USN intelligence chief has no access to classified info

[Bilge_Rat]

well, this..is..interesting:


For more than two years, the Navy’s intelligence chief has been stuck with a major handicap: He’s not allowed to know any secrets.

Vice Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch has been barred from reading, seeing or hearing classified information since November 2013, when the Navy learned from the Justice Department that his name had surfaced in a giant corruption investigation (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/navy-captain-enters-guilty-plea-in-massive-bribery-case/2015/01/15/b09688ba-9ced-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html) involving a foreign defense contractor and scores of Navy personnel.

Worried that Branch was on the verge of being indicted, Navy leaderssuspended (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/two-admirals-face-probe-in-navy-bribery-scheme/2013/11/08/d2dc063a-48d8-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html) his access to classified materials. They did the same to one of his deputies, Rear Adm. Bruce F. Loveless, the Navy’s director of intelligence operations.

More than 800 days later, neither Branch nor Loveless has been charged. But neither has been cleared, either. Their access to classified information remains blocked.

Although the Navy transferred Loveless to a slightly less sensitive post, it kept Branch in charge of its intelligence division. That has resulted in an awkward arrangement, akin to sending a warship into battle with its skipper stuck onshore.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/01/27/the-admiral-in-charge-of-navy-intelligence-has-not-been-allowed-to-see-military-secrets-for-years/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_navy-820pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

[vienna]

Ah, yes...a prime example of "military intelligence"... :haha:



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[Platapus]

Sometimes you just gotta shake your head ruefully. :nope:

[vienna]

This incident, and the current re-surfacing of the Clinton email issue, got me to wondering: how is the dissemination of intelligence handled when a person with no intelligence background or, for that matter, clearance, is elected or appointed to an office where they will be privy to and expected to act on intelligence of an extremely sensitive and potentially harmful nature if disclosed. Let's face it; there are very few of the candidates currently running for any office one would expect to get the sort of top-level clearance given to those professionals in the intelligence community if they were subjected to the same sort of background checks and vetting given to those professionals. I mean, anyone could theoretically become President, but does just winning the office automatically make that person qualified to see, act upon and possibly disseminate highly classified intelligence? Do the CIA, NSA, and other alphabet organizations limit or filter the data presented to the President and, if so, who makes the call? What are the dangers if such filtering is tainted by political partisan-ism or vested self interest to retain control and management of the intelligence? Do we really believe any President has, since the advent of modern intelligence gathering, been given the full, undiluted, true state of intelligence operations or knowledge? It would seem, perhaps, who the occupant of the office is of very little matter when it comes to the ability to make decisions about national security; the decisions that do come are apparently based on a very "need to know" set of data and, often, the person who really needs to know, the President, may only really know part of the story...


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[Platapus]

Awesome questions and ones worthy of serious answers

This incident, and the current re-surfacing of the Clinton email issue, got me to wondering: how is the dissemination of intelligence handled when a person with no intelligence background or, for that matter, clearance, is elected or appointed to an office where they will be privy to and expected to act on intelligence of an extremely sensitive and potentially harmful nature if disclosed.

A good question.

There are some positions, especially congress, when simply the fact of being elected grants one to a level of classified information. Few people in the IC are happy with this, but it is the way of democracies.

Upon being selected to specific committees in congress, however, the individual does have to go through a background investigation, which is primarily in name only in that no congress person has ever been denied access to highly classified material when they have been politically appointed to a committee. The investigation is primarily educational in nature to help the congress person understand how to handle it.

History has demonstrated how well this works.... in most cases it works well. In some cases it does not work well. In any case it is difficult in a democratically elected body to make the statement, "Yes, the people choose you, but the government does not trust you." All the more reason people really need to understand who they are voting for beyond the letter after their name on the ballot.

Let's face it; there are very few of the candidates currently running for any office one would expect to get the sort of top-level clearance given to those professionals in the intelligence community if they were subjected to the same sort of background checks and vetting given to those professionals. I mean, anyone could theoretically become President, but does just winning the office automatically make that person qualified to see, act upon and possibly disseminate highly classified intelligence?

Yes. Unfortunately, the answer to this critical and complicated question is simply yes. Once they get elected, the POTUS would have the access. In theory, the POTUS is held accountable for obeying the same laws as the rest of the minions.

Do the CIA, NSA, and other alphabet organizations limit or filter the data presented to the President and, if so, who makes the call?

Yes the information is filtered, but not for the reason you fear. Simply due to the vast quantity of information, the POTUS is limited in the Presidential Daily Brief (and myriad other briefings) to what is presented. The POTUS is truly a CEO and has a very large staff of Intel people working on what is put in front of the POTUS.

Each POTUS, periodically publishes down a list of what he is interested in, and the President's staff coordinates with the POTUS with their list they publish up stating what they think the POTUS needs to be interested.

Like any CEO, the POTUS makes very few decisions concerning the IC. He reviews and gives general guidance (and in some cases specific guidance.

The bottom line is that the POTUS sees what the POTUS needs to see and little else. If this were a Hollywood movie, it would be so the POTUS has "Plausible Deniability". In real life it is because POTUS has about 26 hours of stuff to cram in to a normal 18 hour day.

What are the dangers if such filtering is tainted by political partisan-ism or vested self interest to retain control and management of the intelligence? Do we really believe any President has, since the advent of modern intelligence gathering, been given the full, undiluted, true state of intelligence operations or knowledge? It would seem, perhaps, who the occupant of the office is of very little matter when it comes to the ability to make decisions about national security; the decisions that do come are apparently based on a very "need to know" set of data and, often, the person who really needs to know, the President, may only really know part of the story...

There really is no significant danger in filtering what the POTUS sees. It would be a rare thing for a president to be involved in a time dominant decision by himself. Even on 911, most of what the government agencies did, they did independently of the POTUS. The POTUS simply can't micromanage the government like that.

As for the "political partisan-ism" concern, you will be happy to learn that once you scrape off the crust of political appointees, the government is surprisingly non-partisan. While the government is chock full of people and people have their own individual political leanings, that is left at the door.

With all the reviews involved, the chances of information being filtered solely due to political purposes, from the POTUS are very slim and a fast way to end a career.

The POTUS has the President's Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), which is an independent element within the Executive Branch, which in a non-partisan role advises the POTUS on what is and ain't important. There are many other reviewing and advising bodies lower down on the food chain.

It is a complicated and imperfect system, but it works and works well. IN what would make an excellent straight line for a joke, Intelligence is only a tiny part of what the POTUS deals with every day.

I hope this answered your excellent questions and satisfied some of your concerns.

If you have more specific questions, please ask. The more people know about how their government works the better informed citizens they will be.

[vienna]

Thanks for the response. This is something that came out in the press about a week ago:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/iraq-war-wmds-donald-rumsfeld-new-report-213530

This is what prompted my questions; it seems there is a great possibility for someone, somewhere on the intelligence food chain to sway the ultimate decision by POTUS by just burying data. In the case in the article, it didn't really matter; Bush was going to put the US into a war in Iraq no matter what anyone found about Iraq's alleged WMDs. As they say. truth is the first casualty of war...


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