The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies – Book Review
2 stars – Opens with a Lie, Goes Downhill from There
American Herald Tribune
5 June 2018
Graphic and full text below the fold.
Bill Harlow (Editor), George Tenet (Introduction), Porter J. Goss (Contributor), Michael V. Hayden USAF (Ret.) (Contributor), John McLaughlin (Contributor), Michael Morell (Contributor), Philip Mudd (Contributor), John Rizzo (Contributor), Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. (Contributor)
1 Star Authors Double-Down on Lies Told Previously
I am a co-signer of the below letter to the President of the United States of America from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), as delivered yesterday and also posted in ConsotiumNews.com by Robert Parry. A better more truthful book, albeit fiction to avoid the legal bru-ha-ha, is Broken!, a story of torture and treason far closer to reality than the version offered by the perpetrators themselves.
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Veteran Intelligence Professionals Challenge CIA’s “Rebuttal” on Torture
Continue reading “Review: Rebuttal – CIA “Leaders” Double-Down on Lies”
More Than Espionage: Open-source intelligence should be part of solution
By Andrew M. Borene
Here's some food for thought: White House policymakers and Congress can help develop an increasingly robust national intelligence capacity by investing new money in the pursuit of a centralized open-source intelligence (OSINT) infrastructure.
Phi Beta Iota: In 1992 it was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and The MITRE Corporation that destroyed the emergent Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) movement. CIA refused to deal with OSINT unless everyone associated with it was a U.S. citizen with a SECRET clearance (we do not make this stuff up), and MITRE misled the US Government in such a way as to promote their Open Source Information System (OSIS) that ended up providing analysts mediocre high-side access to six open sources (LEXIS-NEXIS, Oxford Analytics, Jane's Information Group, Predicast and two other non-memorable sources). The US Marine Corps, which was the proponent for OSINT based on the lessons learned in creating the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (MCIC), argued for an outside the wire center of excellence that would have access to all sources in all languages (in part because the “experts” flogged by contracting firms may have been expert once, but are not “the” expert on any given topic for any given day–for that we prize European and Chinese and Latin American graduate students about to receive their PhD).
During his tenure as Director of the Community Open Source Program Office (COSPO), Dr. Joe Markowitz, the only person ever to actually understand OSINT within CIA, closely followed by Carol Dumaine, founder of the Global Futures Partership, tried four years in a row, with the support of Charlie Allen, then Deputy Director for Collection (DDCI/C), to get an OSINT program line established. Four years in a row, Joan Dempsey, then Deputy Director for Community Management (DDCI/CM) refused. The secret IC is incapable of creating an Open Source Agency (OSA) as called for by the 9-11 Commission, and any money it puts in that direction will be wasted unless the Simmons-Steele-Markowitz recommendations briefed to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are respected.
Dr. Markowitz is also the author of the OSINT portions of vital Defense Science Board reports such as Transitions to and from Hostilities, and is unique within the CIA alumni for understanding both the needs of defense and the possibilities of OSINT. COSPO was an honest effort–CIA/OSC is not.
CIA and LEXIS-NEXIS still do not get it–they both want a monopoly on a discicpline they do not understand and cannot monopolize. The US Government is a BENEFICIARY of OSINT, not its patron, and any endeavor that is not outside the wire, transparent, and under diplomatic and civil affairs auspices, is destined to fail, just as CIA/OSC has failed all these years, just as LEXIS-NEXIS, Oxford Analytica, and Jane's Information Group have failed on substance all these years. They profit from government ignorance, they do not profit from actually connecting the government to sources that are largely free, not online, and not in English.
Continue reading “Journal: LEXIS-NEXIS OSINT Kiss to CIA/OSC”
Mike Hayden introduced the important concept of being able to connect the dots across disciplines from ingestion point onwards, not only at the finished production level. Steve Edwards flipped chart to show dots coming it at the top, and Robert Steele added the last three bars, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), Information Operations (IO), and all Other.
Doug Naquin, the senior Central Intelligence (CIA) officer responsible for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and for the Open Source Center (OSC), the half-baked replacement for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), is a good person trapped in a bad system. He not only does not know what he does not know, but is held in multiple strait-jackets by CIA security, CIA legal, and CIA culture.
In November 2005 we recognized the severe damage that Doug Naquin–with the best of intentions–was doing to the US military, and we tried to stop him. Below is the letter that was sent to the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, General Michael Hayden, USAF. He ignored the letter.
Naquin is still doing damage. Apart from misrepresentations to the Combatant Commanders (COCOMs), the personnel exchange is sending unqualified FBIS/OSC people out to the military where they not only have no clue, but they also try to spin everything to CIA's advantage. The Department of Defense (DoD) needs to realize that the OSC is not a “full-spectrum” OSINT shop; that it can barely handle CIA's own internal requirements (and by some accounts, is considered argely worthless among the CIA analysts as well)
This letter was on target. It is still on target. It is time for Doug Naquin to do what he does best: stay on campus at CIA and stop messing up the US military with misprepresentations, failures to perform, and exported personnel that are not worth the C Rations it takes to feed them.
