Drain the Intelligence Swamp!

American Thinker ^ | December 14, 2016 | G. Murphy Donovan

[Kaslin]

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared on Public Television shortly before the presidential election for an extended interview with Charlie Rose. Mister Rose, like many of his peers these days, swings between hard news at dusk and bimbo chat at dawn. Indeed, Charlie is the very model of a Beltway double-dipper, a celebrity groupie who feeds at public and commercial troughs, PBS and CBS.

On any given day, Rose might be seen giggling with celebrities in the morning and then lofting softballs to political touts in the evening. The Council on Foreign Relations was the venue for the recent Clapper show. “Impartial, non-profit” think tanks are often used to provide the appropriate gravitas to administration spin. The Clapper performance, just before the November election, seemed to be of a piece with several other Intelligence officials who campaigned against Donald Trump.

And the Clapper interview, like many administration dog-and-pony shows, was not about transparency or openness or even information per se. In another day, any public chat with an Intelligence official might have been relegated to the desinformatsiya file. Today, Intelligence officials like Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan play other, and some might say sinister, if not partisan roles.

Whether the subject is Islamism, Vladimir Putin, or fake news; the name of the game at the moment is overtly political. Call it spin control.

[BluH2o]

The CIA, or at least influential elements within it, are trying to “Pinochet” America.

The CIA, going back to the early years of its inception in WWII recruited heavily from Ivy League schools. This elitist mentality and the arrogance associated with it has not served them well ...

[okie01]

Never trusted the CIA after that, but I thought Porter Goss might get it cleaned out. He dodn’t last long.

If there were ever any questions about the politics of the CIA, the Valerie Plame Affair provided the answer.

[ASA Vet]

MI Ping

What say you MI folks?

[Grimmy]

Close it.

Give the duties of foreign intel over to the military, since they’re the ones that’ll have to bleed if it’s wrong.

[PIF]

Keep in mind that no matter how much one wants to get rid of this agency or some other in the Intel community - you only know it by the public failures not by its successes.

The Church Committee pretty well gutted US Intel capabilities a long time ago. Now these agencies answer to their political master who control the agendas and funding. Change the top and the agencies will fall into line - doing more of what they are supposed to do to keep the country safe from foreign adventures.

My 2 cents

[Mad_as_heck]

100% agree. Anything infested with credentialed nit-wits coming out of the Ivy League is not going to be pursuing the interests of mainstream Americans.

Intelligence would be more competent and less prone to going out of control if it was subordinated to the armed forces and staffed by people from that background.

[Grampa Dave]

Excellent! One of our best friends timewise was a NavSecGrp guy at the last of WWII. His lingo speciality was Standard Chinese [b] (aka Putonghua) not Japanese, which we were at war with.

His CO, several peers, and he were offered jobs based on their foreign lingo skills with what became the farm at the end of the war.

Rather than face trying to get jobs competing with millions of other WWII vets trying to get jobs in America. He, his CO and some peers joined the new group created by Truman after Truman disbanded the OSS by ExO.

That new group/organization became the CIA.

Our friend used to laugh at the anal inspection/probes, he/his peers and their families got from the FBI and ONI, before they could join NavSecGrp. That was SOP to make sure that criminals, deviates and communists didn't get into this special critical Navy group.

However, once, he joined the new farm's field team and became an agent, his main job skill became lying and deceit in the field.

Of course, those, who were the best at lying and deceit in the new home office got promoted to key CIA positions. That has not changed since 1947. Your jpg below sums up the CIA.

Would the CIA lie to Americans about past election?

[Godzilla]

Our intelligence community cannot be allowed to turn into a propaganda arm of the progressives like the MSN. Our leadership need to have through, unbiased and accurate intelligence on real threats to America. 0bama and his cronies have damaged that.

[GreyFriar]

The new administration definitely has to get the politics out of the leadership of the intel agencies. And I’d start with the disbanding of the DNI that was created after 9-11 and has become bh0’s political tool. Brennan also puts bh0’s politics ahead of his duty to the nation.

[Azeem]

I worked for AIA so I didn’t deal with the political hacks. I’ve been offered to apply at CIA and NSA but I have no desire to work in the swamp.

[ManHunter]

The CIA has been failing miserably in its primary mission, the collection of Human Intelligence, for years. HUMINT networks in very high-interest areas are virtually nonexistent. I worked extensively with “Christians in Action” overseas while I was on active duty and do so now, albeit to a lesser extent, as a civilian and the change in how case officers even think about intelligence is absolutely striking.

I recently met with a couple of case officers with long-term experience at a couple of the largest stations and they’re nothing but intelligence bureaucrats. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “Oh, we don’t do that” or “We don’t do things that way” and they have no clue about how to locate, integrate or exploit information from other sources, even open sources in the public domain.

As for Clapper, I posted the following a couple days ago in an entirely different thread:

“If you had ever had a substantive, face-to-face discussion with Jim Clapper, you’d probably think otherwise. Reasonably articulate and pretty glib, but “there’s not a lot of there, there...” - and I’m referring to Clapper. I briefed him when I was a major and he was a three star. Walked out of his office thinking he was probably the dumbest flag officer I’d ever met and that it was a complete waste of my time. That was 1994, I’ve spoken with him a number of times since and I haven’t changed my opinion.

Any doubts, listen to some of his open testimony on Capitol Hill.”

[NorthMountain]

its primary mission, the collection of Human Intelligence, for years

That can be traced directly to Jimmy Carter.

[jsanders2001]

> What could possibly be the justification for the USA or any other country to need 16 Intelligence agencies. Is that in itself intelligent?

There are needs for many types of intelligence for different needs and the agencies to oversea them. There is also a need to compartmentalize much of that information for safety and national security concerns. One of the real problems in the intelligence industry is the different methods that the data is collected and the verification methods they use for credentialing process when the source has not been properly vetted to establish their credibility. One of the major problems is the Internet and easy access so that almost anyone can plant false information online that may appear to be a serious threat that has to be checked out. The other problem that began surfacing during the early 90's was that a lot of the intelligence agencies became dependent on open sources (basically anything in print or online on the Internet; once the newspapers came online it became even easier). Now we find ourself in a situation where there is literally too much information and unvetted sources and propaganda out there to sort through. It's a mad house.

As to doing away with many of the intelligence agencies that would require an in-depth study to see if there are crossover needs or if any of the intel could be shared without there being any national security or compartmentalism issues or interagency conflicts. I'm fairly certain some of the military agencies might be able to do that without too many issues. The others I don't know without doing a lot more research.

Bottom line - sometimes things are not nearly so easy to do as they first seem.

[Grampa Dave]

Imho, you were too kind to Clapper in your remarks.

[jsanders2001]

> The CIA has been failing miserably in its primary mission, the collection of Human Intelligence, for years. HUMINT networks in very high-interest areas are virtually nonexistent. I worked extensively with “Christians in Action” overseas while I was on active duty and do so now, albeit to a lesser extent, as a civilian and the change in how case officers even think about intelligence is absolutely striking. I recently met with a couple of case officers with long-term experience at a couple of the largest stations and they’re nothing but intelligence bureaucrats. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “Oh, we don’t do that” or “We don’t do things that way” and they have no clue about how to locate, integrate or exploit information from other sources, even open sources in the public domain.

HUMINT acquisition has been a problem for the CIA since the '90's which is a major problem when dealing with 7th century minded savages isthe Middle East. They got too comfortable with news journalists doing their leg work for them and publishing them inthe public domain which was a whole lot easier to do. Now there is a whole new generation that posts all over the Internet and some of that info can be helpful but the problem is you have to identify their online hangouts and translate their conversation that's written in foreign languages such as Arabic or Urdu.

The CIA needs to begin retraining their case officers more in field craft and deploy good candidates who have the appearance of the people living in the environment that they will be injected in IMHO. HUMINT is more timely, typically more credible, and more effective in removing serious threats in the Middle East. You can't identify them with open sources...

[Grampa Dave]

“The CIA started with Donovan. Truman at the end of WWII dismantled the OSS and started what became the CIA.

President Truman did not trust the OSS and its increasing power.

At the end of WWII, he signed an ExO ending the OSS.

September 20, 1945, President Truman signed Executive Order 9621, terminating the OSS. His Order became effective October 1, 1945. In the days following, the functions of the OSS were split between the Department of State and the Department of War.

The State Department received the Research and Analysis Branch of OSS (originally created by Edward Mead Earle[28]) which was renamed the Interim Research and Intelligence Service or IRIS,[29] headed by U.S. Army Colonel Alfred McCormack. Later it was renamed the Bureau of Intelligence and Research by the State
Department.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services

[ColdSteelTalon]

Clapper lied to Congress, under oath. He should be in jail.

[Lisbon1940]

In the early days, CIA were mainly northeastern plutocrats.

[ManHunter]

I can’t say I take exception with any of your statements except the last one, “You can’t identify them with open sources...”

I worked with retired USAR COL and former US Congressman Rob Simmons when he commanded an Army Reserve Strategic MI detachment back in the early to mid-90s; his unit provided general support to my active-duty unit on a number of our ops. Together, Rob and I developed some early methods for identifying and integrating information from the public domain - not necessarily the Internet at the time - into our operational intel, as well as that from national sources.

Our methods were based on techniques we applied to tactical and operational-level collection and a tachnique we used to call “time-event charting”, which we used to reconstruct activities leading up to insurgent and terrorist ops. As information became more ubiquitous and more international with the expansion of the ‘net, we adapted and refined our methods.

We used financial information (not bank data, but identifiable financial and business relationships), along with a lot of other information that existed in the public domain, some of it only available via subscription services (obviously, we anonymized our searches and subscriptions). A lot of those methods are now integrated into what’s come to be known as “Activities Based Intelligence” and “Object Based Production”.

Using these techniques, we identified a LOT of individuuals and cells of various types, i.e., ops, logistics, intel, financial support, etc., in the the United States and many other countries. For example, our work led to the opening of over 100 FBI CT-related investigations in the US alone.

The real challenge now is that the IC just doesn’t understand what OSINT really is. And that opinion is not limited to the CIA; it also applies to DIA, NSA, NGA and others. In my opinion, within the IC, only the FBI and DEA, for the reasons noted above, have a full appreciation for the potential value of information from the public domain, which goes way beyond the contemporary definition and understanding of “OSINT”.

[jsanders2001]

> We used financial information (not bank data, but identifiable financial and business relationships), along with a lot of other information that existed in the public domain, some of it only available via subscription services (obviously, we anonymized our searches and subscriptions)

From the sounds of it, I've probably used many of the same sources you utilized to establish ties between different networks, individuals, and business entities. Financial relationships do identify a lot of bad guys that would go unnoticed no doubt.