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US Wants BSA Signature No Matter What It Takes

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On the very same day that a member Congress stated that Middle Eastern cultures routinely lie during negotiations, several US senior officials suggested dishonest ways of working around Hamid Karzai’s conditions for signing the Bilateral Security Agreement by getting someone other than Karzai to sign it.

Granted, Duncan Hunter, Jr. is batshit crazy and also was arguing for the use of tactical nuclear weapons in a war with Iran, but his statements on honesty yesterday provide a supremely ironic context for John Kerry and Chuck Hagel suggesting someone other than Karzai could sign the agreement. TPM has Hunter’s comments:

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) said Wednesday that it is in the Middle Eastern culture to lie during negotiations.

“In the Middle Eastern culture, it is looked upon with very high regard to get the best deal possible no matter what it takes — and that includes lying,” Hunter said in an interview with C-SPAN. “That’s one reason that these Gulf states like to work with the United States — because we’re honest and transparent and we have laws that we have to live by.”

Hunter and his ilk, of course, would point to Karzai’s new conditions imposed after the loya jirga approved the BSA and urged Karzai to sign it. But is the US acting any differently than the actions Hunter criticizes in its attempt, at any cost, to get a work-around?

From the Washington Post:

The Obama administration is looking for ways to work around Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s new demands concerning a key security agreement with the United States, a senior U.S. official close to the negotiations said Wednesday.

“One of the things we’re trying to do quietly is design, engineer, imagine ways that we could get ourselves out of this fix,” the official said in an interview, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to describe the emerging strategy on the record. “One of those ways might be to find a mechanism, a technique where Karzai could abide by his loya jirga pledge not to sign it but still give us the document we need.”

Secretary of State John F. Kerry suggested this week that someone other than Karzai might sign the security deal. Possibilities include the top Afghan and U.S. defense officials, although U.S. officials played down that option after Kerry spoke.

But in Washington on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also suggested to reporters at the Pentagon that the signature of an Afghan leader other than Karzai might suffice.

And Martin Dempsey has also joined the Coalition of the Working-Around:

Dempsey said it was important that any agreement be binding. “As long as the document is considered legally binding by both parties and credible internationally, then I think it will be a matter of who they decide signs it,” he said.

The attempts to bypass Karzai are not being received well in Kabul. From Khaama Press:

Aimal Faizi, spokesman for president Hamid Karzai has said that the Afghan ministers will not be authorized to sign the security pact unless the demands are met.

Mr. Faizi further added that president Hamid Karzai remains committed to his two main demands to sign the agreement. “President Karzai wants an absolute end to the military operations on Afghan homes and a meaningful start to the peace process, and we are certain that the Americans can practically do that within days or weeks,” Faizi quoted by Reuters said.

He also added, “As long as these demands are not accepted, President Karzai will not authorize any minister to sign it.”

There is one more very important tidbit buried near the end of this article. It turns out that the US didn’t merely mention getting someone other than Karzai to sign the agreement, it has already approached the Afghan defense minister to try to persuade him to sign it:

According to reports, US officials have also approached Afghan defense minister Gen. Bismillah Mohammadi during the NATO foreign ministerial meeting in Brussels to discuss such a possibility.

Hunter couldn’t have said it any better. The US wants this document signed, no matter what it takes.

Jirga Approves BSA While Karzai Stands by Pledge to Delay Signing

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After Sunday got off to a historic start with the announcement of an agreement between the P5+1 and Iran, the day continued to be momentous as the loya jirga in Kabul approved the Bilateral Security Agreement between the US and Afghanistan. Even though the jirga coupled its approval of the agreement with a plea to Karzai to sign it immediately (the chair of the meeting, a former Afghan president, threatened to leave the country if Karzai doesn’t sign), Karzai followed through on his warning from his opening remarks of the four day meeting on Thursday and stated that he will delay signing the agreement until Afghanistan’s elections are completed in April.

Formal approval of the BSA comes as a big surprise for me. I have maintained since the start of negotiations a year ago that the Afghanistan agreement would go the same route as the Iraq agreement and that our military would be forced into a complete withdrawal, primarily over the issue of criminal immunity for the troops remaining in the country. While that “zero option” remains a distinct possibility, it now would be forced by Karzai’s delay in signing the agreement where immunity has now been granted.

The second big surprise for me is that I did not expect security surrounding the jirga to be a complete success. I feared at least one successful attack, especially after the site was hit with a suicide attack just a few days before the gathering began. However, a security force that apparently numbered around 25,000 strong appears to have thwarted a number of additional suicide attacks and at least one planned rocket attack.

By having the approval for the BSA in hand while refusing to sign it, Karzai has built a huge point of leverage over the final issue that threatened to derail the agreement. Unilateral counterterrorism raids by the US, especially in the form of night raids that enter the homes of Afghan citizens, were the final sticking point for Karzai. The US reluctantly agreed at the final minute to provide an assurance in the form of a letter from President Barack Obama that such raids would occur only under exceptional circumstances when the lives of US troops were at stake. Most likely because he remembers just how readily the US lies when developing agreements with Afghanistan on issues where there is disagreement, Karzai has warned the US that the very next night raid will mean that he never signs the agreement. From ToloNews:

“If there is one more raid on Afghan homes by U.S. forces, there is no BSA. The U.S. can’t go into our homes from this moment onward,” President Karzai said in his closing remarks at the Jirga on Sunday.

Karzai’s brinksmanship has set up a very high stakes game of “chicken” played by two junkies. The US has stated that it must know by the end of this year whether the BSA will be signed now that it has been approved. Karzai has stated that he will wait until at least April for signing. Just who will blink first is anyone’s guess. The US is strongly addicted to night raids. Will they be able to hold off on them, even for a month? Karzai is equally addicted to the billions of dollars the US pumps into Afghanistan’s economy. Will he hold off his signature past the date at which the US has warned it will drop pursuit of the agreement and proceed with a full withdrawal–of both troops and funds? Will the US allow the decision point on the zero option to be delayed until after the April elections?

For Susan Rice, Love of Endless War Means Never Having to Say US Is Sorry

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Yesterday evening, reports appeared in both the New York Times and Khaama Press in Afghanistan that the final hurdle for the Bilateral Security Agreement had been cleared and that US President Barack Obama would sign a letter to be read at the loya jirga. The letter would note that the US has made mistakes in its war efforts in Afghanistan. Further, the letter would convey an apology along with a pledge to avoid repeating the mistakes in which innocent Afghan citizens suffered.

But for the endless war faction within the US military and government, an apology just won’t do (even if there was one to Pakistan that finally reopened the supply routes after the US killed 24 Pakistani border troops). National Security Advisor Susan Rice immediately got time with Wolf Blitzer on CNN to nip the idea of an apology in the bud:

“No such letter has been drafted or delivered. There is not a need for the United States to apologize to Afghanistan,” National Security Adviser Susan Rice said on CNN’s “Situation Room.”

“Quite the contrary, we have sacrificed and supported them in their democratic progress and in tackling the insurgents and al Qaeda. So that (letter of apology) is not on the table.”

Rice said she has seen news reports but has no idea where they are coming from, describing the claims as a “complete misunderstanding of what the situation is.”

Here’s the video:

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRDWTuApcxM’]

I’m surprised she didn’t go all the way to insisting on an apology from Afghanistan for being ungrateful for all the freedom we’ve unleashed on them.

The Times version of the story has been through a number of changes. Note that the url retains the early headline for the story “Key Issue Said to be Resolved in US-Afghan Security Talks”. The story now reflects the push-back from Rice, but it also shows that diplomats are focusing on a letter anyway (but of course now can’t call it an apology):

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss continuing negotiations, was more noncommittal, saying that a letter acknowledging past issues like civilian casualties was a possibility being weighed. “We will consider his request for reassurances, including the option of a letter from the administration stating our position,” the official said.

Under the Afghan description, in return for the letter, Mr. Karzai would then accept wording that allowed American Special Operations raids to search and detain militants within Afghan homes, but only under “extraordinary circumstances” to save the lives of American soldiers. That would seem to greatly hamper the American intent behind those operations, which commanders have said are critical to taking the fight directly to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

The Washington Post goes further on the letter and suggests that it will indeed be signed by Obama and delivered: Read more →

US Failures in Afghanistan Multiplying: Negotiation Impasse, Bomb at Jirga Site and Increasing Violence

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It is difficult to imagine how the situation could be any worse for the US ahead of Thursday’s opening of the loya jirga that was meant to give a stamp of approval to the Bilateral Security Agreement that would govern US troops remaining in Afghanistan after 2014. Both the New York Times and Reuters are reporting a sticking point (the issue is not a new one) in the negotiations that threatens to prevent an agreement being reached. Furthermore, a suicide bomber struck on Saturday at the site where the jirga is planned. The Taliban has claimed responsibility. Finally, the UN is reporting that despite as many as 12,000 Taliban fighters being killed, wounded or captured in the last year, violence in Afghanistan is at its highest point since the US surge.

The latest sticking point in the Bilateral Security Agreement (immunity for US troops also is a sticking point that is just as likely to derail approval by the jirga) addresses US troops entering Afghan homes without permission. This is at the heart of the operations of US death squads as Special Operations forces carry out night raids. From the Times:

Offstage, however, American raids continued to be a point of deadlock, according to the Afghan officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations were continuing. In recent days, the talks have been led on the Afghan side by Mr. Karzai, and on the American side by Ambassador James B. Cunningham and the military coalition commander, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr.

The Afghan officials said Mr. Karzai would not change his position before Thursday’s loya jirga, to which 3,000 officials, elders and notables from around the country have been invited to ratify or reject the security agreement.

So even though these negotiations are being carried out at the highest level, it appears that a serious disagreement persists, just a few days short of the critical jirga. The article notes that some on the US side feel that this is a last-minute ploy by the Afghans, but considering that Karzai has opposed the raids from the beginning, it is hard to see how that argument has any merit. The article continues to show how this disagreement could scuttle the entire deal: Read more →

Just One Week Before Jirga on US Troop Immunity, Reuters Finds Afghan Murder Investigation Stymied by Immunity

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With Hamid Karzai’s loya jirga only about one week away, Reuters has published information that adds fuel to one of the major objections to the new Bilateral Security Agreement between Afghanistan and the US that the jirga is meant to bless. Despite clear evidence provided recently in full by Matthieu Aikins that US special forces were involved in the murders of a number of civilians in the Nerkh district of Maidan Wardak province, Afghanistan’s security directorate has had to close their investigation into those deaths because the US will not provide access to the troops who were involved. The current status of forces agreement provides full criminal immunity to US troops and it is widely believed that criminal immunity going forward after 2014 will be the key decision point at the jirga and for Karzai signing the agreement.

For their article, Reuters came into possession of a report from Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security that was written in September:

Afghanistan’s intelligence service has abandoned its investigation into the murder of a group of civilians after being refused access to U.S. special forces soldiers suspected of involvement, according to a document obtained by Reuters.

/snip/

In the report authored by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) intelligence agency, investigators said they had asked the United States for access to three U.S. Green Berets and four Afghan translators working with them but were rebuffed.

“Despite many requests by NDS they have not cooperated. Without their cooperation this process cannot be completed,” said the report, which was originally published on September 23.

U.S. military officials were not immediately available for comment but they have long said the Green Berets did not take part in, or turn a blind eye to, illegal killings in Wardak.

Yeah, right. How can the US claim they didn’t turn a “blind eye” when, among the many things Aikins documented, it was clear that Zakariah Kandahari was in Facebook contact with the special forces unit in question while he was officially “missing”?

There has been much posturing over the jirga in recent days, with assemblies of politicians and other leaders being called to both support and oppose any approval of the bilateral security agreement. The Taliban also has weighed in, warning that any tribal leaders voting for the US to retain a presence in Afghanistan will be targets of future attacks.

Of course, the US claims that even though US forces are immune from being charged by Afghan authorities, US troops are subject to the military justice system and that crimes are investigated and prosecuted. However, given the rush to prosecute only Robert Bales on the Panjwai massacre even though it seems quite possible he had help with at least some of those killings, by blocking Afghan access to the remainder of the death squad involved prompts speculation that Kandahari will be the scapegoat for the Nerkh killings, especially since the US continues to maintain that Kandahari wasn’t even officially working for the US.

Will the blocking of Afghanistan’s investigation into these brutal murders be the final straw that blocks approval of immunity and the BSA?

Peace Initiative Gains Momentum in Afghanistan Despite Lack of Participation by US

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Last week, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited Washington, DC for a series of meetings. The final press appearance by Sharif and Barack Obama was noted by the New York Times to be somewhat awkward as Sharif paid whispered lip service to Pakistani objections to drone attacks while Obama ignored the topic entirely. The joint appearance was quickly overshadowed by release of an article from Greg Miller and Bob Woodward leaking a number of documents relating to the drone program. Both Marcy and I commented on the release and what it could mean.

The concept of the end of the war in Afghanistan got a bit of a mention in the Times article on Sharif’s visit:

With the United States’ winding down the Afghan war, Mr. Obama reminded Mr. Sharif of the importance of a stable, sovereign Afghanistan. American officials have long been suspicious of links between the Pakistani military and militant groups like the Haqqani network, which has carried out attacks on Westerners in Afghanistan.

For its part, the Sharif government has signaled an interest in negotiating with the Pakistani Taliban, a process that analysts said the United States should encourage.

But heaven forbid that Afghanistan should attempt to talk with Pakistan’s Taliban. Recall that earlier this month, the US snatched a high-ranking figure of the Pakistan Taliban from Afghan security forces as they were bringing him to a meeting. The cover story at the time from Afghanistan was to suggest that they were attempting to start peace talks with Latif Mehsud. An article in yesterday’s New York Times suggests that Afghanistan actually intended to work with Mehsud to develop a sort of alliance with the Pakistan Taliban and to use them as a pressure point against Pakistan’s government. What intrigues me most about this possibility is that Afghanistan claimed that this tactic was merely an imitation of what the US has done repeatedly in Afghanistan:

Another Afghan official said the logic of the region dictated the need for unseemly alliances. The United States, in fact, has relied on some of Afghanistan’s most notorious warlords to fight the insurgency here, the official tartly noted.

“Everyone has an angle,” the official said. “That’s the way we’re thinking. Some people said we needed our own.”

Afghan officials said those people included American military officers and C.I.A. operatives. Frustrated by their limited ability to hit Taliban havens in Pakistan, some Americans suggested that the Afghans find a way to do it, they claimed.

So Afghanistan’s intelligence agency believed it had a green light from the United States when it was approached by Mr. Mehsud sometime in the past year.

Just in case you’ve forgotten, the last time we checked, the most notorious warlord war criminal of them all, Rashid Dostum, was still getting about $100,000 every month from the US while also drawing a salary as Karzai’s Army Chief of Staff. Coupling that with the Petraeus plan of incorporating the worst militias directly into the death squads of the Afghan Local Police while providing them support from the CIA and JSOC, and we can see why Afghanistan would feel that there are zero moral constraints on working with groups having a violent tendency.

But apparently in the Calvinball playing field of Afghanistan, only the US is allowed to make shadowy alliances, and so the US snatched Mehsud away from Afghanistan before any alliance could be formed. But even if we chalk that move up to an honest move to take a noted terrorist out of action, US behavior on other fronts relating to Afghanistan and Pakistan still continue to illustrate that the only US priorities are more military action in Afghanistan and more drone strikes in Pakistan.

Sharif’s next stop after Washington was London. But instead of awkward public appearances, the UK has instead set up meetings for Sharif directly with Hamid Karzai: Read more →

US Grabs Pakistan Taliban Representative From Afghan Authorities, Preventing Peace Talks

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Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently lashed out at the United States, stating that US insistence on being able to conduct autonomous counterterrorism actions within Afghanistan was a major obstacle to signing a new Status of Forces Agreement (okay, they call it the Bilateral Security Agreement now, but SOFA just has a much better ring to it). A report from the Washington Post yesterday evening provides a perfect example of how the hypocrisy of US forces in Afghanistan is killing any chance of an agreement being signed, as the US consistently brags about Afghans being “in the lead” on virtually all actions and yet when the US wants, it takes arbitrary and brutal action with complete disregard for the Afghan chain of command.

The hubris of this latest insult to Afghanistan is staggering. After months of carefully recruiting a senior figure from inside Pakistan’s Taliban, Afghan intelligence officials were in the process of bringing him into Afghanistan where he was to begin discussions with the security service that could lead to peace talks. It appears that the US stopped the convoy transporting him, grabbed him, and took him to the portion of the prison at Bagram that the US still refuses to turn over to Afghan control:

The United States recently seized a senior Pakistani Taliban commander in eastern Afghanistan, snatching him from the custody of Afghan intelligence operatives who had spent months trying to recruit him as an interlocutor for peace talks, Afghan government officials charged Thursday.

Latif Mehsud, an influential commander in the Pakistani Taliban, was taken into custody by U.S. personnel, who intercepted an Afghan government convoy in Logar province, Afghan officials said.

As might be expected, Karzai is furious. Karzai’s spokesman talked to the Post:

Afghan officials described their contact with Mehsud, thought to be about 30, as one of the most significant operations conducted by their country’s security forces. After months of conversations, the Taliban leader had agreed to meet with operatives of Afghanistan’s main spy agency, the National Directorate of Security, said Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Karzai, who declined to identify Mehsud by name, referring to him only as a top Taliban commander.

/snip/

“The Americans forcibly removed him and took him to Bagram,” said the spokesman, referring to the military base that includes a detention facility where the United States continues to hold more than 60 non-
Afghan combatants.

There is simply no way that the US could have thought that Mehsud was in Afghanistan to carry out a terrorist attack. He was in a convoy of NDS personnel and word has been spreading that the Pakistan Taliban is interested in peace talks with Pakistan, so the concept of peace talks with Afghanistan also would make a lot of sense.

Keep in mind as well that, even though the drone strike on Wali Ur Rehman was seen by most as revenge for his role in the Khost bombing, Rehman was seen as one of the more moderate voices within the Pakistani Taliban who would have favored peace talks. The Taliban quickly called off the prospect of peace talks after Rehman’s death. Recall that his death came just as Nawaz Sharif, who had campaigned on a platform including peace negotiations with the Taliban, was preparing to take office.

It goes without saying that Pakistan’s Taliban is one of the most violent and disgusting organizations in existence. Continued attacks on polio vaccine workers and threats to attack Malala Yousufzai again if she returns to Pakistan and continues her activism for young girls to have equal access to educational opportunities show them to be the worst kind of terrorists. And yet, somehow, the US has seen fit twice now to intervene and remove from the playing field the voices within this group who seemed in the best position to help lead it out of its most extreme actions and closer to a peaceful position within society.

Somehow, US actions in Pakistan and Afghanistan seem to indicate that the US does not feel that peace talks in the region are in its best interests. What harm would come to the US from peace talks?

Karzai: NATO Caused Lot of Suffering and Death, Yet Afghanistan Is Not Secure

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[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_zHbMa0iJU’]

Last week, we learned that Hamid Karzai’s strong objection to the US continuing to control death squads inside Afghanistan after the NATO mission officially concludes at the end of 2014 seemed likely to scuttle the US and Afghanistan finalizing the bilateral security agreement that is under negotiation. In a further sign that the agreement now appears to be dead, Karzai unleashed some of his strongest criticism of NATO and the US to date in an interview with BBC:

“On the security front the entire Nato exercise was one that caused Afghanistan a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life, and no gains because the country is not secure,” he said.

He said Nato had incorrectly focused the fight on Afghan villages rather than Taliban safe havens in Pakistan.

/snip/

“I am not happy to say that there is partial security. That’s not what we are seeking. What we wanted was absolute security and a clear-cut war against terrorism,” Mr Karzai said of the Nato campaign.

Unsurprisingly, I have already started seeing grumblings about how ungrateful Karzai is. But really, how could anyone honestly expect him to be grateful for “a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life”, when these losses have not achieved the stated mission of security?

Because of these bluntly honest remarks, Karzai also will be attacked by US apologists for his corruption. But his response to the widespread corruption in his government also is sobering and in need of consideration by the chattering classes inside the Beltway:

“Our government is weak and ineffective in comparison to other governments, we’ve just begun,” Mr Karzai said. “But the big corruption, the hundreds of millions of dollars of corruption, it was not Afghan. Now everybody knows that. It was foreign.

“The contracts, the subcontracts, the blind contracts given to people, money thrown around to buy loyalties, money thrown around to buy submissiveness of Afghan government officials, to policies and designs that the Afghans would not agree to. That was the major part of corruption,” he said.

“Goodness”, the chattering class will claim, “we never could have anticipated that all those investments in Afghan security could have turned into opportunities for looting”. Yeah, nobody (and that makes John Sopko and his crew into definite nobodies) could have expected all that money to find its way out of the country and into bank accounts controlled by Afghan bigwigs.

Coverage in the New York Times of Karzai’s remarks has this to say about Karzai’s observation that if an agreement cannot be reached, NATO forces “can leave”: Read more →

SOFA Unlikely Due to Karzai’s Objection to Death Squads

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The US has set the end of this month as its artificial deadline for signing a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA, also Bilateral Security Agreement, or BSA) with Afghanistan to govern the presence of US troops inside Afghanistan after the scheduled end of NATO operations at the end of 2014. The driving force behind this push to have the SOFA in place so far ahead of the end of next year was to prevent a repeat of the embarrassment that the US suffered when it was unable to get the terms it wanted–specifically, full criminal immunity for US troops–in Iraq and wound up withdrawing all troops instead of leaving a force behind after the stated end of military operations.

The news today out of Afghanistan does not bode well for the US to meet its deadline. Although the issue of criminal immunity still seems likely to me to be just as big a barrier in Afghanistan as it was in Iraq, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has raised a different concern that the US seems quite unlikely to address in the way he wants. From Reuters:

But two issues have emerged as potential “deal breakers”, President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi, told reporters late on Tuesday.

One is a U.S. desire to run independent counter-terrorism missions in Afghanistan after 2014, Faizi said. The other was a U.S. refusal to agree to a wide-reaching promise to protect Afghanistan from foreign aggression.

Karzai has long opposed operations in Afghanistan by U.S. special operations forces and the CIA, particularly when they run the risk of causing civilian casualties.

“These things are strongly related to our sovereignty,” Faizi said. “We find it to be something that will definitely undermine our sovereignty, if we allow the U.S. forces to have the right to conduct unilateral military operations.”

Recall that back in February of this year, Karzai grew frustrated with the death squad activities in Wardak province and called for the expulsion of US special forces there. As usual, the reference to “special operations forces and the CIA” means the death squads that the US organizes in Afghanistan (sometimes under the guise of Afghan Local Police) that carry out brutal night raids described as “counter-terrorism” operations.

Faizi is quoted on this issue further in an AFP piece picked up by Dawn:

“The US wants the freedom to conduct military operations, night raids and house searches,” Faizi told reporters late Tuesday.

“According to them, there are 75 Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, which is very strange as this agreement will be for 10 years to have the right to conduct military operations anywhere in the country.

“Unilaterally having the right to conduct military operations is in no way acceptable for Afghans.”

It appears that negotiations on this issue are now being carried out in direct phone conversations between Karzai and Obama. It’s hard to imagine that either will give up any portion of their position, so look for an announcement near the end of this month that the “deadline” has been extended. There already is discussion that the new Afghan president taking office after the April elections will be tasked with finalizing the agreement since Karzai and Obama seem unable to come to agreement.

The second sticking point is also fairly interesting. It appears that in this case, the US is actually showing restraint of a sort, since they don’t want to give Afghanistan wide latitude in determining what constitutes an attack on Afghanistan that would trigger the US responding in defense of Afghanistan. From the Dawn article:

Faizi also said the two sides could not agree on how the bilateral security agreement (BSA) should define an attack on Afghanistan that would trigger US protection.

“We believe that when terrorists are sent to commit suicide attacks here, that is also aggression,” Faizi said.

“We are a strategic partner of the US and we must be protected against foreign aggression. For us and for the US, that’s the conflicting point. We are not of the same opinion and we need clarity from the US side,” he said.

Cross-border skirmishes between various factions in Afghanistan in Pakistan are an ongoing process. In fact, there was a suicide bombing today at the Chaman border crossing that killed at least eight people. Today’s attacker appeared to have come from the Afghan side of the border, but it appears that the US wishes to avoid being forced to carry out attacks inside Pakistan under the guise of the SOFA when a suicide attack originates from inside Pakistan.

Of course, even a government shutdown hasn’t stopped the US carrying out drone strikes inside Pakistan, but that is a different issue entirely and seems to relate more to who has pissed off John Brennan lately rather than who organized a suicide attack.

Well, at Least DOJ Promised Not to Mine Journalists’ Metadata Going Forward

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When I read this passage from DOJ’s new News Media Policy, it caused me as much concern as relief.

The Department’s policies will be revised to provide formal safeguards regarding the proper use and handling of communications records of members of the news media. Among other things, the revisions will provide that with respect to information obtained pursuant to the Department’s news media policy: (i) access to records will be limited to Department personnel who are working on the investigation and have a need to know the information; (ii) the records will be used solely in connection with the investigation and related judicial proceedings; (iii) the records will not be shared with any other organization or individual inside or outside of the government, except as part of the investigation or as required in the course of judicial proceedings; and(iv) at the conclusion of all proceedings related to or arising from the investigation, other than information disclosed in the course of judicial proceedings or as required by law, only one copy of records will be maintained in a secure, segregated repository that is not searchable.

It is nice for the subset of journalists treated as members of news media whose calls get treated under these new policies and not — as still seems possible — under the apparently more permissive guidelines in the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide that when their call and other business records are collected, some of that information will ultimately be segregated in a non-searchable collection. Though why not destroy it entirely, given that the information used for the investigation and court proceedings will not be segregated?

Moreover, this passage represents a revision of previous existing policy.

Which means data from members of the news media may not have been segregated in the past.

When you consider that one of the abuses that led to these new policies included the collection of 20 phone lines worth of data from the AP — far, far more than would be warranted by the investigation at hand — it raises the possibility that DOJ used to do more with the data it had grabbed from journalists than just try to find isolated sources.

Like the two to three hop analysis they conduct on the Section 215 dragnet data.

It’s with that in mind that I’ve been reading the reports that Kiwi troops were wandering around Kabul with records of McClatchy freelancer Jon Stephenson’s phone metadata.

The Sunday Star-Times has learned that New Zealand Defence Force personnel had copies of intercepted phone “metadata” for Stephenson, the type of intelligence publicised by US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden. The intelligence reports showed who Stephenson had phoned and then who those people had phoned, creating what the sources called a “tree” of the journalist’s associates.

New Zealand SAS troops in Kabul had access to the reports and were using them in active investigations into Stephenson.

The sources believed the phone monitoring was being done to try to identify Stephenson’s journalistic contacts and sources. They drew a picture of a metadata tree the Defence Force had obtained, which included Stephenson and named contacts in the Afghan government and military.

The sources who described the monitoring of Stephenson’s phone calls in Afghanistan said that the NZSIS has an officer based in Kabul who was known to be involved in the Stephenson investigations.

Last year, when this happened, Stephenson was on the Green-on-Blue beat, He published a story that a massacre in Pashtun lands had been retaliation for the killing of Taliban. He reported on another NATO massacre of civilians. He reported that a minister accused of torture and other abuses would be named Hamid Karzai’s intelligence chief. Earlier last year he had reported on the negotiations over prisoner transfers from the US to Afghan custody.

Now, the original report made a both a credibility and factual error when it said Stephenson’s metadata had been “intercepted.” That has provided the Kiwi military with a talking point on which to hang a non-denial denial — a point Jonathan Landay notes in his coverage of the claims.

Maj. Gen. Tim Keating, the acting chief of New Zealand’s military, said in a statement that no military personnel had undertaken “unlawful interception of private communications.”

“I have asked the officers responsible for our operations in Afghanistan whether they have conducted monitoring of Mr Stephenson . . . and they have assured me that they have not.”

The statement, however, did not address whether metadata, which includes the location from where a call is made, the number and location of the person who is being called and the duration of the call, was collected for Stephenson’s phones. Such data are generally considered business records of a cell phone provider and are obtained without intercepting or real-time monitoring of calls. In the United States, for example, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has ordered Verizon to deliver such records of all its customers to the National Security Agency on a daily basis.

While under contract to McClatchy, Stephenson used McClatchy cell phones and was in frequent contact with McClatchy editors and other reporters and correspondents. [my emphasis]

Indeed, higher ranking New Zealand politicians are trying to insinuate that Stephenson’s call records would only be collected if he was communicating with terrorists — even while admitting the government did have a document treating investigative journalists like terrorists.

Prime Minister John Key said it’s theoretically possible that reporters could get caught in surveillance nets when the U.S. spies on enemy combatants.

[snip]

Also Monday, New Zealand Defense Minister Jonathan Coleman acknowledged the existence of an embarrassing confidential order that lists investigative journalists alongside spies and terrorists as potential threats to New Zealand’s military. That document was leaked to Hager, who provided a copy to The Associated Press. Coleman said the order will be modified to remove references to journalists.

Finally, New Zealand officials seem to be getting close to blaming this on the US.

“The collection of metadata on behalf of the NZDF by the U.S. would not be a legitimate practice, when practiced on a New Zealand citizen,” Coleman said. “It wouldn’t be something I would support as the minister, and I’d be very concerned if that had actually been the case.”

Thus far, the coverage of the Stephenson tracking has focused on the Kiwi role in all of it. But as Landay notes, Stephenson would have been using McClatchy-provided cell phones at the time, suggesting the US got the records themselves, not by intercepting anything, but simply by asking the carrier, as they did with the AP.

Ultimately, no one is issuing a direct denial that some entity tied to ISAF — whether that be American or New Zealand forces — collected the phone records of a journalist reporting for a US-based outlet to try to identify his non-friendly sources.

So what other journalists have US allies likened to terrorists because they actually reported using both friendly and unfriendly sources?