Wikipedia has an extended entry on the Enigma machine:

The ‘”Enigma machine” was a cipher machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. More precisely, Enigma was a family of related electro-mechanical rotor machines, comprising a variety of different models.

The Enigma was used commercially from the early 1920s on, and was also adopted by the military and governmental services of a number of nations—most famously by Nazi Germany before and during World War II.

It sounds like the agency has been pretty aggressive in it’s application of the concept:

The emerging technology has already attracted some large users, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the lead intelligence operation of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Bob Gourley, chief technology officer at the DIA until six months ago, when he joined consulting firm Crucial Point LLC, said the agency uses JackBe Presto to gather data from different internal systems and geographically display it to analysts. The tool has helped the agency slash the development time normally needed to link such data sources.

Gourley noted that the DIA is also looking to take advantage of the tool’s gradual increase in support for SOA. Mashup tools are starting to provide what he called “the last mile of the SOA” — or the ability to mash data from disparate sources.

I think the PR folks are scrambling a bit after one of our local stations crashed HPD’s semi-secret UAV demo:

Houston is one of two cities chosen by the Federal Aviation Administration to test whether unmanned aircraft can be used safely in an urban environment, authorities said.

During the testing period, expected to run at least until next June, HPD and the Miami-Dade Police Department will help the FAA establish national flight guidelines, such as how the small aircraft can be deployed and what training is needed to operate them.

“At this point, the project is strictly on a research level,” Executive Assistant Chief Martha Montalvo said.

The UAV in the KPRC video looks pretty familiar. I’m almost positive that it’s the Insitu ScanEagle. Boeing had a hand in ScanEagle’s development and their site details some of the bird’s impressive capabilities.

Earlier this year Blackwater Worldwide created a new business unit to build and deploy remotely piloted airships. Small maueverable airships are great surveillance, communications, and intelligence gathering platforms so this seems like a pretty logical extension of their business. They’ll do a ton of business with these too because this is exactly the type of operation that most agencies should be contracting out anyway.

Blackwater Facts has more:

Blackwater Airships, a unit of Blackwater Worldwide, designed the blimp to carry intelligence-gathering cameras, sensors and communications gear for counterterrorism, counternarcotics and border security operations. The blimp is to be unmanned and piloted by remote control from the ground.

Blackwater intends for its airships to be low-cost alternatives to other unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The blimps can fly at 10,000 feet and require only a crew of three.

I’d like to see a dozen of these things on the Texas-Mexico border starting Monday but that’s a whole other issue. I can definitely see them being deployed at the local level for special event security. HPD certainly seems interested in having that capability. Head over to The Virginian-Pilot for really cool photos of the tests.

New York Daily News
James Bamford, who has written several respected books on the intelligence community, said it’s not surprising CIA vets wouldn’t care that Prouty lied. It’s the difference between the CIA and FBI cultures, he said. “One agency teaches people to lie and break the rules. The other teaches them to tell the truth and obey the rules,” Bamford said. While FBI agents are indoctrinated to be morally pure because they often testify in criminal trials, “the CIA is the opposite,” he said. “The CIA was founded on subverting laws, going over walls and under fences.”

YID With LID
So Prouty infiltrates the CIA and passes info to Hezbollah and other terrorist interests, thus harming national security. She will get a slap on the wrist. Jonathan Pollard gave an ally information that it was supposed to have anyway–and is rotting in jail. Am I missing something?

PA Pundits
This woman had been given access to detainees in Iraq, she has allegedly given information to Hezbollah, her brother-in-law is a fugitive for funneling his restaurant profits to Hezbollah, and she is married to a State Department guy who has been a bigwig in more than a couple of U.S. embassies in the Middle East.

Rantburg
“This is not John Dillinger or Reilly Ace of Spies,” said the official. “She took an illegal shortcut to the American dream, then she made some inappropriate computer searches. At this point, there is no reason to treat this as a counterintelligence case. There is NO allegation she had ever ties to Hezbollah. You can’t let suspicions get ahead of the facts.”

The Truth Shall Set You Free
…the case gives Zionists more ammunition against the Arab-American Institute (AAI), a powerful advocacy group founded in 1985 by James Zogby, brother of pollster John Zogby. The AAI is headquartered in Washington DC, and works to mobilize Arab-American voters.

Debbie Schlussel
Prouty promised money in exchange for marriage to an unemployed Michigan man living in a trailer, so she could remain in the U.S. once she thought she’d be caught overstaying her student visa. The man is Chris Deladurantaye of Lincoln Park, Michigan, a working-class suburb of Detroit. But nothing happened to Deladurantaye as a result of his fraudulent marriage, which ultimately led to a Hezbollah mole infiltrating the FBI and CIA at its highest security clearance levels.

Something…And Half of Something
Nada Nadim Prouty, just another illegal immigrant, doing the spying that Americans won’t do

Counterterrorism Blog
…underlying this failure and numerous other penetration efforts by Islamist groups is the large-scale failure of U.S. counter-intelligence efforts for many years. There are numerous cases of Chinese infiltration agents, Islamist penetration and Russian penetrations that underscore the shrinking ability to monitor or detect the spies working in this country. The capacity has been rapidly shrinking for several decades, and, despite the threat of Islamist terrorists and the growing activities of the Chinese in both traditional and industrial espionage, the entire concept of a counter-intelligence has withered on the vine, from before the Clinton administration through the current administration. Currently, that capacity barely exists, according to my friends in the intelligence community.

Michelle Malkin
The illegal alien CIA/FBI agent Nada Prouty debacle keeps getting worse and worse, uglier and uglier, outrageous and more outrageous. Today, the NYPost reports that Prouty’s former sister-in-law also engaged in a bogus immigration marriage scam and is now a…Marine officer

WorldNetDaily
Intelligence official: ‘FBI might as well put out a sign – Double agents wanted’

Power Line
The lack of interest in the story is hard to understand. You might alsmost think that major news organization don’t take national security seriously. Among those who not only take the story seriously, but who are trying to draw appropriate lessons from the case, are Debbie Schlussel, Douglas Farah, and Michelle Malkin.

Human Events
An espionage case has come to light in Detroit that has a little of everything: besides espionage, there’s an illegal immigration angle, a Keystone Kops angle, and even involvement of major presidential candidates. It would make a great movie — if this kind of thing doesn’t kill us first.

The woman was a giant walking red flag and while she was caught (eventually) you have to wonder how she obtained a clearance in the first place:

Never mind those early red flags. With citizenship papers in hand, the one-time waitress gained employment as an FBI Special Agent, and later, as a CIA operative. During her time with the FBI, Prouty accessed the agency’s Automated Case System (without authorization) to obtain information on her brother-in-law and a separate national security investigation into the terror group, conducted by the FBI’s Detroit field office.

But it gets better. While working for the FBI, Nada Prouty obtained a security clearance. And, at some point, she gained a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (TS/SCI) clearance, giving her access to some of the nation’s most vital intelligence information. The FBI reports that Ms. Prouty didn’t work on Hizballah-related cases during her time with the agency, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t access intelligence files on the terrorist organization.

Indeed, during her time as a CIA employee (2003-2007), Prouty almost certainly had access to Intelink, the classified intranet of the intelligence community. With Prouty working on the inside, Hizballah was in a position to gain valuable insights on our collection activities and, possibly, sources within the group. While the Justice Department says there’s “no evidence of actual espionage” and “no evidence [Prouty] was working as a spy,” they did tell CBS News:

“..she is accused of passing information to sympathizers of Hezbollah, a group the U.S. has labeled a terrorist organization.”

We’d love to get Jim Angleton’s take on that one. In his day if it “looked like a spy, and acted like a spy,” well, you get the idea. Incidentally, Debbie Schlussel, who’s been on this story since Day One, notes that a later version of the CBS story claims Prouty was also accused of “improperly taking classified information home with her.” But, the government says there’s no evidence of actual espionage. In other words, Ms. Prouty was quite adept at covering her tracks–or the feds are afraid of where their trail might lead.

Head over to In From the Cold to read through a number of questions about this case that must be answered.

I stumbled across an interesting article while researching a presentation on virtual worlds and healthcare that I’m putting together:

The research arm of the U.S intelligence community has kicked off a project to tap into virtual world technologies, such as Second Life, to develop innovative decision support systems for intelligence analysis.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity project is directed by Jeffery Morrison, who runs the Analyst Space for Exploitation (A-SpaceX) program. Morrison says his project is designed to harness technologies to help the 15 agencies that report to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to change from a “need to know” culture to a “need to share” culture.

Under development is a new workstation to help analysts marshal and screen data, formulate data, and tell stories. It will support a creative process much like that used by a journalist, Morrison told Government Executive. He said he wants to find tools and technologies that support the analytical thought process, a true killer application that does not exist today. Bits and pieces of various synthetic world technologies can aid in development of such an application, Morrison believes.

Morrison hopes the new analyst workstation will support that thought process through information organization and decision support tools he called “mind snaps,” involving visualization of information.

While there are limitations inherent in virtual worlds one benefit is that you can create a model that allows for distributed analysis where every bit of the process is captured. Who knows what a completely transparent process would reveal over time? This is great stuff. It’s a shame that we probably won’t get many updates on the project’s progress.

Intelligence gained from the investigation into the recent UK attacks is troubling:

E-mail addresses for American individuals were found on the same password-protected e-mail chains used by the United Kingdom plotters to communicate with Qaeda handlers in Europe, a counterterrorism official told The New York Sun yesterday. The American and German intelligence community now believe the secure e-mail chains used in the United Kingdom plot have provided a window into an operational Qaeda network in several countries.

“Because of the London and Glasgow plot, we now know communications have been made from Al Qaeda to operatives in the United States,” the counterterrorism official said on condition of anonymity. “This plot helps to connect a lot of stuff. We have seen money moving a lot through hawala networks and other illicit finance as well.” But this source was careful to say that at this point no specific information, such as names, targets or a timeline, was known about any particular plot on American soil. The e-mail addresses that are linked to Americans were pseudonyms

That folks tied to al Qaeda are operating in the United States isn’t really news. Most of them are probably functioning at the support level and not directly carrying out operations themselves. Otherwise, things would be a lot more violent around here. All we can do is hope the security folks get the breaks they need, find them, and roll them up.

The Problem

• The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was drafted almost thirty years ago, for the purpose of establishing a process for obtaining a court order to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance in the United States.
• However, as a result of revolutions in telecommunications technology since FISA was passed, FISA now often requires the Government to get a court order to collect information on terrorists and other foreign intelligence targets located overseas.
• It makes no sense to require the Government to obtain a court order to collect foreign intelligence on foreign targets located in foreign countries. This requirement impairs our intelligence capabilities, and diverts scarce resources that would be better spent safeguarding the civil liberties of Americans, not foreigners who wish to do us harm.
• As the Director of National Intelligence has reported, as a result of this outdated law we now are “missing a significant amount of foreign intelligence that we should be collecting to protect our country.” This is unacceptable at any time-but it is intolerable in the current heightened threat environment.

The Director of National Intelligence Has Proposed A Reasonable Solution

• The Administration proposed a comprehensive FISA modernization bill to the Congress several months ago. However, Congress has made it clear that they will be unable to act upon the Administration’s full proposal before the August recess.
• In an effort to address this critical intelligence gap, the Director of National Intelligence has proposed a significantly narrowed proposal focused on the current, urgent need to protect our Nation.
• This new proposal would substantially enhance our capabilities to collect intelligence on targets located overseas. It would also preserve a role for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in reviewing the Government’s procedures for collecting intelligence on these overseas targets. This is an effort to balance court review and our urgent need to close the current intelligence gap.
• The court review procedures would not stand in the way of starting collection of foreign intelligence immediately. The Government would have 90 days after collection has started to submit its procedures to the court for review. If the court found any deficiency, collection would continue during any and all court review processes.

What Is Not Acceptable

• Some have proposed that the Government must obtain pre-approval from a court before it conducts critical surveillance of targets located overseas. This is unacceptable. The Government must be able to act immediately, particularly in the case of national security emergencies, to protect the Nation.
• Some have suggested that FISA must be reformed, but only to permit collection against certain overseas threats like al Qaeda terrorists. This is unacceptable. There are many threats that confront our Nation, including military, weapons proliferation, and economic, and we must be able to conduct foreign intelligence effectively on all of them.
• Some have suggested that we must wait to modernize FISA. This is unacceptable. Congress must act now to give our intelligence professionals the tools they need to uncover plots in time to protect our homeland.
• Some have suggested that a court order should be necessary before our intelligence professionals are able to gather any information about a foreign target who happens to contact someone in the United States frequently. This is unacceptable.

Via The White House

Here’s the official word:

A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

WHEREAS Lewis Libby was convicted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in the case United States v. Libby, Crim. No. 05-394 (RBW), for which a sentence of 30 months’ imprisonment, 2 years’ supervised release, a fine of $250,000, and a special assessment of $400 was imposed on June 22, 2007;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, pursuant to my powers under Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, do hereby commute the prison terms imposed by the sentence upon the said Lewis Libby to expire immediately, leaving intact and in effect the two-year term of supervised release, with all its conditions, and all other components of the sentence.

IN WITNESS THEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this second day of July, in the year of our Lord two thousand and seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.

GEORGE W. BUSH

And the President’s statement:

The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today rejected Lewis Libby’s request to remain free on bail while pursuing his appeals for the serious convictions of perjury and obstruction of justice. As a result, Mr. Libby will be required to turn himself over to the Bureau of Prisons to begin serving his prison sentence.

I have said throughout this process that it would not be appropriate to comment or intervene in this case until Mr. Libby’s appeals have been exhausted. But with the denial of bail being upheld and incarceration imminent, I believe it is now important to react to that decision.

From the very beginning of the investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name, I made it clear to the White House staff and anyone serving in my administration that I expected full cooperation with the Justice Department. Dozens of White House staff and administration officials dutifully cooperated.

After the investigation was under way, the Justice Department appointed United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald as a Special Counsel in charge of the case. Mr. Fitzgerald is a highly qualified, professional prosecutor who carried out his responsibilities as charged.

This case has generated significant commentary and debate. Critics of the investigation have argued that a special counsel should not have been appointed, nor should the investigation have been pursued after the Justice Department learned who leaked Ms. Plame’s name to columnist Robert Novak. Furthermore, the critics point out that neither Mr. Libby nor anyone else has been charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act, which were the original subjects of the investigation. Finally, critics say the punishment does not fit the crime: Mr. Libby was a first-time offender with years of exceptional public service and was handed a harsh sentence based in part on allegations never presented to the jury.

Others point out that a jury of citizens weighed all the evidence and listened to all the testimony and found Mr. Libby guilty of perjury and obstructing justice. They argue, correctly, that our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable. They say that had Mr. Libby only told the truth, he would have never been indicted in the first place.

Both critics and defenders of this investigation have made important points. I have made my own evaluation. In preparing for the decision I am announcing today, I have carefully weighed these arguments and the circumstances surrounding this case.

Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.

I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.

The Constitution gives the President the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted. It is my judgment that a commutation of the prison term in Mr. Libby’s case is an appropriate exercise of this power.

I agree with the President on this one. It will be interesting to watch his critics completely overlook the parts of Libby’s sentence that were left in place with this action. Libby doesn’t exactly get to “Skate” as CNN puts it.