Petraeus Knew of FBI Investigation During Benghazi Pushback

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I’m supposed to be packing to move today, so I may not get to my post on how Big Brother and the Obama Administration’s assault on leakers doomed Petraeus’ career (though Josh Gerstein and Jesselyn Raddack hit on some of the issues).

For now, though, I’d like to make a very narrow point. According to the NYT’s reporting, the FBI spoke to Petraeus about their investigation of his mistress Paula Broadwell–and other issues–two weeks ago.

Government officials said that the F.B.I. began an investigation into a “potential criminal matter” several months ago that was not focused on Mr. Petraeus. In the course of their inquiry into whether a computer used by Mr. Petraeus had been compromised, agents discovered evidence of the relationship as well as other security concerns. About two weeks ago, F.B.I. agents met with Mr. Petraeus to discuss the investigation. [my emphasis]

So while the White House purportedly didn’t find out about this until Wednesday, Petraeus found out about it around October 25 or 26. That would put it well before the CIA’s pushback campaign on Benghazi–both the CIA rebuttal to Fox’s reporting that CIA security people at the annex did not respond right away to the attack on the mission, and, more interestingly, the 1,500 word requiem for Petraeus’ untainted image in the NYT. And while Petraeus’ aides seem to have orchestrated that media barrage, what are probably the same aides have been chatting freely albeit anonymously in the last day.

To be clear, I’m not saying that means Petraeus’ resignation was about Benghazi. I think it’s possible, but some reporters I trust insist it’s not.

But consider how different this passage from the NYT reads when you understand that Petraeus had already learned the FBI had discovered his former mistress may have been snooping through his emails–not to mention months of his emailed pleas to her to get back together.

Mr. Petraeus’s future has inevitably been the subject of rumors: that he would be Mitt Romney’s running mate, or, more plausibly, that he was interested in the presidency of Princeton. In a statement in late September, he did not rule that out for the future, but said that for the time being he was “living the dream here at C.I.A.” That was before the recriminations this week over Benghazi.

In late September–after Benghazi, mind you, but before he realized this affair had been exposed–Petraeus was still thinking about leading Princeton. But then “recriminations” jeopardized that hope.

The CIA blitz was certainly an attempt to minimize Petraeus’ and CIA’s role in getting an Ambassador killed. But it also reads, now, like an effort to preempt the damage from this.

One more note: the timing appears to be that the affair lasted for some of the period when Petraeus was in Afghanistan–so June 2010 to June 2011. It’s unclear whether the affair continued after Petraeus started at CIA in June 2011–though he did keep emailing Broadwell to try to get her to get back together. The NYT says the investigation started only  several months ago.

While that suggests the investigation may have been a counter-cyber investigation rather than a counter-intelligence investigation–an investigation into whether the Chinese had hacked his computer rather than an investigation targeting Broadwell from the start–the timing would coincide with the leak witch hunts launched by Congress. I would laugh my ass off if the same members of Congress who are bemoaning the loss of Petraeus now somehow led to this investigation with their earlier demands for leak investigations targeted at top Administration officials. Imagine how funny it’d be if in their search for blood, Congress ended up killing the career of the one person they all believed was above reproach?

Update: WSJ provides a different timeline, saying the affair started after he left the military and ended months ago, while the investigation started in the spring.

The Day After the Election, Mike Rogers Finally Decides To Do His Job

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On October 2, 26 days ago and over a month before the election, I asked why Darrell Issa, rather than House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers, was leading an investigation into the Benghazi attack.

Issa’s subsequent investigation worked out as expected: a big showy hearing, sensitive information revealed, and a month of misleading leaks. Even Dana Milbank realized having Issa lead investigation didn’t make sense.

Lo and behold, today, the day after the election, the House Intelligence Committee has revealed that they–like their counterpart in the Senate–will conduct an investigation.

Finally! A serious investigation rather than a transparent effort to trump up an October Surprise.

NYT Kisses David Petraeus’ Boo Boos To Make Them Better

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I’m going to spoil this blowjob masquerading as profile for you. Here are the last three sentences of Scott Shane’s 1,500 word “news” piece on how David Petraeus’ image has taken a hit because his agency 1) missed that the militias we’re partnering with in Libya were trying to kill us 2) gave poor intelligence that made the Administration look bad 3) asked for drones in response to this massive HUMINT failure.

Mr. Petraeus’s future has inevitably been the subject of rumors: that he would be Mitt Romney’s running mate, or, more plausibly, that he was interested in the presidency of Princeton. In a statement in late September, he did not rule that out for the future, but said that for the time being he was “living the dream here at C.I.A.” That was before the recriminations this week over Benghazi.

So in the interest of rehabilitating Petraeus’ image so he can run for President of Princeton or America, Shane explains,

  • Petraeus’ “deliberately low profile” is what created the void that in turn created the media firestorm, not the CIA failures themselves
  • Petraeus “abruptly abandoned” his media star role when he became Director of the CIA
  • Petraeus’ trip to Turkey to consult on Syria–which was covered by the press–“went all but unnoticed by the news media” (no word on whether Petraeus is responsible for a suspect in the Libya attack expecting he could use Turkey as a gateway to join jihadists in Syria)

In short, the whole thing seems designed to prove that Petraeus hasn’t been the media hog his aides proved him to be yesterday (Shane points out Petraeus was out of the country when his aides orchestrated this media blitz) … in a profile about his image in the Paper of Record.

And nowhere does Shane, a national security reporter by trade, deal with whether the underlying issues–the HUMINT failures and the problematic response–themselves constitute failures. This is a report about image, completely ignoring that underneath that image there are real questions of performance that should be what drives the image, not fluff pieces in the NYT.

David Petraeus cannot fail, you see. He can only have his image failed by his own silence.

And to top off the substanceless image, all this is peppered with quotes from–among others–Michael O’Hanlon, described as a friend and an advisor.

“He thinks he has to be very discreet and let others in the government do the talking,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a Brookings Institution scholar who is a friend of Mr. Petraeus’s and a member of the C.I.A.’s advisory board.

[snip]

Whatever the challenges of his first year, said Mr. O’Hanlon, his friend, “I’m confident in saying that he loves this job.”

“He may miss the military at an emotional level,” he added, “but he loves this work.”

Wait! David Petraeus has appointed “his friend” Michael O’Hanlon to advise him about “Intelligence”? And Shane now turns to “his friend” to … what? Reassure Americans David Petraeus loves his job even if four people are dead and we have gaping holes in HUMINT?

We are a democracy. Citizens should expect that our news media report facts so we can assess the performance of those who wield tremendous power in our name. Maybe Petraeus failed. Maybe he did not. But that is the question before us. Not whether Benghazi makes it less likely he’ll be President of Princeton one day.

It is not, however, the role of our news media to kiss top officials’ boo boos publicly when they’ve experienced setbacks.

If CIA’s Benghazi Annex Was So Secret, Why Were Its Personnel Being Harassed?

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Of all the stories reporting David Petraeus’ pushback on the Benghazi story, WSJ’s was clearly the most thorough.

But I want to question this claim.

The significance of the annex was a well-kept secret in Benghazi. A neighbor said that he never saw Libyan security guards at the annex compound and that the street never had any extra police presence or security cordon. “If the CIA was living there, we never knew it,” the neighbor said.

The comment is part of the CIA’s partial disclosure about its activities in Benghazi, which makes it clear that the Benghazi presence was really a CIA operation with a diplomatic face.

The spy agency was the first to set up shop. It began building up its presence there soon after the Libyan revolution started in February 2011. The uprising overturned what had been a tight working relationship between the Gadhafi regime’s spy services and the Americans, creating a gap that the CIA presence sought to fill, officials said.

The CIA worked from a compound publicly referred to as the “annex,” which was given a State Department office name to disguise its purpose. The agency focused on countering proliferation and terrorist threats, said an American security contractor who has worked closely with CIA, the Pentagon and State. A main concern was the spread of weapons and militant influences throughout the region, including in Mali, Somalia and Syria, this person said.

Libyan officials say they were kept in the dark about what the CIA was doing in Benghazi. “The Americans had people coming and going with great frequency. Frankly, our records were never clear [about] who was out there” in Benghazi, said a senior Libyan government official in Tripoli.

In mid-2011, the State Department established its consulate in Benghazi, to have a diplomatic presence in the birthplace of the Libyan revolution. At the annex, many of the analysts and officers had what is referred to in intelligence circles as “light cover,” carrying U.S. diplomatic passports.

All this “transparency” about what the spooks were doing in Benghazi appears designed to show why CIA prioritized the Annex over the Mission compound the night of the attack.

But I don’t buy the claim that the Libyans were as clueless about the spooks’ presence as this story suggests.

This July 2012 review of security incidents in the last two years (see PDF 67-117, particularly 89 and 99-100) describes two events this year in which people who appear to have been tied to CIA’s mission were harassed by militias.

First, on February 19, two women described as “Mission personnel” but not by rank were stopped late at night in a “hastily crafted checkpoint” on their way back from the airport.

U.S. Mission personnel were detained by militia personnel after they drove through a previously unknown and hastily crafted checkpoint in Benghazi. The Mission vehicle and personnel were returning from Benghazi’s Benina airport at approximately 0100 hours. The Mission vehicle was pursued and stopped by a militia vehicle and additional militia personnel arrived at the site after the Mission vehicle was stopped. The two female Employees in the vehicle identified themselves as U.S. diplomats by referring to their vehicle license plate, diplomatic placard, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs ID card but were still prevented from leaving. The one English speaking militia member at the checkpoint demanded to see their passports and to inspect their cargo. Mission personnel refused access to the vehicle and its cargo. The detained employees contacted Mission security personnel and 17 Feb Martyrs Brigade QRF members, who responded to the checkpoint and were able to resolve the situation with the checkpoint commander.

Then, on April 27, two South African contractors working on US funded disarmament projects were kidnapped, interrogated, then released.

Two South African nationals, in Libya as part of a U.S. funded weapons abatement, UXO removal, and demining project, were detained at gunpoint while walking in a residential area. At approximately 0630 hrs, a Ford sedan passed the two men while they were walking, turned around and returned to where the men were, and a soldier with an AK series assault rifle exited the vehicle. The soldier directed them to get into the vehicle. The soldier took one of the South African’s company ID, read the Arabic version on the back of the ID card, and examined the passport and visa. The two South Africans were driven to a house at high speed, where the soldier crashed the gate open with his vehicle. A second militia member wearing a hood and armed with an AK47, entered the vehicle, and questioned the two expatriates regarding their nationality, employer, and purpose for being in Libya. The vehicle departed the residential building at high-speed but stopped in order for the militia members to blindfold the two South Africans. The South Africans were then driven to a second property where a third, unidentified person joined the first two militia members. The milita members reviewed the passports, employer ID cards, and appeared to be discussing next steps. The milita members returned the South Africans’ documents and cards and then drove them back to the initial point where they were directed into the vehicle. The South Africans’ [sic] remained blindfolded until they were brought to the initial pick-up point. The milita members told the South Africans’ [sic] that they were detained “for their own safety”, shook hands with the South Africans’ [sic] and allowed them to return to their residence. The incident lasted for approximately 2 hours.

FWIW, the women appear spookier than the South Africans; after all, demining is more danger-work than analysis (indeed, it could be State or DOD funded), and State’s silence about what the women do is suggestive by itself. (Darrell Issa listed the South African’s kidnapping in his first letter to Hillary Clinton on Benghazi but not the women’s questioning, though that list was only intended to go back six months).

Both incidents appear to have been designed to let American-tied personnel know that militias were aware of their presence and movements. That attention may have had to do with the South Africans’ unspecified race (particularly if they are white) and the women’s gender and late night travels. And the militia members may have had no clue of any tie with CIA, assuming one exists. Furthermore, even if they were tracking these individuals, there’s no guarantee the militias knew where the Annex was (though it would presumably make it easy to find out).

But these incidents read to me like deliberate attempts to let Americans know they were being surveilled. Add in the repeated assertions on the part of Libyans who helped protect Americans the night of the attack that the Annex attack included pre-stationed weapons, and it seems like at least some of the militia were tracking CIA’s activities for months leading up to the attack.

The Petraeus Barrage on Benghazi

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As I noted yesterday, Jonah Goldberg was whining that not enough journalists were covering this story, which said that CIA had twice asked for help from DOD, only to be denied, and stated that several fo the security guards at the CIA annex were told to stand down rather than responding immediately to the attack on the mission.

Sadly for Jonah’s wishes for October-in-November, “senior intelligence officials”–which WaPo made clear were at the CIA–held what NYT and WaPo make clear was a formal briefing that set off a frenzy of coverage on Benghazi, all refuting the claims made in the Fox story.

You gotta hand it to David Petraeus. He still completely commands the media in this country. Neither WaPo nor NYT add much beyond refuting the Fox story–though the NYT does make clear that CIA had taken control of the DOD drone that surveilled the mission after the attack started.

An unarmed military drone that the C.I.A. took control of to map possible escape routes relayed reassuring images to Tripoli and Washington.

The WSJ, which clearly supplemented the CIA briefing with reporting from Congress, State, and the FBI, added far more. Of note, CIA and State are now telling Congress different stories about what role CIA was supposed to play that night.

Congressional investigators say it appears that the CIA and State Department weren’t on the same page about their respective roles on security, underlining the rift between agencies over taking responsibility and raising questions about whether the security arrangement in Benghazi was flawed.

[snip]

At one point during the consulate siege, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned the CIA director directly to seek assistance. Real-time intelligence from the field was scarce and some officials at State and the Pentagon were largely in the dark about the CIA’s role.

And–as has been suggested before, even at the Darrell Issa hearing–CIA and FBI weren’t sharing information.

In ensuing weeks, tensions over the matter spread to the FBI and Capitol Hill. The FBI didn’t initially get to review surveillance footage taken at the compound because officials say it was being analyzed by the CIA. The CIA, in turn, wasn’t able to immediately get copies of FBI witness interviews, delaying the agency’s analysis of what happened outside the consulate and at the annex.

Perhaps most damning, though, are the gripes about how Petraeus responded to the attack, staying at the movie Argo the the night of the Issa hearing, and not attending the funeral of the two former SEAL contractors who died providing security to CIA. One of WSJ’s sources compared how Panetta responded to the Khost killings with Petraeus’ actions. Panetta lifted the cover of those who died and attended funerals. Petraeus stayed away–he claims in this article–to hide CIA’s role in Benghazi.

Officials close to Mr. Petraeus say he stayed away in an effort to conceal the agency’s role in collecting intelligence and providing security in Benghazi. Two of the four men who died that day, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were former Navy SEAL commandos who were publicly identified as State Department contract security officers, but who actually worked as Central Intelligence Agency contractors, U.S. officials say.

This is of course a totally bullshit answer. Libyans made it clear right away that they had not been told about the personnel at the annex, making it clear they were spooks. By not attending the funeral, Petraeus was keeping no secrets from the Libyans, though he may have thought he was keeping them from us (and making Hillary take the fall for this attack).

Ah well, Petraeus can still get the media to report his barrage, even if he can’t offer credible explanations for his actions.

Jonah Goldberg Complains That Media Treats Boys Who Cry Wolf Like Boys Who Cry Wolf

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Welcome to November. As DDay joked on Twitter last night, we’ve officially moved out of October Surprise month.

I guess Jonah Goldberg was thinking of the same timing when he wrote a column–posted at midnight on October 31–complaining that the press had not taken the Benghazi attack more seriously.

If you want to understand why conservatives have lost faith in the so-called mainstream media, you need to ponder the question: Where is the Benghazi feeding frenzy?

[snip]

Last week, Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that sources on the ground in Libya say they pleaded for support during the attack on the Benghazi consulate that led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens. They were allegedly told twice to “stand down.” Worse, there are suggestions that there were significant military resources available to counterattack, but requests for help were denied.

If this is true, the White House’s concerted effort to blame the attack on a video crumbles, as do several other fraudulent claims. Yet, last Friday, the president boasted that “the minute I found out what was happening” in Benghazi, he ordered that everything possible be done to protect our personnel. That is either untrue, or he’s being disobeyed on grave matters.

This isn’t an “October surprise” foisted on the media by opposition research; it’s news.

There are just a couple problems with Jonah’s complaint, though. There’s his suggestion that reporting on Richard Mourdock’s belief that women should bear the children of their rapists is “ridiculous.” There’s his silence about the real October Surprises of history, the unpatriotic ones crafted by Republicans: Nixon’s negotiation with the Vietnamese and reported efforts to hold the Iranian hostages to hurt Jimmy Carter (and Jonah dismisses the seriousness of the Swift Boat attack on John Kerry).

But mostly there’s the evidence that the attacks on Obama’s response to Benghazi were explicitly intended to serve as an October Surprise. In fact, according to Craig Unger’s unrebutted report dating to the first day of October, Republicans explicitly called this line of attack an October Surprise.

According to a highly reliable source, as Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama prepare for the first presidential debate Wednesday night, top Republican operatives are primed to unleash a new two-pronged offensive that will attack Obama as weak on national security, and will be based, in part, on new intelligence information regarding the attacks in Libya that killed U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens on September 11.

The source, who has first-hand knowledge of private, high-level conversations in the Romney camp that took place in Washington, DC last week, said that at various times the GOP strategists referred to their new operation as the Jimmy Carter Strategy or the October Surprise.

He added that they planned to release what they hoped would be “a bombshell” that would make Libya and Obama’s foreign policy a major issue in the campaign. “My understanding is that they have come up with evidence that the Obama administration had positive intelligence that there was going to be a terrorist attack on the intelligence.”

The day after Unger’s report, Darrell Issa–not, as would be entirely appropriate, Mike Rogers–started a loud and clumsy attack that, while it correctly exposed State’s misjudgment about security for the mission in Benghazi, completed ignored underlying (and equally serious) problems with the CIA’s response. Republicans repeatedly leaked documents claiming they said one thing when in fact they said something completely different (though what they said was still serious).

In other words, a Republican source said Republicans were planning an October Surprise, and Republicans spent the entire month of October very obviously acting to turn Benghazi into one, all the while ignoring the really serious issues raised by Benghazi that should be discussed.

I think Jonah’s most pissed about this, a story about a classified August 16 cable reporting on an emergency meeting about threats to the Benghazi mission, predicting that the mission could not withstand a coordinated attack. The story reads very much like it is the intended bombshell Unger’s source reported, the warning Obama didn’t heed, held on ice for the entire month of October like a precious prize.

The story is news. And we will return to it, presumably, next Wednesday and in the weeks thereafter, as the serious people begin to take over this investigation from buffoons like Issa and Romney surrogate Jason Chaffetz.

But for some reason it happened to get leaked the weekend before the election. In most years, such a remarkably timed release would fit right into October Surprise campaign, dominating the weekend shows just before the election (the GOP apparently haven’t updated their October Surprise plans since early voting became so important).

Except Mother Nature had an October Surprise of her own. And unless stories start breaking about seniors stuck in powerless skyscrapers with no food, water, or means to get to street level to get those things (I think this is still a distinct possibility), the pre-election weekend will be dominated by pictures of President Obama looking very presidential in a crisis and pictures of Mitt looking increasingly desperate and weak.

The Republicans, it seems, had their October Surprise preempted by a real October Surprise.

That’s the thing about surprises, I guess. Sometimes they actually are surprises and not well-managed opposition campaigns.

Would the Real Ansar al-Sharia Please Stand Up?

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Back in September, when Republicans were hyperventilating over the former Gitmo detainee, Abu Sufyan bin Qumu, purportedly behind the Benghazi attack, Aaron Zelin patiently explained the difference between Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi–which reportedly launched the attack–and Ansar al-Sharia in Derna–which Qumu leads.

Today, he walks CNN through the official Facebook postings of the latter group–showing that they immediately disclaimed credit for the attack–as a way of refuting the importance of emails (the Republicans’ latest topic of hyperventilation) describing Ansar al-Sharia Benghazi claiming credit.

The e-mail carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al Sharia Claims Responsibility For Benghazi Attack.” The message said: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group has claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”

[snip]

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and two other Republicans in the Senate wrote Wednesday to Obama, saying: “These emails make clear that your Administration knew within two hours of the attack that it was a terrorist act and that Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan militant group with links to Al-Qaeda, had claimed responsibility for it.”

However, an examination of the known Facebook and Twitter accounts of Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi reveals no such claim of responsibility. Aaron Zelin, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, tracks dozens of jihadist websites and archives much of what they say. He told CNN he was unaware of any such claim having been posted on the official Facebook page or Twitter feed of Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi.

Zelin, who said his RSS feed sends him any new statement from the group, provided CNN with a copy of that feed. It shows no Facebook update between September 8 and September 12, when a posting late that afternoon first referenced the attack. Zelin notes that the posting referred to a news conference the group had held earlier that day in Benghazi in which it denied any role in the assault on the consulate, while sympathizing with the attackers.

In a Tweet, Zelin explains that Ansar al-Sharia Derna–the one with ties to the Gitmo detainee–has no known online presence.

Given that so many people have apparently seen these emails, I’d be curious to learn a little more about who sent it. In any case, you can’t expect people in Tripoli working on an evacuation and worrying about an attack on the Embassy itself, to offer the clearest analysis of the attack.

But that won’t stop Republicans from treating it as such.

Maybe This Is Why Mitt Didn’t Exercise His “Jimmy Carter Opportunity” on Libya on Monday?

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Even while Liz BabyDick Cheney joins in the dance on Ambassador Chris Stevens’ grave, Mitt Romney said nothing about it in Monday’s debate.

Maybe this is why:

Ali Ani al-Harzi, who was arrested in Turkey with one other person, kept there for a week, then sent to his native Tunisia, may now be headed to Gitmo (though I expect the Salafists in Tunisia would not respond well to such fate).

U.S. intelligence officials, along with members of the FBI, are in negotiations with the Tunisian government to gain access to al-Harzi or have the suspect transferred to the American detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

And in Egypt, another Benghazi suspect known only as Hazem was killed in what sounds like a fairly extensive fight with “security services.”

A man suspected of involvement in an attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi last month has been killed in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, officials say.

[snip]

According to the Egyptian officials the suspect was cornered in a flat in Madinet Nasr early on Wednesday morning. He threw a bomb at the security forces, but it bounced back into the flat.

An exchange of fire with the security services then began and went on for several hours, local media reports say.

The suspect’s burnt body was found in the property, along with weapons and explosive materials, officials say.

All of this, thus far, without the US appearing to bigfoot the investigation (though obviously tracking at least some of the alleged culprits closely enough to track al-Harzi fleeing to Syria).

While I’m sure BabyDick has been getting all sorts of leaks about Obama’s sleeping patterns (really! after the Dick Family mouthpiece accused Obama of not reading PDBs, BabyDick says Obama shouldn’t sleep if there’s been a claimed terrorist attack not in intelligence briefing, but on FaceBook), she presumably hasn’t been getting the briefings that Mitt has been getting. Mitt’s a tone deaf man. But he seems to have decided it best to leave the accusations that Benghazi has demonstrated Obama’s weakness to the PACmen.

I’m not saying I approve of the possibility that al-Harzi be sent to Gitmo; I don’t. I do hope they had positive ID on the guy in Cairo (though he certainly sounded prepared to resist capture). And in any case, catching the culprits doesn’t change the security failures nor the sense that the Benghazi attack has surfaced evidence of al Qaeda metastases stretching around North Africa and the Middle East.

But thus the culprits in the Benghazi attack have started to be rounded up–and Mitt knows more about that than we do. So it’s possible Mitt decided any further scandal mongering on this issue himself might blow up even worse than his accusation that Obama waited two weeks to call this a terrorist attack.

The Benghazi Suspect Was Headed to Syria

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This Eli Lake story describing what has happened to one of two Benghazi suspects arrested in Turkey confirms something I long suspected: he was headed for Syria.

These people say Turkish officials held [Ali Ani] al-Harzi for less than a week at the behest of the U.S. government, then sent him to Tunisia. There, he was kept in military custody until last week, when he was transferred to a jail in preparation for a court trial. It’s unclear what role he might have played in the attacks or what he might be charged with. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. intelligence community are working with Tunisian authorities, but there has been no deal yet on whether to send al-Harzi to the U.S. or keep him in Tunisia where he could be charged under the country’s own counterterrorism laws. The Tunisians have also not yet allowed U.S. officials direct access to the suspect.

Al-Harzi is a member of violent extremist networks in North Africa, one U.S. intelligence officer told The Daily Beast. This person added that he was also connected to jihadist organizations in the Middle East and was headed to Syria when he was detained in Turkey. [my emphasis]

Think about what it means that a guy who had just bragged about attacking our Benghazi mission was headed for Syria–through Turkey.

While there have long been claims that jihadists involved in overthrowing Qaddafi (though remember, this guy is Tunisian) made up some of the fighters in Syria, this makes it clear how unfriendly to American interests some of those jihadists are. Moreover, it suggests terrorists now consider Syria a kind of hiding place. (Note, Lake’s September 28 story reporting his brag may well have alerted al-Harzi that he needed to seek refuge.)

The apparent link between the people who attacked the mission in Benghazi and the “freedom fighters” in Syria explains something else. This month there has been a series of stories detailing how the jihadists in Syria are the ones getting arms; there’s also some blame-game going on, with sources trying to blame Qatar, and not Saudi Arabia, for arming terrorists. I can see now why these countries are scrambling to absolve themselves of arming terrorists–because the terrorists have ties to attacks on the US. (Incidentally, it shouldn’t make sense ideologically, but I keep thinking about the fact that Qaddafi’s old spook Moussa Koussa is hanging out in Qatar these days.)

One more point about this. Though this arrest was reported on October 4, the arrest itself took place on October 3, the same day Turkey decided to start shelling Syria.

That was also the day of the first Presidential debate. I said then–and believe even more now–that one of the reasons Obama did so poorly in that debate is because he had just been briefed on increasing hostilities in Syria. He had also, presumably, just been briefed that one of the guys involved in the Benghazi attack was fleeing to Syria to take part in those increasing hostilities.

There has always been reason to worry about Qatar and Saudi Arabia’s attempts to do in Syria what they did in Afghanistan in the 1990s. But this seems like pretty strong circumstantial evidence that the Qatar-armed terrorists in Syria would ultimately target the US.

Remember Larry Franklin…

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I’m not a fan at all of what Larry Franklin did–leaking documents to help drum up a more hawkish policy on Iran.

But amid the news that John Kiriakou’s lawyer, Plato Cacheris, has docketed a change of plea hearing today at 11, it’s worth reviewing what happened with Franklin. After he was charged, the government put a lot of pressure on Franklin and his family (as they have with Kiriakou) and got him to plead guilty, with Cacheris’ advice. He was given a 10 year sentence.

Then the men he leaked to–Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, with the counsel of Abbe Lowell–started questioning the very premise of the case. First, they prepared to call top officials, including Condi Rice, to demonstrate that they, too, leak classified information all the time. Then, the judge in the case, Thomas Ellis, ruled that they could not be charged for espionage if they didn’t have the intent to harm the US. It was the reverse of that ruling–Leonie Brinkema’s ruling that because Kiriakou was a government employee and therefore intent to harm the US didn’t matter–that led Kiriakou’s lawyers to rush to plead guilty.

But here’s the interesting thing.

After the government’s case against Rosen and Weissman fell apart, the judge then push to re-sentence Franklin. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 10 months of house arrest.

Now, I’m not saying that could happen with Kiriakou. According to Jesselyn Raddack, he will take the plea, and he will serve 2.5 years in prison.

And the cases are not parallel: while top Administration officials leak classified information to the press all the time, only Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby spend their time outing spies (though I still suspect Matt Bissonnette’s identity was confirmed by Pentagon sources).

But the government does continue to give its spooks fairly transparent covers, as was demonstrated when “Stan Dove Boss” got ambushed by cops tied to a drug cartel in Mexico, not to mention the entire CIA annex that militia members seemed well aware of in Benghazi. There was, certainly, the possibility that this case would have demonstrated how cavalierly the CIA had sent its kidnappers and torturers around the world with big expense account. And that, in turn, would demonstrate that the issue is not whether we–or al Qaeda–can learn the identities of the torturers, but whether citizens and journalists can speak of the torturers by name.

In any case, these cases are increasingly about whether or not the government will continue to use clearances and secrecy to set up a two-class society: those whose livelihood depends on complete obedience to the government’s asymmetric use of information, and those outside of that club who are not trusted with the truth about what our country does.

John Kiriakou’s plea deal is not only another victory in the Obama Administration’s cover-up of torture. But it’s also a win for the people who believe the citizens of this democracy are not entitled to know what is being done in their name.

Update: It’s done. Another DOJ win in protecting torturers.