Chuck Schumer Must Want All American Brown Youth Stop and Frisked

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I thought Chuck Todd was speculating in that beltway fashion when he said he had heard people suggest Ray Kelly should replace Janet Napolitano as Department of Homeland Security Secretary.

But apparently, Chuck Schumer actually thinks it’s a good idea.

It’s leader needs to be someone who knows law enforcement, understands anti-terrorism efforts, and is a top-notch administrator, and at the NYPD, Ray Kelly has proven that he excels in all three.  As a former head of the Customs and Border patrol, he has top-level federal management experience. There is no doubt Ray Kelly would be a great DHS Secretary, and I have urged the White House to very seriously consider his candidacy.

Not only is this a batshit crazy idea because of all the authoritarian things Ray Kelly has done in NYC, from harassing hundreds of thousands of African American and Latino youths to spying on Muslims.

But note how Schumer doesn’t mention the other, equally important part of Homeland Security: keeping the country safe from things like Chinese hackers and natural disasters.

How’d Kelly do at organizing a response to Hurricane Sandy? Maybe we should ask Occupy Sandy about that?

MEK Stirs Pot in Iran Despite Improved Negotiation Outlook After Rohani’s Election

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In a remarkably welcome surprise, moderate cleric Hassan Rohani won last month’s presidential election in Iran and did so with a large enough margin to avoid a runoff. In the immediate aftermath of the election, there was hope that the heated rhetoric on both sides of the dispute over Iran’s nuclear technology would calm a bit:

Though thousands of jubilant Iranians poured onto the streets in celebration of the victory, the outcome will not soon transform Iran’s tense relations with the West, resolve the row over its nuclear program or lessen its support of Syria’s president in the civil war there – matters of national security that remain the domain of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But the president runs the economy and wields broad influence in decision-making in other spheres. Rohani’s resounding mandate could provide latitude for a diplomatic thaw with the West and more social freedoms at home after eight years of belligerence and repression under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was legally barred from seeking a third consecutive term.

“This victory is a victory of wisdom, a victory of moderation, a victory of growth and awareness and a victory of commitment over extremism and ill-temper,” Rohani told state television, promising to work for all Iranians, including the hardline so-called “Principlists” whom he defeated at the poll.

Alas, those who favor violence over negotiation don’t intend to sit idly while moderation has a chance of breaking out. Today, we have a new “revelation” brought to us in a Reuters article:

An exiled opposition group said on Thursday it had obtained information about a secret underground nuclear site under construction in Iran, without specifying what kind of atomic activity it believed would be carried out there.

/snip/

The NCRI said the site was inside a complex of tunnels beneath mountains 10 km (6 miles) east of the town of Damavand, itself about 50 km northeast of Tehran. Construction of the first phase began in 2006 and was recently completed, it said.

The group released satellite photographs of what it said was the site. But the images did not appear to constitute hard evidence to support the assertion that it was a planned nuclear facility.

The Reuters article identifies NCRI as the National Council of Resistance of Iran and in addition to identifying them as “exiled dissedents” also mentions affiliation with the “People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI)” without noting that the more commonly used acronym for the latter group is MEK. That would be the same MEK that was only de-listed by the US Department of State as a terrorist organization last year. Promptly after de-listing, the group moved to register as lobbyists:

An Iranian group that was listed as a terrorist organization until last year has formally registered to lobby the Obama administration.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran told the Justice Department that it plans to “educate” the public and the U.S. government about the need to pursue an Iran policy “based on respect for human rights, non-proliferation, and promotion of democracy.” The council is an umbrella group of five Iranian opposition groups, the largest of which is the delisted terror group Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK.

/snip/

The State Department closed the council’s Washington office in 2002, calling it a front group for the MEK. Since then, the group has earned the good graces of U.S. conservatives by drawing international attention to Iran’s clandestine uranium enrichment facility in Natanz.

That bit about NCRI exposing the Natanz facility? Even though it also is cited in today’s Reuters article, there is good reason to believe that MEK came into the information through a leak to them rather than their own intelligence-gathering: Read more →

Did Umar Patek Lead the US to Osama bin Laden?

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Yesterday, Al Jazeera published a leaked copy of the final report from the Abbottabad Commission appointed by Pakistan’s government to investigate both how Osama bin Laden could have lived within Pakistan (on military land!) for so long and how the US was able to carry out its mission to kill him without Pakistan’s military responding in any way.

The report is published as a pdf file of what is clearly a photocopy of the report. The English version has a few translation and/or transcription errors where a word here and there does not make sense. The copy is nearly complete, but Al Jazeera notes that every copy they saw was missing a page in which former ISI director Pasha described conversations Musharraf had with the US just after 9/11.

I’m about a third of the way through reading the report. So far, it has been organized as summaries of the testimony from individuals who had some sort of role at bin Laden’s compound or a role in government or law enforcement that intersected with the event. Each summary of testimony is followed by a bit of reaction from the commission itself, and this reaction can be quite pithy at times. The commission found Shakeel Afridi’s testimony completely unbelieveable, as he claimed to have no knowledge at all that he was working with the CIA. The commission also, in response to the testimony of a lower level local police figure, ascribed the abdication of duty as due to “government implosion syndrome”, adding that “This explains a lot without excusing it.”

What stands out to me in the reading so far is the role that Umar Patek could have played in aiding the US to find bin Laden. Recall that so far, the party line from the US is that bin Laden’s compound was located in Abbottabad by tracing the two couriers who lived there. However, Indonesian bomber Umar Patek was arrested in Abbottabad in January of 2011, just a few months before the May raid by the US.

Here is a bit of the testimony from the Home Secretary of Kyhber Pakhunkhwa Province (so as not to add further transcription errors, I am relying on partial screen captures of the pdf document that is in a form not allowing text to be copied):

KP Home Sec re Umar Patek

 

So the arrest of Patek aroused at least some concern, but it was not followed up on. The testimony of the wife of one of the couriers, Maryam, got into a very interesting analysis of the Patek situation, though, with the commission offering some incisive deductions:

Patek part 1

 

And after a page break:

Patek part 2

 

Almost nobody had paid any attention to Patek’s arrest being so close in time and location to the bin Laden raid. Well, one foul-mouthed blogger did, a year ago this week:

But there’s a question that has, AFAIK, never been answered. Patek was arrested in January 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan. There have always been suspicions that the arrest of Patek in the city Osama bin Laden was hidden out in (Patek reportedly planned to meet OBL) helped to solidify the case that he was in fact the “Pacer” in the compound. Did Patek help the US get OBL?

Both Marcy and the commission find the interrogation window for Patek to fit extremely well with the timing of the bin Laden raid. The commission also shows considerable insight in noting that despite the efforts by bin Laden to cut off all interaction with the outside world except for the use of his two couriers, at least one high level al Qaeda affiliate may well have known that bin Laden was in Abbottabad.

While the world focuses on the role of following bin Laden’s couriers, it may well be that Patek provided some of the most actionable intelligence on bin Laden being in Abbottabad.

Federal Court Strikes Down Obama DOJ’s State Secrets Defense

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In what can only be described as a significant ruling, Judge Jeffrey White in the Northern California District (CAND) has rejected the federal government’s, via the Obama and Holder Department of Justice, assertion of state secrets privilege in the case of Jewel v. National Security Agency and the related consolidated case of Shubert v. Obama.

The full decision of the court is here, and in the critical active language from the court’s own summary states:

Having thoroughly considered the parties’ papers, Defendants’ public and classified declarations, the relevant legal authority and the parties’ arguments, the Court GRANTS the Jewel Plaintiffs’ motion for partial summary adjudication by rejecting the state secrets defense as having been displaced by the statutory procedure prescribed in 50 U.S.C. § 1806(f) of FISA. In both related cases, the Court GRANTS Defendants’ motions to dismiss Plaintiffs’ statutory claims on the basis of sovereign immunity. The Court further finds that the parties have not addressed the viability of the only potentially remaining claims, the Jewel Plaintiffs’ constitutional claims under the Fourth and First Amendments and the claim for violation of separation of powers and the Shubert Plaintiffs’ fourth cause of action for violation of the Fourth Amendment. Accordingly, the Court RESERVES ruling on Defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the remaining, non-statutory claims.

The Court shall require that the parties submit further briefing on the course of this litigation going forward.

Now, before too much celebration is made, there are some sobering aspects of this decision as well. As can be told from the quote above, several counts in both complaints have been dismissed based on sovereign immunity, and the court has questions about the continued validity of the remaining counts and has requested further briefing in that regard.

With the ultimate status of the litigation left for another day, the big news today is the negation of the dreaded state secrets assertion. To say this is a rare occurrence is to be too kind. In fact, the main instance where the privilege was overcome was the al-Haramain litigation, also in CAND, where Judge Vaughn Walker found non-classified evidence sufficient to proceed in the face of the state secrets assertion, and even that case was later reversed and dismissed by the 9th Circuit.

The court in Jewel mapped out the consideration process for the privilege challenge:

The analysis of whether the state secrets privilege applies involves three distinct steps. First, the Court must ascertain whether the procedural requirements for invoking the privilege have been satisfied. Second, the Court must make an independent determination whether the information is privileged. In determining whether the privilege attaches, the Court may consider a party’s need for access to the allegedly privileged materials. See Reynolds, 345 U.S. 19 at 11. Lastly, the “ultimate question to be resolved is how the matter should proceed in light of the successful privilege claim.” El-Masri v. United States, 479 F.3d 296, 304 (4th Cir. 2007).

Noting that the assertion of state secrets must not cause “a complete surrender of judicial control over access to the courts”, Judge White wrote:

Here, having reviewed the materials submitted for review and having considered the claims alleged and the record as a whole, the Court finds that Defendants have timely invoked the state secrets doctrine. Defendants contend that Plaintiffs’ lawsuits should be dismissed as a result of the application of the privilege because the state secrets information is so central to the subject matter of the suit that permitting further proceedings would jeopardize national security. Given the multiple public disclosures of information regarding the surveillance program, the Court does not find that the very subject matter of the suits constitutes a state secret. Just as in Al-Haramain, and based significantly on the same set of facts in the record here, the Court finds that although there are certainly details that the government has not yet disclosed,

because of the voluntary disclosures made by various officials since December 2005, the nature and purpose of the [Terrorist Surveillance Program], the ‘type’ of persons it targeted, and even some of its procedures are not state secrets. In other words, the government’s many attempts to assuage citizens’ fears that they have not been surveilled now doom the government’s assertion that the very subject matter of this litigation, the existence of a warrantless surveillance program, is barred by the state secrets privilege.

507 F.3d at 1200; see also Hepting v. AT&T Corp., 439 F. Supp. 2d 974, 986-88, 991 (N.D. Cal. 2006) (holding that the existence of a program of monitoring the contents of certain telephone communications was no longer a state secret as a result of the public statements made by the President and the Attorney General). Accordingly, the Court does not find dismissal appropriate based on the subject matter of the suits being a state secret. See Totten, 92 U.S. at 107.

White went on to note that there were significant items of evidence in the Jewel case tending to confirm or negate the factual allegations in Plaintiffs’ complaints that would be subject to state secrets exclusion. However, White held that, as a matter of law, the FISA procedural mechanism prescribed under 50 U.S.C. 26 § 1806(f) preempted application of the state secrets privilege in the litigation at bar.

Citing one of the interlocutory appellate decisions in al-Haramain and the underlying logic of then trial judge Vaughn Walker), Judge White said:

In its opinion on remand in the Al-Haramain matter, this district court found that “FISA preempts the state secrets privilege in connection with electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes ….” In re National Security Agency Telecommunications Records Litigation (“In re N.S.A. Telecommunication Records Litig.”), 564 F. Supp. 2d 1109, 1111 (N.D. Cal. 2008). The undersigned agrees and finds that the in camera review procedure in FISA applies and preempts the determination of evidentiary preclusion under the state secrets doctrine. Section 1806(f) of FISA displaces the state secrets privilege in cases in which electronic surveillance yields potentially sensitive evidence by providing secure procedures under which courts can consider national security evidence that the application of the state secrets privilege would otherwise summarily exclude.

Section 1806 of the FISA enabling statutes in Title 50 of the United States Code provides, inter alia;

… whenever any motion or request is made by an aggrieved person pursuant to any other statute or rule of the United States or any State . . . to discovery or obtain applications or orders or other materials relating to electronic surveillance . . . the United States district court … shall, notwithstanding any other law, if the Attorney General files an affidavit under oath that disclosure or an adversary hearing would harm the national security of the United States, review in camera and ex parte the application, order, and such other materials relating to the surveillance as may be necessary to determine whether the surveillance of the aggrieved person was lawfully authorized and conducted.

This finding by Judge White reaffirmed at least some control by federal trial courts of sweeping assertions of state secrets privilege by the Executive Branch. That is, better than nothing, for sure. But it is rather small comfort in light of the finding of qualified immunity extended to the government on the Jewel and Shubert plaintiffs’ statutory claims under FISA.

In discussing the intersection of the FISA claims with related claims by plaintiffs under the Stored Communication Act and Wiretap Act, the court did leave several more general counts of the complaints active. However, there is no way to look at the entirety of Jeff White’s opinion and come away believing the plaintiffs have any clear path to victory in the long run. The Jewel and Shubert cases live on to fight another day, for now, but the handwriting is on the wall for either the 9th Circuit or Supreme Court to deal the death blow down the road.

caught up

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Congratulations to the AP, which has caught up to the reporting I did a month ago on the way SOCOM purged their own systems of Osama bin Laden photos (and, apparently, records) and moved them to the CIA.

But it appears that this shell game involved more than just moving all these records to CIA. It appears CIA had to retroactively classify at least the photographs.

As you recall, Judicial Watch (as well as a bunch of other entities) had FOIAed any pictures of the raid. It its motion for summary judgment, JW made several complaints about the government’s FOIA response:

  • The search, particularly at DOD, was inadequate.
  • The government declarations didn’t adequately specify what was included in the pictures (I suspect this was done to hide trophy pictures not shown to Congress or, possibly, even the President).
  • The government declarations don’t prove that all the photos could cause exceptionally grave harm.
  • The description of the classification process was inadequate.

It is the last of these that is most interesting, given the apparent fact that DOD transfered all its photos to CIA (plus my suspicion that a lot of these are trophy photos, not official operational photos).

First, Defendants fail to identify who classified the records. Director Bennett testifies as to who generally has the authority to classify information as TOP SCERET and who generally has the authority to delegate such authority. Bennett Decl. at ¶¶ 14-15. In addition, Director Bennett states that the “Director of the CIA has delegated original TOP SECRET classification authority to me. As an original classification authority, I am authorized to conduct classification reviews and to make original classification decisions.” Id. at ¶ 18. Yet, Director Bennett does not testify that he personally classified the records. Nor does he state that any other authorized official actually classified the records.  If an individual without the proper authority classified the records, Defendants have not complied with the procedural requirements of EO 13526.

Second, Director Bennett does not specifically testify as to when the 52 records were classified. Director Bennett only states that as of September 26, 2011, the 52 records are currently and properly classified. Read more →

Shorter Mark Udall: Why Can’t John Brennan “Honor the Oath”?

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Still reading the NSA IG Report, so I’ll just quote right from Mark Udall’s release:

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I am concerned to see news reports about the CIA’s response to the Committee’s Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program before the information was provided to the committee. Committee members have not yet seen this response, which we have been expecting for nearly six months.

The American people’s trust in intelligence agencies requires transparency and strong congressional oversight. This latest leak–the latest incident in a long string of leaks from unnamed intelligence officials who purport to be familiar with the Committee’s Study and the CIA’s official response to it–is wholly unacceptable. Even as these reports emerged today and over the past several months, the CIA and the White House have repeatedly rejected requests to discuss the Committee’s report with Members or Committee staff.

The continual leaks of inaccurate information from unnamed intelligence officials are embarrassing to the agency and have only hardened my resolve to declassify the full Committee Study, which is based on a review of more than six million pages of CIA records, comprises more than 6,000 pages in length and includes more than 35,000 footnotes. The report is based on CIA records including internal memoranda, cables, emails, as well as transcripts of interviews and Intelligence Committee hearings. The Study is fact-based, and I believe, indisputable.

I am confident the American people will agree once they have the opportunity to read the Study, as well as the CIA’s official response, that this program was a failure and a tragic moment in America’s history. The only way to correct the inaccurate information in the public record on this program is through the sunlight of declassification.

The other thing that leaked in the last day, in addition to CIA’s claim that millions of its reports are inaccurate, is this news:

CIA Director John Brennan is launching a new campaign aimed at pressuring CIA officers to keep the intelligence agency’s secrets secret, after a series of leaks to the media.

In a memo to the CIA workforce this week, Brennan says the “Honor the Oath,” campaign is intended to “reinforce our corporate culture of secrecy” through education and training.

Some leadership on “our corporate culture of secrecy” Brennan is showing, huh?

Who Was the Short-Sighted Personnel Guy at CIA Who Set up NYPD-on-the-Hudson in 2002?

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As Charlie Savage reports, the CIA’s IG report on CIA-on-the-Hudson has finally been released. It finds that the decision to put CIA personnel at NYPD was ill-advised and poorly managed by CIA’s executives who oversaw the arrangement.

While negative public perception is to be expected from the revelation of the Agency’s close and direct collaboration with any local domestic police department, a perception that the Agency has exceeded its authorities diminishes the trust placed in the organization. This has the added potential of impeding our ability to effectively support law enforcement at both the local and federal level. Additionally, the risk that CIA officers could become involved in law enforcement matters exists if implementing procedures and policies to designed such collaboration are not clearly understood. A lapse in any one of these components has the potential to make Agency officers vulnerable and could jeopardize the vital mission the Agency performs.

[snip]

The revelation of these issues, as discussed in more detail in the Executive Summary, leads me to conclude that the risks associated with the Agency’s relationship with NYPD were not fully considered and that there was inadequate direction and control by the Agency managers responsible for the relationship. [my emphasis]

Amid descriptions of violations of protections for Americans, the report describes basic personnel problems with the arrangement.

In addition, there appears to have been no documentation between CIA and NYPD addressing specifically the employee’s role concerning access to NYPD records and the practices to be followed with respect to the sharing of lead information.

[snip]

… better documentation of the arrangement, practices, and appropriate approvals was warranted.

Unfortunately, the report does not name all the “senior CIA managers” who first implemented such an ill-considered program — it only says the first CIA officer was sent under George Tenet’s authority.

In early 2002, senior CIA management received requests for increased Intelligence Community (IC) support from federal, state, and local law enforcement, to include the NYPD. A Concept of Operations (CONOP) was developed by senior Agency officers in April 2002 for a temporary duty assignment (TDY) of a seasoned Directorate of Intelligence (DI) analyst to New York City for a six to nine month period under Director of Central Intelligence Authorities. 1

1 … DCI Tenet directed [redacted–AP reported this as Larry Sanchez] to New York City in 2002 under his DCI authorities as manager of the intelligence community.

Sanchez would be there from June 4, 2002 to March 2004, after which he took Leave without Pay and served at the NYPD full time until May 2009.

Sanchez believed he had “no restrictions” as to what he could and couldn’t do at NYPD.

The report makes it clear Sanchez served as a cop during the 5 years he was at NYPD while on LWOP. It doesn’t explain what he did in the first 2 years there, when he was still officially at the CIA, during which time — the report makes clear — serving as a cop would have violated restrictions on CIA officers serving as law enforcement.

Now, the report provides more details about how two of the other three CIA officers shared with the NYPD got sent. It names titles — Associate Deputy Director, Director of National Clandestine Services, Senior Deputy General Counsel as being involve d in the later decisions. It decides a Memorandum of Notification and warnings against engaging in domestic law enforcement (though that didn’t stop the person in question from filtering up to 12 reports a day up to CIA). For the third (whose transfer didn’t have that kind of guidance), names are named, including that of Deputy Director Mike Morell and Director/NCS John Bennett.

In short, Sanchez’s assignment may or may not have been as bad when, for a period in 2008, CIA was getting direct access to NYPD’s domestic intelligence reports. But at least from this review it seems like his assignment was one of the biggest clusterfucks from a management perspective.

You know? From the period when John Brennan was Deputy Executive Director at the CIA, “focused on administrative and workforce issues.” The same John Brennan who, after these practices were exposed, insisted he was “intimately familiar” with the program but that the CIA “knew what the rules were” — rules that, particularly for Sanchez while Brennan was still DExDir, simply weren’t in place.

Brennan’s potential role in this clusterfuck is all the more interesting given the timing of the report. It was written while he was the President’s top counterterrorism advisor. EPIC FOIAed the document March 28, 2012. CIA denied it expedited processing. So EPIC sued on December 20, 2012. CIA asked for one one week delay a few weeks after Brennan was confirmed Director.

And now this comes out, the day before Brennan heads to the Senate Intelligence Committee to tell them their 6,000 page report on torture is wrong.

It sure sounds like a report held to avoid embarrassing Brennan.

But don’t worry. We didn’t need to have any public airing of Brennan’s role — aside from his vague admission he knew about the program — before he got the authority to replicate the program elsewhere.

In superb news, late last night, the NYC City Council passed, with veto proof majorities, two bills that would provide real oversight for the NYPD.

Government Spying: Why You Can’t ‘Just Trust Us’

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imagesOkay you Wheelhouse mopes, Marcy, Jim and I are all in San Jose at Netroots. Not sure the jail in this here town is big enough to hold us all. Marcy already put up two posts earlier today, but posting may be a bit spotty, we shall see. I have an important one that will probably go up tomorrow morning on the Aaron Swartz case.

At any rate, to give some extra fodder here, and because Ms. Wheeler is terminally lame at noticing our own blog when she writes articles elsewhere, I am hereby placing you on notice that she has a great article that went up late yesterday at The Nation titled:

Government Spying: Why You Can’t ‘Just Trust Us’

Go read it, you will be glad you did! Other than that, use this as an open thread for Trash Talk (GO SPURS!), and anything and everything else you want to yammer about.

Did “The Shooter” Take 7 Souvenir Pictures of Osama bin Laden?

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On Tuesday, I noted that, between the draft and the final, DOD’s Inspector General removed this language referring to Admiral William McRaven purging SOCOM’s network of pictures of Osama bin Laden after CIA exposed the members of SEAL Team 6.

This effort included purging these records to another Government Agency.

But there was also telling new language introduced in the final (which would have been introduced between late last year and last week). The draft included this sentence.

ADM McRaven also directed that the names and photographs associated with the raid not be released.

The final changed that language to read,

ADM McRaven also directed personnel to forego releasing names of operators and photographs associated with the raid.

The use of the word “personnel” is ambiguous, as it’s not clear whether it refers to the SEAL Team members mentioned earlier in the paragraph or to DOD staffers who handle SOCOM’s archives (or to CIA personnel who now purportedly have the photos).

But I find it telling, given another detail about Judicial Watch’s FOIA for these photos.

Recall that on February 15, 2013, DOJ informed Judicial Watch that CIA had found 7 more photos responsive to their FOIA. That happened just 4 days after Esquire published a splashy story about the guy who claimed to have been the SEAL who actually killed OBL. The current version includes this line.

In the compound, I thought about getting my camera, and I knew we needed to take pictures and ID him.

I had made the connection at the time, and I have a distinct suspicion the language was slightly different in the original (Esquire was making factual corrections along the way but the original is not on Internet Archive), making it clear that the Shooter and possibly others did take pictures, though perhaps not for operational purposes.

What kind of amped up warrior who had just helped kill the bogeyman could resist taking souvenir pictures? Could you blame them, if so?

In any case, I suspected at the time that the reason CIA “located” new photos was because they read about another set of photos in the possession in one of the guys who participated in the op, if not shot the lethal bullet. The ambiguity in the description of McRaven’s order seems to support that.

That is, what SOCOM and CIA appear to be protecting are — in significant part — the personal photos taken by the guys who did the operation.

DOD’s Inspector General Disappears William McRaven’s “Purge”

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The day before I got hopelessly buried in the rabbit warren of NSA leaks, I reported that the draft IG Report on the Obama Administration’s leaks to Zero Dark Thirty’s creators seemed to indicate that, on Admiral William McRaven’s orders, SOCOM had purged its networks of Osama bin Laden photos that were the subject of an active Judicial Watch FOIA.

According to ADM McRaven, the DoD provided the operators and their families an inordinate level of security. ADM McRaven held a meeting with the families to discuss force protection measures and tell the families that additional protective monitoring will be provided, and to call security personnel if they sensed anything. ADM McRaven also directed that the names and photographs associated with the raid not be released. This effort included purging these records to another Government Agency.

The other day the final report came out. And while I haven’t yet read the report in depth (short version: it clears the Obama Administration of all the improprieties laid out in the draft), I do notice this interesting edit.

According to ADM McRaven, DoD provided the operators and their families an inordinate level of security. ADM McRaven stated that he previously met with operators’ family members and discussed force protection measures. USSOCOM officials informed family members that protective monitoring will be initiated, and instructed them to call security personnel if security-related incidents arise. ADM McRaven also directed personnel to forego releasing names of operators and photographs associated with the raid.

They took out all mention of the “purge” of photos requested under FOIA.

To be fair, the use of the word “purge” in the original always seemed inapt, as it appears that McRaven ordered the photos on DOD servers to be moved — not destroyed — to CIA’s servers. So it’s not like McRaven ordered evidence be destroyed.

Still, as I’ll eventually get around to describing, it may have affected the outcome of the FOIA.

Which seems worthy of note. But apparently not to the people who protect top military leaders.