Web site where spies share data, swap ideas

CHICAGO - As spy gear goes, a social-networking Web site doesn't have quite the same cachet as James Bond high-tech gadgets.

But the U.S. intelligence community is taking a page from popular online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace to help encourage operatives to share information. In December, agency leaders are launching a social-networking site just for spooks.

The classified "A-Space" ultimately will include blogs, searchable databases, libraries of reports, collaborative word processing, and other tools.

It comes on the heels of the year-old Intellipedia, a Web site modeled after the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Intellipedia has been gaining traction among the intelligence agencies and already has nearly 30,000 posted articles.

Although A-Space will be built with commercially available software, organizers are quick to dismiss criticism about security, saying sensitive data will be stored behind a thicket of safeguards.

The social-networking efforts, led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, are emerging as the nation's intelligence community comes under renewed criticism for a lack of cooperation and communication - something a new internal CIA report said contributed to the information breakdown before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Aside from simply being able to share documents, experts at different agencies could hold virtual meetings with one another and swap ideas and information. Experts say the current procedures for sharing information are so cumbersome that such communication is now impossible.

"It's just a better way to build and grow that network so that improved analysis can come out the other end," said Robert Cardillo, deputy director of analysis for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Organizers acknowledge it may be difficult to erase generations of territorial tendencies and prevent spats among the country's 16 intelligence agencies, which often want credit for their own discoveries.

But they hope the influx of younger operatives - half the intelligence analysts employed by the U.S. government have been on the job for no more than five years - will help shelve old feuds and embrace Web tools already in widespread use.

"It's a way to build the social network for all analysts," said Mike Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic transformation and technology, who is leading the initiative. "We put more eyes on more problems."

Development of the $5 million project began in June, and a pilot version will be available in December, with features to be added over the next year. Ultimately, the system may grow to include an unclassified network for use by state and local law enforcement and even some foreign agencies.

But three months before A-Space is to go live, there is ample skepticism.

Richard L. Russell, a former CIA analyst who teaches at the National Defense University, says the government needs to focus on building better analysis and human intelligence, not on fancy tools.

"You may have a great technological infrastructure for managing information, but if you put garbage into it," he said, "the output will be garbage."

Others said the initiative was a giant leap for the three-letter agencies that find themselves stumbling to share information through bureaucratic channels and cumbersome firewalls.

"A site that's open to all 16 intelligence agencies, that allows them to chat more freely, I think is a darn good idea and may help them get around some of these issues," said Donald C. Daniel, a security studies professor at Georgetown University. "But it may be hit or miss."