PRESS RELEASE: More Cloak & Less Dagger

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PRESS RELEASE: More Cloak & Less Dagger

LOA PRESS RELEASE, June 2010

MORE CLOAK & LESS DAGGER

CIA Veteran Leutrell Osborne says Covert Action is Obsolete

Can We Maintain Security with a Kinder, Gentler Intelligence Community?

by Iona Miller, 5-2010

"When did the DNI's new leadership start determining that we had to give up rights so we can protect a vulnerability in our nation-state's security? What is the real DNI agenda? When will the HUMINT capabilities be improved and increased? When will the funds be pulled from Covert Action intelligence operations so the funds can be used for greater results? Tell me when you news people will really get the more important stories going? " --Leutrell Osborne, Sr.

“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.” --Rilke

Leutrell Osborne, Sr. bids for Director of National Intelligence

In late May of 2010, President Obama forced out his Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and began reevaluating the post, which is probably best led by a civilian, according to top lawmakers. "The president needs to decide what he wants the DNI to be," Feinstein said, "and then work with the intelligence committees to see that the necessary authority is, in fact, in law." It needs to be someone who can work with Directors of CIA, NSA and FBI, as well as the support agencies.

The DNI needs to wear many hats to coordinate and deploy the 16 intelligence agencies and report those filtered results directly to the President. First and foremost he needs visionary insight to navigate through the turbulent waters of international sociopolical complications, as well as the diplomatic power to mesh all the powerful players involved in the National Intelligence Community (NIC).

An effective DNI needs credibility to get the job done and the clout to determine and execute direction. He needs the capacity to mobilize and transform the Draconian bureaucracy. He even needs to be able to stand up to the President, helping him navigate and course correct the ship of State.

One intent in establishing the DNI was to gain control of the budgets of the 16 agencies and departments of the NIC. Congress was previously unable to handle budget issues of the NIC. Hence, Congress created the DNI layer of management over the NIC. {There must be other than budgetary concerns since this came as a result of ramping up security oversight and coordination. Elaborate.Bullet list of 5-8 specific items]

As in Rilke's line, “The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens,” the future has entered Leutrell Osborne, Sr. Advocating the ethical High Road, he would like to bring transformation to the NIC's clandestine intelligence operations while balancing equities of governance with stakeholders and career government employees. In short, US foreign policy can be improved by re-inventing the NIC especially regarding "Covert Action (CA) intelligence operations."

The creation of the DNI has been a transformational and very tumultuous time for the intelligence community and particularly the CIA. When you ask somebody to do so much transformational change, often it makes sense to let somebody then take the agency forward from there.

Osborne suggests he has "natural leadership qualities" with his "decades of experience in the intelligence community," government and private business world. He suggests Intelligence needs to be more human. Humans provide the best intelligence. An extrovert and "relater," he emphasizes the value of the human connection and even intuition. The county's core needs are changing. Citizens are fed up with corrupt government, institutions and corporations.

Osborne doesn't mind admitting that transformational leaders need to listen to their Spirit and ethical conscience. He advocated against "dirty tricks" and for the moral/ethical approach during his tenure with CIA. CIA is somewhat infamous for an "ends justifies the means" attitude, but Osborne claims those ends simply aren't met with "dirty tricks," such as those chronicled in the book of greatest hits, CIA's Family Jewels. So, we need to consider the real effects and rework our strategy.

HUMINT or human intelligence remains one of the best forms of clandestine intelligence trade crafts though other methods such as "TECHINT" continue to play a significant role in the nation-state's effort to obtain so called secret information. The question remains, without Covert Action (CA) could the USA still have achieved what it has? This "change agent" says, "Yes, since there is little to no evidence indicating that CA ever worked, per se."

The sequence of events prior to shooting wars remain questionable and may be where the next transformation needs to occur. That is, once the USA deals with reduction of CA it can press on more HUMINT and TECHINT clandestine operations. Please remember there is no need for CIA clandestine operations when the Department of State and our diplomats exchange overt information with other nation-states. {Don't useful secrets to be 'captured' or acquired on policies, scenarios and deployments, etc. exist even while "diplomatic relations" are still in place? For example, we spy on Israel and Israel spies on us. Clarify.]

Annapolis, Maryland resident, "Mike" Osborne, Sr. was a spymaster for the CIA. Case Officers function more like spy managers over independent contractors (agents, assets and recruits), overseeing select operations within their respective specialties. They are deployed periodically outside Langley as Field Officers.

Operations include three types: 1) Intelligence, or collection of information, 2) Counter Intelligence (CI) to prevent or stop foreign intrusion; and, 3) Covert Action (CA). Other CIA activities include analysis and projections. Osborne’s specialty was and still is CI – Counter Intelligence -- the defensive "cloak" of "cloak and dagger."

Intelligence is one form of control system. Other control systems on the minds of large populations include education (controls behavior), money (controls wealth), law (controls authority), politics (controls national will), economy (controls wealth), history (controls beliefs), psychology (controls thinking), philanthropy (controls opinion), medicine (controls health), religion (controls spiritual beliefs), media / propaganda (controls culture, opinion), and continuity of succession (controls power).

CIA is not the only intelligence agency deployed by and reporting to the U.S. President. There are now 16 intelligence collection agencies (IC) coordinated by the DNI. They include military intelligence, information operations (IO), satellite and electronic surveillance (SIGINT), science intelligence, even domestic spying and homeland security.

Osborne notes, "Law enforcement in the USA has to change and acquire some of the attributes of intelligence work. That's why FBI SAs are now going to CIA for training. That's why USA is fighting dirty tricks, aka CA, aka terrorism, formerly known as secret para-military warfare."

“For the record,” Osborne says, “the continued preoccupation with reducing vulnerabilities is costly and just the opposite of what the Osborne Ultimatum recommends. We recommend more and improved HUMINT. Intelligence is a property of human beings.”

MORE CLOAK and LESS DAGGER

Osborne was trained in Transformational Leadership in both CIA and government contracting as a transformation agent. He would bring a Transformational Leadership approach to the position of DNI. His view of leadership transformational theory is one of reaching to higher moral positions without the pitfalls and conceptual weaknesses of charismatic leadership.

Osborne believes he can translate his CIA and business experience into an overview and coordination of the entire Intelligence Community and its administrative guidance needs in the rapidly shifting balance of world power.

Yet, he continuously questions the CIA's transformation to a paramilitary organization. He also notes, while CIA was originally mandated to perform foreign espionage, Intelligence has now merged with domestic law enforcement in Fusion Centers that monitor and control the activities of US citizens.

The global war on terrorism has, if nothing else, renewed the discussion of when and how societies—especially those believing that they are constituted on some values more noble than the mere continuation of their governing regimes—can use violence or restrict (on security grounds) the liberties of their own citizens or persons they encounter from other countries, friendly, neutral, or hostile.

The military services have faced transformational decision points for centuries. We know how the right path to innovation, so easy to define in hindsight, frequently proves “too hard to do” even for devoted and capable professionals trapped in a framework of institutional loyalties and structures.

Dedicated to civil rights and protection of Constitutional law, Osborne has certain pet peeves that have prompted him to continue his own investigations into the injustices and truth of our nation’s clandestine history. His interests include what he calls more intelligent intelligence (HUMINT), the KKK Assassinations (JFK, RFK and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), 9/11, COINTELPRO, Covert Action (CA) oversight, and transnational crime including global drug trade.

Osborne was interviewed on national television channel BET the day after 9/11 with Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Anderson Cooper has also interviewed him on CNN about life in CIA when he assisted in the defense with lawyer Mark Zaid of a fellow Black CIA Case Officer (Jeffrey Sterling), who had lost his job. Osborne was also interviewed in Mike Ruppert’s book Crossing the Rubicon. He has championed many issues and been a valuable mentor and "godfather" to many.

Osborne's personal story of his mother’s CIA employment and his own vocation was featured on CNN during Black History Month in February 2007 <www.leutrellOsborne.com)> A highlight of his life was attending the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize for Martin Luther King, Jr. and a long conversation with the Civil Rights leader at the following reception. Dr. King was a very influential transformational leader and Osborne seeks to emulate him. But more than charisma and comprehension of task importance is needed to direct the IC of the United States and coordinate it with both military and law enforcement agendas

QUASI-MILITARY OPERATIONS

As a CIA veteran, Osborne sees the main conceptual weakness of CIA as its ineffective use of dangerous and expensive COVERT ACTION. Secret paramilitary activities within other nations have largely failed and cost the US in credibility and public opinion. Even the "most successful" operations during the Soviet War in Afghanistan have blown back upon the US which is now mired in a similar stalemate.

CIA is now taking on bigger and riskier roles in the Front Lines. In recent years the civilian spy agency has transformed into a paramilitary organization at the vanguard of America’s far-flung wars.

TARGET INTELLIGENCE

The C.I.A. has always had a paramilitary branch known as the Special Activities Division, which secretly engaged in the kinds of operations more routinely carried out by Special Operations troops. But the branch was a small — and seldom used — part of its operations.

That changed after Sept. 11, 2001, when President George W. Bush gave the agency expanded authority to capture or kill Qaeda operatives around the world. Since then, Washington has relied much more on the Special Activities Division because battling suspected terrorists does not involve fighting other armies. Rather, it involves secretly moving in and out of countries like Pakistan and Somalia where the American military is not legally allowed to operate.

The fact that the agency is in effect running a war in Pakistan is the culmination of one of the most significant shifts in the C.I.A.’s history. But the agency has at times struggled with this new role. It established a network of secret overseas jails where terrorist suspects were subjected to brutal interrogation techniques, and it set up an assassination program that at one point was outsourced to employees of a private security company, then known as Blackwater USA.

Some longtime agency officers bristled at what they saw as the militarization of the C.I.A., worrying that it was straying too far from its historical missions of espionage and intelligence analysis.

When he took office, President Obama scaled back the C.I.A.’s counterterrorism mission, but only to a point. He ordered that C.I.A. prisons be shut and that C.I.A officers no longer play a role in interrogating suspects accused of terrorist acts. At the same time, the administration accelerated the C.I.A.’s drone campaign, using Predator and Reaper aircraft to launch missiles and rockets against militants in Pakistan.

HUMINT

Human intelligence is the collection of intelligence from human sources, including defectors, voluntary sources, spies recruited to betray their country or organization, prisoners, diplomats, information from allied or liaison intelligence services.

The US needs to reconfigure how it uses HUMINT tools by examining their effectiveness in the recruitment-centered model. When using this tool, the collecting agency finds a member of an adversarial group with access to important information. He then turn him or her into a spy by building a personal relationship and eventually popping the question, “Will you spy for me?”

Back pocket agents are nefarious agents or assets, loosely associated to the Company. The key is an "agent" has a narrow meaning and in the espionage business one ought not use words and terms that are loosey-goosey. An agent generally is paid and proven. An asset may not be paid nor in agreement with the nation state.

This model dominates since the Cold War, when spying followed fairly predictable guidelines. The organizational solution to the question of penetration was to rely on finding agents ‘in-place’ and to develop an approach in which agent recruitment played the fundamental role in HUMINT operations. However, even using ‘in-place’ sources had its difficulties. The normal process of developing and managing a HUMINT source consists of a cycle of Spotting, Assessing, Recruiting, Handling, and Terminating an asset In the Recruitment Cycle.

Driving this is an organizational culture that elevates recruiting in the hearts and minds of the Clandestine Service cadre. Career paths are driven by asset and agent recruiting, ‘hallway reputation,’ and ‘scalp-hunting,’ which measures performance for promotions. The highest value is given to recruiting and personality traits that facilitate it. In the Cold War that meant infiltrating the diplomatic scene of embassies and consulates under the guise of ‘official cover’ – cover where an officer’s affiliation with the US is not concealed, but his or her status as an intelligence officer is.

Intelligence liason in the War on Terror is necessarily more difficult, due to access to cultural groups, de-centralization of authority, and heavy need for collection on terrorist targets. Liason with foreign security units is crucial, actually better understood as a form of subcontracted intelligence collection based on barter.

Thus, liaison for the purpose of HUMINT collection is essentially “outsourcing the task of penetration,” an approach upon which the CIA appears to regularly lean when collecting on terrorists. Herein lies liaison’s greatest weakness - that we cannot control it. In a liaison partnership, HUMINT officers may be afforded access to a captured terrorist, or made aware of or allowed to participate in the partner service’s surveillance.

THE PROBLEM

WAR, ETHICS & TERROR

Issue No. 1

US intelligence needs to be reinvented and transformed, especially Covert Action intelligence operations in all of the various aspects called "dirty tricks." Tighter oversight and accountability with improved end results are required. Accountability boards are not enough. One still has to measure the failed Covert Action intelligence for “blowback.”

Issue No. 2

No nation-state currently polices transnational crime, which is a growing threat. Failure to provide adequate Human Intelligence (HUMINT) is a true weakness in the USA system. Most policy decisions are not based on hard HUMINT sourced information but other so-called facts and truths open to spin and interpretation. Senator Jay Rockefeller, Chairman of Select Committee on Intelligence claimed congressional oversight has increased about 100% since 9/11, but that program is now strangled.

Issue No. 3

The shadow of the Shadow Government, including domestic spying and assassinations, needs to be revealed to the American people and the world so we can finally heal. We must take responsibility for that shadow..

Issue No. 4

Our Constitutional rights are under attack, including the First Amendment. Free speech, the right to assembly, and freedom of the press are in jeopardy. It will be illegal to disagree with government policy, even with patriotic dissent. We've traded our democracy for corporate feudalism.

Issue No. 5

A serious consequence, the breakdown in credibility between the U.S. government and its citizenry, needs to be addressed, as well as increasing militarization of police and unwarranted surveillance of US citizens. The breakdown of domestic relations is a serious issue, perhaps concealing further manipulations. Those hunting the truth continue to press for disclosure from all knowledgeable sources.

ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES

CIA Report 2015 outlines the situation. <http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/globaltrends2015/index.html>Diplomacy is increasingly more complicated. In a diminishing US role, Washington will have greater difficulty harnessing its power to achieve specific foreign policy goals. The US Government will exercise a smaller and less powerful part of the overall economic and cultural influence of the United States abroad.
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In the absence of a clear and overriding national security threat, the United States will have difficulty drawing on its economic prowess to advance its foreign policy agenda. The top priority of the American private sector, which will be central to maintaining the US economic and technological lead, will be financial profitability, not foreign policy objectives. The United States also will have greater difficulty building coalitions to support its policy goals, although the international community will often turn to Washington, even if reluctantly, to lead multilateral efforts in real and potential conflicts.
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There will be increasing numbers of important actors on the world stage to challenge and check—as well as to reinforce—US leadership: countries such as China, Russia, India, Mexico, and Brazil; regional organizations such as the European Union; and a vast array of increasingly powerful multinational corporations and nonprofit organizations with their own interests to defend in the world.

But the problem of managing global affairs is made much more difficult by the diminishing power of the state. The Cold War, artificially, managed to organize almost every regional conflict in the world into a global system of conflict, which was managed at the top by two states that had an overarching interest in avoiding instability that could drag them into a very dangerous confrontation.

After it ended, many of the states of the old Soviet empire began to collapse, accelerating crime, lawlessness, tribal violence and terrorism. And the problem acknowledged in "Global Trends 2015" is that governments don't have very sophisticated mechanisms for dealing with "non-state actors."

Transnational Terrorism

States with poor governance; ethnic, cultural, or religious tensions; weak economies; and porous borders will be prime breeding grounds for terrorism. In such states, domestic groups will challenge the entrenched government, and transnational networks seeking safehavens.

At the same time, the trend away from state-supported political terrorism and toward more diverse, free-wheeling, transnational networks—enabled by information technology—will continue. Some of the states that actively sponsor terrorism or terrorist groups today may decrease or even cease their support by 2015 as a result of regime changes, rapprochement with neighbors, or the conclusion that terrorism has become counterproductive. But weak states also could drift toward cooperation with terrorists, creating de facto new state supporters.

Between now and 2015 terrorist tactics will become increasingly sophisticated and designed to achieve mass casualties.We expect the trend toward greater lethality in terrorist attacks to continue.

Much of the terrorism will be directed at the United States and its overseas interests. Most anti-US terrorism will be based on perceived ethnic, religious or cultural grievances. Terrorist groups will continue to find ways to attack US military and diplomatic facilities abroad. Such attacks are likely to expand increasingly to include US companies and American citizens. Middle East and Southwest Asian-based terrorists are the most likely to threaten the United States.

Reacting to US Military Superiority

Experts agree that the United States, with its decisive edge in both information and weapons technology, will remain the dominant military power during the next 15 years. Further bolstering the strong position of the United States are its unparalleled economic power, its university system, and its investment in research and development—half of the total spent annually by the advanced industrial world. Many potential adversaries, as reflected in doctrinal writings and statements, see US military concepts, together with technology, as giving the United States the ability to expand its lead in conventional warfighting capabilities.

This perception among present and potential adversaries will continue to generate the pursuit of asymmetric capabilities against US forces and interests abroad as well as the territory of the United States. US opponents—state and such nonstate actors as drug lords, terrorists, and foreign insurgents—will not want to engage the US military on its terms. They will choose instead political and military strategies designed to dissuade the United States from using force, or, if the United States does use force, to exhaust American will, circumvent or minimize US strengths, and exploit perceived US weaknesses. Asymmetric challenges can arise across the spectrum of conflict that will confront US forces in a theater of operations or on US soil.

Threats to Critical Infrastructure.

Some potential adversaries will seek ways to threaten the US homeland. The US national infrastructure—communications, transportation, financial transactions, energy networks—is vulnerable to disruption by physical and electronic attack because of its interdependent nature and by cyber attacks because of their dependence on computer networks. Foreign governments and groups will seek to exploit such vulnerabilities using conventional munitions, information operations, and even WMD.

PANETTA'S 2010 POLICY

CIA Director Panetta outlined CIA 2015’s three pillars. The first is investing in people. The CIA will recruit, train, and retain a highly talented and diverse workforce with the strengths to tackle any mission that arises. Bolstering the Agency’s foreign language capabilities is essential to that objective. The plan doubles the number of clandestine officers—and triples the number of analysts—enrolled in language training.

The CIA will enhance its use of more flexible and innovative deployments overseas—including new approaches to cover—paving the way for even better intelligence collection. More co-location of analysts and operators at home and abroad will both enrich the information provided to policymakers and lead to even more operational success in the field. This sort of fusion has more than proved its value over the years, and has been key to victories in counterterrorism and counterproliferation, among other disciplines.

The second pillar is investing in technology to extend the CIA’s operational and analytic reach and become more efficient. Agency personnel must be able to operate effectively and securely in a rapidly changing global information environment. The plan boosts the CIA’s potential for human-enabled technical collection and provides advanced software tools to help Agency officers tackle the huge volume of data they encounter in their work.

The third pillar is to achieve a new level of agility in maintaining the Agency’s global presence and surging for emergencies. The Agency will transform its support platforms around the world and consolidate certain business functions. Director Panetta commended the Agency’s tradition of minimal bureaucracy, a key ingredient in its responsiveness and impact. “When we’re told to get a job done, we can do it,” he said. “But we can’t take anything for granted. As good as we are, we can be better. As capable as we are, we can do more. As smart as we are, we can be tougher.” https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/press-release-2010/director-panetta-unveils-blueprint-for-agency-future.html

REVISIONING THE SOLUTION

"When did the DNI's new leadership start determining that we had to give up rights so we can protect a vulnerability in our nation-state's security? How about suggesting that the DNI send a message out to the agencies and departments to do a better and stronger job at conducting Human Intelligence collection operations? We just might find out who and what the adversaries are doing. Thus, we don't have to give up our rights." Osborne has developed a Freedom Program to "counter those activities reducing freedoms, including dirty tricks such as Cointel Pro." --Leutrell Osborne, Sr.

CHANGING FACE OF INTELLIGENCE

CIA 2015 is a three-pillar blueprint for the agency's next five years. The goal of the plan is to ensure that the agency remains in step with current national security challenges, such as cyber threats and so-called "dangerous technology," according to a press statement.

The other two pillars of CIA 2015 call for the agency to invest in a more highly trained, multilingual staff at home and abroad and to achieve business agility to better maintain a global presence and be better prepared for emergencies. The latter will include a transformation of global support platforms and a consolidation of some business activities.

A serious investment by the CIA needs to be made in training our cyber warriors to allow them to better recognize and mitigate intrusions. Training is best served by simulation exercises in a real time environment.

THE IC GOES CORPORATE

CIA has focused on corporate criteria, ignoring the time-honored metrics by which it has historically been held to account. Today, the agency's chief operating officer comes by way of investment banking. Business is booming, and to some that seems to be just about all that matters. The CIA now touts the fact that recruitment is way up—2,600 résumés pour in weekly. In one survey, MBAs rank the CIA as the premier government employer and ahead of such private-sector notables as Apple, Intel, and Pepsi.It is a source of great pride to the agency that customer demand for product— intelligence and analysis—has nearly outstripped capacity.

Agency insiders also celebrate the deregulation of their industry. "Agency Scrub," which once required overseas operatives to get approval from Langley before teaming up with particularly unsavory characters, has been set aside. Midnight abductions, lethal strikes from Predator drones, and interrogations conducted with "Torture Light" all signal a new and more business-friendly environment. The CIA is not just another business. Its only true asset is credibility, its only success enhanced national security. Outcome is the only important vector. Effects are more important than intentions.

OUTSOURCING

Private CIA

CIA officials won't say how much of the agency’s work is done by private companies, but admit that outsourcing has increased substantially since 2001. Of the estimated $40 billion the United States is expected to spend on intelligence this year, experts say at least 50 percent will go to private contractors. An even bigger piece of the pie now goes to domestic security companies serving Fusion Centers.

Intelligence and law enforcement have merged and work together at home and abroad. Police departments across the country have created networks of databases called "fusion centers" in an effort to detect and prevent acts of terrorism. The ultimate objective is to create a nationwide reporting system of suspicious behaviors so that the authorities can "connect the dots" before an attack can occur.

Civil liberties groups claim these fusion centers are beset with legal and practical problems. One legal problem is that the police should not be opening files on people because they exercised their right to free speech, such as demonstrating against the foreign policies of the United States. One practical problem is that the police are gathering so much mundane information that practically anyone could end up on a list of "suspicious" persons because some official arbitrarily decided to fill out a tip sheet. Join us for a discussion of the pros and cons of this newly proposed system of policing.

Teams of military and law enforcement veterans and other motivated, capable Americans protect diplomats, provide training, and offer logistic services. They do those things in support of friendly nation peace operations around the world, including support of some of our Muslim allies.

Spy In the Box

Today's spies for hire can be found online. Independent contractors are the 'fast food' of Intelligence. Clients can order from their service menus. Traditionally, spies have always been outsourced, rather than official employees of intelligence agencies, such as Case Officers or "spy masters."

There are 16 official members of the Intelligence Community, an assemblage of separate agency intelligence organizations which gather, evaluate, and distribute information, most of which is secret. Made up of 16 organizations, its activities are controlled and coordinated by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who reports to the President.

The DNI is charged primarily with developing the overall intelligence budget, designing procedures to govern large intelligence acquisitions, setting priorities and coordinating policies/activities for the 16 intelligence agencies, monitoring covert operations, setting policy for working with foreign intelligence services. DNI has authority to request information from nonintelligence agencies, and perform joint planning for counterterrorism operations for all 16 intelligence agencies. Also reporting to DNI are the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which is staffed by terrorism experts from the CIA, FBI, and the Pentagon; the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board; and the National Counter Proliferation Center.

Underworld to Overworld

These Ops are special and not necessarily accountable to anything but the bottom line. Operations range from the Underworld of black markets, black gold and money laundering to the Overworld of global controllers and Corpoglomerates. They know how things operate and how to get the job done while protecting the clients assets and secrets.

"Intelligence services" represent an unprecedented concentration of military expertise and force in the hands of private corporations. They evaluate clients through research and due diligence, to ensure they are legitimate actors who support freedom and security. They only take on work that is sanctioned by the U.S. government, or so they say.

Halliburton will probably never shake its bad reputation. Blackwater became so infamous, it changed its name to Xe, much like the maligned Whackenhut changed to "The GEO Group, Inc." GEO is now a world leader in the delivery of correctional and detention management, health and mental health, and other diversified services to federal, state and local government agencies around the globe. GEO offers a turnkey approach that includes design, construction, financing and operations. GEO represents government clients in the United States, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Canada,

Substantive Deliverables

With mixed personnel, they circumvent the turf war between Police, CIA and the Pentagon. Services include Acquisitions, National and International Emergency Response, Think Tanks, Field Security, Action Teams, Fusion Analysis, Cyber Forensics, Network Security, Data Analysis, Transactional Auditing, Tutorial Assistance and Systems Transformation.

Also, counter measures, anti-terrorism evaluation, technology and development training, theater-wide communications operations, intelligence liason, clandestine procedures and training, incident management and protective operations. Encryption methodologies and the design of secure communications networks within a defense environment. COMSEC, INFOSEC, and SIGSEC. EMF risk assessment and reduction.

* Counter-Intelligence Services
* All-Source Fusion Analysis Services
* Strategic Debriefing
* Translation Services
* Tactical Translation Services
* HUMINT Support
* Imagery Analysis Support
* Topographic Support

Intellipedians

The CIA has grown wise to the power of open-source collaboration, and Intellipedia—a classified version of Wikipedia—is humming with activity 3 years after its debut, Time reports. The site boasts 900,000 pages of content written by 100,000 identified intelligence professionals. Advocates cite the rapid treatment of questions as evidence of Intellipedia’s effectiveness.

For example, an agent posted a page asking how to collect evidence from a chlorine-based IED after coming across one in Iraq. "Twenty-three people at 18 or 19 locations around the world chimed in on this thing, and we got a perfectly serviceable set of instructions in two days," says one user. Some hardliners have questioned the site’s security, but other say a rapidly evolving database is exactly what the intelligence community needs to combat the ever-changing face of terrorism.

Moonlighting Intel

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side -- a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation's top-level intelligence talent.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in "deception detection," the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.

But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.

A government official familiar with the policy insists it doesn’t impede the CIA’s work on critical national security investigations. This official said CIA officers who want to participate in it must first submit a detailed explanation of the type of work involved and get permission from higher-ups within the agency.

If any officer requests permission for outside employment, those requests are reviewed not just for legality, but for propriety. There is much about the policy that is unclear, including how many officers have availed themselves of it, how long it has been in place and what types of outside employment have been allowed. The CIA declined to provide additional details.

Generally, federal employees across the vast government work force are allowed to moonlight in the private sector, but under tight guidelines, that can vary from agency to agency, according to the federal Office of Government Ethics.

“In general, for most nonpolitical employees, they may engage in outside employment, but there are some restrictions,” said Elaine Newton, an attorney at the Office of Government Ethics. She explained that agencies throughout the federal government set their own policies on outside employment, and that they all typically require that the employment not represent a conflict of interest with the employee’s federal job and that the employee have written approval before taking on the work.

But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy.

NOC, NOC, who's there?

Only a small percentage of the CIA's employees (perhaps less than 10 percent of the agency's estimated 10,000 to 20,000 workers) are clandestine officers involved in operations—the traditional spy stuff that includes recruiting sources, executing covert missions, and gathering intelligence. The remaining 90 percent are analysts, managers, scientists, and support staff. Because of their various roles, CIA employees require different levels of protective cover:

No cover. Upper management, college recruiters, congressional liaisons, Director George Tenet: These men and women are publicly acknowledged CIA employees.

Light cover. Many of the CIA's analysts and scientists fall under this category. Their families and friends might know who they really work for, but publicly, they claim to be employed by some other innocuous government agency or group. One former intelligence officer described this as "the cover you use if your airplane gets hijacked": It's safe enough to use on a quick visit overseas, say to meet with intelligence counterparts in a friendly country, but insufficient cover for spies stationed abroad.

Official cover. Most CIA employees engaged in operations overseas are given official cover: a sham job in the U.S. embassy (or working for another government agency) that affords them diplomatic immunity. These spies work under varying degrees of secrecy—the CIA station chief in a major ally nation may be well-known on the diplomatic cocktail circuit, but his subordinates, who actually recruit new informants, may not be. Such spies probably confide in their immediate families, but otherwise are unlikely to reveal their true occupation. (Although some operatives working in allied nations are "declared" officers, which means the CIA informs the host government that they are spies.) The advantage of official cover is that if officers are caught, they enjoy the benefits of diplomatic protection; at worst, they'd be publicly outed and sent home in disgrace.

Nonofficial cover. NOCs (the word rhymes with "rocks") are the most covert CIA operatives. They typically work abroad without diplomatic protection (often they pretend to work for some commercial enterprise). If these spies are caught, there's no guarantee that the United States would admit their true identities. When using official cover could put a spy's life and work at risk, NOC is the only alternative.

A little-noticed provision in the public section of a mostly-classified Senate intelligence bill signals that the Central Intelligence Agency is more serious than ever about plans to expand its program of setting up cover jobs for CIA officers outside of the usual posts in the State Department and other government agencies. Some believe the CIA's non-official cover, or NOC (pronounced KNOCK), program is the likeliest way for the agency to penetrate terrorist organizations or even, say, the nuclear program of Kim Jong Il's closed regime in North Korea.

"With terrorism, counter-proliferation — the kinds of threats that we face — you have to be more inventive in the way you deploy people overseas," said a knowledgeable U.S. official. "So you are going to have a lot of people who are not under official cover." America's most famous NOC is Valerie Plame, the CIA operative exposed last summer after a columnist reported that Bush administration officials had said she was behind a 2002 trip by her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, to Africa to investigate claims that Saddam had sought to buy uranium from Niger.

NOCs have traditionally been a tough position to fill. Though not a complete solution to the CIA's problem of gathering human intelligence, the NOC program can help. It's extremely expensive and dangerous to build a credible non-official cover by planting someone in, say, a corporate executive post in Islamabad or as a cell phone salesman in Madrid — positions in which a CIA officer would have no diplomatic immunity from arrest by the host government and little protection from deadly retribution by terrorists. Worse, the CIA has faced major bureaucratic hurdles in setting up an infrastructure to ensure that an NOC appears to be paid by a cover employer while actually being paid a government salary but at the same time only liable for taxes on a — often much lower — CIA officer's wage.

The Senate intelligence committee quietly passed a measure that makes it clear that the CIA can "pay salaries, allowances, retirement, insurance, and other benefits to CIA employees under non-official cover in a manner consistent with their cover." This also suggests that a NOC might be allowed to keep at least some of the larger salary that goes with their fake job.

Although some experts believe CIA Directors already have much if not all of this authority, this legislation would give the CIA additional flexibility. Demonstrating the importance of non-official cover across the entire U.S. intelligence community, the Senate bill also makes permanent the authority for the Pentagon to use front companies in its intelligence gathering, an authority that until now has been subject to renewal.

CIA continues to expand its NOC program. Intelligence officials say several hundred NOCs are now in the field, and the number is growing. Senior officials from the agency's National Collections Branch have been quietly approaching businesses doing overseas work to ask if they will provide covers for CIA case officers. Energy companies, import-export firms, multinational concerns, banks with foreign branches and high-tech corporations are among those being approached. Usually the company president and perhaps another senior officer, such as the general counsel, are the only ones who know of the arrangement. ``The CEOs do it out of a sense of patriotism,'' says former deputy CIA Director Bobby Inman.

In effect, the companies get free executives. For the cover to be plausible, the CIA must recruit business-school graduates who can put in a productive day's work with the firm and then spy during their off-hours. The CIA has even begun experimenting with recruiting mid-level corporate executives who yearn for adventure, then placing them in overseas firms as ``NOCs of convenience'' to penetrate a target for several years.

When the mission is over, the execs return to the business world. But while they are NOC officers, the CIA pays them a government salary. The company pays them a corporate salary-- usually much larger--to keep up the cover, but that money is quietly returned to the company. In fact, the agency's Covert Tax Branch has a secret relationship with the IRS to resolve the two W-2 forms an officer gets each year.

NOCs are out in the cold. But the CIA believes NOCs are the best way to carry out many clandestine operations. A foreign-intelligence service usually has no trouble spotting CIA officers operating under an embassy's cover. Not so for NOCs. ``If you're working drugs, thugs or tech transfers, you're going to be in banks all the time looking at financial transactions''--jobs often better suited for an officer under corporate cover, says a CIA contractor. NOC officers also have had more luck spying on ``hard targets'' such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, where the U.S. has no embassies in which to hide CIA operatives. In some countries, CIA is even experimenting with setting up two stations. One would be under the traditional embassy cover to serve as a decoy, while another much more secretive station would handle the NOCs.

CIA sources report NOCs sponsors overseas include: RJR Nabisco, Prentice-Hall, Ford Motor Co., Procter & Gamble, General Electric, IBM, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan Bank, Pan Am, Rockwell International, Campbell Soup, and Sears Roebuck.

In some cases, flamboyant conservative businessmen like Ross Perot and the late Malcolm Forbes have actively cooperated with the CIA in stationing officers worldwide. In other cases, obscure U.S. companies doing business abroad--such as a tiny Texas firm that deals in spare tractor parts in Latin America, cited by a former CIA officer--have taken part in the NOC program. Shipping lines, mineral and oil exploration firms, and construction companies with international operations, like the Bechtel Corp., often house NOCs.

By joining the CIA in clandestine activities, a company tacitly accepts that some of its employees could routinely break the law in another country and, if exposed, embarrass the company and endanger its other overseas employees.

Unlike most CIA officers, who are stationed abroad disguised as State Department employees, military officials, or other U.S. government personnel attached to an American embassy, NOCs operate without any apparent links to the U.S. government. They are able to approach people who would not otherwise come into contact with a U.S. embassy official. The CIA's operations within terrorist, drug trafficking, and arms dealer networks often involve NOCs, who can move more easily in such circles without raising suspicion.

In recent years, according to several CIA sources, NOCs have increasingly turned their attention to economics. Using their business covers, they seek to recruit agents in foreign government economic ministries or gain intelligence about high-tech firms in computer, electronics, and aerospace industries. They also help track the development of critical technologies, both military and civilian.

NOCs frequently stay 5, 10, or more years in one place. During that time, the NOC is truly "out in the cold." Their contacts with control officers in the CIA station are strictly limited; they do not have access to embassy files; and they must report through secret communications channels and clandestine meetings.

"As a NOC officer you are truly alone," says John Quinn, who spent much of the 1980s as a NOC in Tokyo. "The sense of isolation and loneliness is difficult to describe to those who have never experienced it." Because NOCs do not have the diplomatic immunity that protects CIA officers operating under embassy cover, if they are exposed they are subject to arrest and imprisonment--and they can be executed as spies.

TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE AGENT

WHY Leutrell Osborne, Sr.?

Osborne characterizes himself as, "a living a transformation and change agent from the world of espionage that can improve the DNI." The story of his life as THE BLACK MAN IN THE CIA is currently in press and recounts the inspirational details of his rise within the Agency. He cites his decades of varied experience, mentoring and activism:

1939-1951 Birth, mother, father, WDC, light skinned black man w/o money- then at 12 mother working at CIA when he got the vision to get a job at CIA and become a Spy Manager.

1952-1957 - Inspirational life involved in participating in changes like reduction of segregation barriers especially in high school and self taught photography skills that got me hired by CIA as well as eloping and marrying a wonderful life partner Rose Marie Battle Osborne who enabled us to have six children, raise 11 other children and stay married 52 years.

1957-1968 From the CIA's DO become CIA Case Officer w/o a college degree and graduate from the CIA's Career Training Program (CTP) after having a tour abroad in the Far Northern Country (FNC) that enable the family and me serve as genuine change agents to include actually meeting and talking with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rose talked with Coretta while I was talking to Dr. King for over one hour at the US Ambassadors reception for Dr. King, Jr.

1968-1972 Acquiring language and college degree overcoming obstacles that godfathers and mothers helped me resolve.

1972-1974- Latin American tour as Case Officer involved in clandestine service change management and accomplishing firsts in tech operations, agent access opportunities and even sending out information that was from a tech op that become a formal CIA intelligence dissemination to the NIC.

1974-1976 While holding down a significant position as CI for Central America, I was selected to be an advisor to two CIA Directors: Colby and daddy Bush. These opportunities enabled me to serve as a transformation agent while being on the DCI's EEO Advisory Panel that brought greater equality to the CIA. That advisory opportunity was extra-curricula and enabled me to have the same vantage point on the CIA as the DCIs. Thus from this platform, I made the decision and move to desegregate the management of CIA's Office of Communication and I became a Communications Security (COMSEC) officer.

I led a transformation team in COMMO and again advised another DCI Admiral Stansfield Turner. Two of our recommendations impacted NIC telecommunications and creation of CIA's move to separate telecommunications and information management. One of the other significant events was the participation in the NIC's decision to no longer depend on host government's to provide protection for US Embassies and personnel but for the USA to include such matters in NIC protection of US property and personnel.

1976-1981 As the only known CIA Spy Manager with six years COMSEC experience, I was able to transfer the NIC especially on improving NIC tech information across agencies and departments.

1982-1984 As Chief CI for the Directorate of Operation's Libya Branch, again I was position to use past transformation experiences especially knowledge of CIA Commo to improving the DO's handling of vital and important raw information from the field so that it went through the maze of barriers easier and faster to the NIC customer.

1984-1988 Private sector experiences as an international food broker, commercial mortgage broker and security and sales director for one of the few Black owned armored car companies in the world provided more experiences and insights into what works and what does not work. I even had the experience of working with the FBI to investigate a million dollar armored car robbery.

1988-1994 Return to govt via tempo jobs at the Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in l988 and l989. The latter OPM opportunity besides serving as the platform to continue as a change agent allowed me to re-enter government service but now in government procurement as an advocate for small business owners, I began learning and keeping book on many things, but the government vertical systems that don't work such as Equal Employment Opportunity and the Inspector General enabled some of us to gain greater understanding of government barriers and challenges to equality and justice. With the peer election of me to serve as the Director OSDBU, I along with key other govt employees worked through Public Law 95-507 and even improved Congressional understanding of the adversities impacting small business. The OSDBU Director experiences resulted in my assisting in the creation of FAR Part 10 which was part of the stimulus that eliminated my OPM job as Director OSDBU when I retired in l994.

1994-2010 Performing as a "sales consultant" guiding companies in Marketing to the Government (MTG). Note that these 16 years of private sector procurement experience and the prior five (5) years inside of government with several significant transformation managements surely enabled me to influence government to improve contracting for small business owners while these same events also helped set the stage for much of the current government success with government contracting preference programs today.

In conclusion, the family "relationship" responsibilities for over 50 years as well as various leadership roles in the Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus enabled me to gain significant insight and sensitivity for community stake holder expectations that further assisted me in being the transformation agent that I am.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP: The Ties that "BOND"

Pulitzer Prize winner, James MacGregor Burns first brought the concept of transformational leadership to prominence in his extensive research into leadership. His key innovation in leadership theory was shifting away from studying the traits of great men and transactional management to focus on the interaction of leaders and led as collaborators working toward mutual benefit. He is best known for contributions to the Transformational, Aspirational and Visionary schools of leadership theory.

Excerpts from his book Leadership:

Leadership over human beings is exercised when persons with certain motives and purposes mobilize, in competition or conflict with others, institutional, political, psychological, and other resources so as to arouse, engage, and satisfy the motives of followers... in order to realize goals mutually held by both leaders and followers....

Transformational leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.

That people can be lifted into their better selves is the secret of transforming leadership and the moral and practical theme of this work.

"Essentially the leader's task is consciousness-raising on a wide plane. The leader's fundamental act is to induce people to be aware or conscious of what they feel - to feel their true needs so strongly, to define their values so meaningfully, that they can be moved to purposeful action."

In this leadership style, the leader enhances the motivation, moral and performance of his follower group. So according to MacGregor - transformational leadership is all about values and meaning, and a purpose that transcends short-term goals and focuses on higher order needs.

At times of organizational change, and big step change, people do feel insecure, anxious and low in energy - so in these situations and especially in these difficult times, enthusiasm and energy are infectious and inspiring. And yet so many organizational changes fail because leaders pay attention to the changes they are facing instead of the transitions people must make to accommodate them.

In Osborne's view it is the responsibility of the director leading the change to supply an infusion of positive energy. he transformational approach also depends on winning the trust of people - which is made possible by the unconscious assumption that they too will be changed or transformed in some way by following the leader.

Bass defined transformational leadership in terms of how the leader affects followers, who are intended to trust, admire and respect the transformational leader.

He identified three ways in which leaders transform followers:

Increasing their awareness of task importance and value.
Getting them to focus first on team or organizational goals, rather than their own interests.
Activating their higher-order needs.

Bass has recently noted that authentic transformational leadership is grounded in moral foundations that are based on four components:

Idealized influence
Inspirational motivation
Intellectual stimulation
Individualized consideration

...and three moral aspects:

The moral character of the leader.
The ethical values embedded in the leader’s vision, articulation, and program (which followers either embrace or reject).
The morality of the processes of social ethical choice and action that leaders and followers engage in and collectively pursue.

The four components of the transformational leadership style are:

(1) Charisma or idealized influence - the degree to which the leader behaves in admirable ways and displays convictions and takes stands that cause followers to identify with the leader who has a clear set of values and acts as a role model for the followers. Idealized Influence – Provides a role model for high ethical behavior, instills pride, gains respect and trust. Charisma is seen as necessary, but not sufficient, for example in the way that charismatic movie stars may not make good leaders. Two key charismatic effects that transformational leaders achieve is to evoke strong emotions and to cause identification of the followers with the leader. This may be through stirring appeals. It may also may occur through quieter methods such as coaching and mentoring.

(2) Inspirational motivation - the degree to which the leader articulates a vision that is appeals to and inspires the followers with optimism about future goals, and offers meaning for the current tasks in hand. Inspirational Motivation – the degree to which the leader articulates a vision that is appealing and inspiring to followers. Leaders with inspirational motivation challenge followers with high standards, communicate optimism about future goals, and provide meaning for the task at hand. Followers need to have a strong sense of purpose if they are to be motivated to act. Purpose and meaning provide the energy that drives a group forward. The visionary aspects of leadership are supported by communication skills that make the vision understandable, precise, powerful and engaging. The followers are willing to invest more effort in their tasks, they are encouraged and optimistic about the future and believe in their abilities.

(3) Intellectual stimulation - the degree to which the leader challenges assumptions, stimulates and encourages creativity in the followers - by providing a framework for followers to see how they connect [to the leader, the organisation, each other, and the goal] they can creatively overcome any obstacles in the way of the mission. Intellectual Stimulation – the degree to which the leader challenges assumptions, takes risks and solicits followers' ideas. Leaders with this style stimulate and encourage creativity in their followers. They nurture and develop people who think independently. For such a leader, learning is a value and unexpected situations are seen as opportunities to learn. The followers ask questions, think deeply about things and figure out better ways to execute their tasks.

(4) Personal and individual attention - the degree to which the leader attends to each individual follower's needs and acts as a mentor or coach and gives respect to and appreciation of the individual's contribution to the team. This fulfills and enhances each individual team members' need for self-fulfillment, and self-worth - and in so doing inspires followers to further achievement and growth. Individualized Consideration – the degree to which the leader attends to each follower's needs, acts as a mentor or coach to the follower and listens to the follower's concerns and needs. The leader gives empathy and support, keeps communication open and places challenges before the followers. This also encompasses the need for respect and celebrates the individual contribution that each follower can make to the team. The followers have a will and aspirations for self development and have intrinsic motivation for their tasks.

Transformational leadership applied in a change management context, is ideally suited to the holistic and wide view perspective of a programme based approach to change management and as such is key element of successful strategies for managing change.

Yukl (1994) draws some tips for transformational leadership

Develop a challenging and attractive vision, together with the employees.
Tie the vision to a strategy for its achievement.
Develop the vision, specify and translate it to actions.
Express confidence, decisiveness and optimism about the vision and its implementation.
Realize the vision through small planned steps and small successes in the path for its full implementation.

Transformational leadership is defined as a leadership approach that creates valuable and positive change in the followers with the end goal of developing followers into leaders. A transformational leader focuses on "transforming" others to help each other, to look out for each other, to be encouraging and harmonious, and to look out for the organization as a whole.

With this leadership, the leader enhances the motivation, morale and performance of his followers through a variety of mechanisms. These include connecting the follower's sense of identity and self to the mission and the collective identity of the organization; being a role model for followers that inspires them; challenging followers to take greater ownership for their work, and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of followers, so the leader can align followers with tasks that optimizes their performance.

This is in contrast with pseudo-transformational leadership, where, for example, in-group/out-group

'us and them' games are used to bond followers to the leader.

CHANGE AGENTS: Research on champions or change agents typically examines the behaviors, attributes, and motivations of the individual leading the organizational change. As such, “championing” is understood as a near heroic venture by those with a near innate ability and expressed interest in such work. However, change leaders generally rely on the support of a team of employees and consultants.

The experience of the members of change teams is less well understood despite their role in introducing, legitimating, and managing change among the rank and file of the organization. Interviews with full-time members of change teams reveal that they do not begin as skilled, motivated agents of change but rather they undergo extensive training and, in many cases, describe themselves as having experienced a personal transformation during their intense involvement in the change activities. The findings suggest that organizations, in the pursuit of change, produce change agents and that these change agents seek opportunities in the labor market that allow them to continue this work - initiating, championing, and implementing business process management - in other organizations.

Pentagon Tightens Grip on the Obama Administration and the Intelligence Community

Tuesday 08 June 2010

by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: michael baird, David Katz/Obama for America)

President Barack Obama's appointment of retired Gen. James Clapper as the director of national intelligence (DNI) demonstrates the Pentagon's enormous influence over the president and indicates that there is little likelihood of genuine reform of the hidebound intelligence community. Once again, the president has appointed a general officer to an important strategic position that should be in the hands of an experienced civilian who understands the need for change. President Obama has given retired generals the key positions of national security adviser, ambassadors to Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and DNI (on two occasions in a 17-month period) to career military officers. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is about to name a retired general who was responsible for special operations in Afghanistan as the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism. These career military officers are not known for strategic thinking, having been trained to focus on worst-case assessments of geopolitical problems. It is no wonder that there have few diplomatic successes during the Obama administration, that the State Department remains underused and without influence and that the humongous Pentagon budget remains largely untouchable.

In the political panic that followed the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration permitted the creation of two large bureaucratic entities - the Department of Homeland Security and the office of national intelligence - that have been largely sclerotic and demonstrated genuine incompetence during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the attempted suicide bombing of a commercial airliner in 2009, respectively. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has convinced the mainstream media that Clapper's predecessor, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, was forced to resign because of the pathetic performance of the intelligence community in December 2009 when the young Nigerian bomber was permitted to board a commercial airline and the Central Intelligence Agency demonstrated incredible incompetence in a series of events that led to the successful bombing of its most important operational base in Afghanistan.

In fact, Blair cannot be blamed for these intelligence failures. The CIA, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the State Department were all at fault for the attempted suicide bombing. The State Department ignored the Nigerian's multiple-entry visa for the United States, the State Department and the CIA ignored warnings from the Nigerian's father; the NSA didn't exploit collection opportunities that would have provided significant information and NCTC failed to pursue information that would have placed the Nigerian on a no-fly list. The NCTC should have had operational control of counterterrorism operations, but the 2004 statute that created Blair's position specifically states that the NCTC director "may not direct the execution of counterterrorism operations." President Obama's principal adviser on counterterrorism, John Brennan, should have taken this problem to Congress, where it needs to be corrected; he still hasn't done so. None of the numerous human errors that were made could be placed at Blair's door; no one has been held accountable or even responsible.

Blair's major problem was one he shares with many general and flag officers who lack experience in Washington but are placed in sensitive political positions for which they are not prepared. As a result, Blair created unnecessary battles within the intelligence community that he was destined to lose, particularly the effort to control the appointment of chiefs in CIA stations that are located in US embassies around the world. Station chiefs have always been CIA operations officers and it simply made no sense to raise the possibility of placing NSA officers or Defense Intelligence Agency officers as station chiefs. Blair lost that battle, but that did not stop him from trying to halt all clandestine operations in France, which would have weakened the CIA's counterterrorism mission and placed the CIA too close to a French intelligence operation that has been penetrated by foreign intelligence over the years. Blair also never established a personal rapport with President Obama, despite his regular visits to the White House to conduct intelligence briefings. Military officers typically lack the background and experience to provide these largely geopolitical briefings, which should be given by intelligence professionals.

If President Obama were truly interested in intelligence reform, he would have abolished the office of national intelligence and the position of intelligence czar or at least placed the DNI in civilian hands to counter the Pentagon's control of intelligence personnel and intelligence spending. The Pentagon already controls nearly 85 percent of the $70 billion intelligence budget and nearly 90 percent of the 100,000 intelligence personnel. Active duty and retired general officers now command nearly all of the major institutions of the intelligence community, although my 18 years on the faculty of the National War College confirmed my impression that military officers are not distinguished in the fields of strategic intelligence or geopolitical problem solving.

Strategic management of the 16 agencies of the intelligence community is the DNI's major challenge, but the last three intelligence czars have been unqualified general and flag officers. The absence of an independent civilian to counter the power of military intelligence threatens civilian control of the decision to use military power and makes it more likely that intelligence will be tailored to suit the purposes of the Pentagon. The president's erratic decision making on Afghanistan over the past year points to military domination of the decision making process.

Finally, the mainstream media, particularly The New York Times, has demonstrated an ability to accept briefing guidance from the White House on the Clapper appointment and an inability to scrutinize Obama's actions. Saturday's New York Times, for example, cited Clapper's "decades of experience" without mentioning that his experience in communications intelligence and military spy operations is not relevant to his major missions as intelligence czar. The Times credited the president with "pushing the reset button" in order to "recalibrate the intelligence structure," when Clapper's appointment really amounts to new wine in old bottles. The Times also discussed Clapper's ability to refashion and reorganize the intelligence community, without noting that the Pentagon's undersecretary of defense for intelligence has veto power over the ability of the DNI to transfer personnel or budgetary authority from individual intelligence agencies into joint centers or other agencies in order to integrate strategic intelligence.

Clapper is familiar with this problem even if the mainstream media isn't; he served as undersecretary for intelligence for both Secretaries of Defense Gates and Donald Rumsfeld. At that time, moreover, he was responsible for managing the Counterintelligence Field Activities Office, which managed an illegal database that included information about antiwar protests planned at churches, schools and Quaker meeting halls. Perhaps, some of these issues will be raised at his Senate confirmation hearings.