Tag: pentagon

INSIDE THE PENTAGON’S NEW “PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT” OFFICE TO COUNTER DISINFORMATION

NOT LONG AFTER the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched what it called the Office of Strategic Influence, which would seek to “counter the enemy’s perception management” in the so-called war on terror. But it quickly became clear that the office, operating under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, would be managing those perceptions with its own disinformation.

As the New York Times reported at the time, its work was to “provide news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion.” In the nascent Internet age, observers worried the propaganda could boomerang back on Americans.

“The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad,” the Times reported in 2004. “But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets.”

Now, two decades later, “perception management” is once again becoming a central focus for the national security state. On March 1, 2022, the Pentagon established a new office with similar goals to the one once deemed too controversial to remain open. Very little has been made public about the effort, which The Intercept learned about through a review of budget documents and an internal memo we obtained. This iteration is called the Influence and Perception Management Office, or IPMO, according to the memo, which was produced by the office for an academic institution, and its responsibilities include overseeing and coordinating the various counter-disinformation efforts being conducted by the military, which can include the U.S.’s own propaganda abroad.

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THE PENTAGON USES VIDEO GAMES TO TEACH “SECURITY EXCELLENCE.” YOU CAN PLAY THEM TOO.

IN THE 1983 movie “WarGames,” a young hacker played by Matthew Broderick inadvertently accesses a fictional supercomputer belonging to the U.S. military. Before realizing he has found a system the North American Aerospace Defense Command uses for war simulations, he searches for computer games. The list he gets back starts with classic games like checkers and bridge, but to his surprise, it also includes games called “Guerrilla Engagement” and “Theaterwide Biotoxic and Chemical Warfare.”

Turns out the Department of Defense likes to play computer games in real life too.

More than 40 “security awareness” games are available for anyone to play on the website of the Center for Development of Security Excellence, or CDSE, a directorate within the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, the largest security agency within the U.S. government. The DCSA, which refers to itself as “America’s Gatekeeper,” specializes in security of government personnel and infrastructure as well as counterintelligence and insider threat detection. (The Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The games range from crossword puzzles and word searches about how to identify an insider threat, to games with more peculiar titles like “Targeted Violence” and “The Adventures of Earl Lee Indicator.” The trove of games looks like an artifact from the late ’90s: game titles announced in WordArt, award badges that look designed with Microsoft Word, “Matrix”-esque backgrounds of falling numbers, and stock photos (some still watermarked).

Some of the games themselves are presented in formats prone to security vulnerabilities. For example, some look like they were made using freely available PowerPoint magic eight ball templates, despite the file format’s potential for containing malware. Playing the magic eight ball games also requires downloading and opening files, exposing players to potentially malicious attachments. Heightening this risk, it appears not all the games have a carefully guarded provenance: The metadata in a magic eight ball game called “Unauthorized Disclosure,” for instance, indicates that the file was originally stored in a personal Dropbox folder.

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U.S. military is tracking another mysterious balloon

The U.S. military is tracking a mysterious balloon that flew over American soil, but it’s not clear what it is or whom it belongs to, according to three U.S. officials. 

The object flew across portions of Hawaii but did not go over any sensitive areas, the officials said.

The U.S. military has been tracking it since late last week and has determined that it poses no threat to aerial traffic or national security and is not communicating signals, one official said.

It’s not clear if it’s a weather balloon or something else, the official said, adding that the U.S. could still shoot it down if it nears land.

The object, which does not appear to have maneuverability, is moving slowly toward Mexico, the officials said.

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With Pentagon Leak, the Press Had Their Source and Ate Him Too

TRACING THE CONCEPT of homo sacer from antiquity to modern life, philosopher Giorgio Agamben cites the ancient Roman lexicographer Festus, who defined the term as someone “whom the people have judged on account of a crime. It is not permitted to sacrifice this man, yet he who kills him will not be condemned for homicide.” Homo sacer is thus an outlaw who is free to be pursued by vigilante lynch mobs but who, crucially, cannot be martyred. The mass media’s treatment of the alleged Pentagon leaker appears to have taken this conceit to heart, codifying him as a justifiable target for persecution, to be “tracked” and “hunt[ed] down.”

Over and over, the mainstream press has employed a rhetoric of exclusion, stripping the leaker bare of any protections that might be afforded to a whistleblower. He is not, they tell us ad nauseum, an Edward Snowden or a Chelsea Manning. “It does not seem to involve a principled whistleblower, calling attention to wrongdoing or a coverup,” according to a Washington Post editorial. The “far-right” is incorrectly calling him a whistleblower, claims the New York Times. This view lets the outlet chastise those who attribute different motives to the alleged leaker, Jack Teixeira, while simultaneously distancing itself from the “far-right,” despite its own notably pro-law enforcement slant.

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Ex-FBI agents accuse top CIA, FBI officials of 9/11 coverup; CIA said to use Saudis, others for illegal domestic spy operations

Weeks before 9/11, an angry New York FBI agent nearly “came over the table” at CIA officials who were blocking him from obtaining intelligence about two al Qaeda terrorists who would soon take part in hijacking an American Airlines passenger jet and crashing it into the Pentagon.

“Someone is going to die,” the counterterrorism agent wrote in a bitter email shortly after the 2001 encounter.

That astonishing account, and many others, are contained in a sworn declaration by Donald Canestraro, an investigator for the Office of Military Commissions, part of the Department of Defense’s Military Commissions Defense Organization. It is dated July 20, 2021.

Canestraro said in a brief interview with Florida Bulldog that he is part of the defense team for Guantanamo detainee Ammar al-Baluchi, a Pakistani citizen who is awaiting trial with four other men accused of planning the 9/11 attacks. His declaration includes the results of his interviews with 11 ex-FBI agents, 2 ex-CIA agents, a CNN investigative journalist, former deputy National Security Advisor Richard Clarke and former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), co-chair of Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11.

The 22-page declaration, first obtained by the national security website Spytalk, is not confidential, but rather it’s marked CUI – Controlled Unclassified Information. The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency defines CUI as “government created or owned information that requires safeguarding or dissemination controls consistent with applicable laws, regulations and government wide policies.”

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No, Saudi Arabia did NOT do 9/11

The bombshell 911 news this past week, is that a freshly-published court filing from Jul 2021, has revealed at least two of the 19 alleged “hijackers” may have been recruited by the CIA.

Now this isn’t exactly “news”, after all it has long since been established that the CIA, FBI and/or any other US alphabet agencies simply must have been involved. It couldn’t have happened without their involvement.

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, the new release doesn’t go that far. Instead, the testimony from Donald C Canestraro Declaration – former lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions – discusses the “intelligence failures that led to 9/11”, while focusing mainly on the “hijackers” and their backgrounds.

According to a report in Grayzone, the court filing relies on anonymous testimony from “high-ranking CIA and FBIA officials”:

…the filing is a 21-page declaration by Don Canestraro, a lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions, the legal body overseeing the cases of 9/11 defendants. It summarizes classified government discovery disclosures, and private interviews he conducted with anonymous high-ranking CIA and FBI officials.

That should be a red flag, right there. Rather like Sy Hersh’s recent “revelations” on Nord Stream 2, any use of “anonymous insider sources” should always set off your internal bullshit alarm. It’s more likely to be a limited hangout than anything else.

In fact, any discussion of the “hijackers” at all should engage your inner sceptic.

Reality check: The hijackers’ names were supplied by the FBI. Virtually everything we know about those men came from US intelligence sources or the 9/11 Commission Report.

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PENTAGON REQUESTS $36 MILLION FOR HAVANA SYNDROME

HOUSE SPEAKER KEVIN McCarthy’s debt limit bill unveiled Wednesday would slash $130 billion from a broad range of domestic programs, including clean-energy subsidies and student loan forgiveness. But one thing the bill would not cut is the military, which last month requested an $842 billion budget.

Buried in the Pentagon’s sprawling budget request is an ask for at least $36 million to respond to Havana syndrome, the mysterious symptoms alleged by U.S. spies and diplomats. Initially blamed on microwave weapons wielded by foreign powers like Russia, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded there is “no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or collection device that is causing” the symptoms — opening the possibility that they may be psychogenic in nature.

The amount represents an increase of $2.1 million over the previous fiscal year and “ensures that individuals affected by anomalous health incidents receive timely and comprehensive health care and treatment,” according to the Defense Health Program’s proposed operation and maintenance budget, released on March 13. “Anomalous health incidents,” or AHIs, is the U.S. government’s term for Havana syndrome, named after the CIA officers and diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba who, in 2016, reported symptoms like headaches, nausea, and hearing loud noises. Since then, U.S. Embassy personnel who served in other countries have reportedly been affected, including China, Colombia, France, Georgia, India, Poland, Serbia, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

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Orb-Shaped UFOs Seen Over Iraq In Stunning Video Released By Pentagon

The US Pentagon has released video of an orb-shaped UFO flying over Iraq. All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office director Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick explains at a hearing of the Senate subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on April 19, 2023.

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Pentagon “Leaks”: 5 ways to tell REAL from FAKE

We promised a longer take on the Pentagon “leaks”, and here it goes. Regular readers will probably be familiar with my view on leaked documents in general, but if you’re not allow me to quote my own 2019 article on the (absurd) “Afghanistan papers”:

An awful lot of modern “leaks” are no such thing. They are Orwellian exercises in controlling the conversation […] carefully making sure the “establishment” and the “alternative” are joined in the middle, controlled from the same source.

That’s not to say ALL “leaks” are automatically and ubiquitously narrative control exercises, clearly some are real…but it’s usually pretty easy to tell them apart. In fact here’s a little checklist.

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What We Know About Jack Teixeira, Accused Of Involvement In Classified Documents Leak

A 21-year-old has been taken into custody for allegedly being involved in the leak of secret U.S. military documents.

Jack Teixeira of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was arrested on April 13 at a home in southern Massachusetts, about 18 miles east of Providence, Rhode Island.

Here’s what we know about Teixeira.

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