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Erik Prince, Sanctions, and Mineral Wealth

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Let me start by laying out a few details about Erik Prince that have been reported of late.

  • Prince recently gave a speech I interpreted as a proposal for private contractors to serve as big oil’s enforcer–including in Nigeria and Iran
  • Blackwater illegally tried (but allegedly failed) to negotiate a deal to train guards for southern Sudan; as part of the deal, Blackwater would be paid with 50% of Sudan’s mineral wealth
  • The US is close, again, to not prosecuting Blackwater and instead simply fining it for that illegal contracting attempt and other export control violations
  • Anonymous sources say (but his spokesperson will not confirm) that Erik Prince will move to the United Arab Emirates, which has no extradition treaty with the US, claiming he would be leaving the US market altogether
  • He also announced he was selling the company–though you gotta wonder how the reported fine will play into the sale
  • For its part, Blackwater just signed new deals with the State Department and CIA for work in Afghanistan, which has been recently touted for its mineral wealth
  • When asked about the new CIA Blackwater contract, Leon Panetta explained that CIA has reviewed all of BW’s contracts and that for this one, BW simply underbid other bidders
  • Facing a veto threat from the Obama Administration, DiFi has all but dealt away Congress’ demand that GAO be able to audit intelligence related programs–including things like fraud in black ops contracts (more on that later)

Now, as I pointed out in my post on Prince’s reported move to UAE, his move followed that of Halliburton. Given the McClatchy report on the fairly extensive list of alleged export and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act crimes Blackwater had committed, I could imagine that Prince might move for precisely the same reason Halliburton may have–to avoid being held responsible for bribing foreign officials and violating sanction regimes (Halliburton faced its own FCPA charges when it moved to UAE).

Here’s what Blackwater was up to in Sudan:

After negotiating a $2 million draft contract to train Kiir’s personal security detail, Blackwater in early 2007 drafted a detailed second proposal, valued at more than $100 million, to equip and train southern Sudan’s army. Because the south lacked ready cash, Blackwater sought 50percent of its untapped mineral wealth, a former senior U.S. official said.

In addition to its well-known oil and natural gas reserves, southern Sudan has vast untapped reserves of gold, iron and diamonds.

“Most people don’t know this stuff exists. These guys did,” said a second former senior official who saw the document, which apparently was never signed.

Ultimately, though, Blackwater’s venture in Sudan foundered, U.S. officials said.

“Blackwater had some problems in Iraq,” said Deng Deng Nhial, the deputy chief of southern Sudan’s Washington office. “Nothing really materialized. No services were performed.”

Federal investigators, however, found evidence that Blackwater’s sales campaign had violated U.S. sanctions, export control laws and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is designed to prevent U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials in return for business, according to the officials and documents.

The suspected violations included brokering for defense services without a U.S. government-approved license; transferring satellite phones and encrypted e-mail capabilities to southern Sudanese officials; and attempting to open a joint escrow account with the South’s government at a Minnesota bank.

So now you’ve got Prince, the guy who set up our Black Ops contractor, located in the Persian Gulf, with no way to prevent him from violating the US’ own laws about corruption and sanctions. Prince says he’s done working with the United States, and maybe he’s done working directly with the US. Or maybe not. But we do know he’s got aspirations to work with both US allies and enemies.

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White House Won’t Tell DNI It Should Be More Powerful

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Now for your latest installment of DOD’s expanding intelligence authorities, DNI’s increasing irrelevance, and the White House’s efforts to make sure those trends continue.

As you’ll recall, back in March, the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a scathing report on the many failures to stop the Undie Bomber. The report was most critical of the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter. But instead of replacing Leiter right away, the Administration sat on the report for two months until it became public, and then used the report as its excuse to fire Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair as the scapegoat for the Christmas Day attack. The White House reportedly tried to get either Leon Panetta or Chuck Hagel to take over, but after they refused, Obama nominated James Clapper, over the objections of both the Democrats and Republicans who need to confirm the position on SSCI. Two things make this worse: in the face of the need to scale back DOD’s intelligence portfolio to better balance our intelligence community as a whole, DOD has instead been expanding it. And Clapper signed an April memo arguing against a range of controls Congress was trying to put on DOD’s intelligence activities.

It turns out that in addition to SSCI’s March report finding NCTC most responsible for the Christmas Day attack, and Clapper’s April report calling for DOD to keep its expansive intelligence powers, the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board was issuing its own report, finished in March and sent to Congress on April 1. The report calls for a stronger DNI–precisely what Congress is trying to do but DOD and the White House are trying to prevent.

But the White House has not shared the report with the DNI’s office.

The White House has withheld a key report, which maps out a strategy for fixing the troubled Director of National Intelligence, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The classified report, “Study of the Mission, Size, and Function of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” was completed by the Presidential Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) at least as early as March, several weeks before President Obama asked DNI Dennis Blair to resign. The report came at an inopportune time for the White House, which has pursued a policy course counter to the report’s advice.

Multiple sources within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence tell The Atlantic that the office, which employs about 1,500 people including the director himself, never received the report. The White House would not comment on how it was distributed, but Assistant Press Secretary Tommy Vietor said, “The study you reference was shared with DNI Blair, who provided us comments on the findings.” However, the findings are only a brief summary of the report’s unclassified sections; they are also freely available on Politico’s website. The full report, which is classified, has not been shared.

Of particular import here is the White House’s organized blow-off of Congress. Congress commissioned the PIAB report last year as part of the 2010 Defense Authorization.

Congress commissioned the PIAB report late last year as part of the 2010 Department of Defense Appropriations Act, requiring the board to evaluate the DNI and offer proposals for improving it.

At the same time, Congress included some provisions in the 2010 Intelligence Authorization–things like controls on expenditures and expanding budgets, review of the use of contractors, and an Inspector General for the entire intelligence community–that would strengthen the DNI and rein in DOD. SSCI sent a report to the White House in March that the White House used to start planning the ouster of Dennis Blair, who was sympathetic to the goal of a stronger DNI. And at the same time, the White House was refusing to share the PIAB report which would have strengthened Blair’s hand. Against the background of the report showing that the President’s advisory board thinks Congress, not DOD, is right about how the Intelligence Community is organized, the White House sends the Clapper nomination–which is designed to do just the opposite.

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The Value of Advice and Consent: Clapper Nomination

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I’m going to have more to say about James Clapper’s nomination to be Director of National Intelligence. But for now I want to point out similarities between how the Administration’s treated that nomination and its involvement in primaries.

Two things make James Clapper’s nomination anything but a done deal.

Most important to us little people is Clapper’s certainty in 2003 that we hadn’t found Iraqi WMD because Saddam managed to move all of them to Syria before US troops secured them.

The director of a top American spy agency said Tuesday that he believed that material from Iraq’s illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material ”unquestionably” had been moved out of Iraq.

”I think people below the Saddam Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse,” General Clapper, who leads the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said at a breakfast with reporters.

Obama wants a man with a history of not questioning his own assumptions to take on a position invented, at least partly, to make sure the intelligence community questions its assumptions to prevent failures like 9/11 and the Iraq War.

The more important problem to the Senate Intelligence Committee–that is, to those with a vote on the matter–is that Clapper has a history of advocating for continued strong military control over intelligence functions, a view that puts him at odds with Dianne Feinstein and Kit Bond and others on SSCI. As Josh Rogin reports,

Yesterday, we reported that the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee were resisting the nomination of James Clapper to become the next director of national intelligence because he had argued in an April 28 memo against strengthening that very position.

Today, we have obtained a copy of the memo (pdf), which is entitled, “Discussion Draft: Provisions for FY2010 Intelligence Authorization Act that would expand DNI authorities over leadership and management of DOD’s intelligence components.”

The paper, written by Clapper’s staff, but not signed by Clapper himself, spells out 17 concerns that the Pentagon apparently had with the intelligence policy bill making its way through Congress. It’s clearly an attempt to defend the secretary of defense’s authority over defense intelligence agencies against what the memo’s writers see as encroachment by the Office of the DNI.

[snip]

The administration sees Feinstein’s and Bond’s objections as part of their overall push for greater committee jurisdiction over defense department assets. For their part, Hill sources lament that Clapper’s memo seemed to be criticizing a bill that they thought had already been negotiated with the administration.

Regardless, Feinstein said she won’t move the nomination until her bill gets passed and her concerns are addressed. She meets with Clapper this week.

Read the whole Rogin post–and his earlier post on it–to understand why this is not just about a difference of opinion on the role of DNI and DOD in intelligence, but also about the Administration’s ongoing reluctance to allow Congress to exercise full oversight of the intelligence community.

The point is, the folks who need to approve Clapper’s nomination are none too thrilled about him and it will be very easy to spin a narrative about why he’s the wrong person for the job.

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The Inexplicable Timing of Dennis Blair’s Ouster

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I’m thoroughly unsurprised by the news of Dennis Blair’s ouster. After all, it’s an impossible job that appears to serve one purpose: to provide a deck chair you can rearrange every two years as a scapegoat for our continuing inability to detect terrorists even with all the surveillance toys we’ve got.

(Actually, if you’re Michael McConnell, it serves a second, more personal, purpose: giving you means to privatize intelligence for the benefit of your once and future employers.)

But I’ve got a few questions after I read the following on Twitter:

Chuck Todd: MT @SavannahGuthrie POTUS asked for Blair’s resignation; Blair appealed to Chief of Staff to make a rebuttal — an offer that went nowhere.

Major Garrett: + Feinstein: “I look forward to working with the President as he identifies his nominee.” Feinstein Cmte rpt final straw for Blair

That is, if you believe the tweets of the White House Press Corps, Blair was ousted by Obama (thoroughly unsurprising news) in response to the SSCI report on the Undie Bomber.

Now, that someone would be canned in response to the SSCI report is also thoroughly unsurprising. It’s a damning report, showing we’ve made little progress since 9/11. Now, several people–like Marc Ambinder and Jeff Stein–seem to think National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter should be the one canned over this report (and that’s even before you consider that Leiter went on vacation right after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted attack). Whoever gets canned, though, I’m actually a bit pleased that someone will be held responsible for some pretty big failures.

So I understand all that.

It’s the timing I don’t understand. As Ambinder reported earlier this week, this report is not new. It’s just new to us. The White House has had this report for two months.

The SSCI gave its report to the White House and the intelligence agencies two months ago, and an official told me last night that the the IC had made progress implementing many of its regulations. The new budget contains more authority for the DNI to make technical decisions more quickly, which should help with the database issues. A DNI official said that Blair “accepted” blame and is making necessary changes.

If the White House were going to fire Blair in response to the report, why didn’t he get fired two months ago? Why let him start fixing thing (you know, shifting his deck chair), and then fire him?

Or did Rahm and Obama hold off on firing him until this report was declassified so he could serve as a very public scapegoat shortly after its release?

Nine Years after 9/11, Intelligence Community Still Missing Threats to US

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The Senate Intelligence Committee has just released the Executive Summary of its report on the intelligence failures leading up to the Underwear Bomber’s attempted bombing on a plane landing in Detroit. I’ll have a bit more to say in a bit. But I wanted to focus on point 14, which feels an awful lot like that famous August 6, 2001 memo.

Intelligence Analysts Were Primarily Focused on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) Threats to U.S. Interests in Yemen, Rather than on Potential AQAP Threats to the U.S. Homeland.

Analysts’ competing priorities contributed to the failure of the Intelligence Community to identify Abdulmutallab as a potential threat. Prior to the 12/25 plot, counterterrorism analysts at NCTC, CIA, and NSA were focused on the threat of terrorist attacks in Yemen, but were not focused on the possibility of AQAP attacks against the U.S. homeland. These other priorities contributed to the failure of analysts to recognize and collate the several pieces of intelligence reporting that mentioned Abdulmutallab.

Nine years and how many billions later, and we still haven’t figured out that terrorists might want to hit us in the United States?

Steven Kappes Leaves the Agency, Again

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Here’s one of the more curious details about yesterday’s surprise news that Steven Kappes was leaving the CIA.

Best as I can tell, the White House has not yet issued a statement about his retirement (at least not via the White House press list). Not even in a week when one of the key issues for which Kappes gets some credit, the elimination of loose nukes (in Kappes case, in connection with Libya), was much in the news. Obviously, Obama doesn’t have to nominate Kappes’ replacement and get it approved by the Senate, but wouldn’t you think the White House would have had a “thank you for all your service” comment prepared?

House Intelligence Committee Chair Silvestre Reyes’ statement mentioned Kappes’ departure, but not until he spent two paragraphs lauding Kappes’ replacement, first.

I want to extend my congratulations to Mike Morell for his selection to serve as the next Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  I have had the pleasure of knowing Mike and, for the past nine years I have worked with him on a broad range of subjects. He is an exemplary CIA officer.Throughout his 30-year career with the agency, Mike has served with distinction. Whether serving at the Director’s right hand, leading the agency’s team of analysts, or serving as the principal briefer to the President, Mike’s diligence and commitment to duty, and to his country, will serve him well as he assumes his new role.

I know the agency appreciates the job Steve Kappes has done for the nation during his tenure. I will miss Steve’s insight and candor, and I wish him all the best as he moves on to his post-agency career.

CIA Director Leon Panetta’s statement does take the traditional form–lauding the retiring officer first, before announcing his replacement. Read more →

The “Detainees Subject to the Review”

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MadDog linked to the letter that Dennis Blair and Eric Holder sent the Senate describing the process by which 6 agencies and a 100 staffers meticulously decided the ultimate fate of Gitmo detainees–who could be released or imprisoned elsewhere, who could be tried, and (presumably) who had to be held indefinitely. It might be a reassuring letter for its portrayal of the deliberation and rationality applied to Gitmo detainees.

Except for this phrase, repeated twice: “all 240 detainees subject to the review.”

After carefully considering each case, the six agencies reached unanimous agreement on disposition determinations for all 240 detainees subject to the review.

[snip]

After all of the deliberations described above, the DNI-either personally for cases considered by Principals or by delegation to the ODNI official on the Review Panel-agreed with the other five agencies on disposition determinations for all 240 detainees subject to the review.

This process, apparently doesn’t apply to all detainees. Only the detainees “subject to the review.” Now perhaps they’re just making the distinction between Gitmo detainees and those in some black hole in Bagram or some other secret site. But it sure seems to be referring just to Gitmo detainees. In which case, there must be other Gitmo detainees, outside of the 240, who are not “subject to the review.”

Why? Who are they?

Executive Order 13492, which instituted this review, provides two potential hints. First, it provides this definition:

(c) “Individuals currently detained at Guantánamo” and “individuals covered by this order” mean individuals currently detained by the Department of Defense in facilities at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base whom the Department of Defense has ever determined to be, or treated as, enemy combatants.

This would seem to leave out detainees held by CIA or contractors (maybe?). And it would seem to leave out those detainees whom DOD had simply never called nor treated as an enemy combatant. You know those family members Mary keeps asking about? They wouldn’t be enemy combatants, would they?

The EO also suggests DOD would have authority over any other detainees.

(a) Nothing in this order shall prejudice the authority of the Secretary of Defense to determine the disposition of any detainees not covered by this order.

So while this letter to the Senate sounds like a wonderful work of rational deliberation, it also seems to hint at some remaining Kafkaesque hole, whereby some people who have not been deemed enemy combatants remain in some arbitrary limbo not covered by this great display of rational deliberation.

Update: Hmmm is right: the EO lets the Secretary of Defense do what he will with all the other detainees (which I guess makes it especially useful if your Secretary of Defense is an old Chief Spook). I’ve fixed the post accordingly.

Under Michael Chertoff, DHS Used David Horowitz Propaganda in Intell Report

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Mark Hosenball reports that Dianne Feinstein and other Senate Dems have accused the Department of Homeland Security’s spooks of using right wing propaganda to develop finished intelligence reports on Muslims. By looking at this paragraph from last year’s intelligence authorization…

The Committee has raised a number of concerns with reports issued by the Department of Homeland Security OIA that inappropriately analyze the legitimate activities of U.S. persons. These reports raised fundamental questions about the mission of the OIA and often used certain questionable open source information as a basis of their conclusions. The Committee recommends that the next Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis conduct a comprehensive review of the quality and relevance of the intelligence products produced by the OIA, and provide this review to the congressional intelligence committees within 180 days of enactment.

And analyzing the language from this letter from Russ Feingold and Jay Rockefeller, Hosenball credibly argues that DHS used David Horowitz’ DiscoverTheNetworks.org as a source for a least one intelligence report on a US Islamic leader. (The letter cites the tagline, “identif[y] the individuals and organizations that make up the left,” a term Horowitz has used.)

Among others targeted by Horowitz’ site–though not all Islamic leaders–are Keith Ellison, Arianna Huffington, and Kos. And, ironically enough, Janet Napolitano.

Hosenball also notes that the report on the Islamic leader using Horowitz’ site was developed for DHS’s Civil Rights Office, and from there, was circulated to other intelligence agencies.

Congressional officials say the Homeland intelligence report that particularly angered Feinstein and other committee members is still classified. Nevertheless, three current and former intelligence officials, requesting anonymity when discussing sensitive information, say the report in question is a profile of an unnamed but prominent American Islamic leader and was produced by Homeland Security’s intelligence office during the latter years of the Bush administration. The report was requested by the Department’s civil rights office, whose officials were preparing to meet with the Islamic leader. But instead of sending the civil rights office a quick bio of the individual in question, Homeland’s intelligence office issued a “finished” intel report that was circulated to other intelligence agencies and, eventually, to Congressional oversight committees.

In other words, Michael Chertoff was using the Civil Rights Office at DHS as the impetus to develop finished intelligence reports based on the First Amendment activities of Americans.

Remember the firestorm last year when wingnut groups learned DHS did a report–initiated by the Bush Administration–on right wing extremist groups?

The report, “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” said right-wing extremist groups may be using the recession and the election of the nation’s first African-American president to recruit members.

The report, which was prepared in coordination with the FBI, was published last week. It was distributed to federal, state and local law enforcement officials. Mainstream media picked up the story after it was reported by conservative bloggers.

I wonder if they’ll show the same alarm with this report?

How Republicans (and a Few Democrats) Avoided Limits on Section 215

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In the markup of the PATRIOT reauthorization last week, Dick Durbin and Russ Feingold repeatedly pointed out that in 2005, the Senate Judiciary Committee had unanimously approved language to require Section 215 only be used with people who had some known tie to terrorism or a foreign power. Back then, everyone on the Committee supported the change Durbin and Feingold have been proposing as an improvement on Section 215. 

Now, Durbin and Feingold did so to point out the indefensible position of those who–like DiFi–said in 2005 that the current and proposed law amounts to an invitation for a fishing expedition, but are nonetheless insisting on issuing just such an invitation now.

But that doesn’t explain how it happened that, sometime between the Committee markup and the final bill in 2005-6, real limits on the use of Section 215 were eliminated over the apparent objections of the entire Committee. And while I’m just beginning to piece together that story, the history seems to support my suspicions that Section 215 and NSLs became the new vehicles for Bush’s illegal data mining program just as it was being exposed.

The primary bill that became the Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 was HR 3199, introduced by Jim Sensenbrenner, then-Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, on July 11, 2005; in addition, then-Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter introduced S 1389 on July 22, 2005.

Sensenbrenner’s bill introduced the following language into Section 215, requiring that,

the information likely to be obtained from the tangible things is reasonably expected to be (A) foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person, or (B) relevant to an ongoing investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.

That is, when this was introduced in the House, it basically allowed Section 215 to be used for anything, provided it pertained to international terrorism. That language remained in the bill through the House Judiciary and House Intelligence Committee markups of the bill and was adopted by the House as a whole.

But the Senate substituted its own bill, including the language limiting Section 215 orders to those with a definitive tie to terrorism or foreign intelligence, specifically requiring the judge to make sure there was some kind of tie.

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The Total Nail Polish Remover Awareness Program, Brought to You by the Democratic Party

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tia.pngI wanted to pull together the discussion in Thursday’s PATRIOT Act Hearing regarding the use of authorities within it–particularly Section 215–in existing investigations. DiFi initiates this discussion by referring to the "biggest investigation we’ve had since 9/11" (note, contrary to my earlier post, this reference is only implicitly related to the Zazi arrest.

DiFi (47:00): My concern was that nothing we do here interfere adversely with an investigation that’s going ongoing. I happen to believe that the biggest investigation we’ve had since 9/11 is currently ongoing and do not want to do anything to disturb it. Second, I believe that finally, the intelligence in the transformation or transfiguration of the FBI is now taking hold and that we are developing an intelligence mechanism within the country that is now able to ferret out some of these proposed attacks before they might happen. And I think the arrest of Mr. Zazi is demonstration of that. It is not ended and the investigation continues on. I also believe that we continue to face the very real threat of international terrorism. There are people who would hurt us grievously if they have an opportunity to do so, so again, I think it’s vital that we not take any action, especially at this time that would hinder the government’s ability to detect, investigate, and prosecute those who are intent on killing innocent Americans. 

Note, too, DiFi’s reference to the "transfiguration" of FBI finally in place–is she suggesting that for the first time the FBI has used Total Information Awareness to support  terrorist busts?

Later, during the discussion of Durbin’s attempt to limit the use of 215 to those with some discernible tie to a terrorist suspect, DiFi claims that such changes would end several investigations.

DiFi (101:31): Secondly, the FBI does not support this amendment. And thirdly, in putting forward this higher standard, it would end several classified and critical investigations. This was one of the amendments that I submitted to you and you were gracious enough to accept it. Senator Sessions is correct. These are authorized investigations and it’s a use of the National Security Letter in an authorized investigation. So, as I said, a standard for me is that this not interfere in existing investigations, and in fact it would. 

Understand the implications of that comment. Read more →