Inteligencia Norteamericana

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kilo009
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El Departamento de Estado ya ha publicado el Country Reports on Terrorism 2006, disponible en formato html:

http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2006/
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ZULU
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Página web del Departamento de Estado de Estados Unidos.
USA TRANSMITE LA MISMA IDEA QUE LOS NACIONALISTAS CATALANES, VASCOS Y GALLEGOS
La Administración Bush considera a catalanes, vascos y gallegos "grupos étnicos" diferenciados

Al menos la nota informativa incluye un resumen de la historia de España, en el que se recuerda cómo este país llegó a convertirse en el siglo XVI en "la nación más poderosa de Europa, debido a la inmensa riqueza procedente de su presencia en América"

No parece que la supuesta sintonía de nuestros liberales con los neocon del partido republicano sirva para que de una vez los norteamericanos se aclaren sobre cual es la realidad de España.

La página web del Departamento de Estado de Estados Unidos, que dirige Condoleeza Rice, incluye una "background note" o nota informativa, que describe a vascos, catalanes y gallegos como “los grupos étnicos diferenciados dentro de España”. La página de consulta de la administración useña pretende dar una visión general y sintética de todos los países del mundo para que sus nacionales se hagan una idea de cual es su historia, sus datos sociales y económicos más destacables y la posición geopolítica que ocupan en la actualidad.

Evidentemente la idea que transmite la administración Norteamérica sobre Cataluña, Galicia y Vascongadas viene a coincidir con los postulados que usan los nacionalistas y separatistas, ya que dentro del apartado de habitantes de España destaca como grupos étnicos diferentes al resto de españoles a catalanes, vascos y gallegos.

Al menos la nota informativa incluye un resumen de la historia de España, en el que se recuerda cómo este país llegó a convertirse en el siglo XVI en "la nación más poderosa de Europa, debido a la inmensa riqueza procedente de su presencia en América". Pero luego cayó en una decadencia atizada, entre otras cosas, por "una serie de largas y costosas guerras y revueltas, coronadas con la derrota de la 'Armada Invencible' ante los ingleses".

Tampoco aparece que la opinión del Departamento de Estado de Bush sobre la lucha antiterrorista del ejecutivo de Zapatero, al menos de cara a la galería, coincida con la de nuestros más destacados liberales. La página elogia vivamente la lucha del Gobierno español contra el terrorismo: "Los servicios de investigación españoles y el sistema judicial han buscado con tenacidad el arresto y procesamiento de presuntos miembros de Al Qaeda y han cooperado activamente con los gobiernos extranjeros para reducir la amenaza terrorista internacional", señala el Departamento de Estado, quien asegura que "España y Estados Unidos son fuertes aliados en la lucha contra el terrorismo".
EX NOTITIA VICTORIA
“Non aurum sed ferrum liberanda patria est”
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ZULU
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SERVICIO SECRETO (USA)

http://www.treas.gov/usss/
EX NOTITIA VICTORIA
“Non aurum sed ferrum liberanda patria est”
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Loopster
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Copio a RJ porque la cosa es complicada de ver, pero muy interesante.

El presupuesto norteamericano de inteligencia para 2005 fue de 60 mil millones de dólares, y a alguien se le ha escapado :roll:
June 03, 2007
Exclusive: Office of Nation's Top Spy Inadvertantly Reveals Key to Classified National Intel Budget

In a holdover from the Cold War when the number really did matter to national security, the size of the US national intelligence budget remains one of the government's most closely guarded secrets. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the highest intelligence agency in the country that oversees all federal intelligence agencies, appears to have inadvertently released the keys to that number in an unclassified PowerPoint presentation now posted on the website of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). By reverse engineering the numbers in an underlying data element embedded in the presentation, it seems that the total budget of the 16 US intelligence agencies in fiscal year 2005 was $60 billion, almost 25% higher than previously believed.

In the presentation originally made to a DIA conference in Colorado on May 14, Terri Everett, an Office of the Director of National Intelligence senior procurement executive, revealed that 70% of the total Intelligence Community budget is spent on contractors. (This was reported by Tim Shorrock on Salon.com.) Everett also included a slide depicting the trend of award dollars to contractors by the Intelligence Community from fiscal year 95 through a partial year of fiscal year 06 (i.e. through August 31st of FY06.) Because these figures are classified, a scale of the total number of award dollars was omitted from the Y-axis of the bar chart. The PowerPoint presentation was first obtained by Shorrock for Salon.com and it was later posted on the DIA's website where I downloaded it. Although it would not have been visible to the conference attendees, the data underlying the bar graph--the total amount of Intelligence Community funds spent on contractors--is readily available in the actual presentation. By double clicking on the bar chart, a small spreadsheet with the raw classified data appears:





(To view this spreadsheet in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's actual PowerPoint presentation, make sure you are opening the presentation in the PowerPoint program and not a web browser, view slide #11 and, depending upon your version of PowerPoint, making sure you're not on the 9/11 image object double-click on the chart or right click on it and choose Chart Object/Open.)

Here are the dollar amounts in tens of millions spent by the US Intelligence Community on contractors, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as embedded in the spreadsheet data underlying the bar graph (pictured above):



Note: FY06 data as of 31 August. (The numbers are in tens of millions of dollars, although this is not noted, but it is previously known that the amount spent on contracts is a double-digit billion plus dollar figure.)

This 70% of the Intelligence Community budget spent on contractors most likely includes all Intelligence Community direct acquisitions from contractors, including satellites and other very expensive hardware programs as well as more mundane supplies in addition to contracted services--(e.g. "green badgers" or staff contracted to the CIA.) The remaining 30% of the Intelligence Community budget most likely includes both personnel (i.e., civilian federal employee) and as well as intergovernmental operations and maintenance and supplies (e.g. payments by some Intelligence Community elements to GSA to lease office space and acquire government pens and office supplies.) By taking the 70% of the intelligence community budget that now goes to contractors in conjunction with the actual dollars spent on contractors, it is possible to reverse-engineer the budget using simple algebra.

This top line $60 billion figure is 25% above the estimated $48 billion budget for FY 08. It is quite probable that this total figure was not even known by the government until recently. Greater control and oversight of the Intelligence Community budget was a hallmark of the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 that created the position of the Director of National Intelligence and gave it the mandate to get an overview of the entire amount spent on intelligence government-wide. To this end, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has recently gathered all parts of the previously fragmented Intelligence Community budget together for the first time as part of its Intelligence Resource Information System (IRIS). In the report from the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence released last Thursday, the committee praised the Office of the Director of Intelligence for creating a "single budget system called the Intelligence Resource Information System." It also recognizes their efforts in helping create what "will be used for further inquiry by the Committee’s budget and audit staffs and will be a baseline that allows the Congress and DNI to derive trend data from future reports."

Earlier, lower estimates were most likely only included what fell directly under the Director of Central Intelligence and which would have omitted parts of NSA, NRO. A total Intelligence Community number, with the Intelligence Community as defined by 50 U.S.C. 401a(4), would also now include the various military intelligence services (e.g. Army Intel, Navy Intel, etc.), each with its respective weapon technology intelligence exploitation shop. A total budget would also include a large portion of the budget of the Department of Homeland Security which was previously fragment across multiple government agencies. A $60 billion government-wide Intelligence Community budget is not at all out of line with the post 9/11 organizational reality. It seems that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is just now getting a clear picture of the fragmented intelligence community budget.

The overall Intelligence Community budget has long been a well kept secret and this classification did once have relevance when a large shift in the budget could have indicated to the Soviets an addition or cancellation of a major defense program. Now that our greatest adversaries are stateless entities that run on a shoestring budget and strike soft targets, signals of changes in high-dollar defense systems hardly seem worth hiding. Nonetheless, the federal government has frequently gone to court to keep the amount of the national intelligence budget secret. Only the budgets for 1963, 1997 and 1998 have been officially revealed, largely in response to FOIA lawsuits. And in 2005 a US News reporter picked up an apparent slip of the tongue by an official of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence at a conference when it was stated the national intel budget was $44 billion, but it was not clear which fiscal year this was in reference to and the DNI refused to confirm if the figure was accurate or the release accidental. At this time, they would not have had total dollar figures through the new IRIS system. But with such a staggering budget, it does seem that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence would be well advised to find some room in the Intelligence Community budget for a staff training on PowerPoint and OPSEC.
Descargaos el PowerPoint, desde el Internet Explorer no se puede hacer el truquito

http://www.dia.mil/contracting/briefs/T ... verett.ppt

Saludos.
Cry havoc and unleash the hawgs of war - Otatsiihtaissiiststakio piksi makamo ta psswia
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Esteban
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Interesante artículo en el Post sobre cómo cruzan los datos las agencias USA tras el 11S.
Terror Database Has Quadrupled In Four Years
U.S. Watch Lists Are Drawn From Massive Clearinghouse

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 25, 2007; A01

Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world -- field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip -- arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects.

Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives.

But in addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. "The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control," said Russ Travers, in charge of TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean. "Where am I going to be, where is my successor going to be, five years down the road?"

TIDE has also created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to "horror stories" of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.

The watch lists fed by TIDE, used to monitor everyone entering the country or having even a casual encounter with federal, state and local law enforcement, have a higher bar. But they have become a source of irritation -- and potentially more serious consequences -- for many U.S. citizens and visitors.

In 2004 and 2005, misidentifications accounted for about half of the tens of thousands of times a traveler's name triggered a watch-list hit, the Government Accountability Office reported in September. Congressional committees have criticized the process, some charging that it collects too much information about Americans, others saying it is ineffective against terrorists. Civil rights and privacy groups have called for increased transparency.

"How many are on the lists, how are they compiled, how is the information used, how do they verify it?" asked Lillie Coney, associate director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. Such information is classified, and individuals barred from traveling are not told why.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said last year that his wife had been delayed repeatedly while airlines queried whether Catherine Stevens was the watch-listed Cat Stevens. The listing referred to the Britain-based pop singer who converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. The reason Islam is not allowed to fly to the United States is secret.

So is the reason Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, remains on the State Department's consular watch list. Detained in New York while en route to Montreal in 2002, Arar was sent by the U.S. government to a year of imprisonment in Syria. Canada, the source of the initial information about Arar, cleared him of all terrorism allegations last September -- three years after his release -- and has since authorized $9 million in compensation.

TIDE is a vacuum cleaner for both proven and unproven information, and its managers disclaim responsibility for how other agencies use the data. "What's the alternative?" Travers said. "I work under the assumption that we're never going to have perfect information -- fingerprints, DNA -- on 6 billion people across the planet. . . . If someone actually has a better idea, I'm all ears."

'Thousands of Messages'

The electronic journey a piece of terrorism data takes from an intelligence outpost to an airline counter is interrupted at several points for analysis and condensation.

President Bush ordered the intelligence community in 2003 to centralize data on terrorism suspects, and U.S. agencies at home and abroad now send everything they collect to TIDE. It arrives electronically as names to be added or as additional information about people already in the system.

The 80 TIDE analysts get "thousands of messages a day," Travers said, much of the data "fragmentary," "inconsistent" and "sometimes just flat-out wrong." Often the analysts go back to the intelligence agencies for details. "Sometimes you'll get sort of corroborating information," he said, "but many times you're not going to get much. What we use here, rightly or wrongly, is a reasonable-suspicion standard."

Each TIDE listee is given a number, and statistics are kept on nationality and ethnic and religious groups. Some files include aliases and sightings, and others are just a full or partial name, perhaps with a sketchy biography. Sunni and Shiite Muslims are the fastest-growing categories in a database whose entries include Saudi financiers and Colombian revolutionaries. U.S. citizens -- who Travers said make up less than 5 percent of listings -- are included if an "international terrorism nexus" is established. A similar exception for the administration's warrantless wiretap program came under court challenge from privacy and civil rights advocates.

Information Sharing

Every night at 10, TIDE dumps an unclassified version of that day's harvest -- names, dates of birth, countries of origin and passport information -- into a database belonging to the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center. TIDE's most sensitive information is not included. The FBI adds data about U.S. suspects with no international ties for a combined daily total of 1,000 to 1,500 new names.

Between 5 and 6 a.m., a shift of 24 analysts drawn from the agencies that use watch lists begins a new winnowing process at the center's Crystal City office. The analysts have access to case files at TIDE and the original intelligence sources, said the center's acting director, Rick Kopel.

Decisions on what to add to the Terrorist Screening Center master list are made by midafternoon. The bar is higher than TIDE's; total listings were about 235,000 names as of last fall, according to Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. The bar is then raised again as agencies decide which names to put on their own watch lists: the Transportation Security Administration's "no-fly" and "selectee" lists for airlines; Consular Lookout and Support System at the State Department; the Interagency Border and Inspection System at the Department of Homeland Security; and the Justice Department's National Crime Information Center. The criteria each agency use are classified, Kopel said.

Some information may raise a red flag for one agency but not another. "There's a big difference between CLASS and no-fly," Kopel said, referring to State's consular list. "About the only criteria CLASS has is that you're not a U.S. person. . . . Say 'a Mohammed from Syria.' That's useless for me to watch-list here in the United States. But if I'm in Damascus processing visas . . . that might be enough for someone to . . . put a hold on the visa process."

All of the more than 30,000 individuals on the TSA's no-fly list are prohibited from entering an aircraft in the United States. People whose names appear on the longer selectee list -- those the government believes merit watching but does not bar from travel -- are supposed to be subjected to more intense scrutiny.

With little to go on beyond names, airlines find frequent matches. The screening center agent on call will check the file for markers such as sex, age and prior "encounters" with the list. The agent might ask the airlines about the passenger's eye color, height or defining marks, Kopel said. "We'll say, 'Does he have any rings on his left hand?' and they'll say, 'Uh, he doesn't have a left hand.' Okay. We know that [the listed person] lost his left hand making a bomb."

If the answers indicate a match, that "encounter" is fed back into the FBI screening center's files and ultimately to TIDE. Kopel said the agent never tells the airline whether the person trying to board is the suspect. The airlines decide whether to allow the customer to fly.

TSA receives thousands of complaints each year, such as this one released to the Electronic Privacy Information Center in 2004 under the Freedom of Information Act: "Apparently, my name is on some watch list because everytime I fly, I get delayed while the airline personnel call what they say is TSA," wrote a passenger whose name was blacked out. Noting that he was a high-level federal worker, he asked what he could do to remove his name from the list.

The answer, Kopel said, is little. A unit at the screening center responds to complaints, he said, but will not remove a name if it is shared by a terrorism suspect. Instead, people not on the list who share a name with someone listed can be issued letters instructing airline personnel to check with the TSA to verify their identity. The GAO reported that 31 names were removed in 2005.

A Process Under Fire

A recent review of the entire Terrorist Screening Center database was temporarily abandoned when it proved too much work even for the night crew, which generally handles less of a workload. But the no-fly and selectee lists are being scrubbed to emphasize "people we think are a danger to the plane, and not for some other reason they met the criteria," Kopel said.

A separate TSA system that would check every passenger name against the screening center's database has been shelved over concern that it could grow into a massive surveillance program. The Department of Homeland Security was rebuked by Congress in December for trying to develop a risk-assessment program to profile travelers entering and leaving the United States based on airline and financial data.

Kopel insisted that private information on Americans, such as credit-card records, never makes it into the screening center database and that "we rely 100 percent on government-owned information."

The center came in for ridicule last year when CBS's "60 Minutes" noted that 14 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were listed -- five years after their deaths. Kopel defended the listings, saying that "we know for a fact that these people will use names that they believe we are not going to list because they're out of circulation -- either because they're dead or incarcerated. . . . It's not willy-nilly. Every name on the list, there's a reason that it's on there."
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ASR
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Los Historiadores y aficionados a estos temas se van a poner las Botas, saldra algo sobre España?
Los secretos de la CIA al descubierto
El servicio de espionaje de EEUU desclasifica cientos de documentos de sus actividades ilegales

Allende en Chile, Arbenz en Guatemala, Mossadegh en Irán, Lumumba, Videla, Castro, El Salvador. La CIA, la Agencia Central de Inteligencia de Estados Unidos, difundirá la próxima semana en su página de Internet las llamadas "joyas de la familia", una colección de documentos de operaciones encubiertas, muchas de ellas ilegales, que abarcan desde intentos de magnicidio a espionaje de disidentes y periodistas.

El director de la CIA, Michael Hayden, anunció anoche la desclasificación de los documentos ante un foro de historiadores norteamericanos, a quienes explicó que los papeles "constituyen la historia de la CIA", básicamente material de la Guerra Fría de los años 50, 60 y 70.

La colección de documentos secretos conocida como "joyas de la familia", según recordó en su discurso Hayden, son los informes de los empleados de la CIA que, por orden del entonces director de la agencia de espionaje James Schlesinger, daban cuenta de los episodios de operaciones ilegales conforme al estatuto de la CIA.

"Los documentos ofrecen una ojeada de tiempos muy diferentes y una agencia muy distinta", dijo el general Hayden ante el gremio de historiadores del que forma parte.

Coincidiendo con el anuncio, el Archivo de Seguridad Nacional de la Universidad George Washington difundió también en su página de Internet algunos documentos de enero de 1975 en los que los máximos responsables de la Administración de Gerald Ford comentan los "descubrimientos" de las citadas actividades, parte de las cuales ahora se harán públicos.

El director de la CIA de aquel momento reconoce en una reunión del 3 de enero de 1975 con Ford que "hemos dirigido operaciones para asesinar a líderes extranjeros. Nunca hemos tenido éxito", asegura.El documento que transcribe la reunión cita a "Fidel Castro, Trujillo, el general Sneider de Chile y otros".

El pánico a la amenaza roja

En una reunión al día siguiente, Kissinger en referencia a estas actividades ilegales de la CIA afirma ante Ford que, según el (ex director de la CIA) Dick Helms, "son sólo la punta del iceberg" y advierte que de conocerse esa implicación directa de Robert Kennedy en el intento de asesinato de Castro "correrá la sangre".

En otro documento se admite la "tenue" conexión de la CIA con los ejecutores del asesinato el 30 de mayo de 1961 del dictador dominicano Rafael Leónidas Trujillo y niega la participación de la CIA en el asesinato el 17 de enero de 1961 de Patricio Lumumba, líder de la independencia congoleña.

La mano de la CIA preparó y financió decenas de golpes de Estado contra dirigentes incómodos. El primer ministro iraní Mossadegh en 1953, Juan Jacobo Arbenz en Guatemala en 1954, Allende en 1973, entre otros. Fueron políticos colocados del lado de los comunistas en el tablero de la guerra fría, pero muchos de ellos no pretendían más que emancipar a sus países del monopolio de grandes empresas que ejercían un poder colonial.

El espionaje de los periodistas que como Seymour Hersh publican entonces denuncias sobre la infiltración en los grupos pacifistas u otras actividades ilegales de la CIA dentro de Estados Unidos forman parte de los documentos ahora desvelados, que también refieren la interceptación del correo procedente de China y la Unión Soviética.

Incluso hay alguna referencia a pruebas de drogas en humanos, en este caso ciudadanos estadounidenses que no fueron advertidos de ello, para comprobar la modificación de conductas y que fueron financiadas por la CIA entre 1963 y 1973.
Saludos,

ASR

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Esteban
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Cuestión de "responabilidad"
Accountability is what the spies need
By David Ignatius
Daily Star staff
Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Here's an example of the kind of accountability the CIA needs in order to get out of the doldrums and become a truly effective intelligence service: It is 1985, and the CIA team assigned to stop the TWA 847 hijacking has returned home after an embarrassing failure. Despite a standing order from President Ronald Reagan to assault the aircraft and free the hostages, the order is never executed. A US Navy diver, Robert Stethem, is murdered, and the terrorists get away.

The CIA operatives are summoned to a remote building. They think they are going to be fired. An unmarked car arrives carrying a top government official and his senior aide. The two officials send away everyone but the seven field operatives - the highest ranking among them is a GS-13 - and demand to know what went wrong. The CIA officers are told to describe what's broken in the system, and to name names.

The man asking the questions about TWA 847 is the vice president, George H.W. Bush. He spends three hours with these junior officers, probing for the mistakes that contributed to poor performance. When he is finished, he takes prompt steps to hold people accountable and fix problems: A two-star Air Force general is reprimanded; the CIA is given new authorities that allow it to conduct anti-terrorism operations more effectively.

"The issues we faced in that event were identified and fixed, immediately, and as word spread throughout the system, we got an amazing amount of cooperation," recalls a former CIA officer who was involved in counterterrorism operations at the time.

Now, contrast this tight accountability with how intelligence has been managed during the administration of President George W. Bush. Vice President Dick Cheney's role has been to push for the answers he wants, rather than to ask questions. CIA officers who tried to warn in 2003 and 2004 about dangers ahead in Iraq were punished or ignored. George Tenet, the CIA director who unwisely embraced the administration's obsession with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, was awarded the Medal of Freedom. Tenet, to his credit, had angered the White House earlier when he refused to be the fall guy on false claims about the Iraqi nuclear program.

Wary of an independent CIA, the administration installed a Republican congressman as Tenet's successor. He arrived at Langley with a team of congressional aides who began a purge of CIA officers suspected of disloyalty. Competence was not their concern: They installed as the agency's No. 3 official a glad-hander who made his name taking care of congressional delegations traveling overseas. That official was indicted earlier this year for allegedly misusing his position to steer contracts to a friend.

The White House has done better on intelligence during the past year, thanks in part to chief of staff Josh Bolten, whose father was a career CIA officer. The administration appointed a strong CIA management team in General Michael Hayden and his deputy, a highly regarded career spy named Stephen Kappes. The CIA team is matched by independent-minded officials at the Pentagon: Robert Gates, a former CIA director, as secretary of defense, and James R. Clapper, a retired Air Force lieutenant general, as undersecretary for intelligence.

Clear lines of accountability are still obstructed by the bureaucratic layering of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. That bad idea originated with Congress, in its rush to seem responsive to 9/11. Bush should have listened to the many professional intelligence officers who advised against the reorganization. The new DNI, Mike McConnell, has issued a "100-day plan" and other management decrees, but it's still not clear whether this structure hurts performance more than it helps.

Hayden understands the importance of accountability. That's why he decided to release the 1973 accounting of CIA misdeeds known as the "Family Jewels." How tame some of that material looks in light of current activities. Back then, the agency agonized over the mere discussion of assassination; today, the nation has an airborne assassination weapon on standing call, in the armed "Predator" drone. Back then, the possibility that the agency had experimented with drugs for use in interrogation was an unspeakable breach. Now, the vice president's office secretly campaigns to authorize CIA techniques that are widely regarded as torture.

The CIA today is not strong or supple enough to cope with the challenge of global terrorism. That's the conclusion of a new history of the CIA, "Legacy of Ashes," by New York Times reporter Tim Weiner. The book stresses that over the CIA's 60-year history, its performance - for good or ill - has always been a function of what presidents wanted. A culture of accountability is needed in US intelligence, and it must begin at the White House.

Syndicated columnist David Ignatius is published regularly by THE DAILY STAR.
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kilo009
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Mining of Data Prompted Fight Over Spying

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/washi ... ref=slogin
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Un programa aprobado por la Oficina de Inteligencia Nacional y el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional permitirá a policías federales, estatales y locales el acceso a imágenes por satélite de las FAS americanas.
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1000 millones de dólares para contratos de la DIA:
Defense Agency Proposes Outsourcing More Spying
Contracts Worth $1 Billion Would Set Record

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 19, 2007; A03



The Defense Intelligence Agency is preparing to pay private contractors up to $1 billion to conduct core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection over the next five years, an amount that would set a record in the outsourcing of such functions by the Pentagon's top spying agency.

The proposed contracts, outlined in a recent early notice of the DIA's plans, reflect a continuing expansion of the Defense Department's intelligence-related work and fit a well-established pattern of Bush administration transfers of government work to private contractors.

Since 2000, the value of federal contracts signed by all agencies each year has more than doubled to reach $412 billion, with the largest growth at the Defense Department, according to a congressional tally in June. Outsourcing particularly accelerated among intelligence agencies after the 2001 terrorist attacks caught many of them unprepared to meet new demands with their existing workforce.

The DIA did not specify exactly what it wants the contractors to do but said it is seeking teams to fulfill "operational and mission requirements" that include intelligence "Gathering and Collection, Analysis, Utilization, and Strategy and Support." It holds out the possibility that five or more contractors may be hired and promised more details on Aug. 27.

The DIA's action comes a few months after CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, acting under pressure from Congress, announced a program to cut the agency's hiring of outside contractors by at least 10 percent. The CIA's effort was partly provoked by managers' frustration that officials with security clearances were frequently resigning to earn higher pay with government contractors while performing the same work -- a phenomenon that led lawmakers to complain that intelligence contract work was wasting money.

"Mind-blowing," was the reaction of Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, when she learned of the DIA proposal. In a telephone interview, she described it as "definitely something to be concerned about."

In its notice, published on a procurement Web site, the DIA said that "the total price of all work to be performed under the contract(s) will exceed $1 billion," adding that the tally "is only an estimate and there is no guarantee that any orders will be placed."

A DIA spokesman, Cmdr. Terrence Sutherland, said this week that "this is the first DIA contract of its type specifically intended for the procurement of intelligence analysis and related services." He said the primary purpose of the proposal is to ensure that adequate outside support is ready to assist the DIA, as well as Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force intelligence centers and the military's overseas command centers.

In May, Schakowsky and Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) sponsored an amendment to the 2008 intelligence bill that requires the Defense Department to compile a database of all its intelligence-related contracts. The aim, Schakowsky said, is to force a review "of what contractors are doing and, importantly, whether contractors are performing inherently governmental functions."

Some activities, she said, are so sensitive that "if and when they are done," it may not be appropriate for the government to "contract these activities out."

Price asked during the debate whether contractors should be involved in intelligence collection and analysis, interrogation, and covert operations, or whether those activities are so sensitive that "they should only be performed by highly trained intelligence community professionals."

In a statement Friday, Price questioned whether "a contract award of this scale is consistent with the DNI's commitment to reduce the alarming portion of the intelligence budget that goes to private contractors." (DNI refers to the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell.)

The DIA is the country's major manager and producer of foreign military intelligence, with more than 11,000 military and civilian employees worldwide and a budget of nearly $1 billion. It has its own analysts from the various services as well as collectors of human intelligence in the Defense HUMINT Service. DIA also manages the Defense attaches stationed in embassies all over the world.

Unlike the CIA, the DIA outsources the major analytical products known as all-source intelligence reports, a senior intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

A former senior Pentagon intelligence official said yesterday that the DIA is struggling to do "the in-depth intelligence work required under present circumstances" and that is why it is preparing to contract for outside help. He cited the military's efforts in Iraq to provide human intelligence sources to forces that rotate out after tours of a single year. "That is hardly enough time to develop serious, dependable Iraqi sources," he said.

The former official added that for years intelligence has not been a prime career path for officers who seek to reach the top positions in the Army, which favors infantry, armor and special forces as the specializations that lead to promotions.

The war in Iraq has required the hiring of outside contractors by the Pentagon to perform not just security jobs but also the collection of intelligence used for force protection. Earlier this year, retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a former head of the U.S. Central Command who today advises defense contractors, said there is a legitimate role for private firms in security missions. But he warned that problems can arise "when they take on quasi-military roles," such as planning intelligence operations.

In its report in June on the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence noted that Congress had allowed full-time positions in the intelligence community to grow 20 percent since Sept. 11. But personnel caps forced the agencies to turn to contractors.

The committee questioned the additional costs involved in using contractors, citing an estimate that a government civilian employee costs on average $126,500 a year, while the annual cost of a core contractor, including overhead and benefits, is $250,000.

Many companies that provide contract workers to the CIA and Pentagon intelligence agencies are headed by former employees of those agencies. For example, Abraxas, which is run by a former CIA case officer, has hired -- and then contracted out to the government -- more than 100 former intelligence employees over the past six years.

The CIA imposed a rule that former personnel cannot perform work with a CIA contractor in the 18 months after they leave the agency.
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