“Consular Employee” Charged with Murder in Pakistan

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The NYT has a sanitized version of the story of a “US Consular employee” who has been charged with shooting two Pakistanis.

An American official, Raymond A. Davis, 36, appeared in court here on Friday on charges of murdering two Pakistanis after police officials alleged Mr. Davis shot the men during a possible roadside robbery attempt here. The incident on Thursday in mid-afternoon traffic could inflame strong anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, a possibility that the Pakistani government acknowledge while saying it would apply the rule of law.

[snip]

Mr. Davis was driving a white rental car on the congested Jail Road in Lahore on Thursday afternoon when two men on a motorcycle attempted to rob him, according to Pakistani police accounts. Mr. Davis shot the two men, police officials said. Police accounts initially differed on whether the two assailants were armed, but according to the official police report released Friday, the police found weapons on the dead men. Mr. Davis did not have a license to carry a weapon, the law minister said.

Mr. Davis called the consulate for help during the episode, and a four-wheel-drive vehicle that tried to come to his rescue hit and killed a third man, a senior police official, Faisal Rana, said on Thursday.

The American Embassy in Islamabad acknowledged in a statement that Mr. Davis was employed by the consulate but did not describe his position. Pakistani police officials described him in various statements as a “security official” or a “technical adviser.”

But Jeff Stein speculates about what might really be going on.

A senior former U.S. diplomatic security agent suggested Thursday that the American involved in a fatal shootout in Lahore, Pakistan, was the victim of a spy meeting gone awry, not the target of a robbery or car-jacking attempt.

“It looks like an informant meet gone bad more than a car-jacking attempt,” said Fred Burton, a former deputy chief of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service’s counter-terrorism division.

And the WaPo adds these details.

Some Pakistani news channels covering the episode raised the possibility that the Americans involved were employees of Blackwater, an American security contractor, now known as Xe Services, that is widely viewed in Pakistan as a sort of mercenary agency.

Alberto Rodriguez, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, confirmed that one U.S. citizen who works at the Lahore consulate was involved in the shooting incident. He said U.S. officials were still trying to determine what happened and whether other U.S. officials were involved.

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Did DOJ Subpoena Ex-Spook’s Lawyer to Discredit Any Whistleblower Motive?

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Via Jeff Stein, the St. Louis Beacon reports that DOJ not only (unsuccessfully) subpoenaed James Risen in their pursuit of alleged MERLIN source Jeffrey Sterling, but they successfully subpoenaed Sterling’s one-time lawyer, Mark Zaid.

Mark Zaid, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who handles national security cases, was subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury to discuss events surrounding his representation of Sterling in a race discrimination case he filed against the CIA, say sources with knowledge of the case.

As both pieces lay out, the guidelines on subpoenaing a lawyer are–at least in theory–as limited as subpoenaing a reporter (never mind that the government wiretaps lawyers representing alleged terror suspects). But they appear to have used Zaid to get to other interactions–including Sterling’s testimony to a congressional committee–apparently to hone in on an alleged motive.

Prosecutors questioned Zaid about Sterling’s motive in allegedly leaking classified information about an intelligence operation in Iran to James Risen of The New York Times, a source said. The indictment alleges that Sterling leaked the information to retaliate against the CIA for its refusal to settle his race discrimination claim and to approve a memoir he was writing.

The prosecutors’ questions focused on motive and dealt with the circumstances of Sterling’s case and contacts Zaid had with third parties, a source said. Zaid had tried to negotiate a settlement of Sterling’s issues with the CIA. In addition, prosecutors questioned Zaid about actions he had taken on Sterling’s behalf that led to testimony to a congressional committee and that promoted his racial discrimination case through the media, a source said.

Zaid’s testimony was entirely about his contacts with third parties on Sterling’s behalf and was outside of the attorney-client privilege, a source said. [my emphasis]

Now, there are several interesting implications of this. For starters, Zaid probably represents more disgruntled CIA officers than Risen publishes CIA-related scoops. Subpoenaing him–even with the understanding he didn’t testify about protected conversations–may chill others who would seek out Zaid for assistance.

But I’m particularly interested in the way this seemingly links conversations with third parties–notably a Congressional Committee–and motive. Because one of the weakest parts of the indictment is the CIA’s effort to dismiss the possibility that Sterling came forward as a whistleblower.

The indictment describes testimony Sterling gave to two staffers at SSCI on March 5, 2003. This happened two weeks before the start of the Iraq War, but after CIA had rejected the employment discrimination settlements Sterling had proposed through Zaid:

On or about March 5, 2003, consistent with his secrecy and non-disclosure agreements with the CIA, defendant STERLING met with two staffers of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and disclosed classified information about Classified Program No. 1 and Human Asset No. 1. However, in doing so, defendant STERLING falsely characterized certain facts and circumstances relating to Classified Program No. 1, falsely reported that he had believed Classified Program No. 1 to have been flawed from its inception based solely upon his mischaracterization of a single remark by a participant in Classified Program No. 1, and claimed, based upon that false information, that Classified Program No. 1 may have enhanced the weapons capability of Country A.

Importantly, the indictment admits that Sterling was entitled to share this information “consistent with his secrecy and non-disclosure agreements.” While the indictment doesn’t ascribe a motive to Sterling in this meeting, it does say Sterling claimed MERLIN had enhanced Iran’s weapons capability. In other words, by all appearances, it seems that Sterling made a legally-allowable effort to alert Congressional oversight staffers that the CIA had engaged in a boneheaded operation that had helped one of the Axes of Evil acquire nukes.

That is, by all appearances, Sterling was acting as a whistleblower.

Note how the indictment claims Sterling misrepresented something to the Committee (which was then headed by Pat Roberts, noted for his efforts to protect Cheney’s gaming of intelligence and the CIA’s use of torture), but it doesn’t provide any evidence that Sterling intentionally misrepresented it. He was wrong, the indictment claims, but it doesn’t claim he knew he was wrong.

If Roberts didn’t squelch any interest in MERLIN himself, then we can probably assume the CIA told SSCI the same thing they’re claiming here, that Sterling was wrong about what he told SSCI.

Now look how the details change as soon as Sterling goes to Risen. Whereas with the meeting with SSCI, the indictment doesn’t attribute a motive and doesn’t explicitly claim Sterling intentionally provided false information, they claim Sterling made false representations about the operation to “induce” Risen to publish a story on it.

Defendant STERLING caused [Risen’s first call to the CIA’s Public Affairs director about MERLIN] to occur by having disclosed certain information relating to Classified Program No. 1 to Author A and providing false and misleading information about Classified Program No. 1 to Author A in order to induce Author A to publish a newspaper article about Classified Program No. 1.

Claiming Sterling’s alleged misrepresentation was part of what Sterling did to induce Risen to publish this attributes a motive to the allegedly false information. Presumably, they’re arguing that without the risk that MERLIN gave Iran nukes, Risen wouldn’t have found it as interesting a story (though given that this happened just as it was becoming clear Cheney had lied about Iraq’s nukes, I’m not so sure).

And, too, the indictment provides a clear motive behind Sterling’s attempts to get Risen to publish information on MERLIN.

Defendant STERLING’s anger and resentment towards the CIA grew over time as the CIA rejected the defendant’s settlement offers and made other legal decisions. In retaliation for the CIA’s refusal to settle on terms favorable to defendant STERLING, as well as other decisions made by the CIA, defendant STERLING caused and attempted to cause the publication of classified information about Classified Program No. 1 and Human Asset No. 1 that defendant STERLING characterized in a false and misleading manner.

So it seems likely to me the government went to the trouble of subpoenaing Zaid to try to smooth this transition between what appears to be legal whistleblowing to what they claim to be retaliatory, misrepresentative leaking. I would imagine they’re very interested in why Zaid (apparently) negotiated the testimony to SSCI.

Mind you, there are three more interesting details of timing. The indictment alleges that Sterling was the source for this November 4, 2001 article revealing that the 9/11 attacks had destroyed CIA’s New York office. As the indictment lays out, it appeared just days after the CIA had rejected Sterling’s second employment discrimination settlement attempt. So they lay the ground work for retaliation motive early.

Also, the indictment claims that Sterling called Risen on February 27, 2003, two weeks after CIA rejected his last settlement offer, putting it before Sterling told SSCI CIA had had him help deal nuclear blueprints to Iran.

But perhaps the most interesting set of dates appear in a paragraph in Sterling’s suit–filed March 4, 2003, so the day before he testified to SSCI–regarding CIA’s refusal to let him publish details in his memoir.

By letter dated January 3, 2003, the CIA notified Sterling of additional decisions regarding his October submission [to the Publication Review Board]. Sterling was not only notified that the CIA considered certain information in his manuscript to be classified, which also conflicted with earlier decisions, but the CIA informed Sterling that he should add information into the manuscript that was blatantly false. Upon information and belief, the CIA instructed Sterling to knowingly include false information within his manuscript solely to maintain a litigation advantage against Sterling in the unrelated discrimination lawsuit. [my emphasis]

That is, it appears that Sterling, not the CIA, is the first party to claim the other was lying (though they may be about entirely unrelated issues).

It seems likely one of the biggest weaknesses of this indictment is the possibility that Sterling will argue he legitimately worried about our government dragging us to war against Iran based on false claims and went to Risen as a whistleblower. That doesn’t make it legal, but it’s an extenuating circumstance that, 4,300 deaths into the Iraq War, might well make a jury pause before they convict him for leaking this information. And if Sterling can make that case at all credibly, then it’ll get into the mother of all CIPA fights over whether Sterling can get information to prove the CIA right or wrong about MERLIN.

So it seems like the government dragged Sterling’s lawyer into the Grand Jury to try to rebut the whistleblower excuse from the start.

Is That Why We Bombed the Chinese Embassy?

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As soon as I read the news that the new Chinese stealth fighter might have been reverse-engineered from an F-117 Nighthawk shot down during the NATO bombing of Serbia, I wondered the same thing implied (though not explicitly stated) in this Fox News piece: did we bomb the Chinese embassy because they were actively collecting parts and information on the plane?

Western diplomats have said China maintained an intelligence post in its Belgrade embassy during the Kosovo war. The building was mistakenly struck by U.S. bombers that May, killing three people inside.

“What that means is that the Serbs and Chinese would have been sharing their intelligence,” said Alexander Neill, head of the Asia security program at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank in London. “It’s very likely that they shared the technology they recovered from the F-117, and it’s very plausible that elements of the F-117 got to China.”

The Nighthawk was shot down on March 27, 1999, and the embassy was “accidentally” bombed on May 7, 1999.

The US government explained away the bombing, partly, by saying the CIA had done the targeting (starting in March), which was not something they normally did at this level.

I think it is useful to note that this episode is unusual because the CIA does not normally assemble, on its own, target nomination packages containing the coordinates of specific installations or buildings. The targeting support typically provided by CIA is usually at the strategic and planning level, such as analytical judgments on the kinds of targets that are the most important, commentary or specific information concerning targets selected by the military or others, and information that assists the military in identifying future targets.

[snip]

Second, within CIA there were no procedural guidelines for the officers involved in targeting to follow, and there was little senior management involvement in guiding the targeting process. Although our military support organization had been involved in targeting matters, they had not previously been involved in the approval of target nomination packages unilaterally proposed and wholly assembled at CIA. This occasion was precedent-setting.

Though that doesn’t explain why the CIA would have been involved at all, particularly against Yugolavia’s Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement, the purported target.

Now, obviously, I don’t know the answer to this question. Though David Axe notes that the military retired the F-117 program long before it has retired similar programs and takes from that the military may have known the plane’s technology had been compromised.

It’s possible the U.S. defense establishment knew that China had cracked the F-117’s secrets. Perhaps accepting that the cat was out of the bag, the Americans reportedly made no effort to retrieve the stealth artifacts from that Belgrade museum. “A lot of delegations visited us in the past, including the Chinese, Russians and Americans … but no one showed any interest in taking any part of the jet,” Zoran Milicevic, deputy director of the museum, told the AP.

And in a move that surprised many observers, in 2008 the Air Force formally retired the entire F-117 fleet, then roughly 40 strong. (A few F-117s are secretly still flying, apparently for tests.) Officially, the F-117 was obsolete. “I mean it’s a 30-year-old concept now,” F-117 pilot Lt. Col. Chris Knehans said, ignoring the fact that almost all U.S. combat aircraft designs are at least that old. It could be that the F-117 had to go because every potential rival knew its secrets.

If Axe is right, it at least reflects some awareness of what China was up to, though that could have come much later. If the bombing had anything to do with the downed Nighthawk, was it successful in achieving its mission (that is, could China’s exploitation of the technology have been even worse)? Or was it a diplomatic failure and a strategic one?

Who Is Paying for Dewey Clarridge’s Old Spy Novels?

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Update: I’m wrong about this being buried–it will be in tomorrow’s NYT, so big coverage.

When Jeff Stein reported that Mullah Omar was rushed to a hospital for heart treatment, I was pretty sure the real story was about Dewey Clarridge’s Eclipse group, which the NYT had suggested before might be involved in a privatized PsyOp network. As Stein described,

Mullah Omar, the elusive, one-eyed leader of the Afghan Taliban, had a heart attack Jan. 7 and was treated for several days in a Karachi hospital with the help of Pakistan’s spy agency, according to a private intelligence network run by former CIA, State Department and military officers.

The intelligence network, operating under the auspices of a private company, “The Eclipse Group,” said its source was a physician in the Karachi hospital, which was not identified in the report, who said he saw Omar struggling to recover from an operation to put a stent in his heart.

[snip]

The Eclipse Group is run by Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, a former head of the CIA’s Latin American operations who was the first chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center; Kim Stevens, a retired U.S. diplomat who served in Bolivia and Italy; and Brad A. Patty, a civilian advisor to the U.S. Army’s 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team in Iraq from 2007 to 2009.

The Eclipse Group’s reports are available “by invitation only” on its Web site, Stevens said.

By all appearances, the Eclipse network is the just the latest iteration of a shadowy, Pentagon-backed operation that began contracting with former CIA and military operatives to supply intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009. Amid adverse publicity last year, the Pentagon supposedly cut off its funding.

In one of those stories the NYT loves to bury in the Saturday news hole, Mark Mazzetti provides more detail of what Clarridge is up to.

Over the past two years, he has fielded operatives in the mountains of Pakistan and the desert badlands of Afghanistan. Since the United States military cut off his funding in May, he has relied on like-minded private donors to pay his agents to continue gathering information about militant fighters, Taliban leaders and the secrets of Kabul’s ruling class.

[snip]

His dispatches — an amalgam of fact, rumor, analysis and uncorroborated reports — have been sent to military officials who, until last spring at least, found some credible enough to be used in planning strikes against militants in Afghanistan. They are also fed to conservative commentators, including Oliver L. North, a compatriot from the Iran-contra days and now a Fox News analyst, and Brad Thor, an author of military thrillers and a frequent guest of Glenn Beck.

[snip]

On May 15, according to a classified Pentagon report on the private spying operation, he sent an encrypted e-mail to military officers in Kabul announcing that his network was being shut down because the Pentagon had just terminated his contract. He wrote that he had to “prepare approximately 200 local personnel to cease work.”

In fact, he had no intention of shuttering his operation. The very next day, he set up a password-protected Web site, afpakfp.com, that would allow officers to continue viewing his dispatches.

[snip]

When the military would not listen to him, Mr. Clarridge found other ways to peddle his information.

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Gulet Mohamed’s Interrogation without Counsel: Is this the New Miranda Policy?

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Gulet Mohamed, the teen held in Kuwait, allegedly beaten, and interrogated by the FBI while in custody, is finally back in the United States. But before he reunited with his family, he was subjected to one more interrogation without his lawyer.

FBI agents have detained and are interrogating Gulet Mohamed, an American teen who was detained in Kuwait for a month, without counsel at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, DC, Mohamed’s lawyer said Friday morning.

[snip]

Mohamed’s family and lawyer claim that Mohamed has asked FBI officials for counsel multiple times during previous questioning. US legal and constitutional restrictions generally require that custodial interrogations stop when a subject asks for his lawyer. That rule does not seem to have been followed in this case. Mohamed traveled to Yemen and Somalia, two hotbeds of anti-American extremism, in 2009 (to visit family and learn Arabic, his family says). But he has not been charged with a crime in any country.

Now, Baumann points out that interrogations should stop once an American asks for counsel.

Or at least that’s the way things used to be.

But as Justin Elliot reported yesterday, the Administration has changed its Miranda policy. Only, it hasn’t explained what the change entails.

The Obama administration has issued new guidance on use of the Miranda warning in interrogations of terrorism suspects, potentially chipping away at the rule that bars the government from using information in court if it was gathered before a suspect was informed of his right to remain silent and to an attorney.

But the Department of Justice is refusing to publicly release the guidance, with a spokesman describing it in an interview as an “internal document.” So we don’t know the administration’s exact interpretation of Miranda, even though it may have significantly reshaped the way terrorism interrogations are conducted.

[snip]

Asked about the administration’s current stance on Miranda, Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd sent along this statement about the new guidance that was sent to “relevant agencies”:

As demonstrated most recently after the attempted terrorist bombings last Christmas and in Times Square last spring, law enforcement has the ability to question suspected terrorists without immediately providing Miranda warnings when the interrogation is reasonably prompted by immediate concern for the safety of the public or the agents. Because of the complexity of the threat posed by terrorist organizations and the nature of their attacks — which can include multiple accomplices and interconnected plots — we have formalized guidance that outlines the appropriate use of the well-established public safety exception to providing Miranda rights. To ensure that law enforcement is aware of the flexibility that the law gives them in these circumstances, the guidance has been distributed to relevant agencies.

So are the repeated interrogations of Mohamed without counsel a sign of what DOJ has permitted?

Mind you, today’s interrogation was probably something much more similar. As the experience of Wikileaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum, who has been interrogated at the border on three different occasions, shows, our government maintains it can subject anyone crossing into our country to this treatment.

Yet that doesn’t explain the interrogations in Kuwait, coming after Mohamed says he was beaten.

So should we conclude the new Miranda policy allows beating and interrogations with no counsel so long as they take place in other countries?

Is the Government Confirming They Used MERLIN with Other Countries?

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Josh Gerstein notes a curious argument the government makes in its motion to deny bail to alleged leaker Jeffrey Sterling: that leaking is more dangerous than espionage.

The defendant’s unauthorized disclosures, however, may be viewed as more pernicious than the typical espionage case where a spy sells classified information for money. Unlike the typical espionage case where a single foreign country or intelligence agency may be the beneficiary of the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, this defendant elected to disclose the classified information publicly through the mass media. Thus, every foreign adversary stood to benefit from the defendant’s unauthorized disclosure of classified information, thus posing an even greater threat to society.

Now, Gerstein looks at what this likely means for Wikileaks.

The Justice Department’s brief emphasizing the dangers of leaks could be seen as a preview of arguments the government will make against Wikileaks if authorities proceed with a prosecution of its founder, Julian Assange, or others who are part of the group. A prosecution of Wikileaks would open a significant new front in the Obama Administration’s war on leaks, which has so far targeted only leakers for prosecution and not those who receive the leaks.

But I’m interested in what they’re asserting as it has to do with Sterling’s case.

The government repeatedly claims that the big damage from Sterling’s leak is that it put the life of his source–almost certainly the former Russian nuclear scientist who passed doctored nuke plans to Iran–at risk.

In making these illegal disclosures, the defendant put the life of at least one individual in great danger. This individual, identified as Human Asset No. 1 in the Indictment, see Indictment, ¶ 14, played a role in Classified Program No. 1. The defendant’s illegal disclosures revealed certain identifying information about Human Asset No. 1 that placed Human Asset No. 1 in great danger. Id. at ¶ 42. The threat to Human Asset No. 1 was so great that certain United States government officials cited the danger to Human Asset No. 1 as one reason why Author A’s employer should not publish a newspaper article about Classified Program No. 1 in late April 2003. Id. at ¶ 42.

That expressed concern is really rich, as Risen’s book suggests that one of the concerns of the MERLIN case officer–presumably Sterling himself–is that the CIA had botched the process of doctoring the nuke plans so badly, the Russian immediately became aware of the flaw in the plans.

Within minutes of being handed the designs, [the Russian] had identified a flaw. “This isn’t right,” he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. “There is something wrong.” His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight answers from the CIA men in the room. No one in the San Francisco meeting seemed surprised by the Russian’s assertion that the blueprints didn’t look quite right, but no one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either.

In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian’s personal handler had been stunned by the Russian’s statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA officer aside. “He wasn’t supposed to know that,” the CIA case officer told his superior. “He wasn’t supposed to find a flaw.”

“Don’t worry,” the senior CIA officer calmly replied. “It doesn’t matter.”

The CIA case officer couldn’t believe the senior CIA officer’s answer, but he still managed to keep his fears from the Russian, and he continued to train him for his mission.

It was a fear about the flaw in the blueprints that led the Russian to include a note hinting there was such a flaw.

There is, of course, the damage done to the Russian’s ability to conduct any similar operations. It’s worth noting, though, that at least as presented in Risen’s book, this was the first time in the many years he had been in the CIA’s defector resettlement program when the CIA asked him to conduct such an operation.

One secret CIA report said that the Russian “was a known handling problem due to his demanding and overbearing nature.” Yet the same report stated that he was also a “sensitive agent” who could be used in a “high-priority covert-action operation.”

So despite their disputes, the CIA had arranged for the Russian to become an American citizen and had kept him on the payroll, to the tune of $5,000 a month. It really did seem like easy money, with few strings attached. Life was good. He was happy to be on the CIA gravy train.

Until now. The CIA was placing him on the front lines of a plan that seemed to be completely at odds with the interests of the United States, and it had taken a lot of persuading by his CIA case officer to convince him to go through with what appeared to be a rogue operation.

But what really seems to be the government’s complaint, if you take their filing in good faith, is the notion that “every foreign adversary stood to benefit from the defendant’s unauthorized disclosure of classified information, thus posing an even greater threat to society.”

Is that, then, a confirmation of something that James Risen’s sources (plural) only suggested to him?

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Air National Guard Will Deploy Drones to Spy on Black Bears in Adirondack Park

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As part of what they bill as a “military training program,” the Air Force National Guard will deploy a bunch of MQ-9 Reaper drones over the Adirondacks park in Northern NY. (h/t Tim Shorrock)

The Air Force Air National Guard will fly remotely piloted planes over the Adirondacks starting next June.

Crews at ground control stations fly the unmanned aircraft, the MQ-9 Reaper, from both line-of-sight locations and by satellite.

Col. Charles “Spider” Dorsey, vice commander of the 174th Fighter Wing based at Fort Drum, presented details of the new military training program to Adirondack Park Agency commissioners Thursday.

[snip]

It is used for intelligence-gathering details, Dorsey explained, and also for combat search and rescue or simulated attacks.

The Department of Defense prohibits target surveillance of U.S. citizens by intelligence systems,” the colonel said, to deflect concern about any intrusion from the sorties.

[snip]

The MQ-9 is used by the Army, Navy and U.S. Border Patrol, primarily along the southern border, Dorsey said.

Now, Colonel “Spider” Dorsey admits that this drone is used to collect intelligence. But don’t you worry, he says, because DOD prohibits “target surveillance” of US citizens by intelligence systems. I’m not sure precisely what he means by “target surveillance,” but as the NSA’s mission makes clear, DOD does not prohibit surveillance of US citizens by intelligence systems, at least within some parameters.

Moreover, as the use of these drones by Border Patrol makes clear, the US government does use these drones to surveil humans in the US. The legal basis for doing so would generally restrict its use to border areas. But as it happens, the Adirondacks are pretty damn close to an international border, and Fort Drum is even closer to that border. So the US government could very easily start flying “border patrol” missions out of Fort Drum with this drone and–given that DOD had publicly announced its use for “training missions” in the Adirondacks–no one on the ground would know any different. Particularly not given that–as “Spider” boasts–these are designed to be silent. And since this is a medium-to-high altitude drone, with a top flying altitude of 50,000 feet, those “black bears” on the ground “in the Adirondacks” wouldn’t see the damn thing, either.

Mind you, the Adirondacks are really not all that far from all the major population centers in the Northeast; both Boston and NYC would easily fall within its 1,150 mile range. So if this silent, high flying intelligence drone just happened to collect information from people in either one of those cities, under the legal cover of a border-related mission, we would have no way of knowing. Particularly given that the Air Force specifically prohibits anyone cleared into its Special Access Programs from talking to Congress about them.

But don’t you worry. Spider tells us we have nothing to worry about. Honest, I’m sure they’re just spying on the black bears that live in the park.

Wikileaks Redactions: It’s Not Just the Chinese that Bribe for Oil

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Given the past history of how newspapers have redacted (or not) Wikileaks dumps, I was very interested in an article that reveals what the Guardian (or one of its media partners) redacted in a cable on Kazakh corruption. The Guardian summarizes the cable this way:

Top Kazakh energy official reveals the four principal gate-keepers around President Nursultan Nazarbayev, including Timur Kulibayev, the favoured billionaire presidential son-in-law.

But read more closely, it serves to record Ambassador Richard Hoagland’s judgment that KazMunaiGaz First Vice President Maksat Idenov is currently (on January 25, 2010) successfully ensuring that two big hyrdocarbon projects will be developed according to “international standards”–which seems to imply something about the level of bribery involved, but it’s not entirely clear whether that implies less bribery or none at all. The big question, in any case, is whether President Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, Kulibayev, will demand bribes associated with the projects.

But as Israel Shamir reveals in an article for Counterpunch (here’s a Fast Company article with more background on Shamir) there are three details that have been redacted in the Guardian version, all of which make the role of bribery more obvious and point to much closer British, Italian, and US ties to that kind of bribery.

In the first instance, the Guardian version of the cable redacts an explicit reference–attributed to Idenov but not a direct quote from him–to the role of bribery in Kazakhstan and in capitalism more generally. (The bolded text is what is redacted in the Guardian version.)

According to Idenov, in Kazakhstan, market economy means capitalism, which means big money, which means large bribes for the best connected.

But it’s not that analogy which seems to tie the US and Britain more closely to the culture of bribery in Kazakhstan. With two other redactions, the Guardian version of the cable hides the ties between British Gas Country Director for Kazakhstan, Mark Rawlings, and a US citizen recently acquitted of bribery because he had offered the bribes at the behest of the CIA.

When the Ambassador arrived, Idenov was barking into his cell phone, “Mark, Mark, stop the excuses! Mark, listen to me! Mark, shut up right now and do as I say! Bring the letter to my office at 10:00 pm, and we will go together to take it to (Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, MEMR) Mynbayev at his house.” On ending the call, Idenov explained he was talking to British Gas (BG) Country Director for Kazakhstan Mark Rawlings who had missed the deadline to deliver a letter about arbitration on the Karachaganak super-giant oil-field project (reftel). Still clearly steamed, Idenov alleged, “He’s still playing games with Mercator’s James Giffin,” the notorious AmCit fixer indicted for large-scale bribery on oil deals in the 1990s, whose case drags on in the Southern District Court of New York. “I tell him, ‘Mark, stop being an idiot! Stop tempting fate! Stop communicating with an indicted criminal!'” Idenov asked, “Do you know how much he (Rawlings) makes? $72,000 a month! A month!! Plus benefits! Plus bonuses! Lives in Switzerland but supposedly works in London. Comes here once a month to check in. Nice life, huh?”

As Shamir explains in his article, Giffen was ultimately hailed as a patriot by the judge who dismissed most of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges against him in November 2010 (that is, ten months after this cable was written, and around the same time the US signed a new airspace deal with Kazakhstan). Main Justice provides background of how State Department considerations–they didn’t want prosecutors to mention that President Nazarbayev was the recipient of the bribes Giffen was alleged to have arranged–and CIA stonewalling–they refused to provide the details of what Giffen claimed was his role in their “intelligence collecting” operations–led to the dismissal of most of the charges.

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Redefining Security

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Joe Biden finally endorsed yesterday what the imperialists in DC have long been backing: an open-ended presence in Afghanistan.

“It is not our intention to govern or to nation-build,” Mr Biden said. “As President Karzai often points out, this is the responsibility of the Afghan people, and they are fully capable of it.”

But he stressed that the United States would continue to assist the Afghan government.

“If the Afghan people want it, we won’t leave in 2014,” Mr Biden said.

Meanwhile, Lester Brown uses the last paragraph of a piece on the coming food riots to point out how out-dated our empire–the decision-making that will lead us to stay in Afghanistan until we go broke–is.

As the new year begins, the price of wheat is setting an all-time high in the United Kingdom. Food riots are spreading across Algeria. Russia is importing grain to sustain its cattle herds until spring grazing begins. India is wrestling with an 18-percent annual food inflation rate, sparking protests. China is looking abroad for potentially massive quantities of wheat and corn. The Mexican government is buying corn futures to avoid unmanageable tortilla price rises. And on January 5, the U.N. Food and Agricultural organization announced that its food price index for December hit an all-time high.

But whereas in years past, it’s been weather that has caused a spike in commodities prices, now it’s trends on both sides of the food supply/demand equation that are driving up prices. On the demand side, the culprits are population growth, rising affluence, and the use of grain to fuel cars. On the supply side: soil erosion, aquifer depletion, the loss of cropland to nonfarm uses, the diversion of irrigation water to cities, the plateauing of crop yields in agriculturally advanced countries, and — due to climate change — crop-withering heat waves and melting mountain glaciers and ice sheets. These climate-related trends seem destined to take a far greater toll in the future.

[snip]

The unrest of these past few weeks is just the beginning. It is no longer conflict between heavily armed superpowers, but rather spreading food shortages and rising food prices — and the political turmoil this would lead to — that threatens our global future. Unless governments quickly redefine security and shift expenditures from military uses to investing in climate change mitigation, water efficiency, soil conservation, and population stabilization, the world will in all likelihood be facing a future with both more climate instability and food price volatility. If business as usual continues, food prices will only trend upward.

Note, I think Brown misses one cause of the food shortages: the treatment of food and commodities used in its production as one more thing our banksters can bet on at their casino.

But his point stands: probably the two biggest threats to our country are–first–climate change and–second–the refusal to fix the global economy the banksters broke. Yet we’re continuing to pour our dollars into Afghanistan, and to pour it into efforts that may well just exacerbate the violence.

A McClatchy story written by Medill graduate students shows how badly our own “security” establishment responds to such non-military threats.

Yet the U.S. government is ill-prepared to act on climate changes that are coming faster than anticipated and threaten to bring instability to places of U.S. national interest, interviews with several dozen current and former officials and outside experts and a review of two decades’ worth of government reports indicate.

Climate projections lack crucial detail, they say, and information about how people react to changes — for instance, by migrating — is sparse. Military officials say they don’t yet have the intelligence they need in order to prepare for what might come.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a 23-year veteran of the CIA who led the Department of Energy’s intelligence unit from 2005 to 2008, said the intelligence community simply wasn’t set up to deal with a problem such as climate change that wasn’t about stealing secrets.

Read more →

Did John Brennan Have a Role in DOJ’s Decision to Prosecute Jeffrey Sterling?

/in , /by

John Brennan apparently plays an interesting role in the events surrounding Jeffrey Sterling, whom DOJ indicted for allegedly leaking details of the MERLIN program to James Risen.

James Risen first wrote about Sterling–profiling his employment discrimination suit–in March 2002. In it, Risen quotes then CIA Deputy Executive Director John Brennan, denying that Sterling was dismissed because he is black.

John Brennan, the deputy executive director of the agency who met Mr. Sterling several times about his case, said there was no evidence that racial discrimination had caused his problems.

”It was an unfortunate situation,” Mr. Brennan said, ”because Jeffrey was a talented officer and had a lot of the skills we are looking for, and we wanted him to succeed.

”We were quite pleased with Jeffrey’s performance in a number of areas. Unfortunately, there were some areas of his work and development that needed some improvement.”

Now Brennan’s role in negotiating with Sterling on the discrimination claims already provides one reason why Brennan might have a personal interest in seeing DOJ renew its pursuit of Sterling.

But there’s another: to go after Risen personally.

After all, whatever role Brennan had in Sterling’s discrimination suit, there’s no reason to believe it put Brennan at legal risk.

But Risen’s other big scoop in State of War did.

As I have shown, for at least a year, John Brennan was in charge of the process that picked who Dick Cheney would wiretap in his illegal domestic surveillance program.

Brennan appears to have overseen the units that conducted the threat assessments that were a key part of the illegal program from May 2003 at least until August 2004, and possibly up until he left ODNI in December 2005, just days before the NYT broke this story.For at least a year and possibly two, John Brennan appears to have been the guy inventing “reasonable cause” to wiretap people in the United States. John Brennan was also likely the guy who put together the list of groups considered al Qaeda affiliates (including al-Haramain) that could be wiretapped.

Of particular note, Brennan was in charge of this process when, after March 11, 2004, it operated without DOJ sanction, the time when it had the least legal cover (and the time period for which al-Haramain has proof they were illegally wiretapped). John Brennan is an accessory (at least) to violating FISA and other laws prohibiting domestic surveillance (including the part of 2004’s DOD appropriation bill that prohibited data mining of Americans).

And Risen’s reporting is what has ultimately led to the (very limited) exposure of Brennan’s role in the illegal wiretapping of Americans.

Mind you, the Deputy National Security Advisor probably shouldn’t be telling DOJ whom to investigate or not–particularly not if he’s trying to retaliate for the exposure of his own illegal actions. But he seems to have been right in the mix on the White House’s involvement in DOJ’s decisions on torture.

So did DOJ pursue this case so intently–as opposed to, say, torture and illegal wiretapping–at the direction of the White House?