(cross-posted at Haft of the Spear) The Navy counter-intelligence officer who garnered a confession from Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard says that U.S. agencies missed a forest of red flags about him and risk repeating the same mistakes today they made more than 20 years ago. Olive’s book reveals that administrative convenience and bureaucratic bungling allowed…

My friend Matt (the other, more taciturn GroupIntel blogger) and I envisioned GroupIntel as a multi-faceted, multi-user environment for discussions and analysis on intelligence and security-related issues. For those who are not aware GI also includes a Wiki and discussion forum. Participation environment-wide has been small but productive and anyone (national, state, local or otherwise)…

Recent U.S. intelligence analyses of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs were flawed and the lack of clarity on the issue hampered U.S. diplomatic efforts to avert the underground blast detected Sunday, according to Bush administration officials. Some recent secret reports stated that Pyongyang did not have nuclear arms and until recently was bluffing about…

Criminals covet your identity data like never before. What’s more, they’ve perfected more ways to access your bank accounts, grab your Social Security number and manipulate your identity than you can imagine. Want proof? Just visit any of a dozen or so thriving cybercrime forums, websites that mirror the services of Amazon.com and the efficiencies…

Something Matt and I have been pimping for a while now (and the primary motivation behind the GroupIntel concept) covered here (up through ZenPundit, across 1 Raindrop, nothing but Mayfield). Of course we are brought back to reality by Kent’s Imperative and from insights provided by my own sources who point out that there is the on-the-job…

An interesting proposition on the radio today spurred on by this story, about the need for a National Security Academy set up along the lines of West Point or Annapolis. Similar service obligation but a focus on the skill sets required by IC agencies. If I am not mistaken the recent intel reform legislation talked of…

Last February, top F.B.I. officers from across the nation gathered in a high-security auditorium for the latest plan to reinvent the crime-fighting agency to take on terrorism. Philip Mudd, who had just joined the bureau from the rival Central Intelligence Agency, was pitching a program called Domain Management, designed to get agents to move beyond…

Randi Greenberg, information systems security manager for the Homeland Security Department’s U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program, has the task of securing information collected for the program. That is no small order. Other DHS bureaus — such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and Citizenship and Immigration Services — contribute…

CIA director Michael Hayden has upgraded the profile of his organization’s CIO to provide a direct-reporting relationship between the top technology official and his own office. Smart, and recognition that an agency in the information business needs to have their “information officer” near the top of the pyramid.

Ever since President Fidel Castro was sidelined for what was said to be abdominal surgery last July, Cuban officials have maintained that the country’s leader will return to his post. … But U.S. officials tell TIME that many in the U.S. government are now convinced that Castro, 80, has terminal cancer and will never return…