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Welcome to the Monday Morning News Kick Off. We hope everyone had a pleasant weekend and is looking forward to a shorter, holiday week. Many folks may actually be taking a vacation this week. For those taking time away from the office, we hope the sun shines for you this week while you are relaxing at the shore. For those of us in the office this week, we have a wide range of news stories this week that will stimulate your frontal lobe and get your week started on the right track.

Photo of Kim Jong Il Doctored?
Many are speculating that a recent photo of Kim Jon Il, the North Korean leader, was doctored and that his health is actually on the decline. South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said a photo of Mr Kim visiting an army unit – broadcast by a TV station on June 14 – was apparently a retouched version of a picture carried by the official news agency seven weeks earlier. Both photos show Mr. Kim in the front row of a group of soldiers. A background placard and ceiling lights appear identical in both, but some people at either end of the front rank have apparently been deleted from the later picture. Read more here.

North Korea Criticizes US missile Defense for Hawaii; Really??
The news out of North Korea gets stranger and stranger. Now, the word is that North Korea is criticizing our positioning of missile defense systems around Hawaii — calling the deployment part of a plot to attack the regime and saying it would bolster its nuclear arsenal in retaliation. What a second here. Isn’t Kim Jong Il the guy who claimed he wanted to test a missile by firing it towards Hawaii…essentially starting this whole thing?? And, now our missile defense system is seen as an offense again North Korea? Read more here.

Joe Biden to Mediate Intelligence Turf Battles
Vice President Joe Biden has been asked to quickly mediate a long-standing institutional dispute between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Director of National Intelligence, a signal that President Obama’s National Security Council could not reach a consensus, sources with knowledge of the situation said. Read more here.

Cheney Cashing In on Book Deal
As widely expected, Vice President Dick Cheney has signed a deal with an imprint of Simon & Schuster to write a memoir about his life in politics and his service in four presidential administrations. The memoir will cover his tenure as President George W. Bush’s vice president from 2001 to 2009, as well as his political service in the administrations of Republican Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. Oh, and he’ll make $2million off of the deal.

DoD Weighs Greater Use of Social Media
In the wake of Iranian elections and how social media became such a powerful tool for giving the masses a voice, the Defense Department has decided to look at social media much more closely. Last week in a press conference, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had this to say about it: “This department, I think, is way behind the power curve in this; it’s an area where I think we have a lot of room for improvement.” We certainly applaud this movement to embrace social media. As many of our readers know, USGIF is very forward-thinking when it comes to social media, and it is excited to see the DoD move in the right direction on this. Read more here.

Happy Monday! We hope you have a products (and short) week!

Tags: DoD and Social Media, GEOINT, Intelligence Community, Joe Biden, Kim Jong Il, North Korean, North Korean Missle Testing, USGIF