Public Intelligence Blog

Marcus Aurelius

Dot, Dot, Dot . . .

March 10, 2010

In his new book The Watchers, (Penguin Press, 2010), Shane Harris chronicles what he calls “the rise of America’s surveillance state,” a process he’s been following since he was a reporter and technology editor at Government Executive from 2001 to 2005.

It’s a story with all the elements of a spy thriller: political intrigue, shadowy federal organizations and a compelling cast of characters desperately seeking to prevent the next Sept. 11. At the center is the enigmatic John Poindexter, former national security adviser and architect of the ill-fated Total Information Awareness data collection and analysis effort.

. . . . . . .

What I discovered was that it really was the Beirut attack that shocked the intelligence system in a very similar way to 9/11. You have the Marines in Beirut, ostensibly on this international peacekeeping mission. They’re hunkered down at the airport. For various political reasons, they’re not allowed to go out very much in public. They are sort of sitting ducks. What happens is in the aftermath of the bombing, the intelligence community finds out there were all these warnings that something bad was about to happen to the Marines at the airport. So you had, in the spring of 1983, more than 100 individual warnings about car bombings fielded by the intelligence community.

Full Interview Online

The Marines were blind, deaf and dumb sitting at the base. And the golden nugget of it all is that NSA intercepted, in the days before the attack, this phone conversation going from a minister in Iran to presumably one of these organizing terrorist groups–directing this group to go and take this spectacular action against the Marines. You add all these up and it looks a lot like 9/11. There’s all this information sitting there and it’s like, how come nobody’s putting it together? And Poindexter is the guy who looks at this and says, “This shouldn’t happen and we can take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen. There has to be a way to logically approach this problem, systematize the whole process and connect those dots.”

Phi Beta Iota: The US Intelligence Community is badly managed, grotesquely over-funded, and incapable of changing its culture for the simple reason that instead of finding and empowering leaders with new ideas and open minds, we continue to give more money to old leaders, like pouring gasoline on a fire.  We still cannot process 90% of what we collect; we still cannot speak foreign languages; and we still do not play well with others.  The IC is managed by people who know nothing of intelligence–they are essentially staffers who went through the motions of moving money around–and their only real accomplishment is that they have not burned any bridges.  Unfortunately, they have been so busy not burning bridges they have not built anything worthwhile.  The IC is a shell game–move money, move the harem around, repeat the same testimony over and over to Congress again–ultimately the IC is a $75 billion a year tragic farce.

See Also:

Review (Guest): THE WATCHERS–The Rise of America’s Surveillance State

2000 ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings

Book: INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH–Final

With great regret, we have had to close all comments and ping-backs because Russian spammers are over-whelming WordPress.  Emails are always welcome and where desired structured comments delivered via email will happily be posted as guest interventions.

Chuck Spinney

This is a dynamite op-ed written jointly by my good friend Marshall Auerback and Rob Parenteau.

Chuck

Coming to a Country Near You

Let a Dozen Latvias Bloom?

By MARSHALL AUERBACK and ROB PARENTEAU

The article’s bottom line conclusion:

It is now time for the rest of us to follow the Lilliputians of Iceland:  to take the rentier juggernaut down before it completes the task. Time to pry the vampire squid off our faces so we can see the light of day again and allow some semblance of humanity to flourish again.  Hopefully, Iceland represents the future, not Latvia.

Full Story Online

Phi Beta Iota: Iceland has led the way.  It is time to start closing down the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the outrageous misbehavior of Goldman Sachs and the other banks.  Nations need to start nationalizing ill-gotten gains, refusing to pay predatory loan interest, and beginning to think for themselves.  We certainly encourage judicial activism in confiscating foreign-owned land and structures and in blocking both the privatization of water and other commonwealth resources, while also blocking predatory and often hazardous or poisonous importations.    Top-down government has been corrupted and does not work.  The only means to achieve resilience is bottom-up “home rule.”  We salute Iceland for its intelligence and its integiryt.

Marcus Aurelius

Timeline: Government Under Attack

By Dawn Lim and Ross Gianfortune dlim@govexec.com March 5, 2010

Thursday evening’s shootout between Pentagon police officers and a gunman apparently motivated by anti-government sentiment was the latest in a spate of attacks on federal employees and facilities and serves as a stark reminder that public servants too often find themselves unexpectedly in harm’s way. The following timeline reviews major attacks during the past two decades.

Feb. 18, 2010. A small jet is flown into a building housing a federal tax office in Austin, Texas, injuring 13 and killing two. The pilot, Joseph Andrew Stack, was angry with the Internal Revenue Service.

Nov. 5, 2009. An Army psychiatrist goes on a rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding dozens. The alleged gunman, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was a Muslim who had been in contact with a radical Imam and was about to be deployed overseas.

June 1, 2009. A gunman opens fire on a U.S. military recruiting office in Little Rock, Ark., killing one soldier and wounding another. The suspect, a Muslim convert, opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but was not affiliated with a larger terrorist network.

Full Story Online

Phi Beta Iota: The full list is both very incomplete, and hugely misrepresentative.   The list does not include the hanging of census workers, the increased calls for Tyrannicide, the many under-reported bombs and threats across the country, and the growing underground economy that is turning its back on a government many now consider to be an unaffordable burden.   The list also fails to address the nuances between state-sponsored attacks, state-allowed attacks, Islam-oriented attackes, and domestic insurgency such as documented in Harvest Of Rage–Why Oklahoma City Is Only The Beginning and Rage of the Random Actor.  The list also avoids addressing the behavior of the US Government acting “in our name” but far removed from our values as a Republic Of, By, and For We the People, a story told in many books, such as Blood Money–Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq on top ofSAVAGE CAPITALISM AND THE MYTH OF DEMOCRACY–Latin America in the Third Millennium and Open Veins of Latin America–Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent;  and in journal articles such as Why they hate us (II): How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?.

Read the rest of this entry »

Full Story: New WH Chief of Staff

And the brief window we had to fix this country will be gone.

Gone.

Gone, baby, gone.

I don’t know what your team has been up to, but they haven’t served you well. And Rahm, poor Rahm, has turned into a fighter — not of Republicans, but of the left. He called those of us who want universal health care “f***ing retarded.” Look, I don’t know if Rahm is the problem or if it’s Gibbs or Axelrod or any of the other great people we owe a debt of thanks to for getting you elected. All I know is that whatever is fueling your White House it’s now running on fumes. Time to shake things up!

Phi Beta Iota: The Huffington Post is consistently negative on Rahm Emanuel, and with good reason.  Between his partisan ideology and David Axelrods ignoring the 70% of the eligible voters that did not vote for President Barack Obama, the White House is completely out of touch with reality and literally has no intelligence (decision-support) on ANYTHING.   The government is BROKEN.  Click on the photograph to read the full satirical piece.

India-Pakistan: Update. An Indian prosecutor in a special court in Mumbai said active duty members of the Pakistan Army and a serving major general oversaw the training of Lashkar-e-Taiba militants who carried out the deadly Mumbai attacks in November 2008, Press Trust of India reported 9 March. Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said in his final arguments that it could be inferred that the attack was state-sponsored.

The Hindu account is sharper. “The November 26 attack was not an ordinary attack by 10 indoctrinated terrorists. It was well orchestrated, meticulously planned and [reflected] a deep-seated hatred for our country. It was a classic case of sponsored terrorism. Evidence by the prosecution has successfully established that the attack was sponsored by Pakistan. Irrefutable inference [can be drawn] that it was sponsored by State actors involved in the security apparatus of Pakistan,” Mr. Nikam argued.

He said the Major General’s name was not revealed to the attackers “undoubtedly because he was from the Pakistan Army.” “He is an entity separate from the Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT]; he must have been the supreme authority running the training camp.”

Citing excerpts from the judicial confession statement of lone surviving terrorist Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab, recorded on 20 February 2009, Mr. Nikam said the Major General visited the training camps when military and intelligence training was being imparted to the attackers. He had enquired whether the trainees had any complaints and was keen that they completed the mission given by the LeT.

Comment: The Indians are serious about improving anti-terror cooperation, whereas Pakistan wants to restart a comprehensive dialogue.  Pakistan has arrested terrorists from every group except those that target India.  When that occurs, India will know Pakistan has abandoned terror as an instrument of state policy.

Since mid-January, Pakistan has done more to disrupt Pakistan-based terrorists and insurgents than any administration in a quarter century. But it has done little to suppress anti-Indian terrorists, which explains the public embarrassment of the Mumbai trial.

Phi Beta Iota: The tide has turned in the “Global War on Terror,” for a variety of reasons, with Malaysia, Indonesia, and Turkey being among those nations that merit huge respect for their steady secular approach to counter-terrorism, but two nations still stand out as state-sponsors of terrorism: Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.  Until the Americans stop lying to themselves and the public about their naive relationships with 42 of the 44 dictators on the planet, and their naive acceptance of Pakistan’s deceit, Afghanistan will continue to be a “hurt locker.”

A C-130 was lumbering along when a cocky F-16 flashed by.

The jet jockey decided to show off.

The fighter jock told the C-130 pilot, “Watch this!” and promptly went into a barrel roll followed by a steep climb.

He then finished with a sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier. The F-16 pilot asked the C-130 pilot what he thought of that.

The C-130 pilot said, “That was impressive, but watch this!”

The C-130 droned along for about 5 minutes and then the C-130 pilot came back on and said, “What did you think of that?”

Puzzled, the F-16 pilot asked, “What did you do?”

The C-130 pilot chuckled. “I stood up,

stretched my legs,

walked to the back,

went to the bathroom,

then got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun.”

And the moral of this story is…..

When you are young and foolish, speed and flash may seem a good thing. When you get older and smarter, dull and comfortable doesn’t seem so bad!

Wage Peace, not War….

Marcus Aurelius

Phi Beta Iota: This is the month’s good news story–the silver lining in the cloud over America resulting from the loss of political integrity within both political parties.  We continue to support both universal service (to bond the public and keep Congress honest), and military service as the finest possible coming of age experience.  The crucible of Iraq and Afghanistan have hurt America as an international political and economic entity, but they have also raised a new generation of young leaders–not just officers, but non-commissioned officers down to the “strategic corporal,” that could be the Greatest Generation of our era.

Battle-tested: From soldier to business leader

“The thinking was that we could bring in world-class leadership talent that was already trained and ready to go,” says Jennifer Seidner, a senior recruiting manager at Wal- Mart. “And then we could teach them retail, because we know that pretty well.”

Full Story Online

Marcus Aurelius

Phi Beta Iota: This website is focused on public intelligence in the public interest and strives to avoid favoring any specific policy proiposition.  Our view is that an informed public is a nation’s greatest strength.  When we post information that takes a strident position, it is for informational purposes, not as an endorsement.  Below, linked from the photograph, is a speech delivered in the House of Lords of the British Parliament.

Geert Wilders

EXTRACT:  Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t have a problem and my party does not have a problem with Muslims as such. There are many moderate Muslims. The majority of Muslims are law-abiding citizens and want to live a peaceful life as you and I do. I know that. That is why I always make a clear distinction between the people, the Muslims, and the ideology, between Islam and Muslims. There are many moderate Muslims, but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam.

Islam strives for world domination. The Quran commands Muslims to exercise jihad. The Quran commands Muslims to establish shariah law. The Quran commands Muslims to impose Islam on the entire world.

Germany- Russia: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said today that Russian President Medvedev should discuss his security initiative “within the framework” of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, RIA Novosti reported. Merkel said, “President Medvedev and I spoke by telephone last week and we reiterated that we should discuss his initiative on partnership in the security sphere.”

Note: The Russians are proposing a new European security treaty that rivals and might eventually replace NATO, but with Russia, Germany and France as the new leaders. The Germans plus some of the original NATO members appear to want more balance in their foreign relations, meaning they appear to be seeking to reduce their subservience to the US by establishing offsetting relations with Russia.

While that might seem odd, that is the way it looks. Even stranger is that the US is presented as supporting European NATO’s call for a withdrawal of nuclear weapons from western Europe, potentially leaving Russia and Frances as the only states possessing nuclear weapons in Europe.  Of course, the French will not dismantle their nuclear weapons, even while they support withdrawal of American weapons.

US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past nine years have forced the maturation of relations and attitudes in Europe and Asia. The security regime of the post-World War II era is finally ending, albeit slowly and a decade after it should have ended.

US strategic planners need to be thinking about the implications of being first among equals, more than of being the only superpower.