INTEL MONEY PIT By RALPH PETERS NEW YORK POST
December 14, 2004 -- HAVING worked in in telligence for more than two decades, I was fascinated by all the lying as Congress wrestled with intelligence reform. So much of the intel world is hidden from the taxpayer's view that unscrupulous politicians, cynical bureaucrats and defense contractors can make any wild claims they wish with little fear of exposure. The good guys, such as Sens. McCain and Lieberman, wanted to fix our intelligence system. Their opponents sought to protect power and funding. The good guys won a partial victory. But the intel community's mandarins remain committed to a system that is outdated, inadequate and very, very expensive. Our national intelligence capabilities are not as bad as sensation-seeking critics tell us. The problem isn't that our intel system is inept. It's just mediocre. For 40 billion bucks a year, we should get occasional bursts of excellence. But we don't. The system plods on, devouring money and crushing talent, producing moderately helpful tidbits. The issues at play are straightforward. For decades, we favored technology and slighted people, buying incredibly expensive satellites and other systems that were going to solve all of our intelligence problems, while minimizing the irksome human factor. But we live in an age when the human factor is paramount - despite the siren song of technology. Ours is an age of fundamental hatreds, of religion reduced to bigotry and superstition, of a struggle over the fate of civilizations. Our intelligence community's approach has been to buy more systems that can locate warships, tanks and buildings, as if the Soviet Union had never dissolved. Now the vested interests within the intel world, the same men who refused to regard terrorism as a significant threat, want to buy yet another $9.5 billion satellite. It wouldn't be useful in Iraq, or against terrorists, or even against the underground nuke sites in North Korea and Iran. It's a Cold War relic. Our intelligence system needs people: analysts, agents, linguists, interrogators, special operators and counter-intelligence specialists. 9.5 billion bucks would buy a lot of talent. But the insiders are fighting to purchase that "stealth" satellite, even though it's a case of yesterday's technology designed to find yesterday's enemies. Why can't this satellite scam be killed? First, because the shabby details of all the errors of judgment made by intelligence executives remain hidden behind classifications above the top-secret level. Having been inside that world, I can tell you that the No. 1 use of classification markings is to mask inadequate performance. Our intel system continues to measure success the way the Soviets did, by fulfilling norms of volume, rather than concentrating on utility. During my own service, I found that our intel executives understood systems architecture, but had only a superficial grasp of actual intelligence work. You get to the top by buying stuff, not by thinking hard. Another problem is that the new satellite reportedly will be built by Lockheed Martin, the ultimate insider company, with regiments of lobbyists and lawyers. It's impossible to kill Lockheed Martin programs, even unclassified ones. The company is successfully foisting the F/A-22 fighter on our military, a useless Cold War aircraft that costs $300 million dollars a copy. Hustling a black-program satellite is far easier. We also heard lies to the effect that the intel reform bill might hamper the flow of intelligence to our troops in the field. This was one of the most shameless piles of bull in congressional history - its only purpose, to protect the Pentagon's control of intel funding. The truth is just the opposite. Our troops in the field have inadequate intelligence support. Because intel generals and civilian overlords bought one piece of expensive junk after another, from satellites built to find a vanquished enemy to the Army's All Source Intelligence System, a program described most charitably as 20 years of doing the wrong thing the wrong way. In the post-modern wars we fight now it takes people to beat people. On the battlefield, the infantryman remains our supreme weapon. In the intel world, the human mind, not technology, is our best tool of the trade. Certainly, many of the gadgets we have can help. But, in the end, our new wars are much the same as the wars of antiquity, contests of mind against mind, will against will, muscle against muscle. The men and women at the worker level are slowly reforming our top-heavy intelligence apparatus in the field, under wartime conditions. Intel officers in our combat battalions, brigades and divisions have had to improvise and develop new techniques to overcome challenges their superiors failed to anticipate. The big-money intel agencies give them inadequate support - and give it reluctantly. The Pentagon's stranglehold on purchasing decisions must be broken. We need more openness - and far more accountability. And we need more personnel in the intel ranks as surely as we need more soldiers and Marines. But there's no constituency for people. Contractors profit from selling more stuff, not from government hiring. And contractors hire retired generals. Even Congress is more susceptible to the clout of the defense industry than to the real needs of our troops. Toss in top-secret-codeword classifications and all the intricacies of intel work, and no end of moral corruption can be hidden "behind the green door." The best possible result of intelligence reform would be a ferociously aggressive director of national intelligence who demanded accountability from the Pentagon, scrutinized every pre-programmed purchase and recognized that people, not hyper-expensive gadgets, are the key to successful intel work in the 21st century. My prediction? Business as usual. Ralph Peters is a retired Army intelligence officer. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn. Bring education to life by funding a specific classroom project. http://us.click.yahoo.com/FHLuJD/_WnJAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
