Intel Matters

[Crafty_Dog]

 Why Torture Is Counterproductive
Analysis
December 10, 2014 | 02:13 GMT Print Text Size
Torture is Counterproductive
Military police process incoming Taliban and al Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo Bay's Camp X-Ray in Cuba in 2002. (Petty Officer 1st class Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Navy/Getty Images)
Summary

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government had very little intelligence on al Qaeda's plans and capabilities. There was a tremendous amount of fear that the strikes were only the first of many large-scale attacks to come, and reports even circulated that the group had nuclear weapons planted in U.S. cities. The public as well as government officials were in shock and caught off guard. In hindsight, it is easy to understand how extreme fear of the unknown compelled some elements of the intelligence community to embrace the idea that harsh interrogation measures were required to understand the urgent and nebulous threat the nation was facing.

Indeed, the sense of fear and panic was significant enough to cause personnel in some agencies to override the moral objections associated with extreme interrogation tactics, which is also to ignore the widely regarded fact that torture does not produce reliable intelligence. Yet, the Senate report released Dec. 9 makes it clear that, from a purely pragmatic point of view, the results of the United States' enhanced interrogation program were negligible, and as the final analysis shows, the morally objectionable means of this program were not justified by its paltry results.
Analysis

The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report highlights and describes certain techniques in great detail — including the use of stress positions, sleep deprivation, slapping, shaking, water boarding and induced hypothermia — but does not reveal any techniques that were not already publicly known. The CIA began implementing these techniques, deemed torture by opponents and enhanced or harsh interrogation techniques by supporters, in 2002. The aim was to improve the chances of acquiring time-sensitive information from high value-targets that would be critical to national security. The thinking of the time was to employ more robust methods to uncover impending catastrophic attacks against U.S. citizens, the "ticking time bomb scenario" as it is commonly referred to.

In 2004, the revelations of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq at the hands of U.S. military personnel garnered widespread coverage by domestic and international media. Images of military police harassing and violating prisoners were circulated, sparking significant controversy over whether the U.S. government employed torture against its enemy combatants, a stark violation of human rights for many as well as an infringement of the Geneva Conventions. Though the media focused on the actions of the military police, rather than interrogators, the revelations quickly led to further inquiries and deep scrutiny over the interrogation practices conducted at the prison and across the intelligence community.
Conversation: Putting the CIA Interrogation Report Into Context

The scandal led the Defense Department to quickly tighten its policies on interrogations, while each military branch emphatically trained its personnel on operating in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. However, the CIA continued to use enhanced interrogation techniques, though only for a short period and on relatively few combatants. In January 2009, President Barrack Obama signed an executive order that restricted all U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct interrogations strictly in accordance with the methods described in the U.S. Army Field Manual 2-22.3, a publication that is readily available to the public.

Whether the enhanced interrogation techniques implemented by the CIA equate to torture still remains a hotly contested issue in the United States. It is true that all the methods detailed in the report are intended to inflict substantial emotional or physical pain on detainees. Aside from the serious ethical concerns surrounding the techniques detailed in the Senate report, the use of torture or any technique designed to inflict some measure of pain or duress upon a detainee makes for a poor, if not counterproductive, strategy in gaining actionable intelligence. The reasons for this include the inherent nature of the interrogation process as well as the inadvertent psychological consequences of torture or harsh techniques on the detainee.
Defining Interrogation

The sole objective of an intelligence-driven interrogation is to acquire actionable information through direct questioning or elicitation of a detainee. In this sense, actionable intelligence is any piece of information, by itself or as a factor in analysis, that military commanders or policymakers can use in making decisions. If an interrogator fails to obtain such information, the sole objective was not achieved, and the process was a failure. Likewise, if the intent of an interrogation was not to gain actionable intelligence, the interrogation becomes something entirely different.

Despite dramatic Hollywood portrayals of the intelligence-gathering process, interrogating a detainee is actually a very simple process. It can be looked at as an interview, though a major difference between an interrogation and an interview is that many subjects are unwilling to provide answers to pertinent questions at first. As a result, the first step in an interrogation is convincing the subject to cooperate. It is this critical phase, which the U.S. Army Field Manual 2-22.3 refers to as an "approach," that often receives the most attention from the public and, sometimes, even from the interrogator.

Setting aside legal and moral considerations, there is a wide variety of conflicting approaches that can be used to encourage a detainee to provide actionable intelligence. It should be noted that not all approaches are necessarily designed to evoke negative feelings in a detainee. In fact, the Field Manual 2-22.3 details several methods designed to do the opposite. The U.S. intelligence community mostly relies on approaches that generate positive feelings within the detainee, such as "emotional love" and "pride and ego up," in addition to incentive-based approaches. Outside of inflicting emotional or physical harm on a detainee, all approaches are simply conversations guided by the interrogator that would lead the detainee to willingly provide information of intelligence value. A prime example of an incentive-based approach convincing a detainee to talk is when the Detroit underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, cooperated with U.S. authorities after they brought in two of his family members from Nigeria.

These conversations can take time for an interrogator, however, and often span multiple sessions that are carried out over the course of days, weeks or even years. While the time devoted to garner actionable intelligence can be substantial, the interrogator's chance of successfully completing the objective is slim. The vast majority of detainees who are initially uncooperative will remain so, or at least never become cooperative in full. The necessary time to run approaches and the slim odds of success are critical barriers in an interrogation that seeks to discover imminent attacks against U.S. citizens. It is because of these obstacles — that is, to save time and force cooperation — that interrogators sought to employ enhanced interrogation techniques.
The Limits of Enhanced Interrogations

As a potential source of intelligence, interrogations are one of the least reliable and least timely methods employed by the various intelligence disciplines. While inflicting emotional or physical pain on a subject as an interrogation approach will likely elicit a quick response, those responses are not necessarily truthful or accurate, and thus the interrogation can still be a failure.

Whether looking for information on potential attacks or other, less perishable intelligence, an interrogator can gather actionable intelligence only if the subject is telling the truth and answers the questions to the best of his ability. Even if the subject is cooperating, the information he shares is not always accurate. By virtue of placing the detainee under extreme stress, torture can make it difficult for the detainee to accurately recall information from memory. Detainees may misremember details and will often fabricate information they think will end the interrogation.

All information of intelligence value, particularly any information about an impending attack, is time sensitive. For the vast majority of interrogations, the information acquired can only be as recent as the date when the subject was detained, and it begins losing value immediately. A detainee who has been in detention for years will not have intelligence on a pending attack — even information that is a few days old could very well be useless. The capture of an insurgent or terrorist leader could place any attack plans on hold, or the remaining leaders could redraw them, thus making the detainee's knowledge outdated and less valuable. For this reason, when compared to the numerous other means by which the intelligence community collects intelligence, an interrogation makes a poor source of intelligence when attempting to thwart attacks.

To understand why torture provides little benefit over approaches permissible under Field Manual 2-22.3, it is important to consider the perspective of the interrogator and the detainee.
The Process

Before entering the booth with a detainee, every interrogator is armed with a dossier on his subject and a list of collection requirements — broad, open-ended questions on an array of subjects that policymakers, military commanders or others in the intelligence community may have. Background information about the detainee can range from a complete lack of knowledge to an enormous collection of various intelligence reports that collectively proves the detainee's role within an enemy organization as well as the likely topics on which the detainee will have information. Regardless how much information an intelligence agency has on a detainee, there is always a high degree of uncertainty as to what the detainee actually knows.

Many detainees choose not to cooperate at first. They employ interrogation-resistance strategies of some fashion to avoid divulging pertinent information. These methods vary and are taught and shared by militants inside and out of detention facilities. Even before meeting their interrogator for the first time, most detainees are aware of what information they need to safeguard, often having an expectation of what questions they will be asked during the interrogation.

Sometimes it is obvious when a detainee chooses to remain uncooperative; the detainee may remain completely silent, respond to questions with inappropriate answers or attempt to take charge of the conversation. Even when they appear to be cooperating, the interrogator can never be entirely confident the detainee is responding to questions to the best of his ability or, more important, accurately sharing his information. Fortunately, interrogators are trained in numerous tactics to assess the truthfulness of a detainee's stories, but even when skillfully employed, such techniques do not provide guarantees, nor do they help build cooperation.

There are many reasons for a detainee to resist direct questioning. Whether such reasons are ideological in nature or based on fear of reprisals, a detainee must actively make the decision to provide his interrogator with accurate information. Without the desire, the detainee simply will not respond, regardless of any interrogation approach. Many advocates of enhanced interrogation techniques believe the detainee will choose to provide accurate information to stop the pain.
Establishing Rapport

In order to help an approach, an interrogator must build rapport with the subject. They must develop a relationship where credibility exists in both the interrogator and the detainee. It is only after doing this that an interrogator can accurately assess the truthfulness of a detainee's responses. Rapport helps the interrogator establish a baseline for the detainee and understand his typical behavior and mannerisms, developed through conversations discussing pertinent and non-pertinent matters. Likewise, building rapport helps bolster the credibility of the interrogator. It is particularly helpful when using incentive-based approaches and makes the interrogator's other planned approaches more effective. Using harsh techniques or torture complicates the rapport-building process, making it harder for an interrogator to discern between lies and truth.

Building rapport does not always mean the detainee will develop positive feelings toward the interrogator, and even some approved approaches require developing an uncordial relationship. However, placing the detainee under the stress of extreme emotional or physical pain will halt any relationship building as the detainee focuses on his pain. Because an interrogator is never quite certain of what a detainee knows, the detainee under duress or pain may be subjected to questions he may truthfully not know the answers to. In this situation, a detainee will be pushed to say anything necessary to stop the pain, including lies.

Even if the detainee actually has an answer that would satisfy his interrogator, he can still use resistance techniques. Resisting subjects often provide a detailed response that barely answers a given question. They also provide harmless nuggets of truth in hopes of persuading the interrogators of their full cooperation. Again, having prior intelligence on the detainee and building rapport is crucial to spotting these resistance techniques.

Not all inaccurate information provided by the detainee is necessarily a result of his being uncooperative. When being questioned under duress or pain, a detainee may simply lie to make up for a lack of knowledge. More common, however, is that all people have varying abilities to accurately recollect events, descriptions and conversations. Interrogators, particularly those tasked with gathering information on pending attacks, must strive to obtain the smallest details from the detainee. This can significantly challenge any person's memory, especially someone under extreme stress. Details of a story may become more difficult to remember, and if under extreme stress, the detainee may fabricate a critical detail, even when largely telling the truth, in order to satisfy the interrogator. 

While the need to uncover imminent terrorist attacks in the chaos directly after 9/11 was clear, several years of results have made it obvious that using enhanced interrogation techniques is not reliable. Other interrogation approaches, specifically those still permitted by FM 2-22.3, in concert with building a rapport with a detainee, yield far more reliable results. Additionally, using other intelligence-gathering methods under the human intelligence discipline, or methods from other disciplines such as signals intelligence, have proved more productive. The Senate Intelligence Committee's report only confirms this fact, acknowledging what the intelligence community already knows.

Read more: Why Torture Is Counterproductive | Stratfor
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[Crafty_Dog]

Second post:

 Torture and the U.S. Intelligence Failure
Geopolitical Weekly
April 20, 2009 | 17:47 GMT Print Text Size
Dissecting the Chinese Miracle

By George Friedman

The Obama administration published a series of memoranda on torture issued under the Bush administration. The memoranda, most of which dated from the period after 9/11, authorized measures including depriving prisoners of solid food, having them stand shackled and in uncomfortable positions, leaving them in cold cells with inadequate clothing, slapping their heads and/or abdomens, and telling them that their families might be harmed if they didn't cooperate with their interrogators.

On the scale of human cruelty, these actions do not rise anywhere near the top. At the same time, anyone who thinks that being placed without food in a freezing cell subject to random mild beatings — all while being told that your family might be joining you — isn't agonizing clearly lacks imagination. The treatment of detainees could have been worse. It was terrible nonetheless.
Torture and the Intelligence Gap

But torture is meant to be terrible, and we must judge the torturer in the context of his own desperation. In the wake of 9/11, anyone who wasn't terrified was not in touch with reality. We know several people who now are quite blasé about 9/11. Unfortunately for them, we knew them in the months after, and they were not nearly as composed then as they are now.

Sept. 11 was terrifying for one main reason: We had little idea about al Qaeda's capabilities. It was a very reasonable assumption that other al Qaeda cells were operating in the United States and that any day might bring follow-on attacks. (Especially given the group's reputation for one-two attacks.) We still remember our first flight after 9/11, looking at our fellow passengers, planning what we would do if one of them moved. Every time a passenger visited the lavatory, one could see the tensions soar.

And while Sept. 11 was frightening enough, there were ample fears that al Qaeda had secured a "suitcase bomb" and that a nuclear attack on a major U.S. city could come at any moment. For individuals, such an attack was simply another possibility. We remember staying at a hotel in Washington close to the White House and realizing that we were at ground zero — and imagining what the next moment might be like. For the government, however, the problem was having scraps of intelligence indicating that al Qaeda might have a nuclear weapon, but not having any way of telling whether those scraps had any value. The president and vice president accordingly were continually kept at different locations, and not for any frivolous reason.

This lack of intelligence led directly to the most extreme fears, which in turn led to extreme measures. Washington simply did not know very much about al Qaeda and its capabilities and intentions in the United States. A lack of knowledge forces people to think of worst-case scenarios. In the absence of intelligence to the contrary after 9/11, the only reasonable assumption was that al Qaeda was planning more — and perhaps worse — attacks.

Collecting intelligence rapidly became the highest national priority. Given the genuine and reasonable fears, no action in pursuit of intelligence was out of the question, so long as it promised quick answers. This led to the authorization of torture, among other things. Torture offered a rapid means to accumulate intelligence, or at least — given the time lag on other means — it was something that had to be tried.
Torture and the Moral Question

And this raises the moral question. The United States is a moral project: its Declaration of Independence and Constitution state that. The president takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. The Constitution does not speak to the question of torture of non-citizens, but it implies an abhorrence of rights violations (at least for citizens). But the Declaration of Independence contains the phrase, "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." This indicates that world opinion matters.

At the same time, the president is sworn to protect the Constitution. In practical terms, this means protecting the physical security of the United States "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Protecting the principles of the declaration and the Constitution are meaningless without regime preservation and defending the nation.

While this all makes for an interesting seminar in political philosophy, presidents — and others who have taken the same oath — do not have the luxury of the contemplative life. They must act on their oaths, and inaction is an action. Former U.S. President George W. Bush knew that he did not know the threat, and that in order to carry out his oath, he needed very rapidly to find out the threat. He could not know that torture would work, but he clearly did not feel that he had the right to avoid it.

Consider this example. Assume you knew that a certain individual knew the location of a nuclear device planted in an American city. The device would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, but the individual refused to divulge the information. Would anyone who had sworn the oath have the right not to torture the individual? Torture might or might not work, but either way, would it be moral to protect the individual's rights while allowing hundreds of thousands to die? It would seem that in this case, torture is a moral imperative; the rights of the one with the information cannot transcend the life of a city.
Torture in the Real World

But here is the problem: You would not find yourself in this situation. Knowing a bomb had been planted, knowing who knew that the bomb had been planted, and needing only to apply torture to extract this information is not how the real world works. Post-9/11, the United States knew much less about the extent of the threat from al Qaeda. This hypothetical sort of torture was not the issue.

Discrete information was not needed, but situational awareness. The United States did not know what it needed to know, it did not know who was of value and who wasn't, and it did not know how much time it had. Torture thus was not a precise solution to a specific problem: It became an intelligence-gathering technique. The nature of the problem the United States faced forced it into indiscriminate intelligence gathering. When you don't know what you need to know, you cast a wide net. And when torture is included in the mix, it is cast wide as well. In such a case, you know you will be following many false leads — and when you carry torture with you, you will be torturing people with little to tell you. Moreover, torture applied by anyone other than well-trained, experienced personnel (who are in exceptionally short supply) will only compound these problems, and make the practice less productive.

Defenders of torture frequently seem to believe that the person in custody is known to have valuable information, and that this information must be forced out of him. His possession of the information is proof of his guilt. The problem is that unless you have excellent intelligence to begin with, you will become engaged in developing baseline intelligence, and the person you are torturing may well know nothing at all. Torture thus becomes not only a waste of time and a violation of decency, it actually undermines good intelligence. After a while, scooping up suspects in a dragnet and trying to extract intelligence becomes a substitute for competent intelligence techniques — and can potentially blind the intelligence service. This is especially true as people will tell you what they think you want to hear to make torture stop.

Critics of torture, on the other hand, seem to assume the torture was brutality for the sake of brutality instead of a desperate attempt to get some clarity on what might well have been a catastrophic outcome. The critics also cannot know the extent to which the use of torture actually prevented follow-on attacks. They assume that to the extent that torture was useful, it was not essential; that there were other ways to find out what was needed. In the long run, they might have been correct. But neither they, nor anyone else, had the right to assume in late 2001 that there was a long run. One of the things that wasn't known was how much time there was.
The U.S. Intelligence Failure

The endless argument over torture, the posturing of both critics and defenders, misses the crucial point. The United States turned to torture because it has experienced a massive intelligence failure reaching back a decade. The U.S. intelligence community simply failed to gather sufficient information on al Qaeda's intentions, capability, organization and personnel. The use of torture was not part of a competent intelligence effort, but a response to a massive intelligence failure.

That failure was rooted in a range of miscalculations over time. There was the public belief that the end of the Cold War meant the United States didn't need a major intelligence effort, a point made by the late Sen. Daniel Moynihan. There were the intelligence people who regarded Afghanistan as old news. There was the Torricelli amendment that made recruiting people with ties to terrorist groups illegal without special approval. There were the Middle East experts who could not understand that al Qaeda was fundamentally different from anything seen before. The list of the guilty is endless, and ultimately includes the American people, who always seem to believe that the view of the world as a dangerous place is something made up by contractors and bureaucrats.

Bush was handed an impossible situation on Sept. 11, after just nine months in office. The country demanded protection, and given the intelligence shambles he inherited, he reacted about as well or badly as anyone else might have in the situation. He used the tools he had, and hoped they were good enough.

The problem with torture — as with other exceptional measures — is that it is useful, at best, in extraordinary situations. The problem with all such techniques in the hands of bureaucracies is that the extraordinary in due course becomes the routine, and torture as a desperate stopgap measure becomes a routine part of the intelligence interrogator's tool kit.

At a certain point, the emergency was over. U.S. intelligence had focused itself and had developed an increasingly coherent picture of al Qaeda, with the aid of allied Muslim intelligence agencies, and was able to start taking a toll on al Qaeda. The war had become routinized, and extraordinary measures were no longer essential. But the routinization of the extraordinary is the built-in danger of bureaucracy, and what began as a response to unprecedented dangers became part of the process. Bush had an opportunity to move beyond the emergency. He didn't.

If you know that an individual is loaded with information, torture can be a useful tool. But if you have so much intelligence that you already know enough to identify the individual is loaded with information, then you have come pretty close to winning the intelligence war. That's not when you use torture. That's when you simply point out to the prisoner that, "for you the war is over." You lay out all you already know and how much you know about him. That is as demoralizing as freezing in a cell — and helps your interrogators keep their balance.

U.S. President Barack Obama has handled this issue in the style to which we have become accustomed, and which is as practical a solution as possible. He has published the memos authorizing torture to make this entirely a Bush administration problem while refusing to prosecute anyone associated with torture, keeping the issue from becoming overly divisive. Good politics perhaps, but not something that deals with the fundamental question.

The fundamental question remains unanswered, and may remain unanswered. When a president takes an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," what are the limits on his obligation? We take the oath for granted. But it should be considered carefully by anyone entering this debate, particularly for presidents.

Read more: Torture and the U.S. Intelligence Failure | Stratfor
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[Crafty_Dog]

WASHINGTON — A panel investigating the Central Intelligence Agency’s search of a computer network used by staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who were looking into the C.I.A.’s use of torture will recommend against punishing anyone involved in the episode, according to current and former government officials.

The panel will make that recommendation after the five C.I.A. officials who were singled out by the agency’s inspector general this year for improperly ordering and carrying out the computer searches staunchly defended their actions, saying that they were lawful and in some cases done at the behest of John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director.

While effectively rejecting the most significant conclusions of the inspector general’s report, the panel, appointed by Mr. Brennan and composed of three C.I.A. officers and two members from outside the agency, is still expected to criticize agency missteps that contributed to the fight with Congress.  But its decision not to recommend anyone for disciplinary action is likely to anger members of the Intelligence Committee, who have accused the C.I.A. of trampling on the independence of Congress and interfering with its investigation of agency wrongdoing. The computer searches occurred late last year while the committee was finishing an excoriating report on the agency’s detention and interrogation program.

The computer search raised questions about the separation of powers and caused one of the most public rifts in years between the nation’s intelligence agencies and the Senate oversight panel, which conducts most of its business in secret. It led to an unusually heated and public rebuke by Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is the committee’s chairwoman.

Three C.I.A. technology officers and two lawyers had faced possible punishment. In their defense, some pointed to documents — including notes of a phone call with Mr. Brennan — that they said indicated that the director supported their actions, according to interviews with a half dozen current and former government officials and others briefed on the case.

The panel’s chairman is Evan Bayh, a Democratic former senator from Indiana who served on the Intelligence Committee. Its other outside member is Robert F. Bauer, who served as White House counsel during President Obama’s first term.

The panel’s specific conclusions are still being finalized, and it could be weeks before they present a report to the C.I.A. But officials said that the five agency employees had been informed that the panel would recommend that they not be disciplined.

The results of such investigations, known as accountability boards, are not normally released. But given the public nature of the dispute, it is expected that some of the conclusions will eventually become public.

“The process is ongoing,” said Dean Boyd, the C.I.A. spokesman. “We haven’t seen what it says, so it’s impossible to comment on it.”

When the controversy over the search erupted, Mr. Brennan offered a vigorous defense of his agency. He later apologized after the C.I.A.’s inspector general concluded that the agency had improperly monitored the committee’s activities. The inspector general also found that C.I.A. officers had read the emails of agency investigators and sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department based on false information.


Mr. Brennan has enraged senators by refusing to answer questions posed by the Intelligence Committee about who at the C.I.A. authorized the computer intrusion. Doing so, he said, could compromise the accountability board’s investigation.

“What did he know? When did he know it? What did he order?” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is a member of the Intelligence Committee, said in an interview last week. “They haven’t answered those basic questions.”

The computer controversy erupted last December amid a dispute between the C.I.A. and committee Democrats and staff members over the conclusions of the torture report, which was released last week. As it does today, the C.I.A. disputed the report’s findings that brutal interrogation tactics yielded no crucial intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks. During a committee hearing, Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, revealed the existence of a previously unknown internal C.I.A. report that he said backed up the committee’s findings.

“If this is true,” Mr. Udall said, “this raises fundamental questions about why a review the C.I.A. conducted internally years ago — and never provided to the committee — is so different from the C.I.A.’s formal response to the committee study.”

By then, agency officials had already suspected that committee investigators had found the internal review, which was ordered in 2009 by Leon E. Panetta, then the C.I.A. director, and has come to be known as the “Panetta review.” Working for years from the basement of a C.I.A. facility in North Virginia, Senate investigators reviewed millions of digital files related to the interrogation program. But the Panetta review was not supposed to be one of them, and agency officials suspected that Senate investigators had somehow gained access to parts of the C.I.A.’s computer network they had been prohibited from searching.

C.I.A. officers searched their logs to see if they had inadvertently given the Panetta review to the Senate. When they determined they had not, officials brought the matter to Mr. Brennan, who authorized what he has called “a limited review” to figure out if Senate staff members had obtained the documents.

The inspector general’s report included details of a conversation last December, when Mr. Brennan called the home of one of the C.I.A. lawyers under investigation. According to two people with knowledge of the inspector general’s findings, the lawyer wrote a memorandum about the conversation that said Mr. Brennan told him he needed to get to the bottom of the matter.

Much of the dispute between the Senate and the C.I.A. revolves around what rules governed the computer system used by Senate investigators as they wrote their report. The C.I.A. made the documents available to the investigators and created a search function that allowed them to locate documents based on key words. The rules for accessing the network were established in a series of memos and letters, not one formal document.

[Crafty_Dog]

F.B.I. Employees With Ties Abroad See Security Bias

The F.B.I. is subjecting hundreds of its employees who were born overseas or have relatives or friends there to an aggressive internal surveillance program that started after Sept. 11, 2001, to prevent foreign spies from coercing newly hired linguists but that has been greatly expanded since then.
The program has drawn criticism from F.B.I. linguists, agents and other personnel with foreign language and cultural skills, and with ties abroad. They complain they are being discriminated against by a secretive “risk-management” plan that the agency uses to guard against espionage. This limits their assignments and stalls their careers, according to several employees and their lawyers.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/us/fbi-employees-with-ties-abroad-see-security-bias.html?emc=edit_na_20150103

[Crafty_Dog]

Prosecutors Said to Recommend Charges Against Former Gen. David Petraeus

The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors have recommended bringing felony charges against retired Gen. David H. Petraeus for providing classified information to his former mistress while he was director of the C.I.A., officials said, leaving Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to decide whether to seek an indictment that could send the pre-eminent military officer of his generation to prison.

The Justice Department investigation stems from an affair Mr. Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer who was writing his biography, and focuses on whether he gave her access to his C.I.A. email account and other highly classified information.

Mr. Petraeus, a retired four star-general who served as commander of American forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has said he never provided classified information to Ms. Broadwell, and has indicated to the Justice Department that he has no interest in a plea deal that would spare him an embarrassing trial.

READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/us/politics/prosecutors-said-to-recommend-charges-against-former-gen-david-petraeus.html?emc=edit_na_20150109

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/12/the-missing-pages-of-the-9-11-report.html

 

[Crafty_Dog]

WASHINGTON — White House officials favor two primary tactics when they want to kill a news article, Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser, testified Thursday: They can essentially confirm the report by arguing that it is too important to national security to be published, or they can say that the reporter has it wrong.

Sitting across from a reporter and editor from The New York Times in early 2003, Ms. Rice said, she tried both.

Testifying in the leak trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former C.I.A. officer, Ms. Rice described how the White House successfully persuaded Times editors not to publish an article about a secret operation to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. James Risen, a Times reporter, ultimately revealed the program in his 2006 book, “State of War,” and said that the C.I.A. had botched the operation. Prosecutors used Ms. Rice’s testimony to bolster their case that the leak to Mr. Risen had harmed national security.

“This was very closely held,” Ms. Rice said. “It was one of the most closely held programs in my tenure as national security adviser.”

Ms. Rice’s account also threw a light on how the government pressures journalists to avoid publishing details about United States security affairs. It is a common practice that is seldom discussed.

Under President George W. Bush, the White House urged reporters to withhold accounts about many of the most contentious aspects in the war on terrorism: the existence of a secret prison in Thailand, the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation and detention program, warrantless wiretapping and government monitoring of financial transactions.

The Obama administration has persuaded reporters to delay publishing the existence of a drone base in Saudi Arabia, the name of a country in which a drone strike against an American citizen was being considered, the fact that a diplomat arrested in Pakistan was a C.I.A. officer and that an American businessman was working for the agency when he disappeared in Iran.

Mr. Sterling is charged with revealing classified information to Mr. Risen. Phone records and emails show that the two men were in contact, and the Justice Department argues that Mr. Sterling was a disgruntled employee who leaked the information to hurt the agency. His lawyers say the government did not investigate anyone else over the leak or review the phone records and emails of Mr. Sterling’s colleagues before focusing on him.

William Harlow, a former C.I.A. spokesman, testified Thursday that he was surprised when Mr. Risen first raised the subject of the Iranian operation in April 2003. Mr. Harlow testified that he did not know at the time that such an operation existed, and told Mr. Risen that only “a publication that didn’t have our best interests” would run such an article.

“I wanted to get his attention,” Mr. Harlow said.

Mr. Harlow summarized multiple phone conversations with Mr. Risen in memos that would form the foundation of the leak investigation.


The Iranian operation involved a former Russian nuclear scientist who, while working for the C.I.A., provided Tehran with schematics that were intentionally flawed. Mr. Risen’s book suggests that the program was mismanaged, that the Iranians quickly discovered the flaws and that they could have easily worked around them. The government disputes that conclusion.

According to notes of the White House meeting, George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director at the time, told Mr. Risen and his editor, Jill Abramson, that the program was not mismanaged and that Iran had not discovered the design flaw. The C.I.A. prepared talking points for Ms. Rice that said that revealing the program would not only jeopardize the former Russian scientist — who had become an American citizen — but “conceivably contribute to the deaths of millions of innocent victims” in the event of an Iranian nuclear attack. Ms. Rice said she urged The Times to destroy any documents or notes about the program.

The Times ultimately did not run the article. Ms. Abramson, who was the Washington bureau chief at the time, said recently that she regretted not pushing to publish it. Told about Ms. Rice’s testimony, Ms. Abramson said in an email on Thursday that the trial “seems anticlimactic and pointless.”

Mr. Risen declined to comment. The Justice Department decided against putting him on the witness stand at trial, leaving prosecutors with a largely circumstantial case. But prosecutors have said that Mr. Sterling is the only one who could have leaked the information.

[ccp]

Ever wonder about the timing of these reports let alone their veracity?

http://news.yahoo.com/cia-israel-plotted-senior-hezbollah-commanders-killing-report-080125587.html

[Crafty_Dog]

The Dangerous Lie That ‘Bush Lied’
Some journalists still peddle this canard as if it were fact. This is defamatory and could end up hurting the country.
By Laurence H. Silberman
Feb. 8, 2015 6:25 p.m. ET
WSJ

In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”

I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction—a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community’s determination that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—I am, therefore, keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the “Bush lied” allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.

The intelligence community’s 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated, in a formal presentation to President Bush and to Congress, its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction—a belief in which the NIE said it held a 90% level of confidence. That is about as certain as the intelligence community gets on any subject.

Recall that the head of the intelligence community, Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, famously told the president that the proposition that Iraq possessed WMD was “a slam dunk.” Our WMD commission carefully examined the interrelationships between the Bush administration and the intelligence community and found no indication that anyone in the administration sought to pressure the intelligence community into its findings. As our commission reported, presidential daily briefs from the CIA dating back to the Clinton administration were, if anything, more alarmist about Iraq’s WMD than the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.

Saddam had manifested sharp hostility toward America, including firing at U.S. planes patrolling the no-fly zone set up by the armistice agreement ending the first Iraq war. Saddam had also attempted to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush —a car-bombing plot was foiled—during Mr. Bush’s visit to Kuwait in 1993. But President George W. Bush based his decision to go to war on information about Saddam’s WMD. Accordingly, when Secretary of State Colin Powell formally presented the U.S. case to the United Nations, Mr. Powell relied entirely on that aspect of the threat from Iraq.

Our WMD commission ultimately determined that the intelligence community was “dead wrong” about Saddam’s weapons. But as I recall, no one in Washington political circles offered significant disagreement with the intelligence community before the invasion. The National Intelligence Estimate was persuasive—to the president, to Congress and to the media.

Granted, there were those who disagreed with waging war against Saddam even if he did possess WMD. Some in Congress joined Brent Scowcroft, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and former national security adviser, in publicly doubting the wisdom of invading Iraq. It is worth noting, however, that when Saddam was captured and interrogated, he told his interrogators that he had intended to seek revenge on Kuwait for its cooperation with the U.S. by invading again at a propitious time. This leads me to speculate that if the Bush administration had not gone to war in 2003 and Saddam had remained in power, the U.S. might have felt compelled to do so once Iraq again invaded Kuwait.

In any event, it is one thing to assert, then or now, that the Iraq war was ill-advised. It is quite another to make the horrendous charge that President Bush lied to or deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam.

I recently wrote to Ron Fournier protesting his accusation. His response, in an email, was to reiterate that “an objective reading of the events leads to only one conclusion: the administration . . . misinterpreted, distorted and in some cases lied about intelligence.” Although Mr. Fournier referred to “evidence” supporting his view, he did not cite any—and I do not believe there is any.

He did say correctly that “intelligence is never dispositive; it requires analysis and judgment, with the final call and responsibility resting with the president.” It is thus certainly possible to criticize President Bush for having believed what the CIA told him, although it seems to me that any president would have credited such confident assertions by the intelligence community. But to accuse the president of lying us into war must be seen as not only false, but as dangerously defamatory.

The charge is dangerous because it can take on the air of historical fact—with potentially dire consequences. I am reminded of a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany: that the German army had not really lost World War I, that the soldiers instead had been “stabbed in the back” by politicians.

Sometime in the future, perhaps long after most of us are gone, an American president may need to rely publicly on intelligence reports to support military action. It would be tragic if, at such a critical moment, the president’s credibility were undermined by memories of a false charge peddled by the likes of Ron Fournier.

Mr. Silberman, a senior federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, was co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.
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[Crafty_Dog]

How America Was Misled on al Qaeda’s Demise
The White House portrait of a crumbling terror group is contradicted by documents seized in the bin Laden raid.
By
Stephen F. Hayes And
Thomas Joscelyn
March 5, 2015 7:13 p.m. ET
WSJ

In the early-morning hours of May 2, 2011, a small team of American military and intelligence professionals landed inside the high white walls of a mysterious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The team’s mission, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, had two primary objectives: capture or kill Osama bin Laden and gather as much intelligence as possible about the al Qaeda leader and his network. A bullet to bin Laden’s head accomplished the first; the quick work of the Sensitive Site Exploitation team accomplished the second.

It was quite a haul: 10 hard drives, nearly 100 thumb drives and a dozen cellphones. There were DVDs, audio and video tapes, data cards, reams of handwritten materials, newspapers and magazines. At a Pentagon briefing days after the raid, a senior military intelligence official described it as “the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever.”

The United States had gotten its hands on al Qaeda’s playbook—its recent history, its current operations, its future plans. An interagency team led by the Central Intelligence Agency got the first look at the cache. They performed a hasty scrub—a “triage”—on a small sliver of the document collection, looking for actionable intelligence. According to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the team produced more than 400 separate reports based on information in the documents.

But it is what happened next that is truly stunning: nothing. The analysis of the materials—the “document exploitation,” in the parlance of intelligence professionals—came to an abrupt stop. According to five senior U.S. intelligence officials, the documents sat largely untouched for months—perhaps as long as a year.

In spring 2012, a year after the raid that killed bin Laden and six months before the 2012 presidential election, the Obama administration launched a concerted campaign to persuade the American people that the long war with al Qaeda was ending. In a speech commemorating the anniversary of the raid, John Brennan , Mr. Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser and later his CIA director, predicted the imminent demise of al Qaeda. The next day, on May 1, 2012, Mr. Obama made a bold claim: “The goal that I set—to defeat al Qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild—is now within our reach.”

The White House provided 17 handpicked documents to the Combatting Terror Center at the West Point military academy, where a team of analysts reached the conclusion the Obama administration wanted. Bin Laden, they found, had been isolated and relatively powerless, a sad and lonely man sitting atop a crumbling terror network.

It was a reassuring portrayal. It was also wrong. And those responsible for winning the war—as opposed to an election—couldn’t afford to engage in such dangerous self-delusion.

“The leadership down at Central Command wanted to know what were we learning from these documents,” says Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the transcript of an interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier for a coming Fox News Reporting special. “We were still facing a growing al Qaeda threat. And it was not just Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq. But we saw it growing in Yemen. We clearly saw it growing still in East Africa.” The threat “wasn’t going away,” he adds, “and we wanted to know: What can we learn from these documents?”

After a pitched bureaucratic battle, a small team of analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency and Centcom was given time-limited, read-only access to the documents. The DIA team began producing analyses reflecting what they were seeing in the documents.

At precisely the time Mr. Obama was campaigning on the imminent death of al Qaeda, those with access to the bin Laden documents were seeing, in bin Laden’s own words, that the opposite was true. Says Lt. Gen. Flynn: “By that time, they probably had grown by about—I’d say close to doubling by that time. And we knew that.”

This wasn’t what the Obama White House wanted to hear. So the administration cut off DIA access to the documents and instructed DIA officials to stop producing analyses based on them.

Even this limited glimpse into the broader set of documents revealed the problems with the administration’s claims about al Qaeda. Bin Laden had clear control of al Qaeda and was intimately involved in day-to-day management. More important, given the dramatic growth of the terror threat in the years since, the documents showed that bin Laden had expansion plans. Lt. Gen. Flynn says bin Laden was giving direction to “members of the wider al Qaeda leadership team, if you will, that went all the way to places like West Africa where we see a problem today with Boko Haram and [al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb], all the way back into the things that were going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Bin Laden advised them on everything from specific operations in Europe to the types of crops his minions should plant in East Africa.

To date, the public has seen only two dozen of the 1.5 million documents captured in Abbottabad. “It’s a thimble-full,” says Derek Harvey, a senior intelligence official who helped lead the DIA analysis of the bin Laden collection.

And while it is impossible to paint a complete picture of al Qaeda based on the small set of documents available to the public, documents we are able to read, including those released last week in a Brooklyn terror trial, reveal stunning new details.

According to one letter, dated July 2010, the brother of Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s current prime minister, sought to strike a peace deal with the jihadists. Bin Laden was informed that Shahbaz Sharif, who was then the chief minister of Punjab, wanted to cut a deal with the Pakistani Taliban, whose leadership was close to bin Laden. The government “was ready to reestablish normal relations as long as [the Pakistani Taliban] do not conduct operations in Punjab,” according to the letter from Atiyah Abd al Rahman, one of bin Laden’s top deputies. Attacks elsewhere in Pakistan were apparently acceptable under the terms of the alleged proposal. Al Qaeda intended to guide the Pakistani Taliban throughout the negotiations. The same letter reveals how al Qaeda and its allies used the threat of terrorist attacks as a negotiating tactic in its talks with the Pakistani military.

The letter also shows that Pakistani intelligence was willing to negotiate with al Qaeda. Al Qaeda “leaked” word to the press that “big, earth shaking operations” were planned in Pakistan, the letter says, but bin Laden’s men and their allies would back off if the Pakistani army eased up on its offensive against the jihadists in the north: “In the aftermath” of the al Qaeda leak, “the intelligence people . . . started reaching out to us through some of the Pakistani ‘jihadist’ groups, the ones they approve of.” One of the Pakistani intelligence service’s emissaries was Fazl-ur-Rahman Khalil, a longtime bin Laden ally who leads the Harakat-ul-Mujahideen. Khalil was an early booster of bin Laden’s war against the West, having signed the al Qaeda master’s infamous 1998 fatwa declaring jihad “against the Jews and the Crusaders.” Another government intermediary was Hamid Gul, the one-time head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Al Qaeda’s network in Iran is also described in bin Laden’s letters. The Iranian regime held some senior al Qaeda leaders, eventually releasing them. This led to disagreements between the two sides. But the mullahs have also allowed al Qaeda to use Iranian soil as a key transit hub, shuttling fighters and cash to and from South Asia. One letter recounts a plan, devised by Yunis al Mauritani, one of bin Laden’s senior lieutenants, to relocate to Iran. Once there, Mauritani would dispatch terrorists to take part in operations around the world.

Mauritani was tasked by bin Laden with planning Mumbai-style shootings in Europe in 2010. The plot was fortunately thwarted. But all of the terrorists selected to take part transited Iran, according to court proceedings in Germany, taking advantage of the Iranian regime’s agreement with al Qaeda.

During the Arab uprisings in 2011, Obama administration officials argued that al Qaeda had been “sidelined” by the peaceful protests. Just weeks before he was killed, however, bin Laden’s men dispatched operatives to Libya and elsewhere to take advantage of the upheaval. “There has been an active Jihadist Islamic renaissance under way in Eastern Libya (Benghazi, Derna, Bayda and that area) for some time, just waiting for this kind of opportunity,” Atiyah Abd al Rahman wrote in early April 2011. Rahman thought there was much “good” in the so-called Arab Spring. And bin Laden believed that the upheaval presented al Qaeda with “unprecedented opportunities” to spread its radical ideology.

The fight over the bin Laden documents continues. Mr. Harvey, the senior DIA official, believes that the documents should be declassified and released to the public as soon as possible, after taking precautions to avoid compromising sources or methods. Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, inserted language in the 2014 intelligence authorization bill requiring just that.

Making the documents public is long overdue. The information in them is directly relevant to many of the challenges we face today—from a nuclear deal with an Iranian regime that supports al Qaeda to the rise of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; from confidence-building measures meant to please the Afghan Taliban to the trustworthiness of senior Pakistani officials.

Choosing ignorance shouldn’t be an option.

Mr. Hayes is a senior writer for the Weekly Standard. Mr. Joscelyn is senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Popular on WSJ

[Crafty_Dog]

Second post

POTH

LANGLEY, Va. — John O. Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is planning to reassign thousands of undercover spies and intelligence analysts into new departments as part of a restructuring of the 67-year-old agency, a move he said would make it more successful against modern threats and crises.

Drawing from disparate sources — from the Pentagon to corporate America — Mr. Brennan’s plan would partly abandon the agency’s current structure that keeps spies and analysts separate as they target specific regions or countries. Instead, C.I.A. officers will be assigned to 10 new mission centers focused on terrorism, weapons proliferation, the Middle East and other areas with responsibility for espionage operations, intelligence analysis and covert actions.

During a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Brennan gave few specifics about how a new structure would make the C.I.A. better at spying in an era of continued terrorism, cyberspying and tumult across the Middle East. But he said the current structure of having undercover spies and analysts cloistered separately — with little interaction and answering to different bosses — was anachronistic given the myriad global issues the agency faces.

“I’ve never seen a time when we have been confronted with such an array of very challenging, complex and serious threats to our national security, and issues that we have to grapple with,” he said.

One model for the new divisions is the agency’s Counterterrorism Center, an amalgam of undercover spies and analysts charged with hunting, and often killing, militant suspects across the globe. Once a small, occasionally neglected office in the C.I.A., the Counterterrorism Center has grown into a behemoth with thousands of officers since the Sept. 11 attacks as the C.I.A. has taken charge of a number of secret wars overseas.

But Mr. Brennan also cited another model for his new plan: the American military. He said that the Defense Department’s structure of having a single military commander in charge of all operations in a particular region — the way a four-star commander runs United States Central Command — was an efficient structure that led to better accountability.

Mark M. Lowenthal, a former senior C.I.A. analyst, said that the reorganization “is not going to go down smoothly” at the agency, especially among clandestine spies who have long been able to withhold information from analysts, such as the identity of their foreign agents. “The clandestine service is very, very guarded about giving too much information about sources to the analysts,” he said.

But Mr. Lowenthal, who said he had not been briefed about the reorganization and was basing his understanding of Mr. Brennan’s plan on news accounts, said that the new mission centers could help avoid a debacle like the intelligence assessments before the Iraq war, when analysts trusted information from sources they knew little about, and who were later discredited.

During his two years as C.I.A. director, Mr. Brennan has become known for working long days but also for being loath to delegate decisions to lower levels of C.I.A. bureaucracy. During the briefing on Wednesday, he showed flashes of frustration that, under the C.I.A.’s current structure, there is not one single person in charge of — and to hold accountable for — a number of pressing issues.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story

He avoided citing any specific examples of how the C.I.A.’s current structure was hampering operations, and often used management jargon while describing his vision for the agency.

He spoke of wanting to “wring efficiencies” out of the system and trying to identify “seams” in the agency’s current structure that hinder the C.I.A. from adequately addressing complex problems. The C.I.A. needed to modernize even if the current system was not “broken,” he said, citing how Kodak failed to anticipate the advent of digital cameras.

Mr. Brennan said he was also adding a new directorate at the agency responsible for all of the C.I.A.’s digital operations — from cyberespionage to data warehousing and analysis.

Mr. Brennan discussed his plans with reporters on the condition that nothing be made public until he met with C.I.A. employees to discuss the new structure. That meeting was Friday.

While adding the new digital directorate, Mr. Brennan chose not to scuttle the C.I.A.’s four traditional directorates sitting at the top of the bureaucracy — those in charge of clandestine operations, intelligence analysis, science and technology research, and personnel support.

The C.I.A.’s clandestine service, the cadre of undercover spies known for decades as the Directorate of Operations and in recent years renamed the National Clandestine Service, will get its original name back under Mr. Brennan’s plan.

Amy Zegart, an intelligence expert at Stanford, said that the C.I.A. risked being drawn further into the daily churn of events rather than focusing on “over-the-horizon threats” at a time when the C.I.A. has already come under criticism for paying little attention to long-term trends.

For his part, Mr. Brennan said this was the very thing he was trying to avoid — reacting to the world’s crises and not giving policy makers sufficient warning before they happened.

“I don’t want to just be part of an agency that reports on the world’s fires, and the collapse of various countries and systems,” he said.

[Crafty_Dog]

Leak Investigation Could Reveal U.S.-Israeli Covert Operation

A leak investigation targeting retired Marine Gen. James E. Cartwright has stalled due to fears that a prosecution could reveal classified information about joint U.S.-Israeli efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. Investigators suspect that Cartwright leaked details of the operation, which used the computer worm Stuxnet to destroy Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, to New York Times reporter David Sanger. However, prosecution could force the government to confirm details of the operation in open court, potentially putting it at odds with the Israeli government, if Israeli officials were opposed to having their role revealed. U.S. officials also fear that it could undermine negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program at a sensitive time.

[objectivist1]

And the U.S. Government Pretends Not to Notice.  It's "just a small bunch of extremists," after all.

http://pamelageller.com/2015/04/new-islamic-state-isis-video-calls-for-attacks-on-the-american-homeland-promises-another-911.html/

[Crafty_Dog]

Why We Can’t Just Read English Newspapers to Understand Terrorism

And how Big Data can help.

    By Kalev Leetaru
    April 15, 2015
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Why We Can’t Just Read English Newspapers to Understand Terrorism

A few weeks ago, the White House convened the Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), a three-day event intended to “discuss concrete steps” that the United States and its allies can take to mitigate violent extremism around the globe. Yet, the sobering reality is that despite 75 years of monitoring the world’s media and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on global monitoring over just the last few years, much of the U.S. government’s understanding of patterns of violent extremism comes from reading Western English-language newspapers. Meanwhile, its intelligence agencies hoover up extremist communications, but find their archives of little use: it’s hard not to shake one’s head upon reading that analysts assigned to the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba complained that “most of [the intercepted communications] is in Arabic or Farsi, so I can’t make much of it.”

How can Washington hope to counter violent extremism when the analysts assigned to monitor extremist communications can’t even understand a word of what they are reading?

Helping to kick off the CVE summit was a presentation by William Braniff offering an overview of global terrorism trends from a dataset known as the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). The GTD dataset, created by the University of Maryland, is supported by the U.S. Department of Defense and is widely cited in government reports and the news media, from the New York Times to the Washington Post to CNN. Yet, while GTD is heavily utilized as a definitive source of information on global terrorism, it is actually based nearly exclusively on English-language news sources.

When the Los Angeles Times is cited among the primary source material on an Islamic State kidnapping in al-Bab, Syria, and the Chicago Tribune is listed as a primary source for a grenade attack on a market in Rajuri, India, one must question the comprehensiveness of GTD’s data. In fact, according to GTD, of the top 10 countries with the most terrorist attacks in 2013 (their most recent reporting year), just one features English as its primary language (Nigeria) and just two more (India and the Philippines) feature English among their official languages. Collectively, these three English-speaking countries comprise just 17 percent of attacks and 16 percent of fatalities due to terrorism in 2013 in the top 10 countries. It’s difficult to understand GTD’s emphasis on English-language Western outlets in the place of native language local media outlets in the countries where 83 percent of terrorist attacks allegedly take place.

Yet, GTD is far from alone: this focus on Western English-language sources pervades Washington’s efforts to monitor and understand the world. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity-funded HealthMap project missed the earliest warnings of the Ebola outbreak because the original warnings were in a French television broadcast, rather than English-language Western social media feeds. DARPA’s flagship $125 million Worldwide Integrated Crisis Early Warning System (W-ICEWS) program is based almost exclusively on English news outlets with a small amount of human translated material, and has achieved an accuracy level of less than 25 percent. The small amount of translated material that W-ICEWS does incorporate is drawn primarily from the U.S. Open Source Center, which is responsible for monitoring and translating global news and social media.

Yet, even as CIA Director John Brennan announces his intentions to expand the agency, the Open Source Center still draws nearly half its material from English-language outlets, relies primarily on European news agencies for coverage of Africa, and has little coverage of Latin America. In fact, it monitors considerably more news from Russia than from the entire continent of Latin America and the countries of Spain and Portugal combined. Its coverage of languages from regions at elevated risks of terrorism is particularly poor: The Open Source Center’s total monitoring volume of Bengali (the official language of Bangladesh, which the 2014 Global Terrorism Index places at high risk of terrorism) averaged just a single translated article per week for over 20 years.

    There will never be sufficient human translators to monitor the combined output of all the world’s media in all the world’s languages each day.

There will never be sufficient human translators to monitor the combined output of all the world’s media in all the world’s languages each day. This is where machine translation, as imperfect as it may be, offers tremendous opportunity. While machine translation is still highly error-prone, it is capable of infinite scaling, processing the entirety of all global accessible media in real time. Indeed, the same week as the president’s CVE summit, the GDELT Project announced one of the world’s largest deployments of streaming machine translation, translating into English the entirety of global news that it monitors in 65 languages, representing 98.4 percent of its daily non-English monitoring volume. Within 15 minutes of monitoring a breaking news report anywhere in the world, GDELT has translated it and processed it to identify events, counts, quotes, people, organizations, locations, themes, emotions, relevant imagery, video, and embedded social media posts. Leveraging the effectively unlimited capacity of Google Cloud, I built the entire system in under two and a half months as a “nights and weekends” project.

The ability to reach across 65 languages, coupled with a high-resolution local media inventory of the world, means that — unlike the Pentagon’s efforts — GDELT is able to operate across the world’s languages in real time, rather than being limited to a small cadre of Western English-language outlets to understand unfolding events in a remote corner of the world. For some languages like Russian and Estonian, GDELT uses translation models contributed by some of the leaders in the field and achieves accuracy on par or surpassing that of Google Translate on the material it monitors. For other languages, especially those with few available computerized linguistic resources like Swahili, it is still able to robustly recognize locations, major person and organization names, themes, and key event types, but is often less able to discern slight nuance and sarcasm, though its dictionaries are designed to grow daily as it learns from open datasets like Wikipedia’s multilingual information. Machine translation cannot yet compete with the accuracy of expert human translation, but even at its worse, GDELT can flag an article as discussing a large violent protest in a specific city, along with the major ethnic, religious, social, and political groups and leaders mentioned, allowing it to be forwarded to a human analyst for further review. After all, the error of machine translation can be fixed in post-processing, but it isn’t possible to fix or filter what hasn’t been monitored and flagged in the first place.

Moreover, as the accuracy of machine translation continues to rapidly improve, and tools and training datasets become available for an ever-increasing number of languages, GDELT’s algorithms will regularly upgraded. The goal of GDELT’s mass translation initiative is to demonstrate the feasibility of mass translation of global information in real time and to offer a living test-bed that can leverage new technologies and approaches for mass translation.

The map below illustrates why it is so critical to look across languages. All global news coverage monitored by GDELT from Feb. 19 through March 1 was scanned for mentions of geographic locations in Yemen. Locations mentioned in English-language news coverage are colored in blue, while locations mentioned in the 65 other languages recognized by GDELT are colored in red. Larger dots indicate greater volume of coverage mentioning that location. English coverage of Yemen largely focuses on several small clusters of locations around major cities, which is a common artifact of English coverage of the non-Western world, while the media of other languages (especially Arabic) discuss a much broader range of locations across the country. Understanding the current situation in Yemen beyond events in Sanaa or Aden clearly requires turning to local press.
Figure 1 - Locations mentioned in global news coverage of Yemen 2/19/2015 – 3/1/2015 (Blue = English news media, Red = Non-English news media)

Figure 1 – Locations mentioned in global news coverage of Yemen 2/19/2015 – 3/1/2015. (Blue = English news media, Red = Non-English news media.)

Moreover, the emotional and thematic contextualization of ongoing events in the local press can yield critical insights: in the case of Russia, while Western governments paint Moscow as the aggressor in Ukraine, a recent poll suggests 81 percent of the population have a negative view of the United States, the highest of the post-Soviet era, while Vladimir Putin’s approval rating sits at 86 percent. Much of this support is due to careful stage managing of the domestic media environment, requiring an understanding of the Russian psyche to fully understand the root underpinnings of Putin’s increasing popularity — even as sanctions devastate his country’s economy.

Similarly, much of the recent conversation on countering extremism has focused on the “root causes” of how individuals become radicalized or join extremist groups. In a much-maligned February interview with MSNBC (which led to the #JobsForISIS hashtag on Twitter), the State Department’s Marie Harf cited “a lack of opportunity for jobs” as the key root cause for radicalization, a position which the president himself expounded upon at length in his own speech later that week. As Foreign Policy’s South Asia Channel editor and CNN commentator Peter Bergen has noted, however, many of the extremists gracing international front pages, from Osama bin Laden to Umar Farouk Abdulmuttallab, Mohamed Atta to “Jihadi John,” have come from relatively wealthy and privileged backgrounds, not abject poverty. Yet even Bergen acknowledges that the foot soldiers of the Islamic State often come from far more modest backgrounds, and as the Washington Post’s Adam Taylor writes, even a middle class upbringing does not always equate to perceptions of infinite opportunity.

The truth is that there is no single “root cause” of extremism. Much as there is no single view on gun control or abortion in the United States, we must accept a far more fragmented and nuanced understanding of world views. Some may indeed join the Islamic State due to a perceived lack of opportunity, while others may join out of religious beliefs. Acknowledging that there is a continuum of rationales allows for the development of multiple tailored responses that transcend the over-simplicity of political soundbites and more precisely target cultural-specific narratives.

    Given the enormous complexity of the world’s cultures, how can the U.S. government even begin to interact with the views and beliefs associated with elevated levels or risk of extremism?

Given the enormous complexity of the world’s cultures, how can the U.S. government even begin to interact with the views and beliefs associated with elevated levels or risk of extremism? In our chapter of a report on megacities published last spring and prefaced by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Charles Ehlschlaeger and I noted that linguistic and cultural barriers form the primary obstacles towards understanding the developing world that is “often characterized by complex tribal, ethnic, linguistic, religious, familial, and societal affiliations and interconnections” that are “foreign” to most Western analysts. In short, merely being able to read the language of an extremist group does not automatically provide the necessary insight to understand the underlying world views of that group.

Last fall, in collaboration with Timothy Perkins and Chris Rewerts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers published in the journal D-Lib, we demonstrated that it was possible to use large-scale data mining to construct a socio-cultural index over a region of particular interest to CVE: Africa and the Middle East. More than 21 billion words of academic literature on Africa and the Middle East, the entirety of JSTOR, all unclassified/declassified reports from the U.S. Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), and the Internet Archive’s 1.6 billion archived PDFs were computer-processed to identify all mentions of social, religious, and ethnic groups; locations; major themes; and citations. The index can be used to map the geographic footprint of topics, list the thematic grievances most associated with conflict between ethnic groups in a particular area, and even as a “find an expert” system to identify the most frequently cited researchers specializing in particular issues. For example, mapping all locations associated with food or water security produces the map below, which in the prototype interface allows an analyst to zoom into an area of interest and instantly access the combined scholarly and governmental output regarding that area.
Figure 2 - Map of locations mentioned in academic and U.S. Government articles on food and water security 1950-2014.

Figure 2 – Map of locations mentioned in academic and U.S. Government articles on food and water security 1950-2014.

Similarly, more than 110,000 human rights reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Criminal Court, the United Nations, and related organizations were processed using the same system to generate a related index of the world’s human rights reports. Instead of keyword queries on the open web, this interface makes it possible to intelligently map relationships and patterns between specific groups, driving forces, human rights abuses, and geography. When combined with the academic literature index above, and the GDELT news index, it is possible to track in near real time the spread of extremism ideologies, beliefs, and actions, and the undercurrents that drive and support them.
Figure 3 – Map of locations mentioned in Amnesty International Reports, Press Materials, Urgent Actions, Event, and “Other” documents published 1960-2014.

Figure 3 – Map of locations mentioned in Amnesty International Reports, Press Materials, Urgent Actions, Event, and “Other” documents published 1960-2014.

The digital era has made us exceptionally good at collecting the world’s information, but in doing so, we’ve emphasized archiving over analysis. Sometimes we have to put down the computer to better see the world, but when it comes to countering global extremism, big data offers the tantalizing ability to augment our human focus on the English language with the ability to listen to the whole world at once, transcending language barriers and reaching deeply into the reactions and emotional resonance of global events to add context and understanding.

If I can build machine translation for 65 languages in just two and a half months — and build an index over half a century and tens of billions of words of cultural knowledge in just half a year — what could the U.S. government achieve if it spent $125 million on listening to the world, rather than reading American newspapers?

BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images

[Crafty_Dog]

second post:

A knowledgeable friend comments on this article:

Apart from arabic, they need to understand urdu and related languages.  Much of the terrorism has a Pakistani angle.
Something else to note, when someone speaks in English it's for the western audience. They say reasonable things in English because most of the hardliners don't understand a word of it, while the west laps it up. Their real thoughts are in urdu.  Even if someone understands urdu, unless they are native speakers and have lived there for a decade, a Rosetta stone major wouldn't have a clue. Cultural understanding and background is key, for that there are no books.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden

[G M]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n10/seymour-m-hersh/the-killing-of-osama-bin-laden

I wouldn't take any of that as gospel.

[Crafty_Dog]

y
Damian Paletta
Updated May 20, 2015 11:02 a.m. ET
4 COMMENTS

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration on Wednesday released details on more than 400 letters, books, news articles, research reports and even software manuals it seized during the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden at his secret compound in Pakistan, offering a fresh view into the interests and correspondence of the former head of al Qaeda.

The declassified material, which the Office of the Director of National Intelligence labeled “Bin Laden’s Bookshelf,” shows a number of interests—ranging from a Noam Chomsky book on “thought control” to how-to books on terrorist attacks.
Related

    What Osama Bin Laden Was Reading in Abbottabad
    “Bin Laden’s Bookshelf” Website from the Office of Director of National Intelligence
    White House Denies Report That Pakistan Helped in Bin Laden Hit
    U.S. Forces Kill Osama bin Laden

It included, for example, a 2001 document from the U.S. military on “instruction on aircraft piracy and destruction of derelict airborne objects” and numerous records about how to obtain a U.S. passport. The compound also contained numerous world maps.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said “it is in the interest of the American public for citizens, academics, journalists, and historians to have the opportunity to read and understand bin Laden’s documents.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which released the records, said analysts were still reviewing more information seized during the raid and that “hundreds more” records could be declassified in the future.

The intelligence agency declassified the names of 39 English-language books seized at bin Laden’s compound. These included books about the Central Intelligence Agency; Christianity and Islam in Spain from 756 until 1031; and Bob Woodward’s 2010 book, “Obama’s Wars.”

In addition to the books, the documents seized at bin Laden’s compound included 35 items published by other extremist groups, most of which came from Khalifah Publications.

The documents also included numerous items related to France. These included a list of French shopping companies and a 2009 document called “Nuclear France Abroad.”

But perhaps the most intelligence-rich items collected in the raid were the numerous letters that the U.S. government is now declassifying and has likely scrutinized for years to try to track down terrorists.

One letter discusses terror operations in Somalia and mentions an effort to kill the president of Uganda. “Please talk to the Somali brothers about reducing the harm to Muslims at Bakarah Market [in Mogadishu] as result of attacking the headquarters of the African forces,” the 2010 letter reads, according to a translation by the U.S. government.

The 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act required the U.S. government to review documents obtained during the raid on the compound and determine what records could be released.

Another Bin Laden letter remarked on the “revolutions” that took place during the 2010 and 2011 Arab Spring. The revolutions seemed to catch al Qaeda leaders by surprise, but they quickly debated how to take advantage of the volatility.

“These are gigantic events that will eventually engulf most of the Muslim world, will free the Muslim land from American hegemony, and is troubling America whose secretary of state declared that they are worried about the armed Muslims controlling the Muslim region.”

In that letter, he described Egypt as “the most important country, and the fall of its regime will lead into the fall of the rest of the region’s tyrants.”

“All of this indicates that the Western countries are weak and their international role is regressing,” the letter says.

Write to Damian Paletta at damian.paletta@wsj.com

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/06/04/theres-a-wild-rumor-about-john-kerrys-bike-accident/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Firewire&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%206-4-15%20FINAL

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/why-did-china-hack-federal-employees-data/395096/

[G M]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/why-did-china-hack-federal-employees-data/395096/

China has decided that there are no consequences for these actions.

[Crafty_Dog]

No, President Obama has decided that there are no consequences for these actions.  


http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/comic/anglephile/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/12/clinton-admin-bankrupted-cia-ahead-911-ex-director/

[G M]

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/senator-seal-team-6-at-risk-after-opm-hack/

Exposed.

[Crafty_Dog]

 

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/30/hillary-clinton-emails-us-intelligence-preparing-m/

[DougMacG]

Kerry's email hacked
http://twitchy.com/2015/08/11/john-kerry-claims-his-computer-has-been-hacked-chinese-are-very-likely-reading-his-email/

But I'm sure all of our private information, financial, health, census, etc., that they hold in all their departments is safe and secure...

[Crafty_Dog]

    In 2003, the CIA abducted Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr off the streets of Milan. He was suspected of recruiting foreign jihadist fighters and then facilitating their way to Iraq. With Hassan shipped off to Egypt for interrogation, the operation at first appeared to be a success. What happened over the following months and years demonstrated how technology may be the undoing, if not the end, of covert operations.

    Twenty-three CIA officers were convicted, in absentia, by the Italian courts of kidnapping Nasr. The operation’s CIA involvement was brought to light when the Italian government traced the activity of cell phones belonging to CIA personnel, ironically using a version of Analyst Notebook, which America had provided to the Italian government as part of a post-9/11 counterterrorism package. Using this software, they found the metadata from the CIA operatives’ cell phones showed that they were at the location of Hassan’s kidnapping at the same time he went missing.

    Since the Edward Snowden affair, metadata has become a household word, as has awareness of how powerful this data can be in the wrong hands. When you consider the proliferation of biometric scanners in airports and even on city streets, the difficulties involved in inserting clandestine operatives for covert operations become even more profound. Conducting long-term analysis of big data may be the final blow to the traditional tradecraft we are all familiar with from spy novels and movies.

    Cover-identity documents, disguises, and counter-surveillance routes may very well go the way of the dodo, but will this leave America’s intelligence professionals dead in the water without a purpose in life? Or will technology itself facilitate the birth of a new form of intelligence gathering?

    Traditional tradecraft
    In the military, we often refer to the trade secrets we use to conduct operations as ‘tactics, techniques, and procedures.’ Spies use the term ‘sources and methods.’ The ‘methods’ category primarily refers to tradecraft. While supposedly a deeply held secret, many methods of clandestine tradecraft are widely known and featured in films, books, and television shows. Take for example the counter-surveillance route that a spy walks to try to identify enemy counterintelligence agents following him around. Consider the ‘dead drop,’ in which a secret message is hidden away somewhere for the spy’s handler to pick up later that day. Of course, tradecraft gets much more sophisticated than this, but these are examples of basic methods spies use to slip below the radar and go unnoticed.

    Former Mossad officer Michael Ross comments on the subject that, “Traditional tradecraft will never be obsolete. Spies will still need to learn cover, detect surveillance, cross borders, recruit sources, conduct clandestine meetings, communicate covertly, engage in direct-action operations and all the myriad of activities that have been relevant to the profession for centuries.”

    The spies who use tradecraft are usually those engaged in HUMINT, or human intelligence. That is, the art and science of recruiting sources who have access and placement that allows them to gather information the spy wishes to obtain. HUMINT is considered by many to be the bread and butter of intelligence gathering, although it has given way over the years to SIGINT, or signals intelligence, which eliminates the human factor and gives wrist-wringing bureaucrats more quantifiable metrics.

    Human beings are messy and unpredictable, but technology gives us something to measure, which in turn gives policymakers a false sense of security. Of course, SIGINT is only as good as the human beings who interpret it. As a member of the Special Operations Task Force in Iraq, this author recalls numerous examples where Rangers and Special Forces teams were ordered to conduct direct-action raids on the same targets multiple times because someone in the operations center was convinced a terrorist was living there based on SIGINT. Of course, every soldier on the ground knew it wasn’t true as we hit the same target night after night.

    Biometrics
    One element of tradecraft is utilizing a cover, something we are all familiar with from watching actors like George Clooney in movies like “Syriania.” The clandestine operative assumes a false identity with a fake passport, which helps him infiltrate a foreign country. Michael Ross made extensive use of cover during his time with Mossad, living with a deep-cover identity for seven years while he “lived, worked, and travelled without detection and was able to conduct all manner of clandestine activity and direct-action operations securely.”

    However, with the advent of biometric technology such as fingerprint scanners, widely used in airports and customs control points around the world, spies may need to adjust their tradecraft or develop entirely new techniques. One Army Special Operations soldier asked his superiors years ago about what would happen if he was placed under a false identity, passed through customs in Germany where his fingerprints were scanned, and then, 10 years later, went back to Germany on vacation with his family.

    Customs officers would read his fingerprints again but see that they are now associated with a completely different name. Now the German authorities know that he was lying to them 10 years ago, or that he is lying to them now. They also now know that he is, or was, a clandestine operative. One shutters to think of what would happen if this same situation were to arise for one of our personnel in Russia, China, or Iran. Because of the proliferation of biometric technology, our highly trained spies may become single-use operatives. Once their biometrics are collected abroad, they can never be used for clandestine work again.

    Ross advises, “One way biometrics can be overcome: Don’t go against the tide, swim with it. So long as countries are not sharing biometric information, one identity per country is one interim solution.” Which works, just as long as adversarial countries are not sharing biometric data with one another.

    Former CIA Case Officer Jeff Butler (seen in the foreground, featured image) points out that the proliferation of biometrics has likely impacted how the CIA is able to place people in foreign countries using cover, but there are always workarounds as “intelligence agencies simply face greater hurdles in overcoming, or avoiding, biometrics. As a hypothetical, why fly into Frankfurt if it has all the newest biometric gear when you can fly into Split, Croatia, or Ljubljana, Slovenia, and drive to Frankfurt? We are still a ways off from widespread biometric tracking, so workarounds are available. As biometric tracking becomes more widespread, different workarounds will be required.”

    But what if the prospective spy had their biometric data collected on a vacation to Thailand they took prior to joining the military or the CIA? What if someone in the Thai government had been selling their country’s biometric data on Americans to a third country, such as Iran or China?

    Because of public (government) and private (corporate) partnerships, which are not always visible and are sometimes deliberately secret, one can never be sure of who has access to what information. Those security cameras inside your local deli in New York City may very well pipe into an NYPD database, all without you knowing about it. As biometric technology is introduced in every airport and even in city streets, our intelligence officers will have to continue to innovate to overcome these challenges.

    Social media
    On that note, how hard will it be for intelligence services to recruit spies who have zero social media presence? The CIA will have a tough time finding a 30-year-old recruit who has never traveled abroad (where his biometics may have been gathered) and who has never posted his or her pictures on social media. Ross points out that intelligence services are well aware of the problem, but that there are mitigation measures:

    “An under-30 recruit will likely have some form of social media profile, but that will also be examined as part of his or her recruitment as well as an indicator as to his or her level of discretion and maturity. There’s nothing wrong with a social media profile, but it will have to be minimized. Don’t underestimate the capability of modern intelligence services to manipulate the data through their partnerships within the private sector. If the NSA had Google, Facebook, et. al. on board for data collection, what’s to say the CIA couldn’t have someone’s social media profile altered, if not completely erased?”

    SOFREP writer and intelligence analyst Coriolanus remarked that everyone in the intelligence community knows that not having a Facebook profile is a huge indicator of nefarious activity, especially when taken together with another indicator that the person may be a spy. Former CIA Case Officer Lindsay Moran commented on the topic of a spy not having a social media presence: “It doesn’t make sense when, and if, that recruit is employed as a spy to completely drop off social media,” as that could create a signature, or as Coriolanus says, it would indicate ‘derog’ or derogatory behavior, which is used to establish a pattern of life.

    [​IMG]
    As a CIA case officer, Lindsay Moran spent years working as a spy in Eastern Europe.

    Moran continues by saying that social media cuts both ways, against as well as in a favor of, the intelligence officer. “Social networks do a lot of a case officer’s work for him or her. So much of a potential target’s personal information that used to take months, or even years of rapport, development, and elicitation to uncover, is often right there out in the open.” Interestingly, this also highlights a heightened importance of OSINT—open-source intelligence—in today’s era of espionage. In the information age, there is more information/intelligence (note that the Chinese, for example, do not differentiate between these two words) than ever before. “How much bang for our buck are we actually getting in traditional covert HUMINT collection?” Moran asks. “The future of espionage might also be collection via OSINT.”

    Metadata
    Another tool for intelligence services is metadata. Rather than simply look at the actual contents of phone conversations, text messages, and emails, metadata is the underlying technical information used to make those transactions possible and contains information about how, when, and where you communicate from. This type of information can be analyzed and used by intelligence professionals in many different ways. The cell phone itself is essentially a sensor, one that doesn’t need to be placed by covert operatives, but rather one we all voluntarily carry in our pockets.

    For instance, one can examine what times someone places calls on their cell phone, and from this, they can develop an idea of an individual’s circadian rhythms. This alone will quickly allow an intelligence analyst to narrow down what time zone this person is living in.

    Much of this data falls under the category of lawful collection in Western countries. Other nations are likely to be even less restrictive on their counterintelligence operatives who are hunting for our spies. It was no coincidence that after the Boston bombing, cell phone towers were shut down, but only so much as to prevent people in the area of the blast from making phone calls; they could still send text messages. This measure forced people into using a communication medium that could be lawfully intercepted and tracked by law enforcement without having to acquire a warrant.

    How can this affect our spies? Another aspect of tradecraft is running surveillance detection routes (SDRs) to spot counterintelligence agents and allow our spies to meet with their assets in a clandestine manner. Obviously, this becomes highly problematic when foreign governments are tracking metadata emitted by our cell phones. “Surveillance detection routes are a funny thing, and are supposed to be designed for figuring out if you have surveillance on you. You would never do one with a cell phone on you, or iPod, or iPad, for the sole reason they can be tracked,” Butler explains. “That means don’t use them in operations, don’t ever do ops on an attributable phone, regularly scan vehicles/rooms for bugs, and generally avoid repetition in operations. For example, don’t use the same meeting site twice. Good ole’ fashioned tradecraft still applies, even to avoid technological pitfalls.”

    This places a heavy burden on the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. These are the technical experts charged with keeping the CIA’s case officers informed and equipped to avoid technological counterintelligence methods they may encounter in the field.

    However, there can be issues with “going dark.” If the country you are operating in is always monitoring your metadata, but at key moments you abandon your phone, that in itself is a signature, and you could become very interesting to counterintelligence agents. Michael Ross speaks to his experience with Mossad: “If you are too high profile, or your signature is that noticeable—even in its absence—you’re doing it wrong. It’s bad tradecraft to suddenly disappear. Things can be changed gradually: Commercial companies reorganize, merge with other entities, and sometimes move to a new location. People move from one position to another or emerge in a new profession. It’s all about making it look routine and maintaining the appearance of normalcy.”

    The birth of a new form of espionage?
    There will always be counters and workarounds. Technology can always be defeated with greater technology. Biometric sensors can be spoofed if intelligence agencies are able to gain access to the programming that its software operates on and start changing around the ones and zeroes in the code. False social media “personas” can be developed over long periods of time. Metadata can also be spoofed to provide spies with “tailored access” to the areas that they need to penetrate. Of course, all of this would be expensive and time consuming.

    In the future, robots may do most of the spying for us. Just as the cellular phone is a sensor used to collect intelligence, increasingly more and more “smart” devices are on the commercial market, which includes various types of sensors. It could be our kitchen appliances spying on us tomorrow, and that isn’t an exaggeration. Not only will these robots surround us and gather information about us, but they will also work in concert. The data derived from all of these devices can be aggregated; they will work together in a gestalt that will map out our entire lives.

    The proliferation of technology may give rise to a new form of intelligence gathering, a new type of ‘int.’ The spy of the future may be a high-speed cable repairman whose function is to emplace technology near the person or people we need to collect information from.

    In the past, human intelligence gatherers would directly recruit assets who had access and placement that our spies coveted. In the future, biometrics, metadata, and other more novel technologies may make the recruitment of assets difficult, if not impossible, using old-school tradecraft. Instead, our spies may infiltrate near would-be assets to place devices that would allow them to listen in. They may recruit assets, often unwitting, who would than electronically bug the real asset we want information from.

    For example, an American intelligence officer could replace a janitor’s broom with an identical broom loaded with a concealed device. The next time the broom is is used by the janitor in a sensitive facility, the device inside would electronically ‘slurp’ up data, and then transmit it to the intelligence officer who would be nearby to download it onto his smartphone. This sort of technological intelligence-gathering-by-proxy may become much more commonplace in the coming years due to the pressure placed on traditional tradecraft from the technological measures discussed above.

    Bioengineered spies
    Perhaps sometime in the not-so-distant future, nations will engineer operatives from birth for the purpose of espionage. While it may sound outlandish at the moment, we are already on the cusp of several paradigm-changing technologies likely to alter the way we live even more dramatically than the invention of the Internet and telecommunications technologies. These technologies will also impact how we fight and how we spy on each other.

    In the coming decades, biometric scanners, statistical analysis of big data, are likely to make it much more difficult to place spies under a cover and have them conduct covert activities. A spy can change a lot of things about him or herself for purposes of deception, but not his DNA, and DNA scanners may be one of the key technologies mentioned above.

    Will states and non-state actors one day engineer human beings to be spies from the time they are in the womb? In this manner, their entire life would be their cover, with no actual deception aside from the intent of the spy. When this subject was mentioned, Lindsay Moran joked, “Like the Russians do it?”

    However, human beings are not interchangeable parts in a mechanical machine. Moran explained that the qualities needed in a spy can’t really be grown in a laboratory. “That sounds like a viable option, but you cannot really know who is going to be predisposed for the career and craft. It draws upon such a unique combination of personality traits and skills, such as extraversion, street smarts, curiosity, and even a certain amount of empathy.”

    “This is a very outside-the-box approach,” Ross explained. “But to me, it seems to delve too far into the realm of science fiction. There’s really no way of knowing if someone has the aptitude to be a good spy from birth. With all the training in the world, you either have the innate ability to operate in the field or you don’t. My former service [Mossad] expends a lot of effort into that weeding-out process.”

    From experimentation in gene doping to advanced technologies like the TALOs project, the next 50 years will be interesting to say the least. How much of our science fiction becomes science fact during that time is a question likely to keep more than a few of our intelligence professionals up at night.


    Read more: http://sofrep.com/40315/technology-changing-future-espionage/#ixzz3imhEq0HG

[Crafty_Dog]

Did Pravda on the Hudson really need to reveal that the NSA is listening in to everyone at the UN? 
===================================================================

The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.

While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the N.S.A. access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.


These National Security Agency documents shed new light on the agency’s relationship through the years with American telecommunications companies. They show how the agency’s partnership with AT&T has been particularly important, enabling it to conduct surveillance, under several different legal rules, of international and foreign-to-foreign Internet communications that passed through network hubs on American soil.
OPEN Document

The N.S.A.’s top-secret budget in 2013 for the AT&T partnership was more than twice that of the next-largest such program, according to the documents. The company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, far more than its similarly sized competitor, Verizon. And its engineers were the first to try out new surveillance technologies invented by the eavesdropping agency.

One document reminds N.S.A. officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, noting, “This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”

The documents, provided by the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, were jointly reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. The N.S.A., AT&T and Verizon declined to discuss the findings from the files. “We don’t comment on matters of national security,” an AT&T spokesman said.

It is not clear if the programs still operate in the same way today. Since the Snowden revelations set off a global debate over surveillance two years ago, some Silicon Valley technology companies have expressed anger at what they characterize as N.S.A. intrusions and have rolled out new encryption to thwart them. The telecommunications companies have been quieter, though Verizon unsuccessfully challenged a court order for bulk phone records in 2014.

At the same time, the government has been fighting in court to keep the identities of its telecom partners hidden. In a recent case, a group of AT&T customers claimed that the N.S.A.’s tapping of the Internet violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches. This year, a federal judge dismissed key portions of the lawsuit after the Obama administration argued that public discussion of its telecom surveillance efforts would reveal state secrets, damaging national security.

The N.S.A. documents do not identify AT&T or other companies by name. Instead, they refer to corporate partnerships run by the agency’s Special Source Operations division using code names. The division is responsible for more than 80 percent of the information the N.S.A. collects, one document states.

Fairview is one of its oldest programs. It began in 1985, the year after antitrust regulators broke up the Ma Bell telephone monopoly and its long-distance division became AT&T Communications. An analysis of the Fairview documents by The Times and ProPublica reveals a constellation of evidence that points to AT&T as that program’s partner. Several former intelligence officials confirmed that finding.

A Fairview fiber-optic cable, damaged in the 2011 earthquake in Japan, was repaired on the same date as a Japanese-American cable operated by AT&T. Fairview documents use technical jargon specific to AT&T. And in 2012, the Fairview program carried out the court order for surveillance on the Internet line, which AT&T provides, serving the United Nations headquarters. (N.S.A. spying on United Nations diplomats has previously been reported, but not the court order or AT&T’s involvement. In October 2013, the United States told the United Nations that it would not monitor its communications.)

The documents also show that another program, code-named Stormbrew, has included Verizon and the former MCI, which Verizon purchased in 2006. One describes a Stormbrew cable landing that is identifiable as one that Verizon operates. Another names a contact person whose LinkedIn profile says he is a longtime Verizon employee with a top-secret clearance.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, AT&T and MCI were instrumental in the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping programs, according to a draft report by the N.S.A.’s inspector general. The report, disclosed by Mr. Snowden and previously published by The Guardian, does not identify the companies by name but describes their market share in numbers that correspond to those two businesses, according to Federal Communications Commission reports.

AT&T began turning over emails and phone calls “within days” after the warrantless surveillance began in October 2001, the report indicated. By contrast, the other company did not start until February 2002, the draft report said.

In September 2003, according to the previously undisclosed N.S.A. documents, AT&T was the first partner to turn on a new collection capability that the N.S.A. said amounted to a “ ‘live’ presence on the global net.” In one of its first months of operation, the Fairview program forwarded to the agency 400 billion Internet metadata records — which include who contacted whom and other details, but not what they said — and was “forwarding more than one million emails a day to the keyword selection system” at the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. Stormbrew was still gearing up to use the new technology, which appeared to process foreign-to-foreign traffic separate from the post-9/11 program.

In 2011, AT&T began handing over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day to the N.S.A. after “a push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11,” according to an internal agency newsletter. This revelation is striking because after Mr. Snowden disclosed the program of collecting the records of Americans’ phone calls, intelligence officials told reporters that, for technical reasons, it consisted mostly of landline phone records.


That year, one slide presentation shows, the N.S.A. spent $188.9 million on the Fairview program, twice the amount spent on Stormbrew, its second-largest corporate program.

After The Times disclosed the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program in December 2005, plaintiffs began trying to sue AT&T and the N.S.A. In a 2006 lawsuit, a retired AT&T technician named Mark Klein claimed that three years earlier, he had seen a secret room in a company building in San Francisco where the N.S.A. had installed equipment.


Mr. Klein claimed that AT&T was providing the N.S.A. with access to Internet traffic that AT&T transmits for other telecom companies. Such cooperative arrangements, known in the industry as “peering,” mean that communications from customers of other companies could end up on AT&T’s network.

After Congress passed a 2008 law legalizing the Bush program and immunizing the telecom companies for their cooperation with it, that lawsuit was thrown out. But the newly disclosed documents show that AT&T has provided access to peering traffic from other companies’ networks.

AT&T’s “corporate relationships provide unique accesses to other telecoms and I.S.P.s,” or Internet service providers, one 2013 N.S.A. document states.

Because of the way the Internet works, intercepting a targeted person’s email requires copying pieces of many other people’s emails, too, and sifting through those pieces. Plaintiffs have been trying without success to get courts to address whether copying and sifting pieces of all those emails violates the Fourth Amendment.

Many privacy advocates have suspected that AT&T was giving the N.S.A. a copy of all Internet data to sift for itself. But one 2012 presentation says the spy agency does not “typically” have “direct access” to telecoms’ hubs. Instead, the telecoms have done the sifting and forwarded messages the government believes it may legally collect.

“Corporate sites are often controlled by the partner, who filters the communications before sending to N.S.A.,” according to the presentation. This system sometimes leads to “delays” when the government sends new instructions, it added.

The companies’ sorting of data has allowed the N.S.A. to bring different surveillance powers to bear. Targeting someone on American soil requires a court order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. When a foreigner abroad is communicating with an American, that law permits the government to target that foreigner without a warrant. When foreigners are messaging other foreigners,  that law does not apply and the government can collect such emails in bulk without targeting anyone.

AT&T’s provision of foreign-to-foreign traffic has been particularly important to the N.S.A. because large amounts of the world’s Internet communications travel across American cables. AT&T provided access to the contents of transiting email traffic for years before Verizon began doing so in March 2013, the documents show. They say AT&T gave the N.S.A. access to “massive amounts of data,” and by 2013 the program was processing 60 million foreign-to-foreign emails a day.

Because domestic wiretapping laws do not cover foreign-to-foreign emails, the companies have provided them voluntarily, not in response to court orders, intelligence officials said. But it is not clear whether that remains the case after the post-Snowden upheavals.

“We do not voluntarily provide information to any investigating authorities other than if a person’s life is in danger and time is of the essence,” Brad Burns, an AT&T spokesman, said. He declined to elaborate.
Correction: August 15, 2015

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated the number of emails the National Security Agency has gotten access to with the cooperation of AT&T. As the article correctly noted, it is in the billions, not trillions.

[Crafty_Dog]

Moving BBG's post to here:

I'm quite conflicted about Snowden et al. On the one hand the material Snowden released confirmed many of my surveillance state fears and certainly demonstrated those fears are far from unfounded. On the other, various friends with counterintelligence pedigrees are quite convinced Snowden was run by the Russians. This piece supports that suspicion, albeit by inference rather than hard fact.

What petard gave hoist to whom seems pretty clear; who lit the fuse, however, appears to veer deep into spook territory.

http://20committee.com/2015/08/31/wikileaks-is-a-front-for-russian-intelligence/

[Crafty_Dog]

    220
    59

    Opinion
    Review & Outlook

The Bin Laden Papers
Release the captured files on al Qaeda’s secret deals with Iran.
A translated copy of an application to join Osama bin Laden's terrorist network is photographed in Washington, Wednesday, May 20, 2015. ENLARGE
A translated copy of an application to join Osama bin Laden's terrorist network is photographed in Washington, Wednesday, May 20, 2015. Photo: Associated Press
Sept. 14, 2015 7:21 p.m. ET
79 COMMENTS

Unlike so many terrorists, Osama Bin Laden didn’t take all of his secrets to the grave. The Navy SEALs who hunted him down also brought back from his Abbottabad hideout many files on al Qaeda’s plans as well as its cooperation with Iran. The question is why the public hasn’t been allowed to see them.

In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute last week, Dick Cheney quoted former Defense Intelligence Agency Gen. Michael Flynn saying there are “letters about Iran’s role, influence and acknowledgment of enabling al Qaeda operatives to pass through Iran as long as al Qaeda did its dirty work against the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The former DIA director has also said Congress should seek all bin Laden documents related to Iran because they are “very telling.”

Here’s an example from one file that has been released. In a memo to bin Laden, an al Qaeda operative talks about another who is ready to travel:

“The destination, in principle, is Iran, and he has with him 6 to 8 brothers that he chose. I told him we are waiting for final complete confirmation from you to move, and agree on this destination (Iran). His plan is: stay around three months in Iran to train the brothers there then start moving them and distributing them in the world for their missions and specialties.”

More than a decade ago the 9/11 Commission reported that though there was no evidence Tehran knew about al Qaeda’s attack on the American homeland, “there is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.”

The State and Treasury Departments did highlight some of the Iran-al Qaeda link when they were trying to keep the sanctions pressure on Iran. Here’s a sample of public statements:

July 28, 2011. Treasury sanctions six al Qaeda operatives working in Iran. “By exposing Iran’s secret deal with al-Qa’ida allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory,” said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen, “we are illuminating yet another aspect of Iran’s unmatched support for terrorism.”

December 22, 2011: State announces a $10 million reward for Yasin al-Suri, who “under an agreement between al-Qa’ida the Iranian Government” moves “money and al Qa’ida recruits” through Iran.

February 6, 2012: Treasury designates the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security” for its support to terrorist groups, including al-Qa’ida.”

May 30, 2013: State releases its country reports on terrorism. “Iran,” it says, “remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qa’ida (AQ) members it continued to detain, and refused to publicly identify those senior members in its custody.” It also allowed AQ members to operate a “core facilitation pipeline through Iranian territory.”

February 6, 2014: Treasury confirms that Yasin al-Suri “has resumed leadership of al-Qa’ida’s Iran-based network after being temporarily detained there in late 2011.”

You get the picture.

Yet earlier this summer the State Department’s latest country report on terrorism said Iran had “previously” allowed al Qaeda “to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran,” implying this was a thing of the past. Less than a month later, President Obama announced the Iran nuclear deal.

With his deal now moving ahead, the least the President could do is release the other bin Laden files dealing with Iran. And if the President doesn’t release the documents, Congress ought to demand them.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/5/bill-clinton-white-house-suppressed-evidence-of-ir/

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

 Reshaping the Modern Intelligence Community
Geopolitical Weekly
October 6, 2015 | 08:00 GMT Print
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By Philip Bobbitt

Nearly seven months ago, CIA Director John Brennan publicly unveiled his plan to significantly rethink the organization of his agency and how it would conduct its business. In my previous columns, I have tried to link strategy, law and history; now it occurs to me that this linkage lies at the heart of the proposed CIA reforms.

The CIA was created in 1947, nearly six years after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The chief reason given for its formation was to prevent another surprise attack against the United States, and for 60 years it succeeded. And yet, on Sept. 11, 2001 — a date that might also be said to "live in infamy" — another surprise attack hit the United States, resulting in a greater loss of life than the attack at Pearl Harbor. Despite an annual budget totaling twice the defense outlays of Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Libya combined — and roughly equal to the entire British defense budget — the U.S. intelligence community was unable to thwart or even give sufficient warning of the attack.

Nevertheless, the failure to prevent the atrocities of 9/11 was not the most significant intelligence failure of the new millennium. In October 2002, the National Intelligence Council produced a National Intelligence Estimate that said Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. (The National Intelligence Estimate is the U.S. intelligence community's most authoritative intelligence assessment, drawn from all community sources and representing the conclusions of the community as a whole.) But according to the subsequent work of the Iraq Survey Group, this assessment was almost entirely premature. The 2002 National Intelligence Estimate also said that Iraq's biological weapons capability had grown more advanced than it had been before the Gulf War, and that Baghdad possessed mobile biological weapons labs. This, too, was wrong. The report further concluded that Iraq had resumed its production of chemical weapons, including mustard gas, sarin and VX, and had accumulated stockpiles of these weapons amounting to between 100 and 500 metric tons. These claims were also wrong. Finally, the intelligence estimate said that Iraq had obtained unmanned aerial vehicles intended for the delivery of biological weapons, also an erroneous conclusion.

In short, the intelligence community's assessments of Iraq were riddled with errors, and its reputation has yet to fully recover. The role the intelligence community played in persuading the public of the necessity of going to war has done historic damage to the country's trust in subsequent claims for intervention, and indeed, to the credibility of executive action more generally. The Robb-Silberman Commission charged with investigating the community's claims regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction concluded:

    "While the intelligence services of the U.K., France Germany, and Russia also thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction [in 2002], in the end it was the United States secretary of state that put American credibility on the line, making this one of the most public — and most damaging — intelligence failures in recent American history."

The Dangers of Structural Division

At first glance, the intelligence failures of 9/11 and Iraqi WMDs appear to have little in common. The 9/11 Commission Report criticized the intelligence community for failing to share information among agencies, concluding that the lack of communication materially contributed to the wider failure to "connect the dots" — that is, to anticipate the attack and thwart it. "With each agency holding one or two pieces of the puzzle, none could see the whole picture." The Iraq WMD failure presented a different problem. It wasn't so much that analysts were unaware of what their counterparts in other agencies were thinking; it was rather that, with some exceptions, all of the analysts were thinking the same thing. Information that was inconsistent with the widely held thesis was discarded or, tellingly, reclassified as the result of Iraqi deception. Put simply, analysts enthusiastically connected dots that had little to do with one another or that might be better described as inkblots into a false picture.

But what the two fiascos did have in common was the fundamental structure of problem solving that existed within the CIA and throughout the intelligence community as a whole. This structure was the consequence of a particular way of understanding the collection and use of intelligence: Analysts treated these activities as a kind of proto-social science that they conducted from a detached, disinterested, scientific point of view. That understanding was then manifested in bureaucratic organization.

As with most organizations, this problem-solving structure could partly be explained by history. Figures from the World War II-era Office of Strategic Services were incorporated into the newly formed Directorate of Operations, bringing with them covert action; the bureaucratic empire building of J. Edgar Hoover kept the CIA on a tight leash whenever the FBI's interest were implicated; and so on. But the history itself could also be explained by the ideas it represented, for that's what history often is: Institutions and individuals working out the ideas they come to take for granted. In the intelligence community, these ideas came in the form of several antinomies:

    The division between the public and private sectors.
    The separation between the domestic and the international.
    The different rules we apply to law enforcement and intelligence operations.
    The different reliance we place on secret and open sources.
    The distinction between intelligence collection and analysis.
    The different roles of the intelligence producer and consumer.

And although these antinomies enabled the U.S. intelligence services to successfully navigate the challenges of the Cold War, they also directly led to the failures of 9/11 and Iraq.
A New Organization for a New Threat

While some critics have described the reforms announced in March as mere bureaucratic reshuffling, they are in fact an effort to overcome the difficulties imposed by these antinomies as we confront a new international reality.

The key reform is the creation of "mission centers," each led by an assistant director, that are not linked to any particular directorate. These centers will be organized around regions, such as Africa or East Asia, and functions or threats, like counterterrorism or WMD. Indeed, it is telling that the current National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is the model for the new mission centers, because global market state terror is a phenomenon that most challenges the six contradicting sets of ideas listed above. Market state terrorists outsource their activities, merging the private and public spheres; they operate across borders, unconfined by any particular territory, blurring the lines between the domestic and the international; they commit crimes to further their political goals, often depending on criminal activity for their operations; their groups are difficult to penetrate but advertise themselves relentlessly in the media, including social media; the threat they pose requires close collaboration between intelligence producers and consumers who confront it, because typical intelligence customers can't be relied upon to ask for information in such novel and unpredictable circumstances; and they cannot be defeated if analysts are unaware of the sources of their information and if collectors are not constrained to information that is useful to analysts.

The Directorate of Intelligence (which will be renamed the Directorate of Analysis) and the National Clandestine Service (which will revert to its old name, the Directorate for Operations) will mainly function as talent pools, recruiting and training personnel to be deployed in the mission centers. Each center will have a team of analysts and operators working side by side and responsibility for espionage, analysis and covert action within its assigned mission area.

The most important objective of the reorganization is not simply to enhance collaboration or to achieve greater structural coherence. It is to create accountability through the assistant directors. Currently, there is no single person the CIA director can call upon to summarize threats, future trends and current operations in any particular area outside the NCTC and counterintelligence.

Critics' main objections to the reform will be that the CIA is forsaking the very structures that made it successful, and there is much truth to this concern. By keeping intelligence analysis separate from collection, the United States has enhanced the professionalization of both. By keeping intelligence consumers separate from producers, we have reduced — if not entirely removed — the politicization that can corrupt both. By relying on the government to find and maintain secrets while leaving publicly available information to the academics and journalists, we have attempted to protect U.S. journalists from being arrested overseas and to prevent CIA analysts from infiltrating university journals.

In future columns, I will say more about the uses of intelligence by statesmen. For now, I simply leave you with this: These reforms are essential to a preclusive strategy for the United States

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-obtains-previously-classified-cia-inspector-general-report-strongly-condemning-agency-handling-of-briefings-and-interviews-with-the-entertainment-industry/

[Body-by-Guinness]

A little light reading:

http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-Global-Terrorism-Index-Report.pdf

[ccp]

The above should be under climate change since liberals are claiming terrorism is due to "climate change".

[Crafty_Dog]

 Broken Trust: The Pollard Affair
Analysis
November 20, 2015 | 09:01 GMT Print
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(Stratfor)
Analysis

By Fred Burton

Editor's Note: The following piece is part of an occasional series in which Fred Burton, our vice president of intelligence, reflects on his storied experience as a counterterrorism agent for the U.S. State Department. We republish this piece in light of the Nov. 20 release of Jonathan Pollard from a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina.

For anyone who spent time in the intelligence business, the morning news has a way of dredging up old memories. Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard will go free on parole today, having spent 30 years in prison. Some say his release is an overtly political move by the United States to appease Israel following the Iran deal.

I myself have mixed feelings about Pollard's release. Maybe 30 years is long enough to bring the former U.S. Naval Intelligence analyst to justice. But I still vividly recall what a powerful sense of betrayal the entire intelligence community felt when he was caught and convicted in 1987. As special agents and analysts at the intelligence services, every day we handled sensitive, classified information. Most of us took that responsibility extremely seriously, daily devoting our lives and livelihoods to the defense of U.S. national security and to the protection of state secrets. But Jonathan Pollard broke that trust.

While spying for the Israelis in 1984 and 1985, Pollard delivered Mossad, Israel's spy agency, more than 800 classified documents — suitcases full at a time — and 1,500 daily intelligence summary wrap-up messages. After he was discovered, a deep fog of anger settled over the U.S. intelligence community. We felt betrayed, not only (or even primarily) by Pollard but by Israel — and specifically, by the Israeli intelligence service.   

At the time, U.S. and Israeli intelligence cooperated closely. We frequently shared information with our Israeli counterparts through informal channels, wherein representatives from U.S. agencies would meet with Israeli intelligence, defense and police officials to communicate intelligence priorities or possible security threats. And we often aided and supported Israeli intelligence at their request. For example, in the course of debriefing hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon, we would routinely ask questions on behalf of the Israelis about their missing pilot Lt. Col. Ron Arad. In short, we in the national security business believed our friendship with Israel was far deeper than the veneer of diplomatic niceties. 

We were wrong. According to the now-declassified CIA damage assessment of the entire Pollard affair, the Israeli government recruited the naval intelligence analyst primarily to uncover and to pass along information the United States had gathered on Arab, Pakistani and Soviet nuclear and military programs. Rather than go through the established liaison channels, Mossad recruited Pollard and went behind our backs to commit espionage that, at least to my knowledge and to that of all my colleagues, we would have been open to sharing with them anyway.

The discovery of the Pollard affair came as a stunning blow, deeply disrupting the trust between U.S. intelligence agencies and Mossad. Afterward, the liaison channels that our agencies had come to rely upon broke down; we no longer knew whether we could trust the information Mossad had been passing along. Afterward, members of the Diplomatic Security Service, like myself, were still often tasked with the protection of high-ranking Israeli dignitaries such as Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin when they stepped, as they often did, onto U.S. soil. And we continued to maintain some intelligence exchanges that required us to pay frequent visits to the Israeli Embassy on Washington D.C.'s International Drive. But in the back of all of our minds, during every visit and meeting, was Pollard.   

In retrospect, one of the more fascinating aspects of Pollard's espionage was the person the Israelis assigned to handle Pollard's case: Rafi Eitan, a true legend of the Mossad. Eitan had been part of a team of Mossad agents that captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Ares, Argentina, in 1960, bringing him back to Israel for justice. Anyone who has ever been involved in the intelligence community would have wanted to be part of that illustrious team.

The fact that Mossad put one of their most famous and valuable agents, a hero of Israel, on the Pollard case speaks volumes. Pollard must have been one of their most important sources of human intelligence, if not their most important. That means they must have considered access to U.S. secrets one of their biggest intelligence priorities — and one that they feared would have the most blowback if uncovered.

The Pollard affair is a grim reminder that spying is a tough and dirty business, even among countries that consider themselves friends and allies. The handshakes and smiles that take place in diplomatic circles are a facade, beneath which every government and its intelligence agencies operate in an intensely suspicious and dangerous atmosphere.

In 2013, the Jerusalem Post reported that Pollard's wife, Esther, wrote about a meeting with Rafi Eitan years after Pollard's conviction and arrest. During his meeting with Esther, Eitan reportedly said his only regret about the whole incident was that he did not "finish the job" before leaving the United States. When asked what he meant, Esther wrote that Eitan replied: "If I had been at the [Israeli] embassy when Pollard came to seek asylum, I would have put a bullet through his head." Then, he went on, "there would have been no Pollard affair."

[G M]

Pollard deserved a bullet.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/politics/military-reviews-us-response-to-isis-rise.html?emc=edit_th_20151122&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0

[G M]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/politics/military-reviews-us-response-to-isis-rise.html?emc=edit_th_20151122&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193&_r=0

Obama lied, Europe died.

[Crafty_Dog]

 

[Crafty_Dog]

Bringing the discussion on Meta Data from the Sen. Ted Cruz thread over to here:

Pat commented it does not matter anymore, the Feds have new ways of getting the data.

My response:  So why then the fuss over this by the NSA et al?  What are they up to?

[DougMacG]

Pat commented it does not matter anymore, the Feds have new ways of getting the data.

No.  They have other ways of getting other data.  This gives them a cross check when other intelligence is acquired, such as gaining access to a terror connection overseas and seeing what contacts it has madein the US.  Why would we not want to do that.  As asked on the other thread, what privacy have I gotten back at midnight tonight when this expires?  Nothing of note.

See the Chair of the Senate Intelligence 'testimony'.  (Fox News Sunday today)  As far as I know, his only dog in the fight is to gain intelligence and prevent attacks.  And he has clearance that we don't have.  So does Rubio who is a member of that same committee.

By the way, having intelligence updates for the six years coming into the Presidency is better preparation for the Presidency than not having it.  Giving choice committee assignments to your best people isn't always a bad thing.

[DougMacG]

 "you need the haystack to find the needle."

My understanding of where the candidates stand on the so-called NSA metadata issue:

Erring on the side of 'security', as front runner Trump put it:
Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Chris Christy, Lindsey Graham

Erring on the side of 'privacy':
Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Bernie Sanders.

Rand Paul wants a "smaller haystack".  

The data only adds security if you use it and also aggressively use all the other tools available to track potential terror attacks.

I argue that:  
1)  We received essentially none of our lost privacy back through the ending of this program.
2)  Chasing down records via lawyers and courts means it is not immediately available to those we wish were tracking terror leads.
3)  Storing the same information at the phone companies still leaves a similar risk of a hack or misuse.

[DougMacG]

Rather than a massive NSA dragnet, you could actually do aggressive police work and target bad guys and their networks. Like the ton of uncollected evidence left at the berdoo jihadi lair.

Not mutually exclusive choices, IMHO.  Give them the tools and do the hard work.

[G M]

Why didn't the NSA prevent the Berdoo jihad ? What attacks has the NSA prevented?

[DougMacG]

No.  Security was either asleep at the wheel, understaffed or too tied up in rules and political correctness to discover and stop these two people.
On the second question, I don't have security clearance and the prevented ones wouldn't be as  as the successful ones.

Mistakes in the rear view mirror are valuable to look at.  The need is to stop the future ones.

[G M]

No.  Security was either asleep at the wheel, understaffed or too tied up in rules and political correctness to discover and stop these two people.
On the second question, I don't have security clearance and the prevented ones wouldn't be as  as the successful ones.

Mistakes in the rear view mirror are valuable to look at.  The need is to stop the future ones.

Doug, not too long ago I would have agreed with you. But having seen the systemic corruption of the federal government, they have lost my trust.

If Obama had any counterterrorism wins, he would have fed it to his lapdog press.

[Crafty_Dog]

The French have FAR more surveillance state powers than we do.  Ditto gun control.  What good did it do them?

Frankly, Rand Paul's point about the smaller haystack makes sense to me.  In one example of many, the Russians pointed out the Tsarnov (sp?) brothers to us, yet nothing was done.  Already we have far more cases for the feds to keep track of than the people necessary.  So what is the point of adding to the haystack at the cost of enabling an Orwellian state.  Do you really want this stuff lying around for a President Hillary?

There numerous real world things to do e.g.:

*moratorium on visas and immigration for dangerous countries;
*CCW in all states;
*monitoring the 150,000 Arab Muslims here on student visas.  We don't really know where they are;
*Keep track of whether people have left by the time their visas expire;
*Serious discussion about the no-visa countries-- this is a difficult question deserving of thoughtful analysis;
*etc etc

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Human-Intelligence.pdf