UPDATED The Perils of US Intelligence: A "Top-Secret World" Beyond Control (Priest/Arkin)

UPDATED 1500 GMT: Acting Director of National Intelligence David Gompert has put out an innocuous statement (at least it's not "anonymous", like the one fed to ABC's George Stephanopoulos --- see 1430 GMT) on the Washington Post story: "The reporting does not reflect the Intelligence Community we know....The fact is, the men and women of the Intelligence Community have improved our operations, thwarted attacks, and are achieving untold successes every day."

With respect, Mr Gompert, perhaps the point of the story is the community "you know" but the one that you should know about, given its size and apparent consequences?

UPDATED 1430 GMT: Spencer Ackerman has a sharp take on the Washington Post "package", including not only the Priest/Arkin article but the linked source material:

US “National Security”: Revealing the Sprawl of “Top-Secret America”…in 2007 (Shorrock)
US “National Security”: More on the Sprawling “Top Secret America” (Priest/Arkin)

Dana Priest and William Arkin of The Washington Post have now published their much-anticipated exposéof the "top-secret world" of US intelligence services, which extends far beyond official bodies such as the Central Intelligence Agency.

It includes a searchable database cataloging what an estimated 854,000 employees and legions of contractors are apparently up to. Users can now to see just how much money these government agencies are spending and where those top secret contractors are located. Check out this nine-page list of agencies and contractors involved in air and satellite observations, for instance. No wonder it scares the crap out of Official Washington: it’s bound to provoke all sorts of questions — both from taxpayers wondering where their money goes, and from U.S. adversaries looking to penetrate America’s spy complex.

But this piece is about much more than dollars. It’s about what used to be called the Garrison State — the impact on society of a Praetorian class of war-focused elites. Priest and Arkin call it "Top Secret America" and it’s so big, and grown so fast, that it’s replicated the problem of disconnection within the intelligence agencies that facilitated America’s vulnerability to a terrorist attack. With too many analysts and too many capabilities documenting too much, with too few filters in place to sort out the useful stuff or discover hidden connections, the information overload is its own information blackout. “We consequently can’t effectively assess whether it is making us more safe,” a retired Army three-star general who recently assessed the system tells the reporters."

Glenn Greenwald has also posted a lengthy consideration of the implications of the "unchecked Surveillance State":  "The Real U.S. Government -- the network of secret public and private organizations which comprise the National Security and Surveillance State -- expands and surveills and pilfers and destroys without much attention and with virtually no real oversight or accountability."

On the insipid side of the ledger, ABC News celebrity anchorman George Stephanopoulos channels the inevitable anonymous "Administration source" trying to trash the story: "The database...is 'troubling'...[because] it could become a road map for adversaries."

Beyond the relative merits of these responses, notice the twist here in the 21st-century media world. The chatter is not about the newspaper article, as it would have been in olden days, but about an on-line database. That in itself is testament not only to the changed dynamics brought by the Internet but by the "traditional" media's hope for survival and relevance: the Post has put in extensive effort to frame this story as an ongoing resource for scrutiny of the US Government.

---

POSTED 0730 GMT: Credit to Priest and Arkin for important journalism, based on research since 2008. However, much of this was known by close observers of US politics and foreign policy years before that, soon after --- and indeed before --- a US invasion of Iraq which was marked by faulty intelligence, wayward covert action, and a distortion of effective (and legal) policy at home and abroad. (Indeed, Arkin brought some of this to light, albeit in a blog tucked away on The Post's website.) Why did we not see such vital investigations on front pages then?

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

These are not academic issues; lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from his seatmate.

They are also issues that greatly concern some of the people in charge of the nation's security.

"There has been so much growth since 9/11 that getting your arms around that - not just for the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], but for any individual, for the director of the CIA, for the secretary of defense - is a challenge," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview with The Post last week.

In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation's most sensitive work.

"I'm not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything" was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn't take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled ''Stop!" in frustration.

"I wasn't remembering any of it," he said.

Underscoring the seriousness of these issues are the conclusions of retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who was asked last year to review the method for tracking the Defense Department's most sensitive programs. Vines, who once commanded 145,000 troops in Iraq and is familiar with complex problems, was stunned by what he discovered.

Read rest of article....

UPDATED Iran Analysis: When "War Chatter" Poses as Journalism (Step Up, Time Magazine)

UPDATE 1945 GMT: Gosh, couldn't have predicted this. With Western "analysts" playing up the it-could-be-war line, Iranian authorities are responding with we-will-repel-you. Revolutionary Guard Deputy Commander General Hossein Salami said, "The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps is ready to confront arrogance on both national and global levels....[Missiles] are being produced locally and without any limitations and are ready to strike regional targets with any quantity and quality."

I generally try these days to avoid slaps at US pundits because --- however ill-informed or ill-judged the commentary --- the effort is a diversion from the important issues.

Unfortunately, there are times when superficial, speculative ponderings are puffed-up as important revelations, and there are times when those supposed revelations can do political harm as well as causing unnecessary agitation. And on those occasions, a take-down is needed to get a bit of balance and to damp down the media hysteria.

Today Joe Klein of Time is pushing a piece, "An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table". The title says it all --- Reader, Reader, Come to Me, I Will Enlighten You on Dangerous Times! --- and unfortunately it has worked with even normally-shrewd outlets such as the influential Daily Dish blog.

Unfortunately because when you peel away the onion skins of Klein's claims posing as evidence, there is no onion, let alone a likely war, left.

Here are the sources for Klein's supposed discovery: "a recently retired U.S. official" offering his personal opinion ("I began to think...."), "an Israeli military source", and....that's it. There is not one US Government official at any level, let alone a level which would have access to such sensitive discussions.

Klein tries to cover this by stretching a quote from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, "I don't think we're prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran. We do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons". You'll note that this quote doesn't actually translate into "military action" and, if you check both the interview and the context, you'll find that Gates was pushing the US-led sanctions regime against Tehran.

Then there's this beauty of a piece of straw making a haystack: "Other intelligence sources say that the U.S. Army's Central Command, which is in charge of organizing military operations in the Middle East, has made some real progress in planning targeted air strikes — aided, in large part, by the vastly improved human-intelligence operations in the region."

Leave aside that "other intelligence sources" does not necessarily mean "US Government" --- Klein immediately skips to a quote from his Israeli official. Militaries make contingency plans all the time for operations. You see, that's what you do in the military: you don't sit without any provisions for land, naval, and air operations since, you know, there's something called "preparedness" if a conflict does arise.

Klein takes refuge in the one public event that has been unsettling in recent weeks,  when "United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba said on July 6 that he favored a military strike against Iran despite the economic and military consequences to his country". There has been the question as to whether al-Otaiba realised he was "on the record"; more importantly, there's the larger question of whether al-Otaiba is speaking for his Government, let alone any other Arab state, let alone the United States.

So what's the big deal about one jacked-up, macho, doom-laden column? Why not let it fade into cyber-oblivion?

Well, the problem is that, in Washington circles, Joe Klein is a loud voice --- hey, did you know he was the Anonymous author of the novel Primary Colors about the Clintons? --- and others respond to the call even when the voice is saying very little that is productive. So this column might get played up as a smoke signal of what is really happening.

And even though this is not what is really happening, the beat-beat-beat of war talk will be picked up by Tehran, which will echo it as proof of Western perfidy in its attempt to maintain some vestige of internal legitimacy. If the Iranian people are scared of "them", the logic runs, then they may not interrogate why they are disillusioned with the Government.

So let's call this column now. It is not empty, even if it is near-empty of evidence. It is filled with political exaggeration which can cause nothing but trouble: Joe Klein's attention-seeking comes at the expense not of calm consideration. It also comes at the expense of recognition of the Iranian people and their concerns.

China This Week: Trade Pact But No US Arms Sales to Taiwan, Manoeuvres on North Korea, Google Accepts Chinese Law

China-Taiwan Trade Pact: Beijing and Taipei signed anEconomic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) on Tuesday, seeking to boost economic ties and ease political tensions that have haunted cross-Straits ties for most of the past six decades.

The deal, focusing on easier access to markets, will remove tariffs within two years on 539 Taiwan export items worth $13.84 billion and 267 mainland export items to Taiwan valued at $2.86 billion. Taiwan firms will be granted access to 11 service sectors on the mainland, including banking, accounting, insurance, and hospitals. Follow-up consultations will try to remove the obstacles for economic and trade activities.

Shanghai Power Politics: China Shuts Out Iran (Shan Shan)
China This Week: Hu Visits Canada, The Currency Issue, Building Ties with Australia

The pact will also boost bilateral trade already totaling about $110 billion a year, made up of some $80 billion in goods flowing to the mainland and $30 billion to Taiwan.
Analysts from the Peterson Institute for International Economics project that the deal could help Taiwan increase its GDP by up to 5.3 % by 2020, compared to 0.8% without the ECFA.

US arms sales to Taiwan on hold: According to the US-based Defense News, Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, has said arms sales are on hold until at least spring 2011.

While there is no confirmation of the report by official US sources, the Pentagon-backed Defense News has at times released US military decisions in advance.

Earlier this month, China called off a planned visit by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates after Beijing told the Pentagon the timing was "inconvenient". despite an earlier invitation for Gates to visit. This was an apparent snub over a $6.4-billion arms package unveiled in January for Taiwan, including helicopters, Patriot missiles, and mine-hunting ships.

China rebuffs US criticism over North Korea: China has rejected opposition to its stance over the Korean peninsula, saying it would never "pour oil on the fire" at a time when calm and restraint were needed.

Chinese media reports said President Obama had criticised China's "willful blindness" to the actions of North Korea the sinking of a South Korean warship.

"China borders on the Korean Peninsula, and we have our own feeling on the issue, different from that of the countries tens of thousands miles away. We have more direct and intense concerns", said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

Qin said that for long-term development and stability, there must be abolition of nuclear weapons: "We are willing to make joint efforts with parties concerned to realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula through pushing forward the six-party talks".

Google Abides by Chinese Law to Renew License: Guxiang Information Technology Co. Ltd, the operator of Google.cn, has pledged to "abide by the Chinese law" in a letter of application to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to renew its permit to run websites in China.

The application was made "almost at the same time" that Google's chief legal officer David Drummond wrote a blog post saying Google is committed "not to self-censor", according to the official.

Guxiang said it will "ensure the company will provide no law-breaking contents as stated in the 57th statement in China's regulations concerning telecommunications”.