Spring 2006

Vulture's Row

Washington- The new year is off to the races as the last major snow of the season melts away from the marble buildings  . . . the President's Budget has been submitted to negative reviews from the Congress, the Global War on Terror has changed its name to The Long War , and the successful nomination of Judge Sam Alito to the Supreme Court may change the Judicial Landscape . . .The President has made his State of the Union Address , and supported the NSA program which purportedly eavesdrops on American citizens . . . the program is under attack in Congress, even as key provisions of the USA Patriot Act have been retained, and the Administration begins the hunt for those who leaked details of the program to the Press . . . all against a backdrop of a push for reform in Congress , and cleaning up the scandal of earmarking and influence . . . in other words, it is back to full-contact politics, and the annual mark-up of the FY-07 Budget , where the Power of the Purse is king . . . can Spring, and the tour buses be far behind?

The Terrorism Monitoring Program
Official Washington continues to reel with the battle over what the President is calling the Terrorism Monitoring Program . . . he told the nation in the State of the Union address that he views it as part of his inherent powers as the Chief Executive in time of war. . . the Attorney General has been summoned to talk about it before the Senate Judiciary Committee , and the full SSCI and HPSCI have been briefed in closed session . . . There could be legitimate and valid concerns about the program , but since no one can talk outside classified channels on exactly what is going on, it is hard to fully justify, and libertarians are concerned about what future Presidents might consider to be their inherent powers . . . The Vulture happened to be at one of the fashionable watering holes near the J. Edgar Hoover Building and heard something that could have been just like this . . . “We are a great nation of laws, with carefully-crafted checks and balances . . .  But circumstances and personalities push the course of our soci ety this way and that . . .  our system - which the President does not seek to sub vert - will self-level to a certain degree . . .  After eight years, like Cincinnatus, Bush will have to return to his plow, or at least to the chainsaw back at the ranch . . . His policies will or will not survive, depending on future personalities and future circumstances . . . But the important thing to remember is that the nature of intelligence has cha nged . . .It is all mixed with police work now ; it is therefore inevitable that intel officers should find themselves at the center of controversies about law and civil rights . . . The nation wanted better intelligence and it is getting it . . .  Not the antiseptic stuff that military intelligence used to produce, but the real thing:  clandestine, covert penetration SIGINT, HUMINT derived from foreign interrogations and from spies in the enemy's councils . . . information from informants and domestic wiretaps . . . Intel sources are not just used to gain information, but for targeting - to lure our enemies to their doom . . . This is gritty stuff, with foreign and domestic all mixed together . . . Innocent Americans come up on the nets all the time, but are thrown back in as soon as their lack of involvement in the schemes of the enemy becomes clear . . .There are checks and balances . . . Our people are well-trained in Intel Oversight policies .  They know what information they legally may hold, what they must pass over, and how long they may hold material which lies in the gray zone between . . .  Our data bases are reviewed and purged regularly . . . and the conduct of intel operations are subject to review and approval . . . These processes become increasingly stringent as the operations become more sensitive . . . All this is subject to formal inspection and oversight at the highest levels . . . Violators will be punished . . .These are matters of training and discipline . . . the enemy will get through eventually, since he only has to be successful once, while we must succeed every time . . . London and Amman were hit, despite the best efforts of superb security and intelligence services . . . the enemy can kill even if they can't win . . .  In the aftermath, there will be judgments about how well mission and civil rights were balanced . . . What side do you think that future commission of inquiry will come down on?”   . . . The Vulture had to nod and ordered another Scotch . . . this is a new world indeed . . . and he is glad he doesn't have to make the decisions . . .

Pentagon Plea Bargain
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, ruling from the Rocket Docket of the Eastern District , said he gave former Pentagon Analyst Lawrence A. Franklin a sentence on the low end of federal guidelines because he said it appeared Franklin was trying help the United States, not hurt it . . . Ellis also agreed to let Franklin remain free while the government continues with the wider case . . . His prison time could be sharply reduced in return for his help in prosecuting two former members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) . . . Franklin had worked with senior Pentagon officials, including Douglas Feith, former USD-Policy . . . he pleaded guilty in October to three felony counts of disclosing a draft National Intelligence Estimate on Iran . . . Three other counts in the indictment were reportedly dropped in exchange for his cooperation . . .

Counter-terror and Counterintelligence: Vacuum at the Top
Robert Grenier was relieved as Chief of the CIA Counterterrorism Center in February . . . one of a number of senior leaders who have quit or been pushed out of their positions lately . . . Grenier, who goes by his true-name, is a long-time DO veteran who took charge of the Center a year ago after a series of high profile jobs at the center of The Long War . . . he was Chief of Station in Islamabad in 2001, and helped plan the covert campaign that ousted al Qaeda and its Taliban allies from Afghanistan . . . .In the run-up to the invasion, Grenier was recalled to Langley and assigned as chief of the newly- created Iraq Issues Group . . . Grenier's predecessor at the Counterterrorism Center remains undercover and moved on to become chief of the National Clandestine Service, the successor to the DO . . . Insiders say that the two men differed sharply in style . . . the failed attempt on the life of Ayman Zawahiri , al Qaeda's number two leader, had no role in pushing Grenier out, according to sources in a position to know . .  . Other DO veterans who have departed include the station chief in Amman, Jordan, and the head of the European Division, both within the last six months . . . Also departing are most of the national Counterintelligence Team . . . Presidential appointee Michelle Van Cleave resigned last month after the office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX) transferred to the ODNI . . .  At FBI, CIA and the Pentagon , senior counterintelligence positions are held by acting officials . . . At the White House, the National Security Council (NSC) counterintelligence staff position has been downgraded . . . In the past, it was held by an experienced Special Agent . . . Heidi Avery, the current counterintelligence director, is not . . . The failure to fill top spots is a sign that the function of counterintelligence is being reconsidered . . . and that was not the intent of the Presidential Commission on the Weapons of Mass Destruction . . . In the report that provided many of the action items for the new DNI, it said counterintelligence has “ remained fractured, myopic, and only marginally effective "  . . .  FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has testified that spying by China is the most serious foreign intelligence threat . . . The acting NCI-X is Tim Bereznay , a veteran special agent . . .

2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Rolled Out
Special Operations are in, and big platforms are out in this iteration of the QDR, which provides the expected strategic landscape for the next twenty years . . . The review was released concurrent with the 2007 Defense budget request and is Secretary Rumsfeld's last . . . it is one of ideas, not just programs . . . and is clearly intended to be part of the continuum of change and transformation that he began in 2001 . . . This reports cements a shift away from size, predictability and mass toward agility, speed and precision . . . The 2001 edition called for increased spending on technology and a bigger focus on space and cyberspace programs . . . based on troubled major programs like FIA and SBIRS , space appears to be in the lurch . . . but the cyber threat is real and continuing . . . and critical to mission accomplishment , if DoD is to rely on network-centric operations to enhance speed and agility . . . to boost security, DoD is budgeting $77M for six years beginning in 2007 . . . to fund new training and certification requirements for systems administrators . . . An additional $500M has been requested for IT security initiatives . . . These funds are in addition to the $2 billion now being spent annually on information assurance from DoD's $30 billion IT budget . . . Rumsfeld said that the 2006 QDR was intended to build on the changes and momentum since 2001, and fine tune the directional momentum through the lens of The Long War . . . he believes that the QDR should be seen as the next step in a long line of significant changes . . . and not “some sort of a new menu for program adjustments ” . . .  The half-trillion dollar defense budget is based on the likely need for capabilities , which in turn is based on a four-sector chart, broken into threat blocks that read "Irregular," "Catastrophic," "Traditional, and "Disruptive" in nature . . . the likely treat anticipated is migrating from the "Traditional," to "Irregular," which is why significant investment in agile forces and chemical, biological and nuclear detection systems is considered essential . . .

Budget Forecast Supports Steady Spending on Defense and Intelligence
The technical basis for the budget forecast is based on planning assumptions . . . how they were established to support the conclusions of the QDR shows Washington at its finest . . . Office of Management and Budget decreed that the planning assumptions for the National Economy are for stability . . . stable unemployment (5%) . . . declining deficits . . . improving balance of trade (except with China) and steady defense budgets . . . those are hard assumptions to swallow, since Congress has announced that the President's FY-07 Budget is " Dead on Arrival " due to the number of non-defense programs identified for reduction . . . and the costs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan remain “Off the Books” and covered by supplemental legislation . . . The key is that OMB had to appear to maintain the glide-slope on deficit reductions , and the apparent strategy is to shift the burden to the Congress on restoring cuts to civil programs . . . the mid-term elections are coming up, after all, and politics are politics . . .  the supplemental war appropriations do not cover the full cost of wartime operations . . .  Delay in passage means that costs for R&D, Operations and capital equipment replacement are charged to the base budget, as are other external factors, including a $35 Billion Katrina "Tax" levied against the DoD top-line . . .  all of these impact funds available for R&D , of course, as are personnel costs are gobbling an increasing portion of the DoD budget . . . Personnel costs in the early 1990s consumed 25% of the overall total; with the requirements for increased bonus and incentive pay, that percentage as soared to over 40% . . .

Major General Meyerrose Comes Out Shooting as DNI CIO
A year after the legislation was passed, the confirmation process has labored mightily, and produced a Chief Information Officer for the ODNI . . . Major General Dale Meyerrose is on the circuit, outlining his vision for information sharing and IT architectures . . . Now retired, he still radiates confidence that he can do for the National Intelligence Community what he did for U.S. NORTHCOM . . . At his second public outing at AFCEA in February , he looked down from the podium looking as towering as Gary Cooper . . . he is going to take on the entrenched establishment just like Gary did in the movie “High Noon” . . .  Ambassador Negroponte has asked him to exercise the authorities of his office (contained not in the Intel Reform act, but in the Intelligence Authorization of 2004) . . . The General smiled and said he was willing to take on the challenge . . . he said there would be no “two-year studies ,” and that management by committee and consensus was over . . . His sees a mandate to “direct” change , not “coordinate” it . . . He says he will use Industry to assist him , and that he intends to work in 16-week spirals , a process that ensures change within human attention span- like corporate quarterly reports and the length of a school semester . . . Good enough for industry and kids, good enough for the IC . . . He said he was intended to be a disruptive agent, and he had the authority and the mandate to do it . . . He said he had four jobs, and all of them came with breathtaking power over the $40-billion dollar intelligence budget . . . He is going to manage the information architecture of the Intelligence Community; exercise procurement authority over all  information systems; direct and manage all component IT systems ; and steer research and development programs . . . He laughed as he said his mandate was unambiguous on all information technology issues, even though he wasn't sure what that meant . . . He said it could include a door with a security badge reader, and extend as far as major collection platforms . . . Everything in between included some mechanism of information exchange . . . He expects that his charter is going to extend beyond infrastructure , perhaps as far as satellites and the Spooks in the field . . . He said he intended to be collegial, but his course of action was not optional . . . While awaiting confirmation, he studied the community information structure and found no less than 120 assorted working groups, advisory bodies and Tiger Teams . . . He said that is the first thing that is going to go . . .  His office will not work with the consent of the governed . . .first up for action is the gridlock of accreditation of new systems. . . then information sharing . . . He was magnanimous about the abrupt departure of some personnel from the DNI's Staff , saying that many of them had been only "on loan" to establish the office, and no stigma should be associated with their leaving . . . John Russack , former Director of the Information Sharing Office and a retired Navy 0-6 was an early casualty . . . the goal is to end “Analysis Paralysis ,” and let information flow wherever it needs to go, an enormous cultural shift . . . Before he left for the long black car waiting out front, he said he knew there are a thousand earnest bureaucrats scheming against his changes , because he challenges established authorities, and there are 14,000 more people for whom the path of change would be difficult . . .  He said he didn't expect it to be easy to get the intelligence community on the same page , but he said he was not here to fix potholes . . .and intended to move the big rocks first . . . he said hw was a little uncomfortable, being a political appointee for the first time in his life, but it meant that now he has nothing to lose by doing exactly what he was brought to Washington to do . . . stay tuned for change . . .

Bill Gates Strikes Again
. . . And as some are calling for increased use of COTS technology to standardize the community, the Washington Times advised us in a copyrighted article by Shaun Waterman that Microsoft-brand word processing software has caused a series of business, political and national security embarrassments . . . . The Vulture notes with trepidation that MS Word contains a stack of software commands that can reveal the steps in the editing process . .  . the code stack can reveal original authors, comments and deleted portions of documents . . . some serious embarrassment has resulted, since they were not as “safe” for release to the media as was thought . . .. the problem is significant for business, but potentially disastrous for national security applications . . .  the problem has impacted a major Maryland-based intelligence command's ability to sanitize and disseminate intelligence  . . . . a regular security audit revealed highly classified information embedded in products released to the media because  it was thought that conversion to Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) removed the edit trail . . . it didn't . . .Reporters checking the metadata of the "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq"  quickly found the real author   . . . and a coalition report from Baghdad on the fatal shooting of Italian special agent Nicola Calipari contained sensitive information about checkpoint security procedures . .  . it is not the first time that software has let us down . . . centuries ago, when dinosaurs ruled the planet, a high-speed NSA-approved computer-to-communications system called Streamliner was discovered to have a small hiccup . . . it appended the Combatant Commanders personal briefing (with all the bells and whistles) to a low-level allied support message when the power flickered . . . which it did any time it rained . . . the Vulture 's word to the wise: merely converting a Microsoft Word document to PDF does not remove all the metadata   . . . check the NSA website for ways to strip metadata and protect your secrets . . .

Copyright 2006 Vulture Pulblications

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