Stratfor essay on overclassification

[Michael Dravis]

>>The intelligence community underestimates the massive amounts of
>>information available in the open source. In 1995, for instance,
>>the Central Intelligence Agency held a competition to see who could
>>gather the most information, most quickly, on Burundi. The winner
>>was a Washington company, Open Source Solutions, which left the CIA
>>team in the dust. In 24 hours, OSS compiled huge amounts of
>>information, ranging from statistics to scholars; the CIA team
>>finished dead last, compiling little more than their own World
>>Factbook.
>
>"For the record," I am told this is untrue.  CIA did an entirely
>respectable job.  The point was, so did OSS.
>
>And it was not the CIA that held the "competition," it was the Aspin-Brown
>Commission.
>
>Steven Aftergood

The exercise mentioned above is described in the book ON INTELLIGENCE:
SPIES AND SECRECY IN AN OPEN WORLD (Fairfax, VA: AFCEA International Press,
2000), by Robert Steele, who was once and may still be a member of this
Forum.

Here's what Mr. Steele, CEO of the company Open Source Solutions, has to
say (pp. 166-168):

"On the afternoon of 3 August 1995, a Thursday, the author was testifying
to the Commission on Intelligence regarding the importance of dramatically
improving government access to open sources.  At the end of the day, at
1700, the author was invited to execute a benchmark exercise in which the
U.S. Intelligence Community and the author would simultaneously seek to
provide the Commission with information about the chosen target, Burundi.
[Footnote: The exercise is described in vague terms on page 88 of PREPARING
FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: AN APPRAISAL OF U.S. INTELLIGENCE (report of the
Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence
Community).  What the report does not mention is that the comparison was so
shockingly graphic that the staff initially decided to avoid the issue of
open sources entirely, calling the exercise 'unstructured and invalid'.
This 'denial' was common knowledge within 48 hours and subsequent
correspondence with the Chairman was evidently successful, as a three
person sub-panel of Members was created, and the report ultimately
contained a number of very significant comments on the critical importance
of improving access to open sources of information.  Perhaps even more
significant than its findings on the critical nature of open sources for
the U.S. Intelligence Community, was the Commission's conclusion that
intelligence questions that could be answered predominantly by open
sources, should be answered by the consumers themselves--by the home
organizations of the policymakers needing the intelligence.  This is an
important recommendation that validates much of this chapter's thrust,
because the reality is that most policymakers do not have, today, a staff
or a fund with which to define their requirement, manage the collection,
and then apply the value-added techniques of intelligence analysis
necessary to convert open source information into open source intelligence.

Policymakers can no longer excuse their ignorance by claiming reliance on
secrets that do not materialize--they MUST take responsibility for
collecting and producing open source information.

<cut>

"The above effort was described by one very senior Hill staff manager as
'John Henry against the steel hammer--only John Henry won.'  The 'steel
hammer', the U.S. Intelligence Community, had nothing of substance because
Burundi was at the very bottom of its priority list and its capabilities
were not suited for surge coverage of this obscure and remote area that had
here-to-fore been irrelevant to U.S. interests."

Michael Dravis
oso at his.com




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