Bioterrorism Preparedness - Shortcomings & Clusterfuckery

Next Sunday's NYT Magazine will feature a piece on possible shortcomings (and actual clusterfuckery) in US preparedness against bioterrorism.

The Article explains why we have not yet developed a needed new Anthrax vaccine:

Five years later, the cancellation of that contract is still a matter of fierce debate in biodefense circles. Many experts say that the decision had less to do with science than politics. Scott Lilly, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, recently studied the role that lobbying may have played in VaxGen’s demise. Between 2004 and 2006, Lilly writes in a new study, the company that produced the old anthrax vaccine, which is now called Emergent BioSolutions, employed an army of lobbyists to undermine the VaxGen contract. “Each time VaxGen’s test results were less than had been hoped for,” the report says, “Emergent pounded VaxGen with a highly orchestrated campaign to overstate the problems and discourage government support of the effort.” 

[...]

General Russell, who led the early countermeasure program, told me: “It was Emergent lobbying that killed VaxGen. Period. Emergent bought the Congress. Congress killed VaxGen.” Several current officials share Russell’s view. When I asked one senior biodefense official about the lack of a new anthrax vaccine, the official nearly exploded: “Why don’t we have a second-generation anthrax vaccine? The reason is Emergent lobbying!” Even the director of Barda, Robin Robinson, acknowledged that politics played a role in the decision. “Should we have kept it? I think there’s a long debate,” he said. “They had brought in some really top-flight people in there, and Lance Gordon was really good at judging talent. Unfortunately, there was a lot of political pressure.”

Soon after the VaxGen contract failed, the company folded into another, and Emergent bought the rights to develop the new anthrax vaccine it had spent three years lobbying against. Abdun-Nabi told me his company was still trying to develop that vaccine, but critics question whether Emergent, which signed another contract this month to deliver $1.25 billion more of the old vaccine to the stockpile, is pursuing the replacement vaccine as enthusiastically as possible. “They bought the technology and buried it,” Russell says. “We are five or six years behind where we should be. We should be working on a third-generation vaccine.”

There are disagreements over how far afield we should be looking past the two main bioterror threats: smallpox and anthrax:

In fact, other than the vaccines for anthrax and smallpox, there are no vaccines in the stockpile for any other agents on the material-threat list, nor are any of those vaccines in the advanced development program, nor will any of them enter the program any time soon.

[...]

Many agents on the list, Fauci said, were a product of the cold war, when the U.S. military kept a list of “Category A” pathogens being developed by the Soviet bioweapons program. “So when the decision was made to make an investment into developing countermeasures,” he told me, “that was essentially their matrix from the beginning: these are what we know the Soviets had. We know they have stockpiles. This is what we’re going to protect against.” He mentioned the bacterium glanders, which was reportedly used by Germany in World War I and by Japan in World War II but seemed to Fauci a comparatively minor threat today. “I think the unknown threat of a mutant microbe is infinitely greater than someone coming and dropping a glanders on us!” he said. “I mean, seriously! Get real about that!”

When I mentioned Fauci’s comments to O’Toole, who oversees the biological-threat list at the Department of Homeland Security, she said he was “completely wrong” to suggest that the list is rooted in cold-war thinking. “We use current intelligence as an integral part of every material-threat determination,” O’Toole said. “I’m surprised anyone in N.I.H. would think otherwise, particularly since the details of the material-threat determination process are briefed at the White House. It does raise a troubling question about how seriously N.I.H. is engaged in the biodefense mission.”

Whether or not Fauci is right about the origins of the material-threat list, his observation that a natural outbreak is more likely than a biological attack is difficult to dispute. Each year, seasonal flu leads to about 200,000 hospitalizations and several thousand deaths in the United States. Although a biological attack could be much larger, there is no certainty that such an attack will ever happen. How to balance the unlikely but catastrophic potential of bioterror with the steady advance of natural disease is one of the most puzzling challenges for biodefense policy going forward.

To some extent, this is also a question of framework. Fundamentally, the countermeasure program is a public-health project, yet with its reliance on classified intelligence and secret-threat assessments, it is more closely aligned in many respects with the methodology of other national-security projects. Where biodefense fits into government bureaucracy will have a profound impact on its financing. In public health, the $12 billion necessary to develop new vaccines for a dozen material-threat agents can seem a towering, even absurd, figure. Within the realm of national security, the same amount represents less than a quarter of the cost of the military’s experiment with the V-22 Osprey heli-plane, or about what the U.S. will spend in Afghanistan between now and Christmas.

“We spent trillions of dollars in the cold war preparing for a potential nuclear exchange that never occurred,” says Kenneth Bernard, who was the senior biodefense official in the Clinton White House from 1998 to 2001 and then again in the Bush White House from 2002 to 2005. “We’re not spending that kind of money to prevent a bio attack because the people who work on biology are not trained to think like that. They are much more interested in dealing with the three particular strains of influenza that are in the dish this year than they are in thinking about a plague attack in 2018.”

SMC 101

SMC 101: 1) US Knew. 2) MIL Advisors Went. 3) ISR Yes.

and on the bigger story,

New tactical PSYOP tool operational day before yesterday (was supposed to be rolled out Nov 1). This much good to go, will ID when we get green light.


New tool fits seamlessly into existing PSYOP toolkit. SMC twit followers may have to twist in the wind an hour or two to get exact details


Approved for operational use (incl. detainee operations with permission of battalion commander).  Lulu.

Another Whistle Stop for the Caldwellville Express — Registan.net

Fine piece at Registan by Dan Smock. He is right about Caldwell's dog and pony show. And about the manipulation of the numbers.

And on the manip, today's NYT brings us the newest installment of "lets show progress in Afghanistan" (by dropping whole categories of attacks from the publicly released assessments.)

The real numbers are worse. We have this on the best of authority.

Some may think this is merely this generation's version of the "five-o-clock follies", and that the deception of the American citizens is being done for our own good. That would be to put a too charitable interpretation on the situation.

Everyone snickers and shrugs their shoulders at the fact that USG/MIL cannot learn shit (and that they have no institutional memory for lessons learned from past fuckups). Always they are assumed to be covered by the best of intentions. Saw the same thing in Iraq.

Nope, an established pattern like this is malfeasance (and misfeasance too, for any lawyers in the house). Clearly being influenced (even ordered) from the political level.

Not to mention that the people in that part of the world aren't buying it.


PS: In case the above sounds excessively cunty, I just meant to emphasize that there is no legitimate reason for them to pull this kind of shit. They could claim that morale operations - both of allied troops and the home front - are legitimate. Or that they are trying to influence the enemy.

But our troops mostly know the truth, and same with the enemy. This leaves the true audience for the message - the American people. Domestic morale operations today ain't like in WWII. Now they are only for CYA and to keep the $pigot flowing as long as possible.

The Plot is Kosher

Last week, a contact gave us a quick sitrep on the Quds Force/Saudi Amb allegation.

"The plot is kosher."

For a few seconds we were thinking we were off base in our impression that it was sheer bullshittery.

Until the source elaborated.

"YellowCake...IraqWMD...

Curveball...AluminumTubes ... TheBritishGovernmentHasLearned ... ", and about 5 or 6 other plums.  Laughing, we were tempted to ask him to repeat the tirade, but didn't want to be thought of as twats.

We took it as confirmation of our original thesis.

Ray McGovern has reached the same conclusion:

There used to be real pros in the CIA’s operations directorate. One — Ray Close, a longtime CIA Arab specialist and former Chief of Station in Saudi Arabia — told me on Wednesday that we ought to ask ourselves a very simple question:

"If you were an Iranian undercover operative who was under instructions to hire a killer to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, D.C., why in HELL would you consider it necessary to explain to a presumed Mexican [expletive deleted] that this murder was planned and would be paid for by a secret organization in Iran?

"Whoever concocted this tale wanted the ‘plot’ exposed … to precipitate a major crisis in relations between Iran and the United States. Which other government in the Middle East would like nothing better than to see those relations take a big step toward military confrontation?"

...

Another point on the implausibility meter is: What are the odds that Iran’s Quds force would plan an unprecedented attack in the United States, that this crack intelligence agency would trust the operation to a used-car salesman with little or no training in spycraft, that he would turn to his one contact in a Mexican drug cartel who happens to be a DEA informant, and that upon capture the car salesman would immediately confess and implicate senior Iranian officials?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to suspect that Arbabsiar might be a double-agent, recruited by some third-party intelligence agency to arrange some shady business deal regarding black-market automobiles, get some ambiguous comments over the phone from an Iranian operative, and then hand the plot to the U.S. government on a silver platter – as a way to heighten tensions between Washington and Teheran?

Perfect.

The Quds Force Plot Bullshittery Falling Apart - Already

Intel types are skeptical about the Quds Force plot story. Lets just put it this way, Justice has had more solid cases than this one.

Meanwhile, someone wishes Americans to think there is some debate as to the geopolitical outcome of our Iraq endeavor. Vacuum Is Feared as U.S. Quits Iraq, but Iran’s Deep Influence May Not Fill It .

To all of the people who believe that - by our efforts since 2003 - the U.S. has empowered a regime in Iraq that is in bed with Iran, we are served a corrective by the governor of Najaf:

"Before 2003, 90 percent of Najaf people liked Iranians,” said the governor, Adnan al-Zurufi, who has lived in Chicago and Michigan and holds American citizenship. “Now, 90 percent hate them."

A slight qualification is proffered:

But winning over the clerics will not be easy. Certainly, some officials, including Mr. Zurufi — who was appointed governor of Najaf in 2004 by L. Paul Bremer III, then the top American administrator in Iraq, and later elected to the post in 2009 — are pro-American, but the clerical establishment, which is less receptive to American influence, wields more power over the people.


Not only did the Americans refuse a request by Mr. Zurufi and other officials to open a consulate in Najaf, the State Department’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Najaf actually shut down earlier than scheduled this summer after local clerical pressure, particularly from officials loyal to Mr. Sadr, who spends most of his time in Iran

The above NYT piece will have served its purpose if it supplies a useful talking point in support of the "we won in Iraq" crowd - that the Iraqis hate Iran. Fair enough.

But wait, maybe everything is not peachy after all. Iraq, siding with Iran, sends essential aid to Syria’s Assad.

More than six months after the start of the Syrian uprising, Iraq is offering key moral and financial support to the country’s embattled president, undermining a central U.S. policy objective and raising fresh concerns that Iraq is drifting further into the orbit of an American arch rival — Iran.

The timing for a pressure op against Iran couldn't be better.

If Iran was gonna play kinetic amateur hour in Washington D.C., why would they have gone to the trouble of releasing our "hikers"? A "power struggle" in Tehran? (Not to mention that there are softer places closer to the Middle East for them to pull this kind of shit.)

And do they no longer have their proxies? Or their tradecraft?

Nope, bullshittery is bullshittery any way you cut it.

Can't wait for the first mention of "chatter."

Overclassification Clusterf*ck

A piece on the overclassification clusterfuck readied for today's NYT.

No wonder nobody - some exceptions notwithstanding ;-)  - can predict shit when it comes to international and national security matters.

Everything has devolved into overclassification, bullshittery and related shortcomings. The proof is in the pudding.

Maybe our technology will come to our rescue and make policy decisions for us.  Cant do much worse.

Adm. Mullen’s Words On PAK Under Scrutiny -- SMC Avenged

After the UBL raid, we've been almost alone re the US-PAK cooperation angle. For SMC, the UBL raid itself was the big tell (amongst several others).

Just recently Dexter Filkins (he of the flawed piece from two weeks ago) checked in aping the narrative we've been hearing so much of lately. (ref SMC tweet)

Then the dying Christopher Hitchens hopped aboard for a ride on the shall we attack PAK? bandwagon.(ref SMC tweet)

PAK ain't a "loyal ally" - given, but are more helpful than dudes know. (ref SMC tweet) The usual tards have morphed the necessary operational obfuscation into passionate political run-amokism that hasn't been helping matters

Happy me waking up to this piece in today's Post  SMC, thou art avenged!

(High-levels falling all over themselves trying to deal with the "chatter" bullshittery, too.)

Adultz realized that the tards were digging a big hOle for USA if their BS narrative was gonna be carried to its logical conclusion.

It don't get much better than this. (Though they are only walking back the story as much as they can without losing much of what remains of their dwindling credibility)

"U.S. officials said Mullen was unaware of the cellphones until after he testified."

Ho ho ho.  He would have been briefed if it was true.  More accurate would be to say "Mullen was unaware that amateur hour was gonna involve 'chatter' bullshittery."

Its not like we haven't tried to educate them about this sort of thing.

Mullen's key involvement in amateur hour frolics here cannot be good sign.  The level of deception may have gotten out of control.  Subterfuge in furthering an op like we discussed elsewhere a few days ago is one thing, but feeding into the media circus/political spectatorism to the degree that they did is quite another.

Black Market Uniforms? Anyone? Going Once, Going Twice....

U.S. military officials have grown increasingly worried about the threat posed by militants who have infiltrated Afghan security forces to launch attacks on NATO personnel.

One intrepid bunch has been saying this since the time when USG was denying it.  Black market uniforms, anyone?

And it's kinda hilarious how we are portraying insurgent attacks in Kabul as a sign of weakness, or failing that, as a sign that Pak is tipping the scales. Odd that. Most analysts would argue that such a reach into an adversary's capital is a negative metric. When facts don't fit the narrative.

Oh, and an obit, Cicely Angleton, poet and CIA official’s spouse  (He used to say that she thought he worked for the Post Office. Wasn't true, of course.)

Crucial Piece Re Our Slow-Motion Nightmare Just Hit The Wire

The Journalist and the Spies: The murder of a reporter who exposed Pakistan’s secrets

Dexter Filkins has presented a piece which is just chock full of institutional imperative (from several angles).

The circumstances surrounding Syed Shahzad's murder were so special that we kinda figured the history books would have to deal with it. Too frickin sensitive for any shorter time frame. We were overly optimistic. When narrative can be furthered, sensitivities go out the window.

His work was sometimes inaccurate, but it held up often enough so that other journalists followed his leads. At other times, he seemed to spare the intelligence services from the most damning details in his notebooks.
Ho ho ho. (Not really funny at all, just reminds us of several people.)


Islamabad was full of conspiracy theories about the Abbottabad raid: ... [that] Kiyani and Pasha had secretly helped the Americans with the raid.

[J]ust after the Abbottabad raid, Shahzad published a report claiming that the Pakistani leadership had known that the Americans were planning a raid of some sort, and had even helped. What the Pakistanis didn’t know, Shahzad wrote, was that the person the Americans were looking for was bin Laden.

Hadn't seen his story [which gets an important detail wrong], but can add some color. There were two separate raids. Two separate targets. Conducted within a fortnight or so of each other (UBL second). That's why we asserted immediately after UBL raid that we have done this before in PAK. PAK command knew all about the deepest incursions ahead of time. Not to mention that there were certain arrangements in place since around 2001 that PAK would assist in any UBL raid. And full deniability was to be enforced.

Now shit gets serious (as if the previous was chopped liver) ...


Shahzad’s journalism may not have been the sole reason that he was targeted. I.S.I. officials may have become convinced that Shahzad was working for a foreign intelligence agency. This could have elevated him in the eyes of the military from a troublesome reporter who deserved a beating to a foreign agent who needed to be killed.
...

There is no evidence that Shahzad was working for any foreign intelligence agency, but mere suspicion on this front could have imperilled him. “What is the final thing that earns Shahzad a red card—the final thing that tips him over from being a nuisance to an enemy?” a Western researcher in Islamabad said to me. “If someone concluded that he was a foreign agent, and that the stories he was putting out were part of a deliberate effort to defame the I.S.I. and undermine the I.S.I.’s carefully crafted information strategy—if anyone in the I.S.I. concluded that, then Saleem would be in grave danger.”
...

Given the brief time that passed between Shahzad’s death and Kashmiri’s, a question inevitably arose: Did the Americans find Kashmiri on their own? Or did they benefit from information obtained by the I.S.I. during its detention of Shahzad? If so, Shahzad’s death would be not just a terrible example of Pakistani state brutality; it would be a terrible example of the collateral damage sustained in America’s war on terror.

If the C.I.A. killed Kashmiri using information extracted from Shahzad, it would not be the first time that the agency had made use of a brutal interrogation. In 2002, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an Al Qaeda operative held by the Egyptian government, made statements, under torture, suggesting links between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden; this information was used to help justify the invasion of Iraq.
...

On May 27th, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Islamabad, and she presented to Pakistani leaders a list of high-value targets. According to ABC News, Kashmiri was on the list. That morning, Shahzad had published the article naming Kashmiri as the perpetrator of the attack on the Mehran base—broadcasting, once again, his connection to the militant leader.

As if to make amends for this rather inflammatory suggestion, Filkins then forwards what is clearly institutional spin from the IC (ours this time):

As with nearly all drone strikes, the precise number and nature of the casualties were impossible to verify. The high-level American official told me that the “tribal elders” were actually insurgent leaders. But he offered another reason that the Pakistani officials were so inflamed: “It turns out there were some I.S.I. guys who were there with the insurgent leaders. We killed them, too.” (The I.S.I. denied that its agents were present.)

What were I.S.I. agents doing at a meeting of insurgent commanders? The American official said that he did not know. [That last bit cinched it as a community info product. LMAO]

Lots of other interesting stuff in this long article, including a glimpse of a metanarrative involving the wider regional conflict.

Our business has always been to poke at metanarratives, just (usually) not explicitly identifying who are the targets or even which metanarrative is in play.

Insufferably In The Lead (And Duly Embarrassed By It)

Good piece.

We seem to be perpetually a good couple of months ahead of everyone else on the US/PAK story. (Certainly no good reason for such antics.)

Back before UBL raid (and during the Davis incident), we were nearly alone on the tensions angle, expulsion threats,etc.

After the UBL raid, now we are alone on the cooperation angle.

It is clear that the whole PAKs didn't know about the raid narrative is the cover story intended to save PAK govt face. The usual tards have morphed the necessary operational obfuscation into passionate political run-amokism that cannot help matters.

Everybody who knows the truth is covering his/her ass.

Serious Drama In WikiLeaks Land

Serious drama is being concocted in WL land.

Remember JA's insurance file? Well the media is going apeshit about it today - apparently they have just learned of it (they are thinking JA just recently put it online, and accidentally at that).

The real news is that the PW for the insurance file is supposedly now floating around.  Spegiel and WaPo and others are reporting about this - really poor reporting. We have some doubts about the PW allegation. Today's bullshittery is really smelly. We have good reasons for saying this. Hint: DDB has his fingerprints on the story.

Last Friday, the official WL dump suddenly grew to 142,978 cables (out of 251,000).  IOW, 120,000 or so just got released Friday.

The maxim that there are no coincidences is inviolate, but WL is officially denying the PW has leaked, so why then are they releasing the cables in size just at this moment.

Double-Gaming It -- CIA and ISI

David I. hints at what we have been saying for awhile.  Things between Pak and US intel (at least at the highest levels) aren't really as dire as advertized. 


Also, FOX News really pushing it.  (From a few days ago, see last video in the article.  LMAO) The narrative is so audacious it is brilliant. They really do know their audience. The framing of Murdoch as victim will resonate with their viewers various complexes about persecution, etc.


Gotta split for a few weeks.

Ahmed Wali Karzai’s Killer Taliban Foe

Can you imagine what this would look like to President Karzai if he was a conspirato​rially-ori​ented nutjob? ;-)

Ahmed Wali Karzai’s killer had been a Taliban foe

Mohammad also met with U.S. and British military officials, and would be introduced to the new commanders when they rotated into Kandahar, the relatives said. Two of Mohammad’s brothers-in-law said they work as guards at a Central Intelligence Agency base in Kandahar — situated on a hillside at the former home of Taliban leader Mohammad Omar — as part of the agency-run paramilitary group called the Kandahar Strike Force.

These relatives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mohammad was not a member of the strike force, which Karzai helped recruit to fight the Taliban, but that he shared intelligence with U.S. officials and arrested hundreds of insurgents over the years.

“If there was something Sardar could do that the Americans couldn’t, they would ask him to do it,” Malik said. “If American forces were suspicious of someone, they were asking Sardar to make the arrest.”

(Thank goodness Hamid Karzai is a solid citizen, or else we might just have more problems with him than we do already.)

Not Trying To Be Droll: Kerry -- Next SecState

Sunday's NYT magazine is running a long feature piece on the next SecState - John Kerry.  Lots of inadvertently funny bits.

Kerry insists that Assad’s true interests require him to shift to the West, which in turn require him to make peace with Israel. But was Assad really prepared to pursue his interests if they required a break with Iran and an acceptance of Israel? The fact that he never did so, and that he ultimately turned on his own people rather than permitting measured dissent, may show that he lives in a more Darwinian world than do those who seek to entice him out of it. Kerry also maintains that Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared to make real sacrifices for peace. But there’s scant evidence that this is so. Relationships are very important to diplomacy, but it’s possible to set too much store by them.

Article goes to great pains to maintain fiction that Pakistan at a high level did not know about Bin Laden raid beforehand (even embellishing a contentious Kerry dinner meeting with two of the Pakistanis who very likely had been informed).

Practically everything is an uphill battle in Congress these days. The Foreign Relations Committee has attracted some of the most wild-eyed members of the G.O.P.; during the immensely protracted, though ultimately successful, negotiations over the treaty with Russia on nuclear reductions last fall, Kerry needed even more forbearance than he had lavished on Karzai.

The Unbearable Lightness of Iraq

NYT is preparing a piece for tomorrow's print edition about the Iraq clusterfuck that states that the PR war is crucial to success (or lack therof) of the US endeavor.

To make this palatable to the citizenry in Iraq and the United States, the public relations game is to draft language that is politically acceptable yet obscures the reality that American soldiers will continue to face an enemy, will need to defend themselves and will almost certainly continue to die.

Also, article says that a US col. got pissed off and went off the narrative by issuing his own press release about a probably routine miscarriage of justice there. Embassy wants him to STFU. LMAO.

The fact that we have enabled an Iraqi regime to come to power that is antithetical to US interests is lost on the "we won the Iraq War" crowd.

Serious Business -- RDX/HMX Implants

Body Bombs Added to America’s Air Security Concerns

If this were true, then NFW would we be seeing this:

Representatives for several European airlines said that they had learned about the new security recommendations only from a reporter’s inquiry.

[We're talking about Air France, KLM, Lufthansa and British Airways - not just some random fly-by-night commuter lines - as well as BAA, which operates Heathrow Airport, and Airports Council International Europe being in the dark about this threat.]

Although some slippage in the timely dissemination of warnings is not unheard of in the intel business, the smart money here is that bullshittery is afoot.

Of course, this all could just be water-softener.
 
Can't help suspecting that they are also paving the way for more contractor boondoggling. Money seems to expand to fill any gaps in coverage of the most lunatic terror threat fantasy that the most cracked mountebank can pull out of his yuck-pasty ass.

They are starting to credit "chatter" (see SMC Maxim) from AQAP for the "warning". Serious business. LMAO

My Chicago -- Flying Long In and Longer Over

There's something powerful about flying in to America from long abroad.

Take Chicago -- minutes upon minutes approaching half hour of warehouses, suburbs, saturated infrastracture, more suburbs, more warehouses, blue-specky backyard swimming pools, and then a landing still far delayed beyond what any wonderful anticipation could reasonably inflict.This is my home (not 'Homeland')

We're supposed to shit our pants and protectively devour 'selves because a few clustering and persisting mofos dropped a speck of our buildings decade ago. Anyone bother to take measure of how many buildings we still have in reserve?

Alas, too much estrogen in our tap water.

Back to brave and composed, for no other reason than that we reasonably owe taciturn composure to our grandmothers' fallen neighbors and to those quietest of surviving persisters -- both then and now.

Sudden, silent, and violent burial upon our foreign enemies. Calamitous devastation upon our wailing domestic alarmists.

What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing? --Gravity's Rainbow

Sodom Hussein -- An Ailes Product?

Roger Ailes’ Secret Nixon-Era Blueprint for Fox News.

Story based on docs from Nixon and GHW Bush Libraries.
 
Incomplete files from Bush I admin, but I'm beginning to think that GHW Bush's curious new pronunciation of Saddam as "Sodom" immediately post-Kuwait invasion of 1990 - after years of saying it correctly - was not a helpful suggestion from the boyz (as I have always assumed), but was from Ailes.