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Today's Topics:
1. Defense Intelligence Agency Proposes Outsourcing More Spying
(George Antunes)
2. Shocking tales of the underground (George Antunes)
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2007 14:06:32 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Defense Intelligence Agency Proposes Outsourcing
More Spying
To: medianews@twiar.org
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Defense Agency Proposes Outsourcing More Spying
Contracts Worth $1 Billion Would Set Record
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 19, 2007; A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/18/AR2007081800992_pf.html
The Defense Intelligence Agency is preparing to pay private contractors up
to $1 billion to conduct core intelligence tasks of analysis and collection
over the next five years, an amount that would set a record in the
outsourcing of such functions by the Pentagon's top spying agency.
The proposed contracts, outlined in a recent early notice of the DIA's
plans, reflect a continuing expansion of the Defense Department's
intelligence-related work and fit a well-established pattern of Bush
administration transfers of government work to private contractors.
Since 2000, the value of federal contracts signed by all agencies each year
has more than doubled to reach $412 billion, with the largest growth at the
Defense Department, according to a congressional tally in June. Outsourcing
particularly accelerated among intelligence agencies after the 2001
terrorist attacks caught many of them unprepared to meet new demands with
their existing workforce.
The DIA did not specify exactly what it wants the contractors to do but
said it is seeking teams to fulfill "operational and mission requirements"
that include intelligence "Gathering and Collection, Analysis, Utilization,
and Strategy and Support." It holds out the possibility that five or more
contractors may be hired and promised more details on Aug. 27.
The DIA's action comes a few months after CIA Director Michael V. Hayden,
acting under pressure from Congress, announced a program to cut the
agency's hiring of outside contractors by at least 10 percent. The CIA's
effort was partly provoked by managers' frustration that officials with
security clearances were frequently resigning to earn higher pay with
government contractors while performing the same work -- a phenomenon that
led lawmakers to complain that intelligence contract work was wasting money.
"Mind-blowing," was the reaction of Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a member
of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, when she learned
of the DIA proposal. In a telephone interview, she described it as
"definitely something to be concerned about."
In its notice, published on a procurement Web site, the DIA said that "the
total price of all work to be performed under the contract(s) will exceed
$1 billion," adding that the tally "is only an estimate and there is no
guarantee that any orders will be placed."
A DIA spokesman, Cmdr. Terrence Sutherland, said this week that "this is
the first DIA contract of its type specifically intended for the
procurement of intelligence analysis and related services." He said the
primary purpose of the proposal is to ensure that adequate outside support
is ready to assist the DIA, as well as Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force
intelligence centers and the military's overseas command centers.
In May, Schakowsky and Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) sponsored an amendment
to the 2008 intelligence bill that requires the Defense Department to
compile a database of all its intelligence-related contracts. The aim,
Schakowsky said, is to force a review "of what contractors are doing and,
importantly, whether contractors are performing inherently governmental
functions."
Some activities, she said, are so sensitive that "if and when they are
done," it may not be appropriate for the government to "contract these
activities out."
Price asked during the debate whether contractors should be involved in
intelligence collection and analysis, interrogation, and covert operations,
or whether those activities are so sensitive that "they should only be
performed by highly trained intelligence community professionals."
In a statement Friday, Price questioned whether "a contract award of this
scale is consistent with the DNI's commitment to reduce the alarming
portion of the intelligence budget that goes to private contractors." (DNI
refers to the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell.)
The DIA is the country's major manager and producer of foreign military
intelligence, with more than 11,000 military and civilian employees
worldwide and a budget of nearly $1 billion. It has its own analysts from
the various services as well as collectors of human intelligence in the
Defense HUMINT Service. DIA also manages the Defense attaches stationed in
embassies all over the world.
Unlike the CIA, the DIA outsources the major analytical products known as
all-source intelligence reports, a senior intelligence official said,
speaking on the condition of anonymity.
A former senior Pentagon intelligence official said yesterday that the DIA
is struggling to do "the in-depth intelligence work required under present
circumstances" and that is why it is preparing to contract for outside
help. He cited the military's efforts in Iraq to provide human intelligence
sources to forces that rotate out after tours of a single year. "That is
hardly enough time to develop serious, dependable Iraqi sources," he said.
The former official added that for years intelligence has not been a prime
career path for officers who seek to reach the top positions in the Army,
which favors infantry, armor and special forces as the specializations that
lead to promotions.
The war in Iraq has required the hiring of outside contractors by the
Pentagon to perform not just security jobs but also the collection of
intelligence used for force protection. Earlier this year, retired Marine
Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a former head of the U.S. Central Command who today
advises defense contractors, said there is a legitimate role for private
firms in security missions. But he warned that problems can arise "when
they take on quasi-military roles," such as planning intelligence operations.
In its report in June on the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill,
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence noted that Congress had allowed
full-time positions in the intelligence community to grow 20 percent since
Sept. 11. But personnel caps forced the agencies to turn to contractors.
The committee questioned the additional costs involved in using
contractors, citing an estimate that a government civilian employee costs
on average $126,500 a year, while the annual cost of a core contractor,
including overhead and benefits, is $250,000.
Many companies that provide contract workers to the CIA and Pentagon
intelligence agencies are headed by former employees of those agencies. For
example, Abraxas, which is run by a former CIA case officer, has hired --
and then contracted out to the government -- more than 100 former
intelligence employees over the past six years.
The CIA imposed a rule that former personnel cannot perform work with a CIA
contractor in the 18 months after they leave the agency.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2007 15:53:12 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Shocking tales of the underground
To: medianews@twiar.org
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
[One for the weird file.]
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tunnels19aug19,0,166738.story?coll=la-headlines-california
From the Los Angeles Times
Shocking tales of the underground
At campuses across the nation, undergrads insist on making rumors about
utility tunnels into the stuff of legend.
By Tony Barboza
LA Times
August 19, 2007
On the first day of UC Irvine English professor Carol Burke's Introduction
to Folklore course, she asks students to write down any unusual stories
they've heard about their campus.
Someone always mentions the tunnels.
Rumored to have been built as escape routes for professors and as access
points for National Guardsmen during student protests in the 1960s, the 1
1/4 -mile concrete corridor runs in a circle below the campus' original
buildings, connecting to building basements and vaults.
School officials say they don't know where the rumors started; the
passageways were built in 1964, well before most student demonstrations,
and they house only heating and cooling pipes.
Because of security concerns, UC Irvine and other universities across the
country are sealing off tunnels that have drawn curious students and urban
explorers, played host to hazing rituals and pranks and sparked urban
legends, such as the one about mutant radioactive rabbits.
UCLA has blocked off areas of its 6-mile tunnel system. Columbia University
is securing its tunnel entry points with new doors, locks and card readers.
Stanford, which used to count tunnel exploration as a campus tradition,
recently invested in chains, padlocks and gates to keep students out of its
10-mile system after officials discovered that some of them had ventured
under the main quadrangle -- alarmingly close to the president's office.
UC Irvine is the latest to install a sophisticated security system for its
tunnels. The university is spending up to $300,000 on motion sensors,
alarms, closed-circuit cameras and card readers to replace the old locked
gates that weren't entirely successful in keeping students out, said UCI
Chief of Police Paul Henisey.
"There's a lot of people on campus who have no idea where these tunnels are
or how to get into them," said Paul Howland, director of plant operations.
"We want to keep it that way."
Since 9/11, universities have been looking for anything that could make
them vulnerable to terrorism, said Lisa Sprague, president-elect of the
International Assn. of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators.
"Steam tunnels have come to the attention of universities just because of
their safety hazard and their enticement to students and others to be
adventurous," she said.
Ada Meloy, general counsel for the American Council on Education, said
bouts of school violence such as the Virginia Tech shootings "have made
colleges and universities once again focus on how vulnerable the buildings
and campus are to a person seeking to create havoc."
Even without the threat of terrorism, campus officials call the passageways
an "attractive nuisance," an intriguing part of the campus landscape that
is a liability to schools if not locked and monitored.
Some colleges, such as the University of Michigan and the University of
Washington, said their tunnels have been secured in recent years but would
not provide details. Others, such as Princeton and Caltech, were so
concerned about tunnel details falling into the wrong hands that they would
not comment for this article.
Utility tunnels are common at large building complexes that share a central
heating and cooling plant. The passageways serve as a distribution system
for water and steam that regulate the temperature of buildings, as well as
fiber optics and other wiring.
They serve as the subterranean arteries for civic centers, medical
facilities and many colleges and universities, giving workers easy access
to repair aging pipes and wires.
"Without this, we would have to dig big holes in the campus every time we
had to work on a pipe," UCI's Howland said on an increasingly rare tunnel tour.
Despite their utilitarian role, the tunnels for decades have spawned urban
legends and conspiracy theories among students.
"They didn't want another Berkeley," said Joel Montano, a fourth-year
sociology major at UCI, recounting the prevailing theory that the tunnels
were built for riot control.
At Johns Hopkins University, a rumor circulated in the mid-'90s that mutant
rabbits from an underground nuclear experiment lived in tunnels below a
physics building there.
Burke, the English professor and folklorist, calls the fascination with
entering the tunnels an example of "legend tripping," an age-old practice
in which a group of young people investigate a storied place for themselves.
"The subterranean world is really handy to make the site of legendary
happenings," she said. Because of their hidden nature, tunnels have at
nearly every university developed a distinct mythology, she said.
At the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., she said, students call their
campus tunnels the Ho Chi Minh Trail and say they have used them to haze
first-year midshipmen.
UCLA's six miles of steam tunnels became the stamping grounds of
fraternities, partyers and adventure-seekers, if the bottles, cans and
graffiti they've left behind are any indication, said Gail Cowling,
executive officer of UCLA General Services. The university began to seal
off the tunnels in 1984 to boost security for the Olympics.
UC Riverside's 2.75 miles of tunnels, constructed in the 1950s, were known
for their own brand of pranks and revelry in the campus' early years.
The night before Halloween in 1963, a group of students used the steam
tunnels as a route to plant a prank paper-and-wire pumpkin stuffed with
ducks and chickens inside the library, said UCR spokeswoman Kris Lovekin.
But since workers installed steel doors and locks on the entrances to the
6-foot-diameter tunnels more than a decade ago, the stories have begun to fade.
"It's not like there are trap doors at the bottom of every lecture hall,"
said Jim Brown, manager of the university's television studio, housed in a
basement near a door to a tunnel, now locked. "Nowadays it's impossible to
get into any of the steam tunnels. They've gone around and changed all the
locks."
Maulik Shah, 26, crouched and crawled through Stanford's tunnels a handful
of times as an undergraduate, once using them during a game of
capture-the-flag.
In 2000, exploring the Stanford tunnels was included in the university's
alumni magazine alongside fountain hopping and scavenger hunting as one of
the top 100 things to do before graduation.
Until recently, Shah, who has documented his forays with maps and photos on
his website, received e-mails each May from graduating seniors asking for
details on how to get inside.
His visits to campus as an alumnus give some indication why the tunnel
seekers have now stopped writing.
"All the places that I used to go in are all pretty well locked up," he
said. "Maybe the tradition has just been forgotten because it's so much
harder than it used to be."
Burke, the UCI folklorist, said that with access cut off, the tunneling
ritual may fade, but the stories will not.
"The legends will still be around because they speak to this subterranean
world where strange things happen," she said.
Montano, the UCI sociology student, agrees. Knowing the tunnels exist, he
said, will always generate outlandish tales, like the rumor that they were
used to transport criminals who were being used as secret test subjects in
phrenology experiments.
And though he has never tried to enter the tunnels himself, others
apparently have.
At least two police reports this year have documented graffiti and attempts
by students to enter the tunnels.
But according to recent UCI graduate Zach Singerman, most students who set
out for the elusive tunnels usually find only the sewer system.
"College-aged kids tend to do stupid things, and it's probably not a good
idea to have them traveling under the campus," Singerman said. "But it
would be fun to go down and see them," he said of the tunnels.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
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