Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Central Intelligence Agency building in Langley, Virginia.

The Central Intelligence Agency is better known for secrecy than it is for family fun.

But tomorrow you will find spies amid the cotton candy, crafters and carnival rides at the annual McLean Day fair at Lewinsville Park, some three miles from CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia.

Rather than occupying an Undisclosed Secret Location, a safe house or a Secure Compartmented Information Facility, the spooks will be manning Booth 003, between Chain Bridge Bank and Post 8142 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

For undisclosed reasons, the Old Dominion Animal Health Center got Booth 007.

No word, either, on whether those staffing the Agency’s booth will be using their real names or wearing their own hair.

The CIA didn’t respond to requests for comment on its participation in the event.

Original post is CIA Day at the Fair: 007 is Taken by Political Capital.

Photograph by Paramount/Everett Collection

The Klingon Bird of Prey from “Star Trek: The Voyage Home.”

Which is the U.S. Navy talking, and which is Star Trek talking?

One of the descriptions below comes from the Navy’s words for the Littoral Combat Ship, or LCS, a fast boat from Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics designed to defeat threats such as mines, quiet diesel submarines and other fast surface craft.

The other comes from Star Trek’s manual for the inter-galactic, warp speed-capable Klingon Bird-of-Prey, a warship deployed by the Klingon Empire serving Klingon Defense Forces from the late 23rd century into the late 24th century.

1)  “Design philosophy has always centered on tried-and-tested methods and places great importance on the ability to mass-produce ships at great speed. The modular design means that the maximum number of ships can be produced at the fastest possible rate.”

2)   “Wargames and field experimentation have demonstrated the value of distributing combat power among modular-mission platforms — small surface craft with reconfigurable on- and off-board systems which are networked to warfighters.”

Which is the Navy, which is Star Trek?

Think first, then find the answer below:

2): Navy

Original post is Star Trek vs. Navy: Klingons vs. Lockheed Martin by Political Capital.

Photograph by Hunter Martin/Getty Images

Army Cadets cheer during a game against the Navy Midshipmen.

There is cyber-security, and then there is football.

Someone hacked into the U.S. Naval Academy e-mail and sent a mass mailing in advance of the Army-Navy game.

Vice Admiral Michael H. Miller

Dec 5

to goarmysinknavy, AllUSNA, USCC, BTD

Greetings,

In preparation for the humiliating defeat Army will be dealing to us in the near future, I have some guidance to pass down.

First: when we stage for march-on, we need to clean up our act. The internet has us pegged as dirty slobs– this year, we need to bring trash bags and clean up after ourselves. From what I understand, Army is embarrassed to even be associated with us.

Second: clean up the actual march-on. Please at least pretend to be in the military. Dress right dress, don’t talk at attention, etc. Seriously, this one is too easy.

Third: we need to have better accountability of our goats. This is also very embarrassing.

Fourth: when Army sings second, we will be respectful and professional.

Fifth: we need to be better at cyber.

Finally, I award you all with PMI (sleep ins) until Christmas. Maybe even a little longer, depending on how morale is going after Army defeats us on Saturday.

Cheers.

Go Army, Sink Navy!

 

Original post is Plebing the Case for Losing to Army by Political Capital.

Photograph by Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images

Paul Wolfowitz

Update at 5 pm EST, Nov. 8

After a day paling around in Hurricane Sandy disaster areas with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, President Barack Obama got an unexpected defense today from an even more surprising corner of the Republican Party.

In a blog post, George W. Bush administration deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who helped lead the 2003 U.S. charge into Iraq in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi links to al-Qaeda, declared that “the U.S. did almost everything possible to protect our people” from the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

In his post on the Web site of the American Enterprise Institute, the neo-conservative equivalent of the Vatican, Wolfowitz said that after “talking with someone who has spoken directly with key general officers and others involved in the U.S. response to the Benghazi attacks,” he concluded that:

– “The Consulate was overrun in a matter of minutes, before any help was possible.”

– “Decision makers in Washington appear to have been leaning forward, as they should have been. The military’s most capable rescue force, based on the East Coast, was deployed immediately (something that is very rarely done), but –- given the distances involved –- arrived” at the U.S. Naval Air Station at Sigonella in Sicily “only after the crisis was over.”

–  Contrary to claims on numerous conservative Web sites: “There was no AC-130 gunship in the region.”

(Defense Department spokesman George Little told Bloomberg the same thing yesterday in an e-mail.)

– Shooting down another conservative attack line: “The only drone available in Libya was an unarmed surveillance drone which was quickly moved from Darna to Benghazi, but the field of view of these drones is limited and, in any case, this one was not armed.”

– In yet another counterattack on Benghazi conspiracy theorists: “The only other assets immediately available were F-16 fighter jets based at Aviano, Italy. These aircraft might have reached Benghazi while the fight at the Annex was still going on, but they would have had difficulty pinpointing hostile mortar positions or distinguishing between friendly and hostile militias in the midst of a confused firefight in a densely populated residential area where there would have been a high likelihood of civilian casualties. While two more Americans were tragically killed by a mortar strike on the Annex, it’s not clear that deploying F-16’s would have prevented that.”

“If all of this is true,” Wolfowitz concludes, “then it would appear that the U.S. national security team was doing everything they thought possible to protect the Americans in Benghazi.”

“I did defend Obama officials against the charge that they knowingly abandoned Americans who were in danger, but I also said in the same article that they deserved to be criticized for `persistent misleading comments about the motives of the attackers.”’ Wolfowitz wrote in an email to us after this posting appeared. “That was a reference not only to the comments of our U.N. Ambassador but also to the Secretary of State and the President himself.”

In the article Wolfowitz still blames the Obama administration for its credibility problem, calling it “the result of a general lack of transparency and particularly of the fact that senior officials, including the president and the secretary of state, persisted for so long in offering the American people misleading suggestions that the attacks in Benghazi were a response to an obscure anti-Islamic video.”

He also faults the administration for failing to respond to requests for better security in Libya, for assigning a low priority to the military’s Africa Command, and for failing to move quickly to bolster Libya’s security forces after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi — although he confesses that the Bush administration made the same mistake in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It remains to be seen, though, whether even one of the architects of the neo-conservative movement that’s foursquare behind Mitt Romney in the presidential contest can shoot down the Internet buzz about drones, gunships, rapid reaction forces and stand-down orders.

Original post is Obama’s New Libyan Defense Chief: Bush’s Paul Wolfowitz, on Benghazi by Political Capital.

It’s no secret that Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu have their differences, both personal and political. Their opponents have tried to make hay with that, suggesting that each man has eroded the two nations’ 64-year-old alliance.

Netanyahu’s defense minister-turned-rival Ehud Barak and his supporters are suggesting that the prime minister’s cartoon of an Iranian atom bomb at the UN and his demand for a “red line” on Tehran’s suspected nuclear weapons program have caused a rift with Israel’s most important ally. In the U.S., Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has charged that President Obama has “thrown allies like Israel under the bus.”

Neither allegation can pass even a cursory reality check. Despite the frosty relationship between the two leaders and differences over Iran and the Palestinian issue, Israeli-American relations remain anchored by not only shared democratic values, but also $3 billion in U.S. military aid, significant exchanges of secret intelligence and a continuing supply of American defense technology.

Still, now that they’re both facing re-election — Obama on Nov. 6 and Netanyahu on Jan. 22 — the two leaders suddenly have started trumpeting what unites them instead of muttering about their distaste for one another.

So it isn’t surprising that in this month alone, among other things:

– The American administration announced that the two countries will begin their largest joint air and missile defense exercise just before the U.S. Election Day.

– Netanyahu told the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, that his government had “returned security” by, among other things, deploying the Iron Dome missile defense system — for which the Obama administration provided an additional $70 million in July.

– The two countries just signed a telecommunications agreement that’s expected to make it easier for Israeli firms to sell their products in the U.S.

– American trade officials said they’d take Israel off a Watch List as soon as the Knesset passes legislation to improve its intellectual property protection.

No bets on how long the honeymoon will last, however.

Original post is Obama-Netanyahu: Common Ground — It’s Called an Election by Political Capital.