The House Judiciary Committee Preens in Full Ignorance at Leaks Hearing

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The headline that has come out of yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on leaks is that the Committee may subpoena people. As US News correctly reports, one push for subpoenas came from a John Conyers ploy trying to call Republican members’ bluff; he basically asked how they could be sure who leaked the stories in question and if they were they should just subpoena those people to testify to the committee.

It’s a testament to the thin knowledge of these stories that none of the Republicans responded, “John Brennan.” But then, even if they had, the committee would quickly get into trouble trying to subpoena Brennan as National Security Advisors (and Deputy NSAs) have traditionally been excused from Congressional subpoena for deliberation reasons, a tradition reinforced by Bush’s approach with Condi Rice.

Ah well. I’m sure we’re going to have some amusing theater of Jim Sensenbrenner trying to force Conyers to come up with some names now.

The other big push for subpoenas, though, came from Trey Gowdy. Partly because he wanted to create an excuse to call a Special Prosecutor and partly because, just because, he was most interested in subpoenaing some journalists. And in spite of the way that former Assistant Attorney General Ken Wainstein patiently explained why there are good, national security, reasons why DOJ is hesitant to subpoena journalists, Gowdy wouldn’t let up.

But what concerned me more is that no one–not a single person on the House committee that oversees DOJ–explained that DOJ doesn’t need to subpoena journalists to find out who they’ve been talking to. They’ve given themselves the authority to get journalist call records in national security cases without Attorney General approval.

That’s a detail every member of the committee should know, particularly if they’re going to hold hearings about whether DOJ can adequately investigate leaks. And while I expect Trey Gowdy to be ignorant, it seems they all are ignorant of this detail.

There was another display of ignorance I find troubling for a different reason. Dan Lungren suggested that he learned of what we’re doing with StuxNet from David Sanger’s reports. He rightly noted that–as the Chair of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity–he ought to learn these things from the government, not the NYT. And while his ignorance of StuxNet’s escape may be due to the timing of his ascension to the Subcommittee Chair (most members of the Gang of Four, except Dianne Feinstein, would not have gotten briefed on early stages of StuxNet, when someone should have told the government what a boneheaded plan it was), the Subcommittee still should be aware that our own recklessness has made us vulnerable in dangerous new ways.

Perhaps the most telling detail of the hearing, though, came from retired Colonel Kenneth Allard. He was brought on, I guess, to label what we did with StuxNet an act of war (without, of course, considering whether that is the problem rather than the exposure that both Republican and Democratic Administrations are engaging in illegal war without telling anyone). In his comments, he went so far as to say that “What Mr. Sanger did is equivalent of having KGB operation run against White House.”

Someone had to accuse the journalists of being enemy spies.

But Allard’s statement reveals where all this comes from: personal pique against the NYT for coverage they’ve done on him. Not only did he complain that David Sanger’s publisher didn’t give the New York Journal of Books, for which he writes reviews, an advance copy, but also that the NYT reported on the scam the Pentagon set up to give select Generals and Colonels inside information to spin favorably on TV.

Third, I have personally experienced what it feels like when the NYT deliberately distorts national security information, even to the point of plagiarism. On April 20, 2008, the NYT published an inflammatory expose: “Behind Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand” by David Barstow. The Times’ article charged that over 70 retired officers, including me, had misused our positions while serving as military analysts with the broadcast and cable TV networks. Read more →

Security Clearance Tyranny

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Let’s review three data points on security clearances. They’ll show that our system of security clearances are increasingly becoming an arbitrary system of control that does more to foster cowed national security employees than to foster actual national security.

We’ve already discussed one of these data points: James Clapper’s decision to add an as-yet undefined question to Intelligence Community polygraphs probing unauthorized (but not authorized) disclosure of classified information.

First, those agencies within the IC that have mandatory lie detector tests will add an unspecified question about “unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”

(1) mandating that a question related to unauthorized disclosure of classified information be added to the counterintelligence polygraph used by all intelligence agencies that administer the examination (CIA, DIA, DOE, FBI, NGA, NRO, and NSA).

Not only does this cover just some who might have access to classified information, leaving some agencies, contractors, Congressional employees, and White House employees, not to mention our international intelligence partners, in the clear. But it also brackets off the “authorized” disclosure of classified information.

It’s a bad decision because it doesn’t end the asymmetrical abuse of classified information and it’s a bad decision because polygraphs are unreliable.

But it’s also unreliable because at least one of the IC agencies involved slated for this new question–the National Reconnaissance Office–has already been conducting fishing expeditions during polygraphs to find sensitive information.

The National Reconnaissance Office is so intent on extracting confessions of personal or illicit behavior that officials have admonished polygraphers who refused to go after them and rewarded those who did, sometimes with cash bonuses, a McClatchy investigation found.

The disclosures include a wide range of behavior and private thoughts such as drug use, child abuse, suicide attempts, depression and sexual deviancy. The agency, which oversees the nation’s spy satellites, records the sessions that were required for security clearances and stores them in a database.

As McClatchy reports, the NRO pursued such confessions–which are outside the scope of what they’re supposed to ask–even after they were warned to stop.

What’s particularly troubling is that the NRO is not using this information–or not in the most obvious way, by prosecuting those who reveal past crimes. Read more →

Failed Overseers Prepare to Legislate Away Successful Oversight

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Before I talk about the Gang of Four’s proposed ideas to crack down on leaks, let’s review what a crop of oversight failures these folks are.

The only one of the Gang of Four who has stayed out of the media of late–Dutch Ruppersberger–has instead been helping Mike Rogers push reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act through the House Intelligence Committee with no improvements and no dissents. In other words, Ruppersberger has delivered for his constituent–the NSA–in spite of the evidence the government is wiretapping those pesky little American citizens Ruppersberger should be serving.

Then there’s Rogers himself, who has been blathering to the press about how these leaks are the most damaging in history. He supported such a claim, among other ways, by suggesting people (presumably AQAP) would assume for the first time we (or the Saudis or the Brits) have infiltrators in their network.

Some articles within this “parade” of leaks, Rogers said late last week, “included at least the speculation of human source networks that now — just out of good counterintelligence activities — they’ll believe is real, even if its not real. It causes huge problems.”

Which would assume Rogers is unaware that the last time a Saudi infiltrator tipped us off to a plot, that got exposed too (as did at least one more of their assets). And it would equally assume Rogers is unaware that Mustafa Alani and other “diplomatic sources” are out there claiming the Saudis have one agent or informant infiltrated into AQAP regions for every 850 Yemeni citizens.

In short, Rogers’ claim is not credible in the least.

Though Rogers seems most worried that the confirmation–or rather, reconfirmation–that the US and Israel are behind StuxNet might lead hackers to try similar tricks on us and/or that the code–which already escaped–might escape.

Rogers, who would not confirm any specific reports, said that mere speculation about a U.S. cyberattack against Iran has enabled bad actors. The attack would apparently be the first time the U.S. used cyberweapons in a sustained effort to damage another country’s infrastructure. Other nations, or even terrorists or hackers, might now believe they have justification for their own cyberattacks, Rogers said.

This could have devastating effects, Rogers warned. For instance, he said, a cyberattack could unintentionally spread beyond its intended target and get out of control because the Web is so interconnected. “It is very difficult to contain your attack,” he said. “It takes on a very high degree of sophistication to reach out and touch one thing…. That’s why this stuff is so concerning to me.”

Really, though, Rogers is blaming the wrong people. He should be blaming the geniuses who embraced such a tactic and–if it is true the Israelis loosed the beast intentionally–the Israelis most of all.

And while Rogers was not a Gang of Four member when things started going haywire, his colleague in witch hunts–Dianne Feinstein–was. As I’ve already noted, one of the problems with StuxNet is that those, like DiFi, who had an opportunity to caution the spooks either didn’t have enough information to do so–or had enough information but did not do their job.The problem, then, is not leaks; it’s inadequacy of oversight.

In short, Rogers and Ruppersberger and Chambliss ought to be complaining about DiFi, not collaborating with her in thwarting oversight.

Finally, Chambliss, the boss of the likely sources out there bragging about how unqualified they are to conduct intelligence oversight, even while boasting about the cool videogames they get to watch in SCIFs, appears to want to toot his horn rather the conduct oversight.

Which brings me back to the point of this post, before I got distracted talking about how badly the folks offering these “solutions” to leaks are at oversight.

Their solutions:

Discussions are ongoing over just how stringent new provisions should be as the Senate targets leakers in its upcoming Intelligence Authorization bill, according to a government source.

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SCOTUS Conservatives in Anonymous Disarray

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I expressed skepticism about the part of Jan Crawford’s story confirming John Roberts flipped his vote on ObamaCare that claimed Roberts had no role in writing the dissent.

Finally, there is Crawford’s not entirely convincing explanation for the relics in the dissent that seem to suggest Roberts had a hand in crafting the dissent, too.

The two sources say suggestions that parts of the dissent were originally Roberts’ actual majority decision for the Court are inaccurate, and that the dissent was a true joint effort.

The fact that the joint dissent doesn’t mention Roberts’ majority was not a sign of sloppiness, the sources said, but instead was a signal the conservatives no longer wished to engage in debate with him.

If true, those relics, which violate normal protocol for referring to other opinions, reflect a very big affront to Roberts’ governing opinion.

Salon now has a single anonymous source disputing Crawford’s two anonymous sources on this point.

Crawford’s sources insist on the claim that the joint dissent was authored specifically in response to Roberts’ majority opinion, without any participation from him at any point in the drafting process that created it. It would, after all, be fairly preposterous for the four dissenters to jointly “author” an opinion that was in large part written originally by the author of the majority opinion to which the joint dissenters were now so flamboyantly objecting.

Yet that, I am told by a source within the court with direct knowledge of the drafting process, is exactly what happened. My source insists that “most of the material in the first three quarters of the joint dissent was drafted in Chief Justice Roberts’ chambers in April and May.” Only the last portion of what eventually became the joint dissent was drafted without any participation by the chief justice.

[snip]

Roberts’ chamber did much of the drafting of the [first 46 pages of the dissent, which don’t mention Roberts’ opinion], and none of the [last 19 pages, which do mention it]. In short, it appears Chief Justice Roberts ended up in large part authoring both the majority opinion and the dissent in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius.

Set aside the fact we’ve got a anonymous leak war going on, with neither side inherently garnering credibility. Set aside what Salon’s report, if correct, would suggest about Roberts.

I want to focus on what it means that comity in the court has broken down in this way. If Crawford’s report comes, as many suspected, from the conservative justices themselves, it would suggest they leaked a transparently illogical cover story (in that it didn’t explain the relics that made everyone suspicious about the dissent in the first place). They not only broke SCOTUS protocol about leaks, but did so and, reportedly, lied in doing so.

Then you’ve got a quick response from someone–could this be a Roberts clerk? one of the other conservatives?–calling out that purported lie.

To what end? To shift the emphasis on Roberts’ fickleness? To try to tone down the confrontational claims at the heart of the Crawford piece? And if another of the conservatives is behind the Salon report, then how do the original leakers feel about the story? What are the political objectives of each side of this anonymous leak war?

And all this is just what we can see through the screen of anonymity. The rancor this expresses must be worse in person.

Even if it’s all anonymous, I gotta say, I’m glad this leak fest has revealed the conservative justices in all their bitchy glory.

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Chief Justice Roberts, Flipped Votes, and the Naked Partisans

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Yesterday Barack Obama discovered the one high-rankng Republican in the country who would help him raise taxes: John Roberts.

While the political (how will yesterday’s ruling affect both the Presidential and lower ticket races in November) and pragmatic (what red states will turn down tons of Federal money to provide health care for their poor) consequences of yesterday’s decision are still playing out, I’m quite interested in the Kremlinology over Roberts’ vote.

Because the unsigned dissent on the mandate refers to Justice Ginsburg’s opinion as itself the dissent–and for a slew more reasons–a number of people think that Roberts originally joined the conservatives, but then flipped at a late moment. (See here and here for a discussion of the evidence supporting that argument, see here for an alternative explanation.)

Then there are questions about why Roberts voted, for the first time, with just the liberal block, his first swing vote on one of the highest profile cases of his tenure. Was it to save the respectability of the Court? To gut the commerce clause? To serve his one consistent constituency, corporations?

The answer to those questions, too, are still playing out.

I can’t help but see this in another context. This decision was the last opportunity for SCOTUS to help defeat Barack Obama. They helped mightily with Citizens United and again with their rejection of the Montana campaign finance case. The Court came close to helping on voting rights and redistricting. The Republicans in the Roberts court has done a lot to make sure Obama doesn’t get to pick anymore of their future colleagues.

But yesterday’s decision had a big impact on the the course of this year’s election. Had the Administration lost, I do think they hypothetically could have used the loss as a rallying point, though in practice they have never shown the ability to win this political argument or even try in concerted fashion, so the more likely outcome would have been a setback at the polls. I do think given Mitt’s embrace of the dissent–rejecting insurance for those with pre-existing conditions, among other things–Democrats ought to be able to spin his opposition to great advantage. Yet I also agree with those who argue that neither Obama nor Mitt have an incentive to talk much about healthcare moving forward. Congressional races are another thing altogether, as the GOP will try to run on a promise to overturn ObamaCare.

Alll that said, I’m most struck by the naked partisan face that has emerged in recent days. While the dissent was largely an angry legalistic screed, the decision–to overturn all of ObamaCare–was radical in its intent. Ginsburg’s opinion’s frequent reliance on the Massachusetts example, RomneyCare, was a nice partisan touch. Most all there’s the haunting dissent to the SB 1070 ruling that Scalia read on Monday, using slavery-era law to argue that states could exclude undesirables from their state (to say nothing of Alito’s defense of life in prison for teenagers).

Roberts may be a corporatist, but the other four conservatives are showing far uglier faces of late.

Then there’s this detail. Amanda Terkel noted Jim DeMint saying conservatives had been “teased” into believing SCOTUS would overturn ObamaCare for them, doing as activist judges what even Erick Erickson now accepts must be done by politics.

“Teased”? What does that mean? Was DeMint “teased” with the results before Roberts flipped, if he did? Did DeMint have reason to believe the five conservatives had taken the radical step of overturning all of ObamaCare?

I don’t know the answer to that, but I will say that the dissenters yesterday have clerks and other staffers who, with a half hour’s work, could have hid the most obvious relics of John Roberts’ flip, if that’s what he did. Search and replace: “dissent,” “concurrence.” That is, if indeed Roberts flipped his vote, then it seems likely that the angry Republicans deliberately left evidence that would lead us all to speculate if not conclude he had done so.

SCOTUS doesn’t leak, Jack Goldsmith says, because it doesn’t bring the same political leverage that leaking does for Executive branch employees.

The justices benefit from the reality and mystique of secrecy, and gain nothing from a leak. A justice can frame a case to the public in a written opinion and wins no internal leverage (and likely loses some) from disclosing the disposition of a case prematurely.

[snip]

Emboldened lower level officials become disrespectful of the secrecy system and sometimes disclose classified information to spin an operation in their favor, to settle a bureaucratic score, or to appear important.

Whether or not Jim DeMint learned how the Court voted some time ago, if it’s true Roberts flipped his vote, then it seems likely the other conservatives–the ones serving an even uglier partisan ideology than Roberts’ raw corporatism–believe they benefit from making that known now, after the fact.

They delivered their side of the bargain, the clues in the dissent show. And they seem to want that known.

James Clapper’s Anti-Leak Efforts Will Increase Information Asymmetry

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As Charlie Savage and others report, Director of National Security James Clapper has instituted new efforts to crack down on leaks. The plan has two aspects. First, those agencies within the IC that have mandatory lie detector tests will add an unspecified question about “unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”

(1) mandating that a question related to unauthorized disclosure of classified information be added to the counterintelligence polygraph used by all intelligence agencies that administer the examination (CIA, DIA, DOE, FBI, NGA, NRO, and NSA).

Not only does this cover just some who might have access to classified information, leaving some agencies, contractors, Congressional employees, and White House employees, not to mention our international intelligence partners, in the clear. But it also brackets off the “authorized” disclosure of classified information. Heck, it might not even cover any of the leaks currently under investigation.

Then there’s the authorization of IC Inspectors General to investigate leaks that DOJ declines to pursue.

(2) requesting the Intelligence Community Inspector General lead independent investigations of selected unauthorized disclosure cases when prosecution is declined by the Department of Justice. The IC IG will establish and lead a task force of IC inspectors general to conduct ind ependent investigations, pursuant to his statutory authority and in coordination with the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive. This will ensure that selected unauthorized disclosure cases suitable for administrative investigations are not closed prematurely.

As Savage has noted (and this report he links makes clear) the vast majority of leaks are not prosecuted. That’s partly because information is so widely distributed that identifying a sole leaker becomes legally problematic if not impossible more generally. In addition, many leak prosecutions would risk disclosing more classified information than simply letting the alleged leaker go free (this is probably why the Bush and Obama Administrations tried to trump up a charge against Thomas Drake rather than charge known leakers who exposed the illegal wiretap program).

Clapper’s solution will instead have Inspectors General pursue suspected leakers instead. Not only would this free investigative methods from evidentiary rules (so for example, IGs might use wiretaps and other intrusive investigative techniques because they would never need to be disclosed or not in court). The secrecy of such investigations would also make the exposure of selective prosecution impossible. And given the impunity with which the government can give or withdraw clearances, it would mean those unfairly targeted would have no recourse.

All this might be less problematic if the IC IG hadn’t already proven himself to serve government cover-ups rather than the citizens of this country. But as it is, this scheme is ripe for abuse.

Which won’t end leaking. Instead, it’ll make whistleblowing even riskier, as compared with sanctioned leaks, than it already is. Which, so long as Congressional oversight committees refuse to exercise any oversight, will mean the intelligence committee will operate with further unchecked power.

Pro-Drone Leaks from the Leak Witch Hunt Committees

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There are several interesting details in this story describing the claimed attention with which the Intelligence Committees oversee drone killing.

But let’s start with the fact that it largely relies on anonymous staffers from the Intelligence Committees (as well as on-the-record comments Dianne Feinstein has made in other contexts, and two on-the-record quotes from Democratic Congressmen).

“You can see exactly what is going on,” said a senior congressional aide, who, like other officials, spoke about the highly classified program on the condition he not be identified.

[snip]

“I don’t know that we’ve ever seen anything that we thought was inappropriate,” one senior staff member said.

Still, the drone program is under far more scrutiny than in the past, congressional officials say.

[snip]

Members of the oversight committees are limited in their ability to challenge the CIA’s conclusions, a senior staff member cautioned. “I can watch video all day long — I’m not an imagery analyst,” he said. “I can only look to see if the description reasonably concurs with what my untrained eyes are seeing.”

This, in spite of the facts in the article–to say nothing of recent government court filings–making it clear that the program is compartmented.

The lawmakers and aides with the intelligence oversight committees have a level of access shared only by President Obama, his top aides and a small number of CIA officials.

Of particular note, while the article makes clear that HPSCI senior policy advisor and Naval Reserve intelligence officer Tom Corcoran (who it describes as someone with real expertise in reviewing intelligence) did not comment for the article, it does not say whether two former Ag Committee staffers working for Saxby Chambliss on SSCI commented or not.

There’s a lot else in this article deserving of attention: its silence about the oversight of JSOC strikes (which derives from the different oversight rules for the military), conflicting details about the Abu Yahya al Libi strike, the assumptions expressed about visual evidence and real knowledge.

But most of all, I find it notable that just weeks after these staffers’ bosses have declared war on leaks, they’re out there, leaking to spin their bosses’ desired narrative that the bosses exercise adequate oversight over a controversial program.

Vaccination and Leak Wars

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In spite of the fact that the Administration’s cooperation with Hollywood on an Osama bin Laden flick is included among the leaks Republicans want investigated, there has been no discussion about how the CIA’s use of a vaccination program as cover got reported in the press.

Now that a Pakistani Taliban leader, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, has frozen polio vaccinations for 161,000 children, maybe we ought to look more closely at that leak, which (along with the terrible judgment to use it as CIA cover in the first place) is officially putting thousands of children–and the effort to completely eradicate polio generally–at risk.

The Leak War

As I noted last year, the vaccination cover was not among the things Administration officials discussed for Eric Schmidle’s propagandistic account of the OBL raid; for that, he relied–alone among all details on the raid–on the Guardian’s report on the vaccination cover. And while the Guardian is generally credited with breaking the story–at least in the English and American press–the story appeared a month and a half after the doctor in question, Shakeel Afridi, was arrested three weeks after the raid. A version of the Guardian story, with additional reporting from Jonathan Landay, appeared the same day in McClatchy.

The ISI learned of Afridi’s role in their own investigation of the OBL raid.

Pakistani intelligence became aware of the doctor’s activities during the investigation into the US raid in which Bin Laden was killed on the top floor of the Abbottabad house.

A source quoted by the Guardian–a Pakistani official–described how irregular the doctor’s actions were, which may have tipped them off.

“The whole thing was totally irregular,” said one Pakistani official. “Bilal Town is a well-to-do area. Why would you choose that place to give free vaccines? And what is the official surgeon of Khyber doing working in Abbottabad?”

Subsequent reports make it clear Afridi told his colleagues enough–that he had business in Abbottabad–that might have roused suspicion.

His medical colleagues at Jamrud Hospital in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber tribal agency suspected he was having an extramarital affair. When they asked Dr. Shakeel Afridi, the hospital’s chief surgeon, why he was absent so often last spring, he replied curtly that he had “business” to attend to in Abbottabad. The mystery only grew when one doctor accused Afridi of having taken a half-dozen World Health Organization cooler boxes without authorization. The containers are for keeping vaccines fresh during inoculation campaigns, and yet no immunization drives were underway in Abbottabad—or the Khyber agency either, for that matter.

In addition, the nurse who went into OBL’s compound, Mukhtar Bibi, would have realized after the fact what she had been involved in–though she did not speak with the Guardian.

A nurse known as Bakhto, whose full name is Mukhtar Bibi, managed to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound to administer the vaccines. According to several sources, the doctor, who waited outside, told her to take in a handbag that was fitted with an electronic device. It is not clear what the device was, or whether she left it behind. It is also not known whether the CIA managed to obtain any Bin Laden DNA, although one source suggested the operation did not succeed.

Mukhtar Bibi, who was unaware of the real purpose of the vaccination campaign, would not comment on the programme.

In other words, Afridi’s colleagues and Abbottabad locals would have known enough to be suspicious, and the ISI presumably learned of these suspicions and arrested and interrogated the doctor (they learned the name of his CIA handler, for example).

The Guardian cites the following sources: Pakistani and US officials and residents of Abbottabad.

The US sources seem to have been trying to pressure the Pakistanis for investigating how CIA found OBL rather than how OBL managed to hide for so long.

American officials are concerned that Pakistan is more focused on finding out how the CIA tracked down bin Laden than on determining how he managed to remain undetected for as long as five years in Abbottabad, a military garrison town where the nation’s premier military academy is less than a mile from the bin Laden compound. So far, no one is known to have been arrested for helping to hide bin Laden.

None of that reveals who first went to the press with this story, though it seems like it arose in response to or conjunction with US efforts to put more pressure on Pakistan. Perhaps the US sources revealed that the Pakistanis still held one of the people who had helped find OBL, and the Pakistanis responded by revealing what he had been doing? Or perhaps the Pakistais responded to US pressure by revealing what the doctor had been doing, and the US downplayed the efficacy of it, noting (for example) that they had not succeeded in obtaining OBL’s DNA.

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Sheldon Adelson Could Buy Bibi a Very Effective October Surprise

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The Internet is abuzz today with Sheldon Adelson’s announcement that he has already donated $10 million to Mitt Romney’s SuperPAC and plans to provide limitless donations to defeat Obama.

Forbes has confirmed that billionaire Sheldon Adelson, along with his wife Miriam, has donated $10 million to the leading Super PAC supporting presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney–and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. A well-placed source in the Adelson camp with direct knowledge of the casino billionaire’s thinking says that further donations will be “limitless.”

But the attention is mostly focused on the sheer numbers he’s talking about, not what it suggests that Adelson–who already spent buckets of money to try to defeat Mitt in the primary–has now promised limitless donations to defeat Obama.

This is about Likud trying to decide the American elections.

Adelson doesn’t hide the fact that this donation is about Israel as much as it is Obama’s “socialism.”

Adelson, this source continues, believes that “no price is too high” to protect the U.S. from what he sees as Obama’s “socialization” of America, as well as securing the safety of Israel. He added that Adelson, 78, considers this to be the most important election of his lifetime.

Nor is it surprising he’s doing this. More than he is for any of these American politicians, Adelson is Bibi Netanyahu’s Sugar Daddy. And Obama has been remarkably successful thus far in stymying Bibi’s goal of forcing the US to attack Iran. In addition to the sanctions regime that has brought about negotiations, in recent months, the Administration has leaked both a white paper showing that an Iran attack would do nothing but set off a regional war and news of the bases in Azerbaijan Israel would use if it unilaterally attacked Iran. David Sanger quoted Presidential briefers and Joe Biden–Bibi’s old nemesis–blaming Israel for freeing StuxNet, possibly intentionally. Leon Panetta has, on the record, told the entire world, including Iran, when Israel planned to attack. (I actually thought Panetta’s latest 60 Minutes appearance might have been an attempt to placate Israel.)

It may appear to us that the Administration continues typical American policy of capitulating to Israel. But the Obama Administration has taken surprisingly strong measures to push back against Israel.

And now Sheldon Adelson has promised to use unlimited funds to get rid of President Obama.

As much as the money concerns me, that’s not what I worry about the most. The Israelis have never been shy about running off-the-books operations to influence our policies. Indeed, they played a role in Iran-Contra, the start of which goes back to the last October Surprise plot to make sure a Democrat didn’t get reelected in 1980. And the state of affairs in Israel’s neighborhood (both Syria and Egypt would be excellent candidates, though if I were Turkey I’d be cautious, too) is such that it would be very very very easy to create an October Surprise that would make it a lot harder for Obama to get reelected.

Bibi’s Sugar Daddy just announced the world he will do anything in his power to defeat Obama. You can be sure Bibi feels the same way.

Update: Iran/Israel confusion fixed, h/t vl.

“The Yemeni situation and … the Iranian cyber situation”

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As MadDog noted yesterday, Dianne Feinstein seemed to answer a question I’ve written about here and here regarding the scope of the leak investigations.

She said the U.S. attorneys would not face political pressures from the Obama administration and would “call the shots as they see them.”

“We can move ahead much more rapidly,” Feinstein said. “Instead of one special prosecutor, you essentially have two here, one is the Yemeni situation and the other is the Iranian cyber situation. I think you’re going to get there much quicker.”

I’m not sure I agree with MD, though, that “the UndieBomb 2.0 and the Stuxnet leaks are the ones being investigated,” meaning implicitly that just those two “leaks” are being investigated.

DiFi’s quote seems to confirm that there is a distinct investigation into the source of the detail (one of the only new parts of David Sanger’s StuxNet reporting) that Israel let StuxNet free, possibly deliberately. Since Eric Holder suggested there was a jurisdictional component to his choice of US Attorneys on these investigations, we can assume that Rod Rosenstein, US Attorney for the National Security Agency, will investigate that alleged leak.

But what does DiFi include when she says, “the Yemeni situation”? Does it include only the leaks about UndieBomb 2.0? And if so, why isn’t it being investigated out of Eastern District of VA, the CIA’s US Attorney district, which purportedly had a lead on that operation in the US?

Further, MD suggested (though did not say explicitly) this means they’re not investigating the drone targeting leaks.

Now, as I’ve noted, one possible reason they wouldn’t investigate the drone targeting “leaks” would be if the stories reported falsehoods or–more charitably–a drone targeting process that was no longer in place, as the AP has reported to be the case and the White House, in their response to the AP story, seemed to confirm. That is, one possible reason why they wouldn’t investigate the “leaks” about drone targeting would be because those stories did not report accurate classified information (and I’ll remind here that the Klaidman story differs in some notable ways from the Joby Warrick story, which we now know came in part from Rahm Emanuel’s effort to publicize Baitullah Mehsud’s killing).

But there’s another possibility. I’m struck by DiFi’s description of “the Yemeni situation” rather than–as most people refer to it–the “thwarted” bomb “plot.” It’s possible that in DiFi’s mind–the mind of a Gang of Four member who has presumably been briefed on our ongoing operations in Yemen–that the leak of the bomb sting, the leak of the Saudi role in it, and the stories that made it clear that John Brennan is running a secret war against Yemeni insurgents using signature strikes out of the NSC largely at the behest of the Saudis all constitute for her “the Yemeni situation.” UndieBomb 2.0 is a part of that secret war–perhaps the legal justification for US involvement in it (and also a useful way to remove an asset and a key handler before the drones start wreaking havoc). But if this speculation is right, it may well be the other details–the report that this war is being run out of NSC, the details that make it clear we’re targeting insurgents, not just AQAP, the fact that we’re clearly in an undeclared war–that DiFi worries about most.

Mind you, this is all supposition. It may be that DiFi was just using shorthand for the UndieBomb 2.0 plot. But to a great degree, all the stories about drone targeting were efforts to expose–and then cover up–the war we’re engaging in Yemen. And that does seem like a secret the Administration is trying to prevent the American public from learning about.