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Phi Beta Iota Warning Notice:  Do NOT waste ink on the IC report.  We've ordered up what they should have done in the first place, a printer-friendly low-footprint version that prints reliably and should have it delivered to Secrecy News by the end of the week.  Not only does this offering waste a lot of ink, it prints in very tiny font two pages per sheet.  Pending our better offering that retains color and context, go with the text only version.  Our graphics person considers this document to be so deliberately clogged as to be non-usable online to unclude deliberately unprintable in usable form.  Substantive comments below.

Secrecy News:  The development of the 2004 intelligence reform legislation that created the Director of National Intelligence and attempted to modernize and integrate the U.S. intelligence community was examined in detail last year in an unreleased report (large pdf) from the Office of the DNI.

The 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act was supposed to “address institutional obstacles that had complicated the IC's struggle to adapt to new technologies and a changing national security environment. The new act would redraw boundaries between foreign and domestic intelligence, set new rules for intelligence and law enforcement, enhance the interplay between civilian and military intelligence, correct the shortfall in information sharing, and meet the needs of traditional and emergent intelligence functions.”

But five years later, many of those original obstacles remain in place.

Continue reading “Secrecy News: A Look Back at Intelligence Reform (By the Perp)”

The following headlines and links are extracted from the Earth Intelligence Network Twitter feed while this site was down in April:

» FOIA document on counterfeit $100 note connection to North Korea http://is.gd/bRq31 + US dept of Treasury & ‘federal' Reserve reveal new $100 bill design to combat counterfeiting (newmoney.gov) http://is.gd/bDDvQ

» New global CrisisWatch report for May updating the most significant situations of conflict or potential conflict http://is.gd/bQkg9

» Conflict Risk Alert: Thailand http://is.gd/bPqr0

» Draft of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and preliminary analysis http://is.gd/bOWhX

» Video (47 min) on Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC) summit showing “agents of change” powers uniting & conflicting http://is.gd/bNhiA

Continue reading “April Post Re-Cap”

Mexico: Several incidents in the past two days point to a significant increase in the threat to the southern US border.  The first was the cartel takeover of al Porvenir, a town three miles from Fort Hancock, Texas. Cartel leaflets demand payment or children will be murdered. They also warn of a pending inter-cartel fight in the town, many of whose residents have fled to Forth Hancock and requested asylum.

The other incidents were attacks by cartel fighters on Mexican Army facilities in Reynosa, Matamoros and General Bravo. Mexican General Edgar Luis Villegas said gunmen staged seven separate attacks on the Army, including three blockades, according to The Associated Press 1 April.

Gunmen parked trucks and SUVs outside a military base in the border city of Reynosa trying to block troops from leaving and sparking a gun battle with soldiers. Gunmen also blocked several streets leading to a garrison in the nearby border city of Matamoros. Another gang of armed men opened fire from several vehicles, shooting at soldiers guarding a federal highway in General Bravo, in Nuevo Leon State. Troops fought back, killing 18 gunmen, wounding two and detaining seven more suspects.

Many of the attackers in the past two days are Zetas, according to The Associated Press. The Zetas are Mexican Army deserters trained as assassins. They began as a mercenary force for the Gulf cartel, but evolved their own independent operations and are fighting the cartels, who reportedly want to eliminate them as bad for business.

Attacks against the Army create terror by establishing that the premier defense forces of the state cannot defend themselves, much less its citizens. They also establish that the attackers have the capabilities to deliver on the threat. If these attacks continue in the border region, that part of Mexico will begin to resemble the warlord enclaves of Somalia or Afghanistan.

One commentator worried that the cartels are attempting to establish a lawless buffer zone just inside the Mexican border patterned after the Taliban base areas in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Northwest Frontier Province. If that occurs, or perhaps when that occurs, the refugee flow will increase and violence will follow the refugees.

Pakistan-India: Pakistan has deployed more troops on the eastern border with India.  Confirming the report, Pakistan's High Commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, said that India had increased pressure on the border by building several new military cantonments close to the sensitive frontier, and Islamabad can not remain “subservient” to the move.

“The government has had to send some troops down there because we don’t want to leave ourselves exposed. This is taking away from our defence capabilities on the Afghan border. We really wish the international community would intervene, but nobody has said anything to the Indians,” a British newspaper quoted Hasan, as saying.

Experts and diplomats, however, have described the troops reinforcement as more of a political and diplomatic move rather than a strategic one.

Note: No press source has confirmed new Indian cantonments. This is a ruse to deflect US pressure for additional operations to suppress domestic terrorists. Without confirming the facts, the anti-Indian Pakistani press denounced the Indian military moves.

Pakistan-US: Xinhua reported on Saturday the United States has agreed to provide another 14 F-16 jet planes to Pakistan until December 2010. U.S. authorities are scheduled to begin delivering the planes as well as Beyond Visual Range (BVR) missiles in June 2010.

Comment: Pakistan has no need of BVR missiles except in a war with India. There is no fundamental change in the mindset that India poses the greatest threat to Pakistan. Old hands know that provision of modern US weapons invariably are misinterpreted as US support for Pakistan in a war against India.

Aside from high minded sound bites the press coverage of last week’s “strategic” discussions in Washington provided no insight about what promises the US obtained in return.

Phi Beta Iota: The above is in today's NIGHTWATCH, which is available free online in archive form, with the daily version only to AFCEA and NIGHTWATCH subscriber.  It merits comments that for over a couple of decades Pakitan successfully deceived to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its clandestine service chief and so-called “experienced” case officers with the illusion that there was a “rogue” element of the military that favored extremists.  In fact, Pakistan is the Israel of Central Asia, a serious pain in the ass that cannot be trusted and needs to lose all US support just as Israel needs to lose all US support.  The reality is that neither the US intelligence community nor the US national security policy community have a clue as to “what is” reality, strategy, or sustainable end-state.

Linking JIEDDO to US Death Squads:
Chinese Publication Seeks Guidance from HTS Program Manager

“According to several government and civilian sources, [Michael] Furlong's operation was funded under a $24.6 million contract by the Defense Department's Joint IED Defeat Organization [JIEDDO], which was set up early in the Iraq war to combat insurgents' roadside bombs. His operation was part of a larger military information program, called Capstone”, Karen DeYoung, Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/15/AR2010031504151.html

by John Stanton

Cultural Operations Research – Human Terrain System (COR-HTS) — now simply HTS — was originally funded by the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). Coincidently, JIEDDO was formerly under the command of Steve Fondacaro, who now runs the turbulent HTS program. JIEDDO received a punishing audit by the Government Accountability Office.

Continue reading “Journal: From Social “Science” HTT to KR Death Squads”

India-Pakistan: Update. An Indian prosecutor in a special court in Mumbai said active duty members of the Pakistan Army and a serving major general oversaw the training of Lashkar-e-Taiba militants who carried out the deadly Mumbai attacks in November 2008, Press Trust of India reported 9 March. Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said in his final arguments that it could be inferred that the attack was state-sponsored.

The Hindu account is sharper. “The November 26 attack was not an ordinary attack by 10 indoctrinated terrorists. It was well orchestrated, meticulously planned and [reflected] a deep-seated hatred for our country. It was a classic case of sponsored terrorism. Evidence by the prosecution has successfully established that the attack was sponsored by Pakistan. Irrefutable inference [can be drawn] that it was sponsored by State actors involved in the security apparatus of Pakistan,” Mr. Nikam argued.

He said the Major General's name was not revealed to the attackers “undoubtedly because he was from the Pakistan Army.” “He is an entity separate from the Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT]; he must have been the supreme authority running the training camp.”

Citing excerpts from the judicial confession statement of lone surviving terrorist Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab, recorded on 20 February 2009, Mr. Nikam said the Major General visited the training camps when military and intelligence training was being imparted to the attackers. He had enquired whether the trainees had any complaints and was keen that they completed the mission given by the LeT.

Comment: The Indians are serious about improving anti-terror cooperation, whereas Pakistan wants to restart a comprehensive dialogue.  Pakistan has arrested terrorists from every group except those that target India.  When that occurs, India will know Pakistan has abandoned terror as an instrument of state policy.

Since mid-January, Pakistan has done more to disrupt Pakistan-based terrorists and insurgents than any administration in a quarter century. But it has done little to suppress anti-Indian terrorists, which explains the public embarrassment of the Mumbai trial.

Phi Beta Iota: The tide has turned in the “Global War on Terror,” for a variety of reasons, with Malaysia, Indonesia, and Turkey being among those nations that merit huge respect for their steady secular approach to counter-terrorism, but two nations still stand out as state-sponsors of terrorism: Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.  Until the Americans stop lying to themselves and the public about their naive relationships with 42 of the 44 dictators on the planet, and their naive acceptance of Pakistan's deceit, Afghanistan will continue to be a “hurt locker.”