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Ron Wyden: Obtaining ECTRs without a Warrant Is Almost Like Spying on Someone’s Thoughts

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As a number of outlets have reported, Ron Wyden has placed a hold on the Intelligence Authorization in an attempt to thwart FBI’s quest to be able to obtain Electronic Communication Transaction Records with just a National Security Letter.

But Wyden’s released statement on that hold differs in emphasis from what he said in his Senate address announcing the hold yesterday. The statement describes how all toll records — from emails, texts, or web browsing — can infringe on privacy.

The fact of the matter is that ‘electronic communication transaction records’ can reveal a great deal of personal information about individual Americans.  If government officials know that an individual routinely emails a mental health professional, or sends texts to a substance abuse support group, or visits a particular dating website, or the website of a particular political group, then the government knows a lot about that individual.  Our Founding Fathers rightly argued that such intrusive searches should be approved by independent judges.

But in his floor statement, Wyden went on at length about the particular threat posed by obtaining web browsing history (this starts after 4:40).

For example, the National Security Letters could be used to collect what are called Electronic Communication Transaction Records. This would be email and chat records and text message logs, and in particular, Mr. President, and I’ve had Senators come up to me to ask me about whether this could be true, folks at home this weekend, when I was out and responding to questions about this, people asked, “Does this really mean that the government can get the Internet browsing history of an individual without a warrant even when the government has the emergency authority if it’s really necessary?”

And the answer to that question, Mr. President, is yes, the government can. The government can get access to web browsing history under the Intelligence Authorization legislation, under the McCain amendment, and they can do it without getting a warrant, even when the government can go get it without a warrant when there is an emergency circumstance.

Now the reality is web browsing history can reveal an awful lot of information about Americans. I know of little information, frankly Mr. President, that could be more intimate than that web browsing history. If you know that a person is visiting the website of a mental health professional, or a substance abuse support group, or a particular political organization, or — say — a particular dating site, you know a tremendous amount of private and personal and intimate information about that individual — that’s what you get when you can get access to their web browsing history without a warrant, even when the government’s interest is protected, as I’ve said, in an emergency.

The reality is getting access to somebody’s web browsing history is almost like spying on their thoughts. This level of surveillance absolutely ought to come with court oversight, and as I’ve spelled out tonight, that is possible in two separate ways — the traditional approach with getting a warrant, and then under Section 102, which I wrote as part of USA Freedom Act, the government can get the information when there’s an emergency and come back later after the fact and settle up.

Wyden’s statement makes a few other things clear. First, by focusing on the emergency provision of USA Freedom Act, Wyden illustrates that the FBI is trying to avoid court oversight, not so much obtain records quickly (though there would be more paperwork to a retroactive Section 215 order than an NSL).

That means two things. First, as I’ve noted, FBI is trying to avoid the minimization procedures the FISC spent three years imposing on FBI. Right now, we should assume that FISC would prohibit FBI from retaining all of the data it obtains from web searches, but if it moved (back) to NSL collection it would have no such restriction.

The other thing obtaining ECTRs with NSLs would do, though, is avoid a court First Amendment review, which should be of particular concern with web search history, since everything about web browsing involves First Amendment speech. Remember, a form of emergency provision (one limited to Section 215’s phone chaining application) was approved in February 2014. But in the September 2014 order, the FISC affirmatively required that such a review happen even with emergency orders. A 2015 IG Report on Section 215 (see page 176) explains why this is the case: because once FISC started approving seeds, NSA’s Office of General Counsel stopped doing First Amendment reviews, leaving that for FISC. It’s unclear whether it took FISC several cycles to figure that out, or whether they discovered an emergency approval that infringed on First Amendment issues. Under the expanded emergency provision under USAF, someone at FBI or DOJ’s National Security Division would do the review. But FBI’s interest in avoiding FISC’s First Amendment review is of particular concern given that FBI has, in the past, used an NSL to obtain data the FISC refused on First Amendment grounds, and at least one of the NSL challenges appears to have significant First Amendment concerns.

In the Senate yesterday, Senator Wyden strongly suggested the FBI wants this ECTR provision so it can “spy[] on their thoughts” without a warrant. We know from other developments that doing so using an NSL — rather than an emergency Section 215 order — would bypass rigorous minimization and First Amendment review.

In other words, the FBI wants to spy on — and then archive — your thoughts.

Senate Narrowly Avoids Voting Themselves to Become “Typos”

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The McCain (Cornyn) amendment to the Judiciary Appropriations bill that would let them get Electronic Communication Transaction Records with a National Security Letter just narrowly failed to get cloture, with Dan Sullivan flipping his vote to yes near the end but Mike Crapo, a likely no vote, not voting. The final vote was 59-37.

The floor debate leading up to the vote featured a few notable exchanges. Richard Burr was an absolutely douchebag, saying Ron “Wyden is consistently against providing LE the tools it needs to defend the American people.” He did so in a speech admitting that, “My colleague says this wouldn’t stop SB or Orlando. He’s 100% correct.”

Burr also insisted that we can’t let the Lone Wolf provision, which allegedly has never been used, expire. It was extended just last year and doesn’t expire until 2019.

More interesting though was the debate between Burr and Leahy over whether the FBI can’t obtain ECTRs because of a typo in the law as passed in 1993. Leahy basically described that Congress had affirmatively decided not to include ECTRs in NSLs (implicit in this, Congress also did not decide to include it in the 2001 expansion). Burr claimed that Congress meant to include it but didn’t in some kind of oversight.

Here’s how Mazie Hirono and Martin Heinrich described the debate in the report on the Intelligence Authorization, which has a version of the ECTR change.

The FBI has compared expanding these authorities to fixing a “typo” in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

However, during consideration of ECPA reform legislation in 1993, the House Judiciary Committee said in its committee report that “Exempt from the judicial scrutiny normally
required for compulsory process, the national security letter is an extraordinary device. New applications are disfavored.”

The House Judiciary Committee report also makes clear that the bill’s changes to Section 2709(b) of ECPA were a “modification of the language originally proposed by the
FBI.”

This does not support claims that the removal of the ECTR language was a “typo.”

Burr effectively argued that because law enforcement wanted ECTRs to be included back in 1993, they were meant to be included, and Congress’ exclusion of them was just a typo.

In short, a member of the Senate just argued that if Congress affirmatively decides not to capitulate to every demand of law enforcement, it must be considered a “typo” and not legally binding law.

For the moment, the Senate voted down making itself a “typo,” but Mitch McConnell filed a motion to reconsider, meaning he can bring the vote back up as soon as he arm twists one more vote.

 

Days after Bombing a Wedding Party and Squelching UN Investigation in Yemen, Saudi Arabia Worries about Civilian Casualties

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On Monday, coalition forces in Yemen bombed a wedding party, killing over 130 people.

The death toll from an air strike on a wedding party in Yemen has jumped to 131, medics said on Tuesday, in one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in Yemen’s war that drew strong condemnation from the U.N. secretary-general.

[snip]

On Tuesday, a medical source at Maqbana hospital, where most of the casualties were taken, said the death toll had climbed to 131 people, including many women and children.

The United Nations and international rights groups have expressed alarm at the escalating number of civilian deaths in Yemen – at least 2,355 out of more than 4,500 people killed from the end of March to Sept. 24, according to figures released by the U.N. human rights office in Geneva on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia succeeded in pressuring western governments to withdraw a Dutch resolution to conduct an inquiry into the civilian casualties caused by both sides in Yemen.

In a U-turn at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Western governments dropped plans Wednesday for an international inquiry into human rights violations by all parties in the war in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians in the last six months.

The change of direction came as the Netherlands withdrew the draft of a resolution it had prepared with support from a group of mainly Western countries that instructed the United Nations high commissioner for human rights to send experts to Yemen to investigate the conduct of the war.

[snip]

The Dutch resolution also called for the warring parties to allow access to humanitarian groups seeking to deliver aid and to the commercial import of goods like fuel that are needed to keep hospitals running. Deliveries of aid and other goods have been slowed by the coalition’s naval blockade of Yemeni ports.

But in the face of stiff resistance from Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, and to the dismay of human rights groups, Western governments have accepted a resolution based on a Saudi text that lacks any reference to an independent, international inquiry.

On Friday, Saudi Arabia condemned civilian casualties. Just those caused by Russian airstrikes targeting Saudi backed rebels seeking to overthrown Bashar al-Assad.

As Russia continued striking targets in Syria, the U.S. was joined by the U.K., France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey in saying a bombing campaign begun by Vladimir Putin’s government on Wednesday “led to civilian casualties” and didn’t target Islamic State militants. The statement came hours before Putin was due to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French and Ukrainian presidents, Francois Hollande and Petro Poroshenko, to discuss a Ukrainian cease-fire pact in Paris.

“These military actions constitute a further escalation and will only fuel more extremism and radicalization,” the countries said in the statement. “We call on the Russian Federation to immediately cease its attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians and to focus its efforts on fighting ISIL,” according to the statement, which used an acronym for Islamic State. Russia has said it is only targeting “terrorist” groups.

It’s a nice statement. And civilian killings surely do fuel extremism.

But Saudi Arabia — and, for that matter, the US, which has bombed its share of wedding parties (though often because it relies on Saudi intelligence) — is probably not the country that should be condemning civilian casualties right now.

Update: Billmon has been checking and he was only able to find the statement actually posted on Turkey’s Foreign Minister’s website.

Update: Meanwhile, the US (which also claims to be concerned about civilian casualties) told Judge Ellen Hueville that Ali Jaber, whose brother-in-law and nephew a US drone strike killed, does not have standing to ask for an apology.

Update: Lee Fang asked McCain about the Saudis killing Yemenis.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., spent the most time discussing the issue with me. But his answers were perplexing.

“They may be bombing civilians, which is actually not true,” McCain said, when asked about civilian casualties in Yemen.

“Civilians aren’t dying?” I asked.

“No, they’re not,” the senator replied. “Oh, I’m sure civilians die in war. Not nearly as many as the Houthis have executed,” McCain continued, referring to the Shiite militia waging an insurgency against the Sunni government in Yemen.

Asked about the recent reports of Saudi forces bombing a wedding party in Yemen, McCain said, “I’m sure in wars terrible things happen and the Houthis however are an extremist group backed by the Iranians who are slaughtering Yemenis.”

“It’s Good to Be Back,” Petraeus Says before He Offers a Vague Apology and Oil Market Advice

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Screen Shot 2015-09-22 at 1.24.13 PMJohn McCain has officially launched David Petraeus’ rehabilitation tour.

Petraeus testified today before the Senate Armed Services Committee on what to do in the Middle East. But you could tell how much this is about rehabilitation for the heartfelt thanks Petraeus offered McCain for bringing him in to testify. “It’s good to be back,” Petraeus said, before launching into the most hailed part of the hearing, this vague apology.

I think it is appropriate to begin my remarks this morning with an apology, one that I have offered before, but nonetheless one that I want to repeat to you and to the American public. Four years ago I made a serious mistake, one that brought discredit on me and pain closest–to those closest to me. It was a violation of the trust placed in me, and a breach of the values to which I had been committed throughout my life. There’s nothing I can do to undo what I did. I can only say again how sorry I am to thoseI let down and then strive to go forward with a greater sense of humility and purpose, and with gratitude to those who stood with me during a very difficult chapter in my life.

He didn’t actually say what part of the scandal he was apologizing for, though some of the press seemed to be certain that it was about one or another aspect of it. His invocation of the pain he caused those closest to him suggests it was the affair itself. The timing — just over four years ago, August 28, 2011, was the day he gave his black books full of code word intelligence to Paula Broadwell for several days — suggests it was about actually leaking intelligence.

If the acts he apologized for were four years ago, though, it means this apology doesn’t cover the lies he told the FBI on June 12, 2012 about sharing this intelligence. And it doesn’t cover keeping those books with code word intelligence in the top drawer of his unlocked desk until FBI found them on April 5, 2013, the act — mishandling classified information — that he technically pled guilty too.

Though I wouldn’t be surprised if the lawyer he shares with Hillary Clinton, David Kendall, advised him not to apologize for lying to the FBI, given that would involve admitting guilt for something he didn’t plead guilty for.

So having apparently apologized for a range of things that didn’t apparently include lying to the FBI, David Petraeus gave unsworn testimony to Congress.

The testimony was about what you’d expect. David Petraeus’ surge was, according to David Petraeus, a huge success. Petraeus told of some great things Nuri al-Maliki did even while explaining some great things Haider al-Abadi is doing. Petraeus envisioned the break up of Syria while insisting that the same couldn’t happen in Iraq (because the Sunnis in Iraq would have no oil revenues). All casualties in Syria were the fault of Bashar al-Assad, and not the US ally-backed forces Petraeus watched get armed while he was still CIA Director. Petraeus denied, without being asked, that the military had a policy of ignoring Afghan bacha bazi, as reported in NYT this week.

Not a word was mentioned about the chaos CIA-led intervention in Libya has caused, or what to do about it (Petraeus did mention Libya in a passing answer to a question), not even in discussions of why the Russians would never be willing to work under US command in countering ISIS, not even from the party that remains obsessed about Benghazi.

Nothing was mentioned about how all the men we’ve — Petraeus — has trained have been prone to flee.

The closest Petraeus came to discussing the support for Sunni extremism our allies — Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — give (and therefore their role in the region’s instability) came when Petraeus discussed Turkey’s increasing targeting of PKK that happened at the same time Turkey agreed to let us use Incirlik Air Base, though Petraeus didn’t note any connection between those two things.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the hearing, though, came towards the end (after 2:11), when Thom Tillis asked a very reasonable question about how other countries (he didn’t say, but he probably had China in mind) reliance on Iran once they start selling oil will become important strategically.

After claiming Tillis’ break-even number for Iran’s budget (which accords with public reporting) was incorrect, Petraeus put on his private equity guy hat.

I’m the chairman of the KKR global institute and a partner in KKR, one of the global investment firms, uh [hand gesture showing breadth] big private equity firms in our country. And, first of all, by the way, the analysis on crude oil export shows that not only would the price of WTI, West Texas Intermediate go up slightly, so the producers would be better off, it would also have an impact on Brent Crude prices, which would come down, the global price, which is a lot of what we refine, and the price at the pump probably would go down. So it’s very interesting — if you look at, I think it’s the CBO that did the analysis of this. One of our analytical organizations here, I think, on Capitol Hill has looked at this. And it’s a very interesting dynamic.

[Tillis tries to interrupt, Petraeus keeps speaking.]

Beyond that, I don’t think we should get involved in markets as a country, unless we want to do something like sanctions. So again, you wouldn’t do it — if you want to use sanctions for economic tools as a weapon, gives thumbs up sign] fine, but otherwise I think you have to be very careful about intervention in the global markets.

Tillis tried again, restating his question about whether we should drill as much oil as we can to hedge against increased Iranian influence.

We ought to produce all the oil that we can, if we’re making a profit. If we can enable countries like Iraq to revive their oil industry as we did, it helps Iraq, it funds their gover–by the way they’re running into fiscal deficit now. But again, this is really about market forces I think, much more than getting involved in this as a country.

Not much of Petraeus’ answer made sense, but I can assure you, the head of KKR’s Global Institute is pretty excited about natural gas.

Sure, the expertise of a private equity guy might be worthwhile to Congress, though that affiliation was not listed on the SASC website. Screen Shot 2015-09-22 at 12.46.32 PM

But it’s all the more absurd given the rest of Petraeus testimony, most notably his silence about Saudi Arabia’s destabilizing influence, given that we do play in global markets precisely through our unquestioningly loyalty to the Saudis.

I guess the Senate — which turned out in big numbers — finds this kind of analysis useful. But it is, once again, about David Petraeus more than it is about testimony that will help us adopt a sound policy in the Middle East.

The US Chamber of Commerce Is Pre-Clearing What It Is Willing to Do for Our National Security on CISA

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Screen Shot 2015-08-04 at 4.11.21 PMSheldon Whitehouse just attempted (after 1:44) to rebut an epic rant from John McCain (at 1:14) in which the Arizona Senator suggested anyone who wanted to amend the flawed Cyber Intelligence Sharing Act wasn’t serious about national security.

Whitehouse defended his two amendments first by pointing out that McCain likes and respects the national security credentials of both his co-sponsors (Lindsey Graham and Max Blunt).

Then Whitehouse said,  “I believe both of the bills [sic] have now been cleared by the US Chamber of Commerce, so they don’t have a business community objection.”

Perhaps John McCain would be better served turning himself purple (really! watch his rant!) attacking the very notion that the Chamber of Commerce gets pre-veto power over a bill that (according to John McCain) is utterly vital for national security.

Even better, maybe John McCain could turn himself purple suggesting that the Chamber needs to step up to the plate and accept real responsibility for making this country’s networks safer, rather than just using our cybersecurity problems as an opportunity to demand immunity for yet more business conduct.

If this thing is vital for national security — this particular bill is not, but McCain turned himself awfully purple — then the Chamber should just suck it up and meet the requirements to protect the country decided on by the elected representatives of this country.

Yet instead, the Chamber apparently gets to pre-clear a bill designed to spy on the Chamber’s customers.

Mitch McConnell and Richard Burr’s Authoritarian Power Grab Fails

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Last night, Mitch McConnell dealt himself a humiliating defeat. As I correctly predicted a month before events played out, McConnell tried to create a panic that would permit him and Richard Burr to demand changes — including iMessage retention, among other things — to USA F-ReDux. That is, in fact, what Mitch attempted to do, as is evident from the authoritarian power grab Burr released around 8:30 last night (that is, technically after the Administration had already missed the FISA Court deadline to renew the dragnet).

Contrary to a lot of absolutely horrible reporting on Burr’s bill, it does not actually resemble USA F-ReDux.

As I laid out here, it would start by gutting ECPA, such that the FBI could resume using NSLs to do the bulky Internet collection that moved to Section 215 production in 2009.

It also vastly expanded the application of the call record function (which it very explicitly applied to electronic communications providers, meaning it would include all Internet production, though that is probably what USA F-ReDux does implicitly), such that it could be used against Americans for any counterterrorism or counterintelligence (which includes leaks and cybersecurity) function, and for foreigners (which would chain onto Americans) for any foreign intelligence purpose. The chaining function includes the same vague language from USA F-ReDux which, in the absence of the limiting language in the House Judiciary Committee bill report, probably lets the government chain on session identifying information (like location and cookies, but possibly even things like address books) to do pattern analysis on providers’ data. Plus, the bill might even permit the government to do this chaining in provider data, because it doesn’t define a key “permit access” term.

Burr’s bill applies EO 12333 minimization procedures (and notice), not the stronger Section 215 ones Congress mandated in 2006; while USA F-ReDux data will already be shared far more widely than it is now, this would ensure that no defendant ever gets to challenge this collection. It imposes a 3-year data retention mandate (which would be a significant new burden on both Verizon and Apple). It appears to flip the amicus provision on its head, such that if Verizon or Apple challenged retention or any other part of the program, the FISC could provide a lawyer for the tech companies and tell that lawyer to fight for retention. And in the piece de la resistance, the bill creates its very own Espionage Act imposing 10 year prison terms for anyone who reveals precisely what’s happening in this expanded querying function at providers.

It is, in short, the forced-deputization of the nation’s communications providers to conduct EO 12333 spying on Americans within America.

Had Mitch had his way, after both USA F-ReDux and his 2-month straight reauthorization failed to get cloture, he would have asked for a week extension, during which the House would have been forced to come back to work and accept — under threat of “going dark” — some of the things demanded in Burr’s bill.

It didn’t work out.

Sure, both USA F-ReDux (57-42) and the short-term reauthorization (45-54) failed cloture votes.

But as it was, USA F-ReDux had far more support than the short-term reauthorization. Both McConnell and Rand Paul voted against both, for very different reasons. The difference in the vote results, however, was that Joe Donnelly (D), Jeff Flake (R), Ron Johnson (R), James Lankford (R), Bill Nelson (D), Tim Scott (R), and Dan Sullivan (R) voted yes to both. McConnell’s preferred option didn’t even get a majority of the vote, because he lost a chunk of his members.

Then McConnell played the hand he believed would give himself and Burr leverage. The plan — as I stated — was to get a very short term reauthorization passed and in that period force through changes with the House (never mind that permitting that to happen might have cost Boehner his Speakership, that’s what McConnell and Burr had in mind).

First, McConnell asked for unanimous consent to pass an extension to June 8. (h/t joanneleon for making the clip) But Paul, reminding that this country’s founders opposed General Warrants and demanding 2 majority vote amendments, objected. McConnell then asked for a June 5 extension, to which Ron Wyden objected. McConnell asked for an extension to June 3. Martin Heinrich objected. McConnell asked for an extension to June 2. Paul objected.

McConnell’s bid failed. And he ultimately scheduled the Senate to return on Sunday afternoon, May 31.

By far the most likely outcome at this point is that enough Senators — likely candidates are Mark Kirk, Angus King, John McCain, Joni Ernst, or Susan Collins — flip their vote on USA F-ReDux, which will then be rushed to President Obama just hours before Section 215 (and with it, Lone Wolf and Roving Wiretaps) expires on June 1. But even that (because of when McConnell scheduled it) probably requires Paul to agree to an immediate vote.

But if not, it won’t be the immediate end of the world.

On this issue, too, the reporting has been horrible, even to almost universal misrepresentation of what Jim Comey said about the importance of expiring provisions — I’ve laid out what he really said and what it means here. Comey cares first and foremost about the other Section 215 uses, almost surely the bulky Internet collection that moved there in 2009. But those orders, because they’re tied to existing investigations (of presumably more focused subject than the standing counterterrorism investigation to justify the phone dragnet), they will be grand-fathered at least until whatever expiration date they have hits, if not longer. So FBI will be anxious to restore that authority (or move it back to NSLs as Burr’s bill would do), especially since unlike the phone dragnet, there aren’t other ways to get the data. But there’s some time left to do that.

Comey also said the Roving Wiretap is critical. I’m guessing that’s because they use it to target things like Tor relays. But if that’s the primary secretly redefined function, they likely have learned enough about the Tor relays they’re parked on to get individual warrants. And here, too, the FBI likely won’t have to detask until expiration days on these FISA orders come due.

As for the phone dragnet and the Lone Wolf? Those are less urgent, according to Comey.

Now, that might help the Republicans who want to jam through some of Burr’s demands, since most moderate reformers assume the phone dragnet is the most important function that expires. Except that McConnell and others have spent so long pretending that this is about a phone dragnet that in truth doesn’t really work, that skittish Republicans are likely to want to appear to do all they can to keep the phone dragnet afloat.

As I said, the most likely outcome is that a number of people flip their vote and help pass USA F-ReDux.

But as with last night’s “debate,” no one really knows for sure.

American Hegemony: Delivering “Unpredictable Instability” the World Over

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I love Global Threat Hearings and curse you Richard Burr for holding the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing in secret.

At least John McCain had the courage to invite James Clapper for what might have been (but weren’t) hard questions in public in front of Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday.

Clapper started with a comment that was not prominent in (though it definitely underscored) his written testimony (Update: Here’s the transcript of his as-delivered statement.)

Unpredictable instability is the new normal.The year 2014 saw the highest rate of political instability since 1992. The most deaths as a result of state-sponsored mass killings since the early 1990s. And the highest number of refugees and internally displaced persons (or IDPs) since World War II. Roughly half of the world’s currently stable countries are at some risk of instability over the next two years.

It’s a damning catalog. All the more so given that the US has been the world’s unquestioned hegemon since that period in the early 1990s when everything has been getting worse, since that period when the first President Bush promised a thousand points of light.

And while the US can’t be held responsible for all the instability in the world right now, it owns a lot of it: serial invasions in the Middle East and the coddling of Israel account for many of the refugees (though there’s no telling what would have happened with the hundred thousand killed and millions of refugees in Syria had the second President Bush not invaded Iraq, had he taken Bashar al-Assad up on an offer to partner against al Qaeda, had we managed the aftermath of the Arab Spring differently).

US-backed neoliberalism and austerity — and the underlying bank crisis that provided the excuse for it — has contributed to instability elsewhere, and probably underlies those countries that Clapper thinks might grow unstable in the next year.

We’re already seeing instability arising from climate change; the US owns some of the blame for that, and more for squandering its leadership role on foreign adventures rather than pushing a solution to that more urgent problem (Clapper, by the way, thinks climate change is a problem but unlike Obama doesn’t consider it the most serious one).

There are, obviously, a lot of other things going on. Clapper talked admiringly of China’s modernization of its military, driven by domestically developed programs, an obvious development when a country becomes the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. But China’s growing influence comes largely in the wake of, and in part because of, stupid choices the US has made.

There was, predictably, a lot of discussion about cyberthreats, even featuring Senate Intelligence Committee member Angus King arguing we need an offensive threat (we’ve got one — and have been launching pre-emptive strikes for 9 years now — as he would know if he paid attention to briefings or read the Intercept or the New York Times) to deter others from attacking us with cyberweapons.

Almost everyone at the hearing wanted to talk about Iran, without realizing that a peace deal with it would finally take a step towards more stability (until our allies the Saudis start getting belligerent as a result).

Still, even in spite of the fact that Clapper started with this inventory of instability, there seemed zero awareness of what a damning indictment that is for the world’s hegemon. Before we address all these other problems, shouldn’t we focus some analysis on why American hegemony went so badly wrong?

DC’s Elite: Let Our General Go!

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At almost precisely the moment the FBI started investigating who was pestering Tampa Bay socialite Jill Kelley, an investigation that would lead to the resignation and investigation of David Petraeus, John McCain called for an investigation into top Obama officials leaking details of covert ops to make themselves look good.

Outraged by two recent articles published by the New York Times, which exposed the extent of U.S. involvement in cyberattacks made against Iran and the White House’s secret ‘Kill List,’ John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) took to the Senate floor to admonish the administration, and accuse it of widespread disregard for national security.

“The fact that this administration would aggressively pursue leaks by a 22-year-old Army private in the Wikileaks matter and former CIA employees in other leaks cases, but apparently sanction leaks made by senior administration officials for political purposes is simply unacceptable,” McCain said.

Now, McCain is outraged! that former top Obama official David Petraeus is getting the callous treatment given to those being investigated for leaks.

U.S. Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) today released the following statement on the handling of the investigation into former CIA Director David Petraeus:

“While the facts of the case involving General David Petraeus remain unknown and are not suitable for comment, it is clear that this investigation has been grievously mishandled.

“It is outrageous that the highly confidential and law enforcement-sensitive recommendation of prosecutors to bring charges against General Petraeus was leaked to the New York Times. It is a shameful continuation of a pattern in which leaks by unnamed sources have marred this investigation in contravention to fundamental fairness.

“No American deserves such callous treatment, let alone one of America’s finest military leaders whose selfless service and sacrifice have inspired young Americans in uniform and likely saved many of their lives.”

And of course, McCain had no problem when the first story about poor Petraeus’ treatment appeared in December, quoting lots of McCain’s buddies calling for justice! for Petraeus.

McCain (and his sidekick Lindsey) are not the only ones rending their garments over the injustice of a top Obama official being investigated for leaking classified details to make himself look good. Jason Chaffetz keeps complaining about it. And Dianne Feinstein took to the Sunday shows to declare that Petraeus has suffered enough. Richard Burr apparently made false claims about how the Espionage Act has been wielded, of late, even against those whose leaks caused no harm.

Golly, you’d think all these legislators might figure out they have the authority, as legislators, to fix the overly broad application of the Espionage Act.

Meanwhile, Eli Lake — who launched the campaign to Let Our General Go last month — has an odd story complaining about Petraeus’ treatment. To Lake’s credit, he mentions — though does not quote — how Petraeus celebrated John Kiriakou’s guilty plea. Here’s what Petraeus said then about the importance of respecting your vows to secrecy:

It marks an important victory for our agency, for our intelligence community, and for our country. Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.

Lake also suggests Paula Broadwell’s job — writing fawning biographies of the man she was fucking — was the same as Bob Woodward’s.

What’s more, Broadwell herself was writing a second book on Petraeus. When Broadwell — a graduate of West Point — was writing her first biography of him, she was given access to top secret information covering the period in which Petraeus commanded allied forces in Afghanistan. This arrangement is common in Washington for established authors. Sources for Bob Woodward, whose books often disclose classified information that is provided to him through semi-official leaks, are not investigated for betraying state secrets.

Maybe it is, maybe Woodward is nothing more than a power-fucker. But it obscures the key difference (which should not be true but is) that when the White House sanctions a book, they get to sanction self-serving leaks for it.

Finally, Lake misstates something about selective treatment.

Senior officials such as Petraeus, who serve at the highest levels of the national security state, are almost never punished as harshly as low- and mid- level analysts who are charged with leaking. When former CIA director John Deutch was found to have classified documents on his unsecure home computer, he was stripped of his security clearance and charged with a misdemeanor. 

An even better example — one not mentioned at all — is when Alberto Gonzales was found to have kept a CYA file, full of draft OLC memos and notes from a briefing on the illegal wiretap program, in a briefcase in his house. He resigned at the beginning of that investigation (and it has never been clear how much that played a role in his resignation; there are many interesting questions about Gonzales’ resignation that remain unanswered). But he suffered no consequences from keeping unbelievably sensitive documents at his house, aside from being denied the sinecure all other Bush officials got.

That said, that’s true of a lot of people in sensitive positions. Of the 40 witnesses who might be called against Jeffrey Sterling, for example, 6 have been found to have mistreated classified information (as has Sterling himself); that includes his direct supervisor while at CIA as well as 3 others cleared into the Merlin op (and I’m certain that doesn’t include Condi Rice, whose testimony the AIPAC defendants would have used to show how common leaking to the press was, nor does it include one other witness I strongly suspect has been involved in another big leak case). CIA withheld that detail from DOJ until right before the trial was due to start in 2011. But it does offer at least one metric of how common mistreating classified information is.

The prosecution of it, of course, is very selective. And that’s the problem, and David Petraeus’ problem, and Congress’ problem.

Yet that won’t ensure that Congress does anything to fix that problem with the means at their disposal, legislating a fix to stop the misuse of the Espionage Act. That’s because they like the overly broad use of it to cudgel leakers they don’t like. Just not the ones they’re particularly fond of.

Did Obama’s Beloved “Moderate” FSA Fighters Flee Aleppo?

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The Obama Administration continues to hold onto the fantasy that training and equipping a group of “moderate” rebels in Syria will allow threading the gap between the Bashar al-Assad regime that continues to relentlessly attack its own citizens and the ISIS fighters who behead many of the folks in their path. After all, Obama and his minions seem to want us to to think, the “moderates” only occasionally eat a victim’s heart or behead people after posing for photos with John McCain.

The press in Turkey is reporting that Obama’s centerpiece of the “moderate” rebel movement, the Free Syrian Army, has fled the strategic city of Aleppo where battles have taken place since early in the Syrian civil war. The reports say that within the past two weeks, the new leader of the FSA, Jamal Marouf (previous FSA leader Salem Idris was among those in the famous photo with McCain) fled to Turkey where he is being protected. Iranian news is repeating these reports, with stories in both Fars News and PressTV. Both Iranian stories cite this report from Turkey:

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), the recognized armed opposition group against the Bashar al-Assad in Syria, has ceased its resistance in Aleppo, Syria’s second biggest city, withdrawing its 14,000 militia from the city, a ranking Turkish security source told the Hürriyet Daily News on Nov. 17.

“Its leader Jamal Marouf has fled to Turkey,” confirmed the source, who asked not to be named. “He is currently being hosted and protected by the Turkish state.”

The source did not give an exact date of the escape but said it was within the last two weeks, that is, the first half of November. The source declined to give Marouf’s whereabouts in Turkey.

Wow, so not only did the leader apparently leave, but 14,000 fighters abandoned Aleppo, too? That’s huge. The only Western news story I see so far on this is an AFP story carried by Yahoo News in the UK. The story opens by describing how desperate the refugee problem will be in Turkey if Aleppo has indeed fallen:

Turkey fears another two to three million Syrian refugees could cross its borders if the region of Syria’s second city of Aleppo is overrun either by Islamist extremists or regime forces, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday.

Turkey is already hosting at least 1.5 million refugees displaced by the Syrian conflict and has repeatedly warned that its capacities are being strained by the numbers.

It takes another sixteen paragraphs or so before getting to the news about Marouf:

Meanwhile the Turkish online newspaper Radikal reported that the chief of the moderate anti-Assad group the Syrian Revolutionary Front, Jamal Maarouf, had fled to Turkey two weeks ago.

There was no confirmation of the report and no further details were immediately available.

But never fear! The article gives us this rosy news as a conclusion:

Media reports said at the weekend that Turkey and the United States have agreed a plan under which some 2,000 FSA fighters would be trained on Turkish soil.

Let’s see, 14,000 troops fled, and now we’re going to train a whopping 2000 to take their place.

Winning!

It May Not Have Been ISIS, But McCain Did Pose With Members of a Group That Beheads Opponents

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Partial screengrab from the Weasel Zippers post on the McCain photo.

Partial screengrab from the Weasel Zippers post on the McCain photo.

On May 27, 2013, nearly three months before the deadly August, 2013 sarin attack, Josh Rogin was granted an “exclusive” to publish in The Daily Beast that John McCain had secretly slipped into Syria to meet with “moderate” rebels who oppose Bashar al-Assad:

McCain, one of the fiercest critics of the Obama administration’s Syria policy, made the unannounced visit across the Turkey-Syria border with Gen. Salem Idris, the leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army. He stayed in the country for several hours before returning to Turkey. Both in Syria and Turkey, McCain and Idris met with assembled leaders of Free Syrian Army units that traveled from around the country to see the U.S. senator. Inside those meetings, rebel leaders called on the United States to step up its support to the Syrian armed opposition and provide them with heavy weapons, a no-fly zone, and airstrikes on the Syrian regime and the forces of Hezbollah, which is increasingly active in Syria.

Rogin continues:

The entire trip was coordinated with the help of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an American nonprofit organization that works in support of the Syrian opposition. Two leaders of the group attended all of the McCain-Idris meetings and discussed them with The Daily Beast.

A couple of days later, Politico published a photo from the visit, identifying Mouaz Moustafa of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (he is now listed as their Executive Director).

Just who was present in the meetings with McCain, both in photographs that have appeared and in less public meetings, has been a point of contention since word of the meeting came out. Within a week of the Rogin story, Rand Paul was quoted by CBS:

Wielding a charge that’s been largely refuted, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., over the weekend took a swipe at his fellow Republican, Arizona Sen. John McCain, for his clandestine meeting last week with Syrian rebels.

“I’m very worried about getting involved in a new war in Syria,” Paul said Saturday night while taking questions at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is “a bad guy – he is,” the Kentucky senator continued, but cited al Qaeda and additional extremist groups “on the other side” as a reason to give the United States pause before engaging militarily.

“They say, ‘there are some pro-Western people, and we’re going to vet them,'” Paul continued. “Well, apparently we had a senator over there who had his picture taken with some kidnappers, so I don’t know how good a job we’re doing vetting those who are going to get the arms.”

Even though CBS noted that Paul’s accusation had already been refuted before they quoted it, Josh Rogin felt it necessary to give more detail debunking Paul. Leaving aside the red herring of Nour and whether he was at the meeting, this part of Rogin’s piece is very interesting: Read more →