From the "Ash" comes "Imagining the Transforming Event"

Oh boy, this nomination ought to skate through the confirmation like Tonya Harding.  Ashton Carter has a 92% Muckety rating and three degrees of separation or less to George Soros, the NSA, CIA, and the Bush-Clinton crime syndicate. Ties to Skull & Bones and the Chicago gang Harvard, MIT, Mitre Bluebeam team.

Previously, Carter was a senior partner of Global Technology Partners focused on advising investment firms in technology and defense, and an advisor to Goldman Sachs on global affairs. At Harvard’s Kennedy School, he was professor and chair of the International Relations, Science, and Security faculty. He served on the boards of the MITRE Corporation, Mitretek Systems, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and a member of the Draper Laboratory Corporation. Carter has been a member of the Defense Policy Board, the Defense Science Board, and the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group.

Ashton Carter was born on September 24, 1954 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Anne (Baldwin) and William S. Carter, Jr., a Navy neurologist and psychologist.^[3][4] He was educated at Abington High School in Abington, Pennsylvania, where he had been president of the honor society, and graduated in 1972. He received bachelor's degrees in physics and in medieval history from Yale University, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in 1976.^[5] He then received his doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Oxford in 1979, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.^[5] 

He was a physics instructor at Oxford, a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University and MIT, and an experimental research associate at Brookhaven and Fermilab National Laboratories.-wikipedia

 

Belfer Center Harvard University

Reprinted by permission of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Volume 77, Number 6, November/December 1998. Copyright 1998 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.catastrophicterrorism-foreignaffairs-1198.pdf (120K PDF)Ashton B. Carter, John Deutch, and Philip Zelikow

Ashton Carter is Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense. John Deutch is Institute Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former Director of Central Intelligence and Deputy Secretary of Defense. Philip Zelikow, a former member of the National Security Council staff, is White Burkett Miller Professor of History and Director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

IMAGINING THE TRANSFORMING EVENT

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon. But today's terrorists, be they international cults like Aum Shinrikyo or individual nihilists like the Unabomber, act on a greater variety of motives than ever before.

False Flag and MK-Ultra - Ash you lost me already....can you confirm this with your dad?

The bombings in East Africa killed hundreds. A successful attack with weapons of mass destruction could certainly take thousands, or tens of thousands, of lives. If the device that exploded in 1993 under the World Trade Center had been nuclear, or had effectively dispersed a deadly pathogen, the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it. Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history. It could involve loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America's fundamental sense of security, as did the Soviet atomic bomb test in 1949. Like Pearl Harbor, this event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures, scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either further terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently......

ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS
The threat of catastrophic terrorism spans the globe, defying ready classification as solely foreign or domestic. As the 1993 World Trade Center incident demonstrated, a terrorist group can include U.S. citizens and foreign nationals, operating and moving materials in and out of American territory over long periods of time. The greatest danger may arise if the threat falls into one of the crevasses in the government's overlapping jurisdictions, such as the divide between "foreign" and "domestic" terrorism or "law enforcement" versus "national security."

The law enforcement/national security divide is especially significant, carved deeply into the topography of American government. The national security paradigm fosters aggressive, active intelligence gathering. It anticipates the threat before it arises and plans preventive action against suspected targets. In contrast, the law enforcement paradigm fosters reactions to information provided voluntarily, uses ex post facto arrests and trials governed by rules of evidence, and protects the rights of citizens....

President Bill Clinton appointed a national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counterterrorism in May 1998 to "bring the full force of all our resources to bear swiftly and effectively." There is no harm in the designation of a White House aide, but one should not place faith in czars. Real power still resides in the executive departments that have people, equipment, money, and the capacity to get things done.

Because most of the government functions addressing the danger of catastrophic terrorism apply to other purposes as well, the people making decisions about these capabilities against terrorists should be the same people who consider the other missions and can reconcile competing demands. The U.S. government must create unglamorous but effective systems for accountable decision-making that combine civil, military, and intelligence expertise throughout the chain of command; integrate planning and operational activity; build up institutional capacities; and highlight defensive needs before an incident happens. This strategy has four elements: intelligence and warning; prevention and deterrence; crisis and consequence management; and coordinated acquisition of equipment and technology....

INTELLIGENCE AND WARNING
The intelligence role in preventing catastrophic terrorism is complicated by nonstate actors, concealed weapons development, and unconventional deployments, all of which are hard to monitor and preempt. In cyberattacks, for example, the deployment of weapons can be entirely electronic. The U.S. government should therefore have the authority to monitor any group and its potential state sponsors that might have the motive and the means to use weapons of mass destruction. In order to detect such weapons anywhere in the world, the United States should utilize remote sensing technology and cultivate global sources of information. Necessary measures include clandestine collection of open sources, such as foreign newspapers and the Internet, as well as a full exchange of information with key allies...

The intelligence job is hard but not impossible. The would-be terrorists have problems as well. If they are supported by a state, their organizations tend to be either large and leaky or small and feckless. If they are not backed by a state, the group may be small, feckless, and pathological, too. These realities form the opportunities for intelligence success. The national security agencies can seize the initiative. Domestic law enforcement officials, understandably, do not actively pursue intelligence collection but focus their efforts on informants or other evidence in investigating suspected criminal actions. Civil liberties properly discourage them from going out and looking for criminals before they have evidence of a crime. On the other hand, domestic law enforcement has many techniques for gathering data, including lawful wiretaps and grand jury investigations. Much of what these efforts yield, however, is closed off to the national security community by law or regulation to safeguard constitutional rights....

The United States needs a new institution to gather intelligence on catastrophic terrorism -- a National Terrorism Intelligence Center -- that would collect and analyze information so it could warn of suspected catastrophic terrorist acts ahead of time....

Executive Order 13354 The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) (2004)

Since this center would have access to domestic law enforcement data, it should not be located at the Central Intelligence Agency. Instead, the National Center should incorporate the highly successful Director of Central Intelligence Counterterrorism Center, which has a narrower mandate than this proposal, and be located in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. However, the center would be run by an operating committee chaired by the director of central intelligence and including the director of the FBI, the deputy secretary of defense, the deputy attorney general, the deputy secretary of state, and the deputy national security adviser. The National Foreign Intelligence Program, which already provides support for the FBI's National Security Division, would cover the center's budget, while the National Security Council would take up unresolved disputes. The director of the center would come alternately from the FBI and the CIA, and all intelligence organizations would provide a specified number of professionals exempt from agency personnel ceilings....

In short, the center would combine the active intelligence gathering approach of the national security agencies, which are not legally constrained in their foreign investigations, with the domestic authority and investigative resources of law enforcement agencies. This combination is consistent with public trust and respect for civil liberties: the center would have no powers of arrest and prosecution and would maintain a certain distance from the traditional defense and intelligence agencies. The center would also be subject to oversight from existing institutions, like the federal judiciary, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the select intelligence committees of Congress. Such a plan reconciles the practices of foreign intelligence work with the restrictions that limit the reach of law enforcement.....

Risk Analysis. This form of analysis is well known to engineers who look at a dangerous mechanical or electronic system to find key sequences of errors that can lead not just to failure, but to catastrophic failure. In this case, the role of such analysis would be to define risks, gather data to assess their relative seriousness, and subdivide the problems into components where resources can make the biggest impact. A systemic approach would include area surveillance, specific threat identification, targeted surveillance and warning, interdiction and covert action, postattack consequence management, forensic analysis, preventive and punitive action, and learning lessons.

Government agencies can do many things reasonably well, but strategic risk analysis is not one of them. A better alternative would be a nonprofit center for catastrophic terrorism risk analysis, under an FBI contract -- similar to the role of the rand Corporation early in the nuclear era. The Department of Defense has already created a good planning unit, but such a center must have a domestic, not just defense, focus. Meanwhile, the prevention of catastrophic terrorism depends on the interdiction of the people and materials involved. Guided by strategic risk analysis, a serious U.S. effort would include the development of remote sensing technology to detect nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons (and their components). Aided by international agreements among suppliers, the precursor materials that could be used to make such weapons should be chemically marked to enhance detection or ex post facto investigations....

CRISIS AND CONSEQUENCE MANAGEMENT
America bases its present system for handling terrorist emergencies on the FBI at home and the State Department or local military commanders abroad. If an acute threat emerges in the United States, local authorities must alert the FBI. In turn, the FBI's special agent in charge then organizes the intergovernmental response by activating a strategic intelligence center in Washington and a joint operations center and public affairs effort at the site of the attack. Following the East Africa bombings of U.S. embassies, for example, the State Department covered the diplomatic duties and most consequence management while the FBI took charge of the crime scene and criminal investigation.

If there were a threat of weapons of mass destruction, the FBI could call on its Weapons of Mass Destruction Operations Unit, which coordinates the response with other agencies, in particular the Pentagon. It also has the legal authority to seek military aid for a crisis on U.S. soil. Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would organize consequence management under the "Federal Response Plan." This present structure is adequate for ordinary terrorist threats or attacks, or even small scares involving weapons of mass destruction....

If an attack occurs, America must respond immediately to mitigate casualties and damage. Such a massive effort would include emergency medical care; distributions of protective gear, medications, and vaccines; and possible evacuations and area quarantines. It would also require extensive preparations in central locations, the capacity to mobilize its units on sudden notice, and cooperation of local authorities.....

The United States needs a two-tier response structure: one for ordinary terrorist incidents that federal law enforcement can manage with interagency help, and another for truly catastrophic terrorist attacks. The government would require two new offices, one within the office of the defense secretary, and the other within the existing U.S. Atlantic Command [NATO], which already bears operational responsibility for the defense of the American homeland and the majority of the U.S. armed forces. These Catastrophic Terrorism Response Offices, or CTROS, would coordinate federal, state, and local authorities as well as the private sector to respond to major terrorist threats once they are activated by the president and the defense secretary....

Why two offices, rather than one? The CTRO in the Pentagon would concentrate on preparedness for preemptive and/or retaliatory strikes, through covert action or the armed forces. It would draw additional staff from a relatively narrow set of agencies: the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the FBI. This is a highly secret, delicate activity that currently only the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- not the FBI -- cover in an ad hoc manner. The second office, in contrast, would handle a much broader range of activities that affect prevention, containment, and management of the postattack consequences. It would draw on the resources of the National Guard, FEMA, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other federal, state, and local agencies. This office would function like a large orchestra that an integrated structure like the U.S. Atlantic Command could activate in an emergency....

ACQUISITION
Today the U.S. government is ordering everything from vaccines to new research, with nearly two dozen agencies issuing their own separate shopping lists. When these budget requests arrive in Congress, the lack of planning creates difficult choices for committees, which then argue with each other about how to divide the appropriations pie. The government should instead coordinate all budgets involving counterterrorism capabilities. The United States needs to acquire technology such as detectors of special materials (like radioactive substances), forensic investigation tools, automated tracking and analysis systems, and protective clothing and equipment. The Clinton administration has already started to acquire stockpiles of vaccines, antidotes, and antibiotics, adding to such a program already underway for the U.S. armed forces. But it still needs resources for storage and shipment of medications as well as research into defense against biological weapons. Laboratories around the country also need improved detection devices so they can rapidly analyze substances and check field identifications....

Attorney General Janet Reno has warned Congress of the extraordinary acquisition requirements of a serious policy addressing catastrophic terrorism. In April, she explained that "we may need to develop an approach which will permit the government to accelerate the normal procurement procedures to quickly identify and deploy new technologies and substances needed to thwart terrorist threats and respond to terrorist acts. These procedures would be used not only to purchase medications and other needed tools, but also in some instances, to borrow medications or tools from, or to enter in effective partnership with, academia and industry." This statement is a call for an interdepartmental acquisition program that draws on Pentagon expertise. Despite its limitations, the Defense Department still has the best track record in the government for successful sponsorship of technological development and rapid, large-scale procurement.

This proposed acquisition program for counterterrorism would be distinct from other programs for cooperative threat reduction (like the Nunn-Lugar programs for the former Soviet Union), the reducing of narcotics trafficking and organized crime, and nonproliferation activities. The government requires an effective interdepartmental committee system -- a National Counterterrorism Acquisition Council -- chaired by the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology. The council should include representatives from other departments, including top subcabinet officials from the Departments of Justice, Energy, Treasury, State, and Health and Human Services, as well as the deputy director of the FBI, the deputy CIA director for science and technology, and the FEMA director.....

OVERCOMING DISBELIEF
Catastrophic terrorism poses an eminent threat to America's future. But the United States can fight back only if it sets the right goals. In 1940 and 1941, the U.S. government pondered what kind of forces it would need to wage a global war. The answers went so far beyond the imagination that wry smiles and shaking heads in Washington offices greeted the planning papers as they made their rounds. The Cold War saw a similar pattern of disbelief. The notion of an intelligence system founded on photographic surveillance from the upper atmosphere or outer space seemed outrageously far-fetched in 1954, when the U-2 program was born. The films and cameras alone seemed an overwhelming hurdle. A few years later the U-2s were flying; six years later satellites were in place. Similar stories could be told about the remarkable history of intercontinental missile guidance or the fast deployment of more than a half-million troops and thousands of armored vehicles to the Persian Gulf in 1991 and 1992. America can meet new challenges, but it must first imagine success. Only then can it organize itself to attain it.....

*This article is a distillation of the complete report of the Universities Study Group on Catastrophic Terrorism, published by Stanford University. A version of it will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming Preventive Defense: An American Security Strategy for the 21st Century, by Ashton Carter and William Perry. Members of the group, which was convened by the Kennedy School of Government's "Visions of Governance in the 21st Century" Project, are Graham Allison, Zoe Baird, Victor DeMarines, Robert Gates, Jamie Gorelick, Robert Hermann, Philip Heymann, Fred Ikl‚, Elaine Kamarck, Matthew Meselson, Joseph Nye, William Perry, Larry Potts, Fred Schauer, J. Terry Scott, Jack Sheehan, Malcolm Sparrow, Herbert Winokur, and Robert Zoellick. Though most members are sympathetic to our conclusions, none is responsible for this essay.

Ashton Carter is Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense. John Deutch is Institute Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former Director of Central Intelligence and Deputy Secretary of Defense. Philip Zelikow, a former member of the National Security Council staff, is White Burkett Miller Professor of History and Director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

After this review it is the conclusion of this researcher that this exceeds the PNAC Rebuilding America's Defenses as the prototype for the Agenda 21 Operation Bluebeam and  "Transformation" event we can expect after the PNAC 911 trigger for the building of the empire state of Full Spectrum Surveillance and Dominance.  Ashton "Ash" Carter represents the nine committees best candidate to coordinate the Homeland Takeover scenario post "Catastrophic" HAARP or EMR staging over Michelle Flournoy. Carter's scientific background only furthers supports my EMP first stage event, followed by a series of collateral stagings. It also, again follows my theory for a pre 2016 election event to maintain the current governing cabal which have all but been put into place.  The newly elected GOP will continue the continuity of the Corpo-Banking power side to the Clinton-Obama global government transition.  This will also include the subsequent global trade consortium, UN legal authority (security council) and the global governance and police state under the "Peacekeepers" of UN-NATO-OTAN transition.