Intelink is the classified, worldwide intranet for the U.S. Intelligence Community¾ linking together the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and 8 other intelligence organizations, including the FBI. Intelink is the subject of Frederick Thomas Martin's flashily titled Top Secret Intranet: How U.S. Intelligence Built Intelink¾ The World's Largest, Most Secure Network. Perhaps the most surprising revelation the book makes is that this very closed network was built entirely on open system standards like TCP/IP (the communication protocols of the Internet) and SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language, of which HTML¾ the hypertext presentation language of the World Wide Web¾ is an application). Indeed, Martin gets around to boldly stating that "Intelink is patterned after the global Internet.""It was a dark and stormy night," Martin's introduction begins, and that is the best written sentence in the somewhat ponderously crafted and repetitious Intro¾the literary techniques of English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton otherwise conspicuous by their absence. Reading Martin's mushy acknowledgements, one quickly forms the impression of a book both written and vetted by a committee; indeed, one begins to question whether Martin's name should appear on the book at all. Martin recently retired from the NSA as Deputy Director of its Information Services Group.
But it gets better once we reach the book proper. Chapter 1 tells the origin of Intelink, how in 1994 DCI James Woolsey created the Intelligence Systems Board (ISB) to improve the interoperability of information systems supporting intelligence operations. Along with ISB came a permanent staff, known as the Intelligence Systems Secretariat (ISS). Steven Schanzer, the first Director of the ISS, became the "father" of Intelink. A "proof of concept" prototype was put together in April 1994, and by the end of the year Intelink was operational. The rest of Chapter 1 gives a thumbnail history of the Internet and the World Wide Web, introduces SGML and its offspring HTML (an SGML application) and the more recent XML (eXtensible Markup Language, a subset of SGML which will be supported in future Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers), and concludes with a discussion of the need for Intelink to meet the changing needs of intelligence.
Martin notes that SMGL was adopted for document tagging by the Department of Defense in 1987 in its CALS ("Continuous Acquisition and Life-Cycle Support") Program, then as an information processing standard by the CIA in 1993, and finally by Intelink in 1994.
Chapter 2 is essentially a bureaucratic history of the development of Intelink, and describes the eventual formation of the Intelink Management Office (IMO), whose Director alternates between the CIA and DIA, and whose Deputy Director is always NSA. There are dry recitations of duties and goals, some of which read like they were written by an IT-trained Russian speaker struggling with the English language. For example:
"· Enhancing support infrastructures to ensure that future Intelink services enjoy the stability of a robust and well-administered information environment; [Translation: Get our shit together.]
"· Establishing a viable training program to ensure that all producers and users can effectively use existing and new services; [Translation: Teach people to use the system.]
"· Developing a technology integration program to ensure that Intelink enjoys the benefits of early introduction of new information technology;" [Translation: Grab the new stuff pronto.]
The chapter notes that the Global Command and Control System (GCCS)¾ the Department of Defense's new system for delivering command and control capabilities to the warfighter¾ relies in part on Intelink. (See "Intelink-S," below.)
As currently constituted, Intelink is segmented into security levels. At the core is "Intelink-SCI." SCI, according to Martin, stands for "Special" Compartmented Information, although most other people seem to think it stands for "Sensitive" Compartmented Information (see, for example, Jeffrey T. Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, 3rd edition). Information available on Intelink-SCI is classified up to "Top Secret/SCI." About 50,000 people have access to this level, including Monica Lewinsky, while she was at the Pentagon. (You will recall that Monica had a Top Secret/SCI clearance for reasons never explained, but presumably because of her need for detailed handling of Presidential Decision Directives. Image what could have happened, for example, if a foreign intelligence service had gotten a sample of Presidential DNA and created a Clinton clone.)
The next level is "Intelink-SecretNet" or "Intelink-S," which carries information classified up to the Secret level. Intelink-S primarily serves the military, and has around 265,000 users¾ most of whom access Intelink-S through the Defense Information Systems Agency's SIPRNET (short for Secret Internet Protocol Router Network).
The most interesting (and most highly classified) level is "Intelink-PolicyNet" or "Intelink-P," which is operated by the CIA and is only available to very high-level policy makers¾ such as the National Security Council, the DCI, or the President. That way the latter can get all the information they need, say, before deciding to decimate pharmaceutical factories in the Sudan or nomad tents in Afghanistan with Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The final level is "Intelink-UnclassifiedNet" or "Intelink-U," which includes all open-source (unclassified) intelligence, and which is available to members of OSIS (the Open Source Information Service) or others approved by them. OSIS is managed by the CIA, and relies on public data bases and other unclassified information¾ the "open-source intelligence" promoted by Robert Steele. This level is accessed through Virtual Private Networks (but hopefully not ones that use Microsoft's Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol).
Martin notes the close relationship of the intelligence community¾ especially the NSA¾ to the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Chapter 3 argues the need for standards (and there is little to argue with here), and discusses three from the Department of Defense: TAFIM (Technical Architecture Framework for Information Management), COE (Common Operating Environment), and JTA (Joint Technical Architecture). In charge of all this is the Assistant Secretary of Defense for C3I (otherwise known as Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence). (Elsewhere I have attempted to create an easy-to-read intuitive guide to what command and control¾ C2¾ is all about, in the context of SIOP, the Single Integrated Operational Plan for Nuclear War.)
The 8 volumes of TAFIM basically focus on open systems and the need to follow international and national standards. JTA¾ which like TAFIM was inspired partly by co-ordination failures in the 1991 Gulf War¾ is the practical implementation of TAFIM, mandating the use of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software and hardware products, as well as standards such as SGML for documents.
COE can be briefly explained as follows. The 1970s mainframe-based war-fighting system, the World-Wide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS, "whim-mix"), was upgraded in the 1980s, and eventually replaced in the 1990s. The new system was called the Global Command and Control System (GCCS), and was built by direction according to international and national information processing standards, using commercial and government "off-the-shelf" products wherever possible. (GCCS runs on Sun Microsystems computers running the Solaris Unix operating system.) COE consists of the software pieces of this common computing and communications environment, as well as the specifications for putting the pieces together to support specific military missions.
These three Defense Department standards automatically impact 8 of the 13 intelligence organizations within Intelink-NSA, DIA, NIMA, NRO, and the military intelligence units of Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Marines. To such Defense standards are added other initiatives relevant to Intelink and specific to the intelligence community, such as the Unified Cryptologic Architecture 2010 (by analogy to Joint Vision 2010), initiated by NSA Director Kenneth Minihan in September 1997, which mandates common cryptology standards and procedures across the intelligence community.
Chapter 3 concludes with a discussion of the Defense Message System (DMS), Defense's new e-mail system using COTS software. It looks pretty much like the e-mail system you use, except encryption is provided by FORTEZZA instead of PGP. (In the DMS, "e-mail" refers strictly to personal, as opposed to organizational traffic. Here I ignore this dis
(9 reviews)
Sensitive Techniques???
Good Efforts by Good People Buried in a Bunker
Invaluable Information
Better Title: "Incedible! Gov discovers Internet it Created"
"It was a dark and stormy night," - An so it begins.
