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Blogfriend Michael Tanji weighs in on my “Orientalism” post with the bureaucratic facts of life:

Don’t misconstrue what HUMINT is about though. This is not the FBI and the goal is not to turn Bob Smith into the Islamic Donnie Brasco; the goal is to become the guy who meets, befriends, and manages the Donnie Brascos. Regardless, as tough as some say it is to get into the mix, clearly it does not take a degree in rocket science to make the grade; mostly it is about a willingness to put up with life in the third world.

….A day in the life of an analyst, functionally speaking, is not unlike that of many other cube-dwelling, research/writer-oriented jobs in the world. For a collector though it is in many ways unparalleled in both hazards as well as drudgery. The hazards are fairly obvious, since intelligence work is more or less illegal everywhere; drudgery because for every 30-minute meeting one has there are hours if not days of preparation necessary to help avoid the hazards. Use a car? Gotta document why and where to. Spend money? Gotta document why and who to and how much. Everything requires documentation, which is standard procedure for a bureaucracy, but extremely inconvenient if you are running around the hinterlands with a bunch of guys who would get more than a little suspicious if you started asking for receipts after every meal.

….Setting aside the very real psychological and physical issues involved in such a strategy, consider the equally real bureaucratic issues. This person(s) have to be recruited (creates a file); hired (admin shuffle and more papers to the file); trained far away from N. VA (more expense, admin and paper); and paid (more admin and paper). Now he’s an employee, he’s got all sorts of fun stuff like equal opportunity and ethnic sensitivity training to take, performance evaluations, etc., etc. The system isn’t designed for people or missions like this, so it’s either develop a series of waivers (more admin and paper) or do things off the books (dangerous and, depending on your point of view, more stuff-of-movies).

(In case you were wondering, the references to ‘admin and paper’ allude to both the level of effort involved, the fact that more and more people would know what was going on, and the fact that such a situation invites leaks.)

Read the rest here.

Abu Muqawama pointed to a LA Times article on the difficulties the CIA is having in getting clandestine officers near actual, real, live Islamists. Not Islamists in Waziristan, Mogadishu or Gaza but near Islamists whose mosque might be down the street from a Starbucks in Rotterdam.

But after spending hundreds of millions of dollars setting up as many as 12 of the companies, the agency shut down all but two after concluding they were ill-conceived and poorly positioned for gathering intelligence on the CIA’s principal targets: terrorist groups and unconventional weapons proliferation networks.  The closures were a blow to two of the CIA’s most pressing priorities after the 2001 terrorist attacks: expanding its overseas presence and changing the way it deploys spies.The companies were the centerpiece of an ambitious plan to increase the number of case officers sent overseas under what is known as “nonofficial cover,” meaning they would pose as employees of investment banks, consulting firms or other fictitious enterprises with no apparent ties to the U.S. government.

But the plan became the source of significant dispute within the agency and was plagued with problems, officials said. The bogus companies were located far from Muslim enclaves in Europe and other targets. Their size raised concerns that one mistake would blow the cover of many agents. And because business travelers don’t ordinarily come into contact with Al Qaeda or other high-priority adversaries, officials said, the cover didn’t work.

Summing up what many considered the fatal flaw of the program, one former high-ranking CIA official said, “They were built on the theory of the ‘Field of Dreams’: Build them and the targets will come.”

Heh. In fairness, the Allen Dulles model of spymastery has its uses. You set up shop somewhere, loudly hint you might have important connections with American intelligence and wait for a variety of shady and desperate characters to walk in your door. This is what Dulles did in Switzerland during WWII and he reaped many a major intelligence coup by getting on to the radar screen of the Abwehr ‘s high-placed cabal of anti-Nazi dissidents. It’s what good CIA station chiefs or their senior staff did regularly and the KGB and GRU did it too. While the embassy staff had to sift through a sea of crackpots, walk-ins nevertheless provided the biggest HUMINT gains for either side during the Cold War

Unfortunately, that tactic only works at a certain level of play. When Ike wanted to work with the French Resistance, Dulles was of little help. The OSS had to get it’s hands dirty and infiltrate agents behind German lines in high risk operations  run by William Casey, another future DCI, using personnel who could blend in with the target population, speak the languages, generally operate without a net. And in so doing, FDR,  Stimson, Marshall and Eisenhower accepted that, every so often, some OSS operations were just going to blow up in our faces (trying to beat Hitler provided a lot of political wiggle room and the media and this nation’s Boomer elite today have attitudes toward covert ops that are 180 degrees different from the GI Generation). Today we are not recruiting, retaining or training enough people with the characteristics that General William Donovan and the OSS once eagerly sought out.

Abu Muqawama used the all-American Matt Damon’s face as a metaphor for the problem. It’s very  true, we need to revise our legacy policies on recruiting children of native speakers and those with extensive overseas experience ( the kind that yields authentic local knowledge, dialectical inflection and street credibility). But take a look at the pasty complexion of  John Walker Lindh, who wandered around Yemen and militant areas of Pakistan prior to joining the Taliban as a mujahid. An American goof with no particular skills except an ingratiating sincerity and mediocre Arabic ended up in the proximity of the world’s most sought after terrorist leader.

Then there is the even more improbable case of Adam Yahiye Gadahn or “Azzam the American”, as he likes to style himself. A partly Jewish son of California Hippie parentage, who once cranked an air guitar to heavy metal tunes, is now al Qaida’s youtube equivalent of Lord HawHaw. At some point, we might want to consider that the Islamist movement and even al Qaida itself are not really “hard targets” in quite the same sense as is North Korea. I have trouble seeing a clueless California teen-ager in 1949 getting to break bread with Josef Stalin at his dacha on the basis of being a Communist and speaking some broken Russian. We are limited here by our own systemic cultural-linguistic ignorance of the rest of the world and our cherished bureaucratic paradigms.

We need to face facts that the USG and it’s IC needs people who speak three or four languages well and can pick up new ones on the fly, if need be. Who are intuitive anthropologists. Who empathize -but do not self-identify with – the cultures in which they immerse themselves. Who have cognitive maps that can integrate different or alien worldviews and profit from them analytically without being transformed by them. We need 21st century “Orientalists” in the mode of Sir Richard Francis Burton, who spoke perhaps thirty languages and knew the cultures from the Nile to the Indus. Impossible ? A friend of mine, trained as a linguist, speaks seven languages, which is very impressive until he relates that his late mentor spoke forty(!), including several dead ones.

The human mind has not changed much since Burton’s day, just our culture and the incentives offered.

An intriguing post from the loudly mysterious Kent’s Imperative:

“SIGINT in the exaflood environment ”

“There has been a lot of talk recently regarding the implications of the rising rate of data exchange for policy issues such as network neutrality and broadband penetration. The term exaflood – coined by one particularly lobbying group – is apt enough, even if one doesn’t necessarily agree with their proposed solution approaches.

….Traditional SIGINT techniques – even within the relatively new realm of digital network intelligence – are the products of an earlier era, in which the target set and its emanations were distinct enough from its environment to be amenable to capture and analysis using a certain degree of discrimination. The kinds of intelligence that will be required against the adversaries of tomorrow will be increasingly less able to rely on the traditional tradecraft which is undergirded by such assumptions.

We do agree with the statement, frequently attributed to former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis & Production Mark Lowenthal, to the effect that “there is no such thing as information overload, only poor analytical strategies.” However, the exaflood will challenge both collection and analytical strategies such as never before. Against this backdrop, we look to the continuing infrastructure, language, and human resources challenges faced by those in this section of the community, and greatly wonder if our future community will be adequate to the task.”

Read the rest here.

Hmmm. What does this mean then? Will the digital environment itself be the target with “the system” set to by stymied by ( and thus alert human operators to the existence of) processing of data pattern anamolies ? Looking for “non-haystack”, however defined, to stand out from a sea of carefully studied hay? How do we know the exact parameters of a continuously evolving complex system of systems of networks ? My head spins.

I am thwarted in my attempt to comprehend by my inherent  non-geekiness. My kingdom for a slide rule!

The release of the conclusions in the recent NIE  (PDF) on Iran’s nuclear program has provoked widespread commentary in the blogosphere. The pure politics of the release is best dealt with elsewhere but here are a few words from some folks with more than nimble typing fingers to back up their analysis:

Haft of the Spear:

“The declassified key judgments of the latest NIE on Iran are yet another opportunity to get a glimpse of the inner-workings of the highest levels of the intelligence community. The picture isn’t pretty. The key judgments are notable for many reasons, not the least of which is how they contrast with the last NIE on this same topic. In 2005, with access to an Iranian source’s laptop, the community was confident that Iran was determined to build a nuclear weapon “despite its international obligations and international pressure.” Today it is equally confident that Iran halted its weapons program in 2003 and that it remained suspended for several years”

Whirledview:

“I will note that the supposedly secret uranium enrichment program that the administration accused North Korea of, and broke up the Agreed Framework for, was disavowed by the intelligence community earlier this year in much the same way that this NIE disavows the 2005 NIE on Iran. I’ll also note that proving a negative is difficult, and one of the favorite tactics of the right: we say that you’ve got a secret program. Prove to us you don’t.”

ArmsControlWonk:

“ Dafna Linzer reports in the Washington Post that a crucial bit of information was an intercepted communication by a senior Iranian military official “complaining that the nuclear program had been shuttered.”The intercept – which Linzer notes was one of 1,000 footnotes in a 150 page document – was the final piece in the puzzle, and Linzer reports that the intercepts were briefed to the Bush Administration “beginning in July.”So, that timing would be consistent with Mike McConnell’s reference to “new information collected in late spring that caused a reconsideration of some elements of the assessment.”

Swedish Meatballs Confidential:

“The ‘new’ NIE on Iran’s nuclear weapons program [9-page pdf] — which has been [minor tweaks aside] in the can for nearly a year now — was released this afternoon. It is clear why the Cheney Cabal didn’t want this estimate to see the light of day.”

Counterterrorism Blog:

“ While the NIE clearly shifts the assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, it acknowledges the regime continues to engage in dangerous behavior and comes down firmly on the side of political and economic pressure as an effective means of changing Iranian behavior. According to the NIE, Iran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program on the fall of 2003 was “in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.” (It was around this time that the U.S. and other governments exposed the A.Q. Kahn network and its international nuclear weapons material black market). The key judgments conclude that “our assessment that the [nuclear weapons] program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue that we judged previously.”

Sic Semper Tyrannis:

” The chimera of Iran as deadly menace is a product of Israeli paranoia and debilitating fear of the “other.”  This fear saturates Israeli strategic thinking making impossible for them a rational contemplation of the odds against Iranian suicide attacks against Israel.  Israel rejects the concept of deterrence of nuclear attack through creation of MAD (mutual assured destruction).  I have described their reasoning elsewhere in these pages. Given the awful nature of Jewish history, such overwhelming fear of the return of the final “gollum,” or perhaps Azrael himself is comprehensible.”

Thomas P.M. Barnett:

“ Iran’s choice is reasonably smart: talk big like Libya, stop short of weapons like Japan, but signal willingness to aggressively defend like Israel. I told you these guys are not stupid.”

I recall, as a lowly grad student, that many of the documents I would have loved to have had my hands on – NIE’s and PDD/NSDD’s referred to in secondary literature – were locked up tight, despite having been issued sometimes decades earlier. It’s rather surreal, from a historian’s perspective, seeing even partial declassification of a just issued NIE. Until recently at least, the USG had still classified documents going back to 1917 ( most likely covering cryptological sources and methods)!

The devil is in the details, to which we are not privy. Traditionally, the NIC process constructing a NIE would have a NIO as point man and emerge as a consensus, with the CIA  often being the heavyweight in the interagency wrangling. Supposedly, procedures have changed since the pre-Iraq War days to clarify the degree of certainty in an inherently uncertain scenario. Given the general unwillingness of IC bureaucracies to reconsider even information-sharing habits, how robust were the changes in the analytical methodology ?

FIVE HUNDRED DAYS

Via Organization Theory and Collaboration Blog, I see that the DNI, has a 500 day plan to greater IC integration (hat tip Jesserwilson). OTC’s “wilsonml” summarizes:

“Each of the focus areas has a set of core and enabling initiatives:

6. Core: update policy documents clarifying and aligning IC authorities. Enabling: Define Director of Defense Intelligence authorities, roles and responsibilities; update DOD intelligence agency charters; develop a capstone IC doctrine and lexicon; foster integration and collaboration in the IC legal community; harmonize IC policy on “U.S. Person” information; revise and enhance the national intelligence policy process; and submit annual intelligence authorization act proposal.”

Sounds great in terms of reforming structure and process, if not strategic vision or analytical methodology. Ambitious. Perhaps it will come out better than the last well-intentioned 500 Day Plan to transition a massive and unwilling, Cold War era, bureaucratic superstructure.