Re: WWI-L - The Veteran and American Society Conference (fwd)

[<Cfbernard@aol.com>]

Gentlemen,

Do see what I said about the 21st Regiment's early battles in Korea.  A 
version in the Soldier of Fortune of July has much of my perspectives on this.

My attitudes on Vietnam are focused on our taking the wrong lessons from 
Korea there.  Send me a snail mail address and I will share my beliefs about 
our follies there.  Do see Chalmers Johnson's Blowback for a far more 
sophisticated view of our post WWII efforts in Asia.

My reaction to a cri de coeur by an intelligence officer is pasted below.

Best regards,

Carl Bernard  (Task Force Smith; "Love" Company, 21st Infantry; 7th Special 
Forces, Laos, 1961; Province Senior Advisor, Hau Nghia, Chao Duc, Vinh Binh 
1967-1969)


"TO KILL SOMEONE, PERSUADE HIM THAT WHAT HE IS DOING IS WORTHLESS"

Voltaire's words were meant to capture the importance and psychic power of 
habit and inertia, two of the more powerful forces that affect and disable 
American military and their supporting intelligence services, hence our 
decision makers.  Examples of the might of this phenomenon are legion; they 
certainly abound in the bureaucracies everywhere in our government's service. 
 Challenges to elements bent on preserving their roles, especially those 
serving our military, are regarded as slurs and attacks on the patriotism of 
those who have dedicated their lives to protecting the nation.

A former intelligence officer, Robert Steele, has aggravated his old 
profession with a suggestion that it has taken on and adhered to a set of 
procedures that are not serving the nation.  He makes a powerful case that 
"open sources" contain most of the information (95%!) our decision-makers 
need.  He implies that the vast elements assembled to process and protect 
data acquired clandestinely are wasting our country's resources in failed 
efforts by our intelligence services to carry out their responsibilities.  

Even more striking, the data from open sources can be found on remote parts 
of the world a few days.  One damning paraphrase from the Navy Wing Commander 
who led the lead flight over Baghdad: If it is 85% accurate, on time, and I 
can share it, this is a lot more useful to me than a compendium of Top Secret 
Codeword materials that are too much, too late, and requires a safe and three 
security officers to move around the battlefield.

Steele makes his powerful case for integrating open source material in a just 
published work: ON INTELLIGENCE, Spies and Secrecy in an Open World.  His 
illustrations make those of us who have served on military operations cringe 
as we think of the costly errors, large and small, in which we were involved. 
 Steele is certain to make many converts among us.  My concern, however, is 
that there are so few who will understand that what happened to us was as a 
result of repairable and inadequate faulty intelligence.  This will allow the 
erring and ignorant responsible bureaucrats responsible to keep using the 
inertia inherent in their structure to continue mis-serving the nation.

Sun Tzu enjoined soldiers to know their enemy and themselves.  Modern 
politics and war add another element that we must know, our allies.  Our 
folly in Vietnam was the direct result of our intelligence services inability 
to understand how ignorant and innocent they were.  The culture of the 
Vietnamese, allies and enemies alike, remained as much a mystery to our 
intelligence elements as the strange language they spoke.  Their explanations 
to our political and military chiefs of the impact of various actions before 
they were taken, often proved to be inane.  And their expertise, described in 
the miserable summary of John Paul Vann, was that "we had one year of 
experience, ten times."

WHAT CAN BE DONE?  This is the right question.  The answer comes in two 
parts: first, who are the open sources whose knowledge can be applied?  
Second, how can their information be acquired?  Steele offers a program for 
each that would certainly serve our decision makers far better than what they 
are being told today.  The obstacle is the existing structure; the most 
effective enduring enemy we have to overcome is US.

The belief expressed by Bismarck: "God takes care of fools, drunks and the 
United States of America" still seems reasonable enough.  We have certainly 
been able to avoid payment for our various errors.  The CIA invented a term, 
"Blowback," for the unintended consequences that accompany many of our 
actions.  One of our (the?) foremost Asian scholars, Chalmers Johnson, used 
this term as the title for his recent work about our post-WWII follies in 
Asia.

Steele provides an opportunity to augment/improve enormously our intelligence 
data bases at very little cost.  His case is undeniable. The nation would be 
well served if both Presidential candidates and their staffs read his work 
and faced what has to be done during the upcoming debates.  It would be 
devastating for the other if it is only known to one of them. 

The post-election draft letter (page 269) to the incoming President could be 
redrafted and sent now.  The draft bill Steele proposes (Pages 304 -334) for 
the Senate and Congress to send the new President is certainly presumptuous.  
It is also worth a close reading by everyone aware of our intelligence 
agencies' situation in regard to OSINT (Open Source Intelligence).