Dana Priest and William Arkin’s reporting on Top Secret America in the Washington Post was an important media event. Its various graphs and installments nicely illustrate the sheer magnitude of US intelligence privatization. Mind you, the size and the compartmentalization of the US intelligence community is difficult to grasp and a cause for many problems of its own. Add to that the even more elusive layers of contracting and sub-contracting (an estimated 265’000 contractors have top-secret clearances) and one gets a security state that has grown beyond that what anyone can call reasonable by a long stretch of imagination. (If only McNulty had a fraction of that cash for the fight against drugs in Baltimore…)

Here are a few more thoughts on both the content and the style of the WaPo story.

First off, the sprawling privatization of US intelligence is, of course, hardly news to the engaged reader. The WaPo must be criticized for not even referring to Tim Shorrock, the real authority on this subject. He was the first author to have studied post 9/11 intelligence contracting, and he did it in a much more systematic and problem-centered fashion (albeit with less colorful graphs and less floury language on Washington suburbia). His book, Spies for Hire, is a compelling read that tells us why, where and how the US arrived at a situation where an incredible 70 percent of its enormous intelligence budget ends up in the hands of private companies. One can also find his data set, here. Shorrock obtained an unclassified document from the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) that corroborates his basic estimate. After his book release, the CIA and the main stream media (MSM) simply ignored Shorrock’s research. The former called his figures ‘way off the mark’ and the latter shunned an awfully gripping story. Why? Surely, it would be too simplistic to associate big advertising companies of MSM, such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman with this. Fact is, though, it took MSM a long time to pick it up.

Second, and more importantly, the WaPo piece is also short of analysis. Now that the MSM has picked up the story, it does not seem to know what to do with it. The WaPo story hardly raises the important conclusions that ought to be drawn from this incredible intelligence-industrial complex. More concretely, what are the strategic drawbacks when private companies influence public intelligence policy? All of these 1,913 companies pursue their shareholders’ rather than the public interest. Who can deny that the industry shapes intelligence policy making when the contractors are so deeply entwined with those who decide on the contracts, sometimes even overseeing the work of fellow contractors? Companies want more contracts for their business to flourish. To do so, they will pull all possible strings to convince the intelligence community (IC) that their service are not only top-notch quality but also indispensable for counter-terrorism. (One interesting part in the WaPo story was how some IT gadgets developed by corporate America for their intelligence services create envy amongst colleagues, branches etc, which, of course, leads to even more profit). It’s no longer just research and development but actually inherent government functions that are being sold and re-sold like commodities. Not only can private companies bid for such functions, they can also help define what a government function in the intelligence domain should look like, now and in the future. They continue to win large contracts (consider, for example, the latest 100 million contract awarded to Blackwater) despite their often-times very problematic, direct and unaccountable involvement in enhanced interrogation, torture and assassinations in the field or their exploitation of the federal budget from their plush new offices in suburbia. For an example of the former, grab a copy of Spies for hire. Shorrock gives the reader a much more contextual understanding of how the private company CACI directed torture at Abu Ghraib. All this is something, that the WaPo authors « soft-pedaled » in the output of their two-year investigation. (Marcy Wheeler is right on the mark on this and uses stronger words for their lack of critical reporting.)

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Le dernier Focus stratégique vient de sortir et a pour titre: La coopération civile en Afghanistan. Une coûteuse illusion?. Il est l’oeuvre d’Amaury de Féligonde, ancien chef de projet en Kapisa et Surobi au sein de la Cellule Interministérielle Afghanistan Pakistan.

S’exprimant à titre personnel, l’auteur décrit précisément le dispositif mis en place par la France pour apporter la sécurité et le développement aux populations afghanes. Il analyse les problèmes rencontrés, notamment en termes de coopération entre intervenants civils et militaires. Il développe par ailleurs des recommandations, plaidant par exemple pour une meilleure compréhension de l’environnement dans lequel opèrent les équipes françaises. [...]

Un article intitulé « Nicolas Sarkozy: huit ans de déclarations de guerre » a été publié récemment sur le site Internet du journal Le Monde. L’auteur explique que depuis 2002, Nicolas Sarkozy utilise régulièrement une rhétorique belliqueuse: il a ainsi déclaré la guerre aux trafiquants, aux délinquants, aux bandes violentes et même aux chauffards.

Deux remarques à ce sujet: [...]

The Guardian released last week declassified documents incriminating the previous British government (Tony Blair’s) of extraordinary rendition and of involvement in torture. Just over a year after President Obama released what are now known as the torture memos, which justified the use of torture in the War on Terror, the new British coalition government decided to shed light on its country’s involvement in similar practices. It was the Binyam Mohammed case which earlier this year ignited the debate on the involvement of the UK in torture and extraordinary rendition. [...]

Pour la troisième fois (au minimum), Stephen Colbert, de la chaîne américaine Comedy Central, a eu un expert des questions nucléaires comme invité dans son émission « The Colbert Report ». Cette fois, il a accueilli le sénateur Sam Nunn, l’un des quatre ex-officiels américains ayant relancé depuis plusieurs années l’objectif du « Nuclear Free World » (Avec Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger, et George Shultz), à l’occasion de la sortie du film « The Nuclear Tipping Point », que je commenterai peut-être un jour si je trouve le temps de le regarder.

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Interagency cooperation is a fancy word. The goal is legitimate: be more efficient, share information, and optimize human, financial, technical resources. Get more results, especially when war, COIN, or intelligence failures prove how necessary it is to work together. However cooperation is a serious job, not to be undertaken lightly. Indeed competition remains strong between individuals and institutions afraid of losing their influence, usefulness, resources, independence, efficiency, etc. Here are some reasons to be cautious about cooperation and some options to build stronger foundations for collaboration. [...]

A la suite de l’affaire Mc Chrystal, plusieurs personnes – dont Mikhael dans les commentaires de ce blog – ont fait référence à un précédent historique : l’affaire Massu, en janvier 1960. Intrigué par cette comparaison, je me suis brièvement replongé dans l’histoire de la guerre d’Algérie.

Dans un ouvrage consacré au putsch d’Alger, l’historien Maurice Vaïsse évoque cet épisode en quelques lignes. Il rappelle que le général Massu s’est fait piéger par Hans Kempski, journaliste à la Süddeutsche Zeitung. Massu pensait parler en « off » mais Kempski aurait utilisé « en cachette un magnétophone » et fait paraître l’entretien « sans préavis ». Maurice Vaïsse ne détaille pas le contenu de l’interview mais il commente : « L’article fait scandale à Paris. [...]

Le Centre des études de sécurité de l’Ifri vient de publier le numéro 34 de la collection Proliferation Papers. Après le cas nord-coréen, nous restons en Asie mais abordons cette-fois la posture nucléaire chinoise :

Chinese Perceptions of the Utility of Nuclear Weapons. Prospects and Potential Problems in Disarmament

L’auteur de ce Proliferation Paper est Jing-dong Yuan, qui dirige (pour l’instant) le programme « East Asia Non-Proliferation » au Center for Nonproliferation Studies, de Monterey. [...]

Le Laboratoire de Recherche de la Défense vient de publier le Focus stratégique n°23, consacré à la défense britannique. Un post d’UR avait déjà abordé le sujet lors des élections de mai dernier. Dans ce Focus, Pierre Chareyron analyse l’évolution des armées britanniques au cours de la dernière décennie, marquée notamment par l’engagement dans les Blair’s Wars et par un contexte budgétaire de plus en plus défavorable. [...]

Barack Obama accepted General McChrystal’s resignation as ISAF’s commander in chief last week and replaced him with his former superior, the now famous general Petraeus. This decision was taken only a few days after a Rolling Stone article, The Runaway General, was published. In this interview, McChrystal and, especially his staff, criticized and at times reviled civilian members of the Obama administration in charge of Afghanistan.

This raises questions: about Afghanistan, the Obama administration and the American decision-making process in general. But let’s start from the beginning, namely by bringing the article itself into question. [...]