'Langley Won't Tell Us'
How I fought the intelligence turf wars -- and lost.
BY RON CAPPS | JANUARY 11, 2010
And the competition doesn't end there. Funding is another sought-after prize that erects dangerous barriers between all the agencies fighting for it. Technology can also prove a problem. For example, intelligence-system designers create unique hardware platforms and software applications for each agency, and sometimes for separate elements within agencies. Because each of these platforms and applications requires hard firewalls, gaps can occur, and agencies or sections of agencies can get shut out of intelligence-sharing.
Take the case of the newest military command, Africom. To build its intelligence database, analysts and managers had to collect data from the three major commands that were previously responsible for watching the African continent. Each command had used different and incompatible data storage software, making it nearly impossible for the data to be collated. The lines are drawn even more impenetrably between the foreign intelligence services (think CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency) and the domestic law-enforcement communities (think FBI and the Department of Homeland Security). Now, imagine being an analyst at the National Counterterrorism Center, intended to pool and analyze all that data. Senior managers might have four or five different computer hard drives at their desks in order to access upward of 20 different intranets.
If you think that's bad, here's another barrier to intelligence-sharing: the love of secrecy for its own sake. Information is categorized and classified into levels from Confidential to Top Secret according to the level of damage to the United States its disclosure might cause. Information can be even further caveated so that, say, among Top Secret analysts, only certain analysts and consumers can view it. All this is meant to protect not only the information but where it came from and how it was collected, the sources and methods used. And in principle, of course, it is correct and necessary. In reality, such categorizations stovepipe information, and they are often used irresponsibly.
Such problems are hardly new. During the Vietnam War, combat commanders complained that their intelligence officers didn't share critical information with them. When I was a young intelligence officer, this was referred to as "green door syndrome" for the literal closed door behind which we worked.
Today, the door is electronic but just as effective. Commanders in the field have all the requisite clearances to know what sigint or humint is bringing in, but the big-brain analysts in Washington classify their work at such a level that information cannot be sent forward to troops in the field -- who are, ironically, some of those who collected the raw data in the first place.
Flynn says he's going to set up offices in Afghanistan where anyone with something to share or who needs information can come and talk to an analyst. He's on to something. Probably 90 percent of what we need to know is unclassified. Known in the community as open-source material, it's the stuff that's in newspapers, on the radio, stuffed in some professor's head, or happening on the street to be observed. The remaining 10 percent is stuff that's really hard to get, and that's what our intelligence services go after.
So what's the solution? Publishing more reports unclassified would be a start. I once tried to publish a piece this way. I had written it based on information I collected myself in the field, and I wanted anyone who needed it to be able to access it easily. But the mere idea of my organization publishing something unclassified was so foreign that it took three weeks to get it cleared -- that's about 2½ weeks longer than usual. In some organizations, the format of their reports is considered confidential, so regardless of the source, even if it's a local newspaper, the report itself is classified.
These are the true failings that Obama described last week. It's up to him and to the director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, to resolve them and to rethink the system itself. Until that happens, in Afghanistan, in the Horn of Africa, and in other places where what we don't know really can hurt us, we'll continue fighting ourselves as well as our enemies.
Ron Capps served as an area intelligence officer in the U.S. Army and the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was director of human intelligence and counterintelligence operations for U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003 and division chief in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 2006 to 2008.
This material was brought to you by Christian Issues Digest, a ministry of Broadcast(B.C.)Christianity, Michael James Stone, Volunteers, and people dedicated to the Love of God and Salvation of Souls. We hope it helps you to face your personal issues daily as a Christian, as well as prepare you for the return of Jesus Christ, He is Coming Very Soon.
Only God can heal hurts often caused by unintentional consequences of actions done by those who don’t know any better, and those who do. We all can only pray the same thing Jesus did when He said. “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” I pray you forgive as He did and we all learn better how to forgive. -Michael James Stone
Broadcast(B.C.)Christianity, operates by you, for you and about you. You can make a difference in someone’s life. “Freely you have received, freely give” Pass this on, everywhere you can, anytime you can, anyway you can. You will be blessed if you do.
