Analyst's note: Must read. It is obvious from this Op-Ed "On Weak Intelligence Programs" that we are not the only ones "down on political correctness" and see a need for viable intelligence in defense of our nation. Our thanks to the author for considering CSIA Report a proper ventue to share his thoughts. "[....] In so doing, they have made it easier for America's enemies to defeat U.S. efforts to ferret out their secrets and have thereby made it more rather than less likely that the United States will be surprised by a future adversary. Openness has its place, but so does secrecy." Although the authors of Top Secret America and their discussion of our nation's top secret infrastructure may never find themselves in court for their writings, we may also never know just how much more vulnerable they have made you and me, not to mention those inside and associated with our super-sized Intelligence Agency working day and night to protect us. We really need to start working smarter. You've no doubt heard of "connecting-the-dots," but have you ever heard of the mosiac theory? Maybe we all should become more familiar with it. "The theory holds that individually harmless pieces of information, when combined with other pieces, can generate a composite - a mosaic - that reveals national security vulnerabilities. Because of this informational synergy, records that would be unclassifiable in their own right may require protection. President Reagan often warned of KGB mosaic-making, but once he left office the theory receded into obscurity. [....] The 9/11 attacks brutally underscored the ways in which terrorism and technology have been increasing the scope of mosaic-making threats while decreasing their predictability." "With the end of the 1900s, the plots of Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and others had been decided. Jihad would come to America. And it did. Yet, the United States remained insufficiently prepared for the war that had been declared upon the West so long ago. Our intelligence capability remained at best dormant. Our intelligence community continues to stumble. The recent realignment and reintegration of our intelligence community failed to provide for a good span of control, and who was really in charge and in control. According to lectures I received at the Army Intelligence School (Baltimore)...outside of spy movies, the US has never been very good at intelligence. President Woodrow Wilson rejected the idea, arguing that gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail. Which explains handily how the Lusitania was sunk; the Black Tom explosion that took out two million pounds of ammunition and damaged the Statue of Liberty; and the German germ warfare plot against the US could all take place on his watch during WW-1. Things never really got much better since then as we continue to integrate and select a choice for the director of national intelligence (DNI). So now Admiral Blair is out and General Clapper is in. Nonetheless it is apparent that between CIA, NSA, and the NSC somehow failed to work in tandem, share and speak the same signals, digitals or semaphores. WW2’s OSS was America’s best group of foreign operatives, and they were cowboys, tough, ragged and undisciplined, going off on their own, and producing hits and misses. Meanwhile for all the mythology of the CIA, the organization is basically the State Department with a more menacing air. And the State Department is 90 percent of what’s wrong with American foreign policy. After 9/11, consolidation and intelligence sharing were supposed to be the order of the day. Instead of ending the chaos, we instead immortalized it. In the last decade, the ability of US intelligence services to distinguish between good intelligence and bad intelligence, to actually know when a threat was coming and to counter it, have not been very good. The FBI has been moderately decent at breaking up a few cells in the early stages of an operation, and entrapping one or two others. But they’ve been hamstrung by the White House and the US Attorney with an open door policy toward Islamist groups. We are almost at a point: “…Are we sleeping with the enemy?” The CIA has been as useful or useless as it was during the cold war. We need to get serious about stopping terrorists. We have open our gates for lots of foreigners to come into the United States without a better program at solid profiling. For any kind of profiling to work, we need to put aside political correctness and pay close attention. Profiling is an important tool, but one that has to be used within the context of a solid intelligence and counter-terrorism strategy. In law enforcement work we refer to profiling as "field identification card." Having a solid intelligence agency means an agency that doesn’t use Muslims or people with dubious backgrounds as translator. It means an agency that doesn’t use analysts who are more sympathetic to the terrorists than they are to the United States. In addition, It doesn’t use station chiefs who work for foreign governments or go native and adopt the view-points of the enemy. It means an agency that isn’t held hostage to its own political culture and is actually capable of gathering solid intelligence, vice repeating embassy cocktail party chatter, rumors, and including that in intelligence briefings and the intelligence summary. It appears that right now US foreign intelligence is run by people who are often more friendlier to the enemy than they are to us, virtually useless at actually moving information through the pipeline and incapable of seeing even big development like India and Pakistan's nuclear programs until it blows up in their faces. And we continue to play Russian roulette...as we await a rogue state to have possession of the nuclear arms." Adolf Peter Sgambelluri
U.S. Marine Corps (Ret)
Fmr Guam Chief of Police
