Quis Custodiet?

Key quote from the weekend editorial at the LA Times entitled "What did Edward Snowden get wrong? Everything."

"That's why I find the Snowden controversy so frustrating. I realize many Americans don't trust their government. I wish I could change that. I wish I could tell people the amazing things I witnessed during my 30 years in the CIA, that I've never seen people work harder or more selflessly, that for little money and long hours, people took it for granted that their flaws would be scrutinized and their successes ignored. But I've been around long enough to know that deep-rooted distrust of government is immune to stories from people like me. The conspiracy buffs are too busy howling in protest at the thought that their government could uncover how long they spent on the phone with their dear aunt."

Mossadegh. Diem. Allende. Iran-Contra. The ridiculous overestimation of Soviet capabilities. Lumumba. Castro. The Bay of Pigs fiasco and the catastrophic underestimation of dangers of the Missile Crisis. HTLINGUAL. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident. National security letters. COINTELPRO. The Pentagon Papers.

Where do you want me to stop?

Many U.S. citizens don't trust their government in large part because of the many times their government has been caught by its citizens with its pants down buggering the rentboy and has turned on its citizens with an angry look and shrieked "Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes?!"

The U.S. government's intelligence and defense agencies have had a pretty damn ugly record of internal and external skulduggery over the past half century. When you add in the times that they've been flat out mistaken, or have ignored or, worse, dismissed the likely blowback from their actions and have cost the U.S. blood and treasure as a result...or the times they have been misused or ignored by unscrupulous men in executive or legislative power...and you get a pretty high stack of reasons that many Americans SHOULD ask their government for a security deposit prior to handing them over the keys to the beach house.

Frankly, I tend to agree with Liepman, the author of the piece, that there is no such thing as "complete transparency" between a government and its people. Every nation does have enemies. Finding out what those enemies are up to, defeating them before matters come to open warfare, is the best possible mission for a nation's intelligence services. Much of that snooping and foiling must be done in secret. To be successful in these silent wars truth must, indeed, sometimes have a bodyguard of lies.

But, I'm sorry, the rest of his screed is some weak shit.

Given what we know the record of U.S. intelligence. Given what we know now about the people then in power when most of these "counter-terrorism" programs were set up. Given what we know of the tendency of any government, of ALL governments, to gather information about their own people and to use that information against those people that antagonize them.

There is no real reason to simply trust "...the lengths to which the intelligence community goes to protect privacy."

At the moment the question isn't really about the size, or shape, or nature of the bodyguard of lies. We will probably never really know any of that, just that the bodyguard is there and is actively seeking to hide the collection of information, some of which is likely to be our own. Intel insiders like Liepman can swear on the highest stack of Bibles ever piled up that they are really, really good people who really, really aren't going to use these programs to help government officials kneecap political enemies or in other unsavory ways such as to evade the legal requirements for evidence collection imposed on domestic law enforcement and their assurances are almost sure to be worthless.

The real question is, simply just exactly how much power over us we choose to give that bodyguard, and who can guard a guard that cannot be seen or heard.

Wars and Lechery

It appears that former GEN and current Director of the CIA David Petraeus' government career has been terminated with extreme prejudice by his dick.

"It had long been rumored that something was going on between Petraeus and Broadwell."

I don't really have a dog in this "fight". In general I am not particularly impressed by Petraeus' military vita - he seems very, well, "German" to me in that his myopic obsession with tactical minutia seems to have precluded his either garnering or providing the geopolitical/strategic advice his civilian superiors should have received to make sound strategic decisions. As CIA chief, well, we don't really know what the hell the CIA is doing, so there's that.

My only thought is that it does seem frankly shortsighted to base an individual's public employment on where and with whom he or she trades bodily fluids.

Hopefully GEN Petraeus was not using his organs of generation in his positions in the military and intelligence agencies he directed. And one would hope that he was no less discreet in his pillow talk with his lover than with his wife; neither was cleared to know what he knew, so I don't see how the one relationship compromises his effectiveness more than the other in that sense.

Obviously the way that this sort of screwing around is viewed by the media and the public (or is it - how many the public tut-tutters and finger-waggers about this have slipped out for a bit on the side, I wonder?) such a bit of extracurricular rumpy-bumpy put the man in the position to be blackmailed. But is that an issue of the act, or the way we TREAT the act?

I'm not advocating adultery, or the old rules where people like Jack Kennedy screwed the pants of anyone female that would slow down from a slow jog and the press connived to keep it secret. I guess what I'm saying is that I frankly don't give a rat's ass and I'm suggesting the rest of us shouldn't either. I'm suggesting that we treat what happened between David Petraeus and Paula Broadbent as something that should be of concern to Petraues, Broadbent, their spouses, and those who know them personally. I'm suggesting that we should reconsider the notion that when happens in the bedroom is important to what happens in the War Room. And that we might be fools to toss away otherwise intelligent and capable public officials because of their private weaknesses.

But maybe I'm just an indifferent oaf. Maybe private fooling around IS a critical indicator of public failure. Maybe we did the right thing with Petraeus and his wandering weenie.

What do you think?

Update 11/10 p.m.: Glenn Greenwald has a good observation on the broader implications of all this lovey-dovey-ness:

"...there is something deeply symbolic and revealing about this whole episode. Broadwell ended up spending substantial time with Petraeus when she, in essence, embedded with him and followed him around Afghanistan in order to write her biography. What ended up being produced was not only the type of propagandistic hagiography such arrangements typically produce, but also deeply personal affection as well.

This is access journalism and the embedding dynamic in its classic form, just a bit more vividly expressed. The very close and inter-dependent relationship between media figures and the political and military officials they cover often produces exactly these same sentiments even if they do not find the full-scale expression as they did in this case. In that regard, the relationship between the now-former CIA Director and his fawning hagiographer should be studied in journalism schools to see the results reliably produced by access journalism and the embedding process. Whatever Broadwell did for Petraeus is what US media figures are routinely doing for political and especially military officials with their "journalism".

Hmmm...

Intel Brief

(FYI, I'm just passing this on to the smart guys around here. My sum total of military intelligence wisdom was looking at the order of battle for our potential DPRKA enemies and remarking "That's a whole fecking assload of yellow Reds up there, hunh?"

Help from more intelligent intel types would be greatly appreciated.)

Looking for some help and advice from the crowd in the Pub (I think the new term for this is targeted Crowd-sourcing).

I am starting a Masters Program at DIA this week (National Intelligence University, formerly known as National Defense Intelligence College) for a Masters in Science and Technology Intelligence with a concentration in Information Operations and Cyber. I have to write a thesis, and the topic needs to somehow touch on Cyber, preferably with a foreign focus (meaning that the topic of study isn't the US infrastructure, but instead focused on the infrastructure or capabilities or a foreign entity). It can be classified, but I am fighting hard to keep my topic unclass so I can work it at home and for other obvious reasons of convenience.

There are plenty of topics out there that I can write some lengthy information papers about, but the purpose of this drill is to come up with a thesis question, make an argument, have a theory, etc. That is where I am struggling, I am used to identifying problems, analyzing them and proposing solutions. My professors want something that is "academically interesting" and they want me to posit a theory about something. Not the way I am wired to think. I don't care much for theories, I am used to focusing on solutions.

My original plan got shot down, so I am looking for some good ideas. I wanted to look at how Cyber Command and NSA are recruiting computer hackers, and compare that to that actual threat (for example, if Chinese will be the dominant language on the internet in 5 years, how many Chinese linguists are working computers at NSA). I still haven't gotten this sold to my professors because they consider this more of a Human Resources problem with some intelligence supporting the argument, and not truly an intelligence problem. I am arguing that resourcing intelligence operations is an "intel problem," but I haven't found a professor yet who agrees with me. Again, the difference in how I think as a senior leader in tactical intelligence, and how academics at the strategic level of intel think.

So, I need help, and need it quick. I am leaning towards something in regards to social networks and their future role. But I am open to any ideas at this point.

Thanks!

bg

Snooping and Pooping

Not sure how I missed this back in May:

"The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate."

Now I don't know about you, but if I were to catch foreign soldiers sneaking about my country gathering intel I'd

1. treat them as spies and hang them, or

2. treat them as invaders and their actions as an act of war.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a sergeant so I loves me some war. But if we're sending troops into other nations without their consent shouldn't this be something that comes from the National Command Authority and not from some shoulder-strap MACOM commander? Am I way off base here? Help me out, you ConLaw freaks and Small Wars types; wassup?

The State of US Intelligence?

A book review and a report have appeared recently in the US which reflect much on the current state of US Intelligence after eights years of George W. Bush/Dick Cheney's handwork. The trends that have led us to this point of course predate both, or rather date back to the years when Bush was attempting to crawl back up on his barstool. Cheney's influence of course goes back to the end of the Cold War and the restructuring of US intelligence which started in the early 1990s.

William Pfaff's recent article pointed me to Dr. Marc Segeman's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of this month. The last four pages of the document constitute his conclusions and pretty much lay out the rational limits of what our policy concerning Afghanistan "should" be. "Should" defined in terms of national interest supported by rational policy which is connected to available means. There are no "private" or hidden interests involved here, simply the interests of the United States as a state protecting the welfare/interests of the political community it supposedly represents - the American people.

The other document is a book review on a new book about the NSA. The book's strongest part is WWII and the early Cold War period, as in the version as to what really did MacArthur in, but James Bamford's article brings us much more up to date. The NSA, Bamford tells us, has been the key winner in the intelligence shake up that happened after the various intelligence "failures" which followed Bush's moving into the White House. There are obvious reasons for this, one of which I will come to shortly.

But first I think it necessary to point out something that may not be so obvious about these two seemingly very different texts. They both indicate the status of US Intelligence after eight years of Bush and now one of Obama. Dr. Segeman's testimony before the Senate Committee is going to have little influence on what US policy in Afghanistan is, or am I wrong? This is because the Senate some time ago abandoned their constitutional function in regards to foreign policy, and will follow and sign off on what ever the president decides. I also suspect that decision will be based on domestic political considerations (as in various powerful political/economic interests that see war as profitable, or necessary to send "the right message"): or as we say in strategic theory "objective politics" will trump "subjective policy". The American people don't really enter into the calculation.

So how does this link with the seemingly unlimited expansion of the NSA?

In one word: POWER. That is what intelligence is post-George W. Bush. The NeoCons see the US as the lone SuperPower, able to wage war relentlessly since our power is infinite. We simply act out our phantasies in the real world and let "the wogs" sort out the mess, which is what being an American President is all about in a NeoCon world. "Intelligence" is meant to allow the NeoCon leader the "freedom" to do what he has already decided upon. Intelligence based on real world threat assessments is the last thing these "leaders" wish to hear . . . So the good Dr's careful analysis is for naught. At the same time, for a political elite which has given up on democracy, the ability to turn this massive Cold War relic on the very same people it was originally meant to protect must seem a no brainer.

How Obama decides on the Afghan question will take care of any doubts as to where he stands in relation to Bush's policies, but the continued expansion of the NSA is already the handwriting on the wall.

Sadly, the republic canary in the mine died some time ago.

Update 1: War on Terror II