McFate & Fondacaro Ride Again!
U.S. Army soldiers from Charlie Company's 2nd battalion 35th infantry regiment, Task Forces Bronco, climb during an early morning mountain patrol at the Chaw Kay district in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan August 19, 2011. - REUTERS IMAGES
by John Stanton
“You should look again at this cash cow of a program and ask questions...”
“A spectacular failure...”
“People I met in HTS are incapable of separating truth from manipulation by respondents.”
(August 20, Virginia, Sri Lanka Guardian) Montgomery McFate, former senior social scientist for the US Army Human Terrain System (HTS) and Steve Fondacaro, former program manager for the HTS, are teaming up once again to, apparently, tell their side of the HTS story. The Center for Complex Operations (CCO) will be publishing their account in PRISM later in 2011. CCO is supported by the Department of Defense, State and USAID. It also works with the United States Institute for Peace.
“Building a Rocket in the Garage: Reflections on the First Four Years of the Human Terrain System (with Steve Fondacaro), PRISM Journal, National Defense University (forthcoming), 2011,” is the title of the work. HTS was not rocket science, of course, and the the two alchemists managed to get a lot of support from General David Petraeus, USA (Ret.) and a very friendly mainstream media too enamored with the program's personalities, rather than system performance. To this day, reliable performance data on HTS does not exist.
Also forthcoming from McFate in later 2011, is “What do Commanders Really Want to Know? US Army Human Terrain System Lessons Learned from Iraq and Afghanistan.” That effort, with collaborators, will appear in The Handbook of Military Psychology from Oxford University Press.
But if recent reports are to be believed, commanders either want nothing to do with HTS or “want to have one” in the same manner as a teenager wants to have the latest gadget because everyone else does, even if the older gadget is far more reliable. One can hear commanders stomping their feet in a fit, “I want a Human Terrain Team, not a Civil Affairs Team!”
The Pentagon, Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD), has shown in the past that is more than happy to support and supply HTT's. That support may get stronger with Petraeus now into the Central Intelligence Agency. Who knows if there will be a HTS linkage between SECDEF Leon Panneta in OSD and Petraeus at CIA.
A Sri Lankan warfighter once said he “feared HTT's more than the CIA.” That fear factor is probably going to go up a notch given the potential for CIA-DOD collaboration in human terrain exploitation. Who knows? Maybe it has already been done.
Inside The Rocket Launched from the Garage
New reports of dysfunction have surfaced which mirror those of HTS 1.0. The US Army and BAE Systems are still having trouble recruiting qualified personnel. When qualified social scientists with lengthy experience in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq are found, the US Army and BAE Systems manage to find a way to botch up the hire. Both blame each other and then inform the hire that it was the other guy who was responsible for the termination with or without cause. Submitted resumes are embellished by both trainers and recruits and not thoroughly scrutinized by the US Army or BAE Systems it is reported.
A group of new employees was apparently told by a senior HTS instructor, “that he and others were being cut from the program on short notice.”
“The curriculum is laughable...It is a smattering of information that includes lessons on the US Army for those unfamiliar with its internal operations, the background of HTS, some elementary counterinsurgency doctrine with selections taken generally from the 2006-2007 time period, a session of anti-Marxism, a class on culture in Islam--taught by an Iraqi woman—and basic phrases in Dari,” said a source. “No one can speak Pashto.”
“The database is secret, internal and is therefore off-limits to peer evaluation by social scientists,” said sources.
Observers say that “HTS doesn't provide any information that regional specialists don't already have.” That is the case because, “Field interviews, we were told, are limited to about six minutes. People go out only the morning. Some exceptions would be immediate local requests or communications which indicate social fissions.”
There is an allegation of religious discrimination within the program. One trainee evidently asked for a minor accommodation to observe Ramadan and from that point on had to document nearly every activity and, apparently, was under close scrutiny by program officials.
US Military Information Support Operations (MISO)
What is HTS 2.0 morphing into? A MISO support function.
No matter how sliced and served, HTS is still a polling, intelligence and kill-pacify chain operation dating from its early days at the Joint Improvised Explosive Detection Organization. But now, if some employment announcements are any guide, HTS is becoming central to US MISO (globally) which, obviously, is critical to COIN Doctrine.
Shaping the public consciousness, foreign and domestic, is critical to the success of US national security. It is all stated as such in the strategic, operational and tactical doctrine of the USA.
And yes, Americans are a target of US MISO no matter what the law may say.
Here are three advertisements from Glevum Associates which has built a name for itself as expert on pulling information out of cultural-human terrain environments. They gained a lot of experience working with HTS 1.0 and have done quite well in the defense contracting arena.
Where they go, or are, the US military and intelligence gathering organizations are likely to be. These advertisements are from the July-August 2011 timeframe.
“Glevum Associates seeks a Senior Media Advisor in Afghanistan...to provide comprehensive advice and understanding to U.S. military staff in Afghanistan on cultural, social and political implications of communication strategies. In this role, the ideal candidate will engage media, tailor messages and monitor audiences to support the command’s strategic communication objectives. The person will be responsible for implementing the quantitative aspect of Glevum’s Face-to-Face Research and Analysis ™ (F2RA™) which positions Glevum to collect and analyze highly sensitive, population-focused data, while protecting the safety and anonymity of respondents and interviewers. Purpose of collected data will be non-intelligence purposes…Experience supporting US Military Information Support Operations target audience analysis is a plus...Must possess Secret Security Clearance.
Glevum Associates seeks Senior Afghanistan Advisor to support a DoD client developing, managing and coordinating information operations programs. Must be able to move freely within Afghan society and develop personal networks of contacts that can facilitate MISO operations. Must already have established network of Afghan contacts and recent experience of establishing Afghan partner and advisor networks. Experience supporting US Military Information Support Operations target audience analysis is a plus. Research conducted and supervised will lead directly into analysis and recommendations regarding information campaign planning. We count on this person to assist the Senior Research Scientist with the development of culturally appropriate campaign themes, objectives, target audience programming, testing and archiving.
Glevum Associates, a government contractor, is seeking Subject Matter Expert Network Managers to support U.S. government initiatives in Algeria, Nigeria, Libya, and Somalia. Recruits and manages regional and/national SME Net in subject country.”
MISO and HTS: perfect together.
John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in political and national security matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com.
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