Externe

During the recent U.S. combat action involvement in Kosovo,
Weldon was contacted by senior Russian officials.* * *
Weldon learned from the agents that they were seeking
information on Karic to brief the State Department. When he
explained that the information came from the Army and LIWA,
the CIA and FBI agents had no knowledge of that organization,
he confirms. Before his departure for Vienna, the congressman
received a six-page LIWA profile of Karic and his family's
links to Milosevic.
``This is an example of why an organization like NOAH is so
critically necessary,'' Weldon contends. ``LIWA's Information
Dominance Center provides the best capability we have today
in the federal government to assess massive amounts of data
and develop profiles. LIWA uses its contacts with other
agencies to obtain database information from those systems,''
he explains. ``Some is unclassified and some classified.''
Weldon cites an ``extraordinary capability by a former CIA
and Defense Intelligence Agency official, who is a LIWA
profiler, as one of the keys in LIWA's success. She does the
profiling and knows where to look and which systems to pull
information from in a data mining and extrapolation
process,'' he proclaims. ``She makes the system work.''
Weldon intends to use LIWA's profiling capability as a
model for building NOAH. ``My goal is to go beyond service
intelligence agencies and integrate all intelligence
collection. This must be beyond military intelligence, which
is too narrow in scope, to provide a governmmentwide
capability. Each agency with a pod linked to NOAH would
provide two staff members assigned at the hub, which would
operate continuously. Data brought together in ``this cluster
would be used for fusion and profiling, which any agency
could then request,'' he maintains.
NOAH would not belong to the Army, which would continue
with its own intelligence capabilities as would the other
services. There would only be one fusion center, which would
handle input from all federal agencies and from open sources,
Weldon explains. ``NOAH would handle threats like information
operations and examine stability in various regions of the
world. We need this ability to respond immediately.'' The
congressman adds that he recently was briefed by LIWA on very
sensitive, very limited and scary profile information, which
he describes as ``potentially explosive.'' In turn, Weldon
arranged briefings for the chairman of the House National
Security Committee, the Speaker of the House and other key
congressional leaders.
``But this kind of profiling capability is very limited
now. The goal is to have it on a regular basis. The profiling
could be used for sensitive technology transfer issues and
information about security breaches,'' the congressman
allows. LIWA has what he terms the fusion and profiling
state-of-the-art capability in the military, ``even beyond
the military.'' Weldon is pressing the case for NOAH among
leaders in both houses of Congress. ``It is essential that we
create a governmentwide capability under very strict
controls.''
Weldon adds that establishing NOAH is not a funding issue;
it is a jurisdictional issue. ``Some agencies don't want to
tear down their stovepipes. Yet, information on a drug lord,
as an example, could be vitally important to help combat
terrorism.'' He makes a point that too often, federal
agencies overlap each other in their efforts to collect
intelligence against these threats, or they fail to pool
their resources and share vital information. ``This
redundancy of effort and confusion of jurisdiction only
inhibits our nation's capabilities,'' he offers.
NOAH would provide high-bandwidth, virtual connectivity to
experts at agency pod sites. Protocols for interagency data
sharing would be established and refined in links to all pod
sites. The ability to retrieve, collate, analyze and display
data would be exercised to provide possible courses of
action. A backup site would be established for redundancy,
and training would begin on collaborative tools as soon as it
is activated.
The hub system would become part of the national policy
creation and execution system. The tools available at LIWA
would be shared so that every agency would have the same
tools. Weldon explains that all agencies would post data on
the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) highway in a
replicated format sensitive to classification. NOAH's global
network would use the NRO system as a backbone.