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It's called a DD-254 http://www.dami.army.pentagon....

President Kennedy, in a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense, dated 1 June 1962, authorized the award of the Army Commendation Medal to members of the Armed Forces of friendly foreign nations who, after 1 June 1962, distinguished themselves by an act of heroic, extraordinary achievement, or meritorious service.

He used VBA and Perl in order to successfully speed up military bureaucracy - don't you think that qualifies as both heroic and extraordinary achievement, respectively?

Somebody hasn't read their killing with keyboards security briefing =P http://www.dami.army.pentagon.mil/site/sso/content/killer%20keyboard.pps

Ok, someone needs to get a hold of, or make up AFCYBER division shoulder patches.

US Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoulder_patch
http://www.tioh.hqda.pentagon.mil/DUI_SSI_COA_page.htm

A link would have been helpful. I initially thought you were confused and referring to Walter Reed Memorial Hospital. However, I did some digging and at least found this: http://renovation.pentagon.mil/history-condition.h tm

Yes. It's from the Pentagon website itself, so you should be skeptical of the contents. However, it seemed fairly frank and honest. And the content has been available since at least Dec 6, 2001. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://renovation.pen tagon.mil/history-condition.htm So it's not as if the Discovery Channel did some amazing piece of research and "broke" the big story. Unless, of course, the Discovery Channel piece was old. But - again - I wasn't able to find any info on it via Google.

I did search through the bill again and didn't see any references to EO 12333. My guess (this is only a guess) is that EO 12333 and the Posse Comitatus Act are specifically not mentioned to avoid drawing any attention to the fact that this ACT tries to circumvent or remove the limitations that those two impose. Mentioning them would get the media's attention who would then start talking about the abuses of the FBI and the military in the 60's and 70's, which was the reason President Reagan issued EO 12333. But his is just a guess.

Again, we go back to the basic concept of "neither confirm or deny" that is so precious to spooks. It is a good rule, as it keeps your enemies guessing. We PROBABLY have Echelon. But, are you 100% sure? I'm not. It sure sounds like it exists, though.

Everyone I know that works for the intell community has always acted appropriately with regard to intel oversight and not doing illegal operations. Based on my experience in the small piece of the SIGINT pie that I work with, I would have to assume that the rest of the NSA is also conscientious about not doing anything wrong.

The definition of eavesdropping is where things get interesting. If you take a look at the intelligence oversight information page, you'd see the definition discussed a bit. Basically, if we inadvertantly pick up something non-target, we cannot keep it. The only exception is for things the Attorney General has to approve case-by-case. As I said, everyone I know is honest and follows the rules. I would like to believe the rest of the community is as well. And, honestly, most people are incredibly dull, so who wants to spy on them anyway? (joke, folks)