The Committee’s investigation totaled more than three years of investigative activity, more than 200 witness interviews, and more than a million pages of reviewed documents. All five volumes total more than 1300 pages.

You can read “Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities” here.

Read the Senate Intelligence Committee’s previous reports:

• “Volume I: Russian Efforts Against Election Infrastructure”
• “Volume II: Russia’s Use of Social Media”
• “Volume III: U.S. Government Response to Russian Activities”
• “Volume IV: Review of the Intelligence Community Assessment”
• Additional declassifications of “Volume IV: Review of Intelligence Community Assessment”

Source: SSCI

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In partnership with the U.S. Space Force, DARPA’s Blackjack program has an objective to ultimately launch and test a constellation of up to 20 small satellites to demonstrate critical elements of global high-speed autonomous satellite networks in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), proving a capability that could provide the Department of Defense with highly connected, resilient, and persistent overhead coverage. The first two satellites in the Blackjack constellation are scheduled for launch in late 2021. Prior to that, three SEAKR and SSCI demonstration flights, all planned as rideshare opportunities, are scheduled to begin launching in 2020. Each flight aims to verify and validate key technologies to be integrated into Blackjack satellites, to include high-speed supercomputing, optical inter-satellite links, ground software for tactical user access, satellite and constellation autonomy, and advanced processing, exploitation, and dissemination.

SEAKR Engineering is the Blackjack prime contractor for the autonomous mission system called Pit Boss. Pit Boss is an autonomous, collaborative, distributed space-based enterprise that is designed to self-task, process, and distribute tactically relevant information to manned and unmanned subscribers. The SEAKR solution includes SEAKR’s supercomputing hardware and teammate SSCI’s Collaborative Mission Autonomy Software.

As prime, SEAKR supports the Blackjack program with two risk reduction demonstration flights planned as LEO rideshares. The first demonstration, Mandrake I, delivered on a cubesat, aims to demonstrate key Pit Boss hardware and chip level technologies prior to full production. The experimental orbital platform includes a digital twin and strives for ‘real-time’ efficacy feedback on LEO radiation mitigations and processor performance.

The Mandrake II flight demonstration, a DARPA partnership with Space Development Agency, forages early technology demonstration and verification of key Blackjack mission features. Mandrake II is designed to engage laser communications between satellites and also to ground assets with Blackjack constellation laser terminals. The demonstration merits SEAKR’s forward trajectory developing state of the art space-based mesh network capabilities for Pit Boss, an integral part of the Blackjack Program.

SSCI meanwhile continues, under a Blackjack contract, to develop an early on-orbit risk reduction demonstration of Pit Boss. The mission, dubbed “Sagittarius-A*”, is planned to include technology provided by SSCI’s partners Orbit Logic, Emergent Space Technologies, Raytheon BBN, LeafLabs, Kitware, HawkEye360, and Innoflight. To get to orbit, SSCI has executed an agreement for a flight of SSCI’s Pit Boss technologies with mission service provider Loft Orbital. Loft Orbital plans to integrate the Sagittarius-A* Innoflight processor, loaded with the SSCI team’s autonomous battle management command, control, and communications (BMC3) software, onto its YAM-3 spacecraft, an ESPA-class mission hosting a number of government and commercial payloads. Loft Orbital has a unique ability to deploy missions quickly due to its Payload Hub technology, a modular, bus agnostic, and payload agnostic interface adapter that enables a plug-and-play approach to satellite missions. Loft Orbital also provides a turn-key command and control system that can be used by operators for payload operations during reserved times of the day.

The Sagittarius A* mission is intended to provide a demonstration of key initial Pit Boss BMC3 software capabilities to autonomously manage a bus and payload to satisfy a tactical user’s “mission service request” via prototype Blackjack human machine system interface (HMSI) ground software. Requested data services, in turn, are planned to be autonomously disseminated and shown on a tactically relevant user display system. The SSCI team’s open and modular BMC3 software is designed to enable on-orbit upload and host of third-party exploitation algorithms, also referred to as “massless payloads”. Multiple massless payloads are intended to be flown, all of which can operate on payload imagery data for demonstration of advanced mission capabilities. Finally, Sagittarius A* is designed to demonstrate the ability of Pit Boss to receive data products from external sources that will result in onboard autonomous tipping and cueing.

SSCI’s Vice President of Research and Development, Dr. Owen Brown, summarizes the mission’s potential: “This is incredibly exciting that SSCI’s Collaborative Mission Autonomy (CMA), further enabled by our teammate’s plug-in components and third-party massless payloads, is scheduled to ‘fly’ in space. With a successful execution of Sagittarius A*, we can complete our journey of demonstration testing CMA in all of the physical domains. The implication is that DARPA has established a technology paradigm that not only could offer BMC3 services for Proliferated LEO architectures, but that same technology could help unlock many of the capabilities required for multidomain integration of intelligent systems operating at the edge.”

Source: SSCI

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“Over the past several decades, and especially since the terrible tragedy of 9/11, the CIA has been at the forefront of our Nation’s campaign against al-Qa’ida and other terrorist organizations worldwide. The women and men of the CIA have operated around the globe, 24-hours-a-day, working with their U.S. colleagues as well as with foreign partners to prevent terrorist attacks. As a result of these efforts, including the many sacrifices made by CIA officers and their families, countless lives have been saved and our Homeland is more secure.

As part of the CIA’s global effort to dismantle al-Qa’ida and to prevent future terrorist attacks, the Agency was directed by President Bush six days after 9/11 to carry out a program to detain terrorist suspects around the world. Certain detainees were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), which the Department of Justice determined at the time to be lawful and which were duly authorized by the Bush Administration. These techniques, which were last used by the CIA in December 2007, subsequently were prohibited by an Executive Order issued by President Obama when he took office in January 2009.

Today, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) released a redacted version of the Executive Summary, Findings, and Conclusions of its Study on CIA’s former detention and interrogation program, along with Minority Views and the Additional Views of a number of Committee members on the same subject. The CIA has also released its redacted June 2013 response to the Study, which is being posted on our website, www.cia.gov.

As noted in CIA’s response to the study, we acknowledge that the detention and interrogation program had shortcomings and that the Agency made mistakes. The most serious problems occurred early on and stemmed from the fact that the Agency was unprepared and lacked the core competencies required to carry out an unprecedented, worldwide program of detaining and interrogating suspected al-Qa’ida and affiliated terrorists. In carrying out that program, we did not always live up to the high standards that we set for ourselves and that the American people expect of us. As an Agency, we have learned from these mistakes, which is why my predecessors and I have implemented various remedial measures over the years to address institutional deficiencies.

Yet, despite common ground with some of the findings of the Committee’s Study, we part ways with the Committee on some key points. Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives. The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qa’ida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day.

We also disagree with the Study’s characterization of how CIA briefed the program to the Congress, various entities within the Executive Branch, and the public. While we made mistakes, the record does not support the Study’s inference that the Agency systematically and intentionally misled each of these audiences on the effectiveness of the program. Moreover, the process undertaken by the Committee when investigating the program provided an incomplete and selective picture of what occurred. As noted in the Minority views and in a number of additional views of Members, no interviews were conducted of any CIA officers involved in the program, which would have provided Members with valuable context and perspective surrounding these events.

Throughout its 67-year history, CIA has played a critical role keeping our Nation secure, and CIA officers are rightly proud and honored to be part of an organization that is indispensable to our national security. The numerous challenges on the world stage demand the full attention, focus, and capabilities of the women and men of the CIA so that our country can stay strong and our fellow Americans remain safe. To be successful, the CIA needs to work closely with its Congressional oversight committees as we confront these challenges.  With today’s release of Committee documents and the CIA response, we look forward to the way ahead.”

Related Documents:

• CIA’s June 2013 Response to the SSCI Study on the Former Detention and Interrogation Program [PDF 5.4MB]*
• CIA Fact Sheet Regarding the SSCI Study on the Former Detention and Interrogation Program

Source: Central Intelligence Agency

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