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2004-04-19 Home Front: WoT

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Posted by Dragon Fly 2004-04-19 8:06:28 AM|| || Front Page|| [2 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 interesting.

Posted by B 2004-04-19 8:14:09 AM|| 2004-04-19 8:14:09 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Maybe I'm just out of the loop too long. So, with a grain of salt, etc.

CIA absorbing the NSA? Not going to happen. They have different areas of responsibility and collection methods and are goeverned by different laws - and require different strategies to protect their sources and methods.

There are fundamental differences that cannot be ignored, nor can they be lumped together under a single agency. It would be the equivalent to combining the Navy and Army without paying attention to the differences in how and where each operates, and the missions given to each. You dont want a tank battalion commander given an assignment to command a nuclear attack submarine, nor have a satellite scientist trying to order field operatives around (or vice versa).

Also there are legal problems: You cannot just wave a wand - laws need to be passed, and that means Congress gets involved. And Congress would make a hash of this in an election year.

Secondly, many of the "15" agencies he mentions are not independant, especially the ones that fall under the individual military services. They exist to manage service personnnel for each service, not the missions they work on. At least they did that back in my day. So the numbers of agencies is a bit of an illusion, they are all on the same team and work for the same boss in the end.

And thirdly, the agencies already interworked a great deal back in my day. I can bet that the central theme of all agencies has been reduced to "Misson First" - and that means misson over rivalry and politics. Its not a bunch of different "stovepipes" the way that writer would have you believe. I believe that the war on terror has changed a lot of things, and I imagine that it would include a lot better inter-agency cooperation.

FYI, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is a new one. Maybe its the old Defense Mapping Agency since I dont see that one around. Thats according to my google search. Its website is www.nga.mil and looking around it looks like they mainly do maps, not "spy satellites".

Posted by OldSpook 2004-04-19 8:43:39 AM|| 2004-04-19 8:43:39 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Old Spook, NGA is the reformed National Imagery and Mapping Agency and is a conglomerate of several of the different imagery components from the defense and intel communities. From their FAQs:
"NGA was formed through the consolidation of the following: the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA), the Central Imagery Office (CIO), the Defense Dissemination Program Office (DDPO) and the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) as well as the imagery exploitation and dissemination elements of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO),the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office (DARO) and the Central Intelligence Agency."

They do include a distinct intel component of Geospatial intel analysts (formerly Imagery intel analysts) who use imagery and intel to develop a geospatial package of intelligence. The map-making (evasion charts, etc.) component is separate, I believe.

Posted by Anonymous4303 2004-04-19 10:06:34 AM|| 2004-04-19 10:06:34 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 From his comments, this guy doesn't know his ass from second base. He has no clue how the current intelligence community is organized, how it functions, or who owns/controls what assets and has what responsibilities. I haven't been out of the loop long enough for my information to be that worthless! Salt with vigor.

Posted by Old Patriot 2004-04-19 10:07:13 AM|| [http://users.codenet.net/mweather/default.htm] 2004-04-19 10:07:13 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 well, ok. But he does make a couple of good points - even if it the conclusions are not supported and a generous dose of salt is required to make this palatable.

I think this is just a fact that most would agree with? Don't you?

The intelligence community needs to work together more effectively and efficiently. The military term for such interservice teamwork is "jointness." It means that the services work together as a team, not as separate fighting forces.

Rice bowl bickering continues to be a serious problem. Anything that can be done to improve that will be a good thing, not a bad thing.

Posted by B 2004-04-19 10:46:04 AM|| 2004-04-19 10:46:04 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 This never would have happened if Ludlum were still alive.

Posted by Unmutual 2004-04-19 11:01:40 AM|| 2004-04-19 11:01:40 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Ok, I'll try to say this without spilling any secrets, and still try to make sense. Old Spook, Fred, others, feel free to add to or modify anything I might screw up.

There are about eleven different 'flavors' of intelligence: signals intelligence (who's using what frequency for what purpose), communications intelligence (who's saying what on what frequency, using what encryption), imagery intelligence (my specialty, using photography and other imaging processes to extract information about people, places, and things), human intelligence (spying), data management and collation (surprised? We read what the other guy's saying OPENLY, correlate it with what we know or think, and see how they match up), cyberintelligence (computer spying), and more. All intelligence is driven by a COLLECTION PLAN, which identifies things we want to learn, places we want to check on, people we want to keep track of, etc. That leads to targeting, which leads to data collection, which leads to analysis, which leads to reporting. Usually, there are more requirements than resources, so somebody has to make a decision as to what's the most important data to collect. That's done by committee in Washington. I don't know who's on the current committee, and it's probably classified, anyway. The committee not only decides what requirements are to be collected against, but who's to do the collecting, and what will constitute satisfactory coverage. The requirements are parcelled out according to what's the best way to answer the questions being asked. Some requirements are collected against by several different methods, others by only one. In the end, the final reports get shared at ALL LEVELS.

Posted by Old Patriot 2004-04-19 12:47:44 PM|| [http://users.codenet.net/mweather/default.htm] 2004-04-19 12:47:44 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Thats fairly accurate. From what I remember, its national command authorities that do the tasking in line with national security directives from the President, and the agencies that provide the resources.

CIA director is supposed to be a first among equals, king of human intelligence, as always. Big Daddy does hold a bit of power over signals and communications, and from what you've said about "NGA", they have a lot of imagery power. Those are the 3 biggest pieces of the puzzle. State Dept probably has some stuff (diplomatic leanings and relationships, etc) as would Treasury (financial data).

There is a ton of openly avaialable data that you only need to search, index and collate - there is stuff out there now that it would take you forever to get in previous decades, and it would probably be classified too.

I'd bet the best intelligence tool anymore is Google!

Posted by OldSpook 2004-04-19 7:15:34 PM|| 2004-04-19 7:15:34 PM|| Front Page Top

14:50 Gentle
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01:28 Not Mike Moore
22:48 Anonymous
20:18 Zenster
18:51 Aris Katsaris
15:38 B
14:25 Frank G
13:58 Aris Katsaris
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10:28 Liberalhawk
10:26 Aris Katsaris
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07:49 Phil B
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