Classified Mess

We now have FBI report about Hillary Clinton's servers and email stuff.  What a shit-show!  Yep, that is the technical term.  Or "unforced error".  The good news, like her husband, is that HRC can survive the dumb mistakes and still get to the highest office, in part because her competitor has lowered the standards for judgment. 

I don't think this is disqualifying in a legal sense--but damn, this whole thing was just stupid from the get-go.  Yes, working in government can be damned inconvenient.  But there are reasons to keep classified and unclassified stuff separate.

In my year on the Joint Staff, everyone had their own classified computer hooked up to the SIPRINET (if I remember the acronym correctly), so that folks could and did shoot email around DC and around the world chock full of Excel, Powerpoint, and Word documents that were classified as unclass, confidential, secret, and top secret.  I was not cleared for code-word stuff that is more compartmentalized.  In some meetings, I was kicked out when such stuff was being discussed.  The general rule was that if it involved signals (NSA) or Special Ops, I had to leave the room. 

One could not ship stuff from that system to the unclassified system.  We had one unclassified computer hooked up to the internet, and the folks at higher ranks had two computers on their desk--one for each system.  There were not connected in any way.  Yes, you could insert a USB key, but that was forbidden since those things are great ways to deliver viruses/malware/etc.  Still, one could do use a USB key or burn a disk (Chelsea Manning) to get stuff off of the classified system--it required work and effort. 

The folks I worked with were adept at talking about a topic in different ways, depending on who they were speaking with--they could have an unclassified conversation, a confidential one, a top secret one altering what they would say and with varying levels of detail.  I was not so skilled, but I don't think I blew any big secrets in my year. 

We also had a secondary phone system for secure conversations. I used it all of one time--to chat with an American who was serving as the Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations for the Stabilization Force in Bosnia.  His name happened to be MG David Petraeus.  Small world? 

For secure videotele conferences (SVTC's), we had to go another part of the Pentagon--the National Military Command Center, which is a building within the building.  That was where we had to drop off our classified documents on 9/11 since we couldn't get back into our office (none of us had the combination to the door lock).  Why did we have a combo on the door? Our office was a SCIF--which stands for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.  We could leave classified docs (not those above Top Secret) laying around.

Anyhow, all of this is to say that we took this classified materials stuff quite seriously.  I wish our former Secretary of State did so in her time in office. 

Snowflake Memories

I have written before about my Rummy experiences, but wanted tor revisit after seeing this post yesterday at vox.  I was able to dig through Rummy's website and found the document that spawned a heap of paperwork at my desk on the Joint Staff.

  In the aftermath of 9/11, many allies, partners and others offered to help the US, and since Rumsfeld didn't want allies on the battlefield (with a few exceptions), he wanted to use these offers to get the US out of a variety of commitments around the world.  Backfill refers to finding other forces to fill the gaps after one removes one's troops.

I didn't see this snowflake directly, but it produced a memo with a "wishlist" of a number of missions around the world that Feith thought might be good places to withdraw American troops and have someone else replace them: the Multinational Observation Force in the Sinai, SFOR in Bosnia, KFOR in Kosovo, a handful of folks helping out in East Timor, Korea, and on and on.  It listed pretty much every American contingent in a peacekeeping operation around the world as well as many overseas contingents.

I got to be the "stickee"--that I was stuck with it.  Why me?  Partially because Bosnia was on the list and I was one of two guys on the Bosnia desk.  Mostly, I think it was because I was still learning the job and they didn't want to waste the time of a more productive member of the Joint Staff.  Let''s use Saideman on this--he has not much on his plate, and the other folks are doing stuff that will amount to something.  Just a guess.


I did my job, which was to coordinate with the Joint Staff desk officers responsible for these various missions.  Each one came back with basically the same message: nope, not now.  Our troops in place x were part of a commitment that had politico-military equities that still exist--we did mission x for a reason and that reason has not evaporated--so we should not pull these folks out.  For example, I wrote the Bosnia response to the memo directly (the rest I essentially summarized/cut and pasted/plagiarized from the other JS folks), and I probably wrote something about how we made a commitment to our allies, citing the George W. Bush statement: In Together, Out Together.  That we would not leave our allies behind, handling this thing that we helped get many of them into (France, UK, Canada were already stuck in Bosnia in 1994 before SFOR, of course).  Plus 9/11 made Bosnia a bit more relevant for the US since it was a possible vector through which terrorism may flow--some veterans of the Afghanistan campaign who then fought for Bosnia's Muslims settled there. 

The memo went up and then was sent back down by the two star Air Force officer above me because of Iceland was not on my list... because it was not on the original memo.  The USAF had a desire to get out of the Iceland mission.  What I learned yesterday is that he was not alone as Rummy had asked Feith shortly after the first request about how to get out of Iceland.  Indeed, getting out of Iceland was one of Rummy's first instincts in the first month after 9/11. It just wasn't on Feith's list that I received initially.

The problem is that the Iceland mission had linkages--to Iceland's support of US Navy operations there.  So, we kicked that can down the road.  Indeed, we, the Joint Staff, said no to all of the items on the list.  As a result, I got to respond to that memo two more times, as Rummy didn't like to hear no, and would push and push until he got the answer he wanted.  I kept giving Rummy through the chain the best "politico-military" advice I could, based on the feedback received from the other JS desk officers.  Our answers did not change during my time.  I have no idea how others responded to it after my year was up.

The only real changes that ultimately occurred were:

• The US got out of Iceland as NATO made a commitment to rotate planes through to provide Iceland with some reassurance.  The Iceland Air Patrol became a model for the Baltic Air Patrol, which preceded Putin's moves but is now bigger and with much more visibility.
• The US got out of Bosnia in 2004 when it was changed from a NATO mission to a EU mission.  This betrayed "in together, out together" but it happened anyway.

The rest? Not much, as far as I can tell.  The US is still in Kosovo and still provides troops to the MFO.

Sure, the memo was not as silly as "Fix Pakistan", but my experience in this process was most educational and not just about Rummy's refusal to take no for an answer.  I also learned a bit about these other missions and about the multilateral inclinations of the US military.  They would rather operate with others, helping them out, knowing that they could use some help some day.  One could argue that the Joint Staff was just status quo oriented, but my sense from the experience was that the JS staffers had a clear vision of the long term interests of the US, one that saw cooperation with allies and partners as a key, dare I say it, enabler/force multiplier.  Ah, you can take the academic out of the Pentagon, but not the Pentagon out of the academic. 

Deja Vu Pentagon Style

Heaps of deja vu lately.  This time, it was a piece in Wired about the shopping opportunities at the Pentagon.  It is a nicely snarky piece.  To be clear, there are good reasons to have some shopping opportunities in the building.  Why?  Because it is a damned big building, making it had to duck out and run errands, and because the folks there work long, long hours.  They try to sneak in some errands or some exercise sometime during the day after arriving perhaps around 6am and leaving around 6 pm (we worked half-days--a lame joke).

So, let me run through Ackerman's tour of the building with some of my own experiences in mind:

• Candy shop.  Hmm, not that I can remember, but given the tradition of folks bringing back chocolate from wherever they went in Europe for their co-workers, this might have been handy for the forgetful.
• Art of War.  Military folks like military art.  But more importantly, one of the traditions in my office and probably around the building was to give someone a framed picture signed by all of their co-workers, and I think this was the shop form which these sprung.  I am most proud of my picture, although not so proud of the picture of the picture which depicts the effects of the food court and the birthday cakes (for every promotion or departure or birthday).
• Food court.  Oh, yes.  Where else to go for lunch since leaving the building for a quick lunch is hard to do (especially my year since they had closed the escalator from the metro into the building after 9/11. Just getting to the metro required a walk through and around the building).  The real problem here is that the food is mostly of the not so healthy kind (even before Taco Bell arrived) for a bunch of folks staffing desks.  Perhaps that accounts for the traffic into the POAC (the gym) and the running lanes outside.
• Military Bling.  Not for me, but given the long hours, how else do you buy stuff for the spouse frustrated at the long hours.
• Pedicures.  Again, not easy to just run out for such stuff.  Never did get one.
• Florist.  Again, heaps of spouses needing some pick me ups.
• Hair care.  Absolutely.  Need to keep hair short and neat.  I was less than thrilled that the barber here had no remorse, no bedside manner when saying that my hair was in retreat.
• Bags.  Yep, they have to care stuff.
• Electronics.  I don't remember flatscreens, but headphones, stuff like that, sure. 
• Tchotchkes.  Not just for tourists but also for folks working in the building needing to buy stuff for relatives and friends.  I did buy a jacket there with Joint Staff on it as a souvenir for my year.
• Sushi?  Really?

The photo essay missed the travel agency, the bank, and a few other shops that I am trying to remember.