Journal: Secret World Still Short on All Languages

IC’s Language, Linguistic Shortfalls Under Scrutiny by Anthony L. Kimery Thursday, 21 January 2010 The IC still has important pockets of critical intelligence analysis that continue to suffer. The rank and file analysts at the CIA, NSA and elsewhere throughout the Intelligence Community (IC) are patriotic, dedicated … hardworking. But they have long been hampered …

Journal: Intelligence & Innovation Support to Strategy, Planning, Programming, Budgeting, & Acquisition

Chuck Spinney is still the best “real” engineer in this town–almost everyone else is staggering after fifty years of government-specification cost-plus engineering.  Also, as Chuck explores in the piece on Complexity to Avoid Accountability is Expensive we in the “requirements” business are as much to blame–Service connivance with complexity has killed acquisition from both a …

Reference (2010): Fixing Intel–A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan

UPDATE: A colleague from within asked us to highlight this quote with the observation that neither the US IC nor DoD have any clue how to execute.  We agree.  Both lack leadership with vision and multinational panache; they simply do not know what they do not know because they have both wasted the last 21 …

Reference: Retired CIA officer–Fix the Agency

CNN Editor’s note: Charles S. Faddis is a retired CIA operations officer and the former head of the CIA’s unit focused on fighting terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction. The author of a recently published book about the CIA, “Beyond Repair,” Faddis is also president of Orion Strategic Services, a Maryland-based consulting firm. Phi Beta …

Journal: Underpants Bomber Shines Light on Naked USG–Without Four Reforms, USA Locked in Place

UPDATE 3:  Obama summons intelligence chiefs to White House meeting Comment: This is pathetic. No one now serving in the White House is capable of telling the President the truth–that our $75 billion a year is wasted, that the agencies are suffering from 1950’s mindsets with 1970’s technology and security and legal blinders that are …

Review: Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction (Paperback)

Utterly Brilliant Synthesis, Vital First Step–US Violates Every Single Principle December 18, 2009 United States Institute of Peace This book is a six-star special and will be so rated at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, where I cluster like non-fictions books in 98 categories, one of which is Stabilization & Reconstruction. At its …