"TERRORISM PREVENTION" -- Dennis C. Blair Asks Us To FORGET The 9/11 FAILURES, Accept That His Office Has "Made A Difference"!
Palin'sAnusRimmer
Read this screed, reflect on recent terrorist activities on U.S. soil,
and see if you buy his bs.
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"Strengthening our nation's front line of defense"
Op-Ed
By Dennis C. Blair
The Washington Post
Friday, December 18, 2009; A31
THE LEGISLATION authorizing post-Sept. 11 intelligence reform -- the
Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 -- was signed
into law five years ago this week. We are often asked whether the new
organizations, authorities and additional resources have made a
difference. The answer is yes.
To be clear, the task of reinventing our intelligence structure and
integrating the capabilities, cultures and information technologies of
16 diverse intelligence agencies is massive, and it is incomplete.
Problems persist in our technologies, business practices and mind-
sets. I have no illusions about how challenging they will be to
overcome. But there is an ocean of difference between difficult and
impossible.
While many successes must remain classified, there are things the
public can and should know about changes that have been made and how
we are directing our efforts and America's resources.
A prime example is the new level of cooperation among FBI, local law
enforcement and U.S. intelligence agencies in the recent arrests of
Najibullah Zazi and David Headley, Americans allegedly associated with
foreign terrorist organizations who are charged with planning attacks
in this country and overseas. In both cases, tips and leads were
smoothly passed among those gathering information in this country and
those gathering information overseas, including foreign intelligence
services that provided information or responded to questions. These
investigations connected the dots in exactly the ways the Intelligence
Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act envisioned. However, as the case
of Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who has been charged with the Fort Hood,
Tex., shootings, shows, we must go even further in our efforts to turn
intelligence into the knowledge needed to protect Americans.
Innovative use of information technology across agencies is enabling
analysts to make use of the enormous amounts of data we are gathering
and to distill insights that will help policymakers in Washington and
civil and military officers in the field. Thousands of analysts form
groups spontaneously, in real time, on A-Space, post insights in
Intellipedia, retrieve relevant analyses from the Library of National
Intelligence and interact with the tribal database for Afghanistan.
These tools, among others, ensure that each piece of analysis takes
advantage of work being done and that new insights are immediately
available to those who need them.
Close collaboration among collectors and analysts utilizing human,
satellite and signals intelligence produced key evidence of a
prospective covert uranium enrichment facility in Iran. Teamwork among
different agencies in the United States and partners abroad just last
week led to the interdiction of a Middle East-bound cargo of North
Korean weapons.
Initiatives that will make us even more effective are moving forward.
More than 6,000 intelligence officers are now "joint duty" qualified,
and another 5,000 are gaining interagency experience. Cross-agency
teams are making steady improvements in our administrative information
systems so that we can better manage our human and financial
resources; the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity is
funding high-risk, high-payoff projects in quantum computing, identity
recognition, computer network intelligence and other areas that will
benefit many agencies down the line.
The new National Intelligence Strategy provides the blueprint for
further improvement in effectiveness. All U.S. intelligence
organizations collaborated this year to articulate our shared mission
and objectives. The strategy puts unprecedented focus on
cybersecurity, counterintelligence and the impact that problems such
as pandemic disease, climate events, failed states and scarce natural
resources have on global stability. It recognizes the role of
intelligence in identifying common interests and defusing threats in
such issues as energy, trade, drug interdiction and public health.
Like our armed forces and first responders, intelligence professionals
are on the front lines in defense of this country. Their operations
are already collaborative between and across agencies to an extent
that was unheard of five years ago. Continued commitment and
investment in this reform are vital. If we become complacent now, or
pessimistic about future progress, and revert to stovepipes and turf
battles, full transformation will never be achieved.
Continued reform will also not be possible without a full commitment
from the inside. Every intelligence agency, director, manager and
employee has a role in breaking down the remaining impediments to
integration. I find that the overwhelming majority of intelligence
officers recognize the importance and benefits of integration. While
taking pride in their individual skills and agencies, they are eager
to cooperate with others to accomplish the common mission. This is
most true in the field -- overseas and closer to home at fusion
centers in Los Angeles and Chicago.
It has been famously argued that information is power and, therefore,
should never be shared. The Sept. 11 attacks showed the fatal flaws in
that logic. Our nation is becoming safer every day because we are
aware that information increases in power only when it is shared. Our
mission is a fully integrated intelligence community, and there is no
turning back. My most urgent priorities are to permanently instill
this new culture and to use every tool at my disposal -- from joint
duty to recruitment and communications -- to build a generation of
intelligence leaders for whom this culture is business as usual.
[The writer is director of national intelligence.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/17/AR2009121703672.html
spicpussy
Written by a true [ex?] fed, this piece is merely a non-chart, non-
bulletized presentation of what's never occurred or going to happen
within or between our federal bureaucratic empires.
As the military services have not done since day-one of the dawn of
desktop computers, information-sharing is the last thing heads-of-
agencies would ever condone. Why share that which empowers the
"leadership"?
Someday, even non-feds will understand that federal "recommendations"
represent temporary opiates, tools for getting the public off their
backs.
Until the next time.
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"Information-sharing has to get priority focus"
By Thomas E. McNamara
Friday, January 1, 2010; A15
The partisan finger-pointing that followed last week's attempted
airplane bombing is the wrong response to governmental failures to
share information. Since Congress enacted the recommendations of the
Sept. 11 commission five years ago, administrations of both parties
have worked to fundamentally change the way federal agencies and
offices manage information. These efforts have received bipartisan
support but have unfortunately been marked by limited success.
Neither the George W. Bush nor the Obama administrations nor Congress
has followed its pronouncements of strong support for change with the
high-priority attention required to reform how national security
information is processed. I served in both administrations as program
manager for the Information Sharing Environment -- an office created
by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 -- and
I received enough support to avoid failure, but not enough to ensure
success.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration, with bipartisan
support, built a solid foundation for an Information Sharing
Environment (ISE) -- as called for by the 2004 act, which required the
president to name a program manager for the ISE and to establish a
council to advise the president and the program manager on the
development of information-sharing procedures and coordination among
federal agencies. But fostering an environment in which timely
information moves to those who need it to do their jobs requires
consistent, high-level attention. That is what forces the bureaucracy
to transform its traditional "need to know" restrictions into
"responsibility to provide" practices. We built the base for a new
system but lacked high-level support to institutionalize new
practices.
The White House failed to push for full implementation or funding of
its own directives. Most agencies, for example, never established
required privacy guidelines for information-sharing, and the Office of
Management and Budget provided no new funding for agency reform
efforts. Meanwhile, other priorities pushed aside information-sharing.
In its final year, the Bush White House focused on its "legacy
victory," asserting that reform had been accomplished. But change was
only beginning, and the momentum of the first years was lost.
The Obama administration announced a new impetus for information-
sharing, but here, too, reality has not matched rhetoric. After nearly
a year in office, the administration has yet to fill key information
management positions. The program manager position is vacant and has
been downgraded in status. The White House pledged to stand up the
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a panel required in the
2004 legislation, yet it remains dormant.
While work continues at a modest pace, the bureaucracy knows how to
respond to signals that this is not a priority -- keep on the old
course. The administration and Congress agree that we cannot return to
old ways of managing information. But without sustained, prioritized
attention and allocation of new resources, true change will remain
merely an objective.
The major challenges to improving information-sharing are changing the
cultures, policies and business processes of the agencies. These
challenges are exemplified in the differing agency missions;
overlapping "turf"; resource shortfalls; and bureaucratic inertia. For
five years, the leadership has been inconsistent and insufficient. To
make substantial progress, three initiatives are needed:
First, integrating divergent efforts requires top-down management by a
single national executive. The administration should consolidate
within the Executive Office of the President a single "Information
Management Executive" with budget certification authority to require
agencies to build the infrastructure for a fully functioning,
coordinated system. That individual should coordinate activity in all
information arenas (health, transportation, national security and law
enforcement) at the federal, state, local and private levels.
Second, Congress should put aside its jurisdictional rigidities (and
territorial "rice bowl" attitudes) and take a holistic view of
information management. So far, both houses have left these matters to
their Homeland Security committees, which have done good work but are
restricted to one department. Congress needs a special committee or
task force in each chamber with oversight across committee and agency
lines to deal with these government-wide issues.
Third, the president must stress that sporadic Cabinet-level
involvement is unacceptable. All agency heads must drive the
bureaucracy forward. Requiring periodic reports of progress and
failings to the president should actually produce change.
Progress has been made, but inadequate support has been given to this
essential reform. While the rest of the nation marches into 21st-
century information management, the federal government cannot remain
mired in 20th-century practices.
[The writer served as program manager for the Information Sharing
Environment from 2006 until August 2009. Previously he was an
assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration and a
special assistant to President George H.W. Bush.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/31/AR2009123101741.html