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

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):

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:

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

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