Morsi’s Downfall Detailed, Taliban Kill 18, CJCS On CNN – Daily Intelligence

Egypt on my mind

FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM

1.  Stay cool this summer – Stealth Wear.  “Adam Harvey’s Stealth Wear – designed with a metallized fabric that protects against thermal imaging surveillance, a technology used widely by UAVs/drones – might be the catalyst that revives a cold-war mentality in our asymmetric world:  but on the asymmetric cyber battlefield, drones don’t get bigger or heavier or slower.  They get smarter and lighter and faster as detection-technology development accelerates counter a new kind of mobility.”

2.  100% Contractor Performance Review.  Contributor Diana Rodriguez follows-up her January 2013 blog, “Feedback and Annual Reviews on a Government Contract” with a look at the historical requirements of contractor performance review and, more contemporaneously, the Under Secretary of Defense’s January 2013 memorandum directing “that by FY 2015, The Office of Federal Procurement Policy is recommending 100% compliance” for contractor performance review.

3.  USNS Carl Brashear gets a makeover.  BAE wins $10 contract and Brashear gets a few days at the spa:  “Work will include inspection of the propeller shaft and stern tube, cleaning and painting of the hull, inspection and polish of the bow thruster propeller, installation of the cloropac unit and overhaul of the seal valves.”  She deserves it.

THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT

1.  Mori’s ouster detailed.  Everything you wanted – and need – to know about the fall of Morsi, but were afraid to tell people you didn’t know:  Reuters’ Yasmine Saleh and Paul Taylor provide a view from inside in their detailed report: “For Egypt’s military chiefs, the final spur to rebellion came on June 26. That day top generals met Mohamed Mursi, the country’s first democratically elected president, and spoke bluntly, telling the Islamist leader what he should say in a major speech he planned as protests against him intensified around the country.  ‘We told him it has to be short, respond to opposition demands to form a coalition government, amend the constitution and set a timeframe for the two actions,’ an officer present in the room told Reuters. ‘Yet he came out with a very long speech that said nothing. That is when we knew he had no intention of fixing the situation, and we had to prepare for Plan B.’”

2.  Islamist fight back across Egypt.  Reuters’ Mike Collett-White and Alastair Macdonald report, “Fierce clashes in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria left 12 dead and 200 injured, while in Cairo, five people were killed as pro- and anti-Mursi protesters ran amok in central areas and armored personnel carriers rumbled among them to restore calm.  Five police officers were gunned down in separate incidents in the North Sinai town of El Arish, and while it was not clear whether the attacks were linked to Mursi’s ouster, hardline Islamists there have warned they would fight back.”  See also AP’s “Egypt on Edge” and “Egyptians Clash.”

3.  Taliban kill 18 Afghan National Police Friday.  LongWarJournal.Com Bill Roggio reports, “The Taliban killed 18 Afghan security personnel in two separate suicide attacks in southern Afghanistan today. One of the attacks killed a border police commander. The largest of the two attacks took place at a police reserve unit in Tarin Kot [sic], the capital of Uruzgan province. A suicide bomber wearing a police uniform entered the dining facility and detonated his vest, killing 12 policemen and wounding five more, Reuters reported. Four of the wounded are reported to be in critical condition. . . . At least 22 Afghan policemen have been killed so far this month, according to a count by The Long War Journal. Among the policemen killed over the past five days are the senior female police officer in Helmand and a district police chief in Baghlan.”

4.  Missile Defense fails test.  According to American Forces Press Service, “Missile Defense Agency, the U.S. Air Force’s 30th Space Wing, the Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, and U.S. Northern Command conducted an integrated exercise and flight test [on Friday, 5 July] of the ground-based midcourse defense element of the nation’s ballistic missile defense system.”  All systems were not a go:  “an intercept was not achieved.”  Guess who’s working this weekend.

5.  This Sunday – CJCS update on Egypt-U.S. mil-to-mil relationships.  Sunday on “State of the Union,” CNN’s Candy Crowley airs an interview with Gen. Dempsey taped before Egypt’s military ousted Morsi:  “’ I wanted to encourage them to protect all the Egyptian people, not to take sides in any particular issue, and to ensure that they were a part of the resolution of this, but in their proper role as a military which is to ensure stability, but not try to influence the outcome . . . .’”  Egypt’s response:  “’it’s their country and they will find their way.’”  See also Aljazeera: “McCain urges US to suspend Egypt military aid.”

6.  Distinguished Flying Cross to Osprey Pilots.  DefenseMediaNetwork.Com reports, “Despite serving with distinction in Afghanistan since 2009, no Marine pilot of an MV-22 Osprey had ever been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the third highest medal a member of a flight crew can receive. That changed at a ceremony last week aboard Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C. where two U.S. Marines of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 365 (VMM-365) became the first Marine pilots of the MV-22 Osprey to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Maj. Michael Hutchings and Capt. David Haake were presented the award for their actions on a mission in Afghanistan on June 27, 2012.”

CONTRACT WATCH

1.  Contractors on chopping block, with others.  AP’s Lolita Baldor runs down the effects of sequestration in the world’s largest office building: “A day without pay, the first of 11 through September, comes next week for more than 650,000 people who hold civilian jobs with the Defense Department. Officials worry that the Pentagon will be hit even harder by layoffs in 2014 if automatic budget cuts continue as planned.  Roughly 85 percent of the department’s nearly 900,000 civilians around the world will be furloughed one day each week over the next three months, according to the latest statistics provided by the Pentagon. But while defense officials were able to shift money around to limit the furloughs this year, thousands of civilian, military and contract jobs could be on the chopping block next year.”

2.  $12 billion OASIS RFP makes it a Happy Hump Day 24 July.  FederalTimes.Com reports, “The General Services Administration will issue a request for proposals for its much-awaited One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS) contract on July 24, according to the pre-solicitation notice. OASIS is a 10-year, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract on which agencies across government can purchase professional services such as engineering, scientific and logistics services. The contract will be worth up to $12 billion, according to market research firm Deltek.  GSA to issue RFP for OASIS contract July 24.”

3.  $450 million Cloud contract – 26 August.  FederalTimes.Com announces, “The Defense Information Systems Agency is looking to the private sector for help in defining a planned $450 million cloud-computing project. The agency is seeking industry feedback on a draft request for proposals released June 24, and it intends to issue a formal request for proposals on Aug. 26.”

TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY

1.  Cool things made in the good ol’ U.S. of A.  VentureBeat.Com’s Sean Ludwig gives us 5 more reasons to get that Lee Greenwood song bouncing around in our heads again:  Tesla, MacPro, K’Nex, and more.

2.  Nicaragua and Venezuela seek the geek.  FoxNews.Com reports, “NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s effort to evade prosecution in the U.S. took a turn toward Latin America Friday after the Presidents of Venezuela and Nicaragua announced they were prepared to grant NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden asylum. Although there were no concrete details from Presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua or Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, it is believed that they are the first offers of asylum that Snowden has received since he requested asylum in several countries, including Nicaragua and Venezuela.”  See also, TheDailyBeast.Com’s comparison:  Silkwood to Snowden.   See also The Guardian’s take, “Edward Snowden is a whistleblower, not a spy.”

3.   Prophetic thoughts on Privacy.  In the wake of Snowden, (Re-)read NYT’s Op-Ed by Bill Keller: “When it comes to privacy, we are all hypocrites. We howl when a newspaper publishes public records about personal behavior. At the same time, we are acquiescing in a much more sweeping erosion of our privacy — government surveillance, corporate data-mining, political microtargeting, hacker invasions — with no comparable outpouring of protest. As a society we have no coherent view of what information is worth defending and how to defend it. . . . When our privacy is invaded in the name of national security, we — and our elected representatives, afraid to be thought soft — generally go along quietly.”  Really, why were we all so surprised by PRISM?

POTOMAC TWO-STEP

1.  Mary Jane for Mayors.   TheDailyBeast.Com’s Matt Taylor reports, 180 mayors push pot platforms into the D.C. spotlight:  “The 180 elected officials attending the annual meeting of the U.S. conference of mayors in Sin City unanimously adopted a resolution urging the federal government to let states and localities make their own marijuana policy. The bipartisan sponsors—including, along with the usual suspects, leaders like Jean Robb, the Tea Party–backed conservative mayor of Deerfield Beach, Florida—seemed to show that the war on the war on drugs is now in full sway, a process that has accelerated since voters in Colorado and Washington state embraced weed legalization at the polls last fall.”  Dude.

2.  Pile on the I.R.S.  WaPo’s Josh Hicks tracks growing scrutiny from the left: “Democrats are now questioning the Treasury inspector general’s audit in light of the new IRS documents, which show that terms such as ‘progressive,’ ‘health care legislation’ and ‘medical marijuana’ appeared on a multipart ‘Be on the Lookout’ list, or BOLO, that helped agents determine which groups deserved additional screening.”

OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS

1.  Elections, Not Generals.  Pulitzer Prize Reuter’s journalist David Rohde argues, “There is little reason to have faith in Egypt’s broken political process at this point. But the best way to ease the country’s bitter divisions are immediate elections that include the Muslim Brotherhood.”

2.  Sliding down the slippery slope, for real.  The Atlantic’s Derek Khanna asks – and answers – “If the justification for PRISM and associated programs is predicated on their potential effectiveness, why shouldn’t such logic be applied elsewhere?”  Good question.

3.  Egypt’s Rocky Road.  Forbes’ Paul Gregory writes, “The Egyptian people, with their long history of secularism, were simply not ready for a religious order imposed on them by a minority party. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood came to understand that they could achieve their vision of an Islamic state, contrary to the will of the people, only by non-democratic means. Thus Morsi began tightening the screws on other civil and administrative institutions with the main goal of achieving authoritarian rule. As the Egyptian people grasped what was happening, they took to the streets. They looked at him as a budding dictator not as the leader of a democratic state.”

THE FUNNIES

1.  King Tut.

2.  In the closet.

3.  Cut off the nose.

Visit Ed at http://blog.edledford.com