The Athenaeum

Outsourcing Intelligence?

"Over the past six years, a quiet revolution has occurred in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing to corporations and away from the long-established practice of keeping operations in US government hands, with only select outsourcing of certain jobs to independently contracted experts. Key functions of intelligence agencies are now run by private corporations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) revealed in May that 70 percent of the intelligence budget goes to contractors."  The Nation

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Yes.  That is true.  They hire people like me.  The corporations they are talking about are mostly ones that muster retired or former intelligence professionals as individuals or teams to work for the IC.

Why?  The IC has expanded massively over the last six years.  Retirees are often the best people.  They were when they were still working for the government.  Washington is an expensive place to live.  Like me, many retirees could live more cheaply and probably better somewhere else.  This process keeps them in the government's service.

Why would they not just keep working for the government?  If you ask that, you have never worked for the government.  Honestly, the government pays poorly.  It would be easier to go fishing than continue to put up with the bureaucratic bull that the government hands out for peanuts, Consultants don't get treated badly by the bureaucratic "brass."  If they are, they go fishing. 

The idea that the retirees were somehow responsible for the pre-war mess is "bull."  That happened because of the gutlessness of the leaders of the major agencies and the "scourge" wielded by the neocons. pl

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hillhouse

Maliki and his "friends" are unhappy with Petraeus.

Here we have two stories that highlight the growing unhappiness of the Maliki government with the current US military policy of making common cause with Sunni (and potentially Shia) tribesmen and other residents of smaller towns and cities against AQinM (Al-Qa'ida in Mesopotamia). 

The Maliki government exists by the courtesy of neocon influence on US policy for the purpose of giving the Shia religious urban crowd political power in Iraq.  That policy has failed.  The Shia are clearly not capable of making effective the authority given to them by "one man, one vote" based elections.  They probably will never be capable of making their authority effective in the parts of the country dominated by Sunni Arabs.  To put it bluntly.  They don't have "the juice."

In response to that failure of Shia will and capacity the US military has developed a policy of splitting off insurgent groups who have been allies of convenience for AQinM but who have become unhappy with the fanatic insistence of AQinM in massive change in traditional life style and leadership.  The policy which has been applied by the US in Anbar for the last year has successfully sought to make these non AQinM insurgents into allies of convenience of the US military.  This policy is hard to apply.  It is a bit like "herding cats," and it has to be adjusted every day.  Nevertheless, it has been quite successful.  The tribes are "clearing their zones" of AQinM.  Now, this policy is being applied in other governorates (Diyala for example).  It is now being used to cause village mukhtars to organize local defense against AQinM.

Not surprisingly, both the "high neocons" and their Shia religious politician proteges are outraged by this policy.  The policy represents a repudiation of the neocon romance with the idea of re-organizing the Middle East to make it more "modern" and a more friendly place for Israel to exist.  The Shia exile religious politicians correctly see this policy as something that, if successful, will require them to make the kinds of messy but effective "deals" with the Iraqi Sunni Arabs over money  and power that they really don't want to make.

I wrote a couple of things for the government a while back that bear on this issue.  They are enclosed below.

I'm with Petraeus on this.  pl

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/07/ap_petraeusmaliki_070727/

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq29jul29,0,1476598.story

Download how_to_work_with_tribesmen.pdf

Download an_operational_view_of_islam.pdf

A Farrell film festival

Three Reviews from Alan Farrell:

Download oceans_thirteen.doc

Download Sicko.doc

Download live_free_or_die_hard.doc

Sale on Wolfowitz et al

Dear Pat:

I think it truly bewildering to watch Sen. Graham and this whole administration start to push al Queda as the major threat in Iraq at a time when Iraqi nationalist elements have finally become its effective antagonists.

Lest we forget, the Bush group knew NOTHING about al Qaeda when it entered office nor did it care to learn. In December 1999, the president-elect went to the White House to talk with President Clinton. When the two men were alone, Bush asked for Clinton’s advice on foreign policy and Clinton said, "My only advice to anybody in this is to get a good team and do what you think is right." Clinton then told Bush he had read his campaign statements carefully and saw that Bush’s top defense priorities were building a national missile defense system and dealing with Iraq. Clinton proposed a new set of priorities in order of importance: al Qaeda, Middle East diplomacy, North Korea and nuclear competition in South Asia, listing Iraq last. Bush did not respond.

With good reason. Bush’s group had no understanding of al Qaeda. It’s mind was locked in the ice of Cold War strategic terms: rogue nations and "state-sponsored terror." They had not the slightest grasp of a terrorist organiztion consisting of small lethal cells with no national boundaries that was operating out of sight in 60 countries. The new Bush NSC had actually downgraded the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism; it was no longer a cabinet level position. Richard Clarke did not have his first meeting with Bush Deputies like Condi Rice’s Steve Hadley and Wolfowtiz, Rumsfeld’s deputy at Defense until April 2000! When Clarke started to talk of bin Laden as the single most immediate and dangerous threat America faced, Deputy SecDef Paul Wolfowitz bristled. "Well, there are others that do that as well, at least as much. Iraqi terrorism, for example."

Clarke replied he was unaware of any Iraqi-sponsored terrorism directed at the United States since 1993.
"You give bin Laden too much credit," said Wolfowitz, and said Iraq had been responsible for the 1993 attack on the world Trade Center in New York, repeating the theme of a completely discredited book by Laurie Mylroie that blamed Iraq, when in fact al Qaeda had been involved.

Wolfowitz disliked the Clinton policy of containment of Saddam. Wolfowitz also believed that Saddam was busy attempting to build WMD, in spite of the fact that Saddam’s son-in-law, Kamel, who ran those programs, said that they had been destroyed.

Once again, the Clinton group tried to convince the Bush group that al Queda, not Iraq, was the major threat confronting the United States. On Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2001 just ten days before Bush’s inauguration, the Bush team had met to be briefed by outgoing Secretary of Defense William Cohen. Iraq, Cohen said was weakened and contained. The United States controlled a no-fly zone in the northernmost 10 percent of the country, and in Operation Southern Watch, the US patrolled the entire southern half of Iraq almost to Baghdad suburbs. Cohen told the new group that it would soon see the reality about Iraq. They would not find much support among the neighboring countries for any strong action against Baghdad, which would mean if they launched an all out attack they would have to go it alone. Cohen didn’t think air strikes world accomplish much, and he felt the new group would back off and find "reconciliation" with Saddam whom Cohen believed was effectively contained and isolated. He might as well have saved his breath.

The attacks of Sept. 11, undercut the moderates in the administration like Colin Powell, and incrededibly, as we all know, it sharpened the interest in attacking Iraq. A few days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Greg Newbold, a three-star general and chief operations deputy from the Joint Chiefs of Staff ran into Doug Feith. Said Newbold, "You could still smell he smoke in the corridors. In the middle of this I assured Feith that we were working hard on Afghanistan. Feith told him, `Why are you working on Afghanistan? You ought to be working on Iraq "

Surely this whole Iraqi episode will stun later generations just as the era before and just after Munich stuns us today.

With greetings to all.

Richard Sale

The "Counterintelligence State" and Dr. Strauss

David Habakkuk has been good enough to give us his thoughts on the "Counterintelligence State" with regard to its relationship to the thinking and teaching of Leo Strauss and his associates and "children."  pl

Download DrLeoStrauss1.doc

http://www.stiftungleostrauss.com/bunker.php?itemid=527

"Bush, naturally never wrong." Shankar Vedantam

""Republicans and Democrats have both been very busy reducing dissonance over the Iraq decision," said Tavris, an independent researcher who works in Los Angeles. "The Republicans who were most in support of the war continue to believe that weapons of mass destruction have been found and al-Qaeda was in Iraq and Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were in cahoots. They reduce their dissonance by rejecting evidence they were wrong."

"Half of all Democrats supported the war," she added. "They have reduced dissonance by conveniently forgetting they once supported the war. . . . That is the way memory works and the way the brain works. We ignore, forget or dismiss information that suggests we might be wrong. We rewrite our memories to confirm what we believe."

Aronson, who works at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said that while self-justification is a universal human trait -- and in some cases quite helpful for retaining our sanity -- the Bush administration had taken the trait to such an extreme that it prompted the two researchers to write a book about the phenomenon.

Aronson said the bias toward self-justification explains the administration's shifting rationale for the Iraq war and why Bush could not have allowed Libby to go to prison: "If Scooter Libby, working with the blessing of the vice president, lied about what he did in order to protect higher-ups, he is a good guy, he is loyal. It is an exquisite example of self-justification because the good guys are defined as those who are loyal to the cause even if the cause is wrong."

For Bush to have allowed Libby to go to jail, he would have had to live with the idea that someone whom he thought was a good and loyal soldier was being punished for being a good and loyal soldier -- a fairly extreme form of cognitive dissonance. The only way to keep such cognitive dissonance at bay, the psychologists said, was for Bush to see Libby's prison sentence as overly harsh and do away with it altogether, even though Bush, both as president and governor of Texas, has long prided himself on refusing clemency to felons."  Wapo

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I run into these folks often.  They often believe that the WMD are in the bottom of an Iraqi lake.  It is clearly impossible that they could have been parties to such stupidity.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/08/AR2007070800742.html

"Europe's Epitaph" Arnaud de Borchgrave

"Almost two decades after the end of the Cold War, the 27-nation European Union counts 494 million people and a gross domestic product of $15 trillion, about the same as the United States. But appeasement is back. A Dutch Justice Minister said, "If a majority of Dutchmen opt for the Shariah (Islamic law) at some future date, this has to be respected."

Coupled with an aging native European population and an exploding Muslim influx (Mohammed is the second most popular name for newborn baby boys in Dutch cities), the Continent's 20 million Muslims will become majorities in several European cities by midcentury. Meanwhile, Mr. Laqueur's "Last Days of Europe," tongue only half in cheek, fears the emergence of Europe as "a museum of world history and civilization preaching the importance of morality in world affairs to a nonexistent audience.""  De Borchgrave

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The essential question here is whether or not it is virtuous and wise for Europeans to wish to retain their ancient identities and culture in the face of growing Muslim demographics.

Forget all the politically wise PC baloney about the "threat" of terrorist infiltration into Europe.  This is about cultural identity.

The same thing is true in the USA with regard to the tidal wave of Hispanic immigration. pl

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070703/COMMENTARY/107030004/1012/commentary

"..philosophers, hawks and ideologues," Barry

"Alarmed by the takeover of the US intelligence apparatus by philosophers, hawks and ideologues, former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern formed the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. The Pentagon's claims about wmd in Iraq were "an intelligence fiasco of monumental proporti-ons," said McGovern. He claims that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz established their own intelligence unit because the CIA wasn't giving the hawks the "correct answers." Joining the chorus of criticism of politicized intelligence, Patrick Lang, a former director of Middle East analysis at the Pentagon's DIA said that Rumsfeld set up the OSP to undermine the CIA and DIA and then mounted a threat-assessment campaign that was "political pro-paganda," not intelligence. "  Barry in article linked below.

and David Habakkuk in a letter to me concerning the S&S paper. pl

Download barry_04.doc

Download leo_strauss_and_the_world_of_intelligence.pdf Download

Download artists_versus_bureaucrats....pdf

Download sspaper.pdf

Sidney Smith on the future of HUMINT

Sidney Smith sends us this interesting view of the future of HUMINT.  My ony quibble with it is his natural belief that foreign agents can not be recruited in the context of unfavorable political conditions.  People are more complicated than that.  pl

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"A civilian view --

The goal, at least on one level, seems straightforward, First, understand the architecture described in Col. Lang's essay, "Clandestine HUMINT in support of counterinsurgency operations". Then adapt this architecture to today's world. By adapt, I mean apply the apparatus in such a way that it takes into account the differences between combat operations in VN provinces in 1968 and our global struggle today against takfiri jihadists as well as our combat operations during the US occupation of Iraq.

In some ways, I speculate, Gen. Petraeus was tasked with the same when he wrote the COIN manual. But, at least in my opinion, he failed to take the basic principles and then pitch them out into a post modern world -- one with profound differences from those days of Trinquier and Galula.

To describe the creative process involved, I offer an analogy -- admittedly a strange one. But just as Immanuel Wallerstein took the Marxist dialectic and pitched it beyond the bounds of national dynamics and placed it within an entirely new global perspective, the same must be done with the principles underlying the HUMINT operations that at one time took place in Phuoc Long Province. The point here is to illuminate the creative process or methodology involved, not the Marxist dialectic! It is the type of creativity that leads to a new school of art.

Surely there needs to be changes in the present structural apparatus in Iraq and a return to that which was in place in VN by 1968. That's a given

But, just as importantly, I further speculate, the USM and USG must recognize that HUMINT requires a different personality type. It is a type of charisma or, if you prefer, a charism. To quote from Col. Lang's essay, "The difference in performance seems to have been largely a function of leadership."

Tim Spicer -- who heads Aegis Defence Services Ltd. -- does not appear to have the charisma or leadership ability to head HUMINT. "Spicer is a mercenary" as the WAPO article quoted Robert Pelton. So one cannot help but draw a conclusion that there is a thin line between the spirit underlying the private security contractors in Iraq and that described in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." Simply put: MPRI, Blackwater and all the usual suspects have not evidenced this charisma. Odds are high that their efforts will not lead to "intelligence gathering", much less safeguard the people of the US and Britain. They represent the corporation, not the flag. And by flag, I mean a sacred duty is imposed.

The key to HUMINT, I surmise, is the point of contact between one representing the US flag and a potential "agent". Such a contact between the two, I would think, must be based on clearly defined interests. What does the potential agent desire? What is his or her aim? And, then, can the US representative help in such a way that it also furthers US operational goals? Common aims are needed but not sentimentality. After all, it was once said that sentimentality is but an echo of brutality.

At least right now, the opportunity for making such contacts is nil. So, as a start, because of changes over the last 40 plus years, perhaps it is best to view Phuoc Long Province as the world. Or to put another way, Bernard Fall's Street Without Joy is now a World without Joy. And the principles set forth in Fall’s chapter, "The Future of Revolutionary Warfare", must be pitched out beyond local boundaries and now apply to a global village.

The aim is to increase the opportunities that allow a US representative to meet potential agents. Besides obvious structural changes in the present apparatus, global leadership must act in such a way that those involved in HUMINT can reach potential agents. The internet has created a global village, so the "commander-in-chief", the SecState, and -- yes -- the US Attorney General must act in way that they increase the possibility of creating HUMINT.

Perhaps it is the idea of a strategic HUMINT, as contrasted to tactical HUMINT. National leadership somehow must become imbued with the charisma that increases the opportunity for "intelligence gathering". It must become part of their sacred duty.

Without that adaptation, it seems that "intelligence gathering" will fail to materialize. Why should a potential agent support the US when he or she reads the internet everyday and knows about Abu G? And, of course, the question of our US relationship with a post 1967 Israel is always there. It will not leave and we cannot remain in denial.

And, finally, once there is an opportunity for a point of contact, then the one representing the flag must be able to communicate using symbols that the potential agent understands. In our current conflict, the symbols are religious. If we cannot adapt to using these religious symbols, we will fail and should not be "over there" in the first place, at least in my view. Best I can tell, no evidence exists that we are using such symbols successfully.
Sid"

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You can read the essay that Sid is referring to below at "The Missing Factor."  pl