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…

House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Peter Hoekstra is still pressing U.S. intelligence agencies to look for possible weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—even though intelligence officials say further work is unlikely to reveal anything new about Saddam’s WMD programs. Isikoff and Hosenball at it again. Read if you like but the song remains the same;…

The Internet has become the “seductive hypermedia” for radical Islamic terrorists, with official and unofficial Web sites, forums and chatrooms that appeal to supporters worldwide. Most Web sites are intended to advance a group’s propaganda to increase their supporting audience, while some have operational intentions. But how do we defeat such terrorism in cyberspace? Well…

This gem from Secrecy News is encouraging: A bill introduced by Congressional Democrats would empower the Government Accountability Office GAO) to perform financial audits and other oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies, a function that those agencies have long resisted. “Since 9/11, effective [intelligence] oversight is needed now more than ever,” said Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI)…

Via Secrecy News After years of public controversy, the Department of Energy has adopted a new polygraph testing policy that it said “will significantly reduce the number of individuals who will undergo a polygraph examination.” In particular, “DOE has decided to alter the role of polygraph testing as a required element of the counterintelligence evaluation…

The U.S. Department of Energy still hasn’t done enough to strengthen its cybersecurity protections, exposing critical systems to compromise and putting data at risk, according to a report issued last month by the agency’s inspector general. In his annual report on the status of the agency’s cybersecurity efforts, Inspector General Gregory Friedman did note that…

For a goodly portion of my time in the IC I focused on the technical threats posed by various actors and emerging technologies. While I’ll win no prizes for elegant computer code I like to keep active in the field. Various competing demands force me to stick to writing about pertinent issues and my latest…

Larger post in the works, still gathering data/thoughts. This gem is too good to wait though: Shaffer still works as a civilian employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency and is seeking to have his security clearance restored, according to [his attorney] Zaid. As an Army reservist, he’s assigned to the 9th Theater Support Command at…

Richard Clarke sounds off on the past, present and future. It starts out well enough: FIVE years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, three years after the 9/11 commission report, and just weeks before a national election, the issues of what happened before those attacks have resurfaced. Suddenly, we are again witnessing heated disputes…

Interesting development: […] OMB has given a green light for the creation of an Open Source Agency as proposed by Congressman Simmons, strictly contingent on the DNI’s blessing of that agency being outside the wire in order to be fully effective with all those who do not wish to cooperate with an element of the…