intelligence

According to recent reports, President elect Donald Trump has been turning down the intelligence briefings that the intel community provides to incoming presidents to prepare them for the job.  Instead, Vice President elect Mike Pence is getting the intel briefings just about every day.  When questioned on the matter, Trump’s campaign manager said, “I can’t […]

Eighty-four bodies of Islamic State fighters were piled high at the Kirkuk hospital morgue, as the pathologists went through the gruesome work of gathering intelligence on the group’s sudden counterattack on the city. One by one, the corpses were removed from black body bags so fingerprints and DNA could be preserved. If no relatives come […]

The Military wants its spies that can go where traditional ones cannot. The world is becoming flush with proxy wars and fewer permissive environments. The world saw how potentially cumbersome GRS attached to American spies can be during meetings in “13 Hours.” But, they also felt the lack of tactical and situational awareness those spies […]

Let’s jump right into it. In the first section, we talked about the motivation behind searching for a new job. Then we started looking at the main venue for those looking to get into government employment, USAJOBS. It can be a bit intimidating at first glance, and applying to jobs on the site can be […]

And during the time it takes to train and shift the US’s intelligence capabilities against Russia, the US remains greatly outnumbered by Russian operatives.

“The counterintelligence operation that [Moscow] runs against the US Embassy measured in the thousands,” Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor and former US ambassador to Russia, told the Post. “It always felt, especially sitting in Moscow, of course, that we were in a counterintelligence and collection battle that was an asymmetric fight.”

CIA Director John Brennan recently addressed Russia’s “exceptionally capable and sophisticated” infiltration abilities.

“I think that we have to be very, very wary of what the Russians might be trying to do in terms of collecting information in a cyber realm, as well as what they might want to do with it,” Brennan explained on CBS.

Why is this important? The intelligence community deals with such a large amount of data, you can’t always assume people who have the “need to know,” and who should have access to the data, have seen all of the available information on any topic. The challenge of the intelligence professional is to rapidly sort through all of the data in order to develop usable intelligence analysis, enabling decision makers and warfighters to make informed decisions. Depending on the scenario, these decisions sometimes have to be made within minutes. Sometimes seconds.

Think of someone shoving you into a room filled with thousands of puzzle pieces, and then telling you to put it together in a few hours.

Though hidden from public view, the escalation in espionage activity is part of a broader renewal of conflict and competition between the United States and Russia after a two-decade lull. Surging tensions now cut across nearly every aspect of the U.S-Russia relationship.

Angelo Codevilla, a former intelligence officer and former Senate Intelligence Committee staff member, said FBI Director James Comey’s “vague and evasive” comments regarding Clinton’s handling of classified information confirm that she compromised a significant number of secrets.

“Common sense, the intelligence community’s standard practice, as well as a 2014 directive, require assessing the damage done by any such compromise,” Codevilla said. “The DNI’s refusal to conduct such an assessment, even more than the FBI director’s obfuscation, shows that U.S. intelligence agencies have been reduced to mere political arms of the Democratic Party.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo, Kansas Republican and member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, wants the DNI to do a formal damage assessment.

That level of influence is an intelligence officer’s dream. Except he’s just Sidney Blumenthal.

A formerly classified US policy paper found within Hillary Clinton’s emails (archived byWikiLeaks), promoting the forceful overthrow of Assad as “a massive boon to Israel’s security”, and as a way to start a war with Iran.
It appears that the Clinton email quoted below was sent in April 2012 (the email’s internal date upon release is an error)

The U.S. Army is considered the world’s premier land force, but it also has the capability to play a greater role in shaping other domains like sea, air, cyber and space. “We won’t duplicate capabilities of the other services. We want to enable the other services.” said Greco, deputy chief of staff, G-2, with the […]

This is no longer about intelligence reconnaissance, but rather this is increasingly being used for intelligence repression.