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The Army’s Sticky Fingers

Reuters opens the back door (draft) - (thanks E.D.):

 

The U.S. Army has forced about 50,000 soldiers to continue serving after their voluntary stints ended under a policy called “stop-loss,” but while some dispute its fairness, court challenges have fallen flat.

 

The policy applies to soldiers in units due to deploy for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Army said stop-loss is vital to maintain units that are cohesive and ready to fight. But some experts said it shows how badly the Army is stretched and could further complicate efforts to attract new recruits.

 

“As the war in Iraq drags on, the Army is accumulating a collection of problems that cumulatively could call into question the viability of an all-volunteer force,” said defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute think tank.

 

“When a service has to repeatedly resort to compelling the retention of people who want to leave, you’re edging away from the whole notion of volunteerism.”

 

 

I recall hearing about the foul-mouthed antics of a fellow soldier who was at the end of his four-year enlistment. Just before the declaration of the DESERT STORM stop-loss and just before his departure to the separation point in Cali, he gave a piece of his mind to superiors and subordinates alike. A move that was counter to good order and discipline? Perhaps, but the kid was getting out and it wasn’t like he was soldier of the year or anything, so they lent him vent. No harm, no foul. Mere hours before being processed out he was informed of his newfound status as a stop-lossee, and sent back to the unit. Not the happiest camper in the world, and of course he was going back to deal with all of his “friends” for an undetermined amount of time. Turn-about and all that . . .

 

If I am interpreting the story correctly (assuming Reuters got it right in the first place), this version of stop-loss differs from the one that kicked in the first time we went to Iraq. Back then you got locked in depending on your MOS, not your unit. Probably a more efficient way to do things, but still troubling.

 

I’m not a big fan of the stop-loss program. I think it is a sign of poor performance on the part of people who get paid to plan for this sort of situation. You know that X number of people are going to be getting out under normal circumstances. X+1 number of people are likely to get out during wartime. During war recruiting gets shaky . . . the best solution they can come up with is stop-loss? It probably isn’t the best solution, but it certainly is the easiest one.

DOJ Explains

DOJ PAO explains what all the fuss is about.

Reading Saddam’s Email

My Weekly Standard article is up.

Thanks Steve, R, C, and of course WK.

Pre-emptive note to the CF community: Yes, if this were going to the IJDE  it would read a lot differently. Consider who the average WS reader is. I’m on the HTCIA listserv if you want to discuss technology/technique.

The Fight Comes (Closer to) Home

I spent a brief but memorable time in West Texas many years ago. Unlike a lot of my cohorts I never made a weekend trip south of the border; in part because I’m not all that interested in donkey shows, and because I had a bad experience with tequila once that haunts me to this day.

I hadn’t given much thought to Texas since then, but that changed as I was listening to Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr. on the radio this morning describing four suspected terror training camps just south of his jurisdiction and across the border in Mexico. Now in this case “terror training camp” is more like “violent criminal training camp” since it is reportedly run by renegade ex-Mex-Army troops who are training gang members to be come more violent and skilled in illicit trades, but you can see why someone might have concerns.

This comes on the heels of a story about a fake US passport ring was busted in Colombia that reportedly had ties to al-Qaida and Hamas.

Finally, a story about a 2,400’ tunnel from Mexico to the US that was designed to smuggle dope, but could just as easily be a conduit for people or weapons of various make, model, size, construction, etc.

I’ve already pointed out that most folks don’t have a problem with Uncle Sam using his intelligence apparatus to try and root out terrorists or their supporters located in the US. If anything this latest batch of news should point out the need for more (or at least more capable) domestic intelligence efforts. Training camps for bad guys are not a Middle Eastern problem anymore, and the Great Wall of Rio Grande is working about as well as the original Great Wall. As long as we continue to view intelligence through “foreign” and “domestic” lenses, we will continue to hamstring those at the tip of the spear.

Captain Ed has more at CQ.

What Can We Expect to Find?

In case I needed to paint a bolder and more colorful picture of what one can find on captured media . . . from crypto/privacy guru Bruce Schneier in Wired:

 

Some years ago, I left my laptop computer on a train from Washington to New York. Replacing the computer was expensive, but at the time I was more worried about the data.

 

Of course I had good backups, but now a copy of all my e-mail, client files, personal writings and book manuscripts were … well, somewhere. Probably the drive would be erased by the computer’s new owner, but maybe my personal and professional life would end up in places I didn’t want them to be. […]

 

My laptop is my primary computer. It could easily contain every e-mail I’ve sent and received over the past 12 years, an enormous amount of work-related documents, and my personal everything. […]

 

And in case you thought that intel-related headaches in this area were not going to get worse:

 

The point is that it’s now amazingly easy to lose an enormous amount of information. Twenty years ago, someone could break into my office and copy every customer file, every piece of correspondence, everything about my professional life. Today, all he has to do is steal my computer. Or my portable backup drive. Or my small stack of DVD backups. Furthermore, he could sneak into my office and copy all this data, and I’d never know it.

From the Office of Software Security

Computerworld’s EiC weighs in on a COMPUSEC issue:

Computerworld’s Jaikumar Vijayan reported that the DHS is spending $1.24 million on a project designed to improve the security of open-source software (“DHS Funds Effort to Find Flaws in Open-source,” Jan. 16). The money is being paid to Stanford University, Symantec and source-code analysis vendor Coverity to build and maintain a database of bugs they find in open-source apps.

[Editor at large Mark] Hall wonders, as I do, whether that $1.24 million couldn’t have been better spent. He wonders, as I do, how much progress that money could yield in finding ways to improve, say, the security of containers coming into our ports or cargo being shipped on our airliners.

I don’t claim to be unfurling a patriotic flag by exposing some huge misdeed. But the DHS has unfurled a bright red flag of poor judgment here, and it can’t be allowed to wave unheeded.

My bottom line: Uncle Sam shouldn’t be in the software business. Remember Ada? People applaud NSA for their secure Linux project, but how does that jibe with their missions? Unless they’re going to start a secure Windows project, they’re not making a serious dent in computer security posture of the nation. Building a more secure OS is certainly an admirable goal, but what about apps? How do you account for user behavior? And there is this thing call the Internet . . .

As far as the wisdom of having such an ill-conceived project at DHS goes . . . one need not look far for stories of how dysfunctional DHS is (the people who are busting their @$$es there notwithstanding). Katrina, anyone? Immigration? Border Control? Even if someone can convince me that this is an important project that merits DHS attention . . . $1.24 million dollars? That’s less than a rounding error when it comes to our national security budget. That’s five mid-level SMEs and a little extra for the PM. How many volunteers are fixing a give open source package at any given time?

Looking on the Bright Side

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, yesterday said that four British diplomats accused of espionage in Moscow should not be expelled, as their replacements might be cleverer than they were and harder to catch.

Doing a Mental

Part two of the CNSN story on how NSA deals with percieved malcontents here.

Sad.

The Best Defense

It may have been the delirium of being woken up several times in the night by a crying newborn, or it might have been just normal run-of-the-mill delirium, but if I’m not mistaken Matt Lauer started off the 07:00 hour of the Today Show with a line about the Administration playing the “name game” with regards to the NSA “domestic spying” story. My memory is hazy and the Today site doesn’t seem to have a link to the story in question, but if I have it right the point was that GW and crew was trying to pull a fast one by saying “domestic spying” was really “terrorist monitoring” or something along those lines.

My question to Mr. Lauer is, “If the program is about monitoring terrorists or suspected terrorists or terrorist supporters in the US, who exactly is playing word games?”

After a cup of coffee and a diaper change (the baby, not me) I find this headline in the Washington Post:

Campaign To Justify Spying Intensifies

. . . and if you go back farther there is this:

Administration Paper Defends Spy Program

Not to pick on the Post, as I am sure I could find more examples from other outlets, but duty calls. The point is that in my mind – simple as it is – we’ve already got all the justification we need to do what is necessary to keep this nation and its citizens safe:

For all the fans of the name game: If you don’t want more of the above - the end result of us not being able to monitor terrorists in the US - how would you propose we deploy our intelligence services and their capabilities in the info age?

More robust arguments here and here.

What was that about a nail and a hammer?

CQ points out that NSA isn’t the only place where it pays to keep your pie hole closed:

The FBI’s former top agent in Panama carried on an affair with a confidential informant that left him open to blackmail by “a hostile foreign intelligence agency,” according to his former deputy, who has filed a discrimination suit against the bureau.

Cecilia Woods, a veteran agent herself, was deputy to the FBI’s legal attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Panama during 1999-2000, when she discovered that her boss [married and with three children] was having a sexual relationship with the woman, a former Panamanian government official.

Her boss admitted to that affair, as well as others, during a Nov. 4, 2003, deposition taken as part of Woods’ suit and seen by CQ Homeland Security.

Woods said that the affairs left her boss, legal attaché Gil Torrez, open to blackmail by hostile foreign intelligence agents in Panama, a money-laundering hub for drug kingpins and other top criminals in Latin America.

Normally I would say that he-said-she-said cases are a lot more complicated than they are portrayed. Then this little tid-bit falls to the floor:

“It generated some counterintelligence issues,” Woods said in a brief telephone interview. “Another [U.S.] agency learned he was being targeted for his behavior.”

No kidding.

In June 2000, she made her first official, documented complaint to an FBI inspection team.

For years, she said, FBI headquarters officials ignored her warnings about Torrez’s behavior.

“Nobody bothered to listen to me. I was just a female complaining about a male. It was shoved under the rug.” […]

Torrez was given a 14-day suspension but allowed to transfer to his posting of choice in the FBI’s Dallas field office, according to two sources with firsthand knowledge of the case.

This sounds remarkably like the case of former Special Agent James Smith (if that’s his REAL name), who spent a good deal of time “de-briefing” a source (did I mention she’s a suspected double agent for the Chinese?) and whose punishment consisted of three months of home confinement. It would appear that being a man in the Bureau is a good thing.

I’ve got good friends in the Bureau. I was at a luncheon with Linda Franklin the day before the Beltway Snipers took her life. These people work like dogs, get short shrift, and then have to deal with people thinking that the place is run by horn-dogs who would compromise their integrity and the security of the nation for a little trim. I’ve got two words for all you aspiring Bureau c***-smiths: Internet porn.

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