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BLOGFRIENDS RISING

Congratulations to Sean Meade, the new Project Editor for Aviation Week’s Defense content on the web. Much deserved my man.

Raising a glass to Sean…

BUILDING RESILIENCE AGAINST ANNIHILATION FROM WITHIN

Steve DeAngelis, who is the CEO of EnterraSolutions as well as a blogger, took a large step toward building greater systemic resilience against the dangers of WMD that form the crux of the threats detailed in Charles Ikle’s Annihilation From Within. Enterra, IATGR and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are forming a more closely connected network to become:

“… a center of gravity for Enterprise Resilience Management and provide the venue for leading chemical, nuclear, biological and information technologists, political scientists and business people to join together to explore approaches to critical issues facing the world.”

Steve has mapped out the functions of a SensorNet and ResilienceNet integration in a color graphic that makes the intent of the integrated system clear to try and bring first warning about biological, nuclear, chemical and cyber threats as close as possible to real-time reaction and policy response. My thoughts:

*An effort that is critically important and long overdue, five years after 9/11.

*This mirrors the emerging trend in the larger intelligence and national security communities toward creating “fusion” centers but would broaden beyond collection and analysis to connecting all the different ” players” and shape their response.

* I’m wondering if the proposed ResilienceNet would resemble an “all channel” network in its effect in dissemination of information or a modular structure.

Congratulations to Steve and Shane at IATGR for taking resilience to a new level !

LINKS:

Critt has more information at ConversationBase.

IMPERIAL CONSPIRATORS

“Tsuji is the type of man who, given the chance, would start World War III without any misgivings.”
CIA file on Class A war criminal and G-2 agent Colonel Masanobu Tsuji

Declassified intelligence papers reveal that Japanese agents of SCAP’s G-2 military intelligence plotted a postwar coup to bring an ultranationist government to power in Japan. Key figures included the Yakuza boss Yoshio Kodama who had deep ties with the most pro-Nazi faction of wartime Naimusho bureaucrats, Colonel Takushiro Hattori, once Tojo’s private secretary and the infamous Colonel Masanobu Tsuji.

Deeply involved in pre-war Army political intrigue and known to his troops as ” the god of operations”, Tsuji was a fanatical ultranationalist with backing from members of Japan’s imperial family who did not shy from bullying senior generals. One of the authors of the Bataan Death March, Tsuji had also been implicated in the death of the King of Thailand in 1946 ( Tsuji had planned the invasion of that country during WWII) yet escaped prosecution as a war criminal, being elected to the Diet before disappearing mysteriously in Laos in 1961.

Evidently, the CIA regarded Tsuji, who had pulled the plug on the coup, as completely useless as an intelligence asset.

STATE DEPARTMENT ORAL HISTORIES

Matthew Hogan at Aqoul noticed that the Library of Congress has full text interviews with important American diplomats of the 20th century.