Re-formulated Ice Cream Professor John Macartney's review of topics and contents of material presented at the Association of Former Intelligence Officer's (AFIO) annual symposium -- is most informative. AFIO is a pro-CIA lobbying organization composed of many retired members of the intelligence community (IC) and ordinary citizens. Professor Macartney noted: Among the speakers were DCI George Tenet, the current and former NRO directors, Keith Hall and Jeffrey Harris, GEN-ret Paul Gorman, former CINCSOUTHCOM, LTG-ret Pat Hughes, just retired director of DIA, Richard Kerr, former DDCI, and many other intelligence notables. Because all speakers were assured of AFIO's long standing "not for attribution" policy, they were especially candid and forthcoming with us. Also for that reason, he passed on only some of the substance of the symposium rather than who may have said what. RMC's comments are added. An asterisk denotes material from Professor Macartney's post. + Combating the proliferation of WMD (weapons of mass destruction -- nukes, poisons, germs and missile technology) remains one of the highest priorities of US foreign policy and therefore of the IC (Intelligence Community). Comment: I really doubt that this is one of the highest priorities of the IC. Now we see the massive provision of money and operators to Colombia to fight the newly named "Narco Terrorists." This phrase conjures up visions of the "International Communist Conspiracy" that we fought in Vietnam, China, the USSR and elsewhere. Already we see institutionally provided maps with huge arrows pointing out the routes used by the Colombian "Narco Terrorists." Of course these maps and supporting intelligence ignore the fact that the primary Colombian drug-traffickers is the US-supported Colombian military. How near are we to repeating the Vietnam War in Colombia? During the war on Nicaragua such giant-arrow-maps proliferated depicting the arms traffic from the Sandinistas to Communists in neighboring countries. One top CIA analyst went public and announced that the IC had never discovered a single weapons shipment from the Sandinistas. Yet all of our "intelligence" repeated this Internal and external propaganda. This is how the IC and policymakers shape public opinion and US policy. + Several speakers opined that the US military has been over used in recent years -- too many humanitarian interventions. The result is the tremendously high "ops tempo" that is draining military resources and morale. It also results, for intelligence, in a great deal of SMO, or support to military operations, at the expense, of course, of intelligence support to national decisionmakers as well as attending to long term data base maintenance. + While senior intel officials agreed there was too much SMO, they also said there is no choice. As long as US military is involved in numerous ongoing military operations -- Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, E Timor -- SMO was required and would be the order of the day. Comment: The emphasis on Support for Military Operations indicates recreating the Cold War-like CIA. This demands overwhelming dedication to paramilitary operations ALA the Vietnam War, that swamp and attack any vestige of truth in its reporting. It also demands recruiting case officers who are unable to perform as true intelligence reporters; e.g., they must report (and believe) information supporting PM goals. * Case officer training at "the farm" has been totally revamped and military collectors in the new Defense Humint Service (DHS) now train there along with their CIA brethren. Comment: With Tenet's emphasis on Paramilitary training for all officer trainees; plus, the inclusion of military collectors in the training -- might this give greater emphasis to paramilitary operations? Of course, but what we need are sophisticated intelligence operators and operations, not PM knuckledraggers. + Several speakers lamented the imbalance between collection and analysis where results in a situation where we take in far more information with our technical collectors than can ever be reviewed by analysts, passed on the policy makers or otherwise used. Comment: A point well-taken. But to belabor -- a deficiency that has a long intelligence community history (notably the CIA's) -- it cannot analyze information. A House Intelligence Committee Annual report of two or three years ago said the CIA was unable to analyze political, military and economic information on a world wide basis. That report itemized and elucidated the various deficiencies. + Would be proliferators (10 "rogue" states plus some 60 potential proliferator states or organizations), are practicing more and more denial and deception as awareness of US intelligence sources and methods grows. Comment - we have the graphic case of the CIA missing India's detonation of nuclear devices and in the same time frame the CIA insisting, against all knowledgeable sources, that a nuclear device had been exploded off of coastal Russia, when it was only a volcanic eruption. Once the CIA's bureaucrats/analysts take a position -- that is the accepted religion -- almost no amount of public; e.g., non-IC, information can successfully challenge the sanctity of such claims inside the CIA/IC. + Whereas the worry used to be that the industrial countries, or firms in those countries, would act as WMD suppliers to "rogue" regimes, increasingly the so-called rogues have developed their own WMD manufacturing capabilities and are themselves becoming suppliers to other rogues. Moreover, several of those countries are known to support and harbor terrorists -- one of the most chilling matters discussed at the symposium. Comment: This is why outstanding analytical effort is required, not bureaucrats protecting their territory and backsides. + Because of interest in WMD as well as in IW (information warfare), the CIA and other US intelligence organizations are recruiting more and more biologists, computer scientist and other technical experts to be both analysts and intelligence collectors. Comment: Exactly what is needed -- if in fact the intelligence community re-evaluates its personnel selection criteria. For the first 50-plus years it recruited the Basic ERA (and newer variant-named) personality types that insured institutional loyalty and protection over ability and truth. The "R" factor insured selecting a Black and White mentality -- no shades of gray allowed. The "A" factor insured a team player who would defend the team over all other issues. Can we anticipate that the CIA/IC might adopt personality type recruitment changes to accommodate the challenges of the future? -- I am not sanguine it will. + Counterintelligence, one speaker opined, is all screwed up. We need to start over but there is too much resistance to change, too many rice bowls. Comment: This identifies not only problems in Counterintelligence, but problems in all aspects of the CIA/Intelligence Community. Too many rice bowls, too many overlapping staffs and management levels and personnel. Why are we recruiting more and more people without first tackling this problem? As I have noted elsewhere, doing such results in defeating any initiative or information not accepted by management. One RMC oft-repeated example -- the information I tried to report about Vietnam. The institutional position refused anti-establishment positions on Vietnam, despite 30 years of war proving those positions wrong. That is the level of incompetence and resistance in the CIA/IC, can it be broken -- I do not know. I suggest parking the bureaucrats and other inefficient personnel in huge parking-lots (staffs and/or Divisions) where they can fight with each other while staying out of the way of the new and hopefully efficient manpower and giving the latter the freedom to make necessary changes. + CIA is in the biggest recruiting and hiring drive in years. They are doing well at recruiting young people but biggest problem is retaining top people, especially scientists and engineers who can make big bucks on the outside. Who do they want to hire? TALENT (that is sharp individuals) most of all, but they are specifically seeking native speakers of hard languages plus info tech scientists and engineers. Comment: See the above relevant comments. + Money is a problem. Apparently, Congress provided more funds than the President requested this year (as usual), but still, leaders say, they need more, about $1,5 billion more. (Last year, intelligence got a plus up of some $1.5 billion during the last minute budget negotiations between Speaker Gingrich and the White House. Not likely this year. Instead, the proposed 1.4% across the board cut in all federal programs will cost the IC about $400 million. + Salaries take up more than 50 percent of all intel spending. Comment: All budget figures are suspect since the CIA has taken the position -- now being challenged in court -- that it will not declassify budget figures and will not allow even the overall figure to be known. Doubts are particularly in order when such are handed out on by AFIO. + NGO's (private, nongovt organizations such as the Red Cross or the French NGO, "Doctors without Borders," and hundreds of other such) are increasingly the folks on the front lines of the world's hotspots. As a result, these volunteer organizations are often those most in the know about what is going on in places like Rwanda or Bosnia or East Timor and also the ones most exposed to danger and, sometimes, the sources of ideas about what is to done in a policy sense -- call it the "globalization of foreign affairs." Thus the NGO's are often both sources and consumers of US intelligence information. Comment: An amazing frankness. + The CIA is looking to use more "platforms" other than US embassies from which to mount their operations. That means more NOC's, non official cover case officers. High tech collection is similarly moving away from govt facilities where it can. Comment: Makes sense. Comment: Professor Macartney does not discuss covert operations which is the raison d'être of the CIA and some other elements of the IC. To discuss intelligence issues without addressing covert operations is like eating the cone without the ice cream; e.g., why bother. Ralph McGehee http://come.to/CIABASE