Public Intelligence Blog – Page 2213 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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Lying About Syria, and the Lying Liars Who Lie About the Lying

“U.S. prepares for possible retaliatory strike against Syria,” announces a Los Angeles Times headline, even though Syria has not attacked the United States or any of its occupied territories or imperial forces and has no intention to do so.

Quoth the article:

“the president made no decisions, but the high-level talks came as the Pentagon acknowledged it was moving U.S. forces into position in the region.”

Forgive me, but who the SNAFU made that decision? Does the commander in chief have any say in this? Does he get to make speeches explaining how wrong it would be to attack Syria, meet with top military officials who leave the meeting to prepare for attacks on Syria, and go down in history as having been uninvolved in, if not opposed to, his own policies?

Threatening to attack Syria, and moving ships into position to do it, are significant, and illegal, and immoral actions. The president can claim not to have decided to push the button, but he can't pretend that all the preparations to do so just happen like the weather. Or he couldn't if newspapers reported news.

(Yes, illegal. Read the U.N. Charter:

Continue reading “David Swanson: Lying About Syria, and the Lying Liars Who Lie About the Lying”

2013/08/242013/08/24

Review: Lethal Incompetence

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Civil Affairs, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

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Jeff Bordin

5.0 out of 5 stars Authentic, Credible, Legitimate, and Damning of All Who Betray the Public Trust, August 24, 2013

I have this book in front of me, and will be doing a detailed review over the next week or so. I have already gone through it quickly, and concluded that it offers the single best compilation or literature review of all of the psychological and social reasons why military “leaders” end up being treasonous gerbils, combined with the deepest direct field research I know of to buttress the author's speculative hypotheses and proven conclusions.

I swung by here to check what others have said, and am quite disappointed by the shallow ignorance of the only review present. Here are a couple of quotes that capture my philosophy and hence my valuation of this book:

When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it. Bob Seelert, Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide (New York)

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. George Orwell

This book is a tad hyper-critical (of Dick Cheney for example — certainly a traitor but by no means stupid) and too close in format to the original thesis, or it would be a six star book. If I were Czar, every person responsible for the public interest would receive the wisdom and ethical instruction in this book, in one form or another, to include comic book form if necessary.

My detailed review will be posted within the week. I could not let the first review stand uncontested.

Continue reading “Review: Lethal Incompetence”

2013/08/242014/06/18

Worth a Look The Program from Hell [Indictment of the US Army Human Terrain System (HTS) — Over-Sold, Under-Performing]

5 Star, Civil Affairs, Culture, Research, Force Structure (Military), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)

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The Program from Hell

Authored by John Stanton

This is a story of ongoing alleged fraud, waste, abuse; a murder, KIA's, WIA's, cover ups, a hostage taking, and incompetence at the highest levels of the US Army's TRADOC G-2. It is Mash meets Catch-22 (the movies)…

The United States Army Human Terrain System has been mired in controversy since its inception. Billed as an anthropology program, it went dangerously off track soon after its first mission. Collected for the first time in this volume are many but not all of the reports written by independent journalist John Stanton. They are based on over 110 sources spanning over a four year period from the summer of 2008 to 2013 during which nearly 115 pieces were written. Collectively it is a story about civilian and military leadership that was negligent in the line of duty. The Human Terrain System richly deserves the title, The Program from Hell.

Offered as a Kindle Edition.

Continue reading “Worth a Look The Program from Hell [Indictment of the US Army Human Terrain System (HTS) — Over-Sold, Under-Performing]”

2013/08/242013/08/24

Marcus Aurelius: Conflicted About Ethics, Secrecy, & the Public Interest

10 Security, 11 Society, Ethics, IO Secrets, Officers Call

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COMMENTS:

1. This is one of more internally contradictory pieces I can remember reading;

2. Mark Bowden certainly knows a thing or three about perpetuating compromise of classified information since he's done bunch of it;

3. Bowden harkens back to old saying, “.. there are good secrets, there are bad secrets, and there are non-secrets …”, but people at working level don't have luxury of playing that game. If something is classified, it's classified and there are only two lawful options: get it declassified through established process or protect it;

4. Impact of Bradley Manning is broad and deep. Manning impacts me throughout every working day. Despite clearances, less information is available to me. Like every Federal employee, I now have fewer tools to work with. Formerly routine procedures are now either totally proscribed or so laden with requirements for pre-approval, two-person control, and so forth that cost vastly exceeds benefit. I am under automated surveillance as I perform my official duties. And we have not yet seen impacts of Snowden, which will surely come;

5. Thus, I strongly DISAGREE with Bowden that Bradley's 35-year sentence was excessive but forced to strongly AGREE that it will likely be reduced.

TheAtlantic.com, August 23, 2013

What Snowden And Manning Don't Understand About Secrecy

Government often finds bad reasons to keep information hidden, but the recent indiscriminate leaks are foolish.

By Mark Bowden

As an old reporter who has from time to time outed classified information, I have watched the cases of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden with professional interest.

What troubles me about them is not that they broke the oaths they swore when they took their classified government jobs, the thing that makes them liable to prosecution. Government finds all kinds of dubious reasons to keep secrets, sometimes nefarious reasons, and conscience can force one to break a promise. My problem is with the indiscriminate nature of their leaks.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Conflicted About Ethics, Secrecy, & the Public Interest”

2013/08/242013/08/24

Marcus Aurelius: Pentagon Implodes — Dull Minds Make Dull Cuts

Military

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COMMENT: RIFs vice furloughs is consistent with other reporting which quotes Frank Kendall, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics as saying, essentially, that recent furloughs were inconvenient for OSD seniors because they made it virtually impossible to hold meetings on Mondays and Fridays.

Bloomberg.com
August 22, 2013

Pentagon Weighs Firing Thousands Under 2014 Spending Cuts

By Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News

The Defense Department may have to fire at least 6,272 civilian employees if automatic cuts known as sequestration slice $52 billion from its fiscal 2014 budget, according to a Pentagon planning document.

Additional budget analysis is “likely to produce further reductions” as the services focus on shrinking their contract labor forces, according to a Pentagon “execution plan” obtained by Bloomberg News. The job cuts, although less than 1 percent of the non-uniformed workforce, would mark an escalation from the unpaid leave mandated under sequestration in the current fiscal year.

The services should expect a $475 billion budget after sequestration cuts for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, almost 10 percent less than the pending $526.6 billion request, according to the document dated Aug. 1. Sequestration would result in 16 percent reductions in the Pentagon’s procurement and research spending and 12 percent cuts in operations, maintenance and military construction.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Pentagon Implodes — Dull Minds Make Dull Cuts”

2013/08/24

Nick Peachy: ActiveTextbook | Interactive Textbook Software from Evident Point

IO Tools

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This looks like a great tool for creating interaction and adding multimedia to PDF content. Free for materials up to 500 page.

ActiveTextbook | Interactive Textbook Software from Evident Point

Turn your vision into reality by creating your own version of an existing PDF or textbook. Give it a dynamic touch, jot down notes, add video/audio clips, and discuss materials with your readers within your interactive content. Use Active Textbook to learn, teach or simply share your documents online – it's easy!

Phi Beta Iota: This has huge potential for “just in time” education and for the advancement of Standard Operating Procedures and all forms of organizational handbooks, manuals, regulations, etcetera.

2013/08/242013/08/24

Berto Jongman: Brookings Evaluates the NSA Documents

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Media

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The NSA Documents, An Introduction

Benjamin Wittes

Brookings, 22 August 2013

Rather than starting with what I—or anyone else—think and believe about the remarkable cache of documents the intelligence community declassified yesterday, I thought we should begin with a detailed account of what these documents actually are and the story they tell, individually and collectively.

The press stories that follow a document release like this often do not bother to do this. They look, instead, for a key—or the key—fact, around which the news story then develops. In this case, unsurprisingly, the key fact is that the NSA gathered tens of thousands of email communication by Americans before the FISA Court declared its actions unconstitutional. As the Washington Post puts it in its lead:

For several years, the National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-revised collection method, according to a 2011 secret court opinion.

Read full article.