Enterra Solutions provides technology to Iraq

By Linda Loyd

Inquirer Staff Writer

War-torn Iraq might seem an unlikely place for a small Yardley company to do business.
Yet, entrepreneur Stephen DeAngelis' venture, Enterra Solutions L.L.C., a management-consulting and software firm, has a technology that the Pentagon and the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq say they believe could help revitalize the Iraqi economy, assist once-idle factories to sell their goods, and attract foreign investment.

Enterra, which also is doing work for the operator of the Port of Philadelphia, has a $23 million, three-year contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government to create and operate a business-development center in Erbil, Iraq, where foreign investors can come to invest in critical infrastructure industries - banking, telecommunications, agriculture, chemicals, energy and utilities.

Enterra, whose clients have included NASA, Fidelity Investments, W.L. Gore & Associates Inc., and Conair Corp. consumer products, is working with Holt Logistics Corp., of Gloucester, to improve operations and security at the Port of Philadelphia.

Hundreds of foreign companies are now doing business in Iraq. Enterra has two Pentagon contracts. One is to establish a call center that will handle incoming and outgoing calls for products from Iraqi manufacturers. The other is to set up a business-to-business trading portal, or Web site, for Iraqi manufacturers, similar to Amazon.com Inc. or eBay Inc.

The call center and Iraqi business portal are expected to be operational in about six weeks.

Enterra partnered with Iraq and Western firms to do the work, including Korek Telecom in Kurdistan. A Kuwait-based firm, Agility Logistics, will handle supply-chain logistics to get goods shipped out of Iraq.

"We created a business model that will address the nation-state-building portion of war in the 21st century," said DeAngelis, Enterra's founder and chief executive officer.

DeAngelis started Enterra - which now has 10 employees in Yardley, 25 in Reston, Va., and 10 in other locations - in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the financial collapses of Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. DeAngelis said the world became increasingly complex for business and trade. Companies were faced with a myriad of complex security, compliance and accounting regulations - everything from Sarbanes-Oxley to the Patriot Act.

"We saw a major market gap that globalization was foisting upon companies and governmental agencies," DeAngelis said. "We sought to bridge that gap."

Enterra's technology, called rule set automation, translates regulations, laws and policies into software codes and mathematical algorithms. The software then is embedded inside the operating systems of a company or government agency.

Enterra has collaborated with the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Oak Ridge visiting strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett joined Enterra 21/2 years ago as senior managing director after meeting DeAngelis at the Naval War College, where Barnett was lecturing.

"Ours is a leap-ahead technology," said Barnett, who spent 20 years working in the military, including the Pentagon. The technology's goal, he said, is software that adapts on the fly, "so if a change happens in one sphere - a law or a compliance regulation - you can change your security procedures, change all your performance metrics."

Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute collaborated with Enterra on security and data protection.

"SEI's approach still exists within parts of the Enterra technology," said SEI senior technologist Bill Wilson. The federal research lab also recruited DeAngelis as a visiting scientist.

Last May, DeAngelis joined a trip to Iraq for U.S. businesspeople that was led by Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Paul Brinkley.

The Iraqi government is seeking to reopen factories formerly owned by Saddam Hussein's regime. The premise is that putting idle Iraqis back to work should help calm violence because it would leave fewer disgruntled individuals willing to plant bombs or commit other crimes for money.

"We are seeking to turn back on approximately 120 factories, through a series of privatization initiatives and joint ventures with international partners," said DeAngelis, who returned from Iraq with ideas for using Enterra's technology and management practices.

He submitted a proposal and won the contracts.

Enterra expects to have 50 employees in Iraq by midyear.

For Holt Logistics, which operates the Philadelphia port's Packer Avenue Marine Terminal and the Gloucester Marine Terminal in New Jersey, Enterra software will be used to integrate security, compliance and improved performance management with a "state-of-the-art system for responding to weapons of mass destruction and natural disaster," according to an Enterra statement.

Holt must contend "with an absolute dizzying array of regulatory agencies," president Leo Holt said - "everything from the U.S. Coast Guard to Department of Homeland Security, Department of Agriculture to the Food and Drug Administration, as well as local, state and federal law enforcement."

Enterra's job is to make these disparate systems interoperable, Holt said. "If there's a jam-up of ships coming in, or an oil spill, this technology would immediately alert people faster, quicker and more efficiently," he said.

"It's not just an alert, like check your BlackBerry," he said. "It would spark a series of operational decisions that allow things to operate more efficiently."

Holt and Enterra plan to eventually take the technology "on the road to every port we can," the port operator said.

Enterra, which plans to grow by buying companies, recently acquired Cincinnatus Consulting L.L.C., a Philadelphia port- and harbor-consulting firm.

DeAngelis, 45, named Esquire magazine's "best and brightest innovator" in 2006, previously headed three companies - two technology-related enterprises and one specialty-chemicals manufacturer. He invested his own money to start Enterra, and raised $15 million from family and friends.

The company, with sales under $10 million in 2006 and in 2007, expects revenue this year of $25 million to $30 million, he said.

DeAngelis hopes eventually to take the company public. He wants to build a 300,000- square-foot "computer science factory" at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, he said. He envisions Enterra's Philadelphia headquarters one day employing 500.

"My goal is to run a very vibrant, valued public company."

LONDON, Feb 18, 2008 — The work of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) will be based on programs and international partnerships aimed at helping African nations and regional organizations prevent future conflict, General William "Kip" Ward, AFRICOM commander, said February 18 at a London defense conference, where he outlined his vision for the command and a concept he calls "active security."

Africa Command, he stressed, will not take the place of civilian and nongovernmental programs on the continent but will seek to collaborate with others. Ward delivered the keynote address at a U.S.-Africa relations conference hosted by the Royal United Services Institute.

"AFRICOM recognizes the essential interrelationship between security, stability, economic development, political advancement, things that address the basic needs of the peoples of a region," Ward said.

"Active security," he explained, means "activities that we do on a sustained basis that help lead to stability in a country, in a region. ... We want to improve our ability to provide what we're asked to do in support of our friends, and in so doing help build their security capacity."

U.S. Africa Command is being created in Stuttgart, Germany, and will have a staff of approximately 1,300 personnel, including 665 civilian personnel and 639 military personnel, Ward said. The staff is currently about 400 personnel.

Ward spoke for more than 60 minutes and answered questions from the audience on a range of issues.

Following is a transcript of Ward's remarks and question-and-answer session.

UNITED STATES AFRICA COMMAND
REMARKS BY GENERAL WILLIAM "KIP" WARD
Commander, United State AFRICA Command
Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies
London
FEBRUARY 18, 2008

GENERAL WILLIAM "KIP" WARD: (In progress) I'm an action type of a person and I'm -- I get out and I know this is being recorded, so I hope if I start moving around, my voice will carry enough that whatever is being recorded will still be picked up.

First, let me say how happy that I am to be here at this very renowned and famous place to talk to the assembled audience here about something that, for me, is very, very significant and something that I am greatly appreciative of for having the opportunity to command as the United States does what it does in recognizing how we do our work on the continent of Africa as it is carried out through the offices of the Department of Defense. Let's see here. (Turns to laptop computer at podium to display slides) Now, somebody told me it would load it up. I don't want to mess it up. Okay. I don't know if I did it, or if all of the talk I did -- (off mike, laughter).

Let me start off by saying that when I was confirmed by the Senate as the inaugural commander for the U.S.-Africa Command, it came at a time that I think we all recognize very significant in our lifetime. And the opportunity that we have to move forward in a way that causes how we, the United States of America, the Department of Defense, views what goes on in Africa through the lens of a single, unified command as opposed to through the lens of three sub-commands is indeed a historic opportunity. But even more so than that, the opportunity to cause how we are constructed, how we are set up, to recognize the fact that when you talk about promoting long-term stability and creating security that provides the environment for other things to flourish that are indeed key factors in that long-term security, it is really the type of endeavor that causes us all to be exhilarated.

AFRICOM recognizes those facts. AFRICOM recognizes the essential interrelationship between security, stability, economic development, political advancement, things that address the basic needs of the peoples of a region, and importantly, the requirement to do those efforts and in as collaborative a way as possible, not to take over the work of others, but to ensure that the work that's being done complements the work that others are doing in pursuit of those same objectives.

And that is something that I think we all share as common goals.

AFRICOM was created to do that, created to cause the work that the Department of Defense does to be better integrated, to be better coordinated, and to cause the programs, from the military-to-military programs to the humanitarian programs that can support our pursuit of security objectives, to be better related to those efforts that are undertaken by others, other governmental agencies, other non-governmental organizations, private enterprise, in the hopes of creating a sort of conditions that indeed are conducive to long-term stability in this very important part of the world. I'll talk about those factors or those ingredients of this command a bit more as I go through the presentation. And, as Sir Paul indicated, I will try to leave time for some responses to questions at the end of my presentation.

(To staff, ensuring laptop displays correctly) I still don't speak -- someone's watching.

This is no news to you, this audience. You are here because of your interest in the continent of Africa. And I show this slide just to put things in perspective. Again, the audiences who we deal with are audiences quite frankly don't always understand from perspectives above us. And so I show this chart because it does put things in a perspective that hopefully it helps better understand why it is so important in the world of today to pay attention to the continent of Africa and its island nations in a very comprehensive and complete way. The fact that the move from here to here on a modern jet airplane is about a 12 and half hours non-stop flight, that is a huge immense of geography. You put the waters of the continent in play, the coastline of the continent in play, and it is absolutely clear what we're talking about.

And then you look at the population, look at the population. It's almost unimaginable and the diversity of that population likewise. And so I'll talk about what the means a bit more, but I think we just, to put it in perspective, it's important to understand the immenseness of this and the fact that nothing can be done that will address the entirety of that continent. The age old cliche, one size does not fit all, is certainly true in this case. It is certainly true in this case.

When the secretary of Defense charged me to implement the decision of the president of the United States to look at the continent of Africa in a way that we had not looked at it before, many of you are aware that in the previous situation, the Department of Defense divided the continent in three, through the lens of three separate commands: the United States European Command, United States Pacific Command, and the United States Central Command. And each command had a different part of the continent and its island nations in their -- or in its area of responsibility. And as was pointed out in a way by Sir Paul, our application of our effort was not always as sustained or as consistent as we would like it to have been.

And so when the decision was made at the recommendation of the secretary of Defense and the decision by the president of the United States to reorganize how the Department of Defense views its role in Africa and looked at Africa as Africans look at Africa, as an entire continent and its island nations through a single lens. It signals how we determined and what we thought necessary to provide for a more advanced, a more comprehensive, a more total look, and quite frankly cause our view of Africa to reflect how we viewed other parts of the world geographically.

And so for the first time, the creation of a command, and that command looking at Africa as a continent and its island nations as a whole, just as they view the Pacific, Europe, the Americas, and in that construct looking at a key, key ingredient, this notion of sustained security engagement, sustained security engagement and various things that we would do.

Now, let's talk about how we're going to do that when I come to a different, a follow-on chart. That notion of sustain is critical. The focus effort that is now realized because of the creation of Africa Command provides for that sustained engagement. Previously, when we had AFRICOM, preface before AFRICOM, we had Africa looked at by three separate commands. Africa was a part of their greater discussion for Europe, for the Central Command, for the Pacific Command. Now, Africa is the central and sole part of the focus, the interest, of a dedicated unified command for delivering sustained security engagement through the continent. How we've organized ourselves to do what we have been doing on the continent and providing programs for quite some time. There's oftentimes discussion that well, you're doing something new and you'll be doing different things. Yes, before. So no; the programs, the activities, and I'll talk about these a bit later, the exercises, the missions that we have already been conducting, we will continue to conduct. It is HOW we conduct those activities that will be different.

We are a command under construction. Now, I didn't know how many of you have ever done something for the very first time, moved into an organization, stood up something new, and I've spoken to a few of you, so I know that there is some experience. I've never done that before. I've never stood up something for the first time, something brand new.

Throughout my 36-year military career, I've moved into an existing platoon, an existing company, my existing battalion, brigade, division. When I was COM SFOR (Stabilization Force in Bosnia) the Stabilization Force was already there. And then you go in and you see what's happening and you make some changes on the margin to make things better. SOPs exist, standard operating procedures, policies; brand new here. I call it a success when over a seven-day period of time, I pick up the telephone and think I'm dialing my director of Strategy, Plans and Programs, and he's at the same place, eureka. (Laughter.)

Plugging in telephones, I walk out of my office and walk down the street and I think I'm going to where I think one of my directorates is established and his office is moved. So we are indeed a command under construction, and I've used an analogy and some of you will understand this. Under construction, is that the foundation that's being built? Are the walls going up? And is the frame? Is the roof on? Is it being finished? Is the electrical circuits -- are the electrical circuits being put in? Is the plumbing being installed? Well, it's all of that going on. And at any point in time, do you think, well, it's just the foundation being laid. And at other points in time, it's a bit more, but we are a command under construction.

As of 1 October 2007, about five months ago, the command declared what we call initial operational capability.

Essentially, that said, we turned the lights on, and we began the process of looking at the various activities that we would be accepting from our other unified commands in a very deliberate and a very focused and sustained way, the idea being that what is currently occurring, those programs, we want to ensure continue on in as seamless a fashion as possible. So we are in the throes of building this team. And I'll talk about the team a bit later on, who these individuals are, that we're in the process of ensuring that the relationships that we want to have with our partners, our partners on the African continent, our international partners, our non-governmental partners, understand who we are and what we want to accomplish as we move forward together.

So building the team: Assembling from a wide range of agencies a team of hope that will help us do the job that I showed you in our proposed mission statement. That team of individuals that I'll describe a bit later on, more than half civilian, and within that civilian component, interagency personnel, so they aren't just Department of Defense civilians. We are advertising, but before you advertise, we've got to write position descriptions, determine what role we want individuals to take, and then write those decisions and our system of civilian activities and personnel practices. Many of you are familiar with that, get those petitions filled, and then bring those persons on board. That number, it's about 665, and then about a number of 639 uniformed from across our services, joint teams, coming together to do the work of the command.

I talked about the programs, forth being there, adding value, and doing no harm. I've said the work of the command is not new work. The work of the command is to cause the work that we do to be better, to improve upon those programs that we implement so that, in fact, the effect that we create is a more positive effect in helping to add to the stability of the continent, and of course while doing that to do no harm. I kind of liken it to a relay race. I look out here, if you notice, and I see some former track -- I say former -- (laughter) -- former track and field stars. And you use the analogy of a mile relay, the runners are passing the baton, handing off the baton to the next mission. Well, that's where we are.

And so as we accept missions from three existing commands doing the work on the continent, we want to ensure that we are at a pace, so that as we accept that mission, we don't drop that for time, that we do no harm to those programs that are already in play. So that's how we are approaching this, and all of those efforts designed not to be the one there doing the work -- because as was pointed out, that isn't always seen in the most favorable way, but in the words of -- and I paraphrase -- Nelson Mandela, Africans doing our own work, providing for our own security, but with the help of others. And that's the help that we are providing. So our effort, so that we are enabling the work of Africans on the continent.

The three bubbles here in the lower right talk to the totality of that process, accepting missions, understanding what those missions are, engaging with our partners in America because they get at the construct -- it's a bit different and I will talk about that construct -- Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Commerce, Department of Treasury, Department of Homeland Security, all partners in this effort. How do we work this partnership causing them to understand the importance of their role in this command from their point of view?

Our African partners, I'm sure someone will talk to me about -- whoa -- how come Africa's against your command? Africa's not against the command. And what we're doing as we engage Africa is explaining what this command is about, and that is the delivery of programs that are programs being asked for by sovereign entities on the continent of Africa and programs that are in keeping with stated U.S. foreign policy objectives. And oh, by the way, I don't make that (U.S. foreign policy). So I think as we go through our processes, this is what AFRICOM's mission, I told my very small team of folks things that we have to do. And as build a command, as we accept missions, as we engage with our partners and friends, causing that to be understood in ways that make a difference for them.

I show you this chart not to belabor a wire diagram but to highlight a couple of things. This individual here (Deputy to the Commander for Civil-Military Activities) is a career Foreign Service Officer, a senior minister counselor out of our Department of State. The first time this has ever happened in any of our unified commands because the nexus that we clearly seek between the work of this command in support of U.S. foreign policy objectives as pertain to this civil-military activities. Here (Deputy to the Commander for Military Operations), a traditional deputy, a three-star vice admiral. So two deputies, co-equal status, senior civilian State Department, military.

And of these six major directorates (Dirctor for Outreach; Director for Strategy, Plans and Programs; Director for Intelligence and Knowledge Development; Director for C4 Systems; Director for Operations and Logistics; and Director for Resources), three are civilian. Three are civilian: the director for outreach, the director for intelligence and knowledge development. Let's spend a bit of time on knowledge development because that is such an important construct:

Understanding what goes on in Africa from others' perspectives, not just ours. We spend a lot of time focused on trying to do our best, and we won't be perfect, but doing our best and getting that right. The good news is we know from the outset that it's not just what we think; it's also what others think, and as importantly, what others know about what it is that goes on, the reactions to.

Our director for strategy, plans and programs, who happens to be here today, Major General, director for operational logistics, director for C4 systems, and our resources director, another senior executive service civilian. And then beneath the organizations, at the deputy director level, likewise mix of senior civilians. And from the uniform side of it, joint application from our four various services. So a unique design: nowhere else in our Department of Defense command plan structures does this exist. It's different, it's different, and we hope to be able to do business in a different way.

The broader theme, you know, I showed you the mission: sustained security engagement. Who do we do that with? Who are the teammates? Who are the players? Who else is involved? How do we do our best to assure ourselves that what we do supports and compliments creating the effects that we all seek to have? This broader team: I've talked about the U.S. government piece of it, our African partners, bilaterally the things that we do with Africans, African nations in our bilateral relationships, but also providing support to the organizations that the Africans have said are important to them: the African Union, their regional economic communities, and as they create their standby brigades, how can we assist in that effort? Again, not as we think or what we direct, but what comes to us in the way of requests, and again, in keeping with our stated U.S. foreign policy objectives.

International partners: We are not the only ones there. (Shouts) Hey team, we get it!(Laughter.)

So we know there are others who are operating on the continent. We haven't developed all the protocols for what we'll do and how we will do all of these things, but we know it's important to work with them as best we can and to the degree that they want us to work with them. And I will tell you, there is great enthusiasm amongst all of these partners to work with us because of how we look to do our work on the continent. And again, it's not just based on our perspective.

I gave a term, and some of you have probably been in one of these things before, a foxhole. And the whole idea is you get outside of your foxhole, you go downrange, you look back at it from the point of view of someone else, and then you see how good is it really? That's our approach, to go downrange, look at what we're doing from someone else's perspective, and oh by the way, how is it? That's understood what those perspectives are, well you talk to them. You listen to them, and you incorporate those things that make a difference in improving your organization into how you do your duty, those things that you do.

Civil society: A lot of activity goes on in the continent through our non-government organizations. Academia is involved. I showed you early on this thing about knowledge development. When I was in previous assignments, someone came to me and would talk about, well, 'Ward, you need to get a cultural anthropologist on your team.' I said, what! A cultural what? Anthropologist? To do what? Get out of here. Or, 'Ward, you need to have someone to help you understand the human dimension. You need some human terrain analysis.' I said, 'what? Get out of here.' But it's important, and where do those skills, talents reside -- academia, places like RUSI. We want to understand as best as we can and where do we go to attain that expertise and understanding: outside of ourselves; the teams that we hope to partner with, private industry. I mean, I've spent time in different places from the Balkans to the Middle East to Africa, and one thing that I know is that when you want sustained stability, guys 15 years of age to 35 years of age need to productively and gainfully employed. That needs to be addressed. I don't do that, not for the long term. So private sector, private enterprise is a part of this dimension, teammates. (Shouts) I told you I get it! (Laughter.)

A command under construction: And you're going to ask me, well how does all that fit in? We're building it; we're not there yet. I'm giving you what I see as a vision, a vision that in five, 10 -- and this is a deliberate endeavor that requires the patience and sometimes -- well, I'm not talking about all Americans, but Kip Ward is not a real patient guy, but I know that this requires patience. I'd use a -- I won't say it here because it's probably not the best thing to say -- but the true value, work, et cetera, et cetera won't be seen tomorrow, next week, but in 10 years, in 20 years, just like 50 years ago, the groups that sat here 50 years ago, if someone said, well, in 1989 we'll see communism and the wall go down, the group sitting in here would have looked at the person making that statement like they had horns growing out of their head.

These are long-term activities and the work that we do today is being done so that 50 years from now, some of those same proclamations that we make today about how the world has changed, we'll be saying about the continent of Africa in positive terms. We think this construct gives us an ability to beginmoving in that direction. And oh by the way, so we have a model for others as well, just like models you know so well, places like Afghanistan with the provincial reconstruction teams and what that's producing.

What are we doing right now? I've talked about it being a command under construction, looked at our various missions that are going on on the continent of Africa: Operation Enduring Freedom -- Trans-Sahel in the north, the combined joint task force Horn of Africa in the east. Programs that we're conducting: Africa Partnership Station, bringing in an at-sea platform, a vessel. In this case that's going on right now, having embarked upon that vessel, engineers, doctors, teaching, providing assistance to, as they request it, and I want to go back to that, as they -- can you help us cause our electricians to have an increased level of efficiency in maintaining electrical circuits on the patrol craft that have been provided so they can keep them running? That's what's going on with this African Partnership Station vessel -- Can you bring some engineers around so that the outboard motors that are on these vessels can be maintained a bit better. Can you help us better understand some of those principles? That's what's occurring. Can you help us train our sailors on some basic lifesaving procedures so that if they get hurt, their buddies can deliver a higher state of initial aid for them? That's what's going on. Can you bring some of those docs that you have aboard, take them ashore, and some of those veterinarians, and help address some local health issues with the local population and their animals and herds? That's what's going on. Does it add to stability? I think so. And they've asked for that.

Exercises: Those traditional military-to-military activities that help professionalize, and I use that word kind of gingerly, but professionalize armed forces, to cause them to be seen as protectors of their people as opposed to oppressors, through positive example of leadership, values, again not because we say we're coming and we're going to do this for you, but because the request comes in, can you help us? And our foreign policy objective says helping to build professional militaries is in our best interest. So we're in a process of reviewing all of those activities, and as the command achieves capacity, taking over those missions, activities, programs, and exercises, as we move through this year of transition until we are a separate and independent, unified command 1 October of this year.

The things I talked about highlight this notion that I call active security, active security being the activities that we do on a sustained basis that help lead to stability in a country, in a region. It is a sustained level; right now we're doing this Africa Partnership Station, and if I were to say we'd do one of those cruises stopping in four or five countries ever 18 months, we're being asked, well can you do it to every eight months?

So we want to improve our ability to provide what we're asked to do in support of our friends and in so doing help build their security capacity so that they can do these security operational missions on their own. We know we do that because of the requirement to be in continual dialogue. And all of those efforts focused on preventing conflict. That's, I think, critical, not being a crisis responder, but preventing conflicts, setting conditions that prevent that, all being done to enable the work of Africans.

So what do we have here? Well, we do have a vision for a new command. It's not an experiment because we are putting it to work. But it is a learning organization that will be developing those things within the Department of Defense from the standpoint of the programs that cause us to more effectively deliver security assistance to our African friends and their organizations, as they request and in support of our U.S. foreign policy objectives. In doing this, we know that we need to be a trusted and reliable partner. How to achieve that: by being open, by being transparent, to listening, to learning and adopting as those things come along and make sense, creating partnerships that indeed lead to stability, creating partnerships that lead to security, creating partnerships that lead to the development, the long-term development that in fact becomes the inner core of what would go on in the continent and amongst its island nations.

I think that's my last chart. We about that. But that's who we are. That's where we are. Building these relationships that get us there is the work of a command. Carrying out programs that lead to the stability is where we're heading. And doing it in a way that causes all the stakeholders in that endeavor to know that we indeed listen to them, we respect what they have to offer, and hope they vote in confidence and they endeavor the efforts of each of us in doing our work.

So I'll stop there and I think that's about where I needed to be. And I'll take some comments, some questions, and just listen to you. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Now, if you don't have any questions or comments, I can go on some more. I've got some more here -- (laughter).

SIR PAUL LEVER (Chairman of RUSI): General, thanks so much, a command under construction, but a very, very unique form of command. Could I ask those of you who would like to put a question to await the arrival -- we have microphones, yes -- wait the arrival of the microphone and it always helps if you gave your name and any organization with which you are associated. For those of you standing at the back, there are a few seats in the front row. Yeah, the second row?

Q: My name is Mohammed -- (inaudible) I am a journalist from (inaudible) magazine. I just want to ask two questions. You said that Africa's not against AFRICOM. How did you manage to get its assent? Did you do anything, say anything? Another thing is how can you make sure that AFRICOM will not become a tool for dictatorships to get stronger?

Thank you very much.

GEN. WARD: Thank you. I've not done a formal survey because I'm not writing a dissertation on that. So I appreciate your question. But this is what I have done. Over the last, I would say 20, 22 months or so during my time as the deputy commander of U.S. European Command and during my time as commander of Africa Command, I have visited about 30 countries in Africa and have spoken to various leaders, both uniformed and civilian, and asked when the United States Department of Defense comes in response to questions for, Can you help us plan better for an operation? Can you help us train our young sergeants to be non-commissioned offices who accept responsibility, are more efficient in delivering and carrying out their duties?

When they come to us and ask, we'd like to have better maintenance and logistics systems, can you send some folks to train out people on how to ensure repair part supplies are enforced so that when there's a natural disaster and we like to send our C-130s to move humanitarian supplies from one location to another, those C-130s are operational; when you come to us and ask, we have some coastline that we can't monitor, we need to have systems that enable us to link our ability to understand what goes on to improve our maritime safety and security, can you help us put those systems in place?

When they come to us and ask, we'd like to deploy our forces from our country to go and assist in bringing stability to another part of the continent, but we can't get there, can you help us? When they come to us and ask in order to go do this mission, we need a bit more equipment, either some individual equipment, some vehicles, can you help us? And in each of those cases, we are able to provide some support through some mechanism, and that makes a positive difference.

And so then when I say, do you still want that? Because if you don't want that, then, yeah, you're right, you don't want AFRICOM. But if you want that, then that's what AFRICOM is here to do for you. The answer to that is, yes, we want AFRICOM. So that's how I look at it.

This notion of militarizing the continent, what I just showed you had nothing to do with stationing large garrisons of troops, taking in U.S. forces, putting in naval bases, establishing army bases. I've been saying that what we do is in support of U.S. foreign policy, so we're not making any policy that's going to be followed here. So that notion of militarizing your continent, it's just not there. It's not the case. I can't control what folks write, but what I'm telling you is what we'll be attempting to do, and oh, by the way, when we do those things that I just kind of described to you, doing it in a way that is more effective because we do it in a very open, transparent way, doing those things that we're asked to do working with all, as much as we can, the stakeholders that also are operating and those missions in line with the stated U.S. foreign policy objectives, that oh, by the way, AFRICOM does not make.

SIR PAUL LEVER: Thank you. Second right there, yeah.

Q: General, Tom Trenton (spelling?), an American journalist and member of the institute. If the mission of AFRICOM is to enhance the security and stability, are there any lessons to be learned from the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in which the United States played a peripheral but not insignificant role?

GEN. WARD: I think -- I wasn't involved in that, so I can't speak to it, but this is how I will address that, Tom. Our activities are activities -- as we work with sovereign entities on the continent, activities that are in support of achieving some mutual objectives. And so as we continue to pursue those mutual objectives, the lesson learned, I guess, is a lesson that we all know, and that is a lesson of working in transparent ways with those sovereign entities so that what we do is supportive of achieving a mutual goal. And by so doing, it's the desired intent, the desired outcome, that that leads to increased stability, stops human suffering, that's the lesson. We try to do it such that it's consultative.

Is it always perfect? What's always perfect? What I tell you, the attempt, the endeavor will cause it to be, we want it to be as successful as we can make it in bringing stability, in bringing security, and helping protect the lives of innocent people. And that's what we offer. Is that a lesson? It's something that, I think, is a lesson for all time, for all ages, for all people, and we have to -- will we always be perfect? I don't know much out there that is always perfect, but what I do say is that we will always go after it in ways that we hope will achieve and produce the most positive result that we can.

SIR PAUL LEVER: Gentlemen there, yeah.

Q: Captain O'Brian. You talked heavily about what you're doing on the ground, but you also touched on knowledge development. So I wonder, particularly in the area of analysis, what sort of analytical resources do you think the command will need? And as you build your command, where will you draw those from? And then somewhat related to that, there's been quite a lot of speculation and discussion in academia and civil society about contracting out U.S. efforts in Africa. How much do you think that U.S. government employees and military personnel will be able to provide the needs that you have in this command and how much will need to be contracted out?

GEN. WARD: Yeah, great question. I think it's without saying that much of the expertise and knowledge that we would seek to have is in fact resident in other places than U.S. military, be it uniform or civilian. We are in the process now of looking at those alternatives, those options, academia, other institutions of study and analysis that have in-depth research and understanding and knowledge of what it is we need to have a greater degree of understanding of ourselves, finding out who they are and then finding ways to partner with them, to work with them, to cause our understanding to be as good as it can be so that as we move forward and implement our program, we do it with a better understanding of the potential impact. To go back to the question my friend from here had, we in fact do carry out on programs in a way that produces a more positive effect and taking the lessons learned from the past as well. We recognize that that's an important part of our construct.

Getting to who they will be, where we will draw them from, again that's -- there are offers coming in and we appreciate that. I'll be very candid with you, one of my things that worries me now because there is such enthusiasm and interest because as you build a new organization, you have places that those things reside so that you can direct and receive the support, those don't exist just yet. And so what I'm sensitive to is the offer to assist, but I can't take it just yet because the infrastructure, the structure doesn't exist to receive it just yet. So we're working like crazy to get that in place so that when we receive these offers of assistance, we can in fact have places that, yes, this is who you work with, this is who we would be working with to cause the contributions that you can make to us in this endeavor, we can put to use. So that's a work in progress, but great question and we know we need to go other places to get this sort of expertise, knowledge, and help.

SIR PAUL LEVER: Yeah.

Q: Thank you very much. Jaman (ph) -- (inaudible) -- College. First I have two quick questions, General. The first is, there has been quite a lot of, how to say, people have been quite skeptical about the issue of location, especially from the African continent. Is there any update on location, a permanent location for it? And then secondly, it occurs to me that in already five months that it has been announced, the announcement was made, the impression was made, as if there's been a shift in the way the U.S. is trying to get its message across. Don't you think sometimes America gets it wrong when they try to pitch, trying to get people to understand what this is all about and there are some other, still American policies that come across because you look very enthusiastic and it's good, but that message doesn't really get to Africa, to those who the program is meant for. Don't you think sometimes there's a need for more consultation, more engagement before policies are made, especially engagement with those for who the polices are meant? Thank you.

GEN. WARD: Well, thanks for that and a great question. Unfortunately -- I won't say unfortunately -- we are now where we are, and the consultation that you described, that before the -- that this is not a policy, this is reorganization of the Department of Defense, and so it's really not a policy. But the consultation that you very adequately talked to there, there was an attempt to go around and talk and consult with the several audiences prior to announcing the decision to -- the reorganization decision. I grant you that it did not produce the sort of effect that was hoped for. And so you are absolutely correct that in the last four to six months there has been a change in how we are delivering the message about what the command is. Can't go back and fix something that happened 12 months ago, so I appreciate your acknowledging that.

What we are trying to do now is to reinforce and emphasize, and trying to reach the audiences that you've spoken to or that you have spoken about here. Being more on the continent, myself, those -- my deputies that you saw there along with those -- that tier of directors going out, talking to various audiences not just here in Europe, not just in America, but also on the continent of Africa to various media, print media, radio, TV, et cetera, et cetera, trying to explain what this reorganization is about, trying to explain that what we want to do is cause those programs that we are asked to provide to be executed in a more effective way because as opposed to having those programs being looked at by three different commands across the continent in a sometimes unrelated and uncoordinated fashion, to reorganize ourselves in a way that will cause our approach to deliver these programs to be more coordinated in keeping with the work being done by others in a more effective and knowledgeable way, that we add value to those programs.

And when I delivered that message in those terms to Africans on the continent, that when I say that it is not about establishing large bases in Africa, it is not about bringing in large levels troops to Africa to do things, they said, ah, okay, okay, why didn't you say that first? Well, I can't go back and fix 12 months ago when we were doing things at that point in time. And we were saying some of these things; they were just being received in different ways, and it just resonated the way it did.

Now, some of that applied to the president's piece. It applied to the fact that we recognize the vastness of the continent and that what goes in the north and the east, the south, the central part of Africa, there are differences there. And so, an attempt to explain or talk through our realization of that, we talked about how a presence would help in our understanding. And that was translated into: The Americans are invading. Not the case at all. And so we backed away from that part of it, because it was so confusing. We have not asked any African nation to host any part of this command. The command is being stood up initially in Stuttgart, Germany, because it facilitates the transfer of missions, since a great part of what has been going on was being done by the European Command. I was that deputy in U.S. European Command, its four-star deputy. Some of the staff that was at the U.S. European Command, its work in Africa will move over. This facilitates that mission transfer, it facilitates that transition, if you will.

Our programs are the focus. To the degree that having some presence, and again, it's undefined. And this is a headquarters; it's not combat forces running around, it's not air wings being established. This is a headquarters, a staff headquarters. To the degree that some portion of that staff headquarters being on the continent at some point in time will be a positive factor in helping us better deliver programs, and determining where that is, we will then work with a potential host nation and see if that could be done. But we're not there. We are not there. And so this is the status for today, and that's where it is.

SIR PAUL LEVER: I know there's a lot of interest. I'm going to try to squeeze into one more round. I'll try and get two or three questions together, but you could please make them very, very brief?

Q: General, Tony -- (off mike) -- representing BP Angola, security advisor there. You mentioned industry as being a key part of your relationship building. Can you say the mechanism you're going to use for this, in particular obviously companies like BP and other large oil companies which wish to work with our host governments but also with what you're doing?

GEN. WARD: Thank you very much.

SIR PAUL LEVER: I'll take one there.

Q: Thank you, I am -- (inaudible) -- from the Embassy of Sudan. It's a very wise idea to link defense with development and with partnership with the African countries. This is very wise and very clever and a new idea, but there are pitfalls also. For example, you have talked about the NGOs and think tanks. Experience has shown that when the --

SIR PAUL LEVER: Could you make your question brief? We are very, very short on time.

Q: When there is finance coming from abroad or think tanks and for NGOs, you have much roaming (?) of think tanks which have no roots in the local societies and as such, that could create some problems. Thank you.

SIR PAUL LEVER: Okay, and one more. Right there.

Q: Major Captain -- (inaudible). Sir, where we do come with a military umbrella about this AFRICOM when we know that there are other priorities, economically speaking, that -- (inaudible) -- service in Africa on a civilian -- (inaudible)?

GEN. WARD: I don't know if I -- I think the military umbrella -- repeat that again, please?

Q: The AFRICOM as a military, some join in the question of the gentleman over there, make the people working with AFRICOM the military umbrella in general, why don't we, they, do it under civilian perspective like other countries, China or Russia, have done in Africa?

GEN. WARD: First, I think you know the fear -- our Director of Outreach is the conduit which we have established that we would entertain and receive these other interests, if you will, for how we can work with others on the continent, this will be the industry piece through our director of outreach. Again, we're holding various seminars and sessions where those things might be applicable to what we want to do can be discussed. And so there will be ways for industry to tap into, so we can understand and see what can be provided. The Director for Outreach is the mechanism. With the respect to the NGOs and think tanks, again, I think it's we will do our best to understand who they are, and so that those that we in fact work with have established reputations, have records of understanding that are in fact records that make a difference. Again, that's as I said, we will be listening, consulting. It won't be everyone. It won't be all of those that are out there. And so we will do our best to work with those organizations, those academia, academic institutions that have proven records of being some expertise in what it is that we are dealing with. So that's kind of where we are.

So again, I go back to what this is. This is a Department of Defense entity. We are a unified command. We are the attempt by the secretary of defense and the president to reorganize how its military delivers the part that it does in support of these policies. How that might happen in other parts of government could be -- this is not exclusive of potential government, I don't know that, but this is how we in the Department of Defense do our work. We know now that stability and security is not just a military issue. So because of that, just as we see in a place like Afghanistan: we have teams that are interagency, that are intergovernmental, that are multinational, so too this command takes that construct and applies it writ large, still as a military organization.

Is it possible that down the road at some point in time, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years that you might have a unified command headed by a civilian? Possible.

So that's where we are right now. Again, not at the exclusion of those other things, but how we have reorganized ourselves to do our part in delivering our programs.

SIR PAUL LEVER: Thank you, General. We are out of time. My apologies to those who would have wanted to put a question.

I know there was a lot of interest. I hope you'll get the occasion later on in the day to make your points. We're going to move straight into the next session, but before we do, could I ask you all to join me in thanking General Ward for that introduction. (Applause.) Yours may be a command in construction, but I get the impression it's going to be quite a fun command to work in. All the best to you. Thank you very much.

(END OF TRANSCRIPT)

Transcript by
Federal News Service
Washington, D.C.

Can the World Afford A Middle Class?

By Moisés Naím

March/April 2008

Yes, but it will be awfully expensive.

The middle class in poor countries is the fastest-growing segment of the world’s population. While the total population of the planet will increase by about 1 billion people in the next 12 years, the ranks of the middle class will swell by as many as 1.8 billion. Of these new members of the middle class, 600 million will be in China. Homi Kharas, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, estimates that by 2020 the world’s middle class will grow to include a staggering 52 percent of the global population, up from 30 percent now. The middle class will almost double in the poor countries where sustained economic growth is lifting people above the poverty line fast. For example, by 2025, China will have the world’s largest middle class, while India’s will be 10 times larger than it is today.

While this is, of course, good news, it also means humanity will have to adjust to unprecedented pressures. The rise of a new global middle class is already having repercussions. Last January, 10,000 people took to the streets in Jakarta to protest skyrocketing soybean prices. And Indonesians were not the only people angry about the rising cost of food. In 2007, higher pasta prices sparked street protests in Milan. Mexicans marched against the price of tortillas. Senegalese protested the price of rice, and Indians took up banners against the price of onions. Many governments, including those in Argentina, China, Egypt, and Russia, have imposed controls on food prices in an attempt to contain a public backlash.

These protesters are the most vociferous manifestations of a global trend: We are all paying more for bread, milk, and chocolate, to name just a few items. The new consumers of the emerging global middle class are driving up food prices everywhere. The food-price index compiled by The Economist since 1845 is now at an all-time high; it increased 30 percent in 2007 alone. Milk prices were up more than 29 percent last year, while wheat and soybeans increased by almost 80 and 90 percent, respectively. Many other grains, like rice and maize, reached record highs. Prices are soaring not because there is less food (in 2007, the world produced more grains than ever before), but because some grains are now being used as fuel and because more people can afford to eat more. The average consumption of meat in China, for example, has more than doubled since the mid-1980s.

The impact of a fast-growing middle class will soon be felt in the price of other resources. After all, members of the middle class not only consume more meat and grains, but they also buy more clothes, refrigerators, toys, medicines, and, eventually, cars and homes. China and India, with 40 percent of the world’s population, most of it still very poor, already consume more than half of the global supply of coal, iron ore, and steel. Thanks to their growing prosperity and that of other countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, and Vietnam, the demand for these products is booming. Not surprisingly, in the past two years, the world price of tin, nickel, and zinc have roughly doubled, while aluminum is up 39 percent and plywood is now 27 percent more expensive. Moreover, a middle-class lifestyle in these developing countries, even if more frugal than what is common in rich nations, is more energy intensive. In 2005, China added as much electricity generation as Britain produces in a year. In 2006, it added as much as France’s total supply. Yet, millions in China still lack reliable access to electricity; in India, more than 400 million don’t have power. The demand in India will grow fivefold in the next 25 years.

And you know what happened to oil prices. Again, oil reached its all-time high of $100 per barrel not because of supply constraints but because of unprecedented growth in consumption in poor countries with rising middle classes. China alone accounts for one third of the growth in the world’s oil consumption in recent years. The middle class also likes to travel: The World Tourism Organization estimates that outbound tourists will grow from today’s 846 million a year to 1.6 billion in 2020. Venice and Paris will be even more expensive—and crowded—to visit.

The public debate about the consequences of this global consumption boom has focused on what it means for the environment. Yet, its economic and political effects will be significant, too. The lifestyle of the existing middle class will probably have to change as the new middle class emerges. The consumption patterns that an American, French, or Swedish family took for granted will inevitably become more expensive. Some, like driving your car anywhere at any time, may even become prohibitively so. That may not be all bad. It may mean that the price of some resources, like water or oil, may more accurately reflect its true costs.

But other dislocations will be more painful and difficult to predict. Changes in migration, urbanization, and income distribution will be widespread. And expect growing demands for better housing, healthcare, education, and, inevitably, political participation. The unanticipated effects of the new global middle class will become part of our daily news.

The debate about the Earth’s “limits to growth” is as old as Thomas Malthus’s alarm about a world where the population outstrips its ability to feed itself. In the past, pessimists have been proven wrong. Higher prices and new technologies, like the green revolution, always came to the rescue, boosting supplies and allowing the world to continue to grow. That may happen again. But the adjustment to a middle class greater than what the world has ever known is just beginning. As the Indonesian and Mexican protesters can attest, it won’t be cheap. And it won’t be quiet.

Moisés Naím is editor in chief of Foreign Policy.

National Dragnet Is a Click Away
Authorities to Gain Fast and Expansive Access to Records
By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 6, 2008; A01

Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots.

As federal authorities struggled to meet information-sharing mandates after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police agencies from Alaska and California to the Washington region poured millions of criminal and investigative records into shared digital repositories called data warehouses, giving investigators and analysts new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior and other hidden clues.

Those network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a "one-stop shop" enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time.

Although Americans have become accustomed to seeing dazzling examples of fictional crime-busting gear on television and in movies, law enforcement's search for clues has in reality involved a mundane mix of disjointed computers, legwork and luck.

These new systems are transforming that process. "It's going from the horse-and-buggy days to the space age, that's what it's like," said Sgt. Chuck Violette of the Tucson police department, one of almost 1,600 law enforcement agencies that uses a commercial data-mining system called Coplink.

With Coplink, police investigators can pinpoint suspects by searching on scraps of information such as nicknames, height, weight, color of hair and the placement of a tattoo. They can find hidden relationships among suspects and instantly map links among people, places and events. Searches that might have taken weeks or months -- or which might not have been attempted, because of the amount of paper and analysis involved -- are now done in seconds.

On one recent day, Tucson detective Cynthia Butierez demonstrated that power in an office littered with paper and boxes of equipment. Using a regular desktop computer and Web browser, she logged onto Coplink to search for clues about a fraud suspect. She entered a name the suspect used on a bogus check. A second later, a list of real names came up, along with five incident reports.

She told the system to also search data warehouses built by Coplink in San Diego and Orange County, Calif. -- which have agreements to share with Tucson -- and came up with the name of a particular suspect, his age and a possible address. She asked the software to find the suspect's links to other people and incidents, and then to create a visual chart displaying the findings. Up popped a display with the suspect at the center and cartoon-like images of houses, buildings and people arrayed around him. A final click on one of the houses brought up the address of an apartment and several new names, leads she could follow.

"The power behind what we have discovered, what we can do with Coplink, is immense," Tucson police Chief Richard Miranda said. "The kinds of things you saw in the movies then, we're actually doing now."

Intelligence-Led Policing
The expanding police systems illustrate the prominent roles that private companies play in homeland security and counterterrorism efforts. They also underscore how the use of new data -- and data surveillance -- technology to fight crime and terrorism is evolving faster than the public's understanding or the laws intended to check government power and protect civil liberties, authorities said.

Three decades ago, Congress imposed limits on domestic intelligence activity after revelations that the FBI, Army, local police and others had misused their authority for years to build troves of personal dossiers and monitor political activists and other law-abiding Americans.

Since those reforms, police and federal authorities have observed a wall between law enforcement information-gathering, relating to crimes and prosecutions, and more open-ended intelligence that relates to national security and counterterrorism. That wall is fast eroding following the passage of laws expanding surveillance authorities, the push for information-sharing networks, and the expectation that local and state police will play larger roles as national security sentinels.

Law enforcement and federal security authorities said these developments, along with a new willingness by police to share information, hold out the promise of fulfilling post-Sept. 11, 2001, mandates to connect the dots and root out signs of threats before attacks can occur.

"A guy that's got a flat tire outside a nuclear facility in one location means nothing," said Thomas E. Bush III, the FBI's assistant director of the criminal justice information services division. "Run the guy and he's had a flat tire outside of five nuclear facilities and you have a clue."

In a paper called "Intelligence-Led Policing: The New Intelligence Architecture," law enforcement authorities working with the Justice Department said officers " 'on the beat' are an excellent resource for gathering information on all kinds of potential threats and vulnerabilities."

"Despite the many definitions of 'intelligence' that have been promulgated over the years, the simplest and clearest of these is 'information plus analysis equals intelligence,' " the paper said.

Efforts by federal authorities to create national networks have had mixed success.

The federal government has long successfully operated programs such as the Regional Information Sharing System, which enables law enforcement agencies to communicate, and the National Crime Information Center, an index of criminal justice information that police across the country can access. Though successful, those systems offer a relatively limited look at existing records.

A Department of Homeland Security project to expand sharing substantially, called the Information Network, has been bedeviled by cost overruns, poor planning and ambivalence on the part of local and state authorities, according to the Government Accountability Office. Almost every state has established organizations known as intelligence fusion centers to collect, analyze and share information about possible leads. But many of those centers are underfunded and undermanned, and some of the analysts are not properly trained, the GAO said last year.

Federal authorities have high hopes for the N-DEx system, which is to begin phasing in as early as this month. They envision a time when N-DEx, developed by Raytheon for $85 million, will enable 200,000 state and local investigators, as well as federal counterterrorism investigators, to search across millions of police reports, in some 15,000 state and local agencies, with a few clicks of a computer mouse. Those reports will include names of suspects, associates, victims, persons of interest, witnesses and any other person named in an incident, arrest, booking, parole or probation report.

The system will be accessible to federal law-enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, and state fusion centers. Intelligence analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center and FBI's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Center likely will have access to the system as well.

"The goal is to create a one-stop shop for criminal justice information," the FBI's Bush said.

In the meantime, local and state authorities have charged ahead with their own networks, sometimes called "nodes," and begun stitching them together through legal agreements and electronic links.

At least 1,550 jurisdictions across the country use Coplink systems, through some three dozen nodes. That's a huge increase from 2002, when Coplink was first available commercially.

At least 400 other agencies are sharing information and doing link analysis through the Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or Linx, a Navy Criminal Investigative Service project built by Northrop Grumman using commercial technology. Linx users include more than 100 police forces in the District, Virginia and Maryland.

Hundreds of other police agencies across the country are using different information-sharing systems with varying capabilities. Officials in Ohio have created a data warehouse containing the police records of nearly 800 jurisdictions, while leaving it to local departments to provide analytical tools.

Same Data, New Results
Authorities are aware that all of this is unsettling to people worried about privacy and civil liberties. Mark D. Rasch, a former federal prosecutor who is now a security consultant for FTI Consulting, said that the mining of police information by intelligence agencies could lead to improper targeting of U.S. citizens even when they've done nothing wrong.

Some officials avoid using the term intelligence because of those sensitivities. Others are open about their aim to use information and technology in new ways.

One widely used Coplink product is called Intel Lead. It enables agencies to enter new information, tips or observations into the data warehouses, which can then be accessed by people with proper authority. Another service under development, called "predictor," would use data and software to make educated guesses about what could happen.

"Intel Lead is particularly applicable to the needs of statewide criminal intelligence and antiterrorism fusion centers as well as federal agencies who need to bridge the intelligence gap," said a news release by Knowledge Computing, the company that makes Coplink.

Robert Griffin, the chief executive of Knowledge Computing, said Coplink yields clues and patterns they otherwise would not see. "It's de facto intelligence that's actionable," Griffin said.

Managers of Linx are eager to distinguish their system from the commercial Coplink and its more extensive capabilities. They acknowledge their system includes data-analysis capabilities, and it will feed information to counterterrorism and intelligence authorities. In fact, the system is designed to serve as a bridge between law enforcement and intelligence.

But they said Linx is not an intelligence system under federal laws, because it relies on records police have always kept. "It does not create intelligence," said Michael Dorsey, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agent in charge. "It creates knowledge."

To allay the public's fears, many police agencies segregate information collected in the process of enforcing the law from intelligence gathered on gangs, drug dealers and the like. Projects receiving federal funding must do so.

Nearly every state and local jurisdiction has its own guides for these new systems, rules that include restrictions intended to protect against police intrusiveness, authorities said. The systems also automatically keep track of how police use them.

N-DEx, too, will have restrictions aimed at preventing the abuse of the data it gathers. FBI officials said that agencies seeking access to N-DEx would be vetted, and that only authorized individuals would have access. Audit trails on whoever touches a piece of data would be kept. And no investigator would be allowed to take action -- make an arrest, for instance -- based on another agency's data without first checking with that agency.

But even some advocates of information-sharing technology worry that without proper oversight and enforceable restrictions the new networks pose a threat to basic American values by giving police too much power over information. Timothy Sample, a former intelligence official who runs the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, is among those who think computerized information-sharing is critical to national security but fraught with risks.

"As a nation, our laws have not kept up," said Sample, whose group serves as a professional association of intelligence officials in the government and intelligence contracting executives in the private sector.

Thomas McNamara, chief of the federal Information Sharing Environment office, said a top goal of federal officials is persuading regional systems to adopt most of the federal rules, both for privacy and to build a sense of confidence among law enforcement authorities who might be reluctant to share widely because of security concerns.

"Part of the challenge is to leverage these cutting-edge tools so we can securely and appropriately share that information which supports efforts to protect our communities from future terrorist attacks," McNamara said. "Equally important is that we do so in a manner that fully protects the information privacy and legal rights of all Americans."

Miranda, the Tucson police chief, said there's no overstating the utility of Coplink for his force. But he too acknowledges that such power raises new questions about how to keep it in check and ensure that the trust people place in law enforcement is not misplaced.

"I don't want the people in my community to feel we're behind every little tree and surveilling them," he said. "If there's any kind of inkling that we're misusing our power and our technology, that trust will be destroyed.

The Man Between War and Peace

As head of U. S. Central Command, Admiral William "Fox" Fallon is in charge of American military strategy for the most troubled parts of the world. Now, as the White House has been escalating the war of words with Iran, and seeming ever more determined to strike militarily before the end of this presidency, the admiral has urged restraint and diplomacy. Who will prevail, the president or the admiral?

1.

If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it'll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. His name is William Fallon, although all of his friends call him "Fox," which was his fighter-pilot call sign decades ago. Forty years into a military career that has seen this admiral rule over America's two most important combatant commands, Pacific Command and now United States Central Command, it's impossible to make this guy--as he likes to say--"nervous in the service." Past American governments have used saber rattling as a useful tactic to get some bad actor on the world stage to fall in line. This government hasn't mastered that kind of subtlety. When Dick Cheney has rattled his saber, it has generally meant that he intends to use it. And in spite of recent war spasms aimed at Iran from this sclerotic administration, Fallon is in no hurry to pick up any campaign medals for Iran. And therein lies the rub for the hard-liners led by Cheney. Army General David Petraeus, commanding America's forces in Iraq, may say, "You cannot win in Iraq solely in Iraq," but Fox Fallon is Petraeus's boss, and he is the commander of United States Central Command, and Fallon doesn't extend Petraeus's logic to mean war against Iran.

So while Admiral Fallon's boss, President George W. Bush, regularly trash-talks his way to World War III and his administration casually casts Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as this century's Hitler (a crown it has awarded once before, to deadly effect), it's left to Fallon--and apparently Fallon alone--to argue that, as he told Al Jazeera last fall: "This constant drumbeat of conflict . . . is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions."

What America needs, Fallon says, is a "combination of strength and willingness to engage."

Those are fighting words to your average neocon--not to mention your average supporter of Israel, a good many of whom in Washington seem never to have served a minute in uniform. But utter those words for print and you can easily find yourself defending your indifference to "nuclear holocaust."

How does Fallon get away with so brazenly challenging his commander in chief?

The answer is that he might not get away with it for much longer. President Bush is not accustomed to a subordinate who speaks his mind as freely as Fallon does, and the president may have had enough.

Just as Fallon took over Centcom last spring, the White House was putting itself on a war footing with Iran. Almost instantly, Fallon began to calmly push back against what he saw as an ill-advised action. Over the course of 2007, Fallon's statements in the press grew increasingly dismissive of the possibility of war, creating serious friction with the White House.

Last December, when the National Intelligence Estimate downgraded the immediate nuclear threat from Iran, it seemed as if Fallon's caution was justified. But still, well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way.

And so Fallon, the good cop, may soon be unemployed because he's doing what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now openly complaining that their leaders didn't do on their behalf in the run-up to the war in Iraq: He's standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war.

It's not that Fallon is risk averse--anything but. "When I look at the Middle East," he says late one recent night in Afghanistan, "I'd just as soon double down on the bet."

When Fallon is serious, his voice is feathery and he tends to speak in measured koans that, taken together, say, Have no fear. Let Washington be a tempest. Wherever I am is the calm center of the storm.

And Fallon is in no hurry to call Iran's hand on the nuclear question. He is as patient as the White House is impatient, as methodical as President Bush is mercurial, and simply has, as one aide put it, "other bright ideas about the region." Fallon is even more direct: In a part of the world with "five or six pots boiling over, our nation can't afford to be mesmerized by one problem."

And if it comes to war?

"Get serious," the admiral says. "These guys are ants. When the time comes, you crush them."

2.

It was Rumsfeld's fall that led to Fallon picking up his greatest and, inevitably, final mission. Smart guy that he is, Robert Gates, the incoming secretary of defense, finagled Fallon out of Pacific Command, where he'd been radically making peace with the Chinese, so that he could, among other things, provide a check on the eager-to-please General David Petraeus in Iraq.

As the head of U. S. Central Command, his beat is the desert that stretches from East Africa to the Chinese border--a fractious little sandbox with Iraq on one edge and Afghanistan on the other and tens of thousands of American boots already on the ground in both. Pakistan's there in one corner, threatening to boil over and spill its nuclear jihadists forth upon the world; in another, the Gaza Strip continues to hum like a bowstring; and up north, the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia, the 'Stans, rattle along under dictators who range from the merely authoritarian to the genuinely insane. And right in the middle lies Iran.

Where there's peace in the region, how do you keep it? Where there's war, how do you contain it or end it? Where there are threats, how do you counter them? For starters, you might want to make some friends. Which is what Fallon was doing recently on a tour of his area of responsibility.

It's late November in smoggy, car-infested Cairo, and I'm standing in the front lobby of a rather ornate "infantry officers club" on the outskirts of the old town center. Central Command's just finished its large, biannual regional exercise called Bright Star, and today Egypt's army is hosting a "senior leadership seminar" for all the attending generals. It's the barroom scene from Star Wars, with more national uniforms than I can count.

Judging by Fallon's grimace as his official party passes, I can tell that the cover story in this morning's Egyptian Gazette landed hard on somebody's desk at the White House. U.S. RULES OUT STRIKE AGAINST IRAN, read the banner headline, and the accompanying photo showed Fallon in deep consultation with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Fallon sidles up to me during a morning coffee break. "I'm in hot water again," he says.

"The White House?"

The admiral slowly nods his head.

"They say, 'Why are you even meeting with Mubarak?' " This seems to utterly mystify Fallon.

"Why?" he says, shrugging with palms extending outward. "Because it's my job to deal with this region, and it's all anyone wants to talk about right now. People here hear what I'm saying and understand. I don't want to get them too spun up. Washington interprets this as all aimed at them. Instead, it's aimed at governments and media in this region. I'm not talking about the White House." He points to the ground, getting exercised. "This is my center of gravity. This is my job."

Fallon was quietly opposed to a long-term surge in Iraq, because more of our military assets tied down in Iraq makes it harder to come up with a comprehensive strategy for the Middle East, and he knew how that looked to higher-ups. He also knows that sometimes his statements on Iran strike the same people as running "counter to stated policy." "But look," he says, "yesterday I'm speaking in front of 250 Egyptian businessmen over lunch here in Cairo, and these guys keep holding up newspapers and asking, 'Is this true and can you explain, please?' I need to present the threats and capabilities in the appropriate language. That's one of my duties."

Fallon explains his approach to Iran the same way he explains why he doesn't make Al Qaeda the focus of his regional strategy as Centcom's commander: "What's the best and most effective way to combat Al Qaeda? We tend to make too much or too little a deal about it. I want a more even keel. I come from the school of 'walk softly and carry a big stick.' "

Fallon is the American at the center of every circle in this part of the world. And it is a testament to his skill, and to the failure of American diplomacy, that so much is left for this military man to do himself. He spends very little time at Centcom headquarters in Tampa and is instead constantly "forward," on the move between Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all the 'Stans of Central Asia.

He was with Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf the day before he declared emergency rule last fall. "I'm not the chief diplomat of this country, and certainly not the secretary of state," Fallon says in Kabul's Green Zone the next night. "But I am close to the problems." So, he says, that leaves him no choice but to work these issues, day in and day out.

Late that night, I am sitting with Fallon deep in the compound that encompasses the presidential palace and the International Security Assistance Force. We are alone inside the cramped office of ISAF's chief public-affairs officer.

Fallon had spent several hours with "Mushi" the day before in Islamabad, discussing his impending decision. The press coverage would emphasize how Fallon had sternly warned Musharraf not to impose emergency rule. But on this night, the admiral seems neither alarmed by the move nor resigned to its more negative implications. As he talks, Fallon casually takes off the elastic bands that clamp his camo pants to his regulation tan boots. He's beat after a long day that included meetings with President Karzai and a helicopter trip to Khost, Osama bin Laden's pre-9/11 Afghanistan stronghold. But it was the martial law next door in Pakistan that is the focus of the world. Fallon has been through this before.

"I didn't do any preaching," Fallon says about his talks with Musharraf. "In a previous life here, I had two extra constitutional events: a coup in Thailand, and a head of the military took over in Fiji. So I talked to the president for quite a while yesterday, both with the ambassador and then alone. He walked me through his rationale for what he was going to do and why he was going to do it and why he thought he had to do it. We talked about what planning he'd done for this, the downsides of this, what could happen, and how that could screw up a lot of things. At the end of the day, it's his country and he's the boss of it, and he's going to make his decision."

Before he walked into that room in Islamabad, Fallon had plenty of calls from Washington with instructions to pressure Musharraf down another path.

"I'll talk to him," Fallon replied. "There's an awful lot of china that could break. So I'll do it in a professional manner, because I still have to work with him."

As the admiral recounts the exchange, his voice is flat, his gaze steady. His calculus on this subject is far more complex than anyone else's. He is neither an idealist nor a fantasist. In Pakistan, he has the most volatile combination of forces in the world, yet he is deeply calm. "Did I tell President Musharraf this is not a recommended course of action? Of course. Did I tell him there are very negative effects that this could have? Of course. Is he aware of these? Yes.

"He's made his calculations. He feels very strongly that he's responsible for his country. His alternative is to step down. That would not be the most helpful thing for his country."

Why not?

"It's a very immature democracy. Look at the history of the place. It's rough. Musharraf knows his country. He knows what he's got. Their factions, their tribes. There's that group of folks that wants nothing more than to start war with India, another group that wants to take over the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas], another group that wants to take over part of Baluchistan. He's got a tough road. Most guys in his position do."

As for Washington's notion that Benazir Bhutto's return to the country would fix all that, Fallon is pessimistic. He slowly shakes his head. "Better forget that."

Less than two months later, of course, his rueful prophesy will be confirmed when Bhutto is murdered by militants in Rawalpindi.

Meanwhile, Fallon argues that with U. S. plans in the offing to arm Pashtun tribes against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the FATA, now would not seem to be the time to be pushing the democracy agenda in Pakistan.

When Fallon asked Musharraf, "How long do you expect to have to do it?" the general answered, "Not long." And twenty-four hours later, Fallon counseled patience. After all, he said, think about how strong America's military relationship is with Egypt despite Hosni Mubarak's twenty-seven-year "emergency rule."

But that doesn't mean the relationship building remains limited to just Musharraf, and so the rest of Fallon's long day in Islamabad was spent networking with General Ashfaq Kayani, former head of Pakistan's much-feared Interservices Intelligence agency and new chief of army staff. If Musharraf were ever to step or be pushed aside, Kayani is a leading contender to replace him.

But more to the point for Fallon, Kayani becomes the operational point man for any increased collaboration between the U. S. military and the Pakistani army to tackle the issues of the FATA, which a Centcom senior intelligence official calls "the huge elephant in the closet."

That's putting it mildly. The tribal region is where, according to our own National Intelligence Estimate last year, Al Qaeda was reconstituting its operational capacity, and was now in its strongest position since 9/11.

As with Pakistan, Fallon keeps his powder dry when he deals with Iran. He doesn't react like Pavlov's dog to inflammatory rhetoric from inflammatory little men. He understands the basic rule of international diplomacy: Everybody gets a move.

"Tehran's feeling pretty cocky right now because they've been able to inflict pain on us in Iraq and Afghanistan." So the trick, in Fallon's mind, is "to try to figure out what it is they really want and then, maybe--not that we're going to play Santa Claus here or the Good Humor Man--but the fact is that everyone needs something in this world, and so most countries that are functional and are contributing to the world have found a way to trade off their strengths for other strengths to help them out. These guys are trying to go it alone in this respect, and it's a bad gene pool right now. It's not one with much longevity. So they play that card pretty regularly, and at some point you just kind of run out of games, it seems to me. You've got to play a real card."

And when the real cards finally get played, that's when Fallon will double down.

3.

The first thing you notice is the face, the second is the voice.

A tall, wiry man with thinning white hair, Fallon comes off like a loner even when he's standing in a crowd.

Despite having an easy smile that he regularly pulls out for his many daily exercises in relationship building, Fallon's consistent game face is a slightly pissed-off glare. It's his default expression. Don't fuck with me, it says. A tough Catholic boy from New Jersey, his favorite compliment is "badass." Fallon's got a fearsome reputation, although no one I ever talk to in the business can quite pin down why. There are the stories of his wilder days as a young officer, not the partying stuff but more the variety of rules bent to the breaking point, and he's been known as anything but a dove in his various commands, which makes his later roles as champion for engagement with both China and Iran all the more strange.

In keeping with the naval-officer tradition of emasculating bluntness, Fallon can without remorse cut the nuts off peers and subordinates alike. But it is more the intimation of his ferocity than its exercise that has the greatest effect. And Fallon has recently discovered that his reputation can leave him open to stories that might sound true but are not. Last fall, it was reported in the press that Fallon had called General Petraeus an "ass-kissing little chickenshit" for being so willing to serve as the administration's political frontman on the Iraq surge. The old man had told reporters that it hadn't happened like that--that that's not the way he operates, and, in fact, any time he talks with Petraeus, there are only two men in the room--the admiral and the general--and their exchanges remain private. And when they're not in the same room, "We e-mail each other constantly and talk by phone just about every day." Just the two of them, he says. No outsiders observing. The press sources had an overactive imagination, Fallon said. Now when the subject comes up, he dismisses it with a wave of his hand.

"Absolute bullshit," Fallon tells me.

Fallon and his executive assistant, Captain Craig Faller, say that they both suspect "staff agitation" to be behind the story. Interservice rivalry is mighty strong, and Admiral Fallon is the first navy man to be head of Centcom, so it's not hard for them to imagine somebody from the Army stirring the pot.

Fallon says the tip-off that the story was bogus was the word chickenshit. "My kids called me up laughing about that one, saying they knew the story wasn't true because I never use that word."

So put Fallon down as a "bullshit" and not a "chickenshit" kind of guy.

And in truth, Fallon's not a screamer. Indeed, by my long observation and the accounts of a dozen people, he doesn't raise his voice whatsoever, except when he laughs. Instead, the more serious he becomes, the quieter he gets, and his whispers sound positively menacing. Other guys can jaw-jaw all they want about the need for war-war with . . . whomever is today's target among D. C.'s many armchair warriors. Not Fallon. Let the president pop off. Fallon won't. No bravado here, nor sound-bite-sized threats, but rather a calm, leathery presence. Fallon is comfortable risking peace because he's comfortable waging war. And when he conveys messages to the enemies of the United States, he does it not in the provocative cowboy style that has prevailed in Washington so far this century, but with the opposite--a studied quiet that makes it seem as if he is trying to bend them to his will with nothing but the sound of his voice.

So when, during a press conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, Fallon whispers, "The public behavior of Iran has been unhelpful to the region," with his pissed-off glare and his slightly hoarse delivery, he is saying, I'm not making you an offer; I'm telling you what your options are right now.

"Iran should be playing a constructive role," he continues. "I hear this from every country in the region."

Translation: I've got you surrounded.

He'd rather not do it, but if he has to go to war, there won't be any anguish. Whatever qualms Fallon had about using force were exorcised long ago in the skies over Vietnam.

"I try to be reasonably predictable to my own people and very unpredictable to potential adversaries," he tells me.

No wonder Fallon sticks out like a sore thumb with the neocons, who have the unfortunate tendency to come off as unpredictable to their allies and predictable to their enemies. Which is the opposite of strategy. He knows this stuff cold, because he's had his hand on the stick for a very long time. The oldest of nine kids, Fallon's old man was a mailman in Merchantville, New Jersey, following his World War II stint in the Army Air Corps. As a boy, Fallon delivered newspapers, bagged groceries, worked in the local Campbell's Soup plant, and would become the first in his family to attend college. His dad's military experiences, along with those of several of his mom's brothers, naturally pushed him in the direction of West Point.

But his local congressman screwed up his application, and so Fallon chose the naval ROTC program at nearby Villanova, a Catholic haven that has produced three Centcom commanders. More than thirteen hundred carrier landings later, Fallon began his long climb through various combat command experiences--including Desert Storm and Bosnia--to the pinnacle of his profession: four four-star assignments that include vice chief of Naval Operations, commander of the Atlantic Fleet, and then boss of Pacific Command and Central Command in rapid succession.

Sitting in his Tampa headquarters office last fall, I asked Fallon if he considered the Centcom assignment to be the same career-capping job that it'd been for his predecessors. He just laughed and said, "Career capping? How about career detonating?"

At the time, I took that comment to be mere self-effacement. I have since come to think that Fallon was deadly serious.

Weeks later, back in that hotel lounge in Kazakhstan, after a brutal eighteen-hour day of wall-to-wall summits and meetings, Fallon is in a more pensive mood, admitting that he never expected to stay this long in the service. At sixty-three, he's one of the oldest flag officers in uniform, and if you count his ROTC time, he's been in for a whopping forty-five years total. And at this cookie-cutter chain hotel deep in the 'Stans, Fallon wears an expression that is equal parts fatigue and bewilderment. "I expected to be running a start-up company by now," he says.

But something else came up.

4.

When the Admiral took charge of Pacific Command in 2005, he immediately set about a military-to-military outreach to the Chinese armed forces, something that had plenty of people freaking out at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. The Chinese, after all, were scheduled to be our next war. What the hell was Fallon doing?

Contrary to some reports, though, Fallon says he initially had no trouble with then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld on the subject. "Early on, I talked to him. I said, Here's what I think. And I talked to the president, too."

It was only after the Pentagon and Congress started realizing that their favorite "programs of record" (i.e., weapons systems and major vehicle platforms) were threatened by such talks that the shit hit the fan. "I blew my stack," Fallon says. "I told Rumsfeld, Just look at this shit. I go up to the Hill and I get three or four guys grabbing me and jerking me out of the aisle, all because somebody came up and told them that the sky was going to cave in."

But Fallon stood down the China hawks, because as much as military leaders have to plan for war, Fallon seems to understand better than most the role they also have to play in everything else beyond war. And like a good cop, Fallon doesn't want to fire his gun unless he absolutely has to. "I wouldn't have done what I did if I didn't think it was the right thing to do, which I still do. China is our most important relationship for the future, given the realities of people, economics, and location. We've got to work hard and make sure we do our best to get it right."

For Fallon, that meant an emphasis on opening new lines of communication and reducing the capacity for misunderstanding during times of crisis. But beyond that, it meant telling the Chinese, "If you want to be treated as a big boy and a major player, you've got to act like it."

If you want recognition of your power, then you have to accept the responsibility that comes with such power. That's the essential message Fallon delivered to the Chinese, and if that meant he was out of line with the Pentagon's take on rising China, then so be it. If it seemed as though Fallon was downplaying the threat of North Korea's missiles, it was because he preferred pushing a regional response that signaled a united front but still left the door open for North Korea to come in from the cold.

Fallon now brings the same approach to Iran in Central Command: "I want to go through something positive rather than a negative like Iran, which is a real problem." To that end, and right on the heels of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's meetings with Middle Eastern ministers of defense, Fallon held a similar summit of Persian Gulf chiefs of defense in Tampa earlier this year, something Centcom has never attempted before.

Could Iran be a participant in something like this down the road?

"Oh, absolutely, eventually. It's like the Chinese," he says. "It would be great if Iran turned into a team that decided to play ball in the end."

So how does something like this happen?

How do you turn Iran into a responsible regional player? How can the United States even approach Iran when the regime seems populated by only hard-liners and ultraconservatives?

You start down low, says one of Fallon's senior intelligence officials. For example, there's the shared interest in stemming the flow of narcotics from Afghanistan to Iran. "Iran has a huge drug problem," so that's "a potential cooperative area." More recently, the Iranians promised to stop the flow of munitions into Iraq, arguably contributing to the dramatic decrease in U. S. casualties from roadside bombs. After three sets of talks with the Iranians last summer that went nowhere, another round is being teed up. To Fallon, this sort of engagement is crucial, given America's overall lack of experience in dealing with Iran.

"I don't know as much as I'd like about Iran," he says. "You've got to go elsewhere, to people in other countries. There aren't many Americans who've had extensive experience with these guys. So that puts us both at a disadvantage. Plus they're secretive--intentionally so--about us. It makes it more of a challenge."

Early in his tenure at Pacific Command, Fallon let it be known that he was interested in visiting the city of Harbin in the highly controlled and isolated Heilongjiang Military District on China's northern border with Russia. The Chinese were flabbergasted at the request, but when Fallon's command plane took off one afternoon from Mongolia, heading for Harbin without permission, Beijing relented.

The local Chinese commander was beside himself. It was the first time in his life he had ever met an American military officer, and here he was at the bottom of a jet ramp waiting for the all-powerful head of the United States Pacific Command to descend. Then, to his horror, he realized that Fallon had brought his wife, Mary, along for the trip. Scrambling to arrange the evening banquet, the Chinese commander brought his own wife out in public for the first time ever.

When the time came for dinner toasts, after the Chinese commander thanked Mrs. Fallon for coming, the admiral returned the favor by thanking the commander's wife for her many years of service as a military spouse. The commander's wife broke down in tears, saying it was the first time in her entire marriage that she had been publicly recognized for her many sacrifices.

And there was peace in our time.

5.

Fallon is what is called a "four-star action officer," meaning he tries to do too many things himself. He spends no more than a week each month in Tampa, Centcom's headquarters. Captain Faller jokes that if it weren't for federal holidays, Fallon's staff wouldn't know what a day off even was.

Fallon travels at least three weeks out of each month, spending, on average, two weeks in theater, meaning the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, and Central Asia. He travels to Iraq and Afghanistan every month like clockwork.

It's an unseasonably warm early-winter morning in Kabul, and Fallon is out in the field, walking his beat. And short of the president of the United States himself, this convoy is the richest and most opportune terrorist target in the world at present. So everybody wears the heavy armor. Weighed down by a helmet that feels like twenty pounds--applied directly to my forehead--and a desert-camo flak jacket that's decidedly heavier, I climb into the back of an armored Suburban that'll play third-on-a-match in Fallon's three-vehicle convoy. We are told to expect a bumpy ride, as ours is the vehicle that will routinely swerve from side to side to position itself to ram any vehicle that might approach the command vehicle from the side.

It's like riding in a car with the biggest asshole in the world behind the wheel. We almost pass Fallon's vehicle--time after time--only to slam on the brakes, slip back behind, lurch over to the other side, and do the same thing. A word of advice: Don't do this on a heavy breakfast. Fallon's personal enlisted aide, strapped in next to us, says our driver is actually being fairly mellow, on the admiral's orders. That's good to hear, as the streets are full of women and children on foot.

Thirty minutes after we've left the maze of barricades that line every entrance into the Green Zone, giving the place a sort of Maxwell Smart sense of never-ending doors, we arrive at a military airport where two Black Hawk UH-60's await. I ride with Fallon's senior aides in the second one. I am strapped into a four-part harness, the body armor keeping me well cocooned. Minutes after takeoff, as is the universal custom among military personnel, everyone but the personal-security-detail soldiers is asleep.

I scan the moonscape that is the mountains west of Kabul.

Traveling at high speed, we've been dipping ever so gently around the mountains as we travel to Bamiyan Province, ancient home to the giant Buddhas that are no more--parting shots from the once and future Taliban. I can spot Fallon's Black Hawk out the window, framed from above by the sky and below by the barrel of a large machine gun sticking out of our helicopter's side. It's manned by a rather short fellow whose face is almost completely obscured by his Star Wars blast shield.

The view is amazing and reminds me why banditry and smuggling remain dominant industries here. Every road seems to lie at the bottom of a narrow, meandering ravine, and every walled compound looks like a fort out of America's Wild West days. Most of the time, the only things moving across this barren landscape are the shadows from our helos.

We alight from the Black Hawks after touching down on a strip of asphalt located in the center of the wide, flat plain that is Bamiyan Valley. Immediately your eyes are drawn to the dominant geological feature: cliff walls as high as skyscrapers that run along the valley's northern edge as far as the eye can see. Carved into the stunning vertical cliff are two empty frames, each running fifteen or so meters deep into the rock. Here stood the gigantic stone Buddhas carved hundreds of years ago by monks who lived in a warren of caves connecting the statues.

We're met at the landing zone by the Kiwi colonel, Brendon Fraher, who leads a small unit of New Zealand's finest civil-affairs specialists operating out of a small fort a few clicks away. The camp is home to a Provincial Reconstruction Team manned by the Kiwis, who work hand in glove with U. S. State Department, U. S. Agency for International Development, and ISAF personnel in coordinating coalition reconstruction aid to this province.

As we head to a convoy of armored Ford F-350 pickups, Fallon says that Fraher reports two enemy rockets landed nearby yesterday, but other than that, all's quiet. We speed off to meet the only female provincial governor in Afghanistan. Pulling up to the local government building, we pile out of the pickups and file into a large receiving room blanketed by modest Persian rugs and surrounded by even more modest couches. Just inside, we strip off the helmets and vests and heap them into a pile of fabric-covered metal and ceramic in the corner, all of it too heavy to hang on any coatrack.

Fallon--who's done this sort of thing so often, he seems to glide through the protocol--zeroes in on Governor Habiba Sarabi, a middle-aged woman of average height who's dressed in a reform sort of way--head covered but face exposed. Despite all our accompanying security, you've got to believe she's the biggest Taliban target in the room.

Tea is served and formal greetings are exchanged with no need for translation, as the governor speaks English with calculated fluency, a skill she demonstrates a half hour into the meeting, when Fallon makes clear that he wants to hear her complaints.

It's a tricky moment for Sarabi, because she's basically critiquing Western aid and the military agencies represented by the officials surrounding her now. It's like bitching about your parents in front of Child Protective Services: Strike the right note and you might suddenly find yourself free of them for good.

Speaking about a road long-promised by Kabul and the coalition that would connect this isolated valley to Afghanistan's central circular artery, the Ring Road, she suddenly blurts out, "This is three years that the Bamiyan people have been waiting for this road!"

Fallon aggressively queries the assembled officials in order, running from the deputy chief of mission at the U. S. embassy to the USAID leader to the ISAF officers and, finally, the local Kiwi PRT commander. Each offers a typically complex, bureaucratic response in turn. Glancing at the governor, I can almost feel her anger rising.

With obvious passion, Sarabi interrupts the proceedings with a stream of complaints about the length and complexity of USAID's planning process. This is where her fluency in English suddenly falters, as Sarabi's sentences start trailing off, leading the assembled officials to fill in the blanks.

"It is very . . . "

"Long?" chimes in the USAID official.

"And there is such a lack of . . . ahh." Sarabi raises a finger to her chin, scanning the far wall as if the word lingers there.

"Coordination?" offers the deputy chief of mission.

"It all makes me so incredibly . . . how do you say?"

"Mad?" one officer suggests.

"Depressed?"

"Angry?"

It's almost like an auction now as the bids keep rising. I'm just about ready to toss in my personal favorite, "pissed off," when Fallon weighs in with "frustrated"--no question mark.

Sarabi turns toward the admiral, a sly smile passes across her face.

Fallon starts probing yet again, this time cutting off officials, as their answers obscure rather than illuminate.

Emboldened, the governor piles on with a new complaint: Every winter, a local river becomes impassable for a local migratory tribe that is then stranded outside the valley.

Fallon asks the deputy chief of mission, "Are you aware of this?"

The DCM replies, "No, I wasn't, and I promise to look into that."

Fallon's on a roll now, and the governor is beaming, but his efforts soon head into a bureaucratic cul-de-sac that no one in the room can fix. Kabul's central government simply does not prioritize this heartland province. Fallon asks the senior American ISAF officer if the coalition could arrange a Bailey pontoon bridge just for the winter months. In return, he gets a complex answer about past surveys.

Fallon cuts him off and turns to the governor. "I tell you what, I'm not getting a satisfactory answer here. I'll be honest. I don't think we can do anything for you this winter. However, I will try to get, from many miles away, a screwdriver big enough to push this process for next year."

The governor immediately thanks Fallon for his promise.

Fallon doesn't forget details like that. Six months earlier, he noticed that the American flag flying outside the Hyatt hotel in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, was frayed. He had told one of the defense attachés at the U. S. embassy to get it replaced. The beaten-up flag was still there when we arrived. It's late on the fifth straight day of nonstop travel that has taken Fallon's entourage from Florida to Qatar to Pakistan to Afghanistan and now to Kyrgyzstan. Tomorrow, Tajikistan, where he'll have to put up with the Putin clone who is president. So at the moment, maybe the flag is not all that's frayed. His gaze fixed on it, Fallon quietly repeats his order, his voice so low and so quiet that you can almost hear somebody's next promotion getting axed.

6.

Unlike his Arabic-speaking predecessor, Army General John Abizaid, Fox Fallon wasn't selected to lead U. S. Central Command for his regional knowledge or cultural sensitivity, but because he is, says Secretary of Defense Gates, "one of the best strategic thinkers in uniform today."

If anything has been sorely missing to date in America's choices in the Middle East and Central Asia, it has been a strategic mind-set that consistently keeps its eyes on the real prize: connecting these isolated regions in a far more broadband fashion to the global economy. Instead of effectively countering the efforts of others (e.g., the radical Salafis, Saudi Arabia's Wahhabists, Russia's security services, China's energy sector) who would fashion such connectivity to their selfish ends, Washington has wasted precious time focusing excessively on transforming the political systems of Iraq and Afghanistan, as though governments somehow birth functioning societies and economies instead of the other way around.

Waiting on perfect security or perfect politics to forge economic relationships is a fool's errand. By the time those fantastic conditions are met in this dangerous, unstable part of the world, somebody less idealistic will be running the place--the Russians, Chinese, Pakistanis, Indians, Turks, Iranians, Saudis. That's why Fallon has been aggressively hawking his southern strategy of encouraging a north-south "energy corridor" between the Central Asian republics and the energy-starved-but-booming Asian subcontinent (read: Islamabad down through Bangalore and then east to Kolkata), with both Afghanistan and Pakistan as crucial conduits.

On this trip, he's been shepherding a new bridge that links isolated Tajikistan with Afghanistan. The potential here is huge: Tajikistan is 95 percent mountainous and extremely food dependent. Its main asset is its untapped hydroelectric capacity. Afghanistan presents just the opposite picture--food to export but most of the country lacks an effective electric grid.

So what should America be pushing first in both states? Free-and-clear elections for massively impoverished populations, or whatever it takes to get Tajikistan's resource with Afghanistan's resource? Which path, do you think, would scare the Taliban and Al Qaeda more? To Fallon, there isn't even a question to answer.

But this part of the world is defined by its fortresses, and is not known for willingly connecting to the outside world. Tajikistan's powerful security chief, Khayriddin Abdurahimov, had been doing his best to gum up the works on the just-finished bridge, which he allowed to open for business only four hours a day. Having just achieved control of the country's border-security agency, Abdurahimov believed the bridge made the country vulnerable to Afghanistan's dangerous drugs and nothing more.

On the eve of Fallon's arrival, President Emomali Rahmon intervened and extended the bridge's operating schedule to eight hours a day, admitting to Fallon in their first summit that he needs to do more to champion the economic potential.

But Fallon doesn't stop there. Immediately following his meeting with Rahmon, he meets face-to-face with the highly secretive Abdurahimov, who almost never meets with foreign officials.

Just as with Musharraf, Fallon does not preach. He suggests, he encourages, he cajoles, he offers, and he debates, but he does not preach--save the gospel of economic connectivity. Even there, he is not eager to appear competitive with any regional power. "I don't want to create the impression that we're just replacing the Russians," he says.

He just wants a damn bridge.

Fallon gets his bridge.

7.

Fallon's got a spread in a little town in Montana. The streams of this town seem to be full of eighteen-inch fish that he says he'd like to take a crack at someday soon. But the fish of Fallon's town are safe for the moment.

While Condoleezza Rice and the State Department manage a vague endgame on the two-state solution in Palestine, Gates and Fallon have begun the regional-security dialogue that's truly regional in scope.

The rollback of Al Qaeda seems to be both real and continuing, save for the border region of Pakistan. And to gain greater flexibility to plan for the region, Fallon says that he is determined to draw down in Iraq. One of the reasons Fallon says he banished the term "long war" from Centcom's vocabulary is that he believes real victory in this struggle will be defined in economic terms first, and so the emphasis on war struck him as "too narrow." But the term also signaled a long haul that Fallon simply finds unacceptable. He wants troop levels in Iraq down now, and he wants the Afghan National Army running the show throughout most of Afghanistan by the end of this year. Fallon says he wants to move the pile dramatically in the time he's got remaining, however long that may be. And he gets frustrated. "I grind my teeth at the pace of change."

Freeing the United States from being tied down in Iraq means a stronger effort in Afghanistan, more focus on Pakistan, and more time spent creating networks of relationships in Central Asia. With Syria and Lebanon recently added to Centcom's area of responsibility, look to see Fallon popping up in Beirut and Damascus regularly. And he says he is more than willing to take on Israel and Palestine to boot, which for now remains a bastard stepchild of European Command.

The Persian Gulf right now is booming economically, and Fallon wants to harness that power to connect the failed states that pockmark the landscape to the outside world. In this choice, he sees no alternative.

"What I learned in the Pacific is that after a while the tableau of failed, failing, or dysfunctional states becomes a real burden on the functional countries and a problem for their neighborhood, because they breed unrest and insecurities and attract troublemakers very well. They're like sewers, and they begin to fester. It's bad for business. And when it's bad for business, people tend to start restricting their investments, and they restrict their thinking, and it allows more barriers, so we're back to building walls again instead of breaking them down. If you have to build walls, it means you're moving backward."

Fallon has no illusion about solving the Middle East or Central Asia during his tenure, but he's also acutely conscious that with globalization's rapid advance into these regions he may well be the last Centcom commander of his kind. Already Fallon sees the inevitability and utility of having a Chinese military partnership at Centcom, and he'd like to manage that inevitably from the start rather than have to repair damage down the line.

"I'd like to continue to do things that will be useful to the world and its inhabitants," he says. "I've seen a lot of good things, and I've seen a lot of stupid things."

And then there is Iran. No sooner had the supreme leade