With Spies Like These... (Washington Post)

Many people believe that the lack of human intelligence resources, among other things, led to the US intelligence community's mistaken belief that Iraq still had WMDs. Since then, there has been a good deal written about and apparently done to increase the US's clandestine capability.

It is this conventional wisdom that is going to make this Washington Post editorial so controversial. The author, Joseph Weisberg, believes that such spies, even if they existed, "wouldn't have made any difference."

Other highlights:

• "Ever since the inception of the CIA, the operational side of the agency has both believed in and spread the fantasy that foreign agents can provide vital secret intelligence that will clear up great mysteries, change the outcome of wars or prevent terrorist attacks. But this view of intelligence is a myth."

• "Intelligence from almost all CIA assets is unreliable for the simple reason that so many of them are double agents, meaning that the CIA recruited them but that they are being controlled by their own countries' intelligence services."

• "This does not mean that there isn't some useful intelligence to be gleaned from various human sources -- just that these sources aren't always going to be recruited agents and that they aren't going to prevent terrorist attacks or change the outcome of wars."

Related posts:

In Praise Of Open Source
Nada Nadim Prouty: Inevitable

Africa Command: U.S. Strategic Interests And The Role Of The U.S. Military In Africa (CRS)

The CRS has just published a new background brief on AFRICOM for the members of Congress. The report contains a good outline of the US's strategic interests in Africa, DOD's current proposal for the new command and a list of oversight issues for Congress as well as a good bit of background info including an annex on the 42 (!) instances of US armed forces intervention in Africa since 1950.

Here are some other highlights (Boldface and italics are mine):

• "In recent years, analysts and U.S. policymakers have noted Africa’s growing strategic importance to U.S. interests. Among those interests are Africa’s role in the Global War on Terror and potential threats posed by uncontrolled spaces; the growing importance of Africa’s natural resources, particularly energy resources; and ongoing concern for Africa’s many humanitarian crises, armed conflicts, and more general challenges, such as the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS."
  

• "DOD has signaled its intention to eventually locate AFRICOM on the continent, and U.S officials are consulting with strategic partners in the region to identify a suitable location for the command’s headquarters. The new command will operate from Stuttgart, Germany until facilities in Africa are secured. DOD has stressed that there are no plans to have a significant troop presence on the continent."

• "The 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa highlighted the threat of terrorism to U.S. interests on the continent. Political instability and civil wars have created vast ungoverned spaces, areas in which some experts allege that terrorist groups may train and operate. Instability also heightens human suffering and retards economic development, which may in turn threaten U.S. economic interests. Africa recently surpassed the Middle East as the United States’ largest supplier of crude oil, further emphasizing the continent’s strategic importance." (Yoikes!)

The Professional Communications Toolkit (SAGE)

Presentation skills are incredibly important for intelligence professionals. It is not by chance that the item tagged in this blog the most so far has been "presentation". You have to be smart to be in intelligence but coupling those smarts with excellent briefing skills can help take you far.

I received an email the other day that pointed me to an interesting book, The Professional Communications Toolkit by Joel Whalen (Thanks, Pat!). I skimmed the three chapters available online and all were worth the time and the rest of the book seems equally valuable. As always, the notes in italics are mine.

Chapter 1 - Effective Communication: Its Not About You

Highlights:

• "Effective communication happens in the mind of the person who receives your message, not in your mind."
  

• "When you get a meaningful thought, a part of your brain called the limbic system activates (Gershon, 1999). A surge of neurotransmitters is produced that resonates with cousin-receptors residing in your gut. Literally, your gut—from the back of your throat, down your esophagus, through your stomach and intestines—is lined with the same type of receptors that compose your brain."
  

• "Your listeners believe what you’re saying is important and true, not just because they think you make “sense.” Their bodies work with the cerebral cortex to form 'Felt Sense'. The Felt Sense feeling tells them that what you’re saying is the truth."
  

Chapter 3 - The Power and Limitations of Speaking

Highlights (Some interesting explanations of recent neurological research here as well):

• "The most typical result of communication is miscommunication. Each communication results in a different meaning in the speaker’s mind and the listener’s mind. So, if you’re thinking “people don’t always understand me when I need them to,” you’re in good company."
  

• "Repetition does not work—You may have been taught that repetition aids memory. Advertising people are advised to repeat their ideas three times in a commercial. I’ve learned that repetition does not get your listener to remember. What does aid memory, every time, is things said first, last, and sensory-rich messages."
  

• "What is always forgotten—The demonstrators forget numbers, names, and other details. They also don’t remember any sequence of events. If a story has four steps, people forget the order of when things happen. When you speak, you create a sense that things happen simultaneously, in flashes."
  

Chapter 5 - Managing Communication Anxiety

Highlights (Lots of good tips here for managing your fears when you have to speak in public):

• "When you get speech anxiety, your pulse soars to intense levels, as it does during heavy physical exercise. After 3 to 5 minutes, your body begins to slow down, and your pulse drops dramatically to 90 to 100 beats per minute (bpm)."
  

• "It’s as if you’re temporarily insane."

• "Some anxiety is good (See chart below).

In Praise Of Open Source (Wired and Haft Of The Spear)

Michael Tanji of Haft of The Spear and Wired's The Danger Room, has posted a good explanation (and a little history) of the value of open source intelligence.

My own thoughts run close to his but I have a few additional ideas that I think are worth considering. First, when most people think of open sources, they think of the internet and all of the information that is now available. This thought, particularly among some of those of a certain generation, it typically followed by the thought that you can't believe any of it; that little or none of it is credible.

That, of course, is just plain false.

The truth is that there is a vast and growing body of highly credible open source information available through the internet and countless other open sources. To get it you need to be trained in how to use the tools of the trade and be well equipped with critical thinking and critical reading skills. Several good academic libraries -- such as the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Cal Berkeley -- have taken up the challenge and posted a good set of guidelines for assessing source reliability on the internet.

Second, open source information is just a small part of what open source intelligence can do. Adding a complete analytic capability to the wealth of open source information creates a powerful tool for assisting decisionmaking. Here are a couple of examples:

• Alternative Analysis. The recent CRS report highlighted the potential value of conducting an open source review in addition to a classified review of important intelligence questions. First, such a document would be a worthy test of the classified intelligence. Second, if the analysis was consistent with the classified view, then the open source version could be used to ensure that the estimate received the widest possible dissemination (highly classified documents often come with so many bureaucratic obstacles to using the intelligence that they may not be read at all). If the open source analysis was not consistent with the classified view (i.e. the classified view not only passed the test but was clearly better), then it would help justify the 43.5 billion dollar US intelligence budget.
  
• Stretching Limited Resources. Even with a 43.5 billion dollar budget, it is still a big world. That money can run out very quickly and many parts of the world get little if any coverage. For a fraction of the cost of most classified operations, the intelligence community could contract with academia (yeah!) and other commercial vendors to track important but unresourced intelligence requirements. Such a program would also go a long way toward supporting the intelligence studies programs starting up across the country.
  
• Some would say that the community already does this through its own, very capable OpenSource Center and by contracting with such vendors as Janes, Stratfor, Oxford Analytica, the Economist Intelligence Unit and the amazing Australian telecoms research firm, Budde.com. While these services are very, very good, what I have in mind is different. I am talking about a fully loaded intelligence system that is capable of both watching and producing routine analytic products in its assigned requirements but also of surging to meet short term demands. Such a system, consisting of a series of centers around the country would not cost much but would add perspective and diversity to the intelligence analysis equation and could respond to a much wider variety of decisionmakers including law enforcement, businesses, non-governmental organizations and even private citizens.
• Providing A Starting Place. Classified systems, by their nature, have to keep intelligence collection operations focused and intelligence products in restricted channels. Open source can cast a wider net. Particularly useful in a crisis, analysts using just open source information can rapidly build a useful conceptual model upon which, at a minimum, other analysts can layer classified intelligence to add nuance.
  
• Take Maximum Advantage of Technology. There was a day when the intelligence community had the latest technology. That advantage is all but gone. In fact, because of security requirements, today's technology often comes to analysts very late and is often very expensive. Open source, in this environment, is very nimble. It can test and adopt new technologies quickly and can evolve to meet new challenges with the latest tools.
  

These are reasons for the intelligence community to push the boundaries of what we can do with open sources today, while the classical view of intelligence is still considered relevant. The future, whether the current crop of intelligence professionals sees it, believes it or understands it, belongs to open source.

Finding Key Words In Video/Audio (MIT)

MIT has posted a neat piece of web -based code designed to search its growing library of free lectures. There doesn't seem to be too many lectures of interest to the intelligence community so far but I only did a cursory search. The interface is worth a look, however, as it is very slick. I suspect that the database will only get better with time.