SPY 1099

 © by Iona Miller, Triple E Productions, 2010

 

 

FOR INFORMATION ONLY: This proprietary memorandum is informational in nature and relates to the packaging, production and distribution of the dramatic property Twisted Descent - Spy 1099  written by Iona Miller. It is for your confidential use and consideration only, and may not be reproduced, sold, or redistributed without explicit prior approval of TRUTH FOR REEL Productions and the TRIPLE E Enterprise.

Working Title: TWISTED DESCENT: Spy 1099 -  "Lions for Lambs" (2007) meets "The Recruit" (2003) A stand-alone film that can be franchised into a SPY 1099 trilogy.

Three major forces collude today to control the world - Intelligence, Mega-Criminal Enterprise, and the Power Elite. They are related to one another in draconian ways.

TWISTED DESCENT - SPY 1099 is an international thriller based on Outsourcing in today's domestic Fusion Centers and transnational Intelligence Community. Spy games and operations are outsourced to private contractors, who subcontract more independent contractors. They have penetrated the CIA and CIA has penetrated them, changing the Rules of Engagement. Multinational corporation and crime organizations lurk in the shadows and in the well-lit haunts of the Power Elite. Their operations are clandestine, but we have "a need to know" more.

Part 2 - DEADLY DEVIATION: Spy 1099 - "Who Killed John O'Neill" meets "Air America". Global Drug Meta-Groups. Global drug trade is called "the mother of all conspiracies." Drugs are at the core of the underground economy ruled by the "Overground." Power exists, even if the term conspiracy is overused. Conspiracy seems to suggest there are no rival powerful factions, which of course isn't true. Evil exists, power exists, greed exists on a macro level. Money laundering in the billions can and has been used to fund global terrorism, including bioterrorism. Kroll Assoc. is CIA privatized intelligence and industrialized espionage. An exploitive Dark Alliance does, indeed, exist, that does not stop at the mega-drug dealers.

Part 3 - DARK SUITS: Spy 1099 - "Eyes Wide Shut" (1996) meets "Wall Street 2" (2010). Without empathy, the 'dark suits' manipulate and declare the wars and devastate the economies of target countries to line their own pockets. Dark Suits have set themselves up as living Olympian Gods with Gold, Oil and Drugs. But payback is coming.

Agent handling · Black operation · Black bag operation · Concealment device · Cryptography · Dead drop · Eavesdropping · False flag · Clandestine HUMINT asset recruiting · Industrial espionage · Interrogation · Non-official cover · Official cover · Steganography · Surveillance (Computer · Cyber)

 

Release Date: to be announced

Status: Pre-production

Genre: Spy Thriller - a political thriller about possible conspiracies

Production Company: Triple E

Cast:

Director:

Screenwriter:

“Intelligence ends with the first shot fired. Real intelligence much more resembles a fascinating chess game, much complicated by the fact that the figures and their positions are not known to the players…”
- Victor Sheymov, former KGB officer who defected to the United States

THE STORY: OUTSOURCED INTELLIGENCE

Three major forces collude today to control the world - Intelligence, Mega-Criminal Enterprise, and the Power Elite. They are not unrelated to one another.

TWISTED DESCENT - SPY 1099 is an international thriller based on today's domestic Fusion Centers and transnational Intelligence Community spy games where most operations are outsourced to private contractors, who also employ independent contractors. They have penetrated the CIA and CIA has penetrated them, changing the Rules of Engagement. Multinational corporation and crime organizations lurk in the shadows and in the well-lit haunts of the Power Elite.

Conspiracy theories are like black holes--they suck in everything that comes their way, regardless of content or origin...Everything you've ever known or experienced, no matter how 'meaningless', once it contacts the conspiratorial universe, is enveloped by and cloaked in sinister significance. Once inside, the vortex gains in size and strength, sucking in everything you touch.

OVERVIEW

TRIPLE E Productions is an entertainment enterprise seeking production companies and investment for feature-length films for theatrical release. Our stories can be produced as “headline-based” fiction -- docudramas -- or factually-based documentaries. Our group of insightful investigative insiders has a unique perspective on world events, clandestine activity and “deep politics.”

Distinct from the main line of historical fiction, in which the historical setting is a mere backdrop for a plot, docudramas demonstrate some or most of the following characteristics:

A focus on the facts of the event being treated, as they are known;

The use of literary and narrative techniques to flesh out or render story-like the bare facts of an event in history;

A tendency to avoid overt commentary and explicit assertion of the creator's own point of view or beliefs.

Sub-genres include:

• Action thriller: In which the work often features a race against the clock, contains lots of violence, and an obvious antagonist. These films usually contain large amounts of guns, explosions, and large elaborate set pieces for the action to take place. These films often have elements of mystery films and crime films but these elements take a backseat to action. Notable examples are the James Bond films, The Transporter, and the Jason Bourne novels and films.
• Conspiracy thriller: In which the hero/heroine confronts a large, powerful group of enemies whose true extent only he/she recognizes. the Chancellor Manuscript and The Aquitane Progression by Robert Ludlum fall into this category, as do films such as Three Days of the Condor, Capricorn One, and JFK.
• Spy thriller (also a subgenre of spy fiction): In which the hero is generally a government agent who must take violent action against agents of a rival government or (in recent years) terrorists. Examples include From Russia, with Love by Ian Fleming, The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum, and television series such as Mission: Impossible , The Company and 24 .

 

TRIPLE E Enterprise is currently seeking private funding for production of the dramatic motion picture property TWISTED DESCENT: Spy 1099. The film is commercially exploitable to a mass audience through theatrical exhibition, pay-per view, cable broadcast and all home-video formats, including HD and Blue Ray. Outstanding funding required for completion.

 

 

SYNOPSIS:

ACT 1 -

ACT 1 of SPY 1099 opens at a job fair with recruiters and placements for linguists, translators, interrogators, risk assessment, damage control, even counter terrorism analysts. Required skill sets allow us to deduce what kinds of activities are being conducted. Everybody, from the well-dressed applicants to the stern-faced recruiters, wears a badge reading “Secret” or “Top Secret,” TS/SCI-cleared (Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information).

This event is open only to candidates with an intelligence background and a government security clearance -- the more high-level, the better to protect information and personnel. Special Access Programs (SAP) and special access budgets (SAB) are the Pentagon's terminology when used to refer to black (covert) programs and black budgets, respectively

There’s only one thing missing: the U.S. government. Every one of these jobs is being advertised by a private company -- one of hundreds of firms that contract with the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, or the Pentagon to provide everything from urine testers to supervisors of clandestine operations overseas. The people hired for these jobs may be doing government work in Washington or Baghdad, but they will be paid by firms including the international consulting giants.

 

 

The job fair is sponsored by an online recruitment firm headed by a former Intelligence Officer from CIA with contacts in all branches of the IC. He claims his company can hardly keep up with the demand for intelligence contractors. “The government has become addicted to the use of private industry in the world of intelligence,” he says. “In fact, they’ve made a science of it.” Indeed they have.

Both the government and private sector now engage in domestic and foreign Covert Action, or "dirty tricks." Corporate involvement in clandestine programs raises operational security concerns that only exist because these companies market their services to the private sector, capitalizing upon their exotic experience with the US government.

The momentum of the SPY 1099 plot builds through cause and effects that have to happen, to a natural but unpredictable climactic ending. The connective tissue is revealed as each event causes the next. Strong connections build momentum and intensity. Tension builds pushing towards a surprising yet satisfying resolution. Build scenes through ominous music, the rhythms of editing, a heightened sense of place and a central figure, an innocent, who struggles to gain control of a living nightmare.

 

ACT 2 - The Adversaries. 15% of global economy is multinational organized crime. Of this, 70% is transnational drug traffic. Drug trafficking is shifting from argiculturally-based drugs such as heroin and cocaine to pharmaceuticals that mimic and supercede them. In essence, this is one form of bioterrorism. What begins as a normal assignment turns into a twisted descent into the dark legacy of clandestine operations.

ACT 3 - The "Show" - Covert Action. Villain-driven plot the hero overcomes

ACT 4 - The Consequences, CI and tradecraft

ACT 5 - Blowback

ACT 6 - Buildup

ACT 7 - Reveal and Resolution; neutralize adversary

 

BACKSTORY:

Spy In the Box

Today's spies for hire can be found online. Independent contractors are the 'fast food' of Intelligence. Clients can order from their service menus. Traditionally, spies have always been outsourced, rather than official employees of intelligence agencies, such as Case Officers or "spy masters."

There are 16 official members of the Intelligence Community, an assemblage of separate agency intelligence organizations which gather, evaluate, and distribute information, most of which is secret. Made up of 16 organizations, its activities are controlled and coordinated by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who reports to the President.

The DNI is charged primarily with developing the overall intelligence budget, designing procedures to govern large intelligence acquisitions, setting priorities and coordinating policies/activities for the 16 intelligence agencies, monitoring covert operations, setting policy for working with foreign intelligence services. DNI has authority to request information from nonintelligence agencies, and perform joint planning for counterterrorism operations for all 16 intelligence agencies. Also reporting to DNI are the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which is staffed by terrorism experts from the CIA, FBI, and the Pentagon; the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board; and the National Counter Proliferation Center.

Minimize Risks; Maximize Payoffs

Now current and former Intelligence employees are outsourcing themselves and their private CIA-style security companies. Security is composed of highly trained former military, special operations, intelligence and law enforcement personnel as well as professional private security and investigative personnel.

In terms of "deep politics" war is fraud, a manipulated and lucrative commodity that intentionally perpetuates itself in the Long War. That includes "silent" or asymmetric war, drug war, terror war, oil war, economic war, corporate espionage and the myths of war that our culture lives and dies by. Even the classic Cold War is back, in economics rather than an arms race.

Strategic Intelligence

Online security businesses deploy both Blue Badge (Govt.) and Green Badge (Civilian) personnel. Most security and intelligence jobs are now subcontracted to private security agencies, giving rise to the phenomenon of SPY 1099, the Intelligence contractor. They are paid more for private sector work than government work to make the economy scream.

"NOAH" is one such intelligence-gathering and risk management firm providing companies with both information and analysis to enable them to identify, manage and mitigate risks that can arise either from the normal flow of business or from unanticipated contingencies. LOA responds to threats posed by organized crime, and those directed toward critical infrastructure with emphasis on prevention as well as reaction. NOAH safeguards information security, market entry, critical assets, verifies investment theses, and develops critical acquisition data.

NOAH mitigates risk of reputation threat, ensures brand and intellectual property protection, and eliminates fraud and personnel issues. Other services include strategic crisis consulting, due diligence of complicated transactions, business intelligence, solutions to regulatory challenges, encryption, strategic crisis consulting, security and preparedness,  investigations and forensics, as well as open-source and intelligence-based geopolitical risk assessment.  Investigative capabilities include asset tracing, forensic auditing, forensic data recovery and analysis, audio forensics, handwriting analysis and psychological profiling.

The firm’s mission exercises the founders’ expertise, experience and network of relationships to provide clients with a higher standard of business intelligence and analysis, risk assessments and due diligence support for transactions, even in the most challenging emerging markets. NOAH consists of professionals drawn not only from the intelligence world, but also from value-added disciplines, such as the legal profession, financial regulation, investment banking, investigative journalism, diplomacy, forensic science and law enforcement. This well-rounded team is based in offices in Washington, DC, and Annapolis, MD. with continued worldwide growth.

 

Mentor-Protege Program

The Mentor-Protégé program is designed to motivate and encourage large business prime contractor firms to provide mutually beneficial developmental assistance to small business, veteran-owned small business, service-disabled veteran-owned small business, HUBZone small business, small disadvantaged business, and women-owned small business concerns.The program is also designed to:

• improve the performance of contracts and subcontracts,
• foster the establishment of long-term business relationships between large prime contractors and small business subcontractors, and
• strengthen subcontracting opportunities and accomplishments

Mentor Firm – open to any large business firm that demonstrates the commitment and capability to assist in the development of small business protégés.

Protégé Firm - All small businesses that meet the definition of small business concern at FAR 19.001, based on their primary NAICS code, are eligible to be protégé firms. This includes small business, veteran-owned small business, service-disabled veteran-owned small business, HUBZone small business, small disadvantaged business, and women-owned small business concerns. Protégés may receive technical, managerial, financial, or any other mutually agreed upon benefit from mentors including work that flows from a government or commercial contract through subcontracting or teaming arrangements.

Benefits of moving from the traditional large business prime contractor/small business subcontractor model to a mentor-protégé relationship model based on mutual agreement, trust, and meaningful business development. Additionally, mentor-protégé arrangements may provide greater assurance that a protégé subcontractor can perform under a contract than a similarly situated non-protégé subcontractor. Further, protégé firms gain opportunities to seek and perform government and commercial contracts through the guidance and support of mentor firms that may not have been available to them without the mentor-protégé program.

Outsourcing Citizenry

The Citizen Corps Program engages citizens in personal preparedness, exercises, ongoing volunteer programs, and surge capacity response. Citizen Corps is FEMA's grassroots strategy to bring together government and community leaders to involve citizens in all-hazards emergency preparedness and resilience related to Homeland Security.

InfraGard is a private non-profit organization run as a public-private partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is an information sharing and analysis effort serving the interests and combining the knowledge base of a wide range of members. At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the FBI and the private sector.

InfraGard is an association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence to prevent hostile acts against the United States. All InfraGard members are associated with a local chapter. There is no 'National membership.' Protection of our nation’s infrastructure cannot be accomplished by the federal government alone. It requires coordinated action from numerous stakeholders – including government, the private sector, law enforcement, academia and concerned citizens. A fictionalized version could be called "IntraGuard."

More than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect and provide information on fellow Americans. In return, members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public, and at times before elected officials. “There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate Total Information Awareness program (TIPS), turning private-sector corporations—some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers—into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” according to an ACLU report titled “The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society.”

InfraGard, with members from 350 companies of the Fortune 500, started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats. “Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years. FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of InfraGard . . . from our perspective, that amounts to 11,000 contacts . . . and 11,000 partners in our mission to protect America.” He added a little later, “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”

 

 

Intel: Raw & Cooked

The government has outsourced everything from spy satellites to covert operations. They even outsource buildings. Outsourced contractors set up black sites, design programs and create mobile, hand held covert communications devices and the latest must-have spy-tech accessories. They also do data mining and intelligence analysis work.

Today, the ties between intelligence agencies and the private sector -- the "shadow intelligence community" -- are so close, it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference. After leaving government, these officials keep their high-level security clearances, which makes them extremely valuable to their new employers. “You can’t do any business without having the clearances,” says former Spy Master Jake Stockwell. “How else would you know about the contracts?” The most secretive contractors are the Intelligence Community's A-team. Even the military is gearing up to invade our daily lives through domestic deployment.

Re-Tooling Intelligence

Who are these guys; what are they up to and what do they do? A handful of government agencies require TS/SCI contractor access and really only two major intelligence agencies do so. One of them is located in Langley, Virginia a couple of miles from the eastern entrance to the Dulles Toll Road with satellite offices stretching to the west. The other is located in Ft. Meade, Maryland. So, one serves CIA and another NSA.

They have staff co-located at an Annapolis Junction Maryland facility. To the uninitiated, that means they contract with the CIA, work extensively with Army and Navy tier-one Special Forces Teams as well as Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with a little NSA thrown in. Geography tells the tale of who is working for whom.

Employees have experience working in hostile and denied areas and have immediate availability to deploy as part of a team or alone to ply their trade abroad or in the US. (Private domestic spying, anyone?) Go-bags packed, ready to deploy with teams raises the obvious follow up question: which teams?

They tag along along with Special Forces teams to foreign hostile or denied areas with comm equipment that has offensive and defensive capabilities --for ELINT and SIGINT collection. They set up in a house that happens to be in the path of a highly directional signal or on top of just the right cable. The metaphorical houses are probably in such friendly spots as Iran or wherever the yellow brick road of GWOT contracting leads.

They set up covert listening posts and surveillance. Teams stand ready, custom-designed high-tech gadgets in hand, for clandestine missions in enemy territory to covertly and remotely intercept foreign communications or penetrate information systems. This can be done independently or in conjunction with SEAL or Delta or other secret squirrel teams on behalf of SOCOM and the CIA.


Private CIA

CIA officials won't say how much of the agency’s work is done by private companies, but admit that outsourcing has increased substantially since 2001. Of the estimated $40 billion the United States is expected to spend on intelligence this year, experts say at least 50 percent will go to private contractors. An even bigger piece of the pie now goes to domestic security companies serving Fusion Centers.

Intelligence and law enforcement have merged and work together at home and abroad. Police departments across the country have created networks of databases called "fusion centers" in an effort to detect and prevent acts of terrorism. The ultimate objective is to create a nationwide reporting system of suspicious behaviors so that the authorities can "connect the dots" before an attack can occur.

Civil liberties groups claim these fusion centers are beset with legal and practical problems. One legal problem is that the police should not be opening files on people because they exercised their right to free speech, such as demonstrating against the foreign policies of the United States. One practical problem is that the police are gathering so much mundane information that practically anyone could end up on a list of "suspicious" persons because some official arbitrarily decided to fill out a tip sheet. Join us for a discussion of the pros and cons of this newly proposed system of policing.

Teams of military and law enforcement veterans and other motivated, capable Americans protect diplomats, provide training, and offer logistic services. They do those things in support of friendly nation peace operations around the world, including support of some of our Muslim allies.

Underworld to Overworld

These Ops are special and not necessarily accountable to anything but the bottom line. Operations range from the Underworld of black markets, black gold and money laundering to the Overworld of global controllers and Corpoglomerates. They know how things operate and how to get the job done while protecting the clients assets and secrets.

"Intelligence services" represent an unprecedented concentration of military expertise and force in the hands of private corporations. They evaluate clients through research and due diligence, to ensure they are legitimate actors who support freedom and security. They only take on work that is sanctioned by the U.S. government, or so they say.

Halliburton will probably never shake its bad reputation. Blackwater became so infamous, it changed its name to Xe, much like the maligned Whackenhut changed to "The GEO Group, Inc." GEO is now a world leader in the delivery of correctional and detention management, health and mental health, and other diversified services to federal, state and local government agencies around the globe. GEO offers a turnkey approach that includes design, construction, financing and operations. GEO represents government clients in the United States, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Canada,

Substantive Deliverables

With mixed personnel, they circumvent the turf war between Police, CIA and the Pentagon. Services include Acquisitions, National and International Emergency Response, Think Tanks, Field Security, Action Teams, Fusion Analysis, Cyber Forensics, Network Security, Data Analysis, Transactional Auditing, Tutorial Assisstance and Systems Transformation.

Also, counter measures, anti-terrorism evaluation, technology and development training, theater-wide communications operations, intelligence liason, clandestine procedures and training, incident management and protective operations. Encryption methodologies and the design of secure communications networks within a defense environment. COMSEC, INFOSEC, and SIGSEC. EMF risk assessment and reduction.

* Counter-Intelligence Services
* All-Source Fusion Analysis Services
* Strategic Debriefing
* Translation Services
* Tactical Translation Services
* HUMINT Support
* Imagery Analysis Support
* Topographic Support

Intellipedians

The CIA has grown wise to the power of open-source collaboration, and Intellipedia—a classified version of Wikipedia—is humming with activity 3 years after its debut, Time reports. The site boasts 900,000 pages of content written by 100,000 identified intelligence professionals. Advocates cite the rapid treatment of questions as evidence of Intellipedia’s effectiveness.

For example, an agent posted a page asking how to collect evidence from a chlorine-based IED after coming across one in Iraq. "Twenty-three people at 18 or 19 locations around the world chimed in on this thing, and we got a perfectly serviceable set of instructions in two days," says one user. Some hardliners have questioned the site’s security, but other say a rapidly evolving database is exactly what the intelligence community needs to combat the ever-changing face of terrorism.

Moonlighting Intel

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side -- a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation's top-level intelligence talent.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in "deception detection," the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.

But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.

A government official familiar with the policy insists it doesn’t impede the CIA’s work on critical national security investigations. This official said CIA officers who want to participate in it must first submit a detailed explanation of the type of work involved and get permission from higher-ups within the agency.

If any officer requests permission for outside employment, those requests are reviewed not just for legality, but for propriety. There is much about the policy that is unclear, including how many officers have availed themselves of it, how long it has been in place and what types of outside employment have been allowed. The CIA declined to provide additional details.

Generally, federal employees across the vast government work force are allowed to moonlight in the private sector, but under tight guidelines, that can vary from agency to agency, according to the federal Office of Government Ethics.

“In general, for most nonpolitical employees, they may engage in outside employment, but there are some restrictions,” said Elaine Newton, an attorney at the Office of Government Ethics. She explained that agencies throughout the federal government set their own policies on outside employment, and that they all typically require that the employment not represent a conflict of interest with the employee’s federal job and that the employee have written approval before taking on the work.

But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy.

The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms.

BIA has employed active-duty CIA officers in the past, although BIA president Cheryl Cook said that has “not been the case with BIA for some time.”

But the ties between BIA and the intelligence world run deep. The name itself was chosen as a play off CIA. And the presence of so many former CIA personnel on the payroll at BIA causes confusion as to whether the intelligence firm is actually an extension of the agency itself. As a result, BIA places a disclaimer in some of its corporate materials to clarify that it is not, in fact, controlled by Langley.

BIA’s clients can put the company on a retainer for as much as $400,000 to $800,000 a year. And in return, they receive access to a variety of services, from deception detection to other programs that feature the CIA intelligence techniques.

The tactics that BIA officials such as these teach hedge fund clients are based in a program it calls “Tactical Behavior Assessment."Unlike polygraph machines, the TBA technique allows examiners to work without hooking up their subject to a series of wires. The subject never knows he’s being scrutinized.

Polygraph machines work by measuring a person’s physical responses, such as heart rate, that indicate stress. Analysts using the machine need to sit with their subject for a long time. They have to establish a person’s physiological baseline, so they begin with a “control” conversation about neutral topics, before they can begin grilling the subject. Conducting an interview and doing a thorough analysis of polygraph results can take hours.

TBA focuses on the verbal and nonverbal cues that people convey when they aren’t telling the truth. Psychologists familiar with the method say it works because human beings just aren’t hard-wired to lie well. Holding two opposing ideas in your brain at the same time — as you have to do in order to tell a lie — causes a phenomenon they term “cognitive dissonance,” which creates actual physical discomfort. And when people are uncomfortable, they squirm. They fidget ever so slightly, they pick lint off their clothes, they shift their bodily positions.

Agents look for the physical indicators of lying. They watch for a person shifting anchor points. If the person is leaning forward on one elbow, does he switch to the other one? Interrogators watch for grooming gestures such as adjusting clothes, hair or eyeglasses. They look to see if the person picks at his fingernails or scratches himself. They watch for the person to clean his surroundings — does he straighten the paper clips on the table or line up the pens? If he does, he could be lying.

To obtain verbal clues, agents listen for several kinds of statements. They’ll listen for qualifying answers, phrases that begin with words like “honestly,” “frankly” or “basically.” The agents will be listening for detour phrases like “as I said before ...” They’ll want to hear if the person invokes religion — “I swear to God” — or attacks the questioner: “How dare you ask me something like that?”

Other red flags: Complaints —“How long is this going to take?” Selective memory —“To the best of my knowledge.” Overly courteous responses —“Yes, sir.”

BIA doesn’t just offer training, though. For a fee, its officers do the analysis themselves.

Read more: www.politico.com/news/stor...z0fpSZdMbN



HUMINT

Human intelligence. The collection of intelligence from human sources, including defectors, voluntary sources, spies recruited to betray their country or organization, prisoners, diplomats, information from allied or liaison intelligence services.

The US needs to reconfigure how it uses HUMINT tools by examining their effectiveness in the recruitment-centered model. When using this tool, the collecting agency finds a member of an adversarial group with access to important information. He then turn him or her into a spy by building a personal relationship and eventually popping the question, “Will you spy for me?”

Back pocket agents are nefarious agents or assets, loosely associated to the Company. The key is an "agent" has a narrow meaning and in the espionage business one ought not use words and terms that are loosey-goosey. An agent generally is paid and proven. An asset may not be paid nor in agreement with the nation state.

This model dominates since the Cold War, when spying followed fairly predictable guidelines. The organizational solution to the question of penetration was to rely on finding agents ‘in-place’ and to develop an approach in which agent recruitment played the fundamental role in HUMINT operations. However, even using ‘in-place’ sources had its difficulties. The normal process of developing and managing a HUMINT source consists of a cycle of Spotting, Assessing, Recruiting, Handling, and Terminating an asset In the Recruitment Cycle.

Driving this is an organizational culture that elevates recruiting in the hearts and minds of the Clandestine Service cadre. Career paths are driven by asset and agent recruiting, ‘hallway reputation,’ and ‘scalp-hunting,’ which measures performance for promotions. The highest value is given to recruiting and personality traits that facilitate it. In the Cold War that meant infiltrating the diplomatic scene of embassies and consulates under the guise of ‘official cover’ – cover where an officer’s affiliation with the US is not concealed, but his or her status as an intelligence officer is.

Intelligence liason in the War on Terror is necessarily more difficult, due to access to cultural groups, de-centralization of authority, and heavy need for collection on terrorist targets. Liason with foreign security units is crucial, actually better understood as a form of subcontracted intelligence collection based on barter.

Thus, liaison for the purpose of HUMINT collection is essentially “outsourc[ng the task of penetration,” an approach upon which the CIA appears to regularly lean when collecting on terrorists. Herein lies liaison’s greatest weakness - that we cannot control it. In a liaison partnership, HUMINT officers may be afforded access to a captured terrorist, or made aware of or allowed to participate in the partner service’s surveillance.

NOC, NOC, who's there?

Only a small percentage of the CIA's employees (perhaps less than 10 percent of the agency's estimated 10,000 to 20,000 workers) are clandestine officers involved in operations—the traditional spy stuff that includes recruiting sources, executing covert missions, and gathering intelligence. The remaining 90 percent are analysts, managers, scientists, and support staff. Because of their various roles, CIA employees require different levels of protective cover:

No cover. Upper management, college recruiters, congressional liaisons, Director George Tenet: These men and women are publicly acknowledged CIA employees.

Light cover. Many of the CIA's analysts and scientists fall under this category. Their families and friends might know who they really work for, but publicly, they claim to be employed by some other innocuous government agency or group. One former intelligence officer described this as "the cover you use if your airplane gets hijacked": It's safe enough to use on a quick visit overseas, say to meet with intelligence counterparts in a friendly country, but insufficient cover for spies stationed abroad.

Official cover. Most CIA employees engaged in operations overseas are given official cover: a sham job in the U.S. embassy (or working for another government agency) that affords them diplomatic immunity. These spies work under varying degrees of secrecy—the CIA station chief in a major ally nation may be well-known on the diplomatic cocktail circuit, but his subordinates, who actually recruit new informants, may not be. Such spies probably confide in their immediate families, but otherwise are unlikely to reveal their true occupation. (Although some operatives working in allied nations are "declared" officers, which means the CIA informs the host government that they are spies.) The advantage of official cover is that if officers are caught, they enjoy the benefits of diplomatic protection; at worst, they'd be publicly outed and sent home in disgrace.

Nonofficial cover. NOCs (the word rhymes with "rocks") are the most covert CIA operatives. They typically work abroad without diplomatic protection (often they pretend to work for some commercial enterprise). If these spies are caught, there's no guarantee that the United States would admit their true identities. When using official cover could put a spy's life and work at risk, NOC is the only alternative.

A little-noticed provision in the public section of a mostly-classified Senate intelligence bill signals that the Central Intelligence Agency is more serious than ever about plans to expand its program of setting up cover jobs for CIA officers outside of the usual posts in the State Department and other government agencies. Some believe the CIA's non-official cover, or NOC (pronounced KNOCK), program is the likeliest way for the agency to penetrate terrorist organizations or even, say, the nuclear program of Kim Jong Il's closed regime in North Korea.

"With terrorism, counter-proliferation — the kinds of threats that we face — you have to be more inventive in the way you deploy people overseas," said a knowledgeable U.S. official. "So you are going to have a lot of people who are not under official cover." America's most famous NOC is Valerie Plame, the CIA operative exposed last summer after a columnist reported that Bush administration officials had said she was behind a 2002 trip by her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, to Africa to investigate claims that Saddam had sought to buy uranium from Niger.

NOCs have traditionally been a tough position to fill. Though not a complete solution to the CIA's problem of gathering human intelligence, the NOC program can help. It's extremely expensive and dangerous to build a credible non-official cover by planting someone in, say, a corporate executive post in Islamabad or as a cell phone salesman in Madrid — positions in which a CIA officer would have no diplomatic immunity from arrest by the host government and little protection from deadly retribution by terrorists. Worse, the CIA has faced major bureaucratic hurdles in setting up an infrastructure to ensure that an NOC appears to be paid by a cover employer while actually being paid a government salary but at the same time only liable for taxes on a — often much lower — CIA officer's wage.

The Senate intelligence committee quietly passed a measure early this month that would make it clear that the CIA can "pay salaries, allowances, retirement, insurance, and other benefits to CIA employees under non-official cover in a manner consistent with their cover." This also suggests that a NOC might be allowed to keep at least some of the larger salary that goes with their fake job.

Although some experts believe CIA Director George Tenet already has much if not all of this authority, this legislation would give the CIA additional flexibility. "This is intended to sort of cut through some of the paperwork," the U.S. official said. "There shouldn't be any excuse for not doing these kinds of things." Demonstrating the importance of non-official cover across the entire U.S. intelligence community, the Senate bill also makes permanent the authority for the Pentagon to use front companies in its intelligence gathering, an authority that until now has been subject to renewal.

CIA continues to expand its NOC program. Intelligence officials say several hundred NOCs are now in the field, and the number is growing. Senior officials from the agency's National Collections Branch have been quietly approaching businesses doing overseas work to ask if they will provide covers for CIA case officers. Energy companies, import-export firms, multinational concerns, banks with foreign branches and high-tech corporations are among those being approached. Usually the company president and perhaps another senior officer, such as the general counsel, are the only ones who know of the arrangement. ``The CEOs do it out of a sense of patriotism,'' says former deputy CIA Director Bobby Inman.

In effect, the companies get free executives. For the cover to be plausible, the CIA must recruit business-school graduates who can put in a productive day's work with the firm and then spy during their off-hours. The CIA has even begun experimenting with recruiting mid-level corporate executives who yearn for adventure, then placing them in overseas firms as ``NOCs of convenience'' to penetrate a target for several years.

When the mission is over, the execs return to the business world. But while they are NOC officers, the CIA pays them a government salary. The company pays them a corporate salary-- usually much larger--to keep up the cover, but that money is quietly returned to the company. In fact, the agency's Covert Tax Branch has a secret relationship with the IRS to resolve the two W-2 forms an officer gets each year.

NOCs are out in the cold. But the CIA believes NOCs are the best way to carry out many clandestine operations. A foreign-intelligence service usually has no trouble spotting CIA officers operating under an embassy's cover. Not so for NOCs. ``If you're working drugs, thugs or tech transfers, you're going to be in banks all the time looking at financial transactions''--jobs often better suited for an officer under corporate cover, says a CIA contractor. NOC officers also have had more luck spying on ``hard targets'' such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, where the U.S. has no embassies in which to hide CIA operatives. In some countries, CIA is even experimenting with setting up two stations. One would be under the traditional embassy cover to serve as a decoy, while another much more secretive station would handle the NOCs.

CIA sources report NOCs sponsors overseas include: RJR Nabisco, Prentice-Hall, Ford Motor Co., Procter & Gamble, General Electric, IBM, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan Bank, Pan Am, Rockwell International, Campbell Soup, and Sears Roebuck.

In some cases, flamboyant conservative businessmen like Ross Perot and the late Malcolm Forbes have actively cooperated with the CIA in stationing officers worldwide. In other cases, obscure U.S. companies doing business abroad--such as a tiny Texas firm that deals in spare tractor parts in Latin America, cited by a former CIA officer--have taken part in the NOC program. Shipping lines, mineral and oil exploration firms, and construction companies with international operations, like the Bechtel Corp., often house NOCs.

By joining the CIA in clandestine activities, a company tacitly accepts that some of its employees could routinely break the law in another country and, if exposed, embarrass the company and endanger its other overseas employees.

Unlike most CIA officers, who are stationed abroad disguised as State Department employees, military officials, or other U.S. government personnel attached to an American embassy, NOCs operate without any apparent links to the U.S. government. They are able to approach people who would not otherwise come into contact with a U.S. embassy official. The CIA's operations within terrorist, drug trafficking, and arms dealer networks often involve NOCs, who can move more easily in such circles without raising suspicion.

In recent years, according to several CIA sources, NOCs have increasingly turned their attention to economics. Using their business covers, they seek to recruit agents in foreign government economic ministries or gain intelligence about high-tech firms in computer, electronics, and aerospace industries. They also help track the development of critical technologies, both military and civilian.

NOCs frequently stay 5, 10, or more years in one place. During that time, the NOC is truly "out in the cold." Their contacts with control officers in the CIA station are strictly limited; they do not have access to embassy files; and they must report through secret communications channels and clandestine meetings.

"As a NOC officer you are truly alone," says John Quinn, who spent much of the 1980s as a NOC in Tokyo. "The sense of isolation and loneliness is difficult to describe to those who have never experienced it." Because NOCs do not have the diplomatic immunity that protects CIA officers operating under embassy cover, if they are exposed they are subject to arrest and imprisonment--and they can be executed as spies.

CHARACTERS

Spooks really ARE spooky, even if they often stick to just one area of the paranormal. The nature of spying is looking for the ghost in the machine. They are as much or more fascinated by the Great Unknown than the general public and as likely to consult Edgar Cayce as Jane’s Intelligence Review. How different is scenario modelling from foretelling the future?

2007-(The Nation)  This column was written by R.J. Hillhouse.

---

The unprecedented involvement of private corporations in the Iraq War has been well documented. Private soldiers working for Blackwater USA, Triple Canopy and others provide security services against military-level threats, and they regularly engage in combat. But what is not generally known is that the secret side of the Iraq War and the larger "war on terror" is also conducted by private corporations, fielding private spies. The reach of these corporations has extended into the Oval Office. Corporations are heavily involved in creating the analytical products that underlie the nation's most important and most sensitive national security document, the President's Daily Brief (PDB).

Over the past six years, a quiet revolution has occurred in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing to corporations and away from the long-established practice of keeping operations in U.S. government hands, with only select outsourcing of certain jobs to independently contracted experts. Key functions of intelligence agencies are now run by private corporations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) revealed in May that 70 percent of the intelligence budget goes to contractors.

For all practical purposes, effective control of the NSA is with private corporations, which run its support and management functions. As the Washington Post's Walter Pincus reported last year, more than 70 percent of the staff of the Pentagon's newest intelligence unit, CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity), is made up of corporate contractors. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) lawyers revealed at a conference in May that contractors make up 51 percent of the staff in DIA offices. At the CIA, the situation is similar. Between 50 and 60 percent of the workforce of the CIA's most important directorate, the National Clandestine Service (NCS), responsible for the gathering of human intelligence, is composed of employees of for-profit corporations.

Employees of private corporations — "green badgers," in CIA parlance — provide sensitive services ranging from covert CIA operations in Iraq to recruiting and running spies. They also gather human intelligence on behalf of the CIA and analyze it, creating intelligence products used by the intelligence community and also shared with other branches of government.

Corporate intelligence professionals from companies such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC and others are thoroughly integrated into analytical divisions throughout the intelligence community, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It is the ODNI that produces the final document of the President's Daily Brief.

The President's Daily Brief is an aggregate of the most critical analyses from the sixteen agencies that make up the intelligence community. Staff at the ODNI sift through reports to complete the PDB, which is presented to the President every day as the U.S. government's most accurate and most current assessment of priority national security issues. It was the PDB that warned on August 6, 2001, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

It's true that the government pays for and signs off on the assessment, but much of the analysis and even some of the underlying intelligence-gathering is corporate. Knowledgeable members of the intelligence community tell me that corporations have so penetrated the intelligence community that it's impossible to distinguish their work from the government's. Although the President's Daily Brief has the seal of the ODNI, it is misleading. To be accurate, the PDB would look more like NASCAR with corporate logos plastered all over it.

Concerned members of the intelligence community have told me that if a corporation wanted to insert items favorable to itself or its clients into the PDB to influence the U.S. national security agenda, at this time it would be virtually undetectable. These companies have analysts and often intelligence collectors spread throughout the system and have the access to introduce intelligence into the system.

 

• Nearly 50% of contractors perform management and planning tasks, computer upgrades and maintenance functions or work as personnel or payroll officers.

• About a quarter of private contractors were employed to skirt federal hiring limits.

• Contractors are typically paid more than government employees.

• The discrepancy has caused some "talented individuals" to quit government jobs but has not caused a "mass exodus."

"Contractors allow us to expand quickly and contract quickly," Sanders said. "I don't believe we're overly reliant on contractors."

The survey, the first to attempt to account for intelligence contracting, was begun last year, in part because of concerns by intelligence service leaders that too many government workers were quitting to take private work.Last September, CIA Director Michael Hayden said his agency needed to guard against becoming a "farm system for contractors."A separate study of the impact of contracting at the CIA is continuing, spokesman Paul Gimigliano said.

Stephen Marrin, who teaches intelligence studies at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., says hiring higher-paid contractors raises a "fairness issue" and can impact morale. Marrin, who worked as a CIA analyst for 2½ years in the mid-1990s, later returned to the agency as a contract analyst for about a 25% raise. Hiring contractors, he said, can save the federal government money on retirement benefits.

• Badass protagonist
• Dialogue irrelevant. Most low-budget martial arts movies can be watched with the sound off, or without subtitles, with no loss of information.
• Revenge plot. C
• Pacifist hero. Check! Essential. The hero must be capable of kicking ridiculous amounts of ass, but not want to. However, the slightest provocation or transgression of nebulous codes of honour can provoke his murderous rage.
• Hot babe.
• Evil bad guys who deserve killing.
• Car chase. 
• A rival spy group
• A mysterious mentor.
• IN OTHER news regarding the CIA, and IF it's true, it's also truly ugly... "CIA DOMESTIC Black-Ops Team Busted"
  
  The arrests happened in last week’s botched burglary/wiretap attempt of Senator Mary Landrieu’s office at the New Orleans Federal Building.
  
  From Veterans Today:

  SENATE BURGLARY: CIA DOMESTIC BLACK-OP TEAM ARRESTED
  
  January 30, 2010
  by Gordon Duff
  
  ALL 4 INVOLVED IN SENATE HOMELAND SECURITY BREAKIN CIA “N-O-C” AGENTS
  CIA PROGRAM MAY HAVE TRAINED DOMESTIC “DEATH SQUADS”
  
  Last week’s breakin at Senator Mary Landrieu’s office in the New Orleans Federal Building was more than it seemed, much more. All of the 4 arrested had been trained by the CIA and, possibly, Israel. One arrested, Stan Dai, is listed as an Operations Officer of the Department of Defense Irregular Warfare Program and a known expert and lecturer on, not only surveillance but explosives training, assassinations and “false flag operations.” If you wanted a plane to crash, an enemy to get sick and die or a building to blow up, Dai would be the man to know how to make it happen.
  
  Problem is, his skills were being used as part of a criminal conspiracy inside the United States against members of our own government.
  
  Original reports on the “break-in” were also wrong. One of those arrested was found blocks away with a covert receiver, managing the office bugs. The man in the car is identified as Stan Dai, Operations Officer for the Department of Defense Irregular Warfare Program:
  
  “one of the four was arrested with a listening device in a car blocks from the senator’s offices.” The FBI’s affidavit noted that Flanagan and Basel were in the building with O’Keefe, and a federal law enforcement official confirmed to AP that Dai was the one in the car.”
  
  What is not initially known is whether this was the first attempt or, as is much more likely, an additional incursion to plant new bugs as the ones in place were missing key conversations.
  
  Also, it is not known how many “black ops” crews are being run by the CIA inside the United States in violation of their charter or if their operations are being limited to spying on Democratic lawmakers or if operations of a more threatening nature have been performed but remain undiscovered.
  

  Additionally, as this was a covert op against  US government investigations of, not only terrorism and terrorism funding but major financial crimes against the United States, it is unclear who the recipient of the “product,” an intelligence industry term for “output” or information put up for “distribution” might be.  Potential buyers could be the Republican Party, Israel, Turkey, India, Russia, China, Venezuela, North Korea or financial institutions involved in massive money laundering schemes being investigated by the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security of which Senator Landireu is a member.

  Learn how the Intelliegence Community Center for Academic Excellence (IC CAE) at Georgetown University and the CIA got involved in this seedy domestic “black ops” group.  In a story broken this week:

  Dai’s links to the intelligence community appear to be particularly strong. He was a speaker at Georgetown University’s Central Intelligence Agency summer school program in June 2009, and is also listed as an Assistant Director at the Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence at Trinity in D.C. (note the parallels between the Georgetown program tied to “conservative think tanks” and the GWU program with similar ties and the same characters where we trace Dr. Hasan, Ft Hood mass murderer to)

  The university’s president Patricia McGuire told The Associated Press that it promoted careers in intelligence but denied that it trains students to be spies.  (a seemingly meaningless statement considering what has happened)

  The Trinity program received a “$250,000 renewable grant from the U.S. Intelligence Community” upon launching in 2004, according to its Web site. The program’s goals are stated:

  The IC CAE in National Security Studies Program was established during 2005 in response to the nation’s increasing need for IC professionals who are educated and trained with the unique knowledge, skills and capabilities to carry out America’s national security objectives.

  The CIA summer school packet also notes that Dai “served as the Operations Officer of a Department of Defense irregular warfare fellowship program.”

  Dai has been an undergraduate fellow with the Washington-based national security think tank Foundation for the Defense of the Democracies (FDD), according to his College Leadership Program award biography at the Phillips Foundation — as Lindsay Beyerstein first reported.

  FDD claims that it’s partly funded by the US State Department. Its Leadership Council and Board of Advisers comprise many high-profile conservative politicians and public figures — including former House speaker Newt Gingrich, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), former Bush official Richard Perle and columnist Charles Krauthammer.

  Operatives recruited in universities and managed thru conservative think tanks receive paid “vacations” to Israel and elsewhere, places where they are trained in silent killing, use of poisons, explosives and other potentially useful skills whether their career is in intelligence or politics.  As with other terrorist suspects such as those who travel to Afghanistan for their training, these domestic types are funded covertly through the US government but, as we see in New Orleans, rented out to either Israel, India or the Republican party.

  This history of this program parallels one from the Nixon administration after the Vietnam War.  CIA recruiters subsidized hundreds, perhaps several thousand veterans, Marines, Special Forces and Army Rangers who served in unofficial and semi-official capacities in and out of the US.  Some serve to this day.  Today’s, if current bio’s are any indication, depend more on ideology than physical bravery or intellectual qualifications.  Perhaps the “purity” test left little room for battle hardened veterans who might choose country over party and loyalty over cash.

  In a “clarification” of how Israel is involved and sees their cooperation in this domestic terror organization as part of their support of the United States as a trusted ally, we received the following story:

  Dai traveled to Israel for two weeks in 2004 on an FDD (Foundation for the Defense of the Democracies, a conservative Washington based “think tank” with CIA ties) -sponsored trip, the Daily Herald reported. “All expenses (room, board and travel) will be assumed by FDD,” FDD’s Web site said of its Israel program.

  A host of FDD testimonials from Academic Fellows reveal that many fellows have traveled to Israel for training and field trips. The Foundation says the course includes “lectures by academics, diplomats, military and intelligence officials, and politicians from Israel, Jordan, India, Turkey and the United States.”

  FDD proclaims that “Like America, Israel is at the forefront in the war on terrorism.” Further explaining its interest in Israel, FDD declares:

  “Both the United States and Israel are democracies, and both face the same enemy. It is this connection between Israel’s experience and the future of the United States that is the essence of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.”

  One FDD testimonial, by 2004-2005 fellow Dr. Cathal J. Nolan, highlighted the group’s bond with high-level intelligence and government officials in Israel:

  “The access which FDD provided to top government officials–and to academic, police, security service, and intelligence experts at the highest levels–was truly remarkable. I know of no other foundation or fellowship program which is able to provide so much top-level access and first-hand intelligence and security service information in so compact a form, or in such an intellectually stimulating environment.”

  No explanation was offered as to how this “stimulating environment” managed to foster attacks on high security government offices, filled with vital intelligence.  If Israel and the United States face the same enemy, why is Israel training Americans to attack America?  One can’t help but see parallels between “junkets” to Israel for “intelligence training” and Islamic militants who go to Afghanistan for “terrorist” training.

  How few Islamic terrorists would we catch if they were aided by Washington “think tanks,” guided by the Department of Defense or funded by the CIA?

  Last week, Veterans Today outlined the many high security projects being monitored from Senator Landrieu’s office which included, not only terrorist money laundering and other security issues but investigations targeting tens of billions of dollars being hidden offshore illegally by Americans, many with ties to Israel.  The projects subject to spying by this CIA/Israeli operation are, among others:  (source:  Department of Homeland Security and the United States Senate)

  SENATE HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE

  Current hearings held by the Senate Homeland Security Committee chaired by Landireu, hearings subject to this espionage attack involve:

  • Intelligence reform in the aftermath of the Christmas terrorist attack
  • Overviews of contracting corruption in Afghanistan
  • Planning for securing America’s diplomats around the world
  • The Terrorist Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act (IRTPA)
  • Investigating the root causes of the Ft. Hood attack
  • Securing America from financial crimes
  • America’s Defense from Cyber Attack
  • Development plans for “post surge” Afghanistan

  Current investigations by the Sub-Committee on Investigations are:

  • Speculation in trading and how it effects national security
  • How US banks help overseas corporation dodge US taxes
  • Report on Tax Havens hiding billions from the IRS
  • Massive abuses of government credit cards by employees
  • Ending “offshore secrecy” to allow the US to recover billions in tax shortfall
  • Shell Oil credit card interest abuses
  • Medicaid abuse and equipment overcharges
  • Billions in unpaid taxes on Medicaid income by American doctors
  • Speculation in the energy markets costing American consumers billions a year
  • Failures in United Nations reform, waste and corruption
  • Speculation and manipulation that controls and rigs crude oil and gasoline markets
  • and many many more

  9/11

  • The Senate HSC is responsible for implementing all intelligence reforms resulting from the findings of the 9/11 commission especially in light of continued failures as demonstrated by the Ft. Hood tragedy and the Detroit terror attack.

  Current contracting oversight responsibilities:

  • Overseeing all USAID reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan
  • Investigating massive corruption tied to the US Embassy in Kabul
  • Overseeing all US contractors used in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world in regard to corrupt practices and cost overruns
  • Detecting and Prosecuting Contractor Fraud

  No information has been given as to how Federal authorities came to break up this terrorist operation but we are told that informants inside the CIA still loyal to the United States were involved.  The arrest of Dai, a highly trained operative blocks away from the scene opens a number of scenarios.

  With much of the CIA’s former leadership now employed by Blackwater/Xe, a company owned and controlled by Republican party leadership, the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence operations have become blurred.  “CIA agents” killed in Afghanistan recently may all have been Blackwater/Xe employees, some or all former CIA operatives seeking the higher salaries of the private security industry.  Has the CIA become “interchangable” with a mercenary group tied to a political party and available for hire by anyone with enough money?  The deteriorating security sitiuation in Afghanistan and Pakistan gives creedence to this hypothesis.

  The use of forces designated only to be used against American enemies outside the United States against elected officials of our own government, possibly on behalf of an unfriendly foreign government, is a total indictment of the usefulness of our entire intelligence community.  Attempts to centralize intelligence resources only tied those resources to individuals whose political ideologies surpassed loyalty to the United States or were superceded by moral flexibility, so often the case with politicians, now popularly described under the term “situational narcissism.” (believing one’s position places one above any moral code or ethical standard)

  Significant polarization within the political community during the Bush administration encouraged members of the intelligence community to look on members of the opposition political party as terrorist sympathizers.  We are told that many members of the military and intelligence community may be actively involved in “extracurricular” activities, freelancing for individuals no longer in government.  Those co-opted by extremist views are vulnerable to ploys from foreign intelligence agencies who represent themselves as part of “right thinking” or “conservative” patriotic groups.

  This is a common ploy, developed long ago by the KGB in the Soviet Union and now SOP, (Standard Operating Proceedure) for agencies of friend and foe alike.

  It is now a subject for a legitimate investigation as are such “accidents” as the Ohio plane crash that killed Mike Connell, GOP “vote rigging” guru who asked for police protection from Karl Rove tied to rigging the 2004 Presidential Election.  Connell’s family believes his death was murder.  US Senators, investigative reporters, whistleblowing scientists, “girlfriends” and so many other categories seem to die in numbers well beyond any actuarial table.

  We are already spending billions of dollars a year hunting foreign terrorists that threaten the United States.  Do we need to double this and go on a “witch hunt” within our own agencies, the ones we entrust with our own security?  There is only one answer:  Yes, of course we must.  We may not have a few “bad apples,” we may have a diseased orchard.

  Others say:

  Man charged in NOLA-gate scheme did not work for intelligence community
  
  As noted yesterday, Stan Dai, arrested Monday for allegedly aiding and abetting the scheme by James O'Keefe and two other men to enter Sen. Mary Landrieu's New Orleans' offices under the pretense of being telephone repair men, has elements of his resume that suggested he was looking for a career in the U.S. intelligence community.
  
  For instance, in 2008, he worked as the program administrator of an Office of Director of National Intelligence-funded "intelligence community center of academic excellence" program at Trinity Washington University.
  
  The purpose of the ODNI-grant-funded program "was to introduce students in liberal arts colleges to concepts in intelligence studies and potential careers in intelligence," the D.C. university's vice president Ann Pauley said by email.
  
  "Stan Dai was a junior program administrator for one year in a grant-funded program at Trinity Washington University," Pauley said. "Mr. Dai has not worked at Trinity since October 2008 when the grant ended. Trinity’s ICCAE program also ended at the same time." [In Full]

  But, as one of the commenters claimed: "Just because Stan Dai didn't 'WORK' for the US intelligence community DOES NOT MEAN he wasn't an AGENT. (emphasis mine)"