Secrecy News -- 05/21/08
 
Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 13:11:43 -0500 (CDT)


SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2008, Issue No. 48
May 21, 2008

Secrecy News Blog:  http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

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**	INTEL AGENCY ACTION URGED AGAINST SPACE, CYBER THREATS
**	NORTH KOREA-SYRIA CONTACTS VIEWED BY OPEN SOURCE CENTER

INTEL AGENCY ACTION URGED AGAINST SPACE, CYBER THREATS

U.S. defense intelligence agencies should aim to "eliminate" the
capabilities of opponents to operate effectively against the United
States from outer space or cyber space, according to a new Pentagon
strategy for defense intelligence.

Defense intelligence shall "eliminate any advantage held by our
adversaries to operate from and within the space and cyber domains,"
says the new strategy document, "Defense Intelligence 2008" (strategic
objective IV).

"As stated in the U.S. National Space Policy, the focus of defense
intelligence in space will be to ensure full situational awareness for
military and civilian decision-makers, support military planning
initiatives, and satisfy operational requirements. As addressed within
the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, cyberspace has
become a vital national interest economically, militarily and
culturally, and the current patchwork of passive defense is likely to
fail in the face of greater vulnerabilities and more sophisticated
threats."

"Defense intelligence must do its part to defeat this critical threat."

See "Defense Intelligence 2008" (flagged by BeSpacific.com):

     http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/2008strategy.pdf

NORTH KOREA-SYRIA CONTACTS VIEWED BY OPEN SOURCE CENTER

Intergovernmental contacts between North Korean and Syrian officials
during the last two years were scrutinized by the DNI Open Source
Center (OSC), but even in retrospect the available record presents no
indication of joint work on a secret nuclear facility destroyed by
Israel last September.

"A review of available North Korean and Syrian print and online media
in the period 2005-2007 has yielded the names of dozens of DPRK and
Syrian officials involved in military, scientific, trade, and other
aspects of bilateral relations," the OSC analysis said.

However, "no obvious indications of covert military cooperation
surfaced in the highly-censored media of North Korea or Syria in this
period."

In other words, assuming the allegations of clandestine nuclear
cooperation are true, open source intelligence provided no clues
concerning the activity.

Like most other OSC products, the new analysis has not been approved
for public release.  But a copy was obtained independently by Secrecy
News.

See "DPRK-Syria Bilateral Contacts, 2005-2007," Open Source Center, May
2, 2008:

     http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/osc/dprk-syria.pdf

_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web:    www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email:  saftergood@fas.org
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