Richard A. Serrano of LAT's Washington Bureau reports that officials at the US Embassy in Mexico raised concerns that U.S. guns were showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. But ATF officials kept the embassy in the dark about the operation to sell weapons to straw purchasers to trace smuggling routes.
If true, this is an excellent example of interagency uncooperation. Excerpt:
As weapons from the United States increasingly began showing up at homicide scenes in Mexico last summer, U.S. Embassy officials cabled Washington that authorities needed to focus on small-time operators supplying guns to the drug cartels.
Embassy officials did not know that at least some of the weapons were part of an ill-fated sting run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, in which illegal straw purchasers were allowed to buy guns so smuggling routes into Mexico could be traced. Ultimately, ATF lost track of an estimated 1,700 weapons that were part of the so-called Fast and Furious operation, which began in November 2009.
Active links added above. Read the whole thing here.
LAT has also obtained a copy of an SBU telegram (sensitive but unclassified) from US Embassy Mexico dated July 2, 2010 sent via SMART with the subject "Mexico Weapons Trafficking - The Blame Game." The cable includes the names of the drafting officer, clearance officers (EXEC, POL, ATF, CBP, ICE). Click here to read the cable.
Fast and Furious was somebody's dumb idea masquerading as a light bulb, approved by several somebodies who sign off on it. But nobody with spine and integrity has come forward to claim this exhibit in "poor judgment." I'm waiting for a top dog to step to the podium and announced to all interested that "mistakes were made."
In March 2008, the State Department's Inspector General Office did a Review of Department of State Headquarters Cable Drafting and Distribution Process (Report Number OIG-SIA-08-03, March 2008). It's an unclassified report available online. You can read it here.
Nothing striking in that report which was conducted (1) to determine the adequacy of the rules and regulations that govern cable drafting and subsequent distribution and (2) to determine whether these rules and regulations are being followed. Its conclusion:
"This review found the majority of the rules and regulations governing cable drafting to be adequate. [...] It was found that cable drafting rules and regulations are being followed except for those pertaining to the protection of personally sensitive information. Nearly 12 percent of the unclassified randomly selected cables were found to contain personally sensitive information."
This OIG review recommends that:
The Department of State determine and promulgate through Department Notices and the Foreign Affairs Manual the specific types of information that require protection as personally identifiable information, and
The Department require that individual cable access user privileges be based upon need-to-know requirements and be supervisory approved.
But here is the part of the report that I find interesting:
"This review is the first in a series of two reviews concerning the drafting and distribution of Department cables as they pertain to the protection of sensitive and classified information. The second review in this series will focus on the posting of Department cables to the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) via the SIPRNet Distribution (SIPDIS) caption."
As pointed elsewhere in the interwebs, the data sharing was a reaction to the demands of the post 9/11 world. This paper publicly released in 2005 talks about the Net Centric Diplomacy as part of DOD's Horizontal Fusion portfolio (Profiling and Testing Procedures for a Net Centric Data Provider by Derek Pack). The roll out at State presumably happened after 2005. The fact that the OIG reviewed the SIPDIS captioned cables in the Net Centric Diplomacy project some time after its roll out indicate to us that there were concerns about it within the State Department. Since the first part of the review was released in March 2008, we presume that the second part would have been concluded later that year or early in 2009. We spent hours looking online for the second part of the review to no avail.
Before our eyeballs fell out, we decided to ask the OIG directly. Bless their souls, the press folks at the Inspector General's Office actually respond to email inquiries, even from bloggers in tacky pjs.
Douglas Welty, State OIG's Congressional Public Affairs Officer responded to our email inquiry with the following:
"The Office of Inspector General is closely following the current situation involving Department of State cables and WikiLeaks. As a part of our oversight responsibility, and as a follow-up to the March 2008 report you cite below, it would be appropriate for us to initiate a review of lessons learned and processes and procedures implemented to ensure the security of sensitive and classified Department information."
Well, I thought good to know and that's that. But the following day we received a follow-up response from the amazing Mr. Welty:
"I have been doing a bit more research and am able to confirm that there was an OIG report, issued in September 2008, subsequent to the one in March 2008 about which you originally inquired. It was titled "Review of the Process for Sharing Department Cables via the Net-Centric Diplomacy (NCD) Program. However, this was a CLASSIFIED report so it was not posted to our Website nor in any other way made available to the general public."
"The Net-Centric Diplomacy (NCD) program was accomplishing its intended purpose of facilitating the sharing of classified and unclassified cables originating from the Department and overseas posts with other U.S. Government agencies that have Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) access. Some posts were not sharing cables with other government agencies via the SIPRNet distribution (SIPDIS) caption because of the mistaken belief that posting cables to the NCD database requires SIPRNet access. The Department had not provided adequate guidance regarding the specific types of personally identifiable information that should be excluded from cables posted to the NCD, so as to avoid the potential for violations of the Privacy Act."
Anyway, so there, the OIG did review State's the cable sharing with DOD two years before WikiLeaks. But besides what we see in its publicly available report to Congress, no one can talk about its findings. And we can't tell if there were any red flags cited because that report as Mr. Welty points out, is classified.
If you can convince State's OIG to declassify this report, good luck!
The American intelligence community came under heavy criticism after Sept. 11, 2001, for having failed to share information that could have prevented the attacks that day. In response, officials from across the government sought to make it easier for various agencies to share sensitive information - effectively giving more analysts wider access to government secrets.
[...]
"One of the consequences [of 9/11] is you gave a lot of people access to the dots," said Jeffrey H. Smith, a former CIA general counsel. "At least one of the dots, apparently, was a bad apple."
While WikiLeaks has not identified the source of the more than 250,000 cables, suspicions have centered on a 23-year-old Army private, Bradley Manning, who was also the suspected source of the military intelligence documents from Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a series of chats with an online companion, Manning said this spring that "*someone* i know" - apparently a coy self-reference - had gained access to 260,000 State Department cables from embassies and consulates around the world "explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail."
"Hilary Clinton [sic], and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and finds an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format to the public," he said.
[...]
To prevent further breaches, the Pentagon announced Sunday it had ordered the disabling of a feature on its classified computer systems that allows material to be copied onto thumb drives or other removable devices. (Manning reportedly told an associate that he once copied data onto a CD labeled as Lady Gaga music.)
The Defense Department will limit the number of classified systems from which material can be transferred to unclassified systems. It will also require that two people be involved in moving data from classified to unclassified systems.
Such efforts "should have been done long ago before any of this happened," said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. The rush to knock down so-called "stove-piping" without hardening operational security "was asking for trouble," he said.
[...]
A former senior intelligence official said that over the past decade access to Siprnet has ballooned to about 500,000 or 600,000 people, including embassy personnel, military officials from other countries, state National Guard officials and Department of Homeland Security personnel.
[...]
He said that the answer to network breaches is not to restrict access but to improve the vetting of personnel by strengthening the clearance process.
"The fact that you've got someone exfiltrating information doesn't mean you've got a technical problem," he said. "You've got a human problem."
The FS blog, Dead Men Working has an item here on the the leaks and security clearance.
We must confess that we fell off our horse when we read this item above: "Pentagon announced Sunday it had ordered the disabling of a feature on its classified computer systems that allows material to be copied onto thumb drives or other removable devices."
Even after the previously war log leaks, the Pentagon only ordered the disabling of this function yesterday?
Holy mother of goat and all her wingnut nephews!
Elsewhere in the interwebs, it has been reported that Hillary Clinton has "ordered" FSOs to spy on diplomats in the UN, because see there's a cable out there with her name at the bottom.
Ughh! Are they saying that she wrote all those cables that have her name on it? Really? But ALL cables coming out of the State Department when the Secretary of State is not traveling will have "CLINTON" as sign-off signature, approved through multiple layers of the alphabet soup, functional and regional bureaus, etc. She does not actually write them, dudes. And when she is traveling, the sign-off signature changes to whoever is in charge of the building, like "STEINBERG" or "BURNS" (since new D/MR "NIDES" has not been confirmed yet).Yes, that building has a life of its own.
The same is true with the embassy cables. The leaked cables were the transmitted ones; they usually do not include the names of the writers. And like the State Department cables, they all have the embassies' chiefs of missions in the sign-off lines. Does it mean the ambassador is XYZ country wrote all those cables? Goodness, no! Would they be able to go anywhere else or do anything else if they were all tied to their desks?
We suspect that this leak will have several repercussions on process, access and and more, and most probably for the short term, make the embassy reporting jobs more difficult than they already are (Already, OMB under newly confirmed director, Jack Lew has issued a Nov 28 memorandum on WikiLeaks and the Mishandling of Classified Information). But after reading some of the published cables, we feel that this is middle bad, not top bad. That could quickly change if anyone, including sources named in these cables end up in a pickle, i.e. gets whacked. Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations did call the leak "somewhere in the middle" when asked to rate this "diplomatic disaster" whether "bad, not so bad, or somewhere in the middle."
Benedict Brogan, the Daily Telegraph's Deputy Editor writes about the embarrassment of the leak which we thought makes some sense:
[H]owever much the Guardian, the New York Times and Julian Assange assure us that this represents a shattering blow to every assumption we hold about foreign relations, the fact remains that it’s a collection of little substance that will do nothing to reshape geo-politics. The Saudis would like someone to whack Iran? No kidding. Afghanistan is run by crooks? Really? Hillary Clinton would like to know a lot more about the diplomats she is negotiating against? You surprise me. The Russian government may have links to organised crime? Pass the smelling salts, Petunia. The Americans are secretly whacking al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen? What, you thought the Yemenis were doing it? Muammar Qaddafi has a full time, pneumatic Ukrainian ‘nurse’? Nice one. Diplomats are terrified of Pakistan’s nukes? Me too. And so on, ad infinite boredom. Perhaps something better will pop up, but nothing I’ve read since last night’s surprises.
[...]
Effective diplomacy involves all the transgressions Wikileaks is exposing. Embarrassment is just the consequence of exposure. Perhaps the more sophisticated response is to stand firm, to assume a degree of worldiness from those involved in the world of diplomacy (who will for example enjoy seeing the US Secretary of State squirming about her UN spying operation, but only because theirs hasn’t been exposed as well), and to accept that occasional embarrassment is an occupational hazard in a 21st century marked by vast quantities of information circulating in all too accessible digital form.
True. Dat. It's not totally technology or system error, but also user error, the human factor aka: the rotten apple with a security clearance syndrome. Should information sharing now take a back seat for fear of rotten apples with thumb drives?
Former diplomat and Wilson Center scholar Aaron Miller writes that "The republic will survive the WikiLeaks brouhaha; but there's a lesson here for all of us: whether you're in Washington or Kabul, think and think hard before you draft." We agree about the survival of the republic but -- do we really want our diplomats to be more politically correct than be brutally candid when reporting to our policy makers? What used would that be to our decision makers?
And here the cables are called "insulting [to] world leaders." You should read what foreign diplomats wrote about George W. and our congressional leaders. Oh, right, you can't -- those are all in secret diplomatic channels going overseas, too. Secret for now until WL gets there.
We do think that in the future, it would be nice if there's a well tested fire extinguisher right over there before somebody shouts the order to bring the "stove-pipe" walls down.
In any case, to those who are shocked, shocked at reading these leaked cables -- a simple perspective on the diplomatic tradecraft: The foreign diplomats in WashDC, the UN in NYC and elsewhere around the United States are there for the view. Really.
Update @ 8:31 pm.
The Secretary of State has just completed her 1pm EST press appearance addressing the leaks. We will post video/text here as soon as they are available.
I'm not trying to be funny. Really. See -- the New Embassy Compound (NEC) in Addis Ababa is set to open later this year. It will be sub-Saharan Africa's largest with room for 568 mission employees. But its cafeteria apparently only fits 80 hungry folks. Unless OBO do something, the embassy presumably will have to cope with staggered lunch hours. For the cafeteria to feed most of the working folks at the embassy, it has to have at least 7 lunch hour seatings. Perhaps start serving lunch at 9 am and ending at 3 pm? Or they can have strict half hour lunches starting at 11:00 and ending at 2:00? What? But they all have to eat ....
Below is an excerpt from the OIG report:
The new embassy in Addis Ababa, with space for 568 employees, will be sub-Saharan Africa’s largest. Although the facility was originally designed for 472 employees, the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations enlarged it to accommodate 96 additional employees after the project was awarded. The mission had not anticipated the exceptionally rapid growth in USAID, CDC, and military and law enforcement operations when the original planning numbers were created. The new embassy project director has coordinated with each agency that will occupy the building to assign spaces and to accommodate new requirements. Space remains tight, particularly in the controlled access area, with pressure to fit in additional USAU and military positions.
[...]
The new embassy’s cafeteria has seating room for only 80 people, a serious issue in an embassy with 568 employees and no restaurants nearby. The cafeteria was sized far too small for the original 427 occupants of the building, even before an additional 96 positions were added to the building plan. The Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations has offered no solutions to this problem, leaving it to the embassy to cope.
[...]
Embassy Addis Ababa’s 2011 Mission Strategic Plan requests only one additional U.S. direct-hire position, an information systems officer. In addition, although not reflected in the strategic plan, USAID expects to request NSDD-38 approval for 15-30 U.S. employees and 30-50 locally employed staff to manage and support the President’s Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative. USAID Washington hopes to assign at least ten development leadership initiative positions (akin to the Depart- ment’s entry-level officer positions) to the USAID mission in Addis Ababa, including positions in contracting and finance. None of these positions has been approved via the required NSDD-38 process, nor is there space in the new embassy building for this level of growth.
[...]
The embassy does not currently require all agencies to use the NSDD-38 process to request permission to add U.S. personal service contract employees to their staff. These personnel, however, consume the same embassy resources as a U.S. direct-hire employee, including office space, housing, and other ICASS services. They also fall under chief of mission authority for security and other purposes. If the mission does not request NSDD-38 approval for U.S. personal services contractors, agencies can add positions without regard to the effect that they will have on overall mission resources.
Military Information Support Teams (MISTs) are funded by the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCCOM) and support Department of State and U.S. Embassies by augmenting or broadening existing public diplomacy efforts. The MIST’s partnerships with their respective U.S. Embassy Country Teams have demonstrated their ability to successfully provide advice and assistance to partner nations in the development of information activities. Synchronized with embassy goals and objectives and with Country Team oversight, the teams articulate USG messages by informing, clarifying and persuading foreign audiences. MISTs primarily work in coordination with partner nation agencies in support of U.S. and partner nation’s objectives, policies, interests and U.S. Africa Command Theater Security Cooperation objectives.
Sounds good on paper. Not to mention the funding they get which dwarfs PD funding at the embassy level.
The most recent OIG report on US Embassy Addis talks about DOD's Media Information Support Teams (MIST) in Ethiopia:
A further OIG team concern is that the military information support team spends significant time and resources in identifying and developing projects – and leading local contacts to assume they will be awarded a contract – before vetting proposals with relevant mission elements. With such sunk costs, other embassy offices generally pass these projects on with only minor edits rather than a serious review. A better practice would be to coordinate the projects with the public affairs and political/economic sections earlier on.
"Limited understanding" of chief of mission (COM) authority, of course, can spell big trouble for the country effort. Ambassador Charles Ray (formerly to Cambodia) has an informative piece (with real examples) and some interesting questions on Defining Lines of Authority in a 2009 issue of the Armed Forces Journal:
During nearly 47 years of combined military and civilian service, I have noted that conflicts over who is in charge arise from two main causes: lack of understanding by both military and civilian about each other’s cultures, and lack of clearly stated lines of authority in nontraditional situations. [...] Military units, particularly those deployed abroad for short-term missions like NEOs, cannot be expected to be sensitive to or even aware of the foreign policy situation. But then, that is why the president has vested authority for coordination in the COM.
In 2008, Ambassador Robert Gribbin (formerly to Rwanda and Central African Republic) also wrote in American Diplomacy about COM authority:
"[T]he ambassador has absolute authority over personnel and operations in his or her country of assignment. We should think about and treat non-resident AFRICOM personnel exactly as we considered previous command elements. Visitors need country clearances. JCET (exercises), IMET and ACOTA (training), FMS (sales), TSCTP (anti-terrorism), and other programs, training, and exercises are subject to ambassadorial approval. Only CJTFHOA (Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa) forces — 1500 troops stationed at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti — fall under the operational command of a CoCom (formerly called a CINC), which is currently CENTCOM (as the shift to AFRICOM control has yet to be effected). In accordance with existing practice such combat elements enjoy a separate chain of command, even though their in-country, non-combat activities — drilling wells in Djibouti for example — remain subject to ambassadorial oversight. Since aside from CJTFHOA, AFRICOM does not anticipate stationing additional combat personnel on the continent, i.e., no other bases, exceptions to chief of mission authority should not occur elsewhere."
In addition to misinterpretation of lines of authority and cultural disconnect, we have to recognize the elephant in the room -- funding inequities. I don't know how much MIST has for Addis Ababa but the OIG report indicates that the embassy's actual FY 2009 budget for public diplomacy was $529,100 (with public diplomacy representation at $6,800). However much it is, you can be sure that the MIST money is more than the embassy's PD budget (see page 39). Just an example, in Somalia, the Embassy reportedly had $30,000 to spend on public diplomacy while the MIST team had $600,000. Let's think about that for a moment. Over there, DOD gets to spend 20 times more than the Embassy on public diplomacy efforts. Tell me again, that money has nothing to do with the bad equation.
Whether you like it or not, USAID is a poor shadow of its old self. Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) which provided a background paper to the Obama-Biden Transition Project had stark things to say about USAID staffing:
The number of employees at USAID has dropped from 4,300 in 1975, to 3,600 in 1985, to 3,000 in 1995. As of September 2007, USAID was staffed with 2,417 direct hire staff (1,324 foreign service officers and 1,093 civil servants) and 908 staff with limited appointments (628 personal services contractors and 280 Pasas, Rasas, and others). In addition, the agency employed 4,557 Foreign Service nationals at missions overseas. While staffing levels have declined, program responsibility has increased from approximately $8 billion in 1995 to approximately $13 billion in 2007 (in 2005 dollars). USAID has set a target of a contracting officer managing a range of $10-14 million per year, but the current level is at an average of $57 million.
There are inadequate numbers of experienced career officers; as a result, management oversight of programs is at risk. Fifty percent of Foreign Service officers were hired in the last 7 years. One hundred percent of Senior Foreign Service officers will be eligible to retire in 2009. Of 12 Career Ministers, six will reach the mandatory retirement age of 65 in 2010. Mid-career Foreign Service officers in their mid-40s have less than 12 years of service. Until 2007, 70-80 members of the Foreign Service would leave the service annually, 85% for retirement; that rate has fallen to 45-55%. Of 122 new hires in 2007, only 10% were experienced mid-career hires. While the Foreign Service union recognizes the need for mid-career hires, its membership has responded negatively to hiring at the level of FS 03 and 02.
Despite DLI, a new administrator and an ongoing QDDR, the organizational future does not look bright to me. Unless Congress wades into this issue forcefully, USAID is stuck in a big guacamole swamp.
In a related note, the USAID AFSA VP has just released a survey on the State Department's ICASS operation with some troubling results on the State Department and USAID relationship:
"In countries where the consolidation has taken place, the tension between Embassy and USAID staff has increased. USAID employees feel ignored and upset at the treatment they have received from their State counterparts. There is no longer a team concept in these countries and Ambassadors and DCMs do not seem supportive of their complaints. Although each country has a Joint Management Council under ICASS, their one vote is not enough to make changes to decisions which are hurting USAID. A large amount of USAID funds go to subsidize Embassy operations and USAID staff does not believe they are getting their money’s worth. USAID executive officers are spending an inordinate amount of time checking and objecting to the poor support, equipment and services provided by the Embassy. It is an unequal relationship and the situation is deteriorating."
The survey provides a quick background of the ICASS operation at the State Department:
On March 15, 2010, the USAID AFSA office asked overseas Mission Foreign Service Officers, US Personal Service Contractors, and Foreign Service Nationals to respond to a survey regarding the State Department's International Cooperative Administrative Support Services (ICASS) operation. The ICASS process, which is being phased in worldwide in countries where USAID and the U.S. Embassies exist, involves the consolidation of overseas agency administrative operations such as motor pool services, warehousing, administrative supplies, maintenance, leasing, and many other operations with the purpose of improving efficiency and reducing administrative costs. Input to this survey, which closed on April 2, 2010, was requested anonymously to better understand the real life impact on those most closely affected by significant administrative changes under ICASS.
Initially, the ICASS was sold to non-State Department agencies based on three key “pillars”: transparency, local control and voluntary participation. In theory, ICASS leadership was to be assigned to the most competent and skilled agency. USAID, normally the second biggest operation after the Embassy in these countries, was encouraged to participate in this system. In practice, over time, a clear mandate from Washington, developed that forced most USAID Missions to accept the State Department as the agency in charge regardless of the fact that perhaps USAID was the best suited for such a role and was operating very efficiently and effectively. The concept of transparency, local control and voluntary participation evaporated. Control of administrative operations shifted to the Embassy in these countries.
There were 1,073 responders reporting from overseas USAID Missions of which 43% were Foreign Service Officers (FSOs), 13% were U.S. Personal Services Contractors (USPSC), and 44% were Foreign Service Nationals (FSN). About 72% of the posts are already consolidated with their Embassy or in the process. Only 27% reported that consolidation had been fully or somewhat participatory and transparent and only 6% reported that USAID interests were considered a priority in the move to consolidate.
The obvious conclusion we can make based on the results of this survey is that there IS a problem. Without question, development programs are being harmed by the forcible consolidation. There is also a clash of cultures between State and USAID. It is even possible that State employees are feeling the stress of taking on more and incompatible activities they would prefer that USAID continue administering. The ICASS implementation was not collaborative and there is a very good possibility that costs have increased and that productivity has decreased.
One has to ask what was the problem that ICASS was aiming to fix? USAID administrative services were not broken and yet they were targeted to be FIXED. ICASS principles were not followed and the end result has been widespread dissatisfaction and even anger. While there may be some administrative services which make sense to combine, this can be a highly individual country team decision and should never be forced on any one Mission.
The USAID AFSA survey summary suggests that the best solution is to stop the consolidation:
"The best solution is to stop the consolidation, do a scientific review, audit or investigation by a neutral party, and return back to USAID control those services whose "consolidation" is causing financial or operational harm. We have a new Administration at USAID which is looking at bringing us back to being the world's premier development agency. These will be empty words, unless we listen to the needs of our staff. Staying the course will only be detrimental to our mission."
This consolidation partly gobbles USAID (did you hear that buurrp?) Nobody would probably put it politely that way. But the concern and anxieties are real. Not too long ago, the State Department, did chew and gobble the entire USIA. And we know what happened to that one.
After a decade and a half, the Court officially dismissed this case with prejudice but "not without some misgivings" according to Judge Lambert:
"[...] It is not without some misgivings that the Court reaches this decision. Another member of this Court last year approved the settlement of another case (involving the FBI's investigation of the anthrax mailings in late 2001) which involved payment to an individual plaintiff of almost $6,000,000 by the United States. See Hatfillv. Mukasey ... It does not appear that any government official was ever held accountable for this huge loss to the taxpayer.
Now this Court is called upon to approve a $3,000,000 payment to an individual plaintiff by the United States, and again it does not appear that any government official have been held accountable for this loss to the taxpayer. This is troubling to the Court."
Civil Action No. 1994-1756, HORN v. HUDDLE, et al | Links below:
Doc No. 521 (memorandum and opinion)
Doc No. 522 (order) by Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth
QUESTION: Alan Bjerga from Bloomberg News. Yesterday, the Administration said that it was going to be increasing civilian presence in Afghanistan. I’m wondering, from a USDA and USAID standpoint, how many more boots on the ground do you expect to be putting down?
SECRETARY VILSACK: We currently have 54 people in country and another 10 are on their way. And we’ll have an opportunity after this visit not only to thank those workers, but also to evaluate what additional assistance may be necessary. It isn’t just necessarily government boots on the ground; it’s also ways in which we can partner with the many land grant universities and other universities that are providing assistance and help, as well as working with USAID.
So we’re going to have a significant presence. I suspect and know that over the short time, all it’s going to increase. And I also know that there’s already significant work being done, from planting additional trees, up to 3 million additional trees in a forestation effort, to building storage facilities, to improving productivity, there’s good work being done.
from U.S. Government Agriculture Sector Programs in Afghanistan and Upcoming Travel to the Region Briefing with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, and SRAP Richard C. Holbrooke Washington, DC | January 7, 2010 (link)
… And the rationale for the all-source, multi-agency NCTC is all about intelligence sharing. But remember: the inputs are that the guy’s dad says he’s dangerous; he’s Nigerian; he might be in Yemen; and al-Qaeda in Yemen may be looking to use a Nigerian in a forthcoming attack. Is that really enough?
The answer to that question most certainly requires a policy decision, not an intelligence decision. The intelligence community is drinking from a fire hose of data, a lot of it much more specific than what was acquired on Abdulmutallab. If policymakers decide that these thin reeds will be the standard for stopping someone from entering the United States, then they need to change the process to enshrine that in the no-fly system. But it will make it much harder for people who aren’t threatening to enter, a move that will ripple out to effect diplomacy, security relationships (good luck entering the U.S. for a military-to-military contact program if, say, you’re a member of the Sunni Awakening in Iraq, since you had contacts with known extremists), international business and trade, and so on. Are we prepared for that?
2009 IG Inspection Says No Fly List Reduce Vulnerabilities, but Additional Vulnerabilities May Exist
The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security
this past July released a redacted report on the Role of
the No Fly and Selectee Lists in Securing Commercial Aviation.
The report includes background on the Secure Flight Program
Implementation, Terrorist Screening Database, the No Fly and Selectee Lists and
other Watch Lists Derived From the Terrorist Screening Database. The OIG in its review writes that the No Fly
and Selectee Lists reduce vulnerabilities to commercial aviation security, but that
additional vulnerabilities may exist:
“The No Fly and Selectee lists are subsets of the TSDB, the
federal government’s consolidated watch list. The name inclusion criteria for
these two lists are more narrowly focused and restrictive than the inclusion
criteria for the entire TSDB. Specifically, the No Fly and Selectee lists focus
on aviation security and concentrate on [REDACTED].
Although the No Fly and Selectee lists are largely
successful in identifying potential terrorists who could threaten commercial aviation, some
individuals not included on the lists may also present threats to aviation
security.”
Below is an excerpt
from the report on the No Fly and Selectee Lists section:
No Fly and Selectee Lists
The No Fly and Selectee lists, two TSDB derivative watch
lists, are unique among all watch lists derived from the TSDB. They are the
only derivative watch lists that have their own minimum substantive derogatory criteria
requirements. These requirements are considerably more stringent than the
TSDB’s known or reasonably suspected standard. Additionally, the No Fly and
Selectee lists have the narrowest minimum biographic inclusion criteria of all
TSDB watch lists.
Minimum Inclusion Criteria
The No Fly and Selectee inclusion criteria were initially
established in October 2004 by the Homeland Security Council. This council is a
cabinet-level body that coordinates homeland security–related activities and
promotes effective homeland security policy development and implementation. The
No Fly and Selectee Lists Implementation Guidance accompanying the
inclusion criteria was released in January 2005. When establishing the initial
criteria, responsibility for maintenance and export of the lists was
transferred to the TSC. Prior to this time, TSA maintained the No Fly and
Selectee lists. The lists were created in September 2001, before TSA was
established, when the Federal Aviation Administration received 125 names from
the FBI for inclusion on a No Fly list.
No Fly List
Criteria
The TSC updated and supplemented the implementation guidance
in July 2006. Recently, the Homeland Security Council [REDACTED] to allow for inclusion
of more individuals on the No Fly list. The TSC’s Policy Board Working Group
followed suit with new implementation guidance, all of which went into effect
in June 2008. Appendix D provides more detail on the No Fly and Selectee
List Implementation Guidance (DS note:
guidance extensively redacted).
Two paragraphs [REDACTED]
Selectee List
Criteria
The derogatory information criteria for including an
individual on the Selectee list require that an individual who is ineligible
for inclusion on the No Fly list meet [REDACTED] the Selectee list criteria. Specifically, the Selectee list
should include any person, regardless of citizenship, who is: [REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
In applying more narrow requirements than the TSDB’s minimum
substantive derogatory criteria requirements, the No Fly and Selectee lists are
intended to prevent specific categories of terrorists from boarding commercial
aircraft or subject these terrorists to secondary screening prior to boarding,
and are not for use as law enforcement or intelligence-gathering tools. Past
and present implementation guidance emphasizes that the criteria for the No Fly
list require a [REDACTED] and that the Selectee list is not a default for those
who do not qualify for inclusion on the No Fly list.
The current minimum biographic inclusion criteria for the No
Fly and Selectee lists, which were not changed during the June 2008 policy
revisions, require a [REDACTED] for a TSDB record to export to either list. [REDACTED] Given
the restrictive derogatory and biographic criteria for inclusion on the No Fly and
Selectee lists, these lists combined comprise the smallest exported subset of the
TSDB. As of May 2008, the No Fly list contained approximately [REDACTED] records,
and the Selectee list contained approximately [REDACTED] records, collectively
comprising of the TSDB’s records. Additionally, the combined number of No Fly
and Selectee records represents approximately [REDACTED] distinct identities,
of which are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Process for Inclusion on the No Fly and Selectee Lists
Redundancies in the process through which individuals are
added to the No Fly or Selectee list ensure that the proper individuals are
watch-listed. For international terrorists, this process starts with a federal
agency, usually a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community, nominating an
individual for inclusion in TIDE. The NCTC’s Terrorist Identities Group reviews
nominations for the reliability of derogatory information and the sufficiency
of biographic identifying information.
Nominating agencies can recommend an individual for
inclusion on specific TSDB derivative watch lists, such as the No Fly and
Selectee lists. Additionally, although the NCTC is not a nominator, its
Terrorist Identities Group analysts, after reviewing all source intelligence
information, may identify eligible individuals for watch-listing and contact
the originator of the intelligence to request that the individual be nominated
for inclusion in TIDE with specific watch list recommendations. Domestic
terrorists are nominated to the TSDB via the FBI’s Terrorist Review and
Examination Unit, by FBI case agents, and by the FBI’s Counterterrorism
Division; also, each of these can make specific watch list recommendations.
[REDACTED] the NCTC transmits to the TSC an export of
additions and modifications of biographic and biometric identifiers from TIDE, resulting
in additions, modifications, and deletions to the TSDB. These transmissions are collectively referred
to as nominations. Analysts in the Nominations and Data Integrity Unit at the
TSC perform a comprehensive review of each nomination for inclusion eligibility
in the TSDB and for appropriateness of export to the various watch lists. As
part of this review, TSC analysts review specific recommendations for initial
No Fly or Selectee watch-listing, as well as follow-up recommendations for
changes to an individual’s No Fly or Selectee status. This review ensures that recommendations
are consistent with the biographic and derogatory inclusion criteria. Appendix
E provides a graphic representation of the No Fly and Selectee list nomination
process.
When TSC analysts recommend a change to an individual’s No
Fly or Selectee status, the nomination is forwarded to TSA subject matter
experts (SME), who are detailed to the TSC from TSA’s Office of Intelligence
and Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS). The SMEs review the previous analyst’s
notes and all accessible derogatory information associated with the nomination.
When SMEs determine that a change to the No Fly or Selectee status is warranted,
TSA coordinates the change with the FBI’s Terrorist Review and Examination Unit
and case agents for FBI investigative subjects, or with the NCTC for
nominations from other federal agencies.
Domestic terrorism nominations go through a similar process.
TSC domestic terrorism SMEs also review nominations for TSDB inclusion
eligibility and for appropriateness to export to various watch lists, including
the No Fly and Selectee lists. The SMEs coordinate with the Terrorist Review
and Examination Unit to resolve any issues with a nomination or its
watch-listing recommendation.
Other Watch Lists Derived From the Terrorist Screening
Database
In addition to the No Fly and Selectee lists, the TSDB
exports daily to three other federal watch lists that are also used to conduct
terrorism screening. Although none of these databases has its own minimum
substantive derogatory criteria beyond the known or reasonably suspected
standard, each has minimum biographic criteria requirements and some have
additional restrictions.
The databases include: 1) U.S. Customs and Border
Protection’s TECS Database, 2) Department
of State’s Consular Lookout and Support System |The Department
of State’s Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS) is a name-checking
system used to screen visa applications for travel to the United States. A visa
allows a foreign national to travel to a U.S. port of entry to request
admittance into the country. Administered by the Visa Office within the
Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, CLASS is used by consular
officers abroad to screen the names of visa applicants against a number of
government watch lists, including an exported subset of the TSDB. Once a CLASS
name search identifies an individual, and that identity is verified, Department
of State consular officers make a determination of visa eligibility according
to federal law. 3) Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Violent Gang and Terrorist
Organization File and one other
list: Additional Non-Federal Watch List Terrorist Screening Database
Exports.
The OIG report provided one recommendation to TSA:
We recommend that the Assistant Secretary, Transportation
Security Administration:
Recommendation #1: Determine whether it is
appropriate to [REDACTED] to No Fly restrictions or additional screening prior
to boarding an aircraft.
TSA Response: TSA concurred in part with this
recommendation. In its response, TSA management said the nomination criteria
for each list produced from the TSDB are developed and approved by a
multiagency working group overseen by the Homeland Security Council. Each
individual nominated to a terrorist watch list must independently meet the
nomination criteria in order to be watch-listed. [REDACTED] would require an
amendment to the nomination criteria.
[REDACTED] on the No Fly and Selectee lists, TSA said the only apparent and
effective way to ensure that these individuals are restricted from boarding an aircraft
or undergo additional screening would be to add them to the No Fly or Selectee
list. TSA management said this would [REDACTED], and raises privacy and other
concerns. [REDACTED] listed on the No Fly or Selectee list meet the criteria
for nomination to either list, these individuals will be placed on the list.
TSA management responded further that it will need to
explore this issue with other interested agencies to determine whether [REDACTED]
on the No Fly and Selectee lists to these lists is a prudent step that would
enhance security. However, given the privacy and rights issues involved in this
recommendation, TSA management said that it is highly unlikely the lists would
be [REDACTED] in this manner.
Some quite meaty blind quotes if you ask me, not just from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, er make that from the 3Ds. But if there’s smoke, there’s fire. So the fact that these relationship and personality problems are leaking out means that whatever other larger problems we have in Afghanistan, our first problem appears to be with the Team USA tent we have pitched in Kabul.
Quote 1: A US Development officer says:
“They absolutely flooded the zone.” […]"There must have been hundreds of them. They were in every province, every village, talking to everyone. There were 10 of them for every one of us."
Quote 2: A senior State Department official says with a tinge of bitterness:
"What a shock. If you deploy a gang squad, they're going to find a gang." […] "They were looking for an insurgency and they found one."
Quote 3: From an Eikenberry colleague:
"McChrystal came in and he just thought he was some kind of Roman proconsul, a [Douglas] MacArthur." […] "He was going to run the whole thing. He didn't need to consult with the State Department or civilians, let alone the ambassador. This was not only the military's show, it was his show."
Quote 4: A senior Pentagon official:
The PACC is "a stovepipe operation" [….]. "It's beautiful. It's headed up by McChrystal acolytes, former special operations officers who view him [McChrystal] as their patron. So they follow his lead. And there is no requirement for them to share any of the information they get from Kabul with the State Department or anyone else - let alone with Eikenberry. This is McChrystal's game. The PACC people in Washington pass information to McChrystal without going through any channels and they take the best information from Kabul and they brief [JCS chairman Admiral Mike] Mullen - and he briefs the president. So during the run-up to the Afghanistan decision, the military always looked current. They had the best information. Everyone else looked like a bunch of amateurs. Eikenberry was out of the loop. He had no chop [influence] on any of it. They just ran circles around him."
Quote 5: A senior State Department official in Washington:
"We kept saying 'we need to open up to the other side, like we did in Iraq with the Anbar insurgency,' and the military kept saying, 'well this isn't Iraq.' And so we'd answer: 'fine, so if Afghanistan isn't Iraq, then why do you keep talking about a surge?' And we never got an answer."
Quote 6: One State Department employee says:
"You can only be treated like a bunch of idiots for so long before you get fed up," […]. "It was PowerPoint after PowerPoint, all filled with this lingo and it all sounded pretty scientific. But it all amounted to the same thing - who do we kill. Well, it won't work."
There are at least three individuals in the article who are not wearing paper bags over their heads: James Clad, a former Pentagon deputy assistant secretary of defense for South Asia; Graham Fuller, a former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Kabul and Andrew Bacevich, the dean of America's military thinkers.
Last month, Jack Lew, the State Department’s Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources, visited Camp Atterbury-Muscatatuck Center for Complex Operations in Indiana and had a town hall.
Here is part of what he said:
“This is really important work. It’s really hard work. We have a lot of confidence in all of you as you go out to Afghanistan to be able to make a difference. And here in a week and a day, when it’s a new beginning for the government there, it’s a time of hope for the people there, we can’t lose sight of the challenges. You’re going to be dealing with bureaucratic challenges, political challenges, security challenges, and people who may not always be motivated the way we would want them to be motivated. I have confidence that each of you can make a difference in the work you do, and I hope the training here has helped prepare you to go out and be as effective as we know you can be.”
They had a Q&A for about 10 minutes with about half a dozen questions. One question on expanding participating agencies, another one on program continuity, excerpted below:
QUESTION: Thank you, sir, for the opportunity. My question is related to the participating agencies in the mission. Are there any plans to expand the number of participating agencies, i.e., Department of Transportation?
DEPUTY SECRETARY LEW: The Department of Transportation is already helping out with a number of functions, so they’re in the – not a great number, but there’s a handful of people from the Department of Transportation.
[…]
We didn’t sit down and say, we need X, Y, and Z agencies involved. We identified – ultimately the 974 positions that we’re now filling are 974 specific position descriptions. Each of you was recruited because you have a core capability to help with one of those, or a number – a set of those missions. And that’s what makes it challenging to recruit civilians, because you don’t – you can’t just ask for a team of a hundred people who do agricultural work or a team of a hundred people who do rule of law work. If there’s more work for the Department of Transportation, my conversations with the Department of Transportation lead me to believe that they are fully prepared to be part of the effort.
QUESTION: […] But in this short a time, I wouldn’t think it will be effective enough to complete the mission. And I myself hate that I’ll start something and leave it in the middle and then come back and somebody else will come after me, start from the beginning again.
DEPUTY SECRETARY LEW: One of the challenges in crisis and post-crisis missions is continuity of program. These are not programs where you have decades to do it, so you have to work intensely in a short period of time, but we have deployments that have not traditionally been long enough. One of the things about the mission, and what all of you have signed onto, is a longer assignment than, historically, civilians have been taking. The fact that you have made commitments for a year is a huge improvement in terms of continuity, from a situation where we would send civilians out for three months at a time. People can do a lot of good work in three months, but the number of transitions makes continuity very challenging.
So the fact that we’re in the process of building a civilian force from 320 to almost a thousand, and that will be, for the most part, full-year commitments addresses that issue right off the bat. I don’t think that we’ll get most people to sign up for two and three years, but we are encouraging people to make multi-year commitments.
I think we have to be realistic that these are difficult assignments, and if we make the standard that you can only do this work if you do it for two or three years, that will artificially limit the effectiveness of our ability to get people in the right place at the right time. On the other hand, we are very much going to encourage and support multi-year commitments.
We’re also going to try and stagger the turnover. We’re going to try and not have it be that everyone comes and goes on the same day. Part of the challenge in these transitions and the continuity is that the hand-off – it’s kind of like being in an American hospital on July 4th weekend. Everybody’s new. You don’t want to be sick in America on July 4th.
A lot of the turnover in programs like this has tended, because of the schedule of Foreign Service assignments – has been all at once, partially because we’ve been staffing up gradually over an extensive period. People’s years will end at different times. And we’re very conscious of it, and building in with Kabul – with our Embassy in Kabul – a plan to not have the kind of sudden transition that really does create a problem in continuity. The military has been very effective in a lot of places, and Foreign Service has been very effective in a lot of places with these kinds of short-term but very intense assignments.
I think going to a year for the basic assignment is a huge step forward. Having the transitions be smoother is a second one. And I think you put your finger on what is a critical challenge. These are not 12-month projects. The – many of the development projects that we’re going to be undertaking in the traditional development context take many years. We don’t have many years to show progress, because it’s a situation where if we can’t show progress quickly, the political reality on the ground won’t be there where it needs to be to keep moving forward.
But that doesn’t mean you finish the job. Showing progress and finishing the job are different. We need to be able to show progress quickly, and then have a realistic trajectory towards the kinds of objectives, and ultimately the transfer of responsibility, from international and American staff and military, to Afghans.
In any case, at the HFAC the other day, Secretary Clinton also mentioned the magic number of 974 for the civilian surge in Afghanistan:
"The civilian effort is bearing fruit. Civilian experts and advisors are helping to craft policy inside government ministries, providing development assistance in the field, and when our marines went into Nawa province this last July, we had civilians on the ground with them to coordinate assistance the very next day. As our operations progress, our civ-mil coordination will grow even stronger. We are on track to triple the number of civilian positions to 974 by early in January. On average, each of these civilians leverages 10 partners ranging from locally employed staff to experts with U.S.-funded NGOs."
You might remember that in the October 26 briefing that D/Secretary Lew did on the civilian hiring in Afghanistan, one reporter inquired about the sector-wise breakdown of this 974 figure. It was not available at that time, and I have not seen a follow up post on the solicited information from PA. The briefing did indicate that out of the 974 people, 64 will come from the Department of Agriculture and 128 positions will come from the Department of Justice. State has a total of 423 while USAID’s total number will be 333.
D/Secretary Lew also said this: “So we’re doing pretty well in terms of identifying candidates. We’re not seeing that there’s a lack – we’re seeing a great deal of enthusiasm and interest in going to post. I think that it speaks again both to the – how critical the mission is, and that it’s seen as joining a team that’s doing very important work.”
So there's no talk about going through that silly exercise called "Prime Candidate" again (real life not reality show) as was done previously. Thank goodness! But I am still curious about the breakdown of the 974 figure agency and sector-wise and most particularly interested on the composition of the 756 personnel coming from both State/USAID.
How many of the 756 are coming from the regular Foreign Service? Regular USAID?
How many are on Limited Non-Career Appointments (LNA) like Matthew Hoh?
How many are When Actually Employed (WAE) employees (retired Foreign Service personnel with limited work hours)?
How many are Foreign Service National (FSNs or LES) employees from other US Missions, borrowed for temporary duty in Afghanistan?
The 974 number is for Afghanistan alone. By the way, nobody is even talking very much these days about the staffing need at US Embassy Baghdad post-military drawdown or the staffing need at US Mission Pakistan with the expected expansion there. Also not discussed during these briefings are the number of life support personnel who will accompany the deployment of the 974 individuals.
Anyway -- the core question is a simple one -- how much of this specific civilian surge has the State Department been able to grow on its own? And perhaps, more importantly, how much will be outsourced, since almost nothing can be done anywhere anymore these days without contractors.
I am also interested for one other reason. Although additional hiring has been authorized recently for the Foreign Service, the demand still outpaces the supply at this point. Which means that if -- the entire 473 personnel going to Afghanistan are coming from the regular Foreign Service, there will be 473 slots at home and at 265 embassies/consulates that will go unfilled. Unfilled until new people are brought in, trained and sent off as replacements and all that will not happen overnight. In addition, some 450+ personnel most certainly will be needed for the inbound rotation to Afghanistan in fiscal year 2011. Beyond that, who knows?
The Blog of Legal Times has an October 1 update on the Horn v. Huddle case:
A tentative settlement has been reached in a long-running suit that alleges a former intelligence agent and a State Department official unlawfully eavesdropped on a DEA agent, potentially bringing the state secrets case to an abrupt close and sparing the Justice Department a loss on appeal.
Justice lawyers filed notices yesterday evening about the proposed settlement. The notices were filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where the case is pending, and in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where the case was filed in 1994. The agreement was reached through the assistance of the D.C. Circuit’s appellate mediation program. The lawyers asked for a 30-day hold on the proceedings in both courts.
[…]
[T]he potential for an adverse appellate ruling against Justice could vanish if the plaintiff, Richard Horn, settles with defendants Arthur Brown and Franklin Huddle Jr. Justice is paying private lawyers to represent Brown, a former CIA agent, and Huddle, a former State Department official.
