Posted on 08/27/2006 3:24:38 PM PDT by ikez78
ping
Excellent job Mark :)
Yes, that's pretty much my sentiment on Arkin as well. I strongly disagree with his politics (and I'm sure I'm reading his book for very different reasons than he intended in writing it), but he's good at digging up this type of information. Apparently he heard about Harmony from somewhere or someone, and what he says about it is consistent with what Patterson says. I'm wondering now if any other information about the program has leaked out prior to this, perhaps without reference to the program's name.
I've been told off record by some people that there are some important revelations in there concerning Saddam and terrorism but I don't know if anyone else has really gone on record about it. Would be interesting to see.
HARMONY is a tool for managing document collection and translation resources; eliminating duplication in collection and translation efforts; analyzing foreign document marking systems; identifying available foreign source technical and military documents; and reporting document acquisitions within the community and to foreign exploitation partners. Project HARMONY is the NGIC's DODIIS national migration system Data Base for Foreign Document Exploitation and Translation. As such, HARMONY will provide a single comprehensive bibliographic reference to all available primary source foreign technical and military documents and their translations, regardless of classification. Similarly, HARMONY will provide a means for eliminating duplicate collection, translation, and reporting of primary source foreign technical and military documents. Finally, HARMONY will provide DODIIS-wide access to information at the collateral level via SIPRNET through compliance with the NGIC Project PLATYPUS initiative. HARMONY will provide a DOD Information Infrastructure (DII) Common Operation Environment (COE) compliant system that will transit Year 2000 (Y2K).
SNIP
The bottom of this link credits John Pike and Steven Aftergood, who are both acknowledged in Arkin's book ("John Pike's hard work on the Web served as a baseline to understand what was already in the public domain. . .As always on matters of government secrecy, I received the good advice of Steve Aftergood"). The site also includes an external link that now appears to be dead.
I see Captain's Quarter's was also on this over a month ago and you posted it on FR--I need to catch up, y'all are ahead of me, LOL:
Project Harmony Documents Show Chemical 'Projects' In 2003
(Posted at FR here: Project Harmony Documents Show Chemical 'Projects' In 2003)
I read his other books, so this one will be a must. The left is doing all they can to stop the WOT and to smear the name of our President and his administration for conducting a JUST and NECESSARY war. Clinton could not have avoided doing any thing about terrorism by accident. He knew what he was doing, or rather NOT doing. The man should be tried for treason to this day.
http://www.dtic.mil/defenselink/locator/records/000212.html
DefenseLINK Search
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title:
HARMONY : HARMONY
Originator:
Department of Defense
Office of the Secretary of Defense
Defense Information System Agency
Simulation and Assessment (D8)
Access Constraints: None. Approved for Public Release
Use Constraints: None
Abstract: Tool for managing document collection and translation resources; eliminating duplication in collection and translation efforts; analyzing foreign document marking systems; identifying available foreign source technical and military documents; and reporting document acquisitions within the community and to foreign exploitation partners.
Agency Program: The DoD is in the process of establishing a simplified baseline of the best, common information systems across the business functions of the Department. These migration systems represent a stage of process improvement designed at achieving a common set of automated processes and practices in DoD.
Local Subject Terms:
migration system
US Federal GILS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Availability
Distributor Name: Defense Information System Agency
Distributor Organization: Simulation and Assessment (D8)
Distributor Street Address: Virginia Square, 6th Floor, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive
Distributor City: Arlington
Distributor State: VA
Distributor Zip Code: 22203
Distributor Country: USA
Distributor Telephone: 703-696-1819
Distributor Fax: 703-696-1963
Distributor Order Process: Call the DIST help desk (703-760-0303)
Available Time Period: Business Hours EST
Point of Contact
(For further information)
ContactName: SCOTT LAWRENCE
Contact Organization: VGS INC.
ContactStreetAddress: 8301 Greensboro Drive, Suite 600
Contact City: McLean
Contact State: VA
Contact Zip Code: 22901-5396
Contact Country: USA
Contact Telephone: 804-980-7749
Contact Fax: 804-980-7407
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources of Data: Office of the Secretary of Defense : Defense Information System Agency : Simulation and Assessment (D8)
Record Source: Defense Integration Support Tools
Date of Last Modification: Wed Jul 17 16:00:00 EDT 1996
Supplemental Information
Schedule Number: Pending
Control Identifier: DOD-DIST000212
Record Type: Automated Information System
SNIP
I DON'T REMEMBER when I first heard about the project in Doha, Qatar, but I do remember that I was very interested in learning more about it. The effort, led by Central Command with assistance from the Defense Intelligence Agency, is reviewing the detritus of the former Iraqi regime: videotapes, photographs, and many, many documents. One aspect of the effort is something called "Doc-Ex," short for document exploitation. Several intelligence analysts, together with several dozen translators, most of them from Jordan, are sifting through millions of pages of documents unearthed in Iraq after the toppling of the regime.
SNIP
Working outside formal Pentagon lines of inquiry, I soon learned more. Many of the documents from Doha had been entered into a database known as HARMONY. HARMONY is a thick stew of reports and findings from a variety of intelligence agencies and military units, and alongside the Iraqi documents were reports from contributing U.S. agencies. Eventually, I got a list of document titles that seemed particularly interesting:
1. Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) Correspondence to Iraq Embassy in the Philippines and Iraq MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
2. Possible al Qaeda Terror Members in Iraq
3. IIS report on Taliban-Iraq Connections Claims
4. Money Transfers from Iraq to Afghanistan
5. IIS Agent in Bulgaria
6. Iraqi Intel report on Kurdish Activities: Mention of Kurdish Report on al Qaeda--reference to al Qaeda presence in Salman Pak
7. IIS report about the relationship between IIS and the Kurdish Group Jalal Talibani [sic]
8. Iraqi Mukhabarat Structure
9. Locations of Weapons/Ammunition Storage (with map)
10. Iraqi Effort to Cooperate with Saudi Opposition Groups and Individuals
11. Order from Saddam to present $25,000 to Palestinian Suicide Bombers Families
12. IIS reports from Embassy in Paris: Plan to Influence French Stance on U.N. Security Council
13. IIS Importing and Hiding High Tech Computers in Violation of UN
14. IIS request to move persons, documents to private residences
15. Formulas and information about Iraq's Chemical Weapons Agents
16. Denial and Deception of WMD and Killing of POWs
17. 1987 orders by Hussein to use chemical weapons in the Ealisan Basin
18. Ricin research and improvement
19. Personnel file of Saad Mohammad Abd Hammadi al Deliemi
20. Memo from the Arab Liaison Committee: With a list of personnel in need of official documents
21. Fedayeen Saddam Responds to IIS regarding rumors of citizens aiding Afghanistan
22. Document from Uday Hussein regarding Taliban activity
23. Improvised Explosive Devices Plan
24. IIS reports on How French Campaigns are Financed
25. French and German relationships with Iraq
26. IIS reports about Russian Companies--News articles and potential IIS agents
27. IIS plan for 2000 of Europe's Influence of Iraq Strategy
28. IIS plans to infiltrate countries and collect information to help remove sanctions
29. Correspondence from IIS and the stations in Europe
30. Contract for satellite pictures between Russia, France and Iraq: Pictures of Neighboring Countries (Dec. 2002)
31. Chemical Gear for Fedayeen Saddam 32. Memo from the IIS to Hide Information from a U.N. Inspection team (1997)
33. Chemical Agent Purchase Orders (Dec. 2001)
34. Iraq Ministry of Defense Calls for Investigation into why documents related to WMD were found by UN inspection team
35. Correspondence between various Iraq organizations giving instructions to hide chemicals and equipment
36. Correspondence from IIS to MIC regarding information gathered by foreign intelligence satellites on WMD (Dec. 2002)
37. Correspondence from IIS to Iraqi Embassy in Malaysia
38. Cleaning chemical suits and how to hide chemicals
39. IIS plan of what to do during UNSCOM inspections (1996)
40. Secret Meeting with Taliban Group Member and Iraqi Government (Nov. 2000) There are thousands of similar documents. Most of them are unclassified. That's important: Most of them are unclassified.
Because I'd been told that these documents are all unclassified, I requested copies from the Pentagon press office. For reasons I still do not entirely understand, the Pentagon would not provide them. Captain Roxie Merritt, the director of Pentagon press operations, suggested I file a Freedom of Information Act request. I did so on June 19, 2005. Two weeks later I received a letter from the Pentagon's Office of Freedom of Information and Security Review.
The information you requested is under the cognizance of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). We have referred your request to them at the address provided below requesting they respond directly to you. Defense Intelligence Agency Attn: SVI-1, Room E4-234 Washington, DC 20340-5100
On July 22, 2005, I emailed Captain Merritt in the Pentagon public affairs office. Captain Merritt was then--and remained throughout the process--gracious and professional. I got the feeling she was being as helpful as the bureaucracy would allow her to be.
She wrote:
DIA FOIA has confirmed they have your request. Here is the challenge as they described it to me. "This is not a simple request. . . . There are multiple agencies/ organizations involved. It isn't as though the documents are laying around in a neat pile waiting for someone to ask for them. The most logical place for the requested documents to be is in a database known as HARMONY. INSCOM (NGIC) is the program manager (owner) of HARMONY, but as they are quick to point out, "anyone" can enter items into the database, so they do not consider themselves the "owner" of the information in the database. Whoever input the information into HARMONY is the release authority of that information and you can't determine who that is until you find the requested documents. For the 44 requested documents, you're talking mega-hours of searching. Of course, the documents may not even be in HARMONY, which would require searching elsewhere (our FOIA folks are looking into that as well). Our FOIA monitor is talking with INSCOM to determine the most efficient way of retrieving the requested documents."
I didn't understand it either.
For weeks I heard nothing. So on August 23, 2005, I emailed Captain Merritt again. She responded quickly.
Steve, Had my folks check. . . . DIA referred the request to Army's INSCOM which does FOIA on behalf of NGIC . . . the owner of HARMONY. I asked if they had advised you of the referral . . . they had not, but will do so. In early September I received a letter from the DIA.
This responds to your request under the Freedom of Information Act dated 19 June 2005. Therein you requested from the Department of Defense 43 documents. Your request was referred to the Defense Intelligence Agency on 1 July 2005 and assigned case number 0622-05. The thrill of having been assigned a DIA case number was short-lived. I learned in the next paragraph that the DIA was no longer handling the request.
These documents are under the purview of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command and your request has been forwarded to that organization for processing and direct response to you. On September 14, 2005, I emailed Captain Merritt and asked for a contact name at INSCOM. She tasked a subordinate to get back to me. That never happened.
Then, two weeks later, I received a letter dated September 20, 2005. It came from the FOIA office of the Army's Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Meade, Maryland. Once again, I had gotten a case number. And once again the case number was meaningless.
Since additional time is needed to search for records at another element of our command, we are unable to comply with the statutory 20-day time limit in processing your request. Therefore, you may consider this an administrative denial of your request . . . And so I did.
SNIP
I've filed FOIA's with DHS, FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA and DOJ on the topic and gotten the expected runaround.
I can definitely second the complaint against the lumbering bureaucracy.
I hate dealing with FOIA--by the time you're done waiting for them to file your request you're usually done with whatever it is you were trying to research in the first place, LOL. One of my teachers used to do FOIA's all the time--his whole office was a roomful of cartons of documents stacked from floor to ceiling, you could barely see him at his desk behind them. How he ever found anything in that mess is beyond me. . .
Given the bureacratic constaints, I think Hayes did a pretty good job in that article. Hopefully Patterson's comments will trigger some opportunity for further disclosures.
Hayes has really carried a lot of people's water with the work he's done.
I think we all have an obligation to help "advance the ball down field" a little bit more whenever we can.
BUMP!
I didn't know he was writing another book but I'm glad to hear it. Let's also hope he's right about the Harmony documents exposing the left's lies about the Iraq/AQ connections.
bump
Thanks for the ping. More fuel for a fire that just keeps growing.
No prob on the PING.
Be nice to see Mr. Patterson get asked about this when he is on the networks for his book tour.
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