There have been a lot of attacks on Trump for his criticism of our intelligence agencies etc. I have stated that doing so in public, which is his style, is immature and destructive. That said, the attacks on him by senior members of the intelligence community does justify his angst.
As I noted in my previous memo, I perused this massive 600 plus page tome and have attached (see below.) the Conclusion. I have no doubt the report was prepared by brilliant minds,, it's conclusions a sober reminder of our nation's intelligence failings and adopting it's copious recommendation could be of immense help.
The problem is, our bureaucracy is incapable of both digesting and implementing the report's vast array of suggestions. Turf battles, resistance to suggestions of co-operation and sharing of proprietary information, jealousy, defensiveness are standard bureaucratic reactions and they have thwarted much of the recommendations and I daresay our intelligence community is not radically improved since the report's issuance though, I have no doubt, we have learned a great deal about fighting terrorism in the interim.
One thing is for sure and puts the intelligence community at a distinct disadvantage. It's failures are leaked meanwhile, their successes are seldom known.
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The Commission on the
Intelligence Capabilities
of the
United States
Regarding
Weapons of
Mass Destruction
Report to the President of the United States
March 31, 2005
CONCLUSION:
We have approached our task mindful of its historical context. In truth, looking to the past, we find cause for discouragement. Many of the ideas and recommendations that we have made in this report were advanced with compelling reasoning by previous commissions. After ceremonious presentations to the President and to Congress, the previous recommendations were ignored or implemented weakly. Most of them failed to take hold. The question is inescapable: why should this Commission be different from the others? Nevertheless, we are hopeful.
The Intelligence Community is at the juncture of a number of powerful historical forces: the end of the Cold War, the first catastrophic attacks in the United States by international terrorists, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the failure of U.S. intelligence in Iraq, the broad based demand for change by the American people, and enactment by Congress of the most sweeping legislative reform since the creation of the existing Intelligence Community in 1947. These are reasons enough to believe that our work may be put to good purpose. Perhaps the single most prominent and recurring theme in our recommendations is a call for stronger and more centralized management of the Intelligence Community, and, in general, the creation of a genuinely integrated Community instead of a loose confederation of independent agencies. This is not a new idea, but it has never been successfully implemented. Part of the solution is to put more power and authority in the hands of the DNI.
This was a principal purpose of the intelligence reform act of 2004. As we have noted elsewhere, however, the DNI’s authorities under the new legislation are far from absolute. In many instances, the DNI will require the support and concurrence of the Secretary of Defense. He will need, as well, the commitment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to become a part of the Intelligence Community and to be subject to DNI oversight. The DNI will need to use his new authorities swiftly to overcome the barriers that have plagued previous efforts. The new Intelligence Community leadership will also need to cross the old boundaries. The Mission Managers, as we have described them in our report, show how a new approach to management can bring together previously isolated activities and orchestrate an effort that embraces the entire Community.
540 CONCLUSION
But it is also incontrovertible that the Intelligence Community’s flaws cannot be cured by top-down management alone. Reform must rise from the bottom too, and it must involve true cultural change within the Community. We make a number of specific suggestions along these lines in our report. To state just a few: processes to support analysts working long-term strategic topics; an innovation center to incubate new concepts in human intelligence; an opensource directorate that can freely experiment with new information technologies; a sizeable, uncommitted research and development budget that is available to quickly infuse funding; entirely new approaches to gathering intelligence on biological weapons; and incentives to promote the behaviors that lead to better intelligence (and discourage those that don’t).
Some of these challenges—especially support for long-term analysis, for innovative collection, and for aggressive research and development—will require greater resources. We are not in a position to make a precise estimate of the costs, but we believe that budget is less likely to be a constraint than culture and tradition. At every level, new and better ways of doing business should be encouraged, nurtured, and protected. Throughout our work, we have been struck by the range of opinions on reform of the Intelligence Community. Some former and current leaders with impressive experience believe that most of what needs to be done has already occurred. We respectfully disagree. We have unquestionably seen a break with the past and many brave initiatives. We have heard of stunning successes, many of which are too sensitive to mention even in an unclassified report. But too many of these efforts are “more of the same,” and many of those that break with past practices are only timid forays into new territory that could easily end in retreat.
There is another group of highly respected individuals, also with long and deep experience, who are fundamentally pessimistic about the recent legislative changes. They foresee new layers of bureaucracy with little value added weighing on institutions that are already overloaded with formalities. We also disagree with this group, but we understand their concern. Every person with whom we spoke was unanimous on one point: there is nothing more important than having the best possible intelligence to combat the world’s deadliest weapons and most dangerous actors. We agree, wholeheartedly; indeed, our survival may well depend upon it. Of course, even the most improved intelligence process is no guarantee against surprise . (See 1 below.)
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Both parties have failed to meet voter expectations for decades. This performance vacuum, this void created by unfulfilled expectations was eventually responded to by progressive radicals, their insane ideas, PC'ism and now we have the call for socialism to replace capitalism.
As frustration and despair rose, radicals are always there with their backward solutions and the unwashed generally fall for their false/fraudulent message of hope. It did not begin with Obama's desire to transform America but he did pave the way for a young former bartender who is busy filling the void with inane recommendations. She is being supported in her lunacy by the mass media and growing fringe element within the Democrat Party.
It is anyone's guess where this leads but it could end very badly. Time will tell.
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Stacey Abrams is the Democrat Trojan Cow who is seeking to beat David Perdue. Her thread worn tired story is that of the black underdog who is now educated, pulled herself up from her bootstraps and tells us there are no opportunities for her in America because the system is against her kind.
Her reply to Trump's SOTU address was written long before he gave his and was a response that was off base and did not jive. Furthermore, she spoke about an America I did not recognize. It was well delivered but frankly a boring repetition meant to spread guilt. I ain't buying it.
Shapiro adds that she wants a divided America as well.
What is also so disingenuous is Stacey trips to California seeking funding from white corporate liberals who feel an obligation to help her quest to divide partly because of their white guilt and billionaire status and partly because of their hatred of Trump.
In her last election, Abrams played the race card until it wore thin and blamed voting bias. It will be interesting to see what her new shtick will be as she campaigns in the ensuing months. Certainly she will get the preponderant black and liberal Jewish vote but will it be enough? Time will tell.(See 2 below)
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As for Trump, his SOTU address struck the right tone. It was up beat, he discussed subjects in a manner that most Americans agree with, he was "presidential" and could have set a positive platform from which he could launch a campaign that might dispel the distaste he creates with his Tweeting and abrasiveness.
After all, he has wrought some significant accomplishments that have been extremely positive for our country and he has set in motion a significant number of others that have yet to be resolved. He has demonstrated a willingness to resolve issues that have been foot balled and has extended a hand to Democrats he is willing to deal except on America embracing socialism.
To date, Democrats seem willing to remain obstructionists on the assumption that is the best way to beat him in 2020. Time will tell.
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Dick
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1)
Has the US intelligence community misread Iran’s nuclear program?
U.S. President Donald Trump seems to think so, as do certain longtime analysts.
U.S. President Donald Trump clashed with the intelligence community last week over the threats posed by Iran and North Korea, a position that has some U.S. and Israeli experts nodding in agreement.
Former weapons’ inspector David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told JNS that the U.S. intelligence community in essence told us that “Iran does not have a structured nuclear-weapons program—something we all know.”
However, he said, the intelligence community “punted on the more important questions of whether Iran is preserving capabilities to make nuclear weapons, e.g., the Atomic Archive, or working on certain activities to overcome bottlenecks in their nuclear-weapons program.”
Trump criticized the U.S. intelligence community in a Jan. 30 Tweet: “The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!” He also stated, “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”
This was after the heads of the U.S. intelligence community told the Senate that the threat from North Korea is unlikely to be resolved, and that Iran was acting according to the nuclear deal, positions that contradict Trump’s view, reported Reuters.
Emily Landau, director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Program at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, told JNS that on Iran, the assessment’s key sentence—“We continue to assess that Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device”—is laconic, misleading and missing key information.
First, what does it mean that Iran is not working on “key nuclear weapons-development activities?” asked Landau rhetorically.
“It is indeed working on advanced centrifuge R&D under the terms of the deal,” she said. “Moreover, it is testing missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.”
“Both activities are key to having a nuclear-weapons capability, and Iran can work on them without violating the JCPOA,” she pointed out.
Interestingly enough, Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi recently admitted what Iran did regarding the Arak facility—that they poured cement into certain tubes while not disclosing the existence of other tubes they had already purchased.
Second, continued Landau, “what about all the information contained in the Iran nuclear archives that the IAEA has not even begun to check through inspections? How can the assessment be so sure about its conclusions when this information is not taken into account?”
“Finally, while the assessment does not say so explicitly, it implies, especially when taken together with its 2018 assessment, that if Iran is more or less upholding the terms of the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], then the Iran nuclear threat has been dealt with effectively.”
But compliance with the JCPOA is not the barometer for assessing Iranian intentions or ambitions, she added. Indeed, the reason that Iran has an interest in sticking to the deal is because it has major benefits for the regime, such as: “It gives Iran significant sanctions relief in return for minimal nuclear concessions.”
In other words, it enables Iran to keep its nuclear infrastructure, which is in line with its continued nuclear ambitions.
Nuances between North Korean and Iranian nuclear ambitions
On North Korea, the assessment notes all of the steps that have been taken over the past year in the direction of reducing tensions regarding its nuclear program, but then concludes that North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons, which it deems essential for regime survival.
“It is true that North Korea will most likely not give up the capabilities that it paid such a high price to secure,” predicted Landau.
Still, regarding North Korea, even though steps have been taken, explained the Israeli expert, “they are brushed aside because of continued nuclear ambitions. But for Iran, which clearly continues to harbor nuclear ambitions, the assessment regards compliance with the terms of the JCPOA as evidence of lack of nuclear ambitions.”
These are very problematic conclusions—both for not recognizing the danger that Iran continues to pose in the nuclear realm and not giving enough credit to the significant reduction in American-North Korean tensions over the past year.
Albright said that “the archive makes clear Iran intended to continue its nuclear-weapons program after ending the AMAD program [that attempted to build nuclear warheads] in 2003.”
He went on to ask: “What does the Intelligence community think of that? How does it know that certain activities do not continue today, particularly given the IAEA has not visited many of the sites mentioned in the archives?”
A report by the Institute for Science and International Security in October 2018 and authored by Albright, Olli Heinonen and Andrea Stricker, stated the new documentation seized covertly by Israel from Iran’s nuclear archive “shows that in mid-2003, Iran was making decisions about how to decentralize and disperse the elements of its nuclear weaponization program, the AMAD program and its subsidiary Project 110, which included nuclear-warhead development.
“The archive documentation shows that rather than halting its nuclear weaponization work, Iran was carrying out an elaborate effort to break the AMAD program into covert and overt parts, where the overt parts would be centered at research institutes and universities, and any effort that could not be plausibly denied as civilian in nature was left as a covert activity,” the report continued.
So, posed Albright, how does the intelligence community “view Iran’s ongoing development of missiles that would be capable of delivering
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2)
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2)
BEN SHAPIRO: STACEY ABRAMS WANTS A DIVIDED AMERICA
On Tuesday evening, President Trump gave his State of the Union address. The theme of his address: choosing greatness. But in reality, Trump’s speech was about more than that rather generic theme. It was about gratitude.
Trump’s speech was about a particular image of America: an America born in truth, sustained by heroism, fighting its own demons in pursuit of its highest ideals. To that end, Trump called forth memories of Normandy and the liberation of the Nazi death camps, of the moon landing and the civil rights movement. What America is, Trump said, was made possible “thanks to the blood and tears and courage and vision of the Americans who came before.”
Then failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams responded.
She presented a sharply contrasting vision of America: a land of aspiration, but a land rife with brutality and racism; a country steeped in a vicious history, struggling to overcome its own perverse DNA. She focused, in particular, on her defeat in Georgia, claiming that “voter suppression” had been a serious issue in her race.
But the key line of Abrams’ speech went further. “We fought Jim Crow with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Yet we continue to confront racism from our past and in our present...America achieved a measure of reproductive justice in Roe v. Wade, but we must never forget, it is immoral to allow politicians to harm women and families to advance a political agenda.” Black Americans. Female Americans. Gay Americans. Group by group, she informed Americans that they were still victims of a hierarchical, discriminatory system.
Abrams bolstered that approach in an essay for Foreign Affairs. There, she argued that the philosophy of intersectionality—a philosophy that suggests that Americans must organize by group identity in order to tear away hierarchies of privilege—was a necessary precondition for the betterment of the country.
Abrams rightly pointed out that marginalized groups were originally forced into group identities by a racist white majority who used legal tools in order to discriminate against those minorities. And she correctly noted that those groups had to organize in order to fight back. But then she stated that political beliefs of which she did not approve were hallmarks of that same dominant, bigoted majority—and that the majority’s bigotry therefore necessitated the continued use of identity politics by minority groups.
“When the groups most affected by these issues insist on acknowledgment of their intrinsic difference, it should not be viewed as divisive,” Abrams wrote. “Embracing the distinct histories and identies of groups in a democracy enhances the complexity and capacity of the whole.” Indeed, Abrams rejected the “amorphous, universal descriptors” of liberty and equality and individual rights. Instead, she relied on “an expanded, identity-conscious politics.”
This is an ugly vision of the future of the country: a future in which all political differences are chalked up to thinly-masked bigotry, and in which the only solution to that supposed bigotry is identity politics in search of power. That was Abrams’ response to Trump’s articulation of an America united by creed, history, and vision—an America divided by race, class, and sex, but united by a desire to see the system overthrown. And that contrast of visions is sure to be at the center of the 2020 presidential race.
Ben Shapiro is editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire and host of The Ben Shapiro Show, available on iTunes and syndicated across America.
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