Public Intelligence Blog – Page 3633 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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berto small — Berto Jongman Recommends...

Wednesday 31 March 2010

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Patrick Hoesly, CIA)

The CIA recommendations for influencing the European public into continuing their support for the mission in Afghanistan is receiving a lot of attention both in The Netherlands and beyond. But in a military conflict, war is only one stage of the struggle. The biggest struggle is for the hearts and minds of the public at large. What's special about the case of the document is not so much its content, but the fact that it is now available for all to see.

At the top of the CIA-document it states: ‘Why counting on apathy might not be enough'.

Phi Beta Iota: CIA and the Pentagon both stink at Information Operations because neither is interested in putting the truth on the table and working from there, only in manipulating perceptions to achieve ends that are neither strategic nor just. For an alternative perspective that treats the truth with respect, see INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time (OSS, 2006), and more recently, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (EIN, 2010).

2010/04/012010/09/02

Journal: The Legal And Moral Issues Of Drone Use

02 Diplomacy, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military

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March 30, 2010

The use of unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, to fight the Taliban and al-Qaida has increased sharply.

Text and Audio Online

The State Department's top lawyer, Harold Koh, has issued legal justification for targeted killings using drone strikes. But some civil liberties groups are critical of the decision.

2010/04/012010/04/01

Journal: The Truth on Khost Kathy

10 Security, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Government

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Phi Beta Iota: This is the single most relevant comment, by an individual present at Khost, on the reality behind the incompetence of CIA at all levels from D/CIA to the “mob” that got itself killed in Khost. See original post with link, Journal: CIA Leads the “Walking Dead” in USA.

– – – – – – – BEGIN CITED POST – – – – – – –

No one wants to be the person to speak ill of the dead. The truth, however, must trump sensibilities in this matter for a number of reasons, first and foremost being that of using this catastrophic incident as a case study in how not to conduct operations in espionage.

This horrible blunder was at once both easily predictable and preventable. I cannot think of one principle of security that was not violated here. Violations fommented out of the apparent incompetence, obvious arrogance, blind ambition and elitism of “Kathy.” Having been warned repeatedly, constantly, continuously concerning suspicious developments in the days leading up to the “meet”, Kathy was stubbornly and arrogantly dismissive of sound wisdom, counsel and warning. She marginalized and widely disregarded those who were there to conduct and advise her on ground tactical operations. The proof of this is that none were present at the “welcoming party” because they knew that it was not tactically sound, hence no “knuckle draggers” were killed or maimed; they just had to clean up the mess, which they did in the magnificent fashion that is their consistent calling card.

Continue reading “Journal: The Truth on Khost Kathy”

2010/04/012010/04/05

Journal: Audit the Fed & Cost of Wall Street Charity

03 Economy, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics, Government

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Federal Reserve Transparency Working Group and Supporters:

We have 32 cosponsors for S.604 ” Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009″ and 319 cosponsors for H.R. 1207 ” Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009″

The Federal Reserve as a Confidence Game: What They Were Saying in 2007

Salon: The Federal Reserve has come clean about its covert actions
“Thomas Jefferson put a stop to Alexander Hamilton’s idea of a powerful central bank out of fear it would be unaccountable to the public. The Fed has just proven Jefferson’s point.”

2010/04/012010/04/01

Castro’s secret archives: US Special Ops prepares to snatch five decades of damaging material

Communities of Practice, Government, Military

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WayneMadsenReport (paid subscription + some free content)

(From March 24-25)

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR) has learned from knowledgeable sources in the Pentagon that the U.S. Special Operations Command has recently been tasked to come up with a covert operation designed to snatch the secret archives complied over five decades by former Cuban President Fidel Castro.

Our sources report that among Castro's archives are documents proving the collaboration of top U.S. Mafia figures, including Mafia financial boss Meyer Lansky, with the CIA in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. Castro apparently kept track of many of those involved in the assassination of Kennedy because they were also actively involved in anti-Castro plots associated with right-wing Cuban exiles that were organized out of Miami, New Orleans, Houston, and Dallas, cities where the Mafia was extremely active.

WMR has learned that Castro's extensive archives have been secured in a well-protected facility on the Isle of Youth (formerly the Isle of Pines) off the southwest coast of Cuba.

In addition to documents that point to the mob's and CIA's involvement in the Kennedy assassination, including the roles played by the Canadian Bronfman family and their wealthy attorney, the CIA-connected Louis Bloomfield of Montreal, the Castro archives reportedly contain a wealth of information about Cuban support for Angola's government and liberation movements in Africa and Latin America. The archives also have details about the role of the CIA in the Angolan civil war and the coups that toppled Chilean President Salvador Allende and other leaders, as well as Henry Kissinger's infamous Operation Condor that “disappeared” thousands of leftist, student, and labor leaders in Latin America.

Continue reading “Castro's secret archives: US Special Ops prepares to snatch five decades of damaging material”

2010/04/012010/05/08

Banksterism: Total Wall Street Bailout Cost, Financial Crisis Tracker

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

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Financial Crisis Tracker — Center for Media and Democracy's Financial Crisis Portal

The Wall Street Bailout Cost table is produced and updated monthly by the Real Economy Project of the Center for Media and Democracy, which publishes SourceWatch. The total is reflected on the Financial Crisis Tracker widget (to the left). This calculation was peer-reviewed by economists at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. This table represents a unique accounting of actual funds disbursed. Our total includes major programs of the U.S. Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and other government agencies to assist the financial sector and institutions that had a role in the crisis. It does not include stimulus funds, unemployment, student loans, auto bailout and other initiatives to create jobs or support citizens.

2010/04/012010/04/01

Journal: CIA Leads the “Walking Dead” in USA

04 Education, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

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A Dagger to the CIA

On December 30, in one of the deadliest attacks in CIA history, an Al Qaeda double agent schemed his way onto a U.S. base in Afghanistan and blew himself into the next life, taking seven Americans with him. How could this have happened? Agency veteran Robert Baer explains, offering chilling new details about the attack and a plea to save the dying art of espionage

If we take Khost as a metaphor for what has happened to the CIA, the deprofessionalization of spying, it's tempting to consider that the agency's time has passed. “Khost was an indictment of an utterly failed system,” a former senior CIA officer told me. “It's time to close Langley.”

I'm not prepared to go quite that far. The United States still needs a civilian intelligence agency. (The military cannot be trusted to oversee all intelligence-gathering on its own.) But the CIA—and especially the directorate of operations—must be stripped down to its studs and rebuilt with a renewed sense of mission and purpose. It should start by getting the amateurs out of the field. And then it should impose professional standards of training and experience—the kind it upheld with great success in the past. If it doesn't, we're going to see a lot more Khosts.

Phi Beta Iota: Robert Bear, a most-respected colleague, only scratches the surface. While we endorse his condemnation of Clinton and Deutch specifically, Robert misses the deeper history and the broader implications. CIA was “Flawed by Design” as Amy Zegart puts it so well, and has always been a loose-cannon shoot from the hip organization with what Tim Weiner now calls the “Legacy of Ashes”.

Continue reading “Journal: CIA Leads the “Walking Dead” in USA”