The D Brief: Odierno, Ebola and quarantines; A device, approved; Panetta: stop lying; A gentleman’s agreement on F-35; and a bit more.

A dozen U.S. Army troops returning from Africa are now quarantined in Italy. Lolita Baldor for AP: “Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, the commander who led the U.S. response in Liberia, and the members of his headquarters staff were some of the first troops to go to Liberia and were there to provide the initial assessments of the military needs and to begin coordinating the U.S. response... The general and his staff were met by Italian security officials wearing full hazardous materials suits when they arrived in Vicenza, Italy, over the weekend, a senior military official said Monday.”

No alarms, no surprises. “The Army chief of staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, directed a 21-day controlled monitoring period for all redeploying soldiers returning from the Ebola fight in West Africa… But the Army told Williams and his staff before leaving Liberia that they would be isolated near their base in Vicenza, Italy, for 21 days and they had prepared for it.”

And about the digs: “The soldiers are in a building near the base that includes a dining tent, a gym and other facilities. The building has 56 four-person rooms, 24 single rooms and three VIP rooms… [Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren] said there was no exposure incident that triggered the decision, but the soldiers will be checked regularly for any Ebola symptoms.” More here.

Interagency confusion over best quarantine practices is plaguing a unified U.S. response to Ebola. WaPo's Joel Achenbach, Brady Dennis and Lena H. Sun have this: “The military’s policy does not appear to track new guidelines announced Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which called for ‘high-risk’ individuals and health-care workers without any symptoms to be directly monitored by state and local health authorities.” More here.

Odierno’s decision surprised some, including higher up in the chain of command, especially when there is sensitivity about quarantines. And there is some criticism from outside the military mainly about forcing soldiers under “controlled monitoring” which prevents them from returning to see their families as soon as they could otherwise.

Military spouses generally understand these kinds of orders—they live that life every day, D Brief is reminded—and taking precautions to protect others and themselves and their families makes common sense to most military families. The criticism that some Army families are upset says one officer, “is coming from people who have never met an Army spouse. 21 days is nothing. Most spouses would be like ‘whatever.’”

And Col. Steve Warren to D Brief this morning: “This is General Odierno doing what leaders do, making hard decisions to protect soldiers and their families.”

The rapid Ebola screening device U.S. troops have been fielding in West Africa—and which the Dallas hospital had on hand, but couldn’t use due to FDA regs—has been for “emergency use” in the states. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker with this encouraging follow-up: “Health workers in more than 300 hospitals around the country, including 30 lab hospitals in the New York tri-state area, use the machine to screen for a wide variety of illnesses such as listeria, influenza and various other respiratory and intestinal sicknesses. With the right diagnostic kit in place, the FilmArray can also be used to screen for Ebola, delivering results in about an hour with higher than 90 percent certainty. More importantly, it can do so days before an Ebola carrier develops a fever and becomes contagious. One of the hospitals scheduled to receive the machine for that purpose is New York’s Bellevue.”

Update: CNN’s Barbara Starr reporting this morning that 30 more U.S. Army Africa troops are being routed to “closed monitoring” for Ebola upon arrival to Italy later today.

The NYT’s Editorial Board weighed in on the confusion yesterday, too: “To make matters worse, two ambitious governors—Chris Christie of New Jersey and Andrew Cuomo of New York—fed panic by imposing a new policy of mandatory quarantines for all health care workers returning from the Ebola-stricken countries of West Africa through John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty international airports. There is absolutely no public health justification for mandatory quarantines…” More here.

Pentagon Pressec Rear Adm. John Kirby will brief reporters at the Pentagon this afternoon and undoubtedly field some questions about Odierno’s decision. Watch the Kirby show here.

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Update: The security posture at the Arlington National Cemetery is back to normal. After the attack in Ottawa, the Military District of Washington had increased the security posture at Arlington, but yesterday it returned to normal, D Brief is told.

Turns out, Leon Panetta is the proud son of Italian-American immigrants. We kid. But at the splashy book party for the former Defense Secretary’s “Worthy Fights” last night at the Mellon Auditorium in D.C., Panetta did in fact note his heritage, as he often does, as part of his thank yous to a number of people, including his parents, who came to this country for “a better life,” as the first chapter describes. The crowd last night who gathered for the big DC party was a who’s who of the Panetta era, filling up maybe half the massive auditorium - but not in any way crowding it – amid “Gobo” lights for Panetta’s book as well as Beacon Global Strategies, which hosted the party.

Panetta’s book is a true kiss-and-tell, but with a mission, he has said, to help right the course of Washington. Panetta spoke briefly after being introduced by the former CIA deputy director Mike Morell and after opening comments by Panetta’s former chief of staff Jeremy Bash. He noted the need for leadership, at one point noting that if troops can make the sacrifices they do, then “I think the leadership of this country can take a little bit of risk in order to lead this country.”

Washington and its people, Panetta said, has trouble “telling the truth” to itself and to each other. In closing, he said, if this city, in which he first arrived years ago as an Army first lieutenant, is to succeed, it will begin “telling the truth to each other and developing the trust that is necessary if we are going to be able to govern and if we are going to be able to make that dream real.”

DC Seen at the party: Jim Miller, Christine Fox, Philippe Reines, Andrew Shapiro, George Little, Wendy Anderson, Geoff Morrell, Greg Miller, Mike Morell, Carl Woog, Jacob Freedman, Evelyn Farkas, Thayer Scott, Jim Townsend, Ron Lewis, Jamie Morin, Marcel Lettre, Justin Mikolay, Jim Newton, Marie Harf, Tammy Haddad, Jonathan Martin, Betsy Fischer, Margaret Warner, David Ignatius, Shannon Guinn, Andrea Mitchell, Jon Karl, Adam Entous, Marcus Weisgerber, Frank Kendall, Pete Lavoy, Gopal Ratnam, Tony Capaccio, Melissa Fitzgerald, Matt Spence, Jeremy Bash—who Panetta called from the stage “my friend, my pal, my rabbi” and Jeremy’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bash.

Not Seen, but always mentioned: Bravo, who Panetta called “our fourth son.”

Tidbit to think about today: The anti-ISIS campaign costs rise from $7.6 to $8.3 million per day, the Pentagon says. The Hill’s Kristina Wong, here.

A team of bumblers? Politico’s Michael Hirsh reports on Obama’s national security staff and if folks like National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are up to the task at hand, citing the Bowe Bergdahl episode and the fight against the Islamic State. The piece doesn’t take many real swipes at Hagel, but doesn’t portray him in a great light, either. It adds, perhaps oddly, that he has been seen as extremely effective at internal reforms at the Pentagon, a contention that is hard to assess since Hagel has not been very visible on those issues, either.

Hirsh: “…Both examples cited to me by well-placed sources close to the Defense Department offer new evidence of a criticism that has dogged this administration for most of its six and a half years: that Barack Obama’s White House is so insular and tightly controlled it often avoids “outside” consultation—including with its own cabinet secretaries and agencies. That’s especially true when the issue is one of this president’s least favorite things: opening up new hostilities in foreign lands. To his critics—and I spoke with several for this article inside Obama’s administration as well as recent veterans of it—it’s all a reflection of the slapdash way a president so vested in “ending wars” has embraced his new one.” Read that one here.

Yesterday we referred to Hagel Chief of Staff “Rexyon” Ryu. Correct spelling? Rexon—sorry for the typo.

The Pentagon has a gentleman’s agreement to buy more JSFs. From Defense One’s own Marcus Weisgerber: “The Pentagon has reached a handshake agreement with Lockheed Martin for 43 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. While the contract has not been finalized, the Pentagon says the price of the expensive jet continues to fall from previous buys. DoD says the price is down 3.6 percent, for each version of the aircraft. There is a standard jet for the Air Force, one that can take off from short runways and land vertically for the Marine Corps and one for the Navy that can take off and land from an aircraft carrier. Deliveries of this batch of aircraft will begin in 2016. The latest production deal includes 29 U.S. aircraft, but more notably includes Israel’s first two aircraft and Japan’s first four aircraft. Two Norwegian and two British jets are also part of the deal. The Pentagon and allies have purchased 166 F-35, not including the 43-aircraft deal announced late Monday. So far, Lockheed has delivered 115 aircraft.”

Who’s doing what today? Frank Kendall keynotes TechAmerica's Vision Federal Market Forecast Conference at the Falls Church Marriott at 9 a.m. And at the same venue, DOD's comptroller Michael McCord gives his perspective on "Budget Constraints and Uncertainty" at 12:30 p.m. and Kirby briefs the press.

The information war against ISIS needs to move outside of the constraints of the State Department and to the CIA. U.S.C.’s international relations and public diplomacy professor Philip Seib writing in Defense One: “In addition to having too little money and too few people, the department is forced to conform to federal rules requiring that its work be identified as coming from the U.S. government... A much more effective approach to combat their message would be a bare-knuckles operation: no disclaimers and a product that matches up better against the videos coming from Al Hayat, ISIL’s video production arm...”

The Islamic State makes British journalist John Cantlie do a tour of Kobane for a bizarre new video. The WaPo’s Adam Taylor, whose story notes that a portion of the video appears to be doctored:

“…The video begins with an aerial shot of Kobane purportedly shot by a "drone of the Islamic State army," before apparently showing Cantlie walking in what he describes as the "so-called PKK safe zone." (PKK refers to the Kurdistan Workers' Party.) Cantlie says the area is now controlled by the Islamic State, and he goes on to call Western media's reporting on Kobane inaccurate.” More here.

The sectarian wedge in Syria is now pushing into Lebanon. The NYT’s Anne Barnard, here.

Speaking of wedges, we ran this bit by U.S. News’ Paul Shinkman yesterday on the wedge of Iranian influence threatening Sunni-Shiite violence in Baghdad and we forgot the link. To read that story click … right… here.

The Army’s Robert Caslen takes responsibility for a booze cruise on a bus and West Point, in damage control mode, tries to correct its course. Kevin Lilley for Army Times: “Twenty cadets faced punishment including loss of cadet rank, two officers received suspensions from their football duties and general officer reprimands, and two coaches ‘were officially admonished by the Athletic Director,’ according to the statement from superintendent Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen… ‘As Superintendent, I take full responsibility for all actions that occur here at West Point to include the incident on Jan. 25, 2014,’ Caslen said in the statement, adding that the school has “commissioned outside consultants to review our workplace culture and policies for blind-spots and weaknesses.’” More on the incident West Point self-reported to the NCAA, here.

With Russia continuing to pursue odd and intimidating offensives on its European flank, the Atlantic Council’s senior Navy fellow Mark Seip—for Defense One here—offers up short-, medium- and long-term counterstrategies for the U.S. and NATO.

Russia says ‘of course’ it will recognize the results of next week’s separatist elections in Ukraine. AFP’s Anna Malpas, Sebastian Smith and Nicolas Miletitch this morning: “The rebel elections on Sunday should ‘go ahead as agreed," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. 'We will of course recognise the results,’ he told the Izvestia daily… The decision to lend legitimacy to the rebels' leadership vote was one of most overt acts of support so far for the two unrecognised ‘people's republics’ that insurgents are carving out in eastern Ukraine.” More here.

Pirates hijacked a police gunboat off Nigeria, killing three and kidnapping six. AP’s Hilary Uguru this hour, here.

A transgender Army officer named Sage Fox reflects a bigger problem in the military. The WaPo’s Sandhya Somashekhar: “Capt. Sage Fox had come to terms with the end of her military career when she said she got a stunning phone call. It was her commanding officer, telling her that despite the military’s ban on transgender service members, she would be welcome to return—as a female, her preferred gender. So Fox, 41, a U.S. Army Reserve officer who had served in the military for 14 years, returned to post in Sacramento as a new person. Her voice was higher with the help of vocal training and her features softer as a result of hormone therapy. She had grown out her hair. She got permission to use the female latrine and be addressed as ‘ma’am.’

“But a short time later, her orders were reversed without explanation, and she was told not to come back, she said. Thousands of men and women serving in the U.S. military are in such precarious positions, caught in the gap between shifting cultural mores and military regulations that still require the immediate dismissal of any service member found to be transgender.” Read the rest of this here.

A decades-old postal service surveillance program known as “mail covers” is alive and, well, maybe a little too active. Ron Nixon for the NYT with this Page One scoop, here.

SOCOM’s new data-mining project is seeking near-instant results. Paul McLeary for Military Times: “U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is building an open-source data-mining program that will run automatic keyword searches across a variety of websites and databases, allowing its operators to build a better picture of their operating environment in as close to real time as possible... When operators go to perform a small mission, they have to tailor their intelligence packages for the geographic area, and 'that’s something that’s hard to get from one of the big intel agencies on short notice, because those agencies are worried about those top-level national priorities,' said Jim Penrose, a former National Security Agency intelligence officer.” More here.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post’s Kevin Sieff reports on the difficult and tangled work of “contact tracers” in Monrovia: “There may be only one way to halt the worst Ebola outbreak in history: find the disease’s victims, strictly quarantine them and monitor everyone with whom they interacted… But doing contact tracing and enforcing quarantines in a place like New Kru Town is a different story. Everything here is shared: mattresses, toilets, food, the burden of caring for the ill.” More here.

A former shadow governor of Afghanistan’s Kunduz province sent Taliban in police uniforms on a killing spree—killing eight and wounding 10 others—at the provincial attorney general’s offices. Azam Ahmed for NYT: “The attack began when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest at the entrance to the provincial attorney general’s offices in Kunduz City on Monday afternoon, said Syed Sarwar Hussaini, a spokesman for the provincial police chief. The initial blast killed a police officer guarding the entry, allowing three insurgents to storm the offices and unleash a wave of carnage… Security in Kunduz rapidly deteriorated over the summer, one of the first seasons in which Afghan forces had fought on their own. Taliban fighters have overrun nearly 20 police posts in outlying districts and surrounded parts of the capital with entrenched positions in nearby villages.” More here.