person:james r. clapper jr.

Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA 10/06/2013

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Booz Allen Grew Rich on Government Contracts - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/us/booz-allen-grew-rich-on-government-contracts.html
#privatisation #porte_tournante et #conflit_d’intérêt
Edward J. Snowden’s employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, has become one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the United States almost exclusively by serving a single client: the government of the United States.
...
As evidence of the company’s close relationship with government, the Obama administration’s chief intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., is a former Booz Allen executive. The official who held that post in the Bush administration, John M. McConnell, now works for Booz Allen.
“The national security apparatus has been more and more privatized and turned over to contractors,” said Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group that studies federal government contracting. “This is something the public is largely unaware of, how more than a million private contractors are cleared to handle highly sensitive matters.”
It has gone so far, Ms. Brian said, that even the process of granting security clearances is often handled by contractors, allowing companies to grant government security clearances to private sector employees.
Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA
- Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA 10/06/2013
  
  Au train où ça va on risque de voir un jour le PDG de Philip Morris prendre le poste de secrétaire du département de la santé et vice-versa.
  
  Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA
- Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA 10/06/2013
  
  Booz Allen Statement on Reports of Leaked Information
  ▻http://www.boozallen.com/media-center/press-releases/48399320/statement-reports-leaked-information-060913
  June 9, 2013
  Booz Allen can confirm that Edward Snowden, 29, has been an employee of our firm for less than 3 months, assigned to a team in Hawaii. News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm. We will work closely with our clients and authorities in their investigation of this matter.
  
  Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA
- Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA 10/06/2013
  
  US security focus shifts to private sector experts - FT.com
  ▻http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9cc73438-d1f1-11e2-9336-00144feab7de.html
  Just as the Iraq war prompted a series of controversies about the role that private companies such as Blackwater were playing in assisting the military, the NSA revelations are casting a light on the close ties and revolving doors between private and public that characterise the intelligence business.
  ...
  The intelligence sector makes up around one quarter of Booz Allen Hamilton’s business, and the company has developed extremely close ties with many of the US intelligence agencies.
  ...
  “I worked as a contractor for six years myself, so I think I have a good understanding of the contribution they have made and continue to make,” Mr Clapper said at his 2010 confirmation hearing for the DNI position. Their expanded role was “in some ways a testimony to the ingenuity, innovation and capability of our contractor base”.
  ...
  The expansion in the intelligence sector has also led to a sharp increase in the number of people inside government who have access to top secret information. A 2010 Washington Post investigation calculated that 265,000 of the 854,000 people with top-secret clearances work for private organisations. The number of people who have access to classified information is believed to be more than 4m, which some experts believe has made leaks much more likely.
  “Everybody agrees that there is [sic] too many secrets being created by the system these days and too may people with access to them,” says William Leonard, a former Pentagon official who helped manage the classification system.
  The rapid expansion in private intelligence contractors helps explain why an individual like Mr Snowden, who claimed in an interview with The Guardian newspaper to have not graduated from high school, could have won such a sensitive security clearance at a young age. ...
  All the US’s big military contractors – led by Lockheed Martin, the largest – operate separate arms offering the US military a range of services, from managing air command systems to basic computing facilities such as making laptop computers more robust for use in combat zones. However, because contracts for most services are short term, they have been among the first to suffer from spending cuts. Many of the companies are hoping that the investment by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies in cyber security will cushion some of the blow from the other budget cuts.
  
  Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA
- Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA 10/06/2013
  
  Les marchands d’armes souhaitent une promotion de la « cyber-sécurité » pour compenser la baisse de leurs chiffres d’affaires écrit ci-dessus le FT.
  Obama ne demande qu’à rendre service
  ►http://seenthis.net/messages/146385
  ... une directive signée par Barack Obama où figure une liste de cibles potentielle de #cyber-attaques contre des pays étrangers (...) [et] daté[e] du 20 octobre 2012, vante les mérites des « Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) » susceptible d’offrir « les capacité uniques et non conventionnelles susceptibles de faire avancer les objectifs nationaux américains à travers le monde ».
  
  Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA
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Avarende @avarende 15/04/2013

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Syrie. Perception américaine des affrontements entre « extrémistes » et « modérés » en Syrie rapportée par le Washington Post. Accent mis sur le Front al-Nusra (déjà inscrit sur la liste des organisations terroristes par les Etats Unis) et sur al-Qaïda. Constat (pour le déplorer ?) que les « modérés » ne reçoivent pas autant d’armes que les « extrémistes ». Regret chez certains que le Président Obama continue de croire à une transition politique négociée avec le régime d’Assad.
A muddled plan for the clear danger in Syria By Editorial Board,
Apr 13, 2013 08:50 PM EDT
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-muddled-plan-for-the-clear-danger-in-syria/2013/04/13/bf0e4c2e-a38a-11e2-82bc-511538ae90a4_story.html
“The Washington Post Published: April 13

SENIOR OBAMA administration officials offered a stark and even frightening picture of developments in Syria in testimony to Congress on Thursday. March, they said, was the deadliest month yet for that country’s civil war, with more than 6,000 people killed; almost one-quarter of Syria’s 22 million people have been driven from their homes. “What started out as a peaceful demand for dignity and freedom,” said Acting Assistant Secretary of State A. Elizabeth Jones, “has become one of the most devastating conflicts of the 21st century.”
Worse, the intelligence community’s assessment is that the war will not end even if the regime of Bashar al-Assad falls. “The most likely scenario,” said Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., is that for “at least a year, a year and a half, there would be continued inter-sectoral competition and fighting.” It will matter greatly who wins, since, as Robert S. Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, put it, “there is a real competition under way now between extremists and moderates.”
(…) Mr. Ford said that the administration was still banking on “a negotiated political transition,” in which Mr. Assad voluntarily steps down. But as Mr. Clapper said, the intelligence community foresees the “most likely scenario” as a messy fight among factions, not a brokered handover. (…) Mr. Ford said that “we need to weigh in on behalf of those who promote freedom and tolerance.” Yet Ms. Jones reiterated that the administration was opposed to providing “lethal support” to any Syrian forces — notwithstanding the weapons and fighters that Mr. Ford said were being supplied by Iran or the growing military capability of al-Qaeda described by Mr. Clapper. Translation: It’s vital that Syria’s moderate forces win, but we won’t counter the military support the extremists are getting.
Senators from both parties expressed exasperation with this non-policy, but not as much exasperation as President Obama’s stubborn passivity deserves. (…)"
Avarende @avarende
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