Crowd of Unilateral Lawyers Applaud Unilateral Operator

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Sarah Cleveland? Not a judge. Greg Craig? Not a judge. William Dodge? Not a judge. Jeh Johnson? Not a judge. David Kris? Not a judge. David Martin? Not a judge. Daniel Meltzer? Not a judge. And Trevor Morrison?

Also not a judge.

Nevertheless, these eight lawyers–all of whom served the function of interpreting the law for the Executive Branch within the Executive Branch for Obama (and, in Kris’ case, for Bush)–assure you that John Brennan will uphold our laws.

Throughout his tenure as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism in the Obama Administration, John Brennan has been a persistent and determined leader in support of adherence to the rule of law, a principled commitment to civil liberties and humanitarian protection, and transparency. On a broad range of issues, he has endeavored to ensure that the national security practices of the United States Government are based on sound long-term policy goals and are consistent with our domestic and international legal obligations, as well as with broader principles of democratic accountability. John Brennan has been a steadfast champion of the President’s commitment to closing the detention facility at Guantánamo, and has urged that our Article III courts remain a vital tool in our counterterrorism toolbox. He has stood firmly with the President’s efforts to ensure that interrogations are conducted in accord with the law and our values. And he has worked to ensure that the responsible and effective pursuit of our counterterrorism objectives will not depend simply on the good instincts of officials, but will instead be institutionalized in durable frameworks with a sound legal basis and broad interagency oversight.

[snip]

John Brennan understands that adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law serve, rather than undermine, our national security interests. Time and again, he has demonstrated seasoned wisdom and judgment in responding to our nation’s greatest national security threats, and he has consistently reaffirmed his core commitment to conducting our national security and counterterrorism policy in a fashion that comports with our deepest values. [my emphasis]

Sure, there are a few tells–such as the boast that his pursuit of counterterrorism objectives will be institutionalized in a broad interagency–not interbranch–oversight. Or, on the reverse, the claim that John Brennan–whose solution to the National Counterterrorism Center’s failure to fulfill minimization requirements was just to open up all Federal databses to NCTC without that minimization–has a “principled commitment to civil liberties.”

But mostly, it’s the structural problem here. Regardless of what John Brennan himself believes–and all the public evidence suggests these lawyers are too close to judge and perhaps just a little seduced by the old spook–this Administration doesn’t stand for any of these things.

More importantly, this Administration has refused just about every opportunity to have someone else–lawyers and judges who hadn’t counseled these policies from the start–weigh these issues. The Administration has shown great disdain for both democratic accountability and Article III courts. It has ensured that interrogations–both those conducted under Bush and those conducted in dark prisons under Obama–never be tested for whether they accord with the law. Indeed, Obama’s Administration has gone to great lengths to hide our torture from international oversight and even from litigants in our own courts.

So even assuming John Brennan is the nice guy these lawyers say he is–an assumption that defies the evidence–they’re still damning Brennan with the same illegitimate argument the Obama Administration has always relied on:

Trust us.

They are emphasizing precisely why John Brennan’s success in an Administration that has refused even basic oversight should not be sufficient for confirmation to lead a secretive agency.

And while in any other week I might be inclined to grant David Kris’ word great weight, not this week. After all, Kris warned we might get into trouble with Hamdan’s material support for terrorism conviction years ago. Nevertheless, the Obama Administration is treating Gitmo with the same Kangaroo arrogance that Bush did, refusing to take the DC Circuit’s ruling on Hamdan as law, overriding their own prosecutor at Gitmo. This Administration–Brennan’s Administration–is defiant of even the warnings Kris offered years ago. So when Kris and other lawyers boast that Brennan will be a great leader consistent with Obama’s policies…

He is also exceptionally qualified to provide leadership and direction to the Agency, consistent with President Obama’s national security objectives.

… It’s shouldn’t exactly count as a glowing endorsement.

Sure, this letter to Dianne Feinstein in support of Brennan’s nomination will work. It’ll provide cover for all the evidence that Brennan is none of these things. At the very least, it’ll force a few Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee to consider whether they’re prepared to admit that Obama’s policies exhibit none of this respect for rule of law. Which they aren’t, yet. So it’ll serve its purpose.

The last actual judge who got a glimpse at the Obama Administration’s claim to abide by the rule of law had this to say:

I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping reasons for their conclusion a secret.

John Brennan is the knave of this Alice in Wonderland system of legal justice.

I take that as a far better read of Brennan’s fitness to be CIA Director than the word of the Queen of Hearts’ other cards up her sleeve.

Update: Conor Friedersdorf does more fact-checking of the claims in the letter.

Rather than Lying to Congress, CIA Now Blows It Off

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Five months into Obama’s first term, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta caused a scandal by telling Congress about Blackwater-staffed assassination squads deployed under the Bush Administration; we would ultimately learn the program was run by a still-active mafia hitman.

Partly in response and partly because of the CIA’s lies to Congress under the Bush Administration, the Intelligence Committees began to tie funding to full briefing of the Committees, rather than just Gang of Eight (which were really Gang of Four) briefings Bush used to avoid oversight. The White House responded by issuing a veto threat if Congress violated the “fundamental compact” of letting CIA operate with almost no oversight. In response, after adding the shoot-down of a missionary plane to the scope, then House Intelligence Chair Silvestre Reyes got Pete Hoekstra to support an investigation into all the times CIA lied to Congress, which Reyes announced in July 2009. By October 2009, the House Intelligence Committee released its preliminary conclusion that CIA had lied to Congress on at least five occasions. In summer 2010, Nancy Pelosi got pissed. In October 2010, Obama finally signed Intelligence Authorization purportedly agreeing to new oversight. In November 2010, Reyes released the final results of the HPSCI inquiry, which showed that “in several specific instances, certain individuals did not adhere to the high standards set forth by the Intelligence Community and its agencies.” However, he said, most of the problems were fixed with that year’s Authorization. In the next Congress, Reyes would be replaced as Ranking Member at HPSCI by Dutch Ruppersberger, a servant to the NSA.

From June 2009 until October 2010, a Democratic Congress and the Obama Administration were engaged in a surprisingly contentious argument over whether the Administration would permit Congress to engage in adequate oversight of the Intelligence Community. In October 2010, the Administration purportedly agreed to abide by the clear terms of the National Security Act, which requires briefing of all members of the Intelligence Committees on covert programs.

With that in mind, consider the timeline suggested by Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden’s letter to John Brennan (see also this post).

December 2010: Wyden and Russ Feingold ask Eric Holder about “the interpretation of a particular statute” (probably having to do with online privacy)

Before January 2011: Wyden asks about targeted killing authority

April 2011: Wyden calls Eric Holder with questions about targeted killing authority

May 2011: Intelligence Community provides some response to Wyden, without answering basic questions

Before January 2012: Wyden asks for “the complete list of countries in which the intelligence community has used its lethal counterterrorism authorities”

Early 2012: Wyden repeats request for response to letter about a particular statute (probably online privacy)

February 2012: Wyden renews his request for answers on targeted killing

In October 2010, the Obama Administration agreed to let Congress oversee the Intelligence Community’s activities.

Almost immediately thereafter, the Administration started stonewalling Wyden, a member of one of those Committees with supposedly renewed oversight authority, on at least three issues (though two–the lethal authority and the targeted killing–are closely related). (As I’ll discuss in a follow-up post, they also blew off Wyden’s request to revoke an OLC opinion that probably guts Americans’ privacy.)

And remarkably, one of the topics on which the IC is stonewalling Wyden–where the IC has engaged in lethal counterterrorism authorities–may well be precisely the issue that set off this process back in June 2009, the use not just of drones to kill alleged terrorists, but also assassination squads.

Even as Wyden made this timeline clear, he also revealed not only that the CIA lied to all the outside entities overseeing its torture program, but continues to lie to the American people about that program.

As Obama’s top counterterrorism advisor and an at least tangential participant in the earlier decisions on the “lethal counterterrorism authorities,” John Brennan has presumably been instrumental in the continued stonewalling of Congress. In a few weeks, he hopes to be approved to lead the CIA.

OK, But Can We Also Fire Lanny Breuer?

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I’ve lost count of how many White House petitions are seeking some kind of vengeance for the harsh treatment of Aaron Swartz. Fire Carmen Ortiz. Fire Stephen Heymann. Pardon Swartz. Commute John Kiriakou’s sentence.

One of the most ethical suggestions I’ve seen (and I’m not even sure if there is a White House petition for it) is to fix the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. [Update: Thanks to Saul Tannenbaum, here it is.]

The government should never have thrown the book at Aaron for accessing MIT’s network and downloading scholarly research. However, some extremely problematic elements of the law made it possible. We can trace some of those issues to the U.S. criminal justice system as an institution, and I suspect others will write about that in the coming days. But Aaron’s tragedy also shines a spotlight on a couple of profound flaws of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in particular and gives us an opportunity to think about how to address them.

I didn’t know Aaron personally, but he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would seek individualized solutions to systemic problems. And one of the problems with the system that destroyed him is a law that badly criminalizes actions that don’t present much harm.

Moreover, as Corey Robin argues in this post, asking Obama to take action to absolve the actions of his own government defeats the point.

Asking the state to pardon Swartz doubly empowers and exonerates the state. It cedes to the state the power to declare who is righteous and who is wrong (and thereby obscures the fact that it is the state that is the wrongful actor in this case). The petitioning language to Obama only adds to this. The statement depicts Obama as somehow the good father who stands above the fray—much like how the Tsar was depicted in the petition of the Russian workers who marched with Father Gapon on the Winter Palace in 1905 and were summarily slaughtered.

Pardoning Swartz also would allow the government, effectively, to pardon itself.

These petitions seem to serve the purpose of pretending that Swartz’ treatment was abnormal.

It was not.

Not only has Obama’s Administration treated all those who liberate information without his government’s sanction as dangerous criminals, but his DOJ has been ruthless against just about everyone who is not a Wall Street Executive.

Jesslyn Radack–who knows how aggressively Obama’s DOJ has targeted those who free information as well as anyone–discusses the legal futility of trying to go after Stephen Heymann. But she also notes that the real remedy to prevent more people from experiencing what Swartz did is to start fixing DOJ.

What might be more realistic is for citizens to demand that the Senate Judiciary Committee exercise meaningful oversight over the out-of-control Justice Department, which has waged an unprecedented, unaccountable, brutal war on whistleblowers and hackers, and to create something akin to the Church Committee to investigate the improper monitoring and targeting of hackers, whistleblowers, Occupy participants, journalists, and a numerous other groups of non-violent “offenders” who’ve done nothing to harm anyone or the country, and have been acting purely in the public interest.

It would be a good start (though SJC Chairman Patrick Leahy has been lax in examining any Obama Administrations abuses).

But there is one action Obama could take today that would both address some of the problems with his dysfunctional DOJ and attest he means to change things systematically: Fire DOJ’s Criminal Division head, Lanny Breuer.

Lanny Breuer is not the only reason Obama’s DOJ has been so aggressive (though he has been instrumental in ensuring it ignores bank crimes). There are far more senior and far less senior people who have fostered DOJ’s overreach. But Breuer runs this system. Moreover, as the head of this system of prosecutorial overreach, he has actually explicitly rewarded abuse.

If we want to fix the injustice that was done to Aaron Swartz, we need to fix the aspects of the system that rewarded such behavior. We need to fix the law that empowered the prosecutors gunning for him. We need to put some breaks on DOJ’s power. And we should start by getting rid of the guy who has fostered this culture of abuse for the last four years.

Will NYT’s Ombud Encourage a NYT Pre-Sentencing Memo for Bradley Manning, Too?

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When I first read Scott Shane’s long profile of John Kiriakou, I thought, “how interesting that the NYT is doing a piece that exposes the government’s double standards just in time for the sentencing of Kiriakou, one of their sources.”

That’s not to say I’m not glad to see the piece: the profile did more to raise the scandal of Kiriakou’s prosecution than just about anything short of a 60 Minutes piece might.

And I’m much less interested in Shane’s references to his own role in Kiriakou’s indictment

Mr. Kiriakou first stumbled into the public limelight by speaking out about waterboarding on television in 2007, quickly becoming a source for national security journalists, including this reporter, who turned up in Mr. Kiriakou’s indictment last year as Journalist B.

[snip]

After Mr. Kiriakou first appeared on ABC, talking with Brian Ross in some detail about waterboarding, many Washington reporters sought him out. I was among them. He was the first C.I.A. officer to speak about the procedure, considered a notorious torture method since the Inquisition but declared legal by the Justice Department in secret opinions that were later withdrawn.

Then I am by this passage.

In 2008, when I began working on an article about the interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, I asked him about an interrogator whose name I had heard: Deuce Martinez. He said that they had worked together to catch Abu Zubaydah, and that he would be a great source on Mr. Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.

He was able to dig up the business card Mr. Martinez had given him with contact information at Mitchell Jessen and Associates, the C.I.A. contractor that helped devise the interrogation program and Mr. Martinez’s new employer.

Mr. Martinez, an analyst by training, was retired and had never served under cover; that is, he had never posed as a diplomat or a businessman while overseas. He had placed his home address, his personal e-mail address, his job as an intelligence officer and other personal details on a public Web site for the use of students at his alma mater. Abu Zubaydah had been captured six years earlier, Mr. Mohammed five years earlier; their stories were far from secret. [my emphasis]

As I have mapped out before, the indictment strongly suggests that Kiriakou was Shane’s source for Martinez’ phone number, and with that suggestion, implies that Shane got Martinez’ identity from Kiriakou rather than one of the 23 other sources he had for the article.

With this passage, Shane rebuts what would have been a key point at trial (and may help Kiriakou in his sentencing). At least according to Shane, he not only learned of Martinez’ identity before he asked Kiriakou about it, but was able to find Martinez’ home address and email on an alumni network site. (Note, Shane doesn’t address whether Kiriakou was the source for the “magic box” technology discussed in the article, about which Kiriakou was also alleged to have lied to CIA’s Publication Review Board.)

In short, the whole article serves as a narrative pre-sentencing memo, offering a range of reasons why Kiriakou should get less than the 30 months his plea deal currently recommends.

Read more →

Blabby Brennan to Replace Publicity Petraeus at CIA?

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“He is a horrendously political animal, and there will be a tendency to politicize information to put the best spin for the administration on it.”

–An anonymous CIA officer, speaking of John Brennan, with whom he worked at CIA during the Bush Administration

As predicted, John Brennan’s past support for torture has generated only limited concern from John McCain and Dianne Feinstein, but no real threat that it will hold up his confirmation. No one, as far as I know, seems to care that Brennan was involved in Dick Cheney’s illegal wiretap program, nor that he decided to give NCTC access to the federal data of completely innocent Americans, nor his “intimate familiarity” with the genesis of NYPD’s abusive domestic spying program. And while there has been much discussion of his role in drone strikes–much of it credulously insisting Brennan wants to put order to drone strikes with an effort stalled after Mitt lost–even drone skeptics like Ron Wyden have not yet raised it as a confirmation issue.

John Cornyn’s warning that Brennan won’t be approved until the leak investigations finish is much more interesting, however.

“John Brennan has not been absolved of responsibility for the slew of high-level security leaks that have characterized this White House,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told POLITICO in a statement Monday. “This investigation needs to be resolved before his nomination can move forward.”

An aide to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “The questions about national security leaks by this administration have not yet been answered, and that will obviously be an issue as the Senate considers his nomination.”

Sure, to some degree Cornyn’s professed concern just reflects Cornyn being not only a partisan asshole, but a hypocrite about leaks.

But there seems good reason to inquire into what John Brennan’s sieve-like qualities will have on national security.

Consider his role in the exposure of the sources and methods used to set up a sting entrapping AQAP in an UndieBomb plot and with it sustaining the claim that AQAP wants to–and has the ability to–strike in the US. After the AP revealed there had been a plot (having held off at the request of the Administration), Brennan called his predecessors to spin the plot and in doing so made it clear that it was a sting, thereby exposing the British passport holder who set up the sting as an infiltrator.

At about 5:45 p.m. EDT on Monday, May 7, just before the evening newscasts, John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top White House adviser on counter-terrorism, held a small, private teleconference to brief former counter-terrorism advisers who have become frequent commentators on TV news shows.

According to five people familiar with the call, Brennan stressed that the plot was never a threat to the U.S. public or air safety because Washington had “inside control” over it.

Brennan’s comment appears unintentionally to have helped lead to disclosure of the secret at the heart of a joint U.S.-British-Saudi undercover counter-terrorism operation.

A few minutes after Brennan’s teleconference, on ABC’s World News Tonight, Richard Clarke, former chief of counter-terrorism in the ClintonWhite House and a participant on the Brennan call, said the underwear bomb plot “never came close because they had insider information, insider control.”

A few hours later, Clarke, who is a regular consultant to the network, concluded on ABC’s Nightline that there was a Western spy or double-agent in on the plot: “The U.S. government is saying it never came close because they had insider information, insider control, which implies that they had somebody on the inside who wasn’t going to let it happen.”

The White House made it clear they would have revealed the plot anyway. Indeed, they did so in an analogous situation two years earlier. And our Saudi and Yemeni partners tend to boast about such things anyway. Much of the outrage over this so-called leak served only to beat up on the AP that had exposed the aforementioned abusive NYPD program.

Nevertheless, revelations about how Brennan briefs his predecessors who then run to their respective networks to officially leak this information show that he is an enthusiastic participant in the asymmetric spread of information in DC.

But hey. We knew that.

Nevertheless, the asymmetry is key. As I’ve noted, Brennan has an interesting closeness to half of the Administration’s whistleblower prosecutions. Yet one of those prosecuted whistleblowers–John Kiriakou, whose book someone who looks exactly like Brennan helped to get published—suggested today that Brennan is “the most prolific leaker in this administration.” A former senior Administration official seems to agree.

“It’s not on people’s radar, but this could be an issue,” said the former administration official, who asked not to be named discussing a potential downside of Brennan’s nomination. “He’s a guy who comes across as a strong, silent type who never speaks, [but] he actually does a lot of talking both internally with the president and externally with select, influential reporters. … I’m not saying the guy seeks it, but [other White House officials] view him as the most credible internal mouthpiece on national security matters.”

Which brings me back to this point. It’s not just that Brennan exposes sources and methods while seemingly supporting the unprecedented prosecution of whistleblowers who do the same. But it’s also that he does so for political gain. This is not–contra Brennan’s many boosters–transparency. It’s about enforcing an official version of events that often contradicts markedly from the truth.

Mind you, it is not at all unprecedented to have a skilled leaker madly spinning Administration policies rather than leveling with the American people at CIA. That doesn’t make it good for national security, but it happens a lot.

All that said, one of yesterday’s jokes is that Brennan–a man with ties to torture and illegal wiretapping–is replacing a guy purportedly ousted for a consensual affair. There are reasons why such affairs on the part of the Director of CIA raise more concerns in the nuclear era than they might have in the past. And that nuclear tie may be the related complications cited to explain why Petraeus had to resign.

Or maybe not. In Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s recent report on Petraeus’ habit of giving the pundits who advanced his career Top Secret clearance and access to materials that might be used to oppose Administration policies, he suggested this practice was receiving new scrutiny at DOD, the kind of scrutiny that might necessitate retirement.

John Cornyn is largely being an asshole in raising Brennan’s blabby mouth in respect to his nomination. But in doing so, he may just expose the deep hypocrisy underlying this Administration’s asymmetric leaks. That may be the price Cornyn demands to rubberstamp Brennan’s CIA appointment.

Will Michael Vickers Now Be Subjected to Forced Nudity?

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If you’ve been following the Bradley Manning case at all, you know the government treats alleged leakers by inventing reasons to take away their clothes away.

So I wonder whether they’ll now subject Undersecretary of Intelligence Michael Vickers–who, DOD’s Inspector General has determined, provided the identity of a Special Operations planner to the makers of Zero Dark Thirty.

Pentagon investigators concluded that a senior Defense Department official who’s been mentioned as a possible candidate to be the next CIA director leaked restricted information to the makers of an acclaimed film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and referred the case to the Justice Department, according to knowledgeable U.S. officials.

[snip]

The case involved a determination by investigators of the Pentagon’s inspector general’s office that Vickers provided the makers of the film “Zero Dark Thirty” with the restricted name of a U.S. Special Operations Command officer who helped plan the May 2, 2011, raid on bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan, one official said.

Though perhaps the best comparison is not between Vickers and Manning, but between Vickers and Kiriakou. Both, after all, gave the name of someone who might not be all that protected to a third party so they could conduct further investigation. With both, the name did not become public via this leak.

And John Kiriakou’s headed to prison.

There’s little chance Vickers will experience a similar fate as Kiriakou though. As McClatchy notes, the Administration has already declassified a report showing Vickers providing this name. DOJ has been sitting on the referral since September. And McClatchy’s sources are discussing how this will affect Vickers’ chances of becoming CIA Director, not whether anything worse will happen.

Even Peter King, who demanded the investigation in the first place, does not want an indictment, but appears to prefer instead to politicize the fact that he hasn’t been told about Vickers’ role.

King told McClatchy that the delay in notifying him “raises the question” of whether officials were trying to put it off for political reasons, but he wanted to see the full report before drawing any conclusions.

“I’m not looking for anyone to be indicted,” he said. “But the IG does not make referrals to the Justice Department as a matter of routine. To me the fact that any information at all would be given to Hollywood producers by this administration is disgraceful.”

“If it’s wrong enough or questionable enough for the IG to refer it to the Justice Department, that means it shouldn’t have been done.” [my emphasis]

Yes, I imagine Peter King wouldn’t want to encourage top people being indicted for leaking classified information…

Which demonstrates, once again, what our classification system really is. It is not a law, to be applied neutrally to all. On the contrary, it is applied selectively, used primarily as a threat tied to higher wages tied to a clearances, but on occasion, as the premise to punish those who deviate from NatSec orthodoxy.

Update: This post originally stated Kiriakou was already in prison. He’s not. As Thomas Drake corrected me, he’s scheduled to be sentenced next month.

Zero Dark 30 “Heroine” Outed and Scarred By European Torture Judgment

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[SEE CRITICAL UPDATE BELOW]

Although many people have been long familiar with her name and career, there seems to be new buzz about the [possible] identity of the female CIA operative lionized in the bin Laden killing and talk of the town movie “Zero Dark Thirty“.

The Twitters are abuzz this morning, but this article from John Cook at Gawker last September tells the tale:

Her name is Alfreda Frances Bikowsky and, according to independent reporters Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, she is a CIA analyst who is partially responsible for intelligence lapses that led to 9/11. The two reporters recently released a “documentary podcast” called “Who Is Richard Blee?” about the chief of the agency’s bin Laden unit in the immediate run-up to the 9/11 attacks and featuring interviews with former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, former CIA agent Bob Baer, Looming Tower author Lawrence Wright, 9/11 Commission co-chairman Tom Keane, and others. In it, Nowosielski and Duffy make the case that Bikowsky and another CIA agent named Michael Anne Casey deliberately declined to tell the White House and the FBI that Khalid al-Mihdhar, an Al Qaida affiliate they were tracking, had obtained a visa to enter the U.S. in the summer of 2001. Al-Mihdhar was one of the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 77. The CIA lost track of him after he entered the U.S.

Bikowsky was also, according to Nowosielski and Duffy, instrumentally involved in one of the CIA’s most notorious fuck-ups—the kidnapping, drugging, sodomizing, and torture of Khalid El-Masri in 2003 (El-Masri turned out to be the wrong guy, and had nothing to do with terrorism). As the Associated Press’ Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo reported earlier this year, an analyst they described only by her middle name—”Frances”—pressed for El-Masri to be abducted even though some in the agency weren’t convinced he was the terrorist that Frances suspected he was. Instead of being punished or fired for the error, “Frances” was eventually promoted to running the Global Jihad Unit by then-CIA director Michael Hayden. According to Goldman and Apuzzo’s story, “Hayden told colleagues that he gave Frances a pass because he didn’t want to deter initiative within the counterterrorism ranks.”

My, my, the CIA does have problems keeping secrets lately, don’t they? A point saliently noted by Marcy in relation to both Matt Bissonnette and the Mexican “trainers” who were involved in in an ambush. I guess the de rigueur Obama Administration leak prosecution will be along any second.

It is fairly amazing Bikowsky’s name has been kept out of the real limelight surrounding [speculation on] Zero Dark Thirty this long, considering her known involvement in the other issues, especially the one about gleefully horning in on the torture show viewing [which Bikowsky did in regards to KSM]. An attitude that speaks volumes as to Read more →

Confirmed: Dutch Ruppersberger, NSA Intercepts, and Deep Hypocrisy on Leaks

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WSJ has a tick-tock of how the talking points on Benghazi developed. It confirms two of the things I noted yesterday. The Intelligence Community developed the talking points behind the pseudo-scandal pursuant to a request from Dutch Ruppersberger.

Later on Sept. 13, then-director David Petraeus presented the CIA’s initial findings to the Senate Intelligence Committee. His conclusions mirrored that morning’s intelligence reporting. He said the attack began “spontaneously” following the protest in Cairo over the video. He also discussed the reports of involvement of Ansar al-Sharia and the al Qaeda affiliate and called the assault a terrorist attack.

Mr. Petraeus presented the same findings the next day to the House intelligence panel, whose top Democrat, Maryland Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger, requested unclassified talking points for lawmakers to use when speaking about the attack.

And the IC decide to withhold the information about a tie to AQIM in part because they were NSA intercepts.

After rounds of bureaucratic exchanges, the CIA officials seeking to remove al Qaeda won the argument, and officials agreed to retain the umbrella term “extremists” but drop the mention of al Qaeda.

The term represented a hedge the CIA used because the attack’s links to al Qaeda had yet to be confirmed. This argument was that including the name would have required additional wording to indicate uncertainty about the al Qaeda links—language that could have opened additional avenues for misinterpretation.

The information was derived from what was seen as a “tenuous” source—intercepts of phone calls between suspected militants saying that al Qaeda-linked militants took part in the attack. The evidence was deemed by some of the intelligence officials to be inconclusive.

Eliminating references to al Qaeda also would protect sources, some of the officials argued. With so few suspected al Qaeda-affiliated militants taking part in the attacks, officials were concerned that fingering al Qaeda in official information would tip them off that they were being monitored. Read more →

When Overseers Become Talking Heads

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The entire Benghazi pseudo-scandal can reportedly be traced back to House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger’s request for talking points he could use to respond to journalists.

Three days after the lethal attack on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya, Representative C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, asked intelligence agencies to write up some unclassified talking points on the episode. Reporters were besieging him and other legislators for comment, and he did not want to misstate facts or disclose classified information.

More than 10 weeks later, the four pallid sentences that intelligence analysts cautiously delivered are the unlikely center of a quintessential Washington drama, in which a genuine tragedy has been fed into the meat grinder of election-year politics.

Before I get too far, remember that Ruppersberger (D-NSA) is one of the geniuses who believe the way to stem leaks is to prevent intelligence professionals from giving background briefings. Remember, too, that the talking points that have caused so much trouble were almost certainly tweaked to protect the intercepts Ruppersberger’s constituent, the NSA, had collected. Nevertheless, this guy, who presumably supports the principle of not telling militants we’ve got their phone tapped, and who thinks people with a more developed understanding of sensitivities around intelligence should not be able to brief the press directly, had to have his talking points so he could talk to the press himself.

Ruppersberger’s inconsistency on this point reminded me that after the super secret drone killing of some American citizens last year, the Gang of Four all weighed in to assure Americans that Anwar al-Awlaki’s death was “legitimate” because there had been “a process.” The Gang’s loquacity contrasted sharply with the Administration’s silence on the very same issue, one reiterated since in the Administration’s Glomar claims about topics the Gang of Four feels welcome to discuss. That contrast is all the more troubling given that Ruppersberger admitted that the Gang of Four does not know who is on the Kill List (and therefore didn’t really know whether the killing of Samir Khan was “legitimate”).

It’s all very neat. Not only does the Gang of Four enjoy immunity from prosecution under the Speech or Debate Clause. But they were–and presumably are–serving as journalistic sources on topics about which they aren’t (though legally should be) fully informed.

Last week Julian Sanchez and Mike Masnick rehashed an earlier version of this, when the Bush Administration armed the Intelligence Committees with talking points that would reinforce their lies that the Terrorist Surveillance Program constituted the entirety of the illegal wiretap program.

Note what that does to the whole question of “legitimacy.” The Gang of Four only knows what Administration and agency officials tell them.  Yet, even in spite of potential and real limits to their knowledge of a program (and a history of deliberately misleading briefings on such topics), they will weigh in and declare something “legitimate.”

We have a problem in this country with the way our intelligence community communicates publicly (see Dan Drezner and Nada Bakos addressing different aspects of this problem.)

But the solution clearly is not the one the national security establishment increasingly appears to be adopting: to turn the four men and women who purportedly exercise the only oversight of the most sensitive programs into talking heads. That process almost certainly ensures incomplete briefing of these “overseers.” Worse, still, it guarantees a kind of complicity that makes the overseers-turned-talking-heads useless for oversight.

WIth their push to limit background briefings, the Gang of Four have raised their own stock as journalistic sources. But they’ve also further gutted the inadequate oversight we’ve got over intelligence.

General Dynamics: The Digital Tale of John & Jill and Dave & Paula

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DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO TAMPA BAY??

Another giant shoe has dropped in L’Affaire Petraeus. Not simply more specifics, but yet another General:

Gen. John Allen, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, is under investigation for what a senior defense official said early Tuesday was “inappropriate communication’’ with Jill Kelley, the woman in Tampa who was seen as a rival for David H. Petraeus’s attentions by Paula Broadwell, the woman who had an extramarital affair with Mr. Petraeus.

In a statement released to reporters on his plane en route to Australia early Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said that the F.B.I. had informed him on Sunday of its investigation of General Allen.

Mr. Panetta turned the matter over to the Pentagon’s inspector general to conduct its own investigation into what the defense official said were 20,000 to 30,000 pages of documents, many of them e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley, who is married with children.

Really, at this point, what can you even say about the secret storm soap opera that roils within the rarified brass air of the US Military? This was just the last hit for a night that saw the emergence of the Shirtless FBI Guy (now under investigation himself by the Office of Professional Responsibility at DOJ) to a nightime search of Paula Broadwell’s home by the FBI.

There are too many tentacles, evolving too quickly, to go too deep on all the facts that have rolled out even in the last twelve hours. But the General Allen/Jill Kelley bit is fascinating. Remember, the handful of emails Paula Broadwell sent to Kelley reportedly did not mention Petraeus by name. This latest report at least raises the possibility Broadwell was referring to an inappropriate relationship between Kelley and Allen, and not Kelley and Petraeus. I am not saying such is Read more →