Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
USA Today
November 12, 2007
Pg. 10
By Richard Willing, USA Today
The U.S. military needed construction workers, and one Iraqi civilian in particular looked like a good candidate. He dressed in a white robe and presented an Iraqi government-issued identification card when he applied for a job in Anbar province one day in 2006.
Then Marines working under Col. Gary Wilson did a quick photo scan of the Iraqi's eyeballs. The picture they took matched a database of suspicious persons that the Marines had been building.
"We told him, 'Hey, you (once) got picked up near where an IED went off, (and) you aren't who you say you are,' " Wilson says, referring to an improvised explosive device. The man was detained as an infiltrator.
The Defense Department wants to hear more of those kinds of stories, and it likely will if the recommendations of a Pentagon working group are adopted. The group issued a 244-page report in September that proposes a $195 million program to expand the use of iris scans, fingerprints, DNA and other traditional as well as novel crime lab tools in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of the spending, the report says, can be covered by previously appropriated funds.
The military has four crime labs in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. The labs specialize in lifting fingerprints from IED fragments and distinguishing marks from spent ammunition. Two more labs are scheduled to open in Iraq this year.
The report says fingerprints and DNA have been valuable in verifying identities of suspected insurgents and in identifying potential intelligence targets.
Using fingerprints, Wilson and his troops linked an insurgent who placed explosives near Fallujah to an earlier blast about 100 miles away. His Marines tracked another insurgent as he moved across northern Iraq planting bombs as he went and were able to predict where he would strike next.
And for about the past year, soldiers have used a handheld device to match fingerprints of detainees to prints downloaded from a Defense Department database. The device has scored a number of successes, said Thomas Dee, director of defense biometrics at the Defense Department.
But the overall program, the report concludes, remains "narrowly focused." The Navy, Army, FBI and interservice groups run different labs or support services. The databases they have built sometimes are incapable of sharing information. A master database of fingerprints taken from IEDs that the Defense Department maintains in West Virginia cannot be searched in real time. Only one lab, in Baghdad, does DNA analysis.
The efforts, the Pentagon report concludes, are "uncoordinated."
Wilson, who served 19 months in Iraq before retiring this year, says the military may be missing as much or more intelligence as it is scooping up. "Voice analysis, behavior analysis, some of those DNA tests that can tell you where someone is from and who his daddy is, that's stuff we're not even touching yet," he says.
Wilson says the "troops on the ground" are way ahead of the front office on this one.
"If we can collect and make available (to troops) his fingerprint, iris scan, DNA, photograph — it doesn't matter who he says he is. We know."
November 12, 2007
Pg. 10
By Richard Willing, USA Today
The U.S. military needed construction workers, and one Iraqi civilian in particular looked like a good candidate. He dressed in a white robe and presented an Iraqi government-issued identification card when he applied for a job in Anbar province one day in 2006.
Then Marines working under Col. Gary Wilson did a quick photo scan of the Iraqi's eyeballs. The picture they took matched a database of suspicious persons that the Marines had been building.
"We told him, 'Hey, you (once) got picked up near where an IED went off, (and) you aren't who you say you are,' " Wilson says, referring to an improvised explosive device. The man was detained as an infiltrator.
The Defense Department wants to hear more of those kinds of stories, and it likely will if the recommendations of a Pentagon working group are adopted. The group issued a 244-page report in September that proposes a $195 million program to expand the use of iris scans, fingerprints, DNA and other traditional as well as novel crime lab tools in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of the spending, the report says, can be covered by previously appropriated funds.
The military has four crime labs in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. The labs specialize in lifting fingerprints from IED fragments and distinguishing marks from spent ammunition. Two more labs are scheduled to open in Iraq this year.
The report says fingerprints and DNA have been valuable in verifying identities of suspected insurgents and in identifying potential intelligence targets.
Using fingerprints, Wilson and his troops linked an insurgent who placed explosives near Fallujah to an earlier blast about 100 miles away. His Marines tracked another insurgent as he moved across northern Iraq planting bombs as he went and were able to predict where he would strike next.
And for about the past year, soldiers have used a handheld device to match fingerprints of detainees to prints downloaded from a Defense Department database. The device has scored a number of successes, said Thomas Dee, director of defense biometrics at the Defense Department.
But the overall program, the report concludes, remains "narrowly focused." The Navy, Army, FBI and interservice groups run different labs or support services. The databases they have built sometimes are incapable of sharing information. A master database of fingerprints taken from IEDs that the Defense Department maintains in West Virginia cannot be searched in real time. Only one lab, in Baghdad, does DNA analysis.
The efforts, the Pentagon report concludes, are "uncoordinated."
Wilson, who served 19 months in Iraq before retiring this year, says the military may be missing as much or more intelligence as it is scooping up. "Voice analysis, behavior analysis, some of those DNA tests that can tell you where someone is from and who his daddy is, that's stuff we're not even touching yet," he says.
Wilson says the "troops on the ground" are way ahead of the front office on this one.
"If we can collect and make available (to troops) his fingerprint, iris scan, DNA, photograph — it doesn't matter who he says he is. We know."