National Security Bullshit Generator
July 8th, 2010I was looking through the Special Access Program (SAP) Policy document hosted over at Cryptome and thought I’d post a section from it because this is just about the most absurd collection of words I’ve ever come across in the English language.
It reminded me of the maniac bureaucracies John Saul describes in Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West:
Known for his novels of international intrigue, Saul in his first work of nonfiction delivers a passionate jeremiad on the follies of our age. Reason, he argues, has run amok; instead of the enlightened utopia envisaged by Voltaire, the modern West is a soulless machine run by technocratic elites that promise efficiency but create disasters. The author targets the insane waste of our “permanent war economy,” the perils of nuclear power, the co-optation of democracy by vested interests, the news media’s focus on false events and manufactured celebrities, the “personality politics” of presidential campaigns. He critiques the Harvard Business School’s management teachings, profiles such figures as Thomas Jefferson, Robert McNamara and Charles de Gaulle, flunks our colleges for failure to reward creativity and imagination. He blames novelists from James Joyce onward for “rendering literature inaccessible” and divorcing fiction from social concerns. He roams freely through history, politics, theology, art and film, challenging his audience on every page. This wonderfully provocative inquiry, a work of bold sweep and originality, may nonetheless leave some readers wondering whether misplaced faith in reason underlies all the ills discussed.
Prepare to gaze down the barrel of publicly funded stark raving technocratic fascism.
Via: DOD / Cryptome:
16. HEADS OF THE DoD COMPONENTS AND OSD PRINCIPAL STAFF ASSISTANTS (PSAs) WITH CA AND OA OVER SAPs. The Heads of the DoD Components and the OSD PSAs with CA and OA over SAPs shall:
a. Establish a SAPCO and designate a SAPCO Director to be responsible for providing general oversight of all SAPs for which the DoD Component Head or OSD PSA has responsibility. When directed, the Director of the Component or PSA SAPCO shall be responsible for developing and implementing policies and procedures for the execution, management, oversight, administration, security, IA, and records management for SAPs. This responsibility applies to all SAP policy executed on behalf of the respective Component Head or PSA and includes, but is not limited to:
(1) Submitting SAP actions requiring DepSecDef approval, as specified in Enclosure 2, to the Director, DoD SAPCO.
(2) Nominating programs to be apportioned into IJSTO; ensuring that SAPs transitioned to IJSTO are assigned a separate and unique nickname and tri-graph different from the originating program.
(3) Evaluating and, when appropriate, approving SAP subcompartments and projects in accordance with, and subject to, the respective SecDef or DepSecDef-approved SAP compartment.
b. Designate a DAA for SAP IS. If the DAA is an official other than the DoD Component or OSD PSA SAPCO, that DAA shall coordinate the accreditation decision with the Component SAPCO.
c. Conduct an annual review and validation for each assigned program for continued SAP protection to include confirming any program changes of the types listed in section 4 of Enclosure 2.
d. Provide support to the Director, DoD SAPCO, for SAP congressional briefings. Coordinate and prepare responses to congressional SAP inquiries.
e. Use organic or servicing CI organizations to provide comprehensive CI support to DoD SAPs in accordance with Reference (i).
f. Determine whether to employ a polygraph and credibility assessment program for personnel accessed to the SAPs under their cognizance.
g. Develop a dedicated cadre of security and audit professionals to administer and execute SAP security and internal audit requirements for assigned programs.
h. Support and execute individual component and team inspections in accordance with guidance published by the Director, DoD SAPCO.
i. Delineate roles and responsibilities in an MOA or other interagency agreement when multiple CAs (DoD and/or non-DoD) are involved in a SAP activity.
The Saul book sounds interesting. Iain McGilchrist makes a similar sounding critique of our age and relates it to a left-brain mode of thinking. To summarise thus makes it sound ominously woolly, but if anyone is interested, he has posted the introduction on his site as a pdf. McGilchrist himself started out attacking the emptiness of literary criticism back in the 80s, then trained as a psychiatrist.
thanks for the Saul link.
as it happens, i am halfway through reading Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich. It is quite short and straightforward but i am a slow reader and like to take my time and mull it over as i go. anyway, Illich wrote it in 1969 and published it in 1970. it really is a pity that 99.9% of the world ignored what he had to say 40 years ago because he was extremely prescient and, as far as i can tell, his prescription for avoiding the current mess the planet is in seems to be on the money (sorry, inappropriate metaphor!). so Saul’s work looks like a good postmortem of the one that got away… another one for the reading list, i reckon.