These are my words, reflecting what I learned in multiple funded trips to work with Dutch intelligence at various levels, and multiple conversation across various conferences I attended in Europe. This is more or less what I told George Tenet when he became DCI….to no effect, naturally.
1994 was a very stressful time in Dutch intelligence history. A scandal had erupted in which the Parliament was investigating Dutch intelligence intrusions with audio-video into the homes of specific Dutch citizens suspected of this and that. Parliament was so angry they threatened to cut all funding for all intelligence. Two very good things emerged from this:
Intelligence is a tool for power and traditionally very sensitive by nature. Well-established and bureaucratic resistance, international positioning and working methods hamper cooperation concerning intelligence. In a multifunctional and multinational peace operation a lot of informal structures are intertwined with formal structures.
EXTRACT
In order to create a picture of the widest spectrum in a multifunctional mission cooperation is necessary among military, police, Governmental- and International organisations and NGO`s. Intelligence services need to communicate with each other, and multi-lateral agreements need to be established to governing the collection, analysis and sharing of intelligence.
NEVER confuse our passion for public intelligence with a desire to eliminate the secret world. On the contrary, Rule 1 for our multinational concept is “Feed the High Side First.” Rule 2 prohibits the high side from controlling open source sharing among all multinational stake-holders. This is all outlined in Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational].
We also distinguish between getting OSINT right within the all-source secret environment, and getting public intelligence right outside of and completely independent from the secret environment. Within the secret intelligence world, OSINT is still at the fourth-grade level, as least in the USA and outside the Nordics and Netherlands, here are a few graphics understood by but not yet accepted in contradistinction to the current paradigm within that community. Absent Integrity, no one will get to where we need to be.
Here are the core elements of the new model as promulgated by this web site as a front end of the Earth Intelligence Network (EIN), a 501c3 Public Charity. Our integral consciousness is reflected in our logo.
INTELLIGENCE is DECISION-SUPPORT. The process of intelligence is separate from whether the sources and methods are secret or not. There is nothing secret, unethical, or illegal about the process of intelligence as decision-support.
Original “Class Before One” (2010 Class 001 in Planning)
In 1988 a global campaign started at the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (MCIC) with the discovery that 80% or more of what the Marine Corps needed to do policy, acquisition, and operations support for this unique expeditionary and constabulary force, was not secret, not expensive, but also not known to anyone in Washington, D.C. Thus was the modern discipline of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) inspired.
This is year 21 in a 25 year fight for the public interest, and although the USA remains “severely deficient” (as stated by the Aspin-Brown Commission in 1996), the US secret world refuses to act on the findings that also called for OSINT to be a “top priority” for both funding and for DCI/DNA attention. Neither of the last have been forthcoming, and it can be fairly said that until an Open Source Agency is established, as called for on pages 23 and 423 of the 9-11 Commission Report, the USA will continue to spend $75 billion a year on the 20% it can capture with secret sources and methods (less than 5% of which is actually processed, i.e. 1% of the totality), all to produce, “at best” 4% of what the President and many others now not served “need to know.”
The Nordic nations, and Sweden in particular through the Folke Bernadotte Academy, have led the way in conceptualizing M4IS operational and intelligence networks:
INTELLIGENCE for PEACE: Multinational, Multifunctional Information-Sharing and Sense-Making, edited by Col Jan-Inge Svensson, SE (Ret), the foremost authority and educator on peace intelligence and the use of unclassified decisions support, goes to the printer on or about 1 December 2009.
Anyone wishing to contribute to this book, now tentatively scheduled to go to the printer on 1 December, must contact Col Svensson at the Folke Bernadotte Academy. Ideally, submit to him a one page overview of the proposed piece, which must address practical concepts, doctrines, tactics, tools, and produres relevant to peace intelligence. This book is intended to be the interim handbook for the United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN), a global grid that incorporates the Joint Military Analysis Centers (JMAC) and Joint Operations Centers (JOC), but does all that the Brahimi Report recommended, and more.
Over 35 peices are now in hand and being weeded down, in many cases simply being shortened with an easy link to the longer online version. As with all OSS/EIN books, the book–and in this case–additional supporting materials–will be easily available online at www.oss.net/Peace.
This was designed by Robert Steele and is shared under Creative Commons copyright with commercial restriction. There are two berets in existence, one in Sweden with Col Jan-Inge Svensson, the lead for peacekeeping intelligence and multinational information sharing, and one with Robert Steele, the lead for public intelligence in the public interest.
Click on the frog to see the latest briefing that includes a concept for harmonziing up to one trillion dollars a year in virtually organized giving from the one billion rich to the five billion poor.
