got geoint?

Welcome to the Monday Morning News Kick Off post from got geoint? As always, we hope everyone had a restful weekend and are geared up for a productive work week. What does this week have in store for us? Well, our crystal ball is a bit fuzzy this morning, but we expect it won’t be as crazy as last week — with the Washington Post story, Clapper confirmation hearing and more — but one never knows. We do know that this weeks MMNKO post has some very compelling news — from more Clapper confirmation news to a story of a meteorite crater being found via Google Earth. So, as we always say, fire up that second cup of coffee and read on!

Clapper Most Qualified To Be National Intel Director
With a career spanning 46 years in the intelligence business, Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. will be the most qualified candidate ever to assume the nation’s top intelligence job. During the 1990s, he was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he created the Defense HUMINT service to institutionalize the Pentagon’s far-flung efforts to recruit and run foreign agents. Just two days after the 9/11 attacks, he became director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the steward of the nation’s network of spy satellites. Read the full NewsMax article here.

Intelligence Nominee’s Contractor Ties Draw Scrutiny
Four months after James R. Clapper left his federal job as head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in June 2006, he joined the boards of three government contractors, two of which had been doing business with his agency while he was there. It was not the only revolving door entered by Clapper, who is now President Obama’s nominee to be director of national intelligence. In October 2006 he was hired full-time by DFI International, which was trying to boost its consulting with intelligence agencies. In April 2007, when he returned to public service as the chief of the Pentagon’s intelligence programs, DFI paid him a $50,000 bonus on his way out the door, according to his financial disclosure statement. Five months later, DFI landed a contract to advise Clapper’s Pentagon office, though company officials do not recall collecting any revenue from the deal. Read the full LA times article here.

Unisys to Compete for Big Geospatial Intelligence Agency Contract
Unisys Corp. said last Thursday it is one of 13 companies selected to compete for up to $1 billion in task orders over five years on the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s Total Application Services for Enterprise Requirements contract. The Blue Bell, Pa.-based information-technology company said it and the 12 other companies will compete to provide integration and deployment services to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and to support the agency’s consolidation to a site in Springfield, Va. Read the full Biz Journal article here.

Assessing WikiLeaks’s Raw Data
You can read harrowing summaries of the WikiLeaks Afghan War Diaries from the New York Times, the Guardian, and elsewhere. The Guardian contends that the massive leak portrays the “real war” in Afghanistan as never before revealed, but that’s not quite accurate. Many of the main narrative streams — the sanctuaries found in Pakistan, the collusion between elements of the ISI and the Taliban, civilian causalities (at least 144 separate incidents are recounted here) and subsequent cover-ups — are part of the main narrative of the war. Read the full Atlantic blog post here.

Untouched Meteorite Impact Crater Found via Google Earth
A pristine meteorite impact crater has been found in a remote area of the Sahara desert in southwest Egypt. The crater was originally noticed on Google Earth images, and is believed to be only a few thousand years old. The 45-meter-wide and 16-meter-deep crater, called Kamil, was probably formed by the impact of an iron meteorite, and was first noticed on Google Earth images in 2008 by Vincenzo de Michele, former curator of the Civico Museo di Storia Naturale, in Milan, Italy. Now researchers led by Luigi Folco, meteorite curator at the Museo Nazionale dell’Antartide attached to the University of Siena, have also reported finding the crater in satellite images taken in 1972, and have visited the site. Read the full Physorg.com post here.

Happy Monday!

Tags: CIA, Clapper, Clapper Confirmation, DIA, Director of National Intelligence, DNI, GEOINT, geospatial intelligence, Google Earth, got geoint?, Meteorite Crater Found Via Google Earth, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, NGA, NRO, ODNI, Spy Satellites, United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, USGIF, WikiLeaks