Category: Uncategorized

(A report on this event has been uploaded as of July 7, 2010)

The ICSR Peace and Security Summit will bring together 400 leading policymakers, diplomats, senior officials and experts from across the globe, encouraging them to share their experiences and approaches in a number of working groups and high-level panels.

Held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, the Summit will explore the greatest security challenges of our time, ranging from domestic radicalization and violent extremism to ongoing conflicts and the struggle for peace in places such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, and the Middle East.

Among the many keynote speakers and panellists are:

HRH Princess Aisha Bint Al Hussein, Jordan
·         Dr. Abdulkarim Al-Eryani, former Prime Minister of Yemen
·         Amb. Daniel Benjamin, Counterterrorism Coordinator, State Department
·         Amb. Cofer Black, former Director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center
·         Noman Benotman, former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group
·         Amb. Peter Galbraith, former UN Deputy Special Representative
·         Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair
·         Hekmat Karzai, director of Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies, Kabul
·         Tsipi Livni, leader of the Israeli opposition
·         Fran Townsend, Homeland Security Advisor to President George W. Bush
·         Lord David Trimble, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

The ICSR Peace and Security Summit is organised in partnership with the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, and receives support from The Rockefeller Foundation, Public Safety Canada, as well as Rena and Sami David.

Thanks to our supporters, there will be no attendance fee. However, places are strictly limited and will not be allocated on a first come first serve basis. If you would like to attend, write to Katie Rothman at katie.rothman@icsr.info before June 25th. Make sure you include your full name, title, affiliation, and current position.

Program as of 21 June 2010

ICSR Conference Page

EVENT REPORT Uploaded July 7, 2010

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Title: State of Global Intelligence

Day/Time: Friday, July 16, 2010 – 1100 (11 am)

Location: Tesla (18th floor)

Title: Spy Improv on Steroids – Steele Uncensored – Anything Goes

Day/Time: Saturday, July 17, 2010 – 2359 (11:59 pm)

Location: Lovelace (18th floor)

The Next HOPE runs from Friday, July 16th to Sunday, July 18th, 2010.

http://www.thenexthope.org

Phi Beta Iota:  The next Director of National Intelligence (DNI) should be required by Congress, as conditions for confirmation, to agree to open the entire Intelligence Community, every single one of the 953 codeword compartments (and the other 200+ that “don't exist”); and to immediately and without further ado declassify all documents as required by law–instead of the deliberately idiotic process of having drones pretend to “study” quarter-century old documents for threats to national security, have a phased process where declassification is absolute, and only publication of the tediously isolated elements is subject to review.  John Lewis Gaddis, in The Landscape of History, says it best: history is a denied area because we are irresponsible about respecting the importance of history in all its forms.  The fact is that the US Intelligence Community understands full well that the declassification as required by law, if done, will immediately do two things:

1.  Subject all past intelligence professionals at the leadership level in clandestine and covert operations to investigation and indictment before International Tribunals that can no longer be ignored, for crimes against humanity including regime change; and

2.  Demonstrate conclusively that the Return on Investment (RoI) for secret sources and methods is questionable at best–when 75 billion dollars a year produce today, “at best,” 4% of what a combatant commander needs to know, the secret world has become a cancer on the body politic of virtually no redeeming value to the public–only to the thieves in high places.

Federation of American Scientists Secrecy News

DECLASSIFICATION AND THE “CRISIS” IN INTEL HISTORY

The ongoing failure to establish a robust, reliable and productive declassification program is steadily eroding the study of intelligence history and may lead to the collapse of the entire field, one intelligence historian told the National Security Agency last month.

“I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we're at a crisis point in the study of intelligence history in general, and signals intelligence history in particular;  because there is a very real question of whether any serious historians outside of the intelligence community are going to continue trying to research and understand and write about this subject at all,” said author Stephen Budiansky in an invited lecture at the National Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade on May 24.

Continue reading “Journal: DECLASSIFICATION AND THE “CRISIS” IN INTEL HISTORY”

Pentagon “To Boost Covert Missions in Middle East”

Phi Beta Iota:  Jim Clapper is a technocrat-administrator, not a leader, and he has consistently undermined both the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI).  The Pentagon's “clandestine” operations are a huge farce–the training, according to one CIA-trained Special Operations Colonel, consists of “push-ups done silently.”  [We do NOT make this stuff up.]  CIA clandestine HUMINT is an equal farce, this is true, but two farces do not make a force.  The US Intelligence Community is a massive waste of the taxpayer's funds–$75 billion and climbing most of it out of control technical and contractor budgets within the Pentagon–because no one in Washington is serious about using intelligence to impact on how we train, equip, and organize Whole of Government in the public interest–the IC, like the Pentagon, is nothing more than a means of transferring wealth from the individual taxpayer to the corporations and banks that fund our corrupt Congress and our corrupt White House.

CIA Report on Soviet War Shows Futility of Military Effort in Afghanistan

Phi Beta Iota:  This is what the “Open Source Center” should have been doing in the first place.  Late, but finally, something intelligent and useful.

Former CIA Officer Says He Was Caught In “Honey Trap”

Phi Beta Iota:  CIA's dirty little secret continues to be the ease with which Third World intelligence services, often aided by the Cubans or others, can wrap up the CIA Stations and selected case officers, in part because case officers operating out of official cover installation live immunity, not cover, and too many of them still drink way more than is good for them, have way too much discretionary spending authority, and generally are not held accountable for being fools.  CIA also continues to harbor sexual predators and to be very–very–hypocritical within the clandestine “boy's will be boy's” club, biased against women and against iconoclasts. 

Former CIA Officer on Iran: Brazil and Turkey are Vital Checks and Balances, by Graham E. Fuller

Phi Beta Iota:  Crystal clear–not being read by the blind.

The Politics Of National Intelligence, by Marc Ambinder

Phi Beta Iota:  Nice try but not serious.  DNI was a wrong turn.  The only thing lacking in national intelligence leadership is integrity. 

The Truth About Drones: They Are Inspiring Homegrown Terror, by Fawaz Gerges in Newsweek

Phi Beta Iota:  Yup.  CIA has taken “collateral damage” to extraordinary new highs, and we fully anticipate the eventual creation a special international tribunal to deal exclusively with the crimes against humanity by the CIA and its elements, going all the way back to the 1950's.  If the USA is a Rogue Elephant, CIA is the turds that elephant keeps dropping around the planet. 

Phi Beta Iota:  The Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) is a precious gem within the landscape of associatioins, most focused on assuring a good living for their officers.  AFIO is consistently ethical, intelligent, and useful.  Visit them at www.afio.org.

Turkey-Israel: For the record. Turkish Defense Minister Gonul said the current crisis with Israel should not delay the delivery of four remotely piloted aircraft (drones), Anatolia news agency reported June 1. Gonul said he expects the drones to be delivered in June or July.

Evidently, the Turks think the plight of the Palestinians is not worth sacrificing one Israeli-supplied remotely piloted aircraft.

Israel-Hamas: Comment: A few myths need to be dispelled that mainstream news commentators have overlooked. First is that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza that requires a sealift. Knowledgeable and objective analysts have reported no such crisis exists.

That means the attempted sealift was a deliberate confrontation, a provocation and a test of Israeli nerve. Thus, the second myth is that this was an innocent, altruistic effort to help suffering Palestinians. This was a setup, as one Brilliant and Well-informed Reader noted in Feedback.

The third myth is that Israel would be swayed by international outrage. Quarantine is meaningless if not enforced and conciliatory gestures invite escalating provocations because Hamas has promised nothing to Israel. Israel did what it said it would do – escort the ships to Ashdod, which is where they are.

A point that has gotten lost is that Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. That marmoreal policy position is existential to Hamas and invites contempt even from fellow Arabs.

Hamas never reciprocates acts of generosity by any one, which explains region-wide contempt for Hamas. On the other hand, Hamas does respond to force and intimidation. Israeli asymmetric strikes in retaliation for rocket attacks from Gaza are the only proven approach for persuading Hamas to stop the rocket attacks.

Hamas may be enjoying Israeli discomfit over the bad publicity, but it lost four ships through its own folly. If there were a genuine humanitarian crisis, then Hamas trifled with the plight of its people and should be exposed as irresponsible. Ship captains on genuine missions of mercy are more than willing to prove the innocence of their cargos in order to complete their missions.

Behavior demonstrating innocent passage is common in all war zones, where humanitarian relief is an urgent need. That is not this case. The humanitarian mission seems unimportant and insignificant, a deception. The behavior of the people on the ships justifies a strong suspicion by any maritime security force in the world that the ships carried contraband and required inspection. That is the law of the sea.

So why has the mainstream media not questioned the motives and behavior of the people on the ships?

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH on Turkey, Israel, and Palestine”