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The latest selection of recent news stories on this topic
are listed at the bottom of this page, which was
established early in 2009 to chronicle the growing liberal attacks on
our intelligence capabilities. |
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Sometimes, regardless of good intentions, members of Congress as well as
the President and Cabinet officials or other public servants
demonstrably do very harmful things. Their arrogance can be
stunning. Their assessment of veterans and other conservatives as
potential security threats are as ludicrous as their vicious attempts to
smear the hundreds of thousands
of Americans at the Tax Day Tea Parties.
Although such idiocy can be annoying, it is largely harmless. In
fact, it may actually help to shorten their tenure. Think of it as
a form of Darwinian natural selection
out of the American political gene pool. Scum separates itself
by rising to the surface, where it becomes more readily apparent and
easier to skim off.
The recent release of memos from the Bush
administration about the interrogation of terrorists is both very
harmful to our national security interests and incredibly naive or even
stupid, as elaborated below. Recent
news updates about such allegations and policy changes are
at the end of this page.
The problem isn't what we did to our terrorist
prisoners in the past, but rather what will happen in the future -
including in situations which don't involve captured enemies at
all, but rather cooperation with those who genuinely want to be
our friends and help us despite the great personal risks involved. This action was
very harmful to the difficult "human intelligence" work which is
essential to our national security.
It isn't harmful just because we have revealed how
little we did to these captured terrorists in order to save many
American lives. It is harmful because it raises doubts about our
own level of commitment to defend ourselves from tyranny, much less to
defend others. As in Iraq and Afghanistan or many other places,
excuses can readily be made by politicians here for tyranny as somebody
else's problem, not ours. If they even visit such places, they do
it with extensive security. Those whose help we really need get
little security. They're left in mortal danger.
The question isn't how we pried valuable information
out of these few terrorists. It is how we will ever get such
valuable information through many other sources and methods. We
demonstrably failed to do so before 9/11/01 despite many prior attacks
on our interests. That was not the first attack which we missed
completely. It was one of many. It's an extraordinary
intelligence challenge to thwart such attacks.
Going back to the pre-9/11 legal focus of Carter and
Clinton is an open invitation to more such disasters, both at home or
abroad. It's not just Americans who die at the hands of such
people. There are people out there who share our interest in
defeating terrorists and other very serious threats to our country.
Will they risk their lives by still trusting us to do so? How many
people have been shot, beheaded, or brutally tortured just for alleged
cooperation with us? They may hate their local tyrants, but will
they trust us?
It really doesn't matter why George Bush's legal
advisors approved of these narrowly limited methods for harsh prisoner
interrogation in a few cases. Let historians argue over that in 30
years or so - not now. Documents are routinely declassified on
that basis. A partisan political witch hunt now is very harmful. |
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How can our Congress possibly be a
threat to our national interests, and a friend to tyrants? |
| It is
harmful because those who live under tyranny will doubt that they can
trust us. Why should they risk their lives, and their
families, in the face of ruthless tyrants who want to kill us?
Doesn't anybody else remember all the damage done by the
Church Committee , regardless of any good intentions?
The problem isn't that CIA staff and others in our
government will go into CYA mode now to protect their own careers.
That's normal - especially among those who spend their entire careers in
Washington DC, where the main threat which they face is to be passed
over for their next promotion if they offend somebody.
The real problem is that our friends in this dangerous
world will once again doubt our resolve to help them escape such
tyrants, and thus will not stand up to them, even in secret by helping
us to do so. They see Obama befriending tyrants as though he could
charm them into better behavior, while he joins our critics rather than
standing up for America. They will not trust us. They
will not risk their lives to help us.
While our NATO friends avoid engagement in conflicts,
and follow an absurd "catch and release" policy to just interfere with
piracy in Somalia rather than to destroy it, our potential friends who
still suffer under the tyranny of bad leaders will not trust us any more
than they trust the Europeans to help them. They see the bad deals
which are made with their rulers, and it convinces them of American and
European hypocrisy. They might be glad to come to America to
escape tyranny, but few will risk standing up against it. |
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Why will foreign intelligence services trust us to protect the
information which they share with us? Why should
potential sources of reliable information voluntarily risk their lives
if they may be exposed for political expediency here whenever some
member of Congress wants to grandstand?
If we aren't even going to be tough on captured
terrorists to protect ourselves, why should they voluntarily risk their
own lives on our behalf? If they say something which a member of
Congress doesn't like, or which may help a politician to gain some
partisan advantage in a political debate here, will they have to fear
exposure if they share such intelligence with us? Trust which
took years to build up can quickly vanish.
How will we win the trust of more reliable sources in
this context? That will just make us even more reliant upon the
capture and effective interrogation of our enemies to learn any
actionable intelligence to prevent harm before it occurs, rather than
just to track down the killers like a police and legal issue after a
crime.
The lack of good "human intelligence" before 9/11/01
and many other attacks on our interests around the world, whether by
terrorists or governments, is always decried by members of Congress as
they look for scapegoats after every so-called "intelligence failure".
While Obama smiles and reaches out to our critics and some of the worst
tyrants in the world, why should those who would stand up to tyranny
trust us? |
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Obama and
members of Congress need to be held accountable for this outrageous
mistake |
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The real human intelligence failure is in Congress, and now it has
spread to the White House. While the
politicians and others demagogue this issue in the comfort and security
of America, those who are on the front lines to defend us against the
spread of tyranny to this island of liberty have just been stabbed in
the back yet again, as they were under Carter and Clinton. This is
as insane as when Secretary of State
Henry Stimson shut down intelligence operations at State in 1929 by
insisting that "Gentlemen don't read other people's mail", even though
he eventually learned the folly of that attitude in World War II.
Tyrants are emboldened by displays of weakness. They
aren't looking to negotiate away their power, as seems to be the
priority of those politicians here who now want to be adored by people
elsewhere, too. |
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Defining political power in Washington
instead of defending "we the people" |
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This arrogant political move is more typical of third world despots
who make their first priority the consolidation of their own power
through attacks on any future rivals and vilification of their
predecessors. It is absolutely outrageous for any President to do
such a thing. It is an assault on the precedent of smooth
transitions of political leadership which we have enjoyed for 230+
years. The Bush administration tried in good faith to ignore all
the vicious criticism and provide for a smooth transition to the Obama
team. Those members of Congress who are now pushing for highly
political investigations or even trials of former Bush officials are
worse than those in the McCarthy era. This is outrageous.
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Perhaps we should now approve of even harsher interrogation methods to
be applied only to members of Congress who had military or
intelligence oversight responsibilities, but refuse to acknowledge that
they ever knew or approved of such methods, or how many Americans were
saved by these actions. Find out what they knew, and when they
knew it, and whether they ever approved of the use of such techniques
against captured terrorists. Let's make sure that there is no
political hypocrisy among them. Force them to confess the truth.
They still insist for political advantage that such methods are not
effective. Let's test that assertion. If our military can
endure such methods for training purposes, let's try it out on them too.
Nancy Pelosi should be first in line. The CIA could probably fund
operations for a long time by selling tickets or TV rights for that
show. |
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Alternatively, if Congress feels that there should be a special
commission to investigate the interrogation methods, then the
suggested venue for the Justice Department and commission meetings
with any members of Congress or expert witnesses would be an insecure
location on the Afghanistan border, or perhaps in the Swat Valley in
Pakistan. Tell the Taliban that you are unarmed, and just want to
all be
friends. Do these members of Congress want heads to roll because
of what the Bush administration did? Here's their chance to cut
through the hypocrisy and openly show their principled leadership and
commitment to reach out to our enemies and trust them to become our
friends. Go to the front lines, as those in the intelligence and
military community do, without your big security detail. Offer that opportunity for Taliban and
al-Qaida supporters to express their expert views on this subject, and
for members of the panel to enjoy their hospitality and see at first
hand how well they treat their prisoners. Don't spend a year doing
comfortable, well-compensated meetings in Washington DC to produce a
partisan political report. Get out
there and meet the enemy in their own environment. Focus on what
you are going to do to defend us all against them. Become
personally familiar with the threat. |
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America looks forward. We try to work together in good faith
on foreign policy issues,
regardless of partisan politics, to do the right thing for the good of
the country as a whole, as we all perceive it to be at the time.
Those perceptions may change over time, particularly as the threats we
face change.
We may disagree vigorously, but we shouldn't engage in political witch hunts
or show trials as in the McCarthy years, because accountability doesn't
mean having scapegoats for everything which we don't like in hindsight.
Leadership is about looking forward, doing the best we can given what we
know at the time, and trying to improve. We try to learn from
mistakes as well as successes, and move forward. |
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Domestic policy failures are more
intuitively obvious, and more easily reversed |
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domestic matters, any damage can usually be recognized more easily by
citizens, regardless of political spin, and reversed over time.
The fear of losing power in the next election cycle, as well as public
outrage between elections, helps to moderate and limit their adverse
behavior. Thanks to our unique Constitution, there are many checks
and balances to deliberately limit the damage which our leaders can do
to us. We shouldn't fall into the trap of tyrants who blame
foreign devils for all of the problems of their own creation. The
buck stops here. We control our own destiny. The choices are
ours, good or bad. Foreign developments certainly affect us, but
it's up to us to do well despite that. The same does not apply in foreign
affairs. We are less likely as individuals to notice the damage
which is being done elsewhere until it leads to a crisis. Congress
can do really stupid and harmful things when it intervenes in foreign
policy and intelligence operations. Rather than defending American
principles and values, Congress can politicize the process.
Instead of preserving our national security, there's a natural tendency
to focus on their own partisan political interests for domestic power
and influence. The focus may be on their own career security.
That's a useful check on their actions, but can also be harmful. |
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no accident that the Executive branch was assigned the task of dealing
with such matters for us, instead of Congress. Congress served as
a check on Executive power, but mostly indirectly through budget powers
and the power to approve or reject treaties which would affect our
sovereign authority over our actions in the world through the "foreign
entanglements" of agreed mutual interests. In
short, were "we the people" giving up our Constitutional protections to
some foreign entity? Was this really in our interests? It
was assumed that members of Congress would be reluctant to support
treaties or the funding of other foreign policy initiatives unless they
perceived them to be a very good deal for "we the people" as a whole -
rather than their own partisan political power and special interests.
If they didn't, it was assumed that we would vote them out of office at
the first opportunity - but the problem is that such foreign commitments
are more durable and difficult to reverse than domestic policy
initiatives. It is far more difficult to get people to recognize the
damage which is being done before it becomes a crisis. We notice
and care about domestic issues. Many would prefer to ignore
foreign issues until they become an overt threat to our interests - by
which point our options may already be very limited. |
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Congress has pushed for more and more control over foreign policy
matters, rather than just advise and consent and effective oversight to
limit abuses of Executive power, there generally isn't much public
resistance to the efforts by those in Congress to keep expanding their
own power and influence. We the people are fairly quick to
recognize and push back against abuses which obviously harm our own
interests, but we may not be as engaged, united, or self-confident about
our foreign interests as a nation. We are more likely to argue
vigorously about what is right, and thus expect Congress to reflect
those arguments. Since we don't like to pay attention to foreign
issues, the result is that Congress tends to just get involved when
there is an obvious crisis and some disagreement about what to do.
Up to a point, that's OK.
There should be informed debate among our elected officials, as well as
among the career professionals and within the White House and Cabinet.
Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas, and we elect a President, not a
king. We don't have rulers with a divine right to simply do as
they please. Our elected officials need to repeatedly convince us
that they are actually doing the right thing.
We the people are still in charge. We're just
temporarily trusting them to make wise choices on our behalf while we go
about our lives and pay relatively little attention to such matters. That
doesn't mean that we are always confident that they will do the right
thing, or that we will always support them. As
free individuals, we reserve the right to vigorously and vocally oppose
their actions, as well as to change our minds about the wisdom of their
decisions. They need our informed consent and trust to be
successful. That doesn't mean we need to know and approve of
everything, as though we were to be governed by the latest opinion
polls. It means that our leaders need to inspire our confidence
and trust that they are doing the right thing without having to expose
everything they do to our prior scrutiny and debate. We can't
simply attack every decision they made with the benefit of 20-20
hindsight, either. We can seek better leadership at election time.
Opinion polls favor simple, populist positions rather than careful
choices by well-informed leaders who we have trusted to protect our
national interests. We expect more than temporary political
expediency of our leaders. They are there to make tough choices. |
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Standing up for our Constitution - not
for foreign critics or multilateral organizations |
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not an advocate of torture. I have not been tortured, but I have
met people who were - by ruthless tyrants as well as sincere police
officials in other countries who thought they were doing the right
thing. Those who assert that torture doesn't work reliably have
also probably never been subjected to torture. People can honestly disagree about what
is appropriate or not when dealing with our worst enemies, regardless of any
legal agreements or precedents on the matter in normal circumstances, particularly when our
enemies feel no such constraints on their actions at any time. Unlike our
reluctance to torture anyone, some of our enemies are eager to torture
us. The idea appeals to them. We need to deal with that reality. Being nice to them
will not change their behavior toward us, or toward others. There
are some really ruthless, sadistic tyrants in this world - but they
firmly believe that their actions are justified.
We have no real legal authority over such tyrants in
other countries, because regardless of whatever we do to negotiate
agreements with other governments or to seek UN resolutions, sanctions,
or other things as a way to somehow justify or seem to legitimize our
actions, they don't recognize our authority or anybody else's authority
over them. They perceive it as a weakness which can be exploited.
They regard any such attempts to limit their own ruthless actions as
unjustifiable. No matter how justifiable we may eventually think
our actions may be, in order to satisfy ourselves that we are doing the
right thing, they really couldn't care less about the qualms we have
have about how to deal with them. They are
implacable enemies. They want us dead, and would gladly torture us
too. They are not interested in playing by our rules, or by any
other rules than their own. They already feel very justified about
their harsh treatment of us, so they don't agonize over whether others
will approve of it or not. Their primary concern is to avoid
losing their own power. For them, that end justifies any means.
No matter how offensive we may regard their actions to be, they really
don't care what we think of them. |
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are not standing up for our American values in foreign countries by
refusing to do things to our enemies which we would not do to our own
citizens, or be willing to defend in American courts as the right way to
treat Americans. We are not dealing with
American citizens living in America. It makes a difference.
There are lots of protections in our Constitution which limit what our
own government can do to us. That's because our founders had the
foresight to recognize the risks of tyranny, regardless of their best
efforts to avoid it.
Find the clause in the Constitution which limits what we
can do to people in other countries.
Find the clause which forbids our government to
defend us unless other countries approve.
You won't find it there. Now try finding the
section of the Constitution which agrees that American law is secondary
to "international law". Where is Congress, or the Supreme Court or
the Executive, directed to make sure that our laws or policies do not
conflict with those of other countries, or groups of countries?
Good luck. You won't find that either.
What you will find is that the Executive and the Legislative branch have
the power to agree to enter into treaties which then have the same force of law
as American legislation - unless and until those treaty agreements are
repealed, just as laws can be changed. We the people have trusted our representatives to make
good choices on our behalf, but we still retained the power to opt out
of such "foreign entanglements" because the founders knew that they
could potentially pose a threat to our own independence and liberty.
Leaders could voluntarily give up important rights.
We trusted our elected officials to not let that
happen, but over the years they have entered into so many bilateral and
multilateral agreements on
so many subjects with so many international organizations and other
countries that it has created the illusion that we are subservient to
international organizations and international law. We are not. |
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are free to choose whether we, as a country, still support those former
agreements. We can't just arbitrarily decide as individuals to
not honor those laws, because our leaders have committed us to honor
them just as we would our own laws, but we are certainly free to seek
political changes to reverse or modify those agreements.
In many cases, however, these are not questions of law but rather of
regulatory interpretations of what is appropriate within the general
parameters of the law. Those regulations and policies may be
useful as a precedent, but even our laws can be changed. We can't
simply choose as individuals to disrespect our laws, but we are
certainly free to organize political pressure to change them. |
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are not the loyal subjects of multinational organizations like the UN or
others, doing whatever their bureaucrats or foreign leaders may
think is the right thing to do in the world. In America, we the
people are still in charge. We are not obliged to do their
bidding. Our participation is voluntary.
We may prefer that other organizations or foreign leaders will agree to
work with our own to achieve our common objectives peacefully, but we
are also responsible for looking out for ourselves. That includes
standing up firmly to our enemies in this world, whether others may like
it or agree with us or not.
We know that foreign leaders and multilateral
organizations are not within our control - so that's why it is so
important that our own elected officials do not try to escape
accountability by negotiating it away to others. We are not
subservient to such organizations. We are free to make our own
choices.
Our enemies do not seek our approval, nor
the approval of others, to attack us or to do other things which are
contrary to our interests. Our options are not limited
to the application of American or international laws and values to them
as though they were good American citizens. We can't ignore those
who are more harmful than UN
rhetoric until they kill us. We have the right to defend
ourselves. We aren't obliged to wait until the rest of the world
agrees with us.
The Constitution does not protect the rights of
everyone in the world to be treated by us as though they were American
citizens. It does oblige our federal leaders to defend us from
our enemies - both foreign and domestic. That is one of the most basic
societal tasks which we the
people have explicitly trusted our federal government to perform well on
our behalf. That doesn't
mean being really nice to our sworn enemies in case it might offend
somebody, or doing public opinion polls at the UN or among foreign
leaders as the guide to our actions. |
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members of Congress and the President are convinced that they have
negotiated away the right to adequately defend our interests in the
world, and have thereby weakened our Constitutional protections which
"we the people" expected them to defend as sworn in their oath of
office, then they should be ashamed of themselves, and they should work
to terminate any such agreements or else we should swear to defeat them
at the first opportunity so that somebody else can fix the mistake on our behalf.
They do not swear an oath to defend the UN, or to
defend international law or any foreign agreements, or to keep America
really popular among foreigners, whether "allies" or not.
They swear an oath of office to defend the Constitution
which was intended to preserve our liberty in a hostile world against
tyranny, foreign or domestic. If they forget that, then we have
the right to fire them. We aren't here to do their bidding, or to
win popularity contests among foreign leaders. |
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Missing the point - why releasing the
legal memos about interrogations was a huge mistake |
The
problem is that the selective release of the interrogation memos sends
the wrong message to those who would cooperate with us - such as
potential "human intelligence" sources (i.e., voluntary cooperation) and
foreign intelligence agencies which will have reason to doubt whether
any shared intelligence will be kept confidential if there's any
potential political benefit to this administration by selective
disclosure.
Why should they trust Obama now? He's cozying up to tyrants and critics
of America to burnish his own narcissistic PR image as a global leader,
and not the least bit worried about accepting or even leading the
criticism of all prior American policies and actions to defend and
advance our interests in the world.
If it's not about his new vision for America and the world, then it
apparently doesn't matter to Obama. People around the world who live
under soft or hard tyranny will be reluctant to trust such a leader,
which means that they will be less likely to step forward and help
defend us against those who want to harm us. |
Clinton and Carter made the same sort of mistakes. In their eagerness to
be loved by others around the world, they raised the fears of those who
live under tyranny and would otherwise be eager to cooperate with us in
the hope of enjoying liberty like us someday. They will not step forward
if they think they will be thrown under the bus as a matter of American
political expediency. The result was that we had more
superficial friendships in places where we were not really facing any
serious threats, and lost respect in those places where people feared
our commitment to help them escape tyranny.
That's what Clinton did with the Iraqi Kurds after the first Gulf War.
They trusted us at first, but wound up being massacred by Saddam after
making the mistake of believing Clinton and CIA assurances of support
for their efforts for the alleged policy in supporting "regime change".
He pulled the rug out from under them, and they died for it. This was
similar to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and other fiascos.We made
the same mistake in Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out - so
foreign policy mistakes are a bipartisan problem. There are many other
examples. We readily talk about the vital importance of better "human
intelligence" after every fiasco, but partisan Congressional political
actions undermine it. It emboldens the tyrants, and brings doubt
or fear to our friends about whether they can really trust us. |
Those
who live under tyranny notice when we show weakness in the face of
tyrants. Obama and his advisors may think that we're trying to be
reasonable and find some common ground with our enemies, and by
listening politely and acknowledging our alleged faults while they admit
none. Those who live under tyranny will perceive this change as
being sold out yet again by another naive and weak President.
So, the problem isn't that people in the CIA may be demoralized by all
this, or go into CYA mode for a few years to protect their own careers.
As career bureaucrats, they can comfortably do that with no serious
consequences. Even if something disastrous happens as a result of not
having better intelligence, as on 9/11/01, their careers will not be at
risk because there will be no proven causal link of performance failure.
The fact that potential friends in other countries will not have helped
us to discover dangerous threats and plots in advance is not something
which can be easily proven. We'll just wring our hands again and say
that we need better intelligence - as we did after Carter and Clinton
deliberately weakened it. Those in the CIA know that the politicians
will never be held accountable for their failures - but they will be
looking for scapegoats and political advantage again by exposing
whatever serves their own purposes. |
| The
news media made much of the fact that Obama got applause at his staged
photo op at the CIA. What government employee would publicly
criticize the President at such an event? No - they'll just
quietly reassess how to protect their own careers - or retire. They know
from experience that Obama will be gone in a few years, and then they
can pick up the pieces and try to fix the damage, as under George W.
Bush. The real problem is that, even if members of the CIA do their
best to develop better human intelligence sources in the years ahead, it
is likely to prove harder than ever to penetrate our worst enemies.
Those who are close enough to them will have new reason to fear them,
and doubt that they can really trust us. |
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News related
to Democratic allegations about the CIA |
| The
Glenn Beck show on July 9 had an interesting segment on this topic.
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| August
20, 2009 -
AP source: CIA hired others to try to hit al-Qaida - Comment:
Still trying to attract attention or readers at the NY Times? Or is
Congress still looking for a distraction in the face of criticism?
The US already offered to pay huge rewards to capture or kill
top al-Qaida leaders from soon after 9/11/01, and nobody seemed to have a
problem with that bounty hunter approach. We are not talking about a program
to assassinate foreign heads of state or political leaders. Instead, we're
talking about trying to kill ruthless criminals who have already tried to
assassinate our political leaders and have killed many other innocent
Americans, with the clearly stated intent to keep killing as many more
Americans as they can.
If Congress has a problem with going after the al-Qaida leaders, then why
all the massive investment in their own security, and that of US government
officials worldwide? Why is the option of using mercenaries off the table?
It may not be the preferred course of action at this time, such as the use
of drones and missiles, but why not at least let al-Qaida wonder whether
they must worry about watching their backs for such threats? Why tell them
the limits of what we are prepared to do about them? |
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| July
14, 2009 -
AP sources: House lays groundwork for CIA probe - Comment: So
the CIA allegedly spent $1 million on planning work for targeting al-Qaeda
leaders. That's small change by comparison to what the Democrats now
plan to spend on a partisan political witch-hunt to distract from their
legislative atrocities. |
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| July
13, 2009 -
Democrats push for probe into Bush policies - Comment: The
Democrats are still looking for a political distraction to deflect attention
and criticism as they push their agenda before the August recess.
Related:
CIA had plan to kill al-Qaida - from an interesting
Wall Street Journal story. Let's see.
If correct, the alleged operation was planning about how to capture or kill
top al-Qaeda leaders, starting soon after the 9/11 attacks. It
apparently never led to any operations - just planning scenarios such as
defining the rules of engagement. It considered the scope of actions
which could be authorized within the context of a past presidential
"finding" (Gerald Ford era) against authorizing any CIA actions to
assassinate foreign leaders. It's unclear whether that same standard
would apply to terrorist leaders.
Note that the prior Clinton-era approach had largely been
to treat terrorism as a law enforcement issue, with the intelligence focus
on tracking down the leaders and proving their guilt for direct involvement
in specific prior attacks, as opposed to targeting the leaders for military
or covert actions. It was an intelligence-gathering and analysis
mission, like monitoring a potential threat, rather than a proactive effort
to thwart any future actions.
Would the Democrats really like to defend to the American
people why they think that the CIA should not have tried to
kill al-Qaeda leaders in the wake of 9/11/01? Are they just hiding
behind the secrecy of the initiative to make vague allegations as if there
was a nefarious secret conspiracy by the Bush administration? If so,
disclosure could hurt the Democrats rather than the Republicans, but in any
case it all hurts the CIA. |
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| July
11, 2009 -
AP Interview: Hayden says Congress was informed - Comment:
Congress seems to be determined to undermine national intelligence
capabilities largely for the sake of creating a distraction. |
|
| July
10, 2009 -
Full CIA investigation called for on Capitol Hill - Comment: by an
early Obama supporter |
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| July 9,
2009 -
House Democrats likely to alter intel bill - Comment: Once
again, the problem isn't just the risk of leaks, but rather that this
process will deter many potential sources of information from trusting
us, especially in some of the most dangerous countries when their exposure
could cost them their lives. That includes jeopardizing the level of
cooperation with other intelligence services. |
|
| July 8,
2009 -
On eve of debate, House Democrats say CIA lied - Comment:
Congress is still a threat to human intelligence, and wants to increase that
role. This is just a red herring. |
|
| August
24, 2009 -
Obama spokesman announces interrogation unit - Comment: It is
a mistake, as in the Carter and Clinton years, to treat foreign terrorism as
a law enforcement problem to be led by the FBI. The focus needs to be
on prevention rather than prosecution. It's not the same as
interrogating criminals. |
|
| August
24, 2009 -
Official: DOJ unit wants CIA abuse cases reopened - Comment:
Meanwhile, Obama wants all future interrogations to be led by a special FBI
group reporting to the White House. This should afford all foreign
terrorists the full legal protections which apply to American citizens.
This is the same sort of twisted logic as was just used in Scotland to
rationalize the release of the Lockerbie terrorist. Why are we so
determined to be nice to those who demonstrably want to murder many
Americans? It sends a message of weakness to embolden such enemies,
and cripples our intelligence capabilities. |
|
| August
25, 2009 -
Cheney blasts Obama over CIA probe - Comment: He's right to do
so. |
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| August
25, 2009 -
Interrogation probe steams those on right and left - Comment:
Fire Holder now. If Obama doesn't, he bears full responsibility for
the future national security consequences of this outrage. |
|
August
27, 2009 -
Memos: CIA pushed limits on sleep deprivation - Comment: Congress
and the Obama administration remain a threat to human intelligence.
Unfortunately, those around the world who would otherwise take great
personal risks to help defend us against very dangerous enemies are now
going to think hard about whether they would be exposed for political
convenience. Those who live under ruthless tyrants will be more reluctant to
help the CIA now. Even foreign intelligence services may doubt how safe it
is to cooperate. The problem isn't just that many CIA and other intelligence
workers may go into CYA mode for a few years. This will cause lasting damage
to our capabilities at a time when our enemies will gladly exploit any
perceived weakness.By the Army Field Manual
standard, how many college professors could be charged with torture for
keeping their students awake through excessive homework or the rigors of
preparing for final exams? Would forcing kids to stay awake in class
constitute torture if they had missed having at least 4 hours of sleep that
day? Would employers of people who work at two jobs be liable if their
employees get less than 4 hours of sleep per day? It's OK for the Army
to keep foreign troops awake for weeks on end by relentless bombing attacks,
but once they are captured, they have to be guaranteed 4 hours of sleep or
else it's a war crime? Reality check time. |
|
| August
30, 2009 -
Cheney says politics behind CIA probe at Justice - Comment:
This will harm our intelligence capabilities for a very long time, as
Carter's brief tenure and the
Church committee did. Those who live in personal danger under
ruthless tyrants and would help us to defeat them will be more reluctant to
trust the CIA. They will fear fatal exposure by Congress or appointees
like Holder for political advantage. They aren't going to risk their
lives against ruthless tyrants for partisan US politicians who seem to be in
denial again about the threat. The problem isn't that more CIA
officers will retire or go into CYA mode to protect their own careers for a
few years until this latest witch-hunt has passed. The problem is that
the friends we need in very dangerous places around the world will go into
CYA mode, and more Americans will die because we won't have the intelligence
we need to thwart our enemies.
Justice Dept. again fielding charges of politics - No, they're a
myopic threat to human intelligence because they
are looking backwards as lawyers looking for something actionable to
prosecute, without any accountability for the future harm to national
security to which their reckless actions may contribute. They can't be
prosecuted when more Americans die. Obama just risks losing his job,
and that's pretty likely to happen in 2012 anyway. Maybe this will
help to change Congress in 2010. |
|
|
September 19, 2009 -
Ex-CIA directors urge Obama to drop abuse probe - Comment: As
stated from the start, this is a very serious threat to human intelligence
and our national security. |
|
|
December 29, 2009 -
Obama moves to curb federal secrets
- Comment: The only secrets he seems to care about are the deals
made behind closed doors by the Democrats in Congress. |
|
| January
5, 2010 -
Jordanian bomber of CIA base deceived family - Comment: What
purpose is served by AP reporters speculating about the extent of CIA
cooperation with Jordanian intelligence? |
|
|
February 26, 2010 -
Dems pull provision penalizing intel personnel - Comment:
This shows that the Dems remain clueless about the damage which they are
doing to intelligence operations, and thereby to our national security.
Even though this particular measure was defeated, it demonstrates to anybody
in the intelligence community that these jerks are still out to get them for
political gain. Pretty motivating, eh? Once
again, the damage isn't just that CIA officers will go into CYA mode. It is
that potential sources, who would perhaps have to risk their lives to help
us learn what some of our worst enemies are planning, will not trust us.
Similarly, foreign intelligence services will be very nervous about sharing
vital intelligence with us because of the risk that politicians with an
election year agenda here will expose their sources and methods. |
|
|
February 26, 2010 -
Republicans call out Democrats on bill provisions to punish, jail CIA agents |
|
| March
8, 2010 -
Judicial Watch obtains top secret memorandum detailing closed Congressional
hearing on enhanced interrogation techniques - Comment: More
evidence, if any were needed, that the relevant members of Congress were
repeatedly briefed about the effectiveness of these methods. |
|
| April
26, 2010 -
CIA rolls out plan to beef up spy techniques - More cultural
training, less action. |
|
| July 8,
2010 -
Justice says Russians will release 4 in spy swap - There certainly
seems to be remarkable haste at deporting these alleged spies before there
is any opportunity to question them and expose what they may have been doing
for Russia, or who they knew. Isn't that curious? They just
admit to being unregistered foreign agents under FARA, or money laundering,
and then get swapped, no questions asked about their potential espionage
activities? Whose side is DOJ on these days? |
|
July 9,
2010 -
Cold War redux: US, Russia swap 14 spies in Vienna - Why all the
haste to swap them if they were such bumbling spies, as the media seems to
be accepting without question? What might have been disclosed if this deal
had not quickly and quietly swept it all under the rug, as though there was
nothing to see here? Is this really a sign of a "reset" relationship, or
more incompetence or willful disregard for our national interests after a
decade of keeping track of such threats? What message does this send to
anybody else who is working on counterespionage cases here? Will all their
years of effort get discarded because it is politically inconvenient for
this administration to admit that such threats to our interests are more
serious than they would like to portray?
Obama's team may not be very worried about Russian or other spies here, but
should that be cause for us to worry? Who were these or other spies
targeting? Were they getting close to some of the radical leftist friends of
this administration? Was that an unacceptable risk of yet another adverse
political surprise in this election? Nothing to see here, folks, move along. |
|
July 9,
2010 -
Official: CIA's Panetta led spy swap negotiations - Did they develop
any friends among the Soros progressive crowd, or NY politicians, or the
Apollo Alliance, leftist activists, union leaders, and others who have been
actively involved in lobbying or rewriting our laws recently? Is anybody
asking? They may not have just been looking for government secrets. Party
secrets could also be of interest.
The intelligence oversight committees in Congress should be seeking answers,
even if the news media won't necessarily get more than the official story
that these were ineffective spies of no real value - just like the
ineffective non-terrorist at Ft Hood, the ineffective Christmas bomber,
ineffective Times Square bomber, etc. etc. Nothing to see here, folks.
There's no real threat. They have everything under control. Our
country is as secure as our border with Mexico. |
|
| July 9,
2010 -
East and West complete super-efficient spy swap Why did this
swap of minor spies become a personal priority of Leon Panetta? The spies we
got in return had been imprisoned for a long time. Why the haste now if we
had been following these Russian spies for 10 years? |
|
|
Spy Swap: From Russia, With Love - On the new Breitbart blog, Big
Peace |
|
| July 11,
2010 -
Attorney general: Russian spies posed threat to US - So, Holder can
now admit that these spies were regarded as valuable by the Russians, and
posed a real threat, but the media remains more concerned about what will
happen to their children? Am I missing something? |
|
| July 11,
2010 -
In spy swap, agents were pawns in a practiced game - While the
Russians play chess as a patient strategic game, Obama plays at being a
leader and gives more campaign speeches. |
|
| July 19,
2010 -
Post documents growth of intelligence since 9/11 - The Washington
Post has published the first of three planned articles about the
intelligence community as a report which has been researched for the last 2
years. By a remarkable coincidence, that is roughly how long the Obama
administration and this Congress have been hard at work undermining our
intelligence capabilities. Is the Washington Post
basically doing their bidding to stir up antagonism against the intelligence
community again as a proxy for blaming the Bush administration again in this
election cycle? It certainly dovetails nicely with the latest
Democratic mantra about the choice between going forward or "back" to Bush
policies, thus helping to energize the liberal base.
It also sets the stage, after several failed terrorist
attacks and Obama administration attempts to declare that the threats were
isolated incidents or minimal, for an easy excuse that intelligence is too
big and out of control, rather than leadership too weak and too intent on
defeating the growing domestic political threats rather than real foreign
enemies. If there is another major incident like the Fort Hood
massacre, or the attempted NY subway or Times Square attack, or the
Christmas bomber, etc., will the mantra become that Obama must reorganize
the intelligence community rather than actually fight terrorists? It
looks as though they are already working on a 5 year plan for that purpose.
Coincidence??? This would certainly seem to be conveniently setting
the stage for such a further assault on our capabilities.
Meanwhile, nobody seems to be asking about that Russian
spy swap, and why it was done so hastily at the highest levels of the CIA
and the White House if they were as insignificant a threat as the official
narrative has declared. They were traded for people who had been imprisoned
for years. Odd. If we got such valuable spies in return, then why didn't we
roll up this spy ring earlier to swap them? Why did it happen so quickly
now, at election time? |
|
| July
25, 2010 -
Russia's Putin sings with expelled agents - If these Russian spies
were as insignificant and ineffective as the administration would clearly
like us all to believe, then why are they getting the red carpet treatment
from Putin? Just wondering ... After all, the Russian spies we got in return
had been held for years, even though we had apparently been following these
spies for a decade. If they were so inept, why didn't we roll them all up
and trade them a few years earlier? What were they working on which Bush
didn't want to disrupt, but Obama did? |
|
| July
26, 2010 -
|
|
| July
26, 2010 -
Key omission in memo to destroy CIA terror tapes - Isn't it
remarkable how this sort of story resurfaces just 100 days before the
election? Right after the NetRoots progressive meeting. |
|
| July
27, 2010 -
So, Obama is "concerned", but the mantra for the day as
pushed by John Kerry and others is that none of this really matters very
much because the policy-makers already had such information available, and
therefore nothing is new. The fact that the selective release of raw
intelligence reports by anti-war activists to push their own agenda is not
being treated as a more serious threat shows that this is regarded as
politically acceptable conduct at the time of an election when they need to
fire up their base. The fact that useful sources may be killed, and
important operations blown, is also just part of the problem. Why
would anybody cooperate with us again in this context? Does that fit
their agenda? |
|
| July
29, 2010 -
WikiLeaks fallout: Tighter access to US secrets?
It still strains credibility for Pfc Manning to have been the
source of all these documents. If true, it is stunning that he would have
had such access, which by implication means that access is now so widely
shared that confidentiality is largely an illusion. That will certainly
intimidate sources from collaboration with us for fear of their lives if
exposed. It will also promote a CYA tendency to not share sensitive
information or be as candid in reporting, including anything negative in
particular which could be misconstrued if taken out of context.
Think of it as applying a political correctness screen to
every report as a self-imposed way to protect one's own career and
colleagues. At the same time, the potential for CYA or back-stabbing reports
(such as to cover themselves by raising doubts about others) goes up. For
example, one CYA tactic is to basically avoid taking any position, such as
by acting as though one has conflicting information and therefore can't be
expected to reliably judge what is true or not. That leaves the door open to
say "I told you so" no matter what the outcome may eventually be, while
providing few useful insights at all. It's basically just a way to pretend
to give an answer instead of saying "I don't know" or "Here's my best
assessment". Instead of saying something which might someday be
criticized with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, or which might be
embarrassing if leaked, the reporting becomes perfunctory or largely
meaningless. |
|
| July
30, 2010 -
Wiki-leaks: Enemies of the State by Brigadier General Anthony J.
Tata on BigPeace |
|
| August
17, 2010 -
AP Exclusive: Terrorist tapes found under CIA desk - Anonymous tips
from current and former officials - just in time for elections! What a
remarkable coincidence with the resurgence of the "blame Bush" strategy to
deflect voter attention. Note that the story is from 2007, about events back
in 2002 - 2003.
Later version of the story |
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