re: "Wanted: Robust Intelligence and Diplomatic Reporting"

James Bruno at Diplo Denizen ("Author and ex-diplomat comments on foreign affairs & writing") explains the importance of diplomatic reporting.

Money quote(s):

"After I completed my assignment, I unexpectedly received kudos from analysts in the intelligence community. They pointed out how much the atmospherics I described in my reporting helped them put together their analyses.

Diplomatic and intelligence reporting work hand-in-hand. Put together, they flesh out a fulsome picture of events, players, and issues. When one component is lagging or missing, the other suffers. When policymakers ignore one or both, they are flying blind."

Throughout the IC we have some incredible analysts who are great in their various specialties, all-source and fusion-cell sorts not excluded, so it can be a very pleasant surprise to learn from them how they value diplomatic reporting.  Even some of our publicly-available "open source" contributions, that convey the basic ground truths which may be common knowledge in a particular country, are valuable to analysts working inside (or near) the beltway.

"One noteworthy fallout of the WikiLeaks publication of State Department cables, leaked by Chelsea Manning, was the compliments about diplomatic reporting from journalists, academics, and others. The New York Times noted, “curious diplomats can turn out to be accomplished reporters, sending vivid dispatches to deepen the government’s understanding of exotic places,” and “the drama in the cables often comes from diplomats’ narratives of meetings with foreign figures, games of diplomatic poker in which each side is sizing up the other and neither is showing all its cards.” "

If there was a silver lining to that debacle it was this; however short-lived it may turn out to be, our reporting officers garnered some "street cred" for their work.

"(A) senior Foreign Service officer said, “It’s infuriating that even after WikiLeaks, the ‘thinking’ world and journalists in general, to say nothing of politicians, don’t understand that our stuff is America’s true bedrock intelligence.” "

It truly is.  Although it may seem thankless or even pointless to draft what may seem obvious from where the writer sits abroad, what "everyone knows" in Timbuktu will be anything to an analyst struggling to understand a new portfolio.

"Practitioners know that the value of intelligence is the marrying of open source information with reporting and data collection obtained through spying. The success of U.S. intelligence is the layering of SIGINT [signals intelligence], HUMINT [human intelligence], overhead imagery, open source, and other data, with diplomatic reporting. All are necessary. One without the other yields an incomplete picture.

It is no surprise that the places where the U.S. has had intelligence and diplomatic failures over the years are places where it had no diplomatic representation – hence no diplomatic reporting and the kind of on-the-ground knowledge necessary to make informed decisions. Iraq [between 1990-2003], Iran, and North Korea are notable examples."

Read the whole thing.

re: "Dudes! Misinterpreting DoD's strategic guidance repeats mistakes, ignores emerging trends, and leads to failure"

Janine Davidson posted at Thomas E. Ricks' The Best Defense blog ("Tom Ricks' Daily Take on National Security"), read the "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21^st Century Defense and Defense Budget Priorities and Choices" documents (so you don't have to).

Money quote(s):

"The fact is, whether we call it "COIN," "stability operations," "peacekeeping," or "irregular warfare," such frustrating, complex, population-centric, and increasingly urban operations against and among savvy and networked non-state actors are simply a modern version of an age-old phenomenon. And they are here to stay."

&

"(N)ot sizing the force for large-scale operations like Iraq and Afghanistan is a responsible and prudent strategic approach. As these two huge wars wind down, of course the force will be down-sized. This is what we do after every war, no matter the type. It would irresponsible, and in fact unconstitutional, to do otherwise. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States clearly indicates the power of the Congress to "raise and support Armies..." but to "provide and maintain a Navy." This language is deliberate, as the founders did not want to maintain large expensive standing ground forces in peacetime. The Congress is empowered to appropriate money to expand the force as needed to fight wars. And that is exactly what happened during the past decade. Our force planning can and should account for our ability to do this again when needed.

For operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the army grew from just over 480,000 soldiers in 2001 to a peak of 570,000 just a couple of years ago. Likewise, the marine corp grew from approximately 170,000 to 210,000. Following redeployment from these wars, the new strategy calls for downsizing back to about 490,000 soldiers and 182,000 marines by 2017, (assuming we manage to disengage in Afghanistan) which is slightly larger than the what President George W. Bush inherited eleven years ago. And still, it is nearly four to five times the size of the ground forces of any of our NATO allies."

Strategy (as outlined in the document being reviewed by Prof. Davidson) is one thing: the meat ax of sequestration is another. The downsizing she posits may be the best case scenario.

"(L)et's not confuse size with competency. Not sizing for Iraqs or Afghanistans does not, and should not, mean forgetting how to conduct such missions -- no matter the size."

&

"Throughout its entire 250-year history, coin, stability operations, and nation building have been far from an "irregular" occurrence. The U.S. has conducted such missions -- on a large scale -- about every 25 years since the Mexican War in the 1840's. U.S. ground troops conducted nation-building, peace-keeping, and a series of counter-guerilla wars against American Indians on the western frontier throughout the 1800's. They conducted a bloody counterinsurgency in the Philippines (1898-1902), a number of "small wars" in the Caribbean (1930's), and occupation duty after the American Civil War and the two World Wars. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has deployed every 18-24 months in response to complex crises of various size, with the average duration of these endeavors becoming increasingly protracted.

From the beginning, these missions have been frustrating and ill-defined, and they have always been controversial. Repeatedly, after each painful episode, the military has sought to avoid having to do them again by forgetting its doctrine and failing to plan, leaving the next generation to re-learn on the fly.

The U.S. army was so fed up with counterinsurgency after its bloody and protracted experience in the Philippines that it eagerly -- with the support of the secretary of War -- managed to turn the whole mission set over to the marines in the early 20^th century. While the army focused on "real" war, the marines were sent to the Caribbean for the "Banana Wars," where they had to re-learn all the hard-learned lessons from old U.S. army manuals that were being discarded. The marine corps did allow a small team of officers to capture this Caribbean experience in the 1940 Small Wars Manual; but the mainstream corps had little appetite for these missions and was already trying to reinvent itself as specialists in amphibious operations. Once WW II began, the marines discarded its doctrine, training, and education for small wars in order to focus intensely on amphibious operations. This left the Vietnam generation to re-invent relevant doctrine once again."

&

"Today we face a global environment characterized by transnational criminals, terrorists, insurgents, and myriad illicit and violent bandits and traffickers. Some of these "bad guys" are aligned with nation states, but most operate in the gray space between what we consider crime and war. Importantly, our future enemies have been paying attention to our struggles against low-tech, high-impact fighters in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere and have been sharing their own "lessons learned" across global social networks. One lesson is clear: Go asymmetric and "irregular" against the U.S. military, because taking it on head to head conventionally would be just plain stupid. " (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"Demographic trends such as urbanization, the youth bulge, resource scarcity, and radicalization ensure that future conflicts requiring ground forces will occur in cities and slums and among populations, where differentiating friend from foe, and victim from "combatant," much less just trying to navigate through the crowded urban "battle space" will continue to plague traditionally-minded and conventionally trained ground forces."

&

"The military should continue to develop special operations and civil affairs capabilities as key components for security force assistance, conflict prevention, and crisis response. Army modularity, which allows ground units to be scaled and tailored for various operations should continue to be developed, and competencies in foreign languages, interagency coordination, and human intelligence collection and analysis should be sustained and enhanced." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"So how then, do we size this new more enlightened and capable force to ensure success in future coin or stability operations missions? With 490,000 soldiers and 182,000 marines on active duty, plus the forces in the selected ready reserve (560,000 in the army and 39,000 in the marine corps), America's ground forces will arguably be large enough for stability operations of significant size even without needing to add to the force once a crisis hits. Still, there is no crystal ball to predict the exact scenario our military might face. Moreover, despite much debate, there is still no consensus over the question of how many ground troops are required to bring stability to a country of a given population. Clearly neither sizing the peacetime force for the largest imaginable stability operation, nor down-sizing and hoping we won't face another large-scale mission of this sort, is no way to plan. Because we have the demonstrated ability to grow the force and adapt once a war begins, the trick is to find the right size that allows us to conduct smaller and medium scale operations and to initiate an operation while scaling up for something larger if and when needed."

&

"(W)e need to be confident that we can access the capable and ready forces we need, when we need them. Being able to grow the force for large-scale missions if required means having a reserve component that is ready for mobilization and an active duty-training cadre that can deliver the expertise on demand. The DoD's plan to, "... leverage the operational experience and institute a progressive readiness model in the National Guard and Reserves in order to sustain increased readiness prior to mobilization," is aiming in the right direction. On the active duty side, the army and marine corps are both planning to retain a greater percentage of mid-grade NCO's and officers even as they downsize, reflecting their understanding that a slightly more senior force is not only required in the conduct of these complex missions, but is also the seed corn needed to train and grow a force if required."

.

Janine Davidson is assistant professor at George Mason University's Graduate School of Pubic Policy. From 2009-2012, she served as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Plans, where she oversaw the development of guidance for military campaign and contingency plans and the review and assessment of plans. Before all that she was a pilot in the air force.

7/27

re: "China and Russia: Nothing to Worry About Here. Just Keep Whistling... "

The Conservative Wahoo at Information Dissemination ("The Intersection of Maritime Strategy and Strategic Communications") provided a stellar example of an alternate futures study.

Money quote(s):

"One of the reasons the military (and the commercial world) deal in alternative futures studies is the value that they provide in forecasting potential future events--events which in many cases, had been proceeded by a series of events that portended their arrival. These "signpost" events are then cataloged and monitored, for if more and more of the signposts line up, the event then grows more likely to occur."

CAA has some experience with this, having read a few of these and helped to write and edit one once. They're a very clever and hopefully useful product which combine the best of intelligence research and analysis tools and methodologies into something that should intellectually engage the reader.

"One of the things we speculated on in our work was a condominium of power between Russia and China, and for some reason, it was one of the most criticized portions of the piece (among those seeking to make thoughtful comments). Shortly after we published the paper, just such a "signpost event" occurred when I linked to a coordination of effort between the Chinese and the Russians with respect to missile defense."

This is not so crazy an idea, given that Russia (under its Soviet incarnation) and China were once closely (more-or-less) allied as major components in what was then thought of as "monolithic communism."

(Signpost or milestone events are intended to be clearly observable developments which indicate that a certain trend towards an alternate future is unfolding.)

"(A)nother signpost event (courtesy of a Galrahn Tweet): China and Russia are going to stage a naval exercise in the Yellow Sea in April. Russia plans to send 10 ships to participate. This of course, will occur in a body of water that the Chinese have increasingly indicated they wish we would not visit.

Have the two nations exercised jointly in the past? Yes they have."

There's already something of a framework for Russian-Chinese codominium already in existance, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which has been considered in alternate futures scenarios in the past (see p. 7, "World Without the West").

4/1

re: "Did we Lose the GWOT Bubble?"

The Phibian at Cdr Salamander ("PROACTIVELY “FROM THE SEA”; LEVERAGING THE LITTORAL BEST PRACTICES FOR A PARADIGM BREAKING SIX-SIGMA BEST BUSINESS CASE TO SYNERGIZE A CONSISTENT DESIGN IN THE GLOBAL COMMONS, RIGHTSIZING THE CORE VALUES SUPPORTING OUR MISSION STATEMENT VIA THE 5-VECTOR MODEL THROUGH CULTURAL DIVERSITY.") examined excessive self-examination.

Money quote(s):

"It is important for a man to have self-doubt. You must nurture your self-doubt; question your own motives and preconceptions. Take what you "know" is true, and seek out those who say it is false.

When you do that, one of two things happen. Either you find other side's argument lacking and so build something else a man must have; self-confidence - or you find your own ideas weak or off-center. When that happens, you reassess, modify, and reposition to a stronger place. Self-generated creative friction, if you will."

In the realm of intelligence analysis, this sort of thing manifests itself as "red-teaming" or other forms of questioning (or at least identifying) your basis assumptions and/or biases.

"One thing I do know though is this; we could be in a worse place if we did less - it could have been better if we did more; or the other way around. We don't know, do we? What we do know is where we are. What we need to focus on is how to make things better and to avoid repeating our mistakes."

Always good advice.

4/25

re: "On Capability vs. Intent, Part II"

Andrew Exum at Abu Muqawama ("a blog that focuses on small wars and insurgencies in addition to regional issues in the Middle East") examined the significance of uncertainty in intelligence analysis.

Money quote(s):

"(I)n my World Politics Review column this week, I tackle the intelligence problems related to intent, which are normally much more difficult than those related to capability. Specifically, I tackle the (understandable) failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to determine whether or not Israel will attack Iran -- a failure that matches my own inability to do so." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

He fleshed that out a little bit more with reference to reading and conversation.

(It'll only take a moment to read.)

4/18

re: "Infuriating idiocy about Islamists"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") presented an award.

Money quote(s):

"This wins the prize for complete inability to admit the blisteringly freaking obvious point that al Qaeda is an Islamist terror group, they are at war with us and we are at war with them. This member of the Defense Department wastes bushels of oxygen evading the simple fact that our enemies are religious fanatics of an easily-identifiable flavor, identifiable because they shout their "god's" name as they hack the heads off living men and women. It is sad reminder that our "leaders" would rather bury their heads in sand, that our enemies tread wearing the iron sandals of violent Islamist extremist ideology, than be shunned by the "right"-thinking left as politically incorrect."

He does have a point. Patterns and indicators, as any intelligence analyst will tell you, assist one in identifying opposing forces.

12/15

re: "Preventing Pearl Harbor"

George Smiley at In From the Cold ("Musings on Life, Love, Politics, Military Affairs, the Media, the Intelligence Community and Just About Anything Else that Captures Our Interest") commemorated America's most famous intelligence failure.

(Remember that operations are always successful; if they're not successful, then there was a failure of intelligence.)

Money quote(s):

"(C)ould the attack have been prevented, sparing the lives of 2,000 Americans who died on that fateful December day in 1941. While war clouds had been gathering for years before the Japanese strike, supporters of FDR claim that neither the President, nor his senior advisers, had any direct knowledge of a pending attack on Pearl Harbor, and could not provide definitive warning to Admiral Husband Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short, the senior Navy and Army commanders in Hawaii.

Still, there is plenty of evidence that U.S. intelligence was aware the Japanese fleet was on the move in late 1941, and might carry out a strike against American possessions in the Pacific."

George details for us a lot of that intelligence.

"Pearl Harbor was clearly at the top of Japan's potential target list, but raids on the Philippines, Alaska, Wake Island and Guam couldn't be ruled out. So, U.S. commanders in the Pacific faced the daunting challenge of locating the Japanese fleet, across millions of miles of open seas."

All of these potential targets were eventually attacked, and at least portions invaded and seized (including part of Alaska's Aleutian Islands chain).

"(T)here is one incontrovertible fact: the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor could have been easily prevented, had President Roosevelt followed the advice of his previous Pacific Fleet commander, Admiral J.O. Richardson. During his tenure as CINCPAC, Richardson repeatedly warned of his fleet's vulnerability at Pearl Harbor, and requested that most of his ships return to their home port in San Diego. When FDR refused, Richardson stuck to his guns and paid a high price: he was fired as CINCPAC in early 1941 and replaced by Admiral Kimmel."

There's a price, sometimes, in being prematurely correct.

Richardson's memoir included this passage, from a message to the chief of naval operations:

"(T)he probable cost (human and physical resources) of any war should be compared [with] the probable value of winning the war."

Clearly Adm. Richardson was a strategic thinker and had read his Clausewitz.

"Sadly, only World War II buffs and naval historians are familiar with the courageous stand of J.O. Richardson. At the cost of his own career, Admiral Richardson stood on principle, trying to avert a military disaster that he believed could be averted, by returning the fleet to San Diego and engaging in the preparations needed to ready the Navy for war.

Richardson's integrity and candor offer an important lesson for military leaders--or anyone in a position to advise decision-makers. Even in that rarefied air, it is essential to tell "the boss" what they need to hear--not what they want to hear. Admirlal Richardson did just that, realizing his advice might fall on deaf ears and result in his dismissal. It's regrettable that so many of his peers failed to follow his shining example in the days before Pearl Harbor."

Tell the truth as you see it, interpret the facts you know as best you can, don't shade or flavor unpalatable truths to fit the preconceived notions or prejudices of your superiors, and let those above you, with access to a presumably wider range of sources and methods, decide on the basis of a fuller scope of information.

12/7

re: "Call Him John"

Lex at Neptunus Lex ("The unbearable lightness of Lex. Enjoy!") has an interesting snippet from AP.

Money quote(s):

"Intelligence drives operations."

Write that down somewhere. And read the whole thing.

re: "Four tasks for Petraeus to fix the CIA"

Paul Miller at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") provides some thoughtful advice.

Money quote(s):

"Petraeus is not just smart: he is capable of challenging groupthink, which is exactly what the CIA needs. If Petraeus is ready to rewrite the book on intelligence the way he did, not just for counterinsurgency doctrine, but for the Army's culture as a whole, he could do wonders for the CIA."

"Let me say right off that I do not think the intelligence community is hopelessly broken, it does provide an irreplaceable service to policymakers and I have the highest respect for the folks I worked with during seven years at the CIA. But I do not think the taxpayers are getting the most bang for their buck."

Some suggestions:

"The Directorate of Intelligence (DI) has the capability of being a leading foreign affairs think tank in the world. Instead, it has largely limited itself to being a massive, overpriced, secretive magazine staff for a readership of one, pouring most of its resources in to the President's Daily Brief (PDB). Analysts live under a maze of restrictions that bar them from public activities, ostensibly to protect their objectivity and credibility. The restrictions are silly. Instead of enhancing their credibility, the restrictions just isolate them and make contact with other experts in their field difficult, awkward, and sporadic.

Analysts can and should be open and regular participants in the world of academia, think tanks, and conferences, encouraged to publish and speak on their areas of expertise. Their writing may actually have a larger impact if they focus less on the PDB and more on the broader foreign policy establishment, which is where policy is shaped in broad outline before it makes it to the President. Petraeus might even experiment with having the DI publish a regular, unclassified product. It's not like we keep our classified documents secret anyway."

Having gained a little familiarity with our analytical profession in the course of my own professional journey, these suggestions make sense to me. Keeping our analysts apart from the larger streams of thought will only make their analyses more and more detached from reality.

re: "Static, One-Dimensional Analysis 1; Dynamic, Multi-Dimensional Analysis 0"

Andrew at Abu Muqawama ("dedicated to following issues related to contemporary insurgencies as well as counterinsurgency tactics and strategy") gives credit where it's due.

Money quote(s):

"Since the intelligence community is so rarely congratulated when they get something right, it's worth pointing out that had they been wrong, we would not be conducting combat operations in Libya right now. But their order-of-battle analysis, sadly, proved all too accurate. Readers, if you will, join me in a quiet golf clap for the men and women at Langley, Fort Meade and Bolling AFB."

re: "The Muslim Brotherhood in America: Part I – Understanding the Threat"

John Guandolo at Big Peace has begun a frightening series of articles.

Money quote(s):

"It is now March of 2011. That jihadi attack on the United States is over nine years behind us. The declaration of a global jihad from Iran in 1979 is over 30 years in our rear view mirror. The national security apparatus of the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to “make America safer,” yet we still have not defined our enemy – or even tried. There is no place in the national security structure which has objectively evaluated the threat doctrine of our enemy, and then created a strategic plan for victory for the United States – per U.S. warfighting doctrine. This lack of strategic understanding of the nature of the threat we face is not only costing us lives on the battlefield in wars with no realistically stated objectives, but so long as we drift aimlessly, we cannot win and we allow the enemy to move our boat as he sees fit. That, is the enemy’s strategy. And he is executing with great success."

This problem has implications far beyond the merely doctrinal and theoretical. When the ever-awkward construction "global war on terrorism" is junked for "man-made disasters," it's not an improvement.

Foreign policy, or at least diplomacy, is just one of the instruments of national power which can be used to implement or support a strategy, grand strategy, or even an operational or tactical plan. Without a clear grand strategy in the current global war, or even an acknowledgement that it exists (that there is something bigger going on that two isolated theatres of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan), foreign policy will be about what you see now.

"The United States continues to view the wars (the establishment sees this as several conflicts, not as one global conflict) as kinetic engagements where guns, air power, drones, bombs, and other weapon of war are brought to bear on “Al Qaeda terrorists” and others with whom we are engaged on the many battlefields around the world."

As I noted above, military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were not conceived and initiated as wholly unrelated and independent activities, whether you agree with them or not. They were, and are, separate campaigns in a larger strategy.

Students of history will note that strategies, and grand strategies, evolve, as do objectives. Abandonment or feigned ignorance of those objectives, however, partway through their accomplishment courts great hazard.

"Every brand new intelligence officer in the United States military knows that when the United States evaluates a threat, our doctrine drives us to begin our process with WHO the enemy says he is and with WHAT the enemy says are HIS reasons for acting. That is where the U.S. analytical process begins – per our own doctrine. If we had done this after 9/11, we would not have so much confusion about the enemy we are engaging.

One hundred percent of the enemy we are fighting states he is fighting “Jihad” in the “Cause of Allah” in order to implement Islamic Law (Shariah). Therefore, U.S. analysts must begin here. Does Islamic Law exist? If so, what does it say about “Jihad” and the requirements for Jihad?"

Clearly, what even the shiniest new intelligence officer or analyst knows requires years of experience and higher education to unlearn. But it can be done.

"Our entire national security apparatus is focused (fixed) on the threat of the violent Jihadis – Al Qaeda and the hundreds of other jihadi groups throughout the world engaging U.S and allied troops on the ground around the world.

Our enemy has no intention of defeating us on the battlefield. The kinetic war being waged by organizations like Al Qaeda, Hamas, and the many other jihadi groups is meant to bleed us, fix us in place, and create a strategic distraction while the real war they are fighting is won in the information battlespace. While AQ fixes us in place, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) presses the U.S. – and the West at large – into a corner with a stated foreign policy mirroring that of Al Qaeda. Who is the OIC? The OIC is the umbrella organization for every Muslim nation in the world – 57 states (they count Palestine as a state). At the Head of State and King level the OIC seeks to re-establish the global Islamic State (Caliphate) and implement Islamic Law. They have a 10-Year Plan in English on their website that may begin shedding light on who they are and what they intend for the West."

Oddly, I was recently required (earlier last year) to write a strategy paper as if I were a military analyst tasked with developing a strategy for Al-Qaeda. It looked a lot like what you just read. Of course, I was probably looking at many of the same, publicly available, source documents available to Mr. Guandolo.

"(T)he reason the International Muslim Brotherhood is calling for the death of Qaddafi is because he is “killing Muslims without right,” a capital crime under Islamic Law, and an act defined as “terrorism” by the OIC – that means the Head of State and King of every Muslim nation in the world has a parallel foreign policy from the one they are discussing with our State Department, and our State Department does not have clue one about it."

Our State Department, like the military, is run as a top-down organization and, like aboard the Titanic, it's difficult-to-impossible to change a large organization's course from down here in the engine room. Individual analysts and reporting officers must continue to write the truth as they observe it, as they interpret it, and keep faith that policy and decision makers are doing more than filing things down the memory hole and proceeding with their pre-conceived biases.

"The Muslim Brotherhood, like the OIC and Al Qaeda, seeks to re-establish the global Islamic State (Caliphate) and implement Islamic Law (Shariah). You do not need a SCIF or a “secure space” to pull this information up on a classified government system. All of the enemy doctrine can be found on the worldwide web, in books, in speeches, in their training curricula, and coming out of their mouths on a daily basis."

What he said.

"When the MB says they have “renounced violence” they are – hold onto your hats – lying.

From several major terrorism trials in the United States, and other information, we now know nearly every major Muslim organization in North America is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) or a derivative group. We know many are support entities for Hamas, and all of the Islamic organizations working with the U.S. government are controlled by the MB. These include: the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a Hamas support entity; the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Hamas organization; the Muslim Students Associations (MSA); the Muslim American Society (MAS); the Interntional Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT); the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA); the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a Hamas support entity; and many other. We also know that the objectives of the MB mirror those of Al Qaeda.

The MB’s doctrine is crystal clear on their objectives. The means for achieving these objectives is to wage a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” – a “grand jihad” – to destroy us from within. They seek to co-opt our leadership in all areas of our society – political, military, intelligence/law enforcement, media, religious. Civilization jihad by our hands. When we see that the Islamic advisor to President Clinton was a Muslim Brother and an Al Qaeda operative currently in federal prison, or that the MB runs the Shariah Compliant Financial programs for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, or that senior policy advisors to Secretary Napolitano are Muslim Brothers, or that the Assistant Director for the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate is an Iranian-born Muslim, we see that there are catastrophic security issue within the U.S. government and that - just maybe – the MB means what they say."

These statements, if true, have some very scary implications. I'm disinclined to tar everyone with a Middle Eastern or Muslim background with too broad a brush, having served in uniform with more than one such individual in whom I have undiminished confidence. Nonetheless, connections with MB-connected front organizations are not happy-making.

re: "Mubarak was wrong, and so were we"

Peter Feaver at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") dissects in the aftermath.

Money quote(s):

"(A)lmost everyone, including bloggers like me, managed to get it wrong:

The Intelligence community. The beleaguered IC was already reeling from White House criticism about failing to predict events unfolding in Tunisia and Egypt. (This criticism is a bit unfair since I bet there were some warnings -- given the volume of intelligence products and the way they are written, virtually everything has been predicted as "possible." Moreover, it is clear that those with vastly better intelligence and sources on Egypt than anything the IC ever could hope to amass, the Mubarak regime itself, were also surprised by the flow of events.) Then came the gaffe by Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the "largely secular" Muslim Brotherhood, a statement his staff was obliged to walk back later in the day. And the topper was CIA Director Panetta's admission that his forward-leaning prediction yesterday about Mubarak's departure was based not on intelligence analysis but on television reports. This is an almost textbook case of the CNN effect."

re: "Failure of Analysis "

George Smiley at In From the Cold ("Musings on Life, Love, Politics, Military Affairs, the Media, the Intelligence Community and Just About Anything Else that Captures Our Interest") gives, as always, an educated assessment.

Money quote(s):

"The United States maintains close ties with both the Egyptian military and its intelligence services. In fact, the nation's recently-appointed vice-president, Omar Sulieman, has been described as "the CIA's man in Cairo," a reference to his lengthy tenure as head of Egyptian intelligence and close ties to his American counterparts.

In other words, Egypt is not a country where the U.S. intelligence community is without sources."

"(I)f that weren't bad enough, our Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, had his own howler on the same day. In his own testimony before Congress, General Clapper said the Muslim Brotherhood "is largely secular;" has "eschewed violence," and is "pursuing social ends."

By days end, Mr. Clapper was walking back those remarks. True, the Brotherhood operates hospitals and social programs in Egypt, but there is ample evidence that many of its factions are active participants in terrorism and still want to wipe Israel off the map. Needless to say, Clapper's comments raised a lot of eyebrows in Washington--and beyond.

But this goes beyond two senior spooks making laughably bad calls on a critical subject. Most individuals in the positions held by Mr. Panetta and Mr. Clapper are very guarded in their comments, knowing the potential impact of their words. And, in virtually all cases, there public remarks reflects the intelligence community's assessment of a particular situation.

So, in that sense, the observations of the CIA Director and the DNI (likely) reflected the consensus of our intelligence community."

&

"(R)emember: the former Air Force General isn't paid to study terror groups in depth; his assignment is to run the nation's intel bureaucracy. His remarks on the Muslim Brotherhood reflect the "consensus" of the intelligence community, i.e., all those well-educated analysts whose sole job is to attain expertise on the Brotherhood, Al Qaida, or other other Muslim terror groups.

If the "smart guys" in the spook world believe the Muslim Brotherhood is morphing into a mainstream political group, we are in trouble."

re: "WIKILEAKS and the Need to Know"

Patricia H. Kushlis at Whirled View asks some educated questions.

Money quote(s):

"(A) once-bitten, twice-shy State Department announced it had restricted the flow of its cable traffic to the Department of Defense. It’s a little like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped, but I don’t blame State for clamping down on the flow of sensitive information outside the department just as I think neither State, DOD nor the US government as a whole should permit the copying of classified documents to personal CDs, DVDs or other mobile devices."

In general, that's true. But there are exceptions which must be made in exceptional circumstances.

In particular, I can recall a certain military intelligence unit which operated, including its headquarters element, well beyond the bounds of established bases where such things a secure communications and cable networks were available. Said unit was collecting a truly massive amount of data, including biometrics like fingerprints and photographs, on a daily basis, and was without a reliable means of electronically transmitting that information to the rest of the army. In those circumstances, copying to a disk or thumb drive and then couriering the data, by armed convoy, to a major base, was the only way to accomplish the mission.

Fortunately, that unit had computer equipment which hadn't been "dumbed down" so that it couldn't be used to perform a basic computer function. That sort of one-size-fits-all lobotomy of the military's data processing capability may cause more problems than it solves.

"One dilemma is where “the need to know” doctrine should begin and end with government secrets and non-secrets. Another is the whole issue of classification."

Pat is absolutely correct in terming this a dilemma, since there really isn't a clear answer, despite posturing by pundits and politicians (and I'm including general officers in that label since to become a general one must, by definition, also be a politician).

"(C)onfidential assessments about other governments, negotiations, leaders and political and economic situations likely are – and it can be particularly damaging when the reporting gets into the gratuitous and names are named and names are called or when negotiating positions and bottom-lines are revealed in public. That's a good way to turn an almost done deal into a dead one.

As far as I’m concerned, however, a PfC in Iraq does not need to be knowledgeable about the internal workings of US relations with much of the rest of the world or, for that matter, have access to someone in the State Department’s pet names for Russian or German or any other country’s leaders. I’m not sure pet names even belong in any department’s cable traffic – but that’s another story."

Said PFC may or may not have been in a billet or job position designated for such a junior rank. Certainly "intelligence analysts" exist at that rank, but they should be learning their trade under the supervision of more experienced officers and non-comms. Sometimes that doesn't happen, due to operational or leadership issues, or as a consequence of the army's personnel management system, which treats people as interchangeable parts. Clearly not all intelligence analysts are created equal.

But someone performing intelligence analytical functions for a commander on the ground may actually need a fairly broad access to all sorts of intelligence data and information. Certainly an all-source analyst must, by definition, have very broad access to "all sources." Missions change, new factors intervene, and dumbing down an intelligence analyst's accesses on the basis of a risk averse management decision made in a higher headquarters than the unit on the ground is a recipe for dumbed-down analysis.

"Information sharing and access to confidential reports among employees of different US government agencies can be crucial for this nation's security – depending on the topic and the employees’ need to know.

But Gulfstream-sized rivers of cables – not to mention e-mails and other forms of communication between Embassies in the field and Foggy Bottom where the really cutesy stuff likely exists in profusion are hardly job-related for a soldier in a field unit in Iraq or elsewhere who should, in my opinion, be focusing on a much smaller universe that above all concerns his or her unit’s tasks and survival."

&

"(W)hy and when the DOD decided to engage in such undiscriminating, free-flow of information among the troops and who made the decision or decisions to permit this to happen are questions among many others awaiting answers – if that is, they are being asked."

re: "Glass Houses"

Walter Jon Williams focuses his creative lense on the whole mess.

Money quote(s):

"The cables reflect pretty well on the State Department. These diplomats are doing what they’re trained for. They’re collecting local information, they’re reporting the candid views of foreign sources, and they’re providing information about personalities, sometimes hilariously— you’ve gotta love the detail about the Chechen dictator dancing at a wedding with his gold-plated pistol hanging out of his waistband.

It has to be said, though, that the big news is that this information was so easily obtained. The Pentagon’s Secret Internet Protocol Network (SIPRNet) is a worldwide US military network to which the State Department and its embassies have access. It runs on Windows XP, not exactly your best model of Internet security. Anyone with a Secret clearance has access not only to the diplomatic cables, but to everything else."

"SIPRNet is a classic example of a good idea gone haywire. The idea was to put every document related to terrorism on a single source, so that it could be accessed by anyone who needed it. But they dumped in loads of unrelated stuff as well, and now their own system has well and truly bitten them on the butt."

Actually, SIPRNet predates the GWOT by quite a few years, although Mr. Williams is correct (I think) if what he's getting at is State's inclusion of classified cable traffic. That came well after SIPRNet's establishment.

"It occurs to me that Russia may only exist because a few important people have decided that it does. And if those props are knocked out, does Russia just become another Iceland?"

It occurs to me that Russia already is another Iceland.

Except, of course, for all the things that make it so much more (and so much less) than Iceland.

No offense meant, Iceland.

"So for my money, the question now, is whether government and finance is only possible if the vast majority of the citizenry is kept in complete ignorance of what they are doing? If Secretary Rice, for fear of exposure, prevents her own analysts from analyzing anything, does that mean that government can no longer conduct the kind of debate and internal dialog that is necessary for a clear-sighted view of its future and its own operation? If the government can’t talk to itself for fear that someone’s listening, do we actually have a government, or just 2.15 million civil servants operating in a complete vacuum, unaware that a bigger picture even exists?"

Mr. Williams is getting to the heart of what I worry will be an over-reaction to the Wikileaks leaks; hamstringing our intelligence analysts and decision-makers through too-zealous or cookie-cutter application of need-to-know policies. After all, how does an intelligence analyst tell you he needs to know something if he doesn't already know about it? Kind of hard to do that if he's kept from knowing about it, isn't it?

This sort of thing spells "intelligence failure." Intelligence analysts know that there are, after all, only two kinds of military outcomes: operational successes and intelligence failures.

(Just to be clear, Mr. Williams knows that Sec. Rice no longer runs the State Dept.; he's mentioning her in the context of a story I didn't snippet from his post.)