NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: October Surprise in Reverse:

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NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: October Surprise in Reverse:
Wed Jun 23, 2004 21:08
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NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: October Surprise in Reverse: Bin Laden Planning to Bolster Bush?
http://www.oss.net/extra/news/?module_instance=1&id=2517

OSS Comment: Today, from Anonymous, a respected and still-serving U.S. Intelligence officer, the author of "Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam & the Future of America", comes a speculative notion: that Bin Laden will stage a major attack in order to help the Bush Administration win a second four years.

EXTRACT: Al-Qaida may 'reward' American president with strike aimed at keeping him in office, senior intelligence man says ... Anonymous does not try to veil his contempt for the Bush White House and its policies. His book describes the Iraq invasion as "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage. "Our choice of timing, moreover, shows an abject, even wilful failure to recognise the ideological power, lethality and growth potential of the threat personified by Bin Laden, as well as the impetus that threat has been given by the US-led invasion and occupation of Muslim Iraq." In his view, the US missed its biggest chance to capture the al-Qaida leader at Tora Bora in the Afghan mountains in December 2001. Instead of sending large numbers of his own troops, General Tommy Franks relied on surrogates who proved to be unreliable.

OSS Note: We don't fault General Franks. He was stuck with an Army that "does not do mountains" and it was Rumsfeld who stupidly allowed the Pakistani's an air corriridor through which they evacuated over 3,000 Al Qaeda and Taliban in one night's flying. Regardless of who is in the White House, the government will continue to fail at national security in the absence of a National Security Act that creates the means for being joint across all of the agencies of government, and General Tony Zinni has recommende, to include our recommendations for a Presidential level office of strategy, office of policy, and office of intelligence.

SOURCE: Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden's hands Julian Borger in Washington Saturday June 19, 2004 The Guardian

Links:
» Source Full Text
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1242561,00.html

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Future Now: The Web and open source intelligence

9,800 pages, all past Proceedings on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), have been posted to www.oss.net and will be perpetually available free to the public. Keynote address to the Secretary (of State)'s Open Forum will be posted Wednesday after the fact, a program preview and persistent single URL reference point is now available at http://www.oss.net/extra/news/?module_instance=1&id=2322Open Source Intelligence: Private Sector Capabilities to Support ...
... Open Source Intelligence: Private Sector Capabilities to Support DoD Policy, Acquisitions, and Operations. ... Introduction: DoD and Open Source Intelligence. ...
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/oss980501.htm
Introduction: DoD and Open Source Intelligence. Faced with ever-increasing requirements for intelligence support--particularly in Tier III and Tier IV countries where classified capabilities have not been focused and operational funds have not been pre-programmed--the U.S. military has discovered the unique value of commercial imagery and developed EAGLE VISION and JOINT VISION. Commercial imagery is one small portion of the remarkable range of open sources that can support DoD policy-makers, acquisition program managers, and operational commanders. This paper proposes that DoD develop a concept of operations for providing open source intelligence (OSINT) to all elements of DoD, in both CONUS and OCONUS.

OSINT is uniquely suited for support to DoD operations because OSINT relies exclusively on information and expertise obtained through legal and ethical means. This gives OSINT greater utility and flexibility in working with Congress, with foreign coalition partners, and with civilian agencies not routinely cleared for classified information. There are three primary reasons for this:

First, contingencies have tended to arise in lower Tier countries (as defined by PDD-35)--such as Haiti or Somalia--where the United States is paying much less attention overall and where national collection resources are least likely to provide much useful information, especially at the outset of a crisis. These are also areas where analytical expertise has been cut back into order to meet demands within the top Tiers and the Hard Targets. As DCI Tenet himself has observed, the Intelligence Community cannot now cover the hard targets and also provide global coverage.

Second, the lead-ups to these issues have not relied on highly classified intelligence as was often the case during the Cold War. Many of these situations -- physical conditions in Somalia, the existence of a junta in Haiti, Milosevic's early statements of his intentions re Bosnia, refugee flows into Goma, Zaire -- have been evident from unclassified sources.

Third, these issues have emphasized recourse to international organizations and broad diplomatic and military coalitions beyond the bounds of the United States' traditional allies and intelligence partners. These are not instances in which much classified intelligence can be easily used, given the increasing need to share information across a broad spectrum of partners.

Fourth, The "information explosion" has increased the amount of available information, while also creating a new "intelligence gap" between what needs to be known, and what can be processed and exploited. Both producers and consumers of intelligence are being flooded with information of mixed value, and both lack the expertise and tools to filter, distill, summarize, visualize, and digest the "nuggets".

OSINT has the advantages of providing a great deal of the intelligence that DoD would find useful as soon as the crisis breaks; of being available to DoD independently and without waiting for the DCI and CIA to sort out their own priorities and needs; and of being more easily used within DoD in terms of sharing it with politico-military partners or coalition forces not cleared for classified.

The Characteristics of OSINT -- Intelligence, Not Information. OSINT, also known as unclassified intelligence or, in the business community, as "decision support" or "business intelligence", must be carefully distinguished from open source information (OSIF), which is acquired in support of both the OSINT process carried out by the private sector, and the all-source process carried out by the U.S. Intelligence Community. OSIF consists of volumes of multi-media and multi-lingual information gathered for further processing and consideration. OSINT, in sharp contrast, integrates world-class human expertise with an integrated human-technical process to produce only "just enough, just in time" intelligence--information tailored to support a specific decision. The OSINT process includes four key elements:

� Discovery. "Knowing who knows" and "knowing where to look" are the heart of a global OSINT process, which leverages distributed centers of expertise and archival knowledge. 80% of the information needed to create OSINT useful to DoD is not online, not in English, and not available within the US.

� Discrimination. Careful discrimination between good and bad sources, current and outdated sources, relevant and irrelevant sources, and finally, between cost-effective and cost-prohibitive sources, is part of the unique value of the OSINT process.

� Distillation. The most important value added by the OSINT process is that of distillation, so that the final OSINT report can be as short as a paragraph or a page, and can communicate to the decision maker the essence of the collective wisdom pertinent to the decision under consideration. The OSINT process permits the out-sourcing of first echelon analysis, and allows world-class expertise to placed in the service of the in-house analysts and their DoD customers.

� Delivery. The best intelligence is the world is useless if it cannot be delivered to the customer in a timely fashion, in a media compatible with the in-house system, with adequate provision for security, and in a format that can be easily understood.

In other words, OSINT, if done correctly and systematically by knowledgeable professionals, is as rigorous, timely and focused as any other intelligence source available to decision makers.

OSINT is not a substitute for classified "all-source" analysis. However, if the term "all source" is to have any true value then it must include OSINT where necessary and applicable. OSINT is often the only intelligence available during routine times and as the necessary first body of knowledge when the national intelligence community and policy makers are shifting toward the increased coverage required by crises. OSINT is widely acknowledged as an essential element for:

� Tip-off. The most experienced intelligence analysts acknowledge the vital role played by open sources in tip-off regarding intentions, new weapons systems, and emerging crises.

� Context. The expertise and historical knowledge to assess a situation rapidly, especially in a Tier III or Tier IV country or in an arcane issue area of limited historical interest to the U.S. government, is available from private sector experts whose decades of knowledge have been funded by others and can be tapped on a "just enough, just in time" basis.

� Collection Management. A solid OSINT foundation is essential to those responsible for classified collection management, both within the consumer agencies and within the producer elements, because it permits the focus of classified capabilities on "the hard stuff".

� Cover. Even when classified intelligence is available, OSINT can be used to protect sources and methods while still communicating essential insights and key findings to coalition partners, the press, and the public.

The Substance of OSINT: A Complex Range of Open Sources, Software, and Services. The greatest obstacle to improved use of open sources is not that of access, which is freely or inexpensively available to all, but rather that of acknowledgement. The two most erroneous perceptions among experienced national security professionals who should know better are that open sources are "merely a collection of newspaper clippings" (in the words of a senior Intelligence Community official) or "the Internet" (in the words of a general officer). On the one hand, neither DoD nor the U.S., Intelligence Community have properly inventoried the full range of private sector offerings, and neither has a credible foundation for identifying, evaluating, and exploiting a complex mix of "just right" open sources, softwares, and services. At the same time, both within the intelligence producer and the intelligence consumer communities, there is a reluctance to accept the fact that the U.S. Intelligence Community is no longer the sole source of critical information, nor the best source for open source information.

� Sources. Representative sources include those associated with Current Awareness (e.g. Individual Inc.); Current Contents (e.g. ISI CC Online); Directories of Experts (e.g. Gale Research, TELTECH); Conference Proceedings (e.g. British Library, CISTI); Commercial Online Intermediaries (e.g. DIALOG, STN); Risk Assessment Reports (e.g. Forecast International, Political Risk); Maps & Charts (e.g. Russian military maps at the 1:100,000 level with contour lines, from East View Publications); and Commercial Imagery (e.g. SPOT Image, Radarsat, Autometric).

� Software. Representative software which is commercially available and which an OSINT provider can integrate off-site, not requiring the client to buy new technology, include Internet Tools (e.g. NetOwl, WebCompass); Data Entry Tools (e.g. Vista, BBN); Data Retrieval Tools (e.g. RetrievalWare, Calspan); Automated Abstracting (e.g. NetOwl, DR-LINK); Automated Translation (e.g. SYSTRAN, SRA NTIS-JV); Data Mining & Visualization (e.g i2, MEMEX, TASC Textor); Desktop Publishing & Communications Tools (many options); and Electronic Security Tools (e.g. SSI, IBM Cryptolopes, many emerging offerings).

� Services. Representative services from the private sector include Online Search & Retrieval (e.g. NERAC, subject-matter and foreign language experts listed in Burwell Worldwide Directory of Information Brokers); Media Monitoring (e.g. BBC, FBIS via NTIS); Document Retrievel (e.g. ISI Genuine Document); Human Abstracting (e.g. NFAIS members); Telephone Surveys (e.g. Risa Sacks Associates); Private Investigations (e.g. Parvus, Pinkerton, INTELYNX); Market Research (e.g. SIS, Fuld, Kirk Tyson); and Strategic Forecasting (e.g. Oxford Analytica).

This token listing barely scratches the surface, and illustrates the importance to DoD of ensuring that its OSINT provider(s) are able to document their investment in following the rapidly expanding, often changing, and frequently unstable nature of the open source world. Beyond this depiction of the variety of open sources, software, and services that can be applied to the answering of requirements from consumers and producers of intelligence, is the distinction between those unclassified data resources which are readily available within the U.S. Intelligence Community; within the rest of the government; within the nation (i.e., in the private sector with its universities, information brokers, businesses, media, and other information activities); and within the larger global information community. It is absolutely essential that each intelligence producer and consumer have a "map" of this larger knowledge terrain, and a strategy for assuring their ability to discover, discriminate, distill, and digest critical open-source information and intelligence.

The Mechanics of OSINT: Security, Copyright and Other Issues. The OSINT provider must bring to bear the optimal combination of government-friendly security and understanding, with private sector savvy of open source copyright, foreign language capability, and source validation issues.

� Security. The OSINT provider's key personnel must hold Top Secret SI/TK clearances, and be eligible for any compartmented clearances as required. Individual sources can hold SI/TK, Top Secret, and SECRET clearances--or no clearance at all--and this qualification can be treated similarly to language and subject matter qualifications. The OSINT provider should serve many clients and provide DoD client with the same kind of obscurity and discretion that a bank provides its most valued private accounts. The OSINT provider should have a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in its building and have Intel-Link and STU-III connectivity as desired. By using fully cleared personnel for the requirements process, and then balancing between in-house and sub-contract personnel who are not privy to the identity of the client and are also operating under non-disclosure contracts, the OSINT provider can fully protect the client's equities. When finding an expert (or several experts) to respond to a particular requirement, the OSINT provider should not reveal the requirement to the expert or contract with the expert until the client has reviewed a resume of the expert's qualifications and approved employment of the expert for the specific requirement.

� Copyright. The OSINT provider should handle copyright through a combination of full compliance, in which the OSINT provider, without revealing the identity or interest of the client, acts as its agent to pay the copyright clearinghouse or obtain a copy through legal and ethical means; and the more common second means of avoiding copyright violation, by abstracting key ideas and data points with full citation



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