which said they needed a “license” in order to act on behalf of Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been designated as a terrorist. After the lawsuit was filed yesterday, the Treasury Department said the license to proceed would be granted.
Meanwhile, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and several House colleagues introduced legislation last week “to prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens.”
“No United States citizen, regardless of location, can be ‘deprived of life, liberty, property, without due process of law', as stated in Article XIV of the Constitution,” their bill said. [The cited statement is actually from the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.]
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said yesterday that the targeting of al-Awlaki was not done entirely without process. “There's a process in place that I'm not at liberty to discuss,” he said.
Secrecy News Complete Online Story
Phi Beta Iota: Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney are among those who have flushed the US Constitution down the toilet, and there is a direct genealogy from them to Barack Obama and the Pelosi-Reid-Axelrod-Emanuel quartet of mendacity lite that relegates the Constitution to its outrageous current status as a quaint relic. The flag officers and Senior Executive Service (SES) have been bribed by the military -industrial complex or intimidated by political appointees whose knowledge of substance is pathetic. There is nothing wrong with America the Beautiful that cannot be fixed by the restoration of the Constitution including the Balance of Powers; we do that with the Electoral Reform Act followed by the Smart Nation Act.
Chile General Convicted in 1974 Murders Blames CIA. The former chief of Chile's feared secret police who was convicted in the 1974 assassination of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's biggest enemy in exile says the CIA committed the crime.
How Does the CIA Know If Its Intel Is Any Good? On Sunday, the website Wikileaks published more than 91,000 military documents from the war in Afghanistan, among them reports alleging that Pakistan's top military intelligence service is aiding Taliban fighters. The Pakistani government has claimed that the documents are based on inaccurate field reports that neither it nor U.S. intelligence agencies are taking seriously. So how do intelligence analysts determine whether reports are credible or not?
Arab Intelligence Agencies Too Busy Protecting Regimes to be Effective. Even the wave of arrests in Lebanon over the last year of those accused of being “Mossad agents” does not change Wilhelm Dietl's opinion that “the Arab intelligence agencies, including that of Lebanon, are ineffective.” . . . The Arab agencies see their primary task as preserving the regime or the leader and therefore, they are cruel and without limits. They are above the law; they are the law itself. They see themselves as a divine entity.
Hit List Draws Fire in Wake of Leaked US Documents, by Lolita C. Baldor. When it comes to war, killing the enemy is an accepted fact. Even amid the sensation of the WikiLeaks.org revelations, that stark reality lies at the core of new charges that some American military commando operations may have amounted to war crimes.
Afghanistan – The Netherlands: BBC and other international media reported that the Netherlands military mission has ended its operations and is withdrawing. They transferred command of Oruzgan to the US and Australians on Sunday.
Their departure will serve as a validation of the Taliban long term strategy of outlasting the foreigners and a recruitment appeal: the Taliban will be around after the foreigners have left. A Taliban spokesman congratulated the Netherlands today.
The Dutch soldiers, maligned in European NATO circles for lax military discipline, performed extremely well under combat conditions in Afghanistan … far better than many other NATO contingents.
Lebanon-Syria-Saudi Arabia: Saudi King Abdullah and Syrian President al Asad visited Lebanon over the weekend and spoke with President Suleiman and Prime Minister Hariri with the purpose of preventing factional and sectarian rivalry from leading to more internal violence.
The operating assumption of the UN tribunal investigating the murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005 has been that Syrian intelligence agents were responsible. This hypothesis resulted in the withdrawal of Syrian forces, increased US and French influence in Lebanon for a time, increased strain with Saudi Arabia, and an enormous increase in Iranian influence with Lebanese Hezbollah.
The most recent investigations indicate the Hezbollah agents were the assassins. That hypothesis is the basis for the new Syrian and Saudi overture to the Beirut government. The Hezbollah leader Nasrallah denies that Hezbollah had anything to do with the Hariri murder, has denounced the new tentative findings and threatened violence in the event they become final.
Prime Minister Saad Hariri's embrace of the Syrian President and the Saudi King indicates the evidence has persuaded him. Saad is the son of the assassinated prime minister. The Saudis are strong supporters of the Hariris.
The only actor that would benefit from discord in Lebanon among Arabs, whether Sunni or Shiites, is Iran.
Phi Beta Iota: UN Tribunals, with their world-class investigative capabilities, are supposed to help build capacity and verify fact–not make arrests or otherwise play Rambo. In Guatemala a UN Tribunal cleared the President who was “framed” for a political murder; now in Lebanon the UN has cleared a government. The value of the UN as a deviner of truth cannot be over-stated; the greatest threat to the UN's success in this arena is unethical UN officers who choose to aggrandize their security sections by manipulating and fabricating threat information, thus reducing the number of positions available for investigators. After UN Tribunals should come regional UN decision-support centres that can address all ten high level threats to humanity while enabling “Deliver As One” harmonization not only across all twelve polices for UN programmes, but across all incoming funding sources UN and non-UN. The UN is evolving in a most constructive direction as a finder of fact that helps create a prosperous world at peace.
