DISA Archives

I can't do this job without the help of a lot of people, and this is the time of the year to thank them -- and they deserve it, because sometimes I can get cranky.

So, kudos to the following folks who exhibit true grace when dealing with me:

• Katie Roberts, Veterans Affairs Department press secretary
• Roger Baker, VA CIO
• Art Wu, Republican Deputy Staff Director, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, House VA Committee
• Laura Williams, public affairs officer, Defense Information Systems Agency
• Air Force Lt. Col. April Cunningham, Pentagon press desk
• Lt. Col. Lee Packnett and Lt. Col. Steve Warren, Army Pentagon media relations
• Paul Mehney and Dave Hampton, Army public affairs officers who help me my trips to Ft. Bliss/White Sands Missile Range
• Lt. Myers Vasquez, Navy public affairs, Pentagon
• Warren Suss, Suss Consulting
• John Garing, DISA/Suss Consulting
• Bernie Skoch, Consultant and fellow radio geek
• Army Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, former director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, and Dr. Greg Reger, Army psychologist with the National Center for Telehealth and Technology, for their insights into PTS/TBI at the Government Executive Leadership Breakfast in April

Finally, special thanks to two friends who help me stay on the beam: George Wright on the Army Pentagon press desk and Navy Capt. Dave Wray, commander of Joint Public Affairs Support Element.

That's the word I'm picking up based on a combination of some good intel and speculation by more than a handful of knowledgeable gadget and gizmo graybeards.

It would make sense for Cyber Command -- charged with network defense and attack -- to take over the Defense Information Systems Agency, which operates Defense global networks.

But for this deal to happen, the newly formed Cyber Command would have to get acquisition authority from Congress, which DISA and the Cyber Command lacks, and probably will not happen overnight.

I also hear that once again Cyber Command has its eyes on DISA's spiffy new HQ at Fort Meade in Maryland. Yeah, the building is larger than what Cyber Command needs, but tell me of any Defense outfit that has shrunk lately.

A variety of speech transcripts and slides released by the Pentagon on Monday called for combining the Defense Department chief information officer ship with the Defense Information Systems Agency, but various crystal ball folks I've talked to are still trying to figure out the end game.

Does this mean that Army Lt. Gen. Carroll Pollett, the director at DISA, will end up dual-hatted as the Defense CIO? (And for those who argue this is a job for a civilian, others counter that Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson serves as the Army CIO.)

Or does it mean that Pentagon management will select a civilian CIO and install him or her in DISA, with Pollett serving as the deputy CIO, but still retaining his director title?

Finally, will Teresa "Teri" Takai, the CIO of California whom President Obama nominated for the Defense CIO job will wait until the Pentagon finishes re-arranging its deck chairs -- or will she jump ship?

More needs to be revealed.

It's a rule of thumb that insiders pose the greatest threat to classified information systems -- a rule sadly reinforced by the public release of 91,000 classified, purloined Defense Department documents by Wikileaks.

Defense has zeroed in on Army Pfc. Bradley Manning as the source of the documents Wikileaks released, because it already has him in custody for allegedly leaking other documents to Wikileaks this year.

While the Pentagon has been all over the news in its reaction to potential damage caused by this massive leak, it has been strangely silent on any new plans to counter insider threats -- or how, as the New York Times put it, a private was able to "exploit a loophole in Defense Department security to copy thousands of files onto compact discs over a six-month period. In at least one instance, according to people familiar with the inquiry, Private Manning smuggled highly classified data out of his intelligence unit on a disc made to look like a music CD by Lady Gaga."

This may have something to do with the fact that in fiscal 2010, the Defense Information Systems Agency budgeted a mere $814,000 for insider threat detection systems and asked for a $2.2 million budget for insider detection tools in fiscal 2011. That's out of an overall information systems security operations and maintenance budget request of $288.6 million.

Since insiders account for 75 percent of leaks, why does DISA allocate such a small amount of its budget to countering the biggest part of the information security problem?

In what has to be considered a coup in the world of federal information technology consulting, Suss Consulting signed July 16 former DISA Chief Information Officer John Garing to its team, along with James Kane, who served as chief Executive officer of rival Federal Sources Inc. for the past decade.

Although DISA plans to compete about $5 billion in network contracts this year, don't expect to get any insights from Garing on these procurements, as ethics rules prohibit him from having anything to do with the agency for a year.

Garing told me he will still have plenty to do and said he would like to help companies doing business with the federal government apply their expertise in the private sector, among other things.

DISA is slated to move from its headquarters on Court House Road in Arlington, Va., to a new campus at Fort Meade, Md., in October. Garing, who lives in Woodbridge, Va., told me that the prospect of the daunting commute was a key factor in his decision to leave the agency.

Now he can work from his house and make nearby meetings without extra wear and tear on his car -- and body, he said.

The Defense Information Systems Agency wants some really smart folks to help it, the Central Command, the State Department and the Agency for International Development to build an information communications technology infrastructure for Afghanistan.

The work will be performed for the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations, which works out of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and DISA says it wants senior-level expertise to jump start a commercial communications industry in Afghanistan.

This includes a mess of policy and governance stuff as well as a regulatory framework that undoubtedly will require inflicting the Afghan government with reams of Power Point slides.

One of the most tantalizing lines buried in the fiscal 2011 budget request for the Defense Information Systems Agency is a $102.8 million single item for a Senior Leadership Enterprise communications system.

The DISA budget says the system supports "National Leadership Command Capabilities and is classified."

Darn. So I can only speculate that DISA has somehow developed a secret gizmo much like the Star Trek Communicator,which, when you get down to it, looks much like a 21st century cell phone.

Of course, Senior Leaders need encrypted phones, so maybe DISA will supply them all with secret decoder rings used as premiums to kids by Ovatltine (a beverage I loathe) in the 1930s and 1940s.

Anyone care to enlighten me as to the real components of the Senior Leader Enterprise system?

Some truly off-the-wall comments on a story on the Haitian relief operations I wrote last week suggest that Haiti was not hit by an earthquake but some sort of a planned attack by the United States.

I have been pondering what kind of weapon could mimic a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, when the answer popped into my e-mail on Thursday. The Air Force, Navy, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and University of Alaska funded High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) projects to use high-powered radio transmitters located near Gakona, Alaska, to conduct ionospheric research.

HAARP conspiracy theorists have conjectured since the mid-1990s that the Defense Department plans to use modified global weather to impair the mental health of large populations and knock out worldwide communications systems.

Now this just in: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has suggested the United States used HAARP to cause the Haiti earthquakes.

Somehow, according to comments I have received says the Defense Information Systems Agency - yes, that's DISA - is enmeshed in this conspiracy. DISA, I'm told, has no plans for world domination, which is refreshing to know.

I know they're real busy on the Hill right now, adding verbiage to an already incomprehensible 2,000 page-plus health care bill, but I'm appalled at the sloppy work done on the fiscal 2010 Defense appropriations bill signed by President Obama on Monday.

The final version of the bill was printed in the Congressional Record, which includes the bill's text and what looks like report language that omitted numerous tables on exactly how Congress sliced and diced a $637 billion budget.

Instead of tables that specify the exact budget for, say, a left-handed cyber gimble, the report in the Congressional Record is replete with notations on page after page that say, "Insert graphic folio."

Someone forgot to insert all the graphic folios.

That means the Senate approved expenditure of billions of dollars without any real idea of exactly what was in the Defense bill. And the president compounded the problem by signing it.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so I'm going to doff my grump hat and thank the folks who make this column possible, starting with some really fine military public affairs officers.

These PAOs have a tough job. They need to feed news hungry hordes of ink-stained (or in my case, digit-stained) wretches with accurate facts on a Web-driven deadline schedule -- and in doing so with probably more grace and style than I could muster if the roles were reversed.

In my experience, military PAOs also could teach their colleagues in civilian agencies a lesson or two and are way ahead of most of their counterparts in the private sector.

So, many warm thanks to these folks:

• Jon Anderson, Defense Information Systems Agency
• Terry Jones, Military Health System
• Charlene Reynolds, Military Health System
• Air Force Lt. Col. Eric Butterbaugh, Pentagon press desk
• Army Lt. Col. Marty Downie, Army Pentagon press shop and Iraq
• Steve Davis, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command
• Julie Calohan, Madigan Army Medical Center
• John Donaldson, Naval Network Warfare Command
• Dave Hampton, Fort Bliss, Texas
• Ray Steen, Army Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care
• Vicki Stein, Pentagon Air Force press desk
• Michael Kleiman, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.
• Lindy Kyzer, Army Online and Social Media Division

And finally, two true friends and superb PAOs who serve as living reminders of what is important: George Wright, in the Army Pentagon public affairs ship, and Navy Capt. Dave Wray, commander of the Joint Public Affairs Support Element of the U.S. Joint Forces Command.

Last, but not least, my thanks go to Katie Roberts, the press secretary at the Veterans Affairs Department, who puts up with me despite the slings and arrows I send her way in this column.