OSS CEO Urges Congress to Dismantle Intelligence Committees, Create Joint Committee on Intelligence & Information Operations (I2O), & Sub-Committees o

November 18 2006

Robert David Steele (Vivas), CEO of OSS.Net, Inc., has today posted a Letter to Congress delivered as a facsimile, and available to anyone as an Op-Ed.

Dear Members,

I respectfully recommend that this lame-duck session of Congress, amidst all its undone business, make room for the most pressing issue facing America: the complete collapse of our national intelligence community dating back to the previous century, and the complete ignorance of all executive agencies and their respective Congressional Committees regarding the vital role that is played by Information Operations (IO), the new inter-agency decision-support matrix within which secret intelligence is, at best, 5% of the useful information.

I can do no better than to quote General Tony Zinni, USMC (Ret), and most recently the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Central Command (CINCENT). He is on record as saying:

"80% of what I needed to know as CINCENT I got from open sources rather

than classified reporting. And within the remaining 20%, if I knew what

to look for, I found another 16%. At the end of it all, classified

intelligence provided me, at best, with 4% of my command knowledge."

It should gravely concern all Members that the future Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) is planning to focus on terrorism, which is a tactic, not an enemy, and which -- in the context of the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers from Brazil to Venezuela -- represents an infinitesimally small and consequently largely irrelevant topic that will distract this Committee from actually being effective.

H.R. 5954, introduced by Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ-06), strikes at the crux of the matter -- every jurisdiction, without exception, requires access to all relevant intelligence, both secret and not. With six co- sponsors, this legislation could be expanded by the Members in three important ways:

1. Recognize that secret intelligence, at $60 billion a year for the 5% we can steal, is nuts, and that the existing intelligence committees have become apologists for fraud, waste, abuse, and institutionalized ignorance, depriving America of access to the other 95% of the relevant information that is not secret, not online, not in English, and not readily accessible nor exploitable by anyone in the U.S. Government today.

2. Recognize that every jurisdiction requires both secret and open source intelligence as well as expertise on information operations, and hence also requires a sub-committee on Intelligence & Information Operations (I2O), one able to demand information sharing, standards, and global access to all relevant information.

3. Finally, recognize that in the Information Age, there is no other jurisdictional issue that is so pervasive as to demand a Joint Committee consisting of the Chair and Ranking Member of the I2O sub-committees for each of the principal jurisdictions in both Houses, one that can provide oversight of secret intelligence within the larger context of I2O, which is to say, narrowly focusing expenditures for secrets while re-directing up to $30 billion a year from secret intelligence to national education, open source intelligence (OSINT), and homeland security information sharing including the fifty Community Intelligence Networks suggested by The Smart Nation Act.

This Congress has the power to demand that the three national intelligence agencies be removed from the Department of Defense as a condition for confirming Dr. Bob Gates (who is inherently sympathetic to this common sense move); and to enact the Smart Nation Act as devised by Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), whose recent loss by 90 votes is earnestly lamented by all moderate Republicans and centrist Democrats.

Each Senator and Representative received a copy of "The Smart Nation Act: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest" just prior to the conclusion of the last session of Congress. Extra copies are available on demand. I and others who support intelligence reform writ large, rather than on the margins, are eager to testify.

For additional information visit http://www.oss.net. A draft monograph on I2O is posted to http://tinyurl.com/y44st6.