Intercepts

Coordinated Intell

The concept of coordinated intelligence may seem like an oxymoron, but Defense Department Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is hoping to change that perception as he continues his search for an "intell czar."

In a Pentagon town hall meeting earlier this month, Rumsfeld said DOD officials are interviewing candidates for the position.

"I think it's readily apparent to people that we have a number of intelligence-gathering entities" within DOD, Rumsfeld said. "We've got all kinds of pieces floating around. There's not a single person that is over those except me."

And he acknowledged that he does not have time to coordinate all of those pieces.

"It is a disservice to [intelligence agents] to not have that process continuously going on so that they are constantly calibrated as to what they ought to be focusing on, what those priorities ought to be," he said.

A senior-level manager will help coordinate that across the department, he said.

Rumsfeld has said that intelligence — and making sure that the United States has it and its enemies do not — is one of his biggest concerns.

"We have a big world, a complicated world, a world with a lot of closed systems that are very difficult to get at," he said. And there are a lot of technologies that enable enemies to "burrow underground and find ways to prevent the rest of the world from knowing what it is they're doing, particularly when they're up to things that are to harm other people."

Call for Security

DOD is cracking down on the use of wireless devices that could be used to overhear and even record sensitive conversations in classified areas. But at least one of the potential vulnerabilities is easily mended, said Christopher Doherty, senior director of public affairs for Nextel Communications Inc.

Doherty said the "automatic answer" feature on many mobile phones, including the increasingly popular flip-open models that don't require a button to be pushed to answer a call, could easily be disabled, making the phone more secure.

"Auto answer is very convenient while you're driving down the highway, but might not be as appropriate in a secure facility," he said.

Lost and Found

After an all-out search, DOD has recovered those two laptop computers that were taken from a tightly controlled area of U.S. Central Command, at MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Fla., which is coordinating the war in Afghanistan.

Officials from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) said they were holding a man who confessed to removing the laptops, one of which contained classified material.

Investigators recovered the laptops from a private residence not far from the base, said Maj. Mike Richmond, spokesman for OSI. The man in custody was in the military, but they would not identify him.

Richmond said that OSI computer forensic agents were conducting an analysis of the laptops themselves to determine whether any data had been manipulated.

Furthermore, military officials would not say why somebody would have removed the laptops from Central Command.

Under the military's court-martial process, the facts of the case are presented to the person's commanding officer, who then makes a determination about whether to file charges.

The laptop computers were reported missing Aug. 7. A search for the PCs involved nearly 50 investigators.

Might be time for DOD to consider an anti-theft PC Card.

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