Page 1 of3

Lorry Fenner

From: OSS CEO Robert D. Steele [bear@oss.net]

Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 7:07 AM
To: Kevin Scheid
Cc: Gordon Lederman; Lorry Fenner
Subject: Personal Suggestion on Forthcoming Testimony of Albright Etc.

Kevin, as you may be aware, I am the #1 Amazon reviewer for national security non-fiction, and could be said to
have one of the broadest, and most current, overviews of both past national security policy history in DC, as well
as a very good appreciation for what world-class experts are saying our national security policy *should be*.
Attached is a list of just the best 13 of the hundreds of books I have reviewed, the titles themselves giving you
some background.

The forthcoming testimony of Albright, among others, gives the 9-11 Commission a unique opportunity to be
clearly non-partisan by bringing out the fact that 'both* the Clinton and the Bush Administrations and
bureaucracies (but more so the political appointees of both parties) were in *denial*, in "old-think", and shutting
out the voices that called for new ways of doing business.

Within the Clinton Administration ! condemn Albright and Sandy Berger for refusing to allow intelligence go
forward to Clinton that stressed the points Clark was trying to make: that it was a clear and imminent threat that
required strong response. I also condemn George Tenet for not being serious about terrorism (his own people
ignored his so-called declaration of war, changing nnthinn ahnnt thair dollars manning, or strategy) and also not
being serious about Global Coverage or sub-state actors. I jwho wrote the study, and Joe Mazzafro
at JHU APL, who read it, and I, are all available to talk about how George was told that $1.58 or $10M per year
per lower tier country or topic, would provide an "insurance policy" on the many threats that were NOT being
covered by classified capabilities. Below are two quotes from the study that George ordered LOCKED UP in June
1997, "never to be spoken of again": ;

Two quotes from this report's executive summary: I

There are widespread concerns regarding the adequacy of the current and projected . . , . .,..
level of effort on open sources, how open source information is viewed by some senior ••
intelligence managers, and how the CIA manages open Source acquisition as a service of
common concern. i

There is a need for a fundamental look at the intelligence role, resources and
management of open sources. This also is one area of intelligence that cries for
"business process reform. " We ought to look very seriously at supporting a commercial
industry of open source "knowledge providers "from which we acquire processed
knowledge,_pot information services, and which can b% used to respond to consumers
when "facts on file " might meet their needs. \, despite the profound and professional recognition of thWe problems

solutions among the wisest within our community, the leadership decided not to pursue this -. ^.-W;r>
course of action. ; • . i- .
In my view, there were and are three THEMES that the 9-11 Cominission can usefully pursue toward its ' •
non-partisan conclusions, all of them dealing with paradigm changes that neither Clinton nor Bush teams
were able to acknowledge. i

'jt-Threat spectrum changed in the 1990's, with convention and nuclear states dropping to less than 10%
1 the threat, and non-state actors with capabilities for catastrophic attacks becoming the most imminent. . ,.
• ' • j' . - • ; , . '

3/23/2004 9/11 Closed by Statute ..•:'.,.

.9/ll Closed by S t a t u t e

threat (the worst threat cases are non-traditional non-human but of human origin: 59 states with plagues
or epidemics, mass refugees, water scarcity, energy crises, ethnic crime, and corporate corruption that
deprives-states of needed revenue's).--.....

/ ^Intelligence, options also changed, in that OSJKlT as thp attanhftri twn-nane briefing prepared by
Vmyself with Dorf-Gessaman and Arnie Donahue from OMByl Tom CIA, LtGen
NormanWood and-Oick Kerr commenting, also changed. The traditional reliance on spies and satellites
• finally saw its last effective days, as the spies become button down bureaucrats working with foreign
liaison rather than unilateral operations, and the satellites went deaf in part because of smarter security
on the part of the targets'ln part because weneyer kept up with the needed processing to make.sense.of
the collection (NjMA Commlsjon Dec 99, trlis is their main point). OSINT, multi-lingual 24/7 OSINT, could
~hpve oeen a stop-gap ana life "saver while we went about recreating a truly deep and clandestine service,
ar?d creating a deep and broad processing capability, and creating a broader analytic capability that
harnessed the knowledge of external experts, but George and Joan and Charlie, and before them
Woolsey and Deutch, were like children with a toy they did not understand but were thrilled to have in
hand. They did nothing because none olthem was a real intelligence professional, all of them were
loos.ely-educated and closed off from the real world, and all of them labeled people like me "gadaflys" or
"lunatics" or "meddlesome, loud-mouthed agitators." Me and about 15 other published authors-l
suppose I was the most confrontational--! am also the one one to have SSCI Chairs write forewords to
both their books.

^3J>Firially, the CommunkatmsjBDyJrnDiTient changed diamaticaliv. and the US Government did not keep'''
up, either within the 1C or within the USG or within the homeland environment of federal to state
communications and computing. Mike Nelson, Gore's guy for, the National Information Infrastructure, ,.
liked to say that we had were looking at 1990's information technology with 1970's-legal spectacles/-.,!'/ /
modified that to say that we were mired dgwjn.wJttLl 970's information technology managed by 195Q's
.mindsets. The CIA decision in 1988 to gcTwitFTtheIBM PS2 as its 'standard" terminal, precisely because
it was a finmhtprminaianri easy to control from a security point of view, captures this internal idiocy
perfectly.! h OSWR had been spending $8M a year onJ^NIX and object oriented
programming, and he was at the forefront of the Internet revolution--he'!anqr" Identified the 18
functionalities needed for an analytic toolkit,_and he was CLOSED DOWN bvl idiot -
3ectsloTi7 i ne security people, not just at CIA, but across the board, are still stupid, trying to keep real-
world information out because it makes it harder for them to protect the trivial 2% of the information that is
really secret. And in all of this, we continued to neglect immigration control, getting terrorist names to ':*
state troopers, and inter-agency'sTTaling.

So, in my view, 9-11 was a catastrophic failure of governance as a whole. There were no mean-spirited .^_,
or incompetent people involved, only people that were "good enough" for business as unusual and NOT
good-enough to rise to the triple challenge thajjaced America in the 1990's: the challenqej^ejTiergmg
and non-traditional threats not subject to spies and satellites: the challenge and-Opportunitv offhe Internet
jmd OSINT revolution: and trie-Challenge of networked forms of go^einnanra.acr.o.ssJederaLand state :••
nines, insfealfofIhe traditional "command and control" model of top down fiat^governnance^

I wrote about all these things in 1988-1992, and no one wanted to listen. I am still writing about them
today, and still, today, no one wants to listen. It will take another 9-11, not only here in the US but also.in^fej!
the.UK, before the public wakes up to the fact that Bush has been stone-walling the 9-11 inquiry arid we < '"'•'.
have wasted 2-3 years during which I and others could have led draconian and constructive changes that' ••([•
today would give us the following ready for action: . ;•• .. •;.;."; ^: • ' • ' • - ' ; ? !

1) Global OSINT network with full sharing across all countries and all seven intelligence tribes
2) Deep clandestine service using third country indigenous case officers on detal to regional multinational
stations
3) Massive all-source compartmented processing at NSA integrating both intelligence and operational
information' '
4) Massive $1008 a year peacekeeping, educational, water, and other assistance programs to stabilize
_ the world
' j5)..$1-2B a year Palestinian-Israeli DMZ and schools, water, and food program, a 30-year commitment;>r'#tf
"witrfnew land taken from Jordan and water guarantees to Palestine as well as Israel ' • . ' ' •
6) Homeland security intelligence centers in every state and every city over 250,000, and cadres of state • ' i,
and'1o^aTinglljgence,an.d.counterintelligence professionals ready to spot, assess, and neutralize terrorists fk

3/23/2004
w.
embedded locally
7) Substantial application of OSINT and data mining toward revenue recovery fromjrnjaort-export pricing
fraud and the many other forms of corporation corruption that are depriving the US Government ot ~~
roughly $5006 to $1 trillion a year in needed funds for social programs and the recapitalization of
education, infrastructure, etc.

We get the government we deserve. The people have been inattentive. The 9-11 Commission has an
opportunity to educate America QnH°Hi >™*°tho fongi-oee in the next two weeks, and I hope you will be
strong in this task. Remember whai bid me about Albright. Remember what I have told
you about George {I have a copy of the unclas draft of the study). They let us down because they were
cocky, arrogant, insular, in denial, and unwilling to listen to people like me. The Bush people continue to
be in denial, and the best thing you can do is to shatter the out-dated paradigms and call into question
their grasp of reality. The paradigms have'changed, VVashington has not. Break the glass!

Best wishes,
Robert';

• . ' • •*;• '

9/11 Closed by Statute- " •

3/23/2004
 Page 1 of 1

Lorry Fenner

From: Robert David Steele [bear@oss.net]

Sent: Friday, May 07, 2004 2:37 PM
To: Gordon Lederman; Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner
Subject: GE Model is Good Idea, with Two Major Caveats

Kevin, you guys are on to something with the GE model, provided you can rip the national elements out of
defense, but I wish to respectfully put forward two major caveats:

1) The OSINT and Outreach elements of the 1C must have fully independent status and be COMPLETELY open
to foreign as well as uncleared domestic and private sector alliances. If you allow the Cold War security model to
undermine these two elements, all is lost. I recommend that you examine a new agency that pulls USIA out of
State, combines it with State and the Federal Research Division, as well as the global DoD OSINT Program
(regional centers) and you will have something that works.

2) The sucking chest wound in the 1C, apart from the stove-pipes, is the corresponding focus on bilateral secret
relationships and foreign liaison at the strategic level rather than multinational regional *tactical* clandestine and
secret technical teams that go after targets of common concern.

If I and several other practitioner authors can be allowed to testify to the Commission AFTER you establish your
conclusions, as part of a "Friend of the Court" internal review process, I think you will hit a home run.

Best of luck to all of you,

Robert

5/10/2004
Lorry Fenner
From: Kevin Scheid
Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2004 7:46 AM
To: OSS CEO Robert D. Steele; Gordon Lederman; Lorry Fenner
Subject: RE: Deficient staff understanding of OSINT

Robert,

Thanks for your comments. You wouldn't believe the fight I went through at 3:00 AM to
keep any mention of open sources in our staff statement. Then when I succeded, I got
blasted from the community about how critical I was. The fact that we mention it in this
forum gives us an opening to debate it. Please stay tuned. We're far from over.
Kevin

Original Message
From: OSS CEO Robert D. Steele [mailto:bear@oss.net]
Sent: Fri 4/16/2004 5:28 PM
To: Gordon Lederman; Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner
Cc:
Subject: Deficient staff understanding of OSINT
Report 11, page 8, tells me that the staff still does not understand OSINT. You are using
the severely deficient FBIS view of OSINT. Proper OSINT includes networks of experts

9/11 Classified Information

LET ME HELP YOU. Nice to see OSINT mentioned, dangerous to realize your poor grasp of it.
Lorry Fenner
From: OSS CEO Robert D. Steele [bear@oss.net]
Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2004 10:23 PM
To: Gordon Lederman; Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner
Subject: FBI problems

Below from the same FBI source that told me CIA and NSA are still withholding vital US
citizen names that take FBI 1-3 months to recover, message by message.

hi robert - well, sometimes you have to watch cspan to learn what's going on at your own
agency - i heard mo testifying about hiring rand and mitre as consultants, so that may
explain her lack of response although a lack of response is still rude in my view - i'm
working on some intel reform proposals while there looks like an opportunity to make some
changes so if i end up interacting with her on these i'll scope out the situation - the
900 analyst thing is a total puff cloud as far as i'm concerned - we're losing analysts
instead of amassing them - but that's another story - i almost quit every month but i'm
hanging in there - not going to let a broken system break me!

Problem #1: Maureen has hired RAND and MITRE to cover her ass. Both of them are
responsible for destroying the early efforts to create a serious OSINT problem, RAND by
over-pricing and turning off the all-source analysts on the idea of outsourcing only to
get trash back, and MITRE by pushing the CIA toward an in-house technical solution called
the Open Source Information System (OSIS), instead of a global help desk with the ability
to reach out to the real world. MITRE cheated the government when they charged the USMC
$10M for the system they installed at the Marine Corps Intelligence Center--!'m still
angry about it. RAND wants to sell man-hours, MITRE wants to sell technology that
displaced data capture and outreach.

Problem #2: FBI is lying to you if they are saying the analyst numbers are getting
better.

Problem #3: FBI is being deceptive if not unethical if they are failing to tell you of
the grevious problems they are having in getting proper information from CIA and NSA--
between chicken managers and dim-witted lawyers, the system is playing it safe on the
citizen privacy side and we are NOT at war on terrorism. EO 12333 clearly establishes
that US citizens known to be agents of a foreign power or supporting terrorism directly
can and should be identified in message traffic. According to my source, as of last
month, fully two years after 9-11, it is still not being done and FBI analysts are tearing
their hair out trying to get NSA and CIA to fix their practices.

You can do something with this!!!! Ashcroft is a liar.

Side note: Tenet is a jerk. Not only will we not have a decent clandestine service in
five years if we persist in keeping the a ge limit to 35 instead of hiring old dogs with
rich foreign area experience, but a really bright person would have conceptualized how to
jump start a new special multinational clandestine service that drew on the Malaysians,
Indians, Russians, and South Africans, among many others, and creating small regional task
forces with the best new commercial technology (CIA and FBI and NSA are about ten years
behind what I can buy off the shelf today).

You are doing holy work. Don't let up. Let me know if I can help.
 ^....••"19/11 Closed by Statute

Lorry Fenner : /j \:

Sent: Saturday, December 20,200312:37 PM /j

To: Gordon Leaerman: Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner/ j
Subject: | ....|Accepts Contact on Global Coverage Study that DCI Locked Away

Twho when I knew him was in charge of the ftdlv of holies. theF

He was probably th$ highest SIS rank when he retired.

J
He is willing to engage with all of you. Note that he and I share a concern about
standards and the unwillingness of the 1C leadership /to; respect the value of standards.

The report that exists and that you must demand of Georae Tenet *soonest* is called "The
Challenge of Global Coverage", authored by| ; | under contract from the Scientific
and Technical Analysis Corporation, dated July 199y.' The unclassified version, which I
have a copy of but ask that you not reveal that, is;141 pages not counting perhaps 100
pages of slides. The codeword version that George has locked away in his safe is only
slightly longer and the codeword does not make a real difference {but I have not seen the
codework version. /

The bottom line on this report is that in June 199.7 George Tenet, who commissioned the
report, decided that he did not want to invest energy in finding $1.5B for a global
coverage "safety net" against the lower tier countries that did not qualify for "hard
target" levels of investment. Had he done so, we/would have had a vastly better grip on
Yemen, Sudan, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Indonesia, etcetera. George also has chosen to
allow Joan Dempsey to stifle OSINT. Both of them should be held accountable for these two
specific decisions that killed a major intelligence opportunity—global coverage via OSINT
in 29 languages done by people without clearance^ who had both the language and the
foreign area expertise—before it could be born./

You will be making a *very* serious mistake if ijhe Chairman does not demand a copy of this
report through a written communication that leaves no doubt you know of its existence.

Original Message
From:!
:I . . . . . . . .
R
To : " Robert David Steele" <bear@oss.net>
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2003 11:41 AM
Subject: Re: URGENT--9-11 Commission and Global Coverage Study

> Hi, Robert. I am willing to engage with Kevin any way that would suit
> you or him, but in any case would like you to remain involved in any
> contact I might have with him. However, my knowledge is so dated now
> (study completed in 1997) that he may consider it irrelevant, though I
> hope not. Certainly the details are, but the concepts are not. Most
> important, from my point of view, is the work my team did to try to
> establish a set of explicit standards for global coverage. My biggest
> disappointment was that the very idea of standards was anathema to the
> Community's so-called leaders. I would LOVE to engage with Kevin on
> that. By the way, I have not done any contract work for two years and
> no longer have clearances.
>
> Please let me know what transpires on this.
>
> Unfortunately, we are nowhere near Wyoming. For reference, take out a

> love to see you and have great guest quarters. Would be happy ..fro pick
1 ..-•-""
9/11 Personal Privacy
 Page 1 of 1

Lorry Fenner

From: Robert David Steele [bear@oss.net]

Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 3:34 PM
To: Lorry Fenner; 9-11 Com Kevin Scheid; Gordon Lederman
Subject: Promised Papers

Herewith:

1) One page summary for Scowcroft of over all needed intelligence reforms
2) One page summary for Scowcroft of specific homeland security reforms
3) My advice to Senator Roberts (which he either ignored or staff blocked it from reaching him)
4) Two page executive briefing on OSINT
5) One page budget for $125M DoD OSINT Program I could execute immediately
6) List of top 20 books on intelligence reform
7) List of dirty dozen national security books for holiday reading

The URL for all 430 or so of my reviews, all mixed up together by Amazon, but a good read
in two hours covering information society and intelligence (oldest ones), emerging threat,
international relations, dissent and blowback, and US leadership failures, is at:
htq3://www.amazon.conVexec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/AlS8AJIin06M9K/l/reP/o3Dcm%5Fmp%5Frv/Q02-
0299204-0956873 (although I am ranked 53, that is in relation to all those that
review fiction, movies, and music. For national security, I am #1 and no one is close behind.

My collected lectures, which you really need cable or Tl to get easily, and including my
various lectures on the literature sorted with pictures but not the detailed reviews you can
read at above URL, are at: http://www.oss.net/extra/news/?module instance= 1 &id= 1516

What I want:

I would be glad if in the course of our continuing exchange, we could work

together to craft a 30 minute brief to the Members of the Commission on OSINT--
perhaps 15 minutes on what OSINT is and how it could have helped avoid 9-11,
15 minutes on why we failed to further OSINT from 1988-2003, and 15 minutes
on a specific OSINT program that would not only provide an immediate improvement
to existing capabilities, but would also be a safety net on transnational threats pending
implementation of reforms. As part of that, we would agree on how you want the
final report to address OSINT, and I will help you get in touch with others, flesh out
your talking points, and scrutinize your conclusions.

I hope all three of you stay in touch...we have a very long 25 years ahead of us.

Best wishes,
Robert

12/21/2003
 Pagel ofl

Lorry Fenner

From: Robert David Steele [bear@oss.net]

Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 3:44 PM
To: Lorry Fenner; 9-11 Com Kevin Scheid; Gordon Lederman
Cc: Authors Robert Baer; Authors Steve Emerson; Hill Yossef Bodansky
Subject: To introduce 3 brilliant authors 9-11 commission MUST interview on OSINT

Robert Baer is the definitive expert, not only on the failure of clandestine
operations in the Arabian region (his first book), but on the failure to do
open sources at all (his second book).

Steve Emerson did the PBS documentary on jihad in American in 1994

that was ignored by all and was brilliant in its execution and findings, and
is the author of American Jihad, which charts the continuing presence in
the US of the cells illustrated in the attached.

Yossef Bodansky is on the Republican Task Force on Terrorism and wrote

the definitive book, prior to 9-11, on "bin Laden: the man who declared
war on America". Yossef used *only* open sources to write the book.

If you do not interview these three people your findings on OSENT in relation
to 9-11 will be severely deficient.

Best wishes,
Robert

12/21/2003
 Page 1 of 1

Lorry Fenner

From: Robert David Steele [bear@oss.net]

Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003'4:22 PM
To: Gordon Lederman; Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner
QC. [9/11 Closed by Statutef

Subject: Absolute Essential Interview for 9-11 Look at OSINT

With this email I wish to reiterate the point I made in our interview--
I am a third of the OSINT knowledge bas^^^^^^^^^^^Is a..
third, and the rest of the world (OSINT bosse^^^*^™*"'Mn -""
I | e(e;}-ar& in the ageregate-tfae finailhird.Yon::::::
9/11 Closed by Statute
absolutely must intervie\^| | whose email is in the cc. ....

Ideally, I recommend that after working with you.and agreeing on the

final emphasis rtiat inrlnHcc nsrNrr as onexjf the "big idea" solutions,
I would like to seel land I testify to the Members on
C-SPAN to get "the word" out more broadly and efficiently.

12/21/2003
 Page 1 of 1

Lorry Fenner

From: Robert David Steele [bear@oss.net]

Sent: Saturday, December 20,2003 11:47 AM
To: Gordon Lederman; Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner
Cc: CIA|_ I
Subject: OSINT Chronology ..'•:::'9/ll Closed by Statute

I am going to spend most of Monday putting together an * international*

OSINT chronology for you, that I will then route to! Ifor
the internal chronology (assuming ho is not constained by anxious
bureaucrats) and also to my international OSINT counter-parts, because
I want to document both successes where they exist, and failures in
OSINT that could have been avoided has US played a multilateral
leadership role.

Now that I understand your focus, please do two things: 1) give me

your deadlines or timelines for optimizing OSINT input to your team
and b) send me as many questions as you wish via email that I will
either answer personally or route to others, in all instances helping
you tap into the 6,000 OSINT bubbas that I have gathered together in
the past 10 years-only about 500 of them are "real" but the other
5,500 are "sleepers" ready to rise if they smell the money.

12/21/2003
 Page 1 of2
/9/11 Closed by Statute

Lorry Fenner

From: Robert David Steele [bear@oss.netj.

Sent: Saturday, December 20,2003 5:58 AM
To:

9/11 Personal Privacy

Cc:

Subject: OSINT Testimony and On or Off-the-Record Advice on OSINT Early Warning of 9-11

Dear Colleagues, / / \u are the world leaders in OSINT., Yesterday I provided staff testimony

to the 9-11 Commission on thr. higt^n/.Vif nsrNTT shortly I will prepare, with
back and forth td] |a "chronology" of the OSINT effort from
1988 to date, drawing on the 30 volumes of OSS Proceedings and my own files.

The Commission does not appear to have the funds, the time, nor the inclination
to order an OSINT retrospective, which is what I would normally recommend, so
we have to do this on a voluntary and ad hoc basis. \e question they are asking is this: "If the US Government had taken OSIN

seriously in 1988-1992 when Steele tried to push it from the inside, or from 1992-
2001, when! [was briefly empowered and then disenfranchised,
would this have helped prevent 9-11?" A related question, in line with my advice
to them that they use this opportunity to educate for the future rather than belabor
the past errors (which we all knew prior to 9-11), is this: "Can a properly funded
and managed OSINT program help prevent future surprise? Should it be unilateral
or multinational in nature?" ;

I have told the senior staff, all in the cc, that they must at a minimum look at
what Steve Emerson and Yossef Bodansky did prior to 9-11, as evidence of how
much could be known from open sources in Arabic; and I have emphasized the
importance of Robert Baer*s retrospective look at what we chose *not* to \t in the way of open sources across Arabia and in relation to the op

and religious fundamentalists. They must of course interview! |

in depth and inquire specifically about why his Open Source Investment Strategy,
brilliantly conceptualized in the mid-1990's and constantly refreshed but refused
in the late 1990's and early 2000's, did not get implemented.

Now I ask you, adding the international people I most respect: can you either
suggest any lines of inquiry, or offer any concise comments, ideally with some
very brief examples, that would be helpful to the senior staff in composing the
OSINT section of the final report?

I am including several vendors in the cc, against the possibility that they might
wish to do an internally-funded report to the 9-11 Commission, much as we did
so successfully for the Aspin-Brown Commission. Looking at bin Laden and
Al Qaeda, and at Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism, is it possible to show in a retrospective
way just how loud the signals were?

Incidentally and in passing, the literature on early warning, including Ben Gilad's
new book that I just favorably reviewed at Amazon, suggests that it is never the
absence of signals that causes surprise, but rather the absence of open minds. This
is one reason why I believe that the US Intelligence Community will never be healed

12/21/2003
 Page 2 of2

nor effective until we 1) have a DCI with a very open mind willing to listen to all the
intelligence reformers as well as sponsor multinational approaches to intelligence;
and 2) a comprehensive re-education and continuing education of all intelligence
professionals, across collection, processing, analysis, and support functions, on
the "new rules for the new craft of intelligence" as set forth in my second book.

Time is short. Anything you can send to the 9-11 senior staff, ideally with a copy
to me, would be helpful. I am ready to integrate everyone's contributions into a
concise consolidated report, if you will permit me that honor.

The benefit to all is this: the Commission is inclined to make OSINT one of its
"big ideas", one of a very small number of strategic recommendations. We did well
with Aspin-Brown but the US Government was not ready to listen. I believe we have
a better shot now at getting OSINT firmly into every Congressional mind-set. I seek
your inputs for the sake of getting OSINT off the ground in the 21st Century. I promise
the vendors this: if the Commision does not cite your contributions in the final report,
I will myself highlight them as an OSS.Net headline with pointers to your sites. Please
do help in this worthy endeavor.

With warm regards to all,

Robert

12/21/2003
Lorry Fenner

From: Robert David Steele [bear@oss.net]

Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2003 4:19 AM
To: Tom Atlee
Cc: Journals ForPo! Moises; Authors Paul Ray; Gordon Lederman; Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner;
FORUM Nathan Newman; DEAN Forum Bob J.; DEAN Forum Gabe Wachob: DEAN Forum
Jon Lebkowsky; CIRC Michael Cudahy; Reformers Jock Gill; Cl/l 9/ii closed by statute |
Subject: Co-Intelligence, Open Source Intelligence, and the Future of America

Dear Tom Atlee, author of The Tao of Democracy: Using CO-INTELLIGENCE to create a world
that works for all:

I am including some additional folks in my answer because you have asked some important
questions and I believe that my answers, and our future collaboration, bears on both the
9-11 Commission's future findings, and on a generic solution to how America a) understands
the world; b) engages the world in honorable dialog;
c) allocates America's tax dollars across the varied instruments of national power with
less emphasis on a hostile military and more emphasis on what I wrote about in the late
1980's: peaceful preventive measures; and d) acts in attitude to the rest of the world.

Your answer to me on my invitation to speak at OSS '04, along with Jonathan Schell
(Unconquerable World), William Greider (Moral Capitalism), Ambassador Mark Palmer
(Breaking the Real Axis of Evil [Dictators]), and Herman Daly (Ecological Economics) was
most open-minded and thoughtful, and I hope that my answers are helpful in moving all of
us forward together.

I, Jock Gill (former assistant to President Clinton for communications) and \l

Cudahy (former campaign leader for Goldwater and Reagan), all told Governor Dean and his
staff three months ago that they needed to get their policy and outreach acts together,
and to put together a national security policy that was *neither* Clintonesque (denial of
terrorism, deception of the public, delay in addressing global needs) nor neo-Nazi neo-Con
(unilateral bully boy tactics alienating billions while costing billions we cannot
afford).

I have proposed to Moises Nairn, executive editor and publisher of Foreign Policy, the need
for a "people's national security policy" section in the next issue, which I conceptualize
as one page summarizing key reforms in intelligence and national security along the lines
of the attached, but broadening it to include the wisdom of all the authors named above; a
one-page line up of a "dream team" of advisors on foreign and national security that would
include the authors I have mentioned plus others such as Joe Nye, George Soros, and
several others, none of whom, with the exception of Nye, is remotely associated with the
beltway; and a two-page recommended reading section which now that I think of it, should
be one page, and the first page of the four pages should be a people's intelligence reform
such as I provide in my lecture on "9-11, US Intelligence, and the Real World", at
http://www.oss.net/extra/news/?module_instance=l&id=1516
>
> The idea of "open source intelligence" is intriguing and launches my
> thinking into realms highly relevant to co-intelligence, to which I
> haven't given adequate attention, given their importance. It seems
> the time has come. My focus on the dialogue/deliberation dimensions
> has eclipsed the informational dimensions, when they are, of course,
> highly interrelated. The two meanings of "intelligence" dance
> together here.
>
> Let me know if I'm picking up your intention correctly: I have a
> sense that you are speaking of "intelligence services" serving the
> whole society rather than only elite powerholders, and of creating new
> internet-empowered intelligence gathering and distribution functions
> to informationally empower democratic awareness, dialogue and
> decision-making around key issues. Am I close?
>
This is exactly right. I hope my NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE reaches you in time to read on
the airplane, but I will tell you now that it take national intelligence to the next
1
level, with four quadrants:
a) Restoration of history in 29 languages as the foundation for contextual understanding
of the present and the future--including a massive digitization program of Islamic and
Chinese history and historical statements by their leadership, among others.
b) Creation of new forms of multilateral intelligence joint endeavors among governments
at first, then broadening to include NGOs, businesses, academia, and journalists (see c)
that *share the cost and knowledge burden* of goind 24/7 "global coverage." This is to
say, we cannot understand the real world if we are not able to both monitor all open
source publications and broadcasts in an integrative culturally-sensitive manner, and also
integrate all earth monitoring information from undersea to buoys to terrain and building
mounted sensors to UAVs and remote satellites, regardless of which nation is managing the
specific system.
c) Creation of a vastly more sensible definition of "national" intelligence to include
what I call "seven tribes with seven standards". The national intelligence tribe,
traditionally spies, needs to be broadened to include people in each of the functional
departments (e.g. Commerce) who are trained in the proven process of intelligence
(requirements definition, collection management, source discovery and validation, multi-
source fusion, compelling actionable presentation) and thus able to truly understand,
taking Africa as an example, that our trade policy is killing that continent at the same
time that our aid policy is ineffective. US policies and activities toward Africa are
ignorant, fragmented, and dangerously counter-productive. So also with respect to energy,
water, disease, migration, crime, and so on.
d) Narrowly focused spies and secrecy. 90% of our secrecy is about bureaucratic turf
protection and avoiding accountability. We need to keep 10%. 90% of our spying is
ineffective and counter-productive. Not only do we need spies that are not easily found,
but we need to do most of our spying in partnership with the local nations (e.g. Singapore
providing Chinese case officers in South Asia, South Africa providing black case officers
in Africa) and against targets of common interest, such as ethnic crime, corporate
carpetbagging and corruption, etc.
Now, with that as the broader background (more detals in Chapter 11 of New
Craft)
we come to Open Source Intelligence. Below is my definition of OSINT:
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) combines the proven process of intelligence (requirements
definition, collection management, source discovery and validation, multi-source fusion,
and compelling actionable presentation) with a deep and broad understanding of what open
sources of information
(OSIF) are available in 29+ languages. While legally and ethically available, roughly 80%
of those sources are not known to and not exploited by standard bureaucratic elements of
the U.S. Government such as the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) of the
Central Intelligence Agency. The Department of State, which has the statutory
responsibility for collecting, translating, and interpreting open sources of information
relevant to U.S. foreign policy and national security, gave up its responsibility and its
competency in this arena during the Cold War. Internationally, a number of nations,
notably Australia, Norway, South Africa, and Sweden, have created specialist units to
focus on OSIF/OSINT, with considerable success.
There are some who say that because open sources are freely available, this is primarily
an analysis problem. That is not correct. As noted above, standard bureaucracies,
especially those in English-speaking organizations, are completely unwitting of the
majority of the sources that are available to them, or unwilling to spend the time, money,
and knowledge needed to capture those sources--sermons in mosques, limited edition
opposition press in hotbeds of Islamic fanaticism, brochures in Arabic from Islamic
charities (whose English-language brochures present a completely different face), and so
on. Analysis of *all* sources (see other disciplines) is very important and at an
elementary stage of its development. However, if collection and processing are not
handled responsibly, analysis is impossible. In the case of OSINT, as the US Government
and FBIS in particular have proven incompetent, it needs to be a multinational endeavor,
with regional centers that share the burden of collection, selection for translation and
digitization, and analysis.
The current definitive guides to OSINT are the NATO Open Source Intelligence Handbook, the
NATO Open Source Intelligence Reader, and the (NATO) Intelligence Exploitation of the
Internet. The definitive historical history of OSINT in recent times is contained in the
30 volumes of Proceedings from the annual OSINT conference sponsored by OSS.Net.
OSINT is politically very powerful because it offers the prospect of empowering the tax-
paying public. In combination with other Internet initiatives such as MoveOn.org, it
offers the real possibility of creating citizen networks that are better-informed than any
bureaucracy, and therefore able to act in unison to defeat special interests that rely on
secrecy combined with corruption to achieve their objectives.

It merits comment that on Wiki-pedia, to take just one example, there is a running battle
between this definition, and a really stupid definition posted by the CIA's Foreign
Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), whose bureaucratic employees are well-meaning but
incredibly ignorant about the real world. They really think that because they have the
responsibility for open sources, they also have the competency. Two different things.

The last paragraph of my definition, which will continue to be posted on Wiki-Pedia until
FBIS gives up, is what brings you and I together. Although defeating special interests is
important, that is a tactical objective. The strategic objective is to "get it right"
through democratic *informed* consensus. Our democracy has been sabotaged. It has become
too driven by special interests, by the tyranny of the minorities (which some of the great
books recently point out is now down to single-member minorities that have LOTS of money,
eg Bill Gates), and by politics instead of intelligence qua deliberative decisions with
access to all relevant information.

The Cold War and dictators (never mind energy, water, etc) are two good examples. The Cold
War led to a severe perversion of US foreign policy in that we did many very very
expensive and very very bad things in the name of anti-communism. We began the Cold War by
stealing all the Japanese loot buried in the Philippines and creating a massive covert
slush fund that immediately restored both Nazis and Japanese imperials to power, and that
has been used to undermine governments around the world, most notably Italy. (See Derek
Leebaert, Fifty-year World, and Peggy and Sterling Seagrave, Gold Warriors). Dictators,
as Ambassador Palmer points out, number 44 today (Saddam was #45), and they are all the
"best friends" of US administrations that place more emphasis on giving lip service to
counter-
terrorism (eg Sudan gets to starve millions in a deliberate genocide, while pretending to
help us on counter-terrorism—as Noriega got to run drugs, while giving us nominal service
on the wars in Central America, where we were on the wrong side with deadly results for
the people). If we can link open source intelligence to public civic activism and
individual fund-raising targeted on specific policy makers and issues, then I believe we
"crack the nut."

In summary, inspired by your question, I believe that we are about to start a new period
of democracy. Civil rights, environmental protection, gay liberties, human consciousness,
these were all driven by people who *intuited* the correct policy and acted as their
conscience guided them, with great courage, in the face of institutionalized opposition.
OSINT is "the Pope's divisions" and OSINT has the potential for empowering citizens, not
only in the US but elsewhere, in ways that have not yet been conceived, and at every level
of politics, economics, and culture.

Happy trails. Will wait to hear from you and now I am going back to bed--your message has
been on my mind and I am glad to get an answer off. I hope that Foreign Policy will
consider giving us four pages in the next available issue, and that you, Paul Ray, Jock
Gill, Michael Cudahy, and I might be able to cosign a "people's foreign policy" overview.

With best wishes,

Robert
 Page 1 of2

Lorry Fenner

From: OSS CEO Robert D. Steele Local Broadband [oss.net@cox.net]

Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 2:53 AM
To: Gordon Lederman; Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner
Subject: Senator Graham as witness on OSINT specifically

http://listarchiyes.his.com/intelforum/intelforum.02

Senator Graham on OSINT and Retrospective

Study

To\x
Subject: Senator Graham on OSINT and Retrospective Study
From: Robert David Steele <bear@xxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 13 Jun2002 17:31:53 -0400
Reply-to: intelforum@xxxxxxx
Sender: owner-intelforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

>Subject: RE: Comments on Homeland Defense Agency

>Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 15:11:08 -0400
>X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service ( 5 . 5 . 2 6 5 3 . 1 9 )
>
>Robert --
>
>Don't know if you saw this yesterday on CBS, but it made me think of you:
>
>GRAHAM: There's another issue here, and that is the intelligence
>communities tend to put a very high value on that information which they
>collect. The reality is that in today's world, you can learn about 85 to 90
>percent of what you need to know in open sources -- in the newspapers, on
>television, on the Internet. And we've tended to disparage that information
>and not plumb it as fully as we should.
>
>And I think we're going to go back and start looking at what was available
>in public, published materials during the period before September llth and
>be surprised at how much, how many clues came from there.

FYI, OSS would love to do such a study and we have already costed it out.
The same team that identified 396 terrorist, insurgent, and opposition web
sites,
in 29 languages, can do this study for $30,000. I am not holding my breath
waiting for a call from the 1C would any major media organization like to
sponsor it with exclusive control of the results?

3/22/2004
. AOL.COM | Message View Page 1 of 1
/9/11 P e r s o n a l Privacy

Subj: FW: Reality Check, Please

Date: 4/27/2004 5:07:34 PM Eastern Daylight Trine
From: "Gordon Lederman"<filederman@9-lltommission.gov>
To: <GordonLedermanl I
File: Parables 1.1 dtd 27 Apr 04.doc
Sent from the Internet (Details)

—Original Message—
From: Robert David Steele [mailto:bear@oss.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 5:46 PM
To: Hill SASC Chuck Alsup; Hill SASC Creight. Greene; Gordon Lederman; Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner; OMB-Don Gessaman;
OMB Amie Donahue
Subject: Reality Check, Please

I prepared the attached for two world-class journalists that are doing cover stories on the need for intelligence reform. Do any
of you have a differing perception on my rather depressing conclusions as to where we stand today in relation to
recommendations and concerns articulated as far back as the 1st Hoover Commission?

1
I plan to post (your comments would be integrated without attribution) but will not post until I get some adult feedback. \8
Gordon Lederman
From: OSS CEO Robert D. Steele [bear@oss.net]
Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2004 10:23 PM
To: Gordon Lederman; Kevin Scheid; Lorry Fenner
Subject: FBI problems

Below from the same FBI source that told me CIA and NSA are still withholding vital US
citizen names that take FBI 1-3 months to recover, message by message.

hi robert - well, sometimes you have to watch cspan to learn what's going on at your own
agency - i heard mo testifying about hiring rand and mitre as consultants, so that may
explain her lack of response although a lack of response is still rude in my view - i'm
working on some intel reform proposals while there looks like an opportunity to make some
changes so if i end up interacting with her on these i'll scope out the situation - the
900 analyst thing is a total puff cloud as far as i'm concerned - we're losing analysts
instead of amassing them - but that's another story - i almost quit every month but i'm
hanging in there - not going to let a broken system break me!

Problem #1: Maureen has hired RAND and MITRE to cover her ass. Both of them are
responsible for destroying the early efforts to create a serious OSINT problem, RAND by
over-pricing and turning off the all-source analysts on the idea of outsourcing only to
get trash back, and MITRE by pushing the CIA toward an in-house technical solution called
the Open Source Information System (OSIS), instead of a global help desk with the ability
to reach out to the real world. MITRE cheated the government when they charged the USMC
$10M for the system they installed at the Marine Corps Intelligence Center--!'m still
angry about it. RAND wants to sell man-hours, MITRE wants to sell technology that
displaced data capture and outreach.

Problem #2: FBI is lying to you if they are saying the analyst numbers are getting
better.

Problem #3: FBI is being deceptive if not unethical if they are failing to tell you of
the grevious problems they are having in getting proper information from CIA and NSA--
between chicken managers and dim-witted lawyers, the system is playing it safe on the
citizen privacy side and we are NOT at war on terrorism. EO 12333 clearly establishes
that US citizens known to be agents of a foreign power or supporting terrorism directly
can and should be identified in message traffic. According to my source, as of last
month, fully two years after 9-11, it is still not being done and FBI analysts are tearing
their hair out trying to get NSA and CIA to fix their practices.

You can do something with this!!!! Ashcroft is a liar.

Side note: Tenet is a jerk. Not only will we not have a decent clandestine service in
five years if we persist in keeping the a ge limit to 35 instead of hiring old dogs with
rich foreign area experience, but a really bright person would have conceptualized how to
jump start a new special multinational clandestine service that drew on the Malaysians,
Indians, Russians, and South Africans, among many others, and creating small regional task
forces with the best new commercial technology (CIA and FBI and NSA are about ten years
behind what I can buy off the shelf today).

You are doing holy work. Don't let up. Let me know if I can help.