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The MAZZ-INT Blog by Joe Mazzafro
04/30/2012 - The Second Oldest ProfessionIs it just me or is the Secret Service hard partying prostitute scandal in Cartagena Columbia like a NSCAR pile up that you shouldn't be fixated on, but just can't bring yourself to stop watching? As a Tailhook era sailor who spent his life in and around Naval Aviation, I am not surprised that anything to do with drinking, partying and hookers would hold my attention (how about those GSA partiers; who knew!?!?), but the mainstream media stays with stories because they are either important or they provide the numbers that matter to advertisers. I am guessing the Secret Service scandal has what journalists call "legs" because it is both salacious and involves the security of the President. Read This Blog 04/09/2012 - INTEL WARS, AFGHANISTAN, and DODIIS - - - Are They Connected? I am just back from the DoDIIS Conference in Denver where the message was moving military intelligence, if not the entire national Intelligence Community (IC), to an Information Technology (IT) Enterprise (ITE; aka "the cloud") is a mission imperative. I will return to DoDIIS, but first I want to comment on the book "INTEL WARS: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror" by Matthew Aid and share some thoughts on the current situation in Afghanistan. Read This Blog 02/17/2012 - Convincing Iran and Restraining Israel: Nice Trick If You Can Do It! January was an intense month for me personally with my daughters return from Afghanistan as I sorted out some challenging career options associated with the ending of myself imposed sabbatical as an unemployed Navy pensioner, but all that is loose change relative to events impacting the IC during 2012s first month. Read This Blog 01/09/2012 - Six Issues the IC Will Likely Confront in 2012 Just before News Years I was conversing with you that Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea are nation states that demand Intelligence Community (IC) focus in 2012 to insure against strategic surprise. Since that penetrating analysis of the obvious, all three have continued to earn IC attention. Kim Jong Eun has assumed his father's leadership of North Korea because any other choice remains destabilizing to the North Korean elites, China, Japan and I suspect South Korea. In Pakistan there are rumblings that the army is trying remove President Asif Ali Zardari without a coup so it can have more pliable civilian leadership to deal with while the CIA has suspended drone attacks. Iran, of course, has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to increasing US sanctions for Tehran not curtailing its nuclear program. Given my amazing "clairvoyance" I am sure you are wondering what other "evitable surprises" I see the IC having to deal with over the course of the new year, so here are a half a dozen to mull over. Read This Blog 12/29/2011 - Hey MEATLOAF: "Two Out of Three Ain't Good Enough!" For someone who self-selected himself for a pre-holiday season sabbatical from the IC private sector work force grind, I have not had much time to get to my monthly discourse with you. Actually I have started the December version of MazzInt several times but events have been occurring faster than I could assimilate them and certainly more swiftly than I could put them cogently into some broader context so I would just not be recounting media reports to you. Read This Blog 11/22/2011 - THE IC PAYS HOW MUCH FOR IT?! I am late with this November edition because of some ongoing changes in my professional life that are of no great importance to any of you, but could impact the Social Security Administration. Read This Blog 10/04/2011 - ISR & AFGHANISTAN Happy FY 12 New Year! First it is good that we are able to celebrate a continuing resolution (CR) for FY 12 vice dealing with a government shutdown as was almost the case as members of Congress postured and played "political chicken" over disaster relief funds for FEMA. More pragmatically, this CR will likely remain in place until at least the Congress votes up or down on December 23rd regarding the coming November 23rd recommendations of the Congressional "Super Committee" for reducing the deficit by at least $1.5 trillion over the coming decade Read This Blog 09/14/2011 - BACK TO THE FUTURE? I DOUBT IT! Over Labor Day Weekend I read Vice President Cheney's personal and political memoir "In My Time" and I happy to report that "my head did not explode" from the "revelations" in this short book. For the most part this is droll and self-serving quick read, but I was happy for his confirmation that as Vice President he never politicized intelligence for policy reasons. Read This Blog 08/01/2011 - THE DEFICIT DEAL AND ITS IMPACT ON THE IC At the time of the July edition of Mazz-INT Blog, the government was tied in a knot over coming to grips with how to get long term spending under control so there would be the political conditions to raise the debt ceiling on August 2nd; NATO forces were engaged in a seeming stalemate in Libya to remove Gadhafi from power; there was rising concern about corruption in the Karzai "government" in Afghanistan; near open confrontation between Islamabad and the Washington over continuing US unilateral drone attacks against Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership inside of Pakistan; and the US Intelligence Community (IC) was finishing a quiet but well deserved victory lap for taking out Osama bin Laden. As August begins I am happy to report that Bin Laden remains dead ----- with increasingly negative impacts for Al Qaeda, but little else as changed. Read This Blog 07/05/2011 - MIGHT OTHERS HAVE BETTER INFORMATION THAN THE IC? There probably should be more on my mind this Fourth of July Weekend to engage you with, but I keep coming back to how historically ineffective most Intelligence Community (IC) industry days are and how the Arab Spring is Déjà Vu all over again re the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The connection between IC industry days and reading the Arab Spring I have to admit is not-obvious (and some will say contrived), but for me they show an institutional flaw that the IC reflexively seems to ignore. Read This Blog 05/31/2011 - TWO "WARNING SHOTS" - ONE TO THE HEAD AND A SECOND TO THE CHEST Since we last gathered around the AFCEA URL, the President has nominated CIA Director Leon Panetta to be the next Secretary of Defense and named General David Patraeus to take over the CIA. In a surprising development neither Vice Chairman Marine General James Cartwright nor European Command Commander Admiral James Stavridis were selected to relieve Admiral Michael Mullen as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs - - - instead the President selected Army General Martin Dempsey, who has been Army Chief of Staff only since 11 April. Former DNI Denny Blair testifying before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs about the status of intelligence reform since 9/11 opined that "As DNI, I could have led this process [intelligence reform] had I enjoyed the support of the President and his staff. However, their past experience, priorities, and the White House-centric style of national security governance never offered me the opportunity." Read This Blog 04/25/2011 - WHEN REAL TIME INTELLIGENCE ISN'T VERY RELEVANT Since our last sojourn together the Intelligence Community (IC) continues to be a "target rich" environment for controversy and contemplation. As the last MAZINT was being posted Director of National Intelligence DNI) Clapper was being derided and chastised for assessing that the conflict in Libya could devolve into a stalemate. Given how things had transpired in Tunisia and Egypt along with the Obama Administration's policy decision to militarily support the Libyan rebels for humanitarian reasons the DNI was apparently wrong about the facts and in conflict with national policy. This stalemate assessment, however, has turned out to be real a "truth to power" moment that has largely gone unrecognized except for a CNN Op-ed by Mike Hayden. Read This Blog 03/14/2011 - DID SECRETARY GATES FEEL A DRAFT AT WEST POINT? There is no shortage of topics to engage with you on starting with the continuing events in Libya and whether Colonel Gaddafhi will go into exile, die at his post as he claims he is ready to do, or prevail. In the meantime violence engulfs the country and has driven oil prices to over $100 a barrel. Then there is the drama and trauma of the US Government being at least partially shut down because of the inability of the White House and both houses of the Congress to come together on spending cuts so an appropriations bill can be passed to fund government operations for the rest of FY 11. Read This Blog 02/07/2011 - CAN THE IC WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN? My plan for this month's edition of Mazz-INT was to discuss with you new House Permanent Select Committee for Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman Mike Roger's statements about throttling back the size and influence of the Office the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). We will actually get to this indirectly, but the vortex of events in Egypt since 25 January trivializes, in the short run at least, any other Intelligence Community (IC) topics. Read This Blog 01/03/2011 - WHO IS THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON IN THE IC TODAY? New Years is always a good time for top ten stories so I thought I would go this way for the January edition of Mazz-INT. I quickly realized, however, there is little new I that could add to stories such as Wikileaks, the failed jihadist bomb attacks, intelligence issues in Afghanistan, budgetary pressures on the IC, or the swap out of Clapper for Blair as DNI that would pique this readership's interest. Read This Blog 12/15/2010 - WIKILEAKS REVEALS AN IC DATA DEFENSE EMERGENCY Nothing to report on the zero based defense intelligence review or the Afghan Strategy review, but as indicated last month I have just finished reading President Bush's book DECISION POINTS, which ironically I enjoyed while being disappointed. In a sound bite, I found this presidential memoir insightful [about the Bush view of events] but not very revealing about his motivations. The 43rd President tells us much about "what" and "how" he made decisions, but little about why he made the decisions he made beyond a drumbeat that it was "the right thing to do. Making me ask as I read "so how did you know what was the right thing to do?" such as lowering taxes while embarking on a Global War on Terrorism; accepting the intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD); or not questioning the clarity of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear weapons program? Read This Blog 11/16/2010 - GEOINT 3.0 --- WHODAT?! I just finished reading Obama's Wars while traveling to and from GEOINT 2011 (31 Oct-4Nov) in the middle of which the mid-term Congressional elections dramatically shifted power in the House of Representatives from the Democrats to the Republicans and made getting 60 votes in the Senate a near mathematical if not political long shot. Since returning from New Orleans we have also had the close call "printer cartridge" bomb plot and President Bush's book Decision Points released. All have important things to say about the state of and future intelligence, but so did Tish Long in her GEOINT Keynote Address. Read This Blog 10/05/2010 - NATIONAL SECURITY: IT'S STILL THE ECONOMY STUPID ISN'T IT? With the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and I was both sobered and renewed by the way the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) remembered the eight people it lost during the attack on the Pentagon in a simple but eloquent ceremony at the National Maritime Intelligence Center (NMIC). What impressed me was the palpable sense of mission at ONI driven by personal loses that is motivating my shipmates at Naval Intelligence to both punish those who attacked us on 9/11 and to protect our nation's flank from a deadly disruptive maritime attack. Given what I know about the rest of the IC I don't believe that ONI is unique in the IC with its sense of mission for protecting our security, but rather emblematic of a community that is doing a difficult job as best it can. Having been a part Naval Intelligence that wore down and wore out the Soviet naval strategic threat to the free world, I drove away from Suitland feeling not just connected to this current generation of intelligence professionals, but confident that that the security of our nation is in good hands. Read This Blog 07/26/2010 - THE IC: NOT TOO BIG TO FAIL, BUT WAY TOO BIG TO SHARE! This is my sound bite take away from what was certainly an event filled if not significant week (July 19-23) for the Intelligence Community (IC). It is probably not happenstance that the Washington Post ran its almanac facts without context three part investigative "TOP SECRET AMERICA" story on the IC (July 19, 20, & 21), the same week the Senate Select Committee for Intelligences (SSCI) surprisingly relented to political pressure and quickly scheduled a confirmation hearing (July 20th) on Jim Clapper to be the fourth Director of National Intelligence (DNI). When I read the Post's breathless cries about how much money the IC is spending, which Secretary Gates knew was coming, I immediately understood why the Secretary of Defense decided not to lecture the Baker Dinner audience on the need for the IC to rein its spending. He knew that the Post story and the resulting commentary generated would make this point better than he could -- and not cost him any political capital. Finally, in a touch of irony, General Stanley McCrystal awkwardly retired from the Army on 23 July. I am not sure why Thursday July 22nd was devoid of any IC stories of import! Read This Blog 06/14/2010 - BUDGET REALITIES Thanks to many of you for noticing that back in February after losing the Chief of Station debate followed by the FLT 253 failed Christmas Bombing event I forecasted in this blog that Denny Blair would be out as DNI before the 4th of July. However, in May I fearlessly, but incorrectly, advised this audience to expect Secretary Gates to have some pointed comments in his Baker Award acceptance speech about the amount of money the nation is spending on large intelligence projects/programs as budgets flatten and the economy continues to struggle. Instead, the SecDef demurred with remarks of gratitude that where brief, sincere and gracious but substantively vapid. Of course, Denny Blair being asked to resign the day before the Baker Dinner may have caused the Secretary to demur from controversial comments that would have added to the news cycle. Read This Blog 05/18/2010 - The Third Rail of American Intelligence: The Convergence of Foreign and Domestic Threats From an Intelligence perspective the first two weeks of May have been quite startling, but few seem to have noticed. On May 2nd we experienced the failed Time Square car bombing; on May 6th machines took over stock trading resulting a near 1000 point crash of the Dow Jones Average; and on May 8th Secretary Gates warned that the current level of defense spending is unsustainable. As backdrop to all of this an oil rig exploded on April 20th killing eleven and has been spewing 5000 barrels of crude a day into the Gulf of Mexico ever since threatening an environmental disaster of epic proportions. Meanwhile on Capitol Hill the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence (SSCI) and the House Permanent Select Committee for Intelligence (HPSCI) for no apparent reason have reengaged on passing an FY 2010 Intelligence Authorization Bill so either the President can veto it or it can be become law just in time to have no impact on IC activities! Read This Blog 04/13/2010 - THE IC DOESN'T NEED A "BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU" - IT HAS THE DNI In February 2009 I cavalierly gave ambassador Negroponte a grade of "Incomplete" for failing to establish the prerogatives of the office and outgoing DNI Mike McConnell a "Gentleman's B" for his performance as the second Director of National Intelligence based on the following accomplishments: · FISA Modernization · Executive Order 12333 rewrite · National Cyber Security Initiative · Development of "A" Space · Security Clearance Reform · Intelligence Community (IC) joint duty program Read This Blog 03/09/2010 - HOW SHOULD WE MEASURE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY PERFORMANCE? As the Congress and the DC dignitary debate if health care is affordable given the nation's first trillion dollar annual debit incursion, I am wondering where the money would come from should the United States need to defend its national interests against another Al Qaeda attack or worse. The President has already frozen budgetary growth for all discretionary spending not related to national security, but can the Defense Department and Intelligence Community remain fenced for much longer given the increasing national debt ----- the size of which already is a national security concern in its own right? Read This Blog 01/12/2010 - SYSTEMIC FAILURE AND IRRELEVANCE Since our last interaction, the holidays have proved to be harshly unkind to the Intelligence Community (IC). First there was they "the systemic failure" to warn with regard to the bungled attempt on Christmas Day by Al Qaeda-radicalized 24 year old Nigerian Umar Abdulmutallab (a.k.a. Passenger 19A) to blow up FLT 253 over Detroit. Then six days later there was the tragically successful suicide bombing attack on the CIA's operating base in Khost Afghanistan by Jordanian triple agent Dr. Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi killing eight. As if these two events were not enough, on 04 January with the nation waiting for the President to be briefed by his national security principals on what was known about FLT 253, the U.S. Army's senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan, Major General Tim Flynn, published through a public sector think tank Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan where he called out military intelligence for not being relevant to the counterinsurgency mission in Afghanistan. Read This Blog 12/09/2009 - INTELLIGENCE AND THE AFGHAN SURGE My apologies to those few of you who expected to see a MAZ-INT blog entry for November, however, the AFCEA Webpage does not seemed to be overwhelmed with inquiries about the missing blog, the IC seems to be functioning despite missing a month of my advice, and unemployment has started to drop since my last blog. Perhaps I should take more months off! Read This Blog 10/13/2009 - NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE STRATEGY: RESULTS MAY VARY If your October is like mine you have way more things going on than you have time to deal with. Over the course of the next three weeks there's AFCEA's Fall Intelligence Symposium, NIP's Annual Meeting, GEOINT, and the annual DCGS Conference. Through in a day job, Oracle Open World in San Francisco and the Major League Baseball playoffs and there is a compelling case for any MazzInt Ruminations should be abbreviated for October if not suspended! They are certainly late in getting posted. Read This Blog 09/08/2009 - AUGUST: A REVEALING MONTH August was a revealing month, at least for me, in terms of understanding where intelligence fits in the grand scheme of the Obama Administration. Even before the economic crisis, it was clear from his campaign that President Obama did not intend to focus on intelligence and would depend on John Brennan to manage the IC and tell him what he needed to know when he needed to know it. Read This Blog 08/11/2009 - CYBER THREATS AND CYBER "IN SECURITY" With the President and the Congress consumed with the scope and details of national health care legislation, there has been little interest in summertime Washington for intelligence issues. The Professor Gates/Police Sergeant Crowley "beer summit" even made the vitriolic exchange between Speaker Polesi and CIA Director Panetta seem tired. As CIA Director Panetta was recommending "moving on!" in a Sunday Washington Post Op-Ed, news was breaking that he had cancelled a program for assassinating terrorist leaders that Vice President Cheney had directed not be briefed to the Congressional leadership. Thank goodness for Congressional recesses! Read This Blog 07/07/2009 - TAKE THIS CYBER CZAR JOB AND SHOVE IT? As fascinated (OK obsessed) as I am with the lack of trust between the Congress and the IC with its attendant impact on national security, its time to move on! I thought DNI Denny Blair's first public address on June 8th at an INSA dinner would provide more than enough material for this month edition, but having sat through it in person I can't bare to review a "dare to be bland" overview of the IC by its CEO. Had this speech been a Wall Street Analyst guidance call I believe there would have been an immediate rush to "short IC" based on lack of strategic direction and tired fundamentals. Read This Blog 06/01/2009 - She Said/He Said: So Much for Building Trust North Korea is testing nuclear weapons, fighting is intensifying in Pakistan's Swat Valley, and the White House 60 Cyber Review has been released, but the political brawl over whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi was or was not mislead by the CIA regarding the use of waterboarding seems to be confirming the point I was making in these pages last month about the lack of trust between the Intelligence Community (IC) and Congress. Read This Blog 04/30/2009 - Rebuilding Trust In mid April I thought the just released ODNI Inspector General's assessment from last November of how the DNI/ODNI is failing to deliver on expectations five years on would be more than controversial enough for us to discuss. Then came the events of Maersk Alabama, the bravery of her Captain Richard Phillips and skills of the Navy Seals that forced the nation to finally take notice of the piracy problem off of the Horn of Africa --- certainly there are some intelligence issues here worth exploring. As I am writing though the media is consumed by the release of Justice Department memos on "enhanced interrogation" techniques authorized by Bush Administration against high value Al Qaida captives and whether the memos should have been released, if the US engaged in torture, and what if any legal action should be taken against those involved. Making this story even more compelling is whether senior Congressional Democrats gave tacit approval to these enhanced interrogation techniques by not objecting to them at the time when they where briefed about them by the Bush Administration. The problem with the so called "torture memos" is what am I going to tell you that you have not read already? Not much is what I suspect. Read This Blog 04/02/2009 - IT'S TAX TIME AND AMERICA NEEDS A CPA! Since December I have been wanting to write about cyber, but realizing this topic is going to be with us for awhile I deferred to more immediate and less controversial topics such as grading DNI McConnell's performance ----- you remember the "gentlemen's B," which I still think is a high mark since I wasn't grading on a curve and his predecessor got an "incomplete" for the course! DNI Blair did his first media availability on 26 March and that is usually good MAZZ- INT fodder, but in the 22 page transcript I didn't see any thing you or I have not already read in the Early Bird! Read This Blog 02/02/2009 - A GENTLEMAN'S "B" FOR THE OUTGOING DNI January and the inauguration of President Obama have offered up a smorgasbord of delicious topics on which to engage. There is John Brennan reemerging as the Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism and the accompanying discussion about whether the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council should be merged. Perhaps we should deconstruct Denny Blair's confirmation testimony for clues about how he will run the Intelligence Community (IC); or we could debate the wisdom of the President's decision to nominate Leon Panetta to be CIA Director. Then there is Bob Gates' Senate Armed Services Committee testimony now as President Obama's Secretary of Defense on the department's priorities that we could explore for their impact on the IC. However, since Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell and the ODNI staff spent considerable effort in January documenting the performance of the DNI and by extension the IC during the McConnell tenure it is here that I want to dwell with my own evaluation. Read This Blog 01/09/2009 - THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION Because there was so little to comment on about the Obama Administration's incoming Intelligence Team, my original intention was to write about the National Comprehensive Security Initiative (NCSI) and the reports that a federal government Cyber Czar would soon be established. Aside from John Brennan's decision in late November to withdraw from consideration for the post of CIA Director, "No Drama Obama" seemed an apt phrase to capture the transition of the IC leadership. As a news story, Intelligence was right where the Obama Transition Team wanted it - on the back burner. This situation changed abruptly though after New Years with the unexpected nomination of Leon Panetta to be CIA Director along with the expected announcement of Denny Blair to be Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Read This Blog 12/15/2008 - WHAT PRESIDENT OBAMA SHOULD ASK HIS DNI ON DAY ONE Before getting into what I believe the next DNI should focus on, I suppose its worth considering briefly why President Elect Obama did not name his Director of National Intelligence (DNI) or CIA Director along with the rest of his National Security team on 30 November. According to informed reporting, retired Admiral Denny Blair was slated to be named DNI and John Brennan-- current CEO of TAC, Clinton PDB Briefer, first NCTC Director, and senior Intelligence advisor to the Obama campaign - Director of CIA. According to unconfirmed second hand insider reports, Denny Blair's nomination is being reconsidered because the Obama Transition Team is concerned about establishing the DNI as a military position. Just a few days before the President Elect introduced his national security team, John Brennan publicly announced he was withdrawing his name from consideration for any senior IC post so as not to be a "distraction" to the new administration because of concerns raised by a coalition of 200 psychiatrists about his tacit acceptance of "enhance interrogation techniques" while at CIA. In my view these are inconsequential reasons for denying our next President and the IC the service of two outstanding individuals who would be ready to lead the IC from the moment of confirmation. Read This Blog 11/10/2008 - IC INDUSTRY DAYS: CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM OR MANURE? Since joining the "for profit" private sector of the industrial base associated with the Intelligence Community (IC) in June of 2006 I have found it necessary to go various agency industry days on a regular basis, and to be blunt with the exception of NSA events and the ODNI's second one I am tired of being fed manure in a sugar cone and being told its chocolate ice cream! Worse, I get the feeling that those intelligence agency officials organizing these industry days actually believe that they are delivering chocolate ice cream, i.e. what the private sector wants to learn at an industry day. Read This Blog 10/10/2008 - IT'S NOT A BAILOUT FOR THE IC BUT IT IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE DNI Throughout the month of September there was a considerable amount of media attention focused on the President's Comprehensive National Cyber Initiative (CNCI). Given the importance of cyber to our national security, the extant threats and vulnerabilities, as well as the complex policy and questions about who should lead the government's cyber efforts, I thought this would be a good topic for AFCEA's monthly intel blog. When I saw what the national economic crisis did to the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates it occurred to me that talking about the intelligence issues associated with CNCI, as important as they are, is not what most people care about right now. Read This Blog 09/08/2008 - TOO MANY CONTRACTORS; TOO MUCH COST? The recently concluded Democratic and Republican Party Conventions provided excellent made for TV political drama, but not surprisingly offered no insight about how either of the Presidential candidates feels about changes in the Intelligence Community (IC). We do know, however, that both Senator Obama and Senator McCain view change as good and that government contractors need to be reined in. We also know from the FY 09 Intelligence Authorization Bill that was not enacted because of partisan differences over language on interrogation techniques that at least the IC Congressional oversight committees want to reduce the number of contractors used by the IC and that they believe contractors should not be allowed to execute "inherently government functions." Read This Blog 08/04/2008 - IC VISION 2015: Too Little and Too Slow! In late July the DNI released "VISION 2015: A Globally Networked and Integrated Intelligence Enterprise." In his cover letter for this glossy 22 page nicely illustrated document Mike McConnell reminds us that the Intelligence Community (IC) "is still largely structured, staffed, and operated around a design optimized for a different era" and VISION 2015 is meant to lay out a path towards globally networked and integrated IC "based on the principles of integration, collaboration, and innovation." Read This Blog 07/08/2008 - IRAQ: IF IT ISN'T ABOUT OIL TODAY IT SHOULD BE The Defense Supplemental Appropriations Bill was passed during the last week in June and action on the compromise FISA legislation was deferred until after the Congress' 4th of July recess so the Intelligence Community (IC) will at least have funds if not complete authority to operate for the rest of FY 08 on behalf of the nation's security. Other than that I am at loss for topics of significance (at least to me) about the health and status of the IC that has pretty much been the staple of this blog. Of course, spending $45.00 two to three times a week to fill up my Honda CR-V could have me distracted, so let's talk about energy, the IC and national security. Read This Blog 05/27/2008 - THE IC OUTSOURCING CONUNDRUM Despite the collected wisdom of those who know about this stuff (i.e. congressional staffers) that it is unlikely there will be an intelligence authorization bill for the third year in row, I was interested in the language of the authorization bills recently reported out by both the House Permanent Select Committee for Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence (SSCI). The reason there won't be an FY 2009 Intelligence Authorization Bill is because the executive branch through the IC finds both versions fatally flawed on interrogation techniques the CIA should be allowed to employ. Read This Blog 05/06/2008 - INTELLIGENCE AND THE CONCEPT OF "CUSTOMERS" LTG Rich Zahner's observation two weeks ago at the AFCEA Spring Intelligence Symposium on Breaking Down Barriers to Information Sharing that intelligence is meant for decision makers vice customers brought one of my favorite hobby horses out of the barn --- the ill conceived concepts of intelligence community customers. Read This Blog 04/08/2008 - WHO REALLY READS THIS STUFF ?!?! My apologies for being a week late with this month's meandering thoughts on the IC, but it seems my trip to attend the DoDIIS Conference in mid March took more out of me than excursions like this in the past use to. Then there are is all that "day job" stuff at Oracle's National Security Group that keeps diverting me. Read This Blog 03/03/2008 - A ZOO STORY - OR CONTEXT MATTERS My original plan for this month's Intelligence Community (IC) color commentary was do a traditional book review on A.J. Rossmiller's recently published STILL BROKEN: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failure from Baghdad to the Pentagon. Given Mr. Rosesmiller's brief experience with DIA, before even reading a word my reaction was that the title was presumptive at best and suggested an agenda. Two hundred and twenty six pages later of mostly anecdotal pap he proved me right. It seems DIA's new hire analysts were consistently producing highly useable intelligence about Iraq only to be thwarted by managers who found their reporting to be unusable because it was too pessimistic to be taken seriously by policy makers. The idea that because something is new to him does not ipso facto make it new to the IC appears to be a condition Rossmiller has not contemplated. Read This Blog 02/06/2008 - I WISH YOU WOULDN'T BRING THOSE ISSUES UP I have been struggling all of January to find something interesting (at least to me ) to write about regarding the IC for this space, but IC related news seems to be dominated by the debate over FISA and the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes. At first I was looking for Lawrence Wright's "NEW YORKER" article on DNI McConnell to bail me out, but 16,000 words later all I found there was Mike's traditional definition of torture and that Jim Clapper has made count down clocks all the rage amongst the IC senior leadership. Read This Blog 01/03/2008 - INEVITABLE SURPRISES At this time of year all the talk shows and newspapers do some kind of year in review with projections for the new year and that's what I was planning to do here for the Intelligence Community but I am going to demur, as it seems to me that the most significant event of 2007 with the likely greatest impact for 2008 occurred on 27 December ----- the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi Pakistan. Read This Blog 11/27/2007 - ARE WE SPENDING ENOUGH ON INTELLIGENCE? WE PROBABLY ARE! Well, the DNI implied back on 30 October that the United States will spend $43.5 billion on intelligence in FY 08 and the security of the republic seems not to have been impaired. Read This Blog 10/29/2007 - IF WE COULD ONLY COLLABORATE AS MUCH AS WE TALK ABOUT IT ! Last month I gave you my slant on the September Analytic Transformation Conference in Chicago, where the IC dignitary seemed to conclude that collaboration across the IC would indeed be transformational. Read This Blog 09/28/2007 - WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A FAILURE TO COLLABORATE! I was in Chicago the week after Labor Day for the DNI's "Analytic Transformation - Moving Forward Together - Symposium" where 400 Intelligence Community (IC) "dignitary" gathered to affirm their belief that information sharing and collaboration enabled by technology can now truly transform intelligence analysis. Read This Blog 08/28/2007 - CONFLICTED Several intelligence issues worthy of examination and discussion emerged in August. There's the NIE on the "Prospects for Iraq's Stability;" the Foreign Surveillance debate between the Congress and the DNI; and the Congressionally mandated release of CIA's Inspector General's 2005 report on the Agency's performance pre 9-11. Read This Blog 06/29/2007 - DEEP PENETRATION Like many of you I have just read (OK, I listened to the book tape) George Tenet's AT THE CENTER OF THE STORM My Years at the CIA, and like some of you I was in the audience on 19 June to hear Bill Studeman's remarks as he accepted the Baker Award. Both speak to the state of America's Intelligence Community (IC) ----- Tenet in terms of explanation and Studeman in terms of prescription. ---- in an unintended issue/response complimentary way. Read This Blog Authors are entirely responsible for opinions expressed in material appearing in AFCEA publications and online products, and these opinions are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. This is a moderated blog, and all comments are subject to review prior to posting. Approved comments will appear within 24 hours. |
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