Years of spotty data-sharing on suspects

The graphic illustrates several matters; the sub-heading of the story is illustrative, and scandalous: Insufficient Funding, Old Technologies and Bureaucratic Turnover Hindered Efforts to Link Spy Agencies.

Say, what?


I almost hate to say this, but today's Journal editorial on this matter makes perfect sense, and I agree with it.

Mr. Obama blamed no one in particular for the failure, not even George W. Bush. In one sense this is refreshing. The President said the buck stops with him, not his underlings, and he ordered the usual agencies to review their usual procedures and institute changes to make sure information is shared more quickly and analyzed more comprehensively. This all seems worthwhile as far as it goes, and it may well do some good by shaking up settled behavior patterns, at least for a while.

On the other hand, it's impossible to read even the six-page unclassified summary of the White House review without a rising sense of frustration, even anger. This was above all a failure of bureaucracy.

How did this happen?


If Mr. Obama isn't angry, he should be, because Americans were told by our leaders that the "intelligence reform" of the last decade would fix this. A smaller Counterterrorism Center had existed for years inside the CIA, but the Bush Administration yanked it out to assert more control. This later became the NCTC when the 2004 intelligence reform created the Director of National Intelligence, which was supposed to prevent these kind of screw-ups by sharing information and "connecting the dots."

I sure wish he would show some anger, and fire someone. One person must be made an example of, showing that the President is leading the nation and the government. Right now, and for the last couple of weeks, the nation is adrift, and has a President who is also adrift. I have lost confidence in him.


However, the DNI has since become its own vast bureaucracy with thousands of employees, whose main job seems to be micromanaging or duplicating the CIA. We—and many others—opposed the 2004 reform on grounds that it would create precisely this redundant layer of intelligence bureaucracy, and so it has. This is one mess that Mr. Obama really can blame on Mr. Bush and especially the 9/11 Commission that came up with the idea and lobbied furiously for it.

Members of the Commission seem to have believed that the way to fix the problems that allowed 9/11 to happen was to create more government. That has been proven wrong. The solution lies in changing government, and that must include streamlining it.


A President has to drive the bureaucracy by making the fight against terrorism a daily, personal priority. Perhaps now Mr. Obama will, and yesterday he finally said after a year in office that "We are at war. We are at war against al Qaeda." But in fighting that war, he'd be better off shrinking the DNI to 20 or 30 people—and the CIA by half—and starting over.

 Indeed.

Summary of Security Review

President's Directive on Corrective Actions

 

Intelligence Agencies' Databases Set to Be Linked

This is incredible. 7 years after 9/11, the US government remains technologically backward: 16 different spy agencies (16?) have separate, disparate data bases.

U.S. spy agencies' sensitive data should soon be linked by Google-like search systems, nearly five years after the intelligence community was rebuked by the 9/11 Commission for failing to "connect the dots" and detect the attack.

5 years later, same situation. More than shameful, it is irresponsible.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has launched a sweeping technology program to knit together the thousands of databases across all 16 spy agencies. After years of bureaucratic snafus, intelligence analysts will be able to search through secret intelligence files the same way they can search public data on the Internet.

Intelligence analysts can not search for data the way Google allows the public to search the Web. And, 16 spy agencies?

Mr. McConnell's new technology program is also addressing a more basic problem: Spies often have trouble emailing colleagues in other U.S. intelligence agencies, because email addresses aren't readily accessible, and messages sometimes get eaten by security filters. Mr. McConnell aims to solve that by uniting the agencies' email systems into a single system with a full directory that links names, expertise and addresses.

Seems bad project management, to say the least.

The new information program also is designed to include Facebook-like social-networking programs and classified news feeds. It includes enhanced security measures to ensure that only appropriately cleared people can access the network. The price tag is expected to be in the billions of dollars, but much of that money will be reallocated from existing technology programs.

Reallocated?

Today, an analyst's query might scan only 5% of the total intelligence data in the U.S. government, said a senior intelligence official. Even when analysts find documents, they sometimes can't read them without protracted negotiations to gain access. Under the new system, an analyst would likely search about 95% of the data, the official said.

Sounds great. But ...

Several similar efforts have been aborted in the past decade, because cultural divides couldn't be bridged between rival agencies. Some of those efforts predated 9/11, and many intelligence agencies have botched their own technology programs since 2001.

Cultural divides? They all work for the US government.

In September, all 16 agencies agreed to the goal of creating one searchable data and email system, and Mr. McConnell borrowed Mr. Winter from the NSA to get the program under way.

The first stage of the initiative is to merge the email systems of the six largest intelligence agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the NSA. Mr. Winter said that is on track to be largely completed by the end of the month. Then, they will expand to the other 10 agencies. By 2010, the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon would have a single email system.

CIA, FBI, NSA. Defense Intelligence Agency. What else? Well, how about googling "u.s. intelligence agencies"? Neat-o. First hit: Agencies of the US Intelligence Community with an URL of www.intelligence.gov/1-members.shtml

And they are:

• Director of National Intelligence
• Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence
• Air Force Intelligence
• Army Intelligence
• Central Intelligence Agency
• Coast Guard Intelligence
• Defense Intelligence Agency
• Department of Energy
• Department of Homeland Security
• Department of State
• Department of the Treasury
• Drug Enforcement Administration
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Marine Corps Intelligence
• National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
• National Reconnaissance Office
• National Security Agency
• Navy Intelligence

Of course, the Intelligence Community has a mission statement; these days, even delis have them.

Definition of the Intelligence Community (IC)

Definition of the IC Members of the IC Relationships with other Government Organizations The IC is a federation of executive branch agencies and organizations that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and the protection of the national security of the United States. These activities include: Collection of information needed by the President, the National Security Council, the Secretaries of State and Defense, and other Executive Branch officials for the performance of their duties and responsibilities; Production and dissemination of intelligence; Collection of information concerning, and the conduct of activities to protect against, intelligence activities directed against the US, international terrorist and international narcotics activities, and other hostile activities directed against the US by foreign powers, organizations, persons, and their agents; Special activities; Administrative and support activities within the US and abroad necessary for the performance of authorized activities; and Such other intelligence activities as the President may direct from time to time.

Intelligence Policy to Stay Largely Intact

Even the idiots who are calling President-elect Obama a communist will be surprised by his pragmatism.

President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that is almost certain to create tension within the Democratic Party.

"He's going to take a very centrist approach to these issues," said Roger Cressey, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "Whenever an administration swings too far on the spectrum left or right, we end up getting ourselves in big trouble."

Emphasis added.

The early transition effort is winning praise from moderate Democrats. "He's surrounded himself with excellent people -- an excellent bipartisan group," said Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who is chairwoman of the House homeland-security subcommittee on intelligence.

Obama's Anti-Terrorism Man

Assemble a good team.

I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO THE MAN WHO IS BENDING Barack Obama's ear about anti-terrorism policies, and I'm relieved to report that he is Bruce Riedel, a respected Near East expert, not some crackpot from the George Soros wing of the Democratic Party. You may disagree with Riedel, but you cannot cavalierly dismiss his views; he has impressive credentials and no perceived patriotism problem like the candidate himself. Riedel's former employer, the CIA, lined his chest with some of its most distinguished medals.

He, as president, and we will need practical people who can get the job done, and not ideologues who talk the right talk and set us up for disaster.

Riedel, who earlier advised Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Richardson, the garrulous governor of New Mexico, likely would be a key member of an Obama administration. This is evidence that the candidate, in addition to being able to attract voters, has the know-how to build a credible and effective foreign-policy team. Obama's disastrous flirtation with Jim Johnson, the man he selected to vet vice presidential candidates, prevents me from declaring that Riedel is evidence of the candidate's broader ability to construct an effective governing team.

Good points.

That Obama is listening seriously to the man shows that the candidate is not a reincarnation of some 1970s flower-power flake, as some of his foes would have you believe. Instead, he is someone who appreciates the strategic, focused application of U.S. force in the ongoing war against al Qaeda.

The Home-Front Battle Heats Up

Clearly we are still grappling with the basic constitutional conundrums of the age of global jihad. In "Law and the Long War," Benjamin Wittes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, sets out to determine just where our crucial post-9/11 policies fit in our constitutional framework and legal traditions. Along the way, he tries to define the proper role of our three branches of government amid the changing circumstances of a war unlike any other we have fought in our past.

An imperial presidency, an ineffective and fearful legislature, and an activist judiciary.

Indefinite and arbitrary-seeming detention has had the effect, Mr. Wittes notes, of provoking powerful fears of the "unchecked inherent powers of the president." Yet the critics who favored supplanting those powers "with the unchecked inherent powers of the judiciary" also have it wrong. Injecting the judicial branch into matters that it is ill-equipped to handle, he argues, can have one of two results: "paralyzing our response to terrorism" or "corrupting the judiciary" as it inevitably bends the law to accommodate the often brutal exigencies of counterterrorism.

Unchecked? No, just appropriate.

The conflict between law and necessity has arisen nowhere more sharply than in the debate over "enhanced interrogation techniques" – or, in noneuphemistic English, torture. Here Mr. Wittes faults the Bush administration more sharply. He acknowledges that very harsh techniques may be necessary – at least in emergency circumstances. But in the matter of high-stakes interrogations – for example, the CIA's interrogations of top al Qaeda planners like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah – the "administration has dug itself the biggest hole."

By its arrogance.

The administration resolved this problem by simply defining torture narrowly enough to permit waterboarding – a mere "dunk in the water" is what Vice President Cheney called it. But stretching language in this way, writes Mr. Wittes, "is a kind of double-talk that denudes law of meaning and renders the presidency morally laughable."

A mere dunk, this from a man who avoided the draft.

On the whole, Mr. Wittes would like to see Congress playing a greater role in the war on terror. Like Jack Goldsmith, a former Justice Department official, he is worried about the legitimacy of policies that are asserted as if by presidential fiat. Conservatives, he says, should have "anticipated to some degree that the courts would respond to muscular presidential actions with assertions of power of their own."

Congress be effective? In renaming french fries freedom fries. Conservatives, or, better put, reactionaries, want to rule by fiat.

As matters now stand, we are needlessly fighting a war on two fronts: against our enemies and against ourselves.

Chávez Decree Tightens Hold on Intelligence

Chávez is a complex figure. On the one hand, he's a tyrant, an authoritarian. And he intends to slowly make Venezuela a dictatorship; he'll call dictatorship of the proleteriat, but it shall simply be a dictatorship.

The new law requires people in the country to comply with requests to assist the agencies, secret police or community activist groups loyal to Mr. Chávez. Refusal can result in prison terms of two to four years for most people and four to six years for government employees.

Cuban-style, proven method to turn citizens against one another; eyes and ears everywhere.

But there is another side to the story. First, this:

Under the new intelligence law, which took effect last week, Venezuela’s two main intelligence services, the DISIP secret police and the DIM military intelligence agency, will be replaced with new agencies, the General Intelligence Office and General Counterintelligence Office, under the control of Mr. Chávez.

Well, the CIA reports to the US president. Whom else should intelligence report to?

And:

Recently, Venezuela has claimed it was subject to military intimidation from the United States, pointing to a recent violation of Venezuelan airspace by an American fighter jet and Washington’s recent reactivation of its Fourth Fleet to patrol Latin American and Caribbean waters.

A fleet in the Caribbean? Defending against whom? The combined forces of Nicaraguan and Bolivian naval vessels? Fleets are used to intimidate, just as much as to fight.

On Sunday, Mr. Chávez referred to critics of the intelligence law as de facto supporters of the Bush administration and of the Patriot Act, the American antiterrorism law that enhances the ability of security agencies to monitor personal telephone and e-mail communications. Mr. Chávez’s new intelligence law has similar flourishes. For instance, it authorizes his new intelligence agencies to use “any special or technically designed method” to intercept and obtain information.

Maybe they used the Patriot Act as a template. Their paradigm is different, in some ways, but not in others.

Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín announced the intelligence overhaul in a public appearance here last week, saying it was needed to combat “interference from the United States” by having intelligence agency workers imbued with “ideological commitment.”

We don't call it “ideological commitment,” but do have quite similar policies. This is a nation, a government, protecting itself proactively, rather than reactively.

The drafting and passage of the law behind closed doors, without exposing it to the public debate it would have had if Mr. Chávez had submitted it to the Assembly, also contributed to the public uproar and suspicion.

Are all provisions of the Patriot Act publicly known? FISA courts are secret. Still, Chavistasa are not democrats.

One part of the law, which explicitly requires judges and prosecutors to cooperate with the intelligence services, has generated substantial concern among legal experts and rights groups, which were already alarmed by the deterioration of judicial independence under Mr. Chávez.

Doesn't the Patriot Act make similar requirements? Nonetheless:

This is a government that simply doesn’t believe in the separation of powers,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights organization. “Here you have the president legislating by decree that the country’s judges must serve as spies for the government.”

WSJ's Dan Henninger's Wonder Land

Obfuscation is a favourite tactic of politicians of all stripes, as it is of analysts and pundits, of all who wish to divert attention from the key, important facts. An effective way of doing so is to raise emotionally-gripping points, and inflate their importance, deflecting attention away from the crux of the matter.

This column is a perfect example of obfuscation. Two different points are raised, twisted, fogged over, an emotional hook put in place, then yanked, and what emerges is the wrong point. In this case a columnist from the Wall Street Journal, that bastion of right-wing nuts, not only befuddles and beclouds the issue, but uses the specter of 9/11 to further confuse the issue.

Yup, never hurts to pinch yourself hard on entering presidential campaign space right now.

Absolutely, yes. Whomever doesn't know that a political campaign is no place to find the unvarnished truth is a dolt. However, let it not be said this columnist is unimaginative.

Setup: Here's another hypothetical: Would this conversation be different today if in August 2006 seven airliners had taken off from Terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport, bound for the U.S. and Canada and each carrying about 250 passengers, and then blew up over the Atlantic Ocean?

Ouch. Now, that is an emotional hook par excellence. Well done.

The details emerging from that case are quite remarkable and will be summarized shortly. Pause to reflect on the ebb and flow of public debate that has occurred over how free societies should order themselves after two airliners full of passengers knocked down the World Trade Center Towers on Sept. 11 in 2001.

Touché, emotionally-wrenching connection made. This man is good.

One sometimes gets the feeling that our policy debates over national security and the journalism that travels with them float, as it were, at 30,000 feet above the reality of the threat on the ground. A novelist or filmmaker, alert to the personal demons that drive modern terror, would with fiction better clarify what is at stake. Start with the details of the eight defendants now on trial in England.

Apt metaphorical choice: 30,000 feet, as it were. An aeroplane's cruising height. Nicely done. This guy is really good. But his punctuation is a mite sloppy; were I his proofreader I might have had it this way: A novelist or filmmaker, alert to the personal demons that drive modern terror, would, with fiction, better clarify what is at stake. Seems repetitive otherwise; the added commas help.

The private intelligence-analysis agency, Stratfor, concludes from the trial that "al Qaeda remains fixated on aircraft as targets and, in spite of changes in security procedures since 9/11, aircraft remain vulnerable to attack."

Stratfor is a fascinating organization. Mr. Henninger is an expert at connecting the dots.

Here in the U.S., our politics has spent much of the year unable to vote into law the wiretap bill, which is bogged down, incredibly, over giving retrospective legal immunity to telecom companies that helped the government monitor calls originating overseas. Even granting there are Fourth Amendment issues in play here, how is it that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama cannot at least say that class-action lawsuits against these companies are simply wrong right now?

Unable? Incredibly? Simply wrong? Well, I beg to differ. Perhaps unwilling, rather than unable. Not necessarily bogged down, rather, debating important details. Not simply wrong, but in defense of personal privacy and civil liberties. Of course, out in the fringe where Mr. Henninger resides, catching the bad guys is more important than keeping our society based on the principles that Madison and Jay (and even Jefferson) thought fundamental.

Philip Bobbitt, author of the just released and thought-provoking book, "Terror and Consent," has written that court warrants are "a useful standard for surveillance designed to prove guilt, not to learn the identity of people who may be planning atrocities." Planning atrocities is precisely the point.

Aye, warrants used to surveil are useful tools. And when warrants are issued with the blessing, as it were, of courts, they indeed can be useful tools. Of course, Mr. Henninger glosses over the fact that the Bush-Cheney team disregards courts when seeking court approval do not suit their purposes. Having courts in the loop insures, as James, John, and Thomas explained, that the Executive does not run roughshod over the rights of the citizens of the nation.

Furthermore, blanket spying is an invasion of privacy that undermines democracy. Mr. Henninger went from Senator Obama questioning General Petraeus to 9/11 to atrocities in a smooth line. Whether that line does in fact exist is debatable, and I disagree.

U.S. Judgment Set Aside Search Rights

It boggles the mind how the Bushies interpreted the law. Yet this one is frightening.

The Justice Department concluded shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks that constitutional protections against unreasonable searches didn't apply to "domestic military operations," according to a recently declassified Justice Department document.

What in hell are "domestic military operations"?

What activities the judgment intended to cover is unknown because the opinion is classified, but the ACLU concluded it related to warrantless surveillance based on information provided in another lawsuit.

Surveillance is a military operation? Perhaps it is conducted by military intelligence?

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the warrantless spying program "relied on a separate set of legal opinions" that have been shared with Congress. Jameel Jaffer, of the ACLU, said Mr. Fratto's explanation raised more questions. "What kind of surveillance program was it meant to justify, then?" he asked. Suzanne Spaulding, a former CIA counsel, said the opinion -- written by former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo -- may have been designed to permit what might otherwise be considered invasive searches as part of military activities on U.S. soil in response to an attack, given that the administration had concluded the new battlefield now included the U.S.

The US a battlefield? It makes me shudder to contemplate what they have done: operations inside the country are labeled military. Putting the government on a tack of conducting domestic military operations is frightening.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an entry on its website discussing this matter. Does this mean that the Administration's lawyers believed that it could spy on Americans with impunity and face no Fourth Amendment claim? It may, and based on the thinnest of legal claims -- that Congress unintentionally allowed mass surveillance of Americans when it passed the Authorization of Use of Military Force in October 2001. In their arguments on the warrantless surveillance program, they try to portray them as "military" in nature, even though they occurred in the United States, far from the military theater.

Secrets and signs

A follow up to the post below.

Patches for classified missions can sometimes provide otherwise-unavailable insights into the nature of those missions.

Inside the Black Budget

A startling look at the underside of Intelligence. Skulls. Black cats. A naked woman riding a killer whale. Grim reapers. Snakes. Swords. Occult symbols. A wizard with a staff that shoots lightning bolts. Moons. Stars. A dragon holding the Earth in its claws. No, this is not the fantasy world of a 12-year-old boy. It is, according to a new book, part of the hidden reality behind the Pentagon’s classified, or “black,” budget that delivers billions of dollars to stealthy armies of high-tech warriors. The book offers a glimpse of this dark world through a revealing lens — patches — the kind worn on military uniforms.
graphic: Trevor Paglen
Clockwise from top left: Ghost Squadron. For search and rescue; National Reconnaissance Office. Dragon is code for infrared imaging on advanced KH-11 satellites; Desert Prowler. May represent Groom Lake, Nev., a k a Area 51; Special Projects Office.4451st Test Squadron. Oversaw F-117A stealth fighter support; Stealth fighters; 413th Flight Test Squadron. Possibly referring to simulated or real electronic threats against aircraft. More Photos >

Get this statistic: The classified budget of the Defense Department, concealed from the public in all but outline, has nearly doubled in the Bush years, to $32 billion. That is more than the combined budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

More for secret militarism than Food and Drug, Science and Space. Wow! The military complex run amok.

Budget documents tell little. This year, for instance, the Pentagon says Program Element 0603891c is receiving $196 million but will disclose nothing about what the project does. Private analysts say it apparently aims at developing space weapons.

Who monitors all this?

“Oderint Dum Metuant,” reads a patch for an Air Force program that mines spy satellite images for battlefield intelligence, according to Mr. Paglen, who identifies the saying as from Caligula, the first-century Roman emperor famed for his depravity. It translates “Let them hate so long as they fear.”

On one side, that sort of braggadocio, on the other, boys having fun (sort of).

The book offers not only clues into the nature of the secret programs, but also a glimpse of zealous male bonding among the presumed elite of the military-industrial complex. The patches often feel like fraternity pranks gone ballistic. The book’s title? “I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me,” published by Melville House. Mr. Paglen says the title is the Latin translation of a patch designed for the Navy Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 4, at Point Mugu, Calif. Its mission, he says, is to test strike aircraft, conventional weapons and electronic warfare equipment and to develop tactics to use the high-tech armaments in war.“The military has patches for almost everything it does,” Mr. Paglen writes in the introduction. “Including, curiously, for programs, units and activities that are officially secret.”

Emphasis added, though the point is self-evident.

Mr. Paglen said he found them by touring bases, noting what personnel wore, joining alumni associations, interviewing active and former team members, talking to base historians and filing requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Leave it for a military bureaucrat to come up with this doozy: A spokesman for the Pentagon, Cmdr. Bob Mehal, said it would be imprudent to comment on “which patches do or do not represent classified units.” In an e-mail message, Commander Mehal added, “It would be supposition to suggest ‘anyone’ is uncomfortable with this book.”

Huh?

What sparked his interest, Mr. Paglen recalled, were Vice President Dick Cheney’s remarks as the Pentagon and World Trade Center smoldered. On “Meet the Press,” he said the nation would engage its “dark side” to find the attackers and justice. “We’ve got to spend time in the shadows,” Mr. Cheney said. “It’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”

Dick to the rescue.

In this research, Mr. Paglen became fascinated by the patches and started collecting them and displaying them at talks and shows. He said a breakthrough occurred around 2004, when he visited Peter Merlin, an “aerospace archaeologist” who works in the Mojave Desert not far from a sprawling military base. Mr. Merlin argued that the lightning bolts, stars and other symbols could be substantive clues about unit numbers and operating locations, as well as the purpose of hidden programs.

Investigate research; sources are there to be found by a good investigator. And clues are there to be interpreted, if one figures out how.

“These symbols,” Mr. Paglen wrote, “were a language. If you could begin to learn its grammar, you could get a glimpse into the secret world itself.”

To wit: A patch from a Groom Lake unit shows the letter sigma with the “buster” slash running through it, as in the movie “Ghost Busters.” “Huge Deposit — No Return” reads its caption. Huge Deposit, Mr. Paglen writes, “indicates the bomb load deposited by the bomber on its target, while ‘No Return’ refers to the absence of a radar return, meaning the aircraft was undetectable to radar.”