[THS] Ray McGovern: Terror`s Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26015.htm

Terror’s Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone

By Ray McGovern

July 24, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- A recent exposé in the Washington
Post shows that if you have a security clearance and are comfortable being part of a
lucrative "self-licking ice cream cone" — a process that offers few if any benefits
while perpetuating its own existence — then the "war on terror" is definitely for you!

The conclusion that the Long War against Islamic militants abroad can be enriching
for a host of "counter-terror" contractors at home leaps out of the Post’s "Top Secret
America," a comprehensive three-part series by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin on
July 19, 20 and 21.

The series presents a graphic account of how lawmakers afraid to be seen as
laggards in the "war on terror" threw billions of dollars willy-nilly at a profusion of
intelligence and security contractors after 9/11.

The U.S. intelligence budget has grown to a publicly announced $75 billion last year
— two and a half times its $30 billion figure on Sept. 10, 2001. Even so, the figure
doesn’t include the cost of many military and domestic counterterrorism programs.

You don’t have to be an economist to marvel at — and bemoan — the "opportunity
costs" of such an investment, at a time when so many Americans are losing jobs,
homes and dreams for retirement.

The Post shows clearly that the post-9/11 environment has been a boon for defense
and intelligence contractors who fattened up at the government feeding trough
before trying to show their worth in the mission of "defeating transnational violent
extremists," like al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and others too many to mention.

And the feeding trough won’t disappear anytime soon, if ever. We are told that this
"war" will not end like World War II with a surrender ceremony on the battleship
Missouri; indeed, it will be impossible to tell when (or if) it is over — since the "war" is
so vaguely defined as to guarantee its continuation in perpetuity as long as there are
some angry Islamists out there, enflamed over all the people the U.S. government
has been killing.

With the Afghan War alone, corporate strategic planning can count on the budget as
reasonably secure for at least four more years in view of the low-key announcement
this week of a withdrawal target date sliding to 2014, though even that was caveated
with the familiar adjective "conditions-based."

Project FICKLE

Arguably, contractors have never had it so good. Not only is the traditional military-
industrial complex still well-fed and healthy, but oodles of new money has been made
available for a new generation of "counter-terror" specialists, profiting off "expertise"
on everything from interrogations and surveillance to analysis and security.

Each sub-group has found a comfortable niche. Some have found several. But the
Washington Post study concluded that it is much less clear whether all the expensive
busywork is actually making the American people safer.

Contractors commonly are big on acronym labels. For this particular self-licking ice
cream cone, FICKLE could be the generic acronym:

"F" for the crucial task of FINDING the militants/insurgents/terrorists (let’s call them
MITs). The contractors use everything from aerial imagery and intercepted
communications to local villagers paid to mark (for whatever reason — valid or
vengeful) the houses of "suspect" MITs;

"I" for IDENTIFYING the MITs by searching, or "populating," mammoth databases;

"C" for CLOSING in on the MIT targets using the whole panoply of high- and low-
tech search-and-find mechanisms, especially drones;

"K" for KILLING "suspect" MITs along with those unfortunate enough to be with or
near them — the latter being "collateral" casualties of fire from high-tech drones or
lower-tech, but well-equipped Special Operations forces;

"L" for LOOKING in search of those who are lucky enough to avoid becoming
collateral casualties but become new "suspect" MITs, guilty by geographic association
or because they got angry over the violence inflicted on their neighbors or fellow
Muslims;

"E" for entering them into one of the giant databases put together by IT contractors;
and then starting the cycle all over again at "F." Your tax dollars at work and huge
profits for the contractors.

Commenting on the Post article, Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute drew attention
to some of the problems that come with "outsourcing."

Privatization usually is good, said Sanchez, assuming there is appropriate oversight.
But he added that adequate scrutiny is almost impossible with agencies in which
budgets and activities are secret.

Simply throwing more money and people at national security tasks, he said, is "like
trying to find a needle in a haystack by piling on more hay."

How Not to Fight Terrorism

We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been addressing this
problem for years. See, for example, our Memorandum of June 2007, "How Not To
Counter Terrorism."

Lat Jan. 5, in "Why Counter-Terrorism Is In Shambles," former FBI special
agent/attorney Coleen Rowley labeled the surging "Surveillance-Security Complex"
with its "total information awareness"-type programs a "sales trick that brings
dividends only to the contractor/creators."

Rowley added that projects like those involving billions of private conversations
vacuumed up and put into newly created databases were "a fool’s errand." She
continued:

"No matter how sophisticated or exotic, they are not likely to succeed in helping find
needles in haystacks that are constantly fed more hay."

The highly embarrassing case of the Christmas-over-Detroit-underpants-bomber,
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is just one example proving this point as the $75 billion
intelligence network generated so much irrelevant data that it couldn’t fit together
some clearly relevant clues of a genuine threat.

Rowley made an even more salient point in noting, "It is much harder for the
counter-terrorist experts to prevent terrorist plots when U.S. foreign policy
contributes to a marked increase in the number of potential terrorists — as it
undoubtedly has."

Outsourcing Intelligence Analysis

There may be no alternative for the government when it hires contractors to build
sophisticated satellites or some other technical collection devices. But some functions
belong inherently to government.

One would, I hope, be reluctant to outsource the work of the Supreme Court, for
instance. We expect the Justices to make their decisions on the basis of fact, legal
precedent and the Constitution, with no consideration to a business bottom line.

The same holds with respect to intelligence analysts whose judgments must be made
on the basis of fact, experience and often inference without reference to any
prospect of profit or hope of contract renewal.

In the Post article, CIA Director Leon Panetta is quoted as expressing specific concern
on the question of possible conflicts of interest in contracting with corporations which
after all have a fiduciary — or profit-making — responsibility "to their shareholders."

(Despite this concern, Panetta still gave the infamous contractor Blackwater —
"rebranded" as Xe Services LLC — a new $100-million global contract.)

Under fire in the wake of the Post series, the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence issued a defensive-toned paper. It nods in the direction of the
"prohibition on the use of contract personnel to perform inherently governmental
activities," but then waxes eloquent — several times — on how well contractors are
performing intelligence analysis.

The paper then squares the circle, insisting that the "inherently governmental
function" is not the analysis per se, but "critical decisions" regarding "what you do
with that analysis."

In the paper, "KEY FACTS ABOUT CONTRACTORS," the Office of the DNI bragged:

"The growth in contractors 
 allowed the intelligence community to fill the need for
seasoned analysts and collectors while rebuilding the permanent, civilian workforce.



"Core contractors, who perform functions like collection and analysis, and have
access to the same facilities [as the permanent workforce], should not be confused
with individuals producing commodities or products (e.g., satellites), or performing
administrative or IT services." (Emphasis in original)

Shopping the Right Study

In the Post series, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is quoted as describing national
security spending since 9/11 as a "gusher," and confessing that he could not even
"get a number on how many contractors work for the Office of the Secretary of
Defense."

That, I gather, is supposed to be disarmingly funny?

With so much to spend, "everyone does their own study," according to Elena
Masters, who headed a team investigating the al-Qaeda leadership for the Pentagon.
In other words, redundancy and waste is surely a problem.

But there is also ample potential for serious mischief. Let’s say, for example, the head
of an agency wants a study "proving" that Iran has restarted the weapons part of its
nuclear program and is closer to an operational nuclear weapons capability than most
intelligence analysts have assessed.

A contracting officer dutifully puts out a Request for Proposal and gives a broad hint
as to what kind of answer would be most welcome. It is a safe bet that the
government officer will have no trouble finding someone to come up with the
"correct" answer — and in the process not only make a tidy profit, but also help
ensure contract renewal.

The fact that an unnecessary war might result could be more collateral damage, but
that, in turn, would help generate more spending.

And, as more and more innocents die, more contractors could be hired to address
other delicate issues like: WHY DO THEY HATE US?

So far, it is does not appear that even a bought-and-paid-for analyst has produced a
report supporting President George W. Bush’s favorite explanation that "they" hate us
for our freedoms, or for our democracy. However, on second thought, perhaps this is
just because they haven’t been asked.

Or perhaps a corporation like CACI has tried to serve up desired "analysis," but the
government contracting officer chose to bury the result lest he be laughed to scorn
by some professionals who remain in the ranks of the CIA and other government
intelligence agencies.

Why single out CACI? The Washington Post article refers in passing to "contractor
misdeeds" in Iraq and Afghanistan damaging U.S. "credibility" in the Middle East.
"Abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, some of it done by contractors, helped ignite a
call for vengeance against the United States that continues today," the Post said.

The Post stopped short of including reports that it was an interrogator working for
CACI who showed the troops at Abu Ghraib how to abuse prisoners — and escaped
any reprimand. Nor does the Post mention that CACI is advertising widely to fill
several positions like the following:

Iran Intelligence Analyst, TS/SCI — i.e., with TOP SECRET/Special Compartmented
Information clearances — responsible for producing high-quality, timely, and
strategic analytic products in a collaborative environment for U.S. policymakers.
Requirements include: Prior experience as an all-source analyst; Must be able to
deploy for six months to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Based on its record, I would wager that CACI would be capable of cooking to order
the kind of analytic piece that would grease the skids to war with Iran, should a
government contractor suggest something along those lines. Nor is it likely that CACI
would be the only such willing accomplice.

Why Do They Really Hate Us

Neither contractor nor intelligence agency staffers seem to see much incentive in
touching the third-rail issue with which even former Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld openly wrestled — what motivates these incorrigible terrorists to attack the
United States and U.S. targets?

Not even his Princeton pedigree seemed of much help to him in figuring this out, so
he opted for torture. Yet, there is zero appetite to address what effect U.S. invasions
and occupation of Muslim countries and our Siamese-twin relationship with Israel
might be having among young Muslim men.

The allergic reaction to even the thought of balanced analysis on these key issues
leaves policymakers to fend for themselves. Grasping at straws, they may conclude
that it’s something in the water that young Muslim men drink as they grow up in
Afghanistan or across the Middle East or even in Europe and the United States.

‘Self-Radicalization’

Almost as strange an explanation is the novel theory adopted by our most senior
intelligence officials regarding "self-radicalization."

This bedeviling concept was advanced on Tuesday by James Clapper, the nominee
for the most senior post in U.S. intelligence, that of Director of National Intelligence.
It quickly became clear that neither his long years of experience in intelligence nor
his honorary doctorate from the Joint Military Intelligence College in Washington have
equipped him to deal with this sinister syndrome or to formulate some more sensible
explanation.

At his nomination hearing Clapper was asked by Sen. Bill Nelson, Democrat of
Florida, about lessons drawn from the investigation of Army Major Nidal Hasan, the
psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood last November.

Clapper responded that "self-radicalization" is a "daunting challenge. 
 I don’t have
the answer to the challenge; identification of self-radicalization may not lend itself to
detection by intelligence agencies. 
 It’s almost like detecting tendencies for suicide
ahead of time."

I’ll say this for Clapper; he had done his homework, or at least had copied off the
work of others.

A week after the shooting at Fort Hood, Georgetown University’s Professor Bruce
Hoffman, another "specialist" on terrorism, told the New York Times, "Maj. Hasan
may be the most recent example of an increasingly common type of terrorist; he may
have become self-radicalized with the aid of the Internet."

Early this year, Defense Secretary Gates and Join Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen also
addressed the issue of "self-radicalization," with pointed warnings to commanders to
be alert to the threat.

Christmas Day Bomber

In January, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano even offered a fix for
"self-radicalization." It is called, you guessed it, "counter-radicalization." Napolitano
described the concept:

"How do we identify someone before they become radicalized to the point where
they’re ready to blow themselves up with others on a plane? And how do we
communicate better American values and so forth 
 around the globe?"

Has no one told Napolitano, Mullen, Gates and Clapper what can be gleaned from
the ample reporting on what was driving Hasan, including his anger over U.S.
military interventions in Muslim lands?

And what about the motives of the Christmas bomber, 23 year-old Nigerian
Abdulmutallab? His friends in Yemen described him as "not overly extremist," but
very angry, nonetheless, over Israel’s actions in Gaza. Does that fit under the rubric
of "self-radicalization?"

Have our senior officials learned nothing from reports on the motivation of Humam
Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian physician of Palestinian origin
who used a suicide bomb to kill seven CIA operatives and one Jordanian intelligence
officer in eastern Afghanistan on Dec. 30?

Al-Balawi’s widow said her husband "started to change" after the American-led
invasion of Iraq in 2003. His brother added that al-Balawi "changed" during the
three-week-long Israeli attack on Gaza, which left 1,400 Palestinians dead, an attack
defended by Washington as justifiable self-defense.

John Brennan: Point Man

Where is journalist Helen Thomas when we need her? She had the temerity to ask
National Security Council guru for counterterrorism, John Brennan, why
Abdulmutallab did what he did. "What is the motivation?" she asked.

Brennan: "Al-Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton
slaughter of innocents 
 [with] an agenda of destruction and death. 
 Al-Qaeda is
just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland."

Thomas: "But you haven’t explained why."

Oh, well. At least he didn’t say it was "self-radicalization."

But what Brennan didn’t acknowledge was his own role in the why.

In the past, he strongly defended CIA abuses like "extraordinary rendition" —
kidnapping suspects and delivering them to regimes that practice brutal methods of
interrogation — and he was a clone of the premier torture outsourcer, the former,
now disgraced, CIA Director George Tenet.

More recently, after the White House made clear that it had decided to act as judge
jury and executioner of an American citizen — preacher of jihad Anwar al-Awlaki —
Brennan made clear that Awlaki wasn’t alone on the death list.

In an interview with the Washington Times on June 24, Brennan referred to "dozens
of Americans [who] have joined terrorist groups and are posing a threat to the United
States." In a take-off-the-gloves mood, Brennan added:

"To me, terrorists should not be able to hide behind their passports and their
citizenship, and that includes U.S. citizens, whether they are overseas or whether
they are here in the United States. What we need to do is to apply the appropriate
tool and the appropriate response."

Even Fox News ran a piece entitled "It’s a Mistake to Assassinate Anwar Al-Awlaki."
But here was a senior U.S. official advocating "the appropriate response" to
suspected terrorists even inside the United States — and there was hardly a peep of
outrage from any political leader.

In sum, what should one think of senators willing to approve a candidate like Clapper
to take the reins for U.S. intelligence, or of President Obama for relying on someone
like Brennan for intelligence advice?

Or of a political process that has added on top of the gigantic U.S. military-industrial
complex a new and expensive "counter-terror" contracting complex, which is more
likely to perpetuate terrorism than to eliminate the reasons for it?

Perhaps we all should practice running for cover when we hear the buzz of drones
overhead or the sound of helicopter gunships.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical
Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. In the Sixties he served as an
infantry/intelligence officer and then became a CIA analyst for the next 27 years. He
is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

This item was first published at Consortiumnews.com