TIA Lives On

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () bsf-llc com>]

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0223nj1.htm

TIA Lives On 
By Shane Harris, National Journal
C National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006 

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than
two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only
and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off
charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens. 

Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program
-- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining
government databases and the personal records of people in the United States
-- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another
group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency,
according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence
sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed,
apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact,
often under the same contracts. 

It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the
classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that moved, their new
code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been
disclosed. Sources aware of the transfers declined to speak on the record
for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific programs
are classified. 

Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the
Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in
Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the
Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied
together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools
developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection
technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the
move to ARDA. 

A $19 million contract to build the prototype system was awarded in late
2002 to Hicks & Associates, a consulting firm in Arlington, Va., that is run
by former Defense and military officials. Congress's decision to pull TIA's
funding in late 2003 "caused a significant amount of uncertainty for all of
us about the future of our work," Hicks executive Brian Sharkey wrote in an
e-mail to subcontractors at the time. "Fortunately," Sharkey continued, "a
new sponsor has come forward that will enable us to continue much of our
previous work." Sources confirm that this new sponsor was ARDA. Along with
the new sponsor came a new name. "We will be describing this new effort as
'Basketball,' " Sharkey wrote, apparently giving no explanation of the
name's significance. Another e-mail from a Hicks employee, Marc Swedenburg,
reminded the company's staff that "TIA has been terminated and should be
referenced in that fashion." 

Sharkey played a key role in TIA's birth, when he and a close friend,
retired Navy Vice Adm. John Poindexter, President Reagan's national security
adviser, brought the idea to Defense officials shortly after the 9/11
attacks. The men had teamed earlier on intelligence-technology programs for
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which agreed to host TIA and
hired Poindexter to run it in 2002. In August 2003, Poindexter was forced to
resign as TIA chief amid howls that his central role in the Iran-Contra
scandal of the mid-1980s made him unfit to run a sensitive intelligence
program. 

...

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