Ben Benavides: Desktop OSINT Handbook

Military, OSINT Generic

cover-ben-benavides-short-handbookBen Benavides, retired US Army master trainer, is as good as it gets in Army OSINT, but not widely enough known. He should be in charge of creating the Army OSINT Handbook and training program, AFTER we put CIA in its place and establish that overt HUMINT is OSINT and cannot be constrained by those who refused to be serious about overt human sources (CIA also forbids its own Open Source Center from talking to overt Subject Matter Experts (SME).  Really.  We do not make this stuff up.

benavides-49-page-quick-guide

Also by Ben Benavides:

2016 Ben Benavides OSINT 2ool Kit On The Go Bag (Bag O’Tradecraft)

Ben Benavides: Exploring Social Media Web Sites: A Guide for the Open Source Analyst

Handbook: How to Negotiate a Ceasefire

Law Enforcement, Military, Stabilization, Threats/Topical, UN/NGO

Kristan Wheaton posted the below to his blog yesterday:

Thursday, March 31, 2011

How To Negotiate A Ceasefire (HDCentre.org)

The Centre For Humanitarian Dialogue, located in Geneva, Switzerland, has done a really good job of pulling together a concise monograph called “Negotiating Ceasefires”.

Only 44 pages from start to finish (including endnotes and a comprehensive list of suggested additional readings), this guidebook is filled with practical advice, concise case studies and quotes from practitioners about the risks and rewards inherent in negotiating a ceasefire.

Read more….

Reference: The Pentagon Labyrinth

6 Star Top 10%, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, DoD, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), Historic Contributions, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Media, Military, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Monographs, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

The Pentagon Labyrinth

It is my pleasure to announce the publication of The Pentagon Labyrinth: 10 Short Essays to Help You Through It. This is a short pamphlet of less than 150 pages and is available at no cost in E-Book PDF format, as well as in hard copy from links on this page as well as here and here.  Included in the menu below are download links for a wide variety of supplemental/supporting information (much previously unavailable on the web) describing how notions of combat effectiveness relate to the basic building blocks of people, ideas, and hardware/technology; the nature of strategy; and the dysfunctional character of the Pentagon’s decision making procedures and the supporting role of its  accounting shambles.

Chuck Spinney
The Blaster

This pamphlet aims to help both newcomers and seasoned observers learn how to grapple with the problems of national defense.  Intended for readers who are frustrated with the superficial nature of the debate on national security, this handbook takes advantage of the insights of ten unique professionals, each with decades of experience in the armed services, the Pentagon bureaucracy, Congress, the intelligence community, military history, journalism and other disciplines.  The short but provocative essays will help you to:

  • identify the decay – moral, mental and physical – in America’s defenses,
  • understand the various “tribes” that run bureaucratic life in the Pentagon,
  • appreciate what too many defense journalists are not doing, but should,
  • conduct first rate national security oversight instead of second rate theater,
  • separate careerists from ethical professionals in senior military and civilian ranks,
  • learn to critique strategies, distinguishing the useful from the agenda-driven,
  • recognize the pervasive influence of money in defense decision-making,
  • unravel the budget games the Pentagon and Congress love to play,
  • understand how to sort good weapons from bad – and avoid high cost failures, and
  • reform the failed defense procurement system without changing a single law.

The handbook ends with lists of contacts, readings and Web sites carefully selected to facilitate further understanding of the above, and more.

Continue reading “Reference: The Pentagon Labyrinth”

Reference: Human Intelligence (HUMINT)–All Humans, All Minds, All the Time

About the Idea, HUMINT, Military, OSINT Generic
Robert David Steele
Position: External Researcher
Email Mr. Robert D. Steele

ROBERT D. STEELE is a retired Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer and also qualified as an S-1/Adjutant, with service at all levels from platoon to Service Headquarters. After four years active duty (the balance in the Individual Ready Reserve) and a decade in the clandestine service of the Central Intelligence Agency (including three tours overseas focused on terrorist and extremist targets), he resigned from the CIA to accept a Marine Corps invitation to be the senior civilian responsible for creating the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command) and served as the study directory for the flagship study, Overview of Planning and Programming Factors for Expeditionary Operations in the Third World. He resigned from the Marine Corps civil service in 1993 to lead the modern Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) revolution, and is the author of the DIA, NATO, and SOF OSINT Handbooks, as well as personally responsible for training 7,500 officers from 66 countries. His latest book, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability, outlines a course of action for creating public intelligence in the public interest across all organizations, beginning with the United Nations. Mr. Steele founded OSS.Net, Inc. and Earth Intelligence Network, the latter a 501c3 public charity, and is the foremost proponent for a Swedish concept enhancing Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, and Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2). Mr. Steele holds graduate degrees in international relations and public administration from Lehigh University and the University of Oklahoma. He has also earned a certificate in intelligence policy from Harvard University and a diploma in defense studies from the Naval War College.

SSI Publications by Mr. Robert D. Steele

EDIT:  None of these are “handbooks” in the classical sense of the word, but all are strategic guides that set the standard for holistic approaches to human intelligence, information operations, and analytic intelligence.

Added June 03, 2010
Type: Monograph
Human Intelligence: All Humans, All Minds, All the Time.
Authored by Mr. Robert D. Steele.
The author explores the centrality of Human Intelligence in meeting the needs of the U.S. Army, as well as the Department of Defense, and the whole of government, for relevant information and tailored intelligence essential to creating a national security strategy; for defining whole of government policies that work in harmony; for acquisition of the right capabilities at the right price in time to be useful; and for operations, both local and global.
Added February 01, 2006
Type: Monograph
Information Operations: Putting the “I” Back Into DIME.
Authored by Mr. Robert D. Steele.
In the Age of Information, the primary source of National Power is information that has been converted into actionable intelligence or usable knowledge. Information Operations is the critical ingredient in early warning, peacekeeping, stabilization & reconstruction, and homeland defense.
Added February 01, 2002
Type: Monograph
The New Craft of Intelligence: Achieving Asymmetric Advantage in the Face of Nontraditional Threats.
Authored by Mr. Robert D. Steele.
This monograph is the third in the Strategic Studies Institute's “Studies in Asymmetry” Series. In it, the author examines two paradigm shifts–one in relation to the threat and a second in relation to intelligence methods– while offering a new model for threat analysis and a new model for intelligence operations in support to policy, acquisition, and command engaged in nontraditional asymmetric
LINKS REPAIRED 10 July 2010

Handbook: Joint Operating Environment 2010

C4/JOE/Software, Government, Military, Military
Full Document Online

This is an absolutely world-class document, and to the best of our recollection, the single best formulation we have seen.  The perspectives, insights, professional approach, and over-all treatment of the challenges of the future are truly first class, and superior to CIA's Global Trends and other such offerings in relation to the needs of the military.

It does have flaws that are not the fault of the author's or the Command, but of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, neither of whom know anything at all about Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).   Supplemental Observation

The document missed Indonesia as a demographic powerhouse; does not fully understand water; understates the DoD share of the US budget by 50%; ignores Operations Other Than War (OOTW) and especially the vital role that the military can play with the Army Civil Affairs Brigade as a hub, ignores multinational outreach in other than liaison terms, and under-studies defense acquisition which is not a hiring problem, it is a mind-set and information problem.

Despite these flaws, which are beyond the control of the author's since they did not receive any intelligence support worthy of the name, this is a phenomenal document with enormous potential for the future of Whole of Government Operations across the spectrum of high-level threats from Poverty to Crime.

It's time to drain the DoD intelligence swamp, that will actually fix acquisition and support to operations in the real-world at the same time.

See also:

Graphic: Whole of Government Intelligence

Graphic: OSINT DOSC MDSC as Kernel for Global Grid to Meet Stabilization & Reconstruction as Well as Whole of Government Policy, Acquisition, and Operations Support

2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

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

Journal: DoD Mind-Set Time Lags Most Fascinating

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

Handbook: Human Terrain Team Handbook (10/2008)

HUMINT, Military, Stabilization & Reconstruction
Document Online
Cryptome on HTT

Phi Beta Iota: Although we assume there must be some isolated success stories, we have not heard any.  The Human Terrain Team (HTT) is nothing more than Civil Affairs done properly, and from all accounts, from the most vicious to direct observation, HTT is a badly managed, badly conceptualized, badly staffed program that is a cancer on the good name of Civil Affairs.  The program should be terminated at the same time that the Army Civil Affairs Brigade is made OpCon to a new Stabilization & Reconstruction (S&R) Field Activity with a brigadier general in command and a ban on all lawyers and security officers–both S&R and Civil Affairs should be honest enterprises in which those in touch with the public do not need clearances.