On the Nonsense of Norms about Secrets
At a panel on secrecy yesterday, Bob Litt proclaimed that the NYT “disgraced itself” for publishing names, some of which were widely known, of the people who were conducting our equally widely known secret war on drones.
Sadly, Litt did not get asked the question implied by the Washington Post’s Greg Miller (who has, in the past, caught heat for not publishing some of the same names).
So CIA tried to convince
@MarkMazzettiNYT not to name CTC chief, but helped@NYTimesDowd do profile of CTC women with names and photos??
Did the NYT “disgrace itself” for publishing a column by Maureen Dowd that covers over some of the more unsavory female CIA officers — notably, Alfreda Bikowsky — who have nevertheless been celebrated by the Agency?
I’d submit that, yes, the latter was a far more disgraceful act, regardless of the credit some of the more sane female CIA officers deserve, because it was propaganda delivered on demand, and delivered for an agency that would squawk Espionage Act had the NYT published the same details in other circumstances.
Keep that in mind as you read this post from Jack Goldsmith, claiming — without offering real evidence — that this reflects a new “erosion of norms” against publishing classified information.
I mean, sure, I agree the NYT decision was notable. But it’s only notable because comes after a long series of equally notable events — events upping the tension underlying the secrecy system — that Goldsmith doesn’t mention.
There’s the norm — broken by some of the same people the NYT names, as well as Jose Rodriguez before them — that when you take on the most senior roles at CIA, you drop your cover. By all appearances, as CIA has engaged in more controversial and troubled programs, it has increasingly protected the architects of those programs by claiming they’re still undercover, when that cover extends only to the public, and not to other countries, even adversarial ones. That is, CIA has broken the old norm to avoid any accountability for its failures and crimes.
Then there’s the broken norm — exhibited most spectacularly in the Torture Report — of classifying previously unclassified details, such as the names of all the lawyers who were involved in the torture program.
There’s the increasing amounts of official leaking — up to and including CIA cooperating with Zero Dark Thirty to celebrate the work of Michael D’Andrea — all while still pretending that D’Andrea was still under cover.
Can we at least agree that if CIA has decided a Hollywood propagandistic version of D’Andrea’s is not classified, then newspapers can treat his actual career as such? Can we at least agree that as soon as CIA has invited Hollywood into Langley to lionize people, the purportedly classified identities of those people — and the actual facts of their career — will no longer be granted deference?
And then, finally, there’s CIA’s (and the Intelligence Community generally) serial lying. When Bob Litt’s boss makes egregious lies to Congress to cover up for the even more egregious lies Keith Alexander offered up when he played dress-up hacker at DefCon, and when Bob Litt continues to insist that James Clapper was not lying when everyone knows he was lying, then Litt’s judgement about who “disgraced” themselves or not loses sway.
All the so-called norms Goldsmith nostalgically presents without examination rest on a kind of legitimacy that must be earned. The Executive has squandered that legitimacy, and with it any trust for its claims about the necessity of the secrets it keeps.
Goldsmith and Litt are asking people to participate with them in a kind of propagandistic dance, sustaining assertions as “true” when they aren’t. That’s the habit of a corrupt regime. They’d do well to reflect on what kind of sickness they’re actually asking people to embrace before they start accusing others of disgraceful behavior.
What Litt is most worried about is what the impact on “look forward, not back” might become if, as in this case, the identities of those in charge are made known. In this instance, it can fairly be observed that if you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, why would you dredge up the ones who cut their teeth in programs that everyone now agrees were Unamerican/distateful/extreme/”not us”/[flat out illegal] to run current programs? What we actually learn when “names are named” is, most unsettlingly, that the kind of people that should have been “moved out and on” over their complicity in illegal programs are, instead, “moved up” with shocking regularity. And this is done secretly and people like Litt have the temerity to lecture about this as if it is laudable? How about a rule — hell, let’s call it a protocol — that disqualifies people who ran illegal black ops from running the successors to “shut down” black ops? Seems like a small thing to ask, rule of law and all that. Because if you’re going to hire the criminal who ran operations you want to forget about as you claim to “look forward”, the very fact that your version of “forward” is being run by people who would be in jail if you were willing to “look back”, then “back” is right under your nose again and being given the chance to repeat itself. Hiring people like these is what Einstein sublimely identified as the definition of insanity: doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
Litt takes the low road, opting to shout “secret” about a problem instead of attending to the problem itself.
this is a very powerful comment – one which feels as if there were a lot of controlled anger behind it, anger given strong legitimacy, as always with emptywheel, thru specific examples and incidents which demonstrate that cia NEVER wants to play by any rules but those ex post facto rules it manufactures to protect itself from any accountability for any act its niebelungen.’m”…so
litt understands all to well that edward snowden destroyed the nsa at it existed in litt’s tenure by revealing its secrets and its totalitarian bureaucratic personality.
he understands also that, despite its efforts to build a shield of lies and hyper-classified documents, the cia is being similarly destroyed as a totalitarian international policing force by nearly a decade of whistleblowing and document hunting and releasing.
the fbi, america’s domestic totalitarians-in-training police force, is now in the initial stages of being similarly diemboweled.
all that keeps any of these very dangerous organizations motoring along as in the good old days of post september 11 bravura-for-show are congressionals who are no longer responsible to their constitutents and shills like litt and goldsmith and dozens of other benighted security fanatics who routinely provide media umbrellas for media rainy days.
Way to go again! Marcy
Reminds me of a emergency room nurse that may have cut lil litt’s dirty underware off and threw it, under his nose!
note.. due to emptywheels prodigious output daily, I can’t keep up, so this is a Johnny Come Lately comment..
quote”And then, finally, there’s CIA’s (and the Intelligence Community generally) serial lying. When Bob Litt’s boss makes egregious lies to Congress to cover up for the even more egregious lies Keith Alexander offered up when he played dress-up hacker at DefCon, and when Bob Litt continues to insist that James Clapper was not lying when everyone knows he was lying, then Litt’s judgement about who “disgraced” themselves or not loses sway.”unquote
Dayam!
First off… it appears that emptywheels gloves are slowly coming off. kudo’s. Rip their faces off emptywheel. These lying bastards are criminals.
Second.. I feel like I’ve been reading a 10k chapter murder mystery, published on 9/11..but you only get to read a chapter per week. But now..we’re approaching the final chapters where you finally get clues of who the real murderer is..but still don’t know. And still don’t know if they get caught and prosecuted. The suspense is killing me.