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An Open Source Intelligence Digest on developments in the international intelligence arena: events, leaders, studies and literatureTRANSCRIPT
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SA Intelligencer
New Developments
New York Times: Wednesday, 12 January 2010: (Ed: shortened for Intelligencer with my emphasis) The failure of the U.S. intelligence community to prevent the Christmas Day bombing attempt is not due to the failure of any individual or department but of the system itself.
The American emphasis on tough border controls and with strict immigration rules and an over‐reliance on information‐gathering technology has failed to make the country more secure. Only shedding this defensive approach and developing a more proactive strategy that understands the evolving nature of the terror threat, while embracing information‐sharing and cooperation among intelligence agencies within the U.S. and abroad, will make a difference.
No fence — including the most sophisticated — can by itself protect a country from terrorist attack. In North America, the borders between the United States, Canada and Mexico are particularly porous. Given this reality, immigration law and border controls cannot be the linchpin of any relevant anti‐terror strategy. Such a defensive “Maginot Line” approach is outdated and ineffective, especially in the face of the shifting shape of terror networks, which are now recruiting and training citizens from the West to go back home to commit terrorist acts.
The other problem of America’s counter terror strategy involves information collection through satellites, drones, wiretaps and other communications scanning by the National Security Agency and other agencies. Too much data kills operational information.
The terrorist threat today is scattered and polymorphous. It does not issue from some central command but is a mutating system that responds to any situation or event from which it might benefit.
Inside This Issue
1 US/France – The holes in America’s anti-terror Fence
2 US/China: Google China cyber attack part of vast espionage campaign
Ligne Maginot ‐ named after French Minister of Defense André Maginot, was a line of concrete fortifications, tank obstacles, artillery casemates, machine gun posts, and other defenses, which France constructed along its borders with Germany and Italy, in the light of experience from World War I, and in the run‐up to World War II. (Wikipedia)
Number 6317 January 2010
Initiator: Johan Mostert Contributions and enquiries [email protected]
US/France: The holes in America's anti-terror fence: A French perception
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Jean-Louis Bruguière - leading French magistrate for investigating counterterrorism from 1981 to 2007
An Open Source Intelligence Digest on developments in
the international intelligence arena: events,
leaders, studies and literature
8 Books on intelligence 6 Calendar: Upcoming conferences
5 Useful web links: Report writing manual & Thesis on size of world intelligence organisations
5 US/UK: Human rights gagged MI5 over Abdulmutallab
3 US – Why intelligence keeps failing
17 January 2010 SA Intelligencer Number 63 2
Evaluation of threats depends on a flexibility of mindset that can match thisviral behavior, allowing a prompt and adapted response. Human intelligencesources are thus usually more effective than technical ones because motivesand opportunities to act are very hard to read from a distance throughopaque data. Satellites cannot get inside the mind of a jihadist.
The United States needs a new approach with new tools and methods.
• First and foremost, circulation of information in real time is crucial.Often, it is the small, apparently trivial sign lost in the avalanche ofdata that forewarns of a coming threat. The more trained eyes thereare on information, the more likely that sign is to be read.
• Al Qaeda and its associates are a global enterprise broken up into
autonomous and worldwide cells that resemble a jigsaw puzzle. Eachnational agency, local police force or foreign intelligence agency has apiece of the puzzle. That is why the single most important task is todevelop the joint capacity to put all the pieces on the same table sothat all those involved in the fight against terrorism can see the wholepicture. Cooperation is the cornerstone of an effectivecounterterrorism strategy. In France, we have adopted the proactivestrategy I have described. As a result, France has not been hit on oursoil by a terrorist attack since 1996, foiling one or two attempts ayear during that period.
Jean‐Louis Bruguière
Proposals:
1) Circulation of information in real time
2) Cooperation 3) Understanding of ever‐
changing shape of global terrorism
• The final piece of a revamped U.S. strategy involves a sharperunderstanding of the ever‐changing shape of global terrorism today.
Clearly, the failed Christmas Day terrorist act has jolted the U.S. into arecognition that attacks on its homeland will be a part of Al Qaeda’s strategyfor a long time to come. The best way for the U.S. to defend itself is to go onthe offensive with a proactive strategy that beats Al Qaeda and its allies attheir own game.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/opinion/13iht‐edbruguiere.html
US/China: Google China cyber attack part of vast espionage campaign
Washington Post: 14 Jan 2010 (ed: shortened)
Computer attacks on Google that the search giant said originated in China were part of a concerted political and corporate espionage effort that exploited security flaws in e‐mail attachments to sneak into the networks of major financial, defense and technology companies and research institutions in the United States, security experts said.
At least 34 companies ‐ including Yahoo, Symantec, Adobe, Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical ‐ were attacked, according to congressional and industry sources. Google, which disclosed on Tuesday that hackers had penetrated the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates in the United States, Europe and China, threatened to shutter its operations in the country as a result.
Editor: Dalene Duvenage Click on hyperlinks to open documents [email protected]
17 January 2010 SA Intelligencer Number 63 3
Human rights groups as well as Washington‐based think tanks that have helped shape the debate in Congress about China were also hit. Security experts say the attacks showed a new level of sophistication, exploiting multiple flaws in different software programs and underscoring what senior administration officials have said over the past year is an increasingly serious cyber threat to the nation's critical industries.
This is a big espionage program
"This is a big espionage program aimed at getting high‐tech information and politically sensitive information ‐‐ the high‐tech information to jump‐start China's economy and the political information to ensure the survival of the regime," said James A. Lewis, a cyber and national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This is what China's leadership is after. This reflects China's national priorities." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp‐dyn/content/article/2010/01/13/AR2010011300359.html
US: Why intelligence keeps failing Herbert Meyer served during the Reagan administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council. He is the author of How to Analyze Information and The Cure for Poverty American Thinker: 13 January 2010 (Ed: shortened)
In the wake of our country's latest intelligence failure ‐‐ allowing a Nigerian terrorist to board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit when his own father had alerted us to the dangers posed by his son ‐‐ President Obama demands to know why our intelligence service failed to "connect the dots."
Herbert Meyer
So he's ordered investigations led by the very same officials who presided over our country's intelligence failures. That would be John Brennan, the president's counter‐terrorism adviser whose job it was to keep Umar Abdulmutallab from boarding that flight, and John McLaughlin, the hapless, now‐retired career CIA official who, as deputy director of the CIA and then as acting director, signed off on the two most screwed‐up National Intelligence Estimates in our country's history: the NIE about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and then that preposterous 2007 NIE which concluded that Iran had abandoned its quest for nuclear weapons.
There isn’t a chance that these clowns will come up with the right answer, because they’re the
problem. There isn't a chance that these clowns will come up with the right answer, because they're the problem. Simply put, the reason our intelligence service keeps failing to connect the dots is because the officials in charge don't know how. And the blame lies squarely with President Obama ‐‐ and alas, with President George W. Bush before him ‐‐ for appointing managers rather than dot‐connectors to run our intelligence service.
To understand why the absence of dot‐connectors at the top lies at the core of our intelligence failures, you must understand the relationship between management and talent. In most organizations, failure or success depends on the quality of management. That's why in the business world, competent chief executives are so highly compensated; they're rare, and they're worth
Editor: Dalene Duvenage Click on hyperlinks to open documents [email protected]
17 January 2010 SA Intelligencer Number 63 4
every penny they're paid. But there are some highly specialized organizations in which failure or success depends not so much on the quality of management or the structure of the organization, but on talent. For example, an opera company.
Put the right people in charge, and the "system" will fail much, much less
frequently
You can have the best manager in the history of the performing arts, but if you're staging La Bohème, then you'd better put two superstars like Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón on the stage, or you'll have a flop on your hands. Likewise with a scientific research institute: It isn't the administrator setting budgets, monitoring grants, and assigning parking spaces who will find the cure for cancer. It's the world‐class scientists working in the labs.
And if you're running one of these specialized organizations whose success depends more on talent than on management, then you put a talented individual in charge. First, he or she can actually do the job, rather than run around looking important while managing people, who in turn manage other people, who themselves manage the people who are actually doing the job. Second, he or she will be able to recognize and recruit other talented people. This is why organizations whose success depends on talent tend to be led by people who themselves have it and have proven that they have it. For example, the Washington National Opera's general manager is the great tenor Placido Domingo. The president of Rockefeller University is Paul Nurse, himself a Nobel laureate in biology.
An intelligence service is one of these highly specialized
organizations whose success depends more on talent than
on management An intelligence service is one of these highly specialized organizations whose success depends more on talent than on management. And the precise talent that an intelligence service needs is the ability to connect dots ‐‐ to spot a pattern with the fewest possible facts ‐‐ not only to intuitively grasp what lies in the future, but to grasp it soon enough, and clearly enough, so that there's time to change the future before it happens.
A president wants one thing from his intelligence service, and that's to connect the dots and get it right ‐‐ to tell the president the future. And how do you get an intelligence service that can connect the dots? You put a world‐class dot‐connector in charge of it.
Our country has no shortage of world‐class dot‐connectors. They're in politics, in business, at think tanks, in the academic world, and at our leading research institutes. You catch glimpses of them in articles they write, speeches they give ‐‐ and sometimes even as talking heads on television. Ask a dozen smart people to make lists of people they consider to be world‐class dot‐connectors, and you'll get a wide range of names, some of which will appear on more than one list. Now, do you really believe that any of these lists will include, say, counter‐intelligence chief John Brennan, or CIA director Leon Panetta, or Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, or Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair? Are you kidding?
And how do you get an intelligence service that can connect the dots? You put a world‐class dot‐connector in
charge of it.
No one among us is perfect, or even close to perfect. In the real world, intelligence failures will happen from time to time no matter how honorable, hardworking, or talented the men and women are on whom we rely to keep us safe. But after so many intelligence failures in such a short
Editor: Dalene Duvenage Click on hyperlinks to open documents [email protected]
17 January 2010 SA Intelligencer Number 63 5
time, we have got to stop making the same mistake over and over again. This week's Washington cliché is that our system failed. No. Systems don't fail; people fail. Put the right people in charge, and the "system" will fail much, much less frequently.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/why_intelligence_keeps_failing.html
US/UK: HUMAN RIGHTS GAGGED MI5 OVER ABDULMUTALLAB Intelligence on Muslim radicals cannot be passed to the US because of privacy fears
Sunday Times (UK) 10 January 2010 (Ed: shortened)
MI5 failed to alert America to intelligence highlighting the extremist links of the Detroit plane bomber because of concerns about breaching his human rights and privacy. The spy agency withheld its files on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from Washington until after the near‐catastrophic Christmas Day attack because of guidance from its legal department.
MI5 has privately conceded that as early as 2006 its surveillance operations had picked up “multiple communications” between the 23‐year‐old Nigerian student and suspected terrorists in Britain. Asked why that information had not been passed to the US, a Home Office official with detailed knowledge of the case said the security service did not pass information to its allies about the thousands of Britons who were merely suspected of having radical Islamic views. It did so only after it classified individuals as progressing into the much smaller category of “violent extremists” — a term used by MI5 to define potential or actual terrorists.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
The decision was consistent with MI5’s legal obligations to ensure that its intelligence gathering and sharing is “proportionate and necessary”, and complies with British and European laws protecting an individual’s right to privacy and freedom of expression. The revelation is likely to deepen a growing diplomatic rift between America and Britain over London’s handling of the Detroit plot.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6982393.ece
Useful web links
Report Writing Style Manual for intelligence officers The Mercyhurst College Institute for Intelligence Studies (MCIIS) has developed a style manual for analysts to assist student analysts with the many perplexing and complex rules to follow when producing written intelligence products. This is a 60‐page manual to guide intelligence analysts in dealing with basic grammar, spelling and abbreviation rules, as well as basic writing principles. (Ed: It’s a basic manual for beginner collectors/investigators/analysts.
Available at http://www.mciis.org/files/MCIIS%20Style%20Manual.pdf
Editor: Dalene Duvenage Click on hyperlinks to open documents [email protected]
17 January 2010 SA Intelligencer Number 63 6
A study of the size of the world intelligence industry Christian Hepner, a Masters student at Mercyhurst College, wrote a thesis on the Size of the World's Intelligence Industry. (Ed: It sure makes some interesting reading, although I did not have the time to evaluate his research methods.)
A Botswana journalist comments as follows on his findings: “Botswana's intelligence sector outstrips, in terms of expenditure and agents employed, many countries in the region and even those countries of a similar size. Botswana spends US $ 25.7 million (about BWP 169.62 million) on the intelligence community in the country, this figure might be outdated as the Directorate on Security and Intelligence have been given a budget of P 200 million. According to the study, the combined total of the intelligence community, possibly including even short term spies, is pegged at 9,800 people, making it one of the biggest workforce and spenders in the continent.
However, the other big spenders and employers are countries that have populations many times that of Botswana. For example Tanzania spends US$19.9m, Kenya US $21.2m, Namibia $US6.9 m, Ivory Coast US$ 22.3m and Ethiopia US $24.6m.
In some cases Botswana's intelligence sector doubles or even triples the sizes of sectors in countries with much bigger populations. Despite the fact that it came out of a civil war only a few years ago Angola employs only 7 000 operatives. However, its expenditure stands at just over US$ 80 million.
Nigeria is Africa's biggest spender with US $ 249 m having been expended during 2009. It is followed closely by South Africa, which leads the sub‐region with US 237 m. However, the country employs only 3500 agents.
Algeria leads the pack with the number of operatives standing at 12. Other countries of interest in Africa include Burundi with 2.549, Cameroon 10 000, Ghana 477, Kenya 5 000.
Among the world's most developed nations the countries with the biggest numbers of intelligence agents are the US with 144 000 agents and spending US$ 75 billion and accounting for 65 percent of the world's intelligence budget, Russia with 172 000, and spending US $3.2 billion, Syria with 25 000 and India standing at 18 000. The UK spent US$ 2.8 billion. Among themselves the worlds top 10 spenders ‐ US, Japan, China and Russia account for 93 per cent of the total intelligence expenditure.”
Calendar: Upcoming conferences
DGI Europe 2010: The 6th Annual European Geospatial Intelligence Conference & Exhibition: 25-27 January 2010: London, UK Defence Geospatial Intelligence (DGI) is Europe's largest annual gathering dedicated to high‐level discussion addressing the major challenges of the defence and government geospatial intelligence community. DGI brings
Editor: Dalene Duvenage Click on hyperlinks to open documents [email protected]
17 January 2010 SA Intelligencer Number 63 7
together heads of Geospatial Intelligence, GIS, Remote Sensing, Operations, Mapping, Imagery and Analysis within the Military, Governmental and National Security sectors, and provides a unique forum to discuss and debate the development of geospatial intelligence capabilities across the globe. Addressing the use of geospatial information in scenarios such as international conflicts, humanitarian disasters, crime, national security, border control, arms treaty monitoring and global climate change, a fundamental objective of DGI is to help organisations understand how to build the necessary infrastructure and architecture to take advantage of geospatial intelligence capabilities. With over 600 participants from 36 international countries, DGI has become Europe’s largest and most comprehensive gathering for geospatial intelligence.
More information available at http://www.wbresearch.com/DGIEurope/
February 2010 17‐20 Feb: International Studies Association (ISA) New Orleans, USA: (Ed: Excellent Intelligence Studies track)
March 2010 9‐12 March: Society for Competitive Intelligence Professionals Annual Conference (SCIP), Washington DC, USA
11‐12 March: 5th International Conference on the Ethics of National Security Intelligence, Washington DC, USA
May 2010 • 3‐7 May: LEIU/IALEIA Annual Training Conference: Orlando, FL, USA
• 9‐12 May: 1st Naked Intelligence Conference ‐ Bridging the Knowing Doing Gap Mondorf‐les‐Bains, Luxembourg
• 23‐26 May: IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics: Vancouver, B.C., Canada
• 25‐27 May: International Association For Intelligence Education (IAFIE) Annual Conference, Ottawa, Canada
June 2010 • 7‐9 June: Security in Government Conference 2010: Securing Government’s Business, Canberra, Australia
• 14‐17 June: Information Security and Cryptography ‐ Fundamentals and Applications Davos, Switzerland
Editor: Dalene Duvenage Click on hyperlinks to open documents [email protected]
17 January 2010 SA Intelligencer Number 63 8
Editor: Dalene Duvenage Click on hyperlinks to open documents [email protected]
July 2010 • 11‐13 July: The Dungarvan Conference 2010: Analytic Best Practices. Dungarvan, Ireland
• 27‐29 July: Intelligence – The Next Domino? Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers (AIPIO) Annual Conference: Melbourne, Australia
Books on intelligence
An Introduction to Intelligence Research and Analysis Series: Scarecrow Professional Intelligence Education Series #3 By Jerome Clauser, Edited by Jan Goldman First published in the 1970s, the classic book An Introduction to Intelligence Research and Analysis was used by intelligence analysts to track and monitor the Communist threat. Although today's environment has changed considerably since the Cold War, intelligence analysts still need to understand the basics of intelligence analysis. The book focuses on how to do research, what qualities are needed to be an intelligence analyst, and what methods can be employed to help in producing products. To avoid politicization, intelligence analysts should strive to become more transparent in their methodology of how they arrived at their conclusions. Intelligence Research and Analysis provides several methods to assist in that end. Jerome Clauser is the author of several publications on intelligence education and training. His previous books include Voice of the United Nations Command: A description of a strategic radio broadcasting psychological operation; and An overview of collateral psychological operations in the Republic of Korea. Jan Goldman is the author or editor of numerous articles and books on intelligence to include Ethics of Spying: A Reader for the Intelligence Professional, and Words of Intelligence: A Dictionary. He is the editor for Scarecrow Professional Intelligence Education Series Available in South Africa from 4Knowledge Analysis Solutions
Notice: The material is being made available for purposes of education and research of the subscribers. The SA Intelligencer contains copyrighted material ‐ the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We do not take responsibility for the correctness of the information contained herein. The content has been harvested from various news aggregators, web alerts, lists etc. This work is in the Public Domain. To view a copy of the public domain certification, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. The SA Intelligencer covers developments in the intelligence field that has not been widely reported in the general media. We also share comments from international experts on burning intelligence issues. Our South African context determines our approach and priorities. We aim to publish weekly, or as the intelligence dictates. We currently have a readership of about 350 intelligence managers, decision makers, civil society leaders, academia and other intelligence professionals from national security, the defence industry, law enforcement, other government departments and the private sector.
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