CIA, New Technology, Directions, and the World Wide Web

   The CIA's Directorate of Intelligence per critics is resistant to 
openly available data and all sorts of overt expertise -- but DCI Tenet 
is adding analysts in key areas and expanding training, language 
instruction and travel in an attempt to build analytic depth. Reformers 
said CIA analysts are obsessed with secrets at the expense of open 
sources. Tenet said this [is not true]. The entire op, is migrating to 
the World Wide Web.  Analysts now have data mining tools unavailable in 
the private sector and technology is being developed so that analysts 
will be able to sift through 10 times as much data as analysts do now. 
All CIA estimates now include input from academics and other outside
experts, a sea change in the agency's analytic process. 
Washington Post 1/7/00.

   Mr. Louie a Chinese-American to head a CIA venture called In-Q-Tel 
openly funded by CIA. DCI Tenet said the pace of technological change 
"dictates a change in the way the intelligence community does business." 
Mr. Louie is to build In-Q-Tel into an organization of about 30 people. 
One of In-Q-Tel's tasks is developing ways to sift data on Internet, 
regardless of the form or language. In-Q-Tel will also develop tools 
to make the Internet secure. Christian Science Monitor 1/14/00.

   The above items tell of important changes in the CIA's direction 
and analytical efforts. These changes are for the most part welcome if 
the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community (IC) are to move 
effectively into the new millennium.

   One very large caution, however, if these changes actually
are occurring, what about politicization?

   One can mine the rich Internet and other open source lodes but 
if all you seek are justifications for policy, then the effort is 
useless.  One recent example: the CIA wanted an indication that 
the Western provinces of China were about to break up that country 
ALA the USSR.  A CIA-contract scholar, Gary Fuller, produced a study 
showing there was little likelihood of this. The study ran counter 
to CIA's wishes/plans so it fired him.

   Another example: U.S. policy now is to defeat the "narco-terrorists"
of Colombia and surrounding countries. Policy says this is a counterdrug 
operation -- when in effect it is mostly a counterinsurgency operation. 
Does the CIA's intelligence reflect the reality of poor peasants forced 
from their land by the rich, farming a hard-scrabble land to grow
cocaine-producing cacao plants who now are the financial foundation 
of the FARC rebels?  Or, does CIA intelligence repeat endlessly the 
"narco-terrorist" justifications for killing them? If so it then 
its information is worse than useless. 

   Also does CIA intelligence reflect that traditionally U.S. 
counterinsurgency operations magnified many times over the 
drugs reaching the U.S. and other countries? 

   Does CIA intelligence reflect that we are dangerously close
to repeating the Vietnam trauma in Colombia and surrounding
countries?

   In Vietnam the CIA ignored massive amounts of reality, while
justifying the war. The truths could be found in published writings 
of Vietnam communist leaders, the studies of some academics and 
the realities of the war itself -- all ignored or subsumed by the CIA. 
In academia, the CIA supported hundreds of policy-supporting scholars 
while black-listing those who would not repeat its "truths." 

   Subverting the media, international and domestic, was a major
task of CIA during any number of Cold War situations, including
Vietnam, Iran, the USSR, Afghanistan, China and others. Can CIA 
analysts and operators now report truthfully with their "open" 
charter or must its programs support its policies?  The jury is
out (?) but I remain highly skeptical.  

Ralph McGehee
http://come.to/CIABASE