Public Intelligence Blog

John Stanton Blog

New Details Emerge in Salomi Hostage Case:  High Drama in HTS

by John Stanton

Observers indicate that two individuals in HTS leadership positions on the ground in Iraq—Lieutenant Colonel Byrd (Program Management Office – FWD)  and Michael Goains, GG-15 (Theater Coordination Element) had direct knowledge of Issa Salomi’s prior forays outside Camp Liberty/Victory Base Complex in Iraq unaccompanied by his teammates (team designation IZ-02,) or US military personnel. Salomi was apparently taken by an Iraqi insurgent group in January 2010 and a video of him recently appeared in global media outlets in February 2010.

Observers have also pointed out that Salomi is not, in fact, a contractor but is instead a temporary US Army Civilian employee. In 2009, HTS reverted to a government program and contractors were forced to choose between leaving or converting to US government civilian status.

“There is so much drama within the HTS program right now that it is unbelievable. Many, many people are being fired, rearranged and moved around due to management incompetence and personality problems,” said observers. “The amount of money being squandered is ridiculous.”

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American Commentary: America Rides off Into the Sunset

American Commentary: Mr. President, Words Matter

Big Dumb Government: Recession chugs on, except in government

Big Dumb Government: U.S. to Form Climate-Change Agency

Cyber-Security: Open Security Foundation – State of the Union 2010

Cyber-Security: Zeus Attack Spoofs NSA, Targets .gov and .mil

Foreign Affairs: China Growls At The Taiwan Arms Sale

Homeland Security: The Disarming Of America

Policy-Economic: Washington threatens to bypass Europe in battle for bank data

Policy-Intellectual Property: Authors Guild: ‘To RIAA or Not to RIAA’

Policy-Intellectual Property: In Secret, Nations Work Toward Crackdown on [Copyright] Piracy

Politics of Intelligence: Anti-terrorism chief rebukes politicians who use cases as talking points

Politics of Intelligence: The Intel Committees Need The Power Of The Purse

Threat-China: China’s Hawks Demand Cold War On The US

Threat-Terrorism: A Wounded But Dangerous Enemy

War in First-Person Poetry: A Well-Written War, Told In The First Person

Full Story Online

The Countertraffickers

Rescuing the victims of the global sex trade

by William Finnegan

May 5, 2008

Her allies and colleagues in this work are widely scattered. An ebullient Dubai prison officer named Omer, who calls Rotaru “sister,” has been a help. So have Russian policemen, an Israeli lawyer, a Ukrainian psychologist, an Irish social worker, a Turkish women’s shelter, Interpol, and various consulates and embassies, as well as travel agents, priests, and partner organizations, including an anti-trafficking group called La Strada, which has offices downstairs from Rotaru’s and a dedicated victims’ hot line.

Chuck Spinney

The author of this article, Simon Johnson, is a highly regarded economics professor at MIT and former chief economist of the IMF.  He has long argued persuasively, at least to my thinking, that the bailout of the “to-big-fail” banks in the US (and UK) did not work to solve the toxic asset problem, but merely kicked the can down the road.

In the two essays linked below Johnson argues that the political rigidities and peculiarities of the eurozone are impeding a rational adjustment to a major part of the worldwide debt problem.  This is increasing the probability of a concatenation of mutually destructive policy actions and reactions like those that precipitated the global depression in the 1930s.

Euro Falling, US Recovery Under Threat

Simon Johnson, Baseline Scenario, 7 February 2010

The euro depreciates, the dollar strengthens, and our path to recovery starts to run more uphill.

Europe Risks Another Global Depression

Simon Johnson, Baseline Scenario, 7 February 2010

The entirely pointless G7 meeting this weekend only served to underline the fact that Europe is again entering a serious economic crisis.

At the end of the meeting yesterday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told reporters, “I just want to underscore they made it clear to us, they the European authorities, that they will manage this [the Greek debt crisis] with great care.”

But the Europeans are not being careful – and it’s not just about Greece any more.  Worries about government debt and associated public sector liabilities (e.g., because banking systems are in deep trouble) have spread through the eurozone to Spain and Portugal.  Ireland and Italy are next up for hostile reconsideration by the markets, and the UK may not be far behind.

Chuck Spinney

Establishment Unsheathes the Long knives in Versailles???????

America: A fearsome foursome (Financial Times)

Phi Beta Iota: The Financial Times is retarded (yes, the R-word, used with love) and has not yet caught up to the fact that required registrations are so TIRED.  We provide the entire article as received, if you insist on registering, click on the photograph below to reach the Financial Times tollbooth.

The team seen most often in the Oval Office

David Axelrod, senior adviser A former journalist on the Chicago Tribune who quit to set up a political advertising firm, Mr Axelrod, 54, is Barack Obama’s longest-standing mentor, from his days in Chicago politics. Always at the candidate’s side during the election campaign, he is the chief defender of the Obama brand. Still a journalist at heart, he describes himself as having been “posted to Washington”.

Robert Gibbs, communications chief

The most visible face of the White House for his sardonic daily briefings. Mr Gibbs, 38, is perhaps the least likely member of the circle – he is a career Democratic press officer from Alabama who quit John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and shortly afterwards went to work for Senator Obama. A constant presence during the campaign, he is also seen as a keeper of the flame.

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Very interesting.  DARPA and IARPA are running about 10 years behind Steve Arnold;  Intel, CISCO, and Nokia are the folks we are watching, although we do not think CISCO will defeat Google, and we do not think Google will overcome its very harmful “do great evil just don’t get caught” model.

A Few Intelligence Science Board Reports

There is “an astonishing number of groups and activities concurrently pursuing the subject” of information sharing, according to a newly disclosed 2004 report (pdf) of the Intelligence Science Board (ISB).  But those activities are not well coordinated.  “In effect, we aren’t even sharing information about information sharing.”

Phi Beta Iota: The Advanced Information Processing and Analysis Steering Group (AIPASG) found much the same in 1992 or so.  The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) desperately needs to get back in the business of MANAGING, using its legitmate presidential authority over the budget to demand an inventory of all that is being done with our taxpayer dollars, and then working to eliminate redundancies and competing projects.

CIA Intelligence Science Board

Phi Beta Iota: This is dated, but if anywhere near this now, a very weak board indeed.

A few leads:

Everything on this site tagged Arnold

Twitter hits on this site

Intel Chip Chat

Intel’s Emerging Compute Model Forum

Cloud Computing (the vendor model against Haggle, the bottom-up infrastructure independent model)

Phi Beta Iota: The “proprietary” corporate model of software is going to collapse at some point.  The only solution that is scalable and sustainable as well as interoperable and effective is the bottom-up open source software solution.

Thank you.  Complex searches do not do well within Word Press.  Here are two distinct results for you, the first within Reviews, the second within Journal.

Reviews: Best Practices in Management (96)

OSINT is like anything else–clarity, diversity, and integrity matter.

Other using search term training (OSINT is irrelevant, this entire site is about OSINT):

Search: free intelligence training

Search: United Nations Intelligence Training

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

Search: Intelligence and the Viet-Nam War

See also:

About the Idea (39);  Definitiions (9);   Handbooks (39); Historic Contributions (226);  History of Opposition (13) and of course all the Articles & Chapters (68);   Books (OSS/EIN) (11);   Briefings & Lectures (66).

Robert David STEELE Vivas CV

Like many fellow Americans (22.9 million), I find myself unemployed and seeking work.   Our long-standing contract in support of the U.S. Special Operations Command (J-23) closes on 9 February. I am immediately available full-time for re-location anywhere.

There are so many intelligent and caring people out there that read this site,  so I appeal to all of you: if you are in a position to hire, or know someone who is, I am ready willing and able.

This web site is an accurate representation of what I know that is in the public domain.  I am immediately available to any government, corporation, or internaitonal organization; mobile as a geographic bachelor (my wife has five more years of government service before retirement–the family home will remain in Oakton, VA); and am totally mobile–travel is when I read, the more the better.

Steele as On Demand Speaker or Trainer

I am especially well-suited to an endeavor that seeks to create the world’s first M4IS2 capability (Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making), but happy to respond to any offer anywhere on the planet.

Preliminary contact should be to email address oss dot net at cox dot net to arrange telephone or face to face commuications.

YouTube 4 minute 13 second Thomas Malone at Davos on emerging Collective Intelligence.

His bottom line:  Human + Computers Converging toward a single global brain, eventually we may be able to harness global collective intelligence.

See also:

What is collective intelligence and what will we do about it?

2008 World Brain as EarthGame

2008 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

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Full Story Online

Steve Fondacaro and Montgomery Clough, senior program management of the US Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS), were warned as early as 2007 that Human Terrain Team members in Iraq and Afghanistan would become prey for insurgent groups. They were advised repeatedly that training must emphasize the dangerous environment HTS employees would be operating in. That training needed to focus on practices and procedures for handling life threatening situations to include kidnapping.

Issa Salomi, a 60 year old HTT member operating in a combat zone, was taken in January 2010 by an Iraqi insurgent group and a video of him was released on the Net in February 2010 by the same group. This tragic event drives home, once again, the core failings of the Human Terrain Team System: the inability to find qualified personnel, to train them properly and to, quite simply, take care of them. Some allege that many team leaders and HTS management itself have no clue where many of their teams are. “Some HTT members disappear for days and then return.”

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