Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 21:26:44 -0500 (EST)
From: rosaphil <rugosa-AT-interport.net>
Subject: Academic Meeting (fwd)


your tax dollahz at woyk! and this is why old blue-haird gents and ladies
and cripples must trek to mexico to afford to pay for medications so that
we won't die slowly and expensively?

too many secrets.

+********** Snail me yer rosehips if you liked this post! ************
*Better Living Thru Better Living!* http://www.interport.net/~rugosa *

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Author Excerpted For Mercy's Sake
Subject: Academic Meeting

ISA Convention.   I have been attending the International Studies
Association Convention in Washington, DC, this week, which involves
thousands of professors and hundreds of panels.  About 40 or 50 of those
professors and 13 of the panels were concerned with intelligence
studies.  Here's some "tidbits" I picked up:

 - in recent years, the FBI has taken over a good deal of what used to
be CIA's counterintelligence responsibilities

 - most senior officials think there is now too much SMO and not enough
strategic intelligence for senior policymakers

 - George Tenet is regarded as a popular and successful DCI

 - whereas covert action (CA) used to take up a great deal of the House
intelligence committee's (HPSCI's) time, it now gets attention more in
keeping with spending for CA, which is "less, much less, than 1% of the
intelligence budget."

 - the HPSCI gets along very well with IC leaders

 - analysis takes up only 6% of the IC budget, and needs to be
increased; everyone pays lip service to that, but year after year
Administrations request, and Congress appropriates, more money for
collection systems without providing for analysis.  Why?  Spy satellites
are nifty, while rooms full of scholars (analysts) are not very
exciting.

 - encryption and access problems (fiber optics) are seriously degrading
SIGINT.  The best solutions to that involve using HUMINT to support
SIGINT (by stealing codes, placing remote sensors, etc)

 - there has been a 17% reduction in all IC personnel since the Cold War
and a 21% reduction in military intel personnel

 - biggest budget shortfall is need for funds to hire more, and better
qualified, analysts

 - the 50% cut in State Dept funding over the last decade has hurt
intelligence.  Why?  Because embassies serve, among other things, as
"intelligence platforms" -- that is, Defense Attaches as well as CIA
and, sometimes, NSA stations are located in embassies.  Also, regular
diplomatic reporting amounts to intelligence.  So when you
close embassies, as we have been, and you get less intelligence.  Quite
a bit less.

 - CIA is hiring and has received over 15,000 applications just since
September.  Those actually coming aboard are extremely well qualified.
Most are in their late 20's or early 30's and have experience abroad.
Almost half are fluent in a foreign language, many come from other than
western European backgrounds.  And, most interesting,
most of them were already employed in the private sector when hired by
CIA, and they had to take substantial pay cuts, averaging 40% to join
the Agency.

 - the Counterterrorism center is enormously successful and a good
example of bringing different bureaucracies together

 - number one priority for US intelligence is proliferation; after that
comes crime and drugs, info warfare and then Russian and Chinese
transitions

 - MASINT will soon be the most important and productive of the INT's;
not surprisingly, the other INT's, especially IMINT, resent MASINT and
bad mouth it at every opportunity

 - there is a big imbalance between imaging systems and imagery
analysts; that is, US intelligence takes far more images (photos) than
anyone ever looks at

 - in the future, the government will purchase most of the satellite
imagery it needs from commercial sources; it may also start outsourcing
imagery analysis

 - already, I understand, some DIA HUMINT collection managers are
contractor employees -- expect to see more and more such outsourcing