Recently in Intelligence Category

I agree with Digby, and thank Richard Clarke for pointing out that the trauma of September 11, 2001, is no excuse for bad decisions made by government leaders. As Clarke writes:

Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. "If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people," Rice said in her recent comments, "then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again."

I have little sympathy for this argument. Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

Thus, when Bush's inner circle first really came to grips with the threat of terrorism, they did so in a state of shock -- a bad state in which to develop a coherent response. Fearful of new attacks, they authorized the most extreme measures available, without assessing whether they were really a good idea.

I believe this zeal stemmed in part from concerns about the 2004 presidential election. Many in the White House feared that their inaction prior to the attacks would be publicly detailed before the next vote -- which is why they resisted the 9/11 commission -- and that a second attack would eliminate any chance of a second Bush term. So they decided to leave no doubt that they had done everything imaginable.

There should be no excusing this. Nor forgiving it. And as the evidence suggests, more investigations are in order.

We must come to terms with what happened if we hope to restore our national honor.

Mark Fiore's Snuggly the Security Bear returns! Remember, our government and the telecommunications companies broke the law because they love us so much.

Yeah, that's the reason. Sure.

Last night, Keith Olbermann offered another outstanding "special comment" after the House of Representatives actually refused to roll over in the wake of President George W. Bush's fear-mongering over the FISA bill.

And if there’s one thing we know about Big Brother, Mr. Bush, it is that he is — you are — a liar.

“This Saturday at midnight,” you said Thursday, “legislation authorizing intelligence professionals to quickly and effectively monitor terrorist communications will expire. If Congress does not act by that time, our ability to find out who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying and what they are planning will be compromised.” You said that “the lives of countless Americans depend” on your getting your way.

This is crap. And you sling it with an audacity and a speed unrivaled by even the greatest political felons of our history.

Richard Clarke — you might remember him, sir: He was one of the counterterror pros you inherited from President Clinton, before you ran the professionals out of government in favor of your unreality-based reality — Richard Clarke wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“Let me be clear: Our ability to track and monitor terrorists overseas would not cease should the Protect America Act expire.

“If this were true, the president would not threaten to terminate any temporary extension with his veto pen. All surveillance currently occurring would continue even after legislative provisions lapsed because authorizations issued under the act are in effect up to a full year.”

You are a liar, Mr. Bush. And after showing some skill at it, you have ceased to even be a very good liar.

Yes, it definitely appears that most of the country has caught on to the all-fear-all-the-time rhetoric for which President George W. Bush is all too famous. Now, let's see if the Congress will continue to rebuild itself to be the coequal branch of government the founding generation intended.

After all, earlier today, the Director of National Intelligence told the world that this fight is not really about keeping us safe. No, it is about liability protection for the telecommunications companies who violated the law in cooperating with an out-of-control executive branch. As the News Hole blog summaries:

So much for President Bush's bleating about how the Democrats in Congress just stole the eavesdropping authorities, the tools of counter-terrorism away from the professionals by not sending him his version of the FISA act. In our third story on the Countdown: "It's true," said Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell this morning on N-P-R Radio, "some of the authorities would carry over to the period they were established, for one year." OK, one Bush lie confirmed. Remarkably, McConnell continued. "However, that's not the real issue. The issue is: liability protection for the private sector." And there goes the other Bush lie about this: that it's about keeping you safe, when, in fact, it's only about keeping the telecom giants safe.

Yep. That is the war on terra. Could the Bush Administration's true motives be any more clear?

Unsurprisingly, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is facing criticism for his courageous stand to filibuster a FISA bill that included retroactive immunity for the telecom companies.

Alas, as Glenn Greenwald explains, the attacks against Dodd come not just from the president and his allies, but from the Democratic leadership.

Notice, too, who is smearing Dodd's motives here. It isn't Dick Cheney or Mitch McConnell. Instead, it's Harry Reid and anonymous, cowardly Democrats whispering in Paul Kane's ear about Dodd's manipulative "grandstanding" and proclaiming that Dodd will ultimately fail, dismissing the notion that he achieved anything other than delaying their well-laid plan to ensure that the President has everything he wants.

So here we have one of the very few acts of the last year by a Democrat in Congress which has actually engaged and energized people; made them feel as though someone was listening to them and taking a stand for what they believe; something that enables actual citizens to have some influence on the political process; and, most of all, an effort that at least disrupted the relentless Congressional march to capitulate to all of Bush's demands.

And in response, Harry Reid and his mewling anonymous Democratic allies immediately recruit the Washington Post's Congressional reporter to attack what Dodd has achieved, demean his motives with a ferocity that they never display in opposing George W. Bush, and assure everyone that their will to do the President's bidding will be realized despite Dodd's temporary interference.

It's one thing to watch Congressional Democrats fail to stand up to any of the Bush abuses. It's another thing entirely to watch as they actively enable them. But they've now moved beyond even that to actually perceiving as their Enemy anyone -- such as "Dodd and his allies" -- who seeks to disrupt their Bush-enabling efforts and, worst of all, who infects their rituals with any dirty, outside riff-raff, such as actual citizens.

It may only prove to be a temporary victory, but this is a victory nonetheless. Congratulations, Senator Chris Dodd, for showing us all what leadership can look like on the floor of the United States Senate.

Click here to watch a discussion of Dodd's victory on the Senate floor from today's Countdown program, guest hosted by Alison Stewart.

Yes, I'm linking to Dodd's web site post about this. He deserves the traffic after his work today.

It is just pathetic that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has stacked the deck in today's FISA debate in favor of those who believe the telecom companies should be excused for their potentially illegal behavior. As Senator Russ Feingold explains:

By choosing the Intelligence Committee bill over the Judiciary product, Senator Reid has made things much tougher for those of us who think the courts -- not Congress -- should decide whether the companies deserve immunity. He's also made it an uphill struggle of those of us who want more court oversight of the broad new surveillance powers included in the bill.

And that's just unconscionable.

Kevin Drum explains the radically contradicting stories CIA sources have now have told about the torture, through waterboarding and other techniques, of Abu Zubaydah.

Was Zubaydah, as sources to Ron Suskind claimed, an "insane, certifiable, split personality" who had "almost nothing "operational" in his portfolio"? Or was he "highly thought of in al Qaeda...one of the intellectual leaders of the group"?

We don't know. Someone may want to investigate this. Congress? Hello?

Also important, as Drum points out: the person who claims that Zubaydah was "highly thought of," now says we should not torture "Because we're Americans, and we're better than that."

In that last statement, finally, I find something with which I can agree unreservedly.

Kevin Drum clearly summarizes what the destroyed CIA torture enhanced interrogation technique tapes would have shown us:

So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and and law enforcement personnel.

Nice trifecta there. And just think: there's an entire political party in this country that still thinks this is OK.

In the aftermath of today's revelation that leading Congressional Democrats were briefed on waterboarding and other activities, an important conversation has begun about just what those Members of Congress could have done once they learned the information.

The Bush Administration, after all, has not been kind to whistleblowers.

Well, our Constitutional system does provide some options -- granted, options that include potential political problems, but there were ways the Democrats could have warned the world that something was amiss (assuming, perhaps generously, that those briefed believed something to be wrong).

Law Professor Michael Froomkin offers this excellent analysis of the Constitution's important -- and powerful -- Speech and Debate clause. Digby notes that if this story is true, it makes the Democrats complicit in these crimes. Glenn Greenwald reminds us that the reason we have secret Congressional Intelligence Committees is not so that they can get briefed on programs and accept them meekly, they are to allow Congress to do its job of providing oversight over the Legislative Branch.

We need to have this conversation, because it could determine just what kind of government this nation has over the next decades.

Harper's Scott Norton points out that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) made some important remarks about the Bush Administration's authoritarian view of its powers on Friday. Whitehouse was able to get some of the Administration's legal "justifications" for its actions declassified, and he read them into the Senate record and discussed their implications.

In a nutshell, these three Bush Administration legal propositions boil down to this:

1. “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.”
   
2. “I get to determine what my own powers are.”
   
3. “The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”

When the Congress of the United States is willing to roll over for an unprincipled President, this is where you end up. We should not even be having this discussion. But here we are. I implore my colleagues: reject these feverish legal theories. I understand political loyalty, trust me, I do. But let us also be loyal to this great institution we serve in the legislative branch of our government. Let us also be loyal to the Constitution we took an oath to defend, from enemies foreign and domestic. And let us be loyal to the American people who live each day under our Constitution’s principles and protections.

You can watch this important speech in two parts below.

Well, this is one reason why "impeachment if off the table." The Washington Post reports that leading Congressional Democrats were briefed on the CIA's torture enhanced interrogation techniques. Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen report:

Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

The Democrats today may be trying, at least rhetorically, to stop the Bush Administration's excesses. But, as Glenn Greenwald points out:

Whether it's the war in Iraq or illegal surveillance or the abolition of habeas corpus and now the systematic use of torture, it's the Bush administration that conceived of the policies, implemented them and presided over their corrupt application. But it's Congressional Democrats at the leadership level who were the key allies and enablers, never getting their hands dirty with implementation -- and thus feigning theatrical, impotent outrage once each abuse was publicly exposed -- but nonetheless working feverishly the entire time to enable all of it every step of the way.

Rep. John Conyers describes what is actually in the FISA legislation, rather than what Joe Klein's radical Republican sources think is in it.

Time columnist Joe Klein really should admit that he made a huge mistake when he claimed in his recent column that the FISA bill passed by the House Democrats last week "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans."

As Salon's Glenn Greenwald demonstrates, Klein's wishy-washy mea culpa from last night hardly does him any credit. In fact, it highlights the entire problem with Klein and his fellow pundits: rather than doing the hard work of their own original research, they listen to (Republican) political operatives and staffers and then reprint the spin they have been given.

Klein got caught on this one, and even admits to the practice, as Greenwald explains:

Nobody who can read basic English can fail to understand what this says. As clearly as it can, the bill says that no warrant is required for communications involving non-U.S. persons outside of the U.S. In fact, individual warrants are not even required when a foreign target communicates with someone inside the U.S.; only general approval by the FISA court of the procedures used to eavesdrop is required (see Sec. 105). Thus, Klein's statements about the bill were indisputably, unquestionably false, and all one had to do is read the painfully clear language of the bill to know that.

But Klein, of course, never bothered to read the bill and still hasn't (even though he is published by Time to "report on" and opine about this bill). Instead, even now, he says that he has spoken with both Republicans and Democrats, and while Democrats insist that what he wrote was false, "the Republican Committee staff disagrees and says [his] reporting is correct."

In other words, Klein's GOP source(s) blatantly lied to him about what the bill does and doesn't do in order to manipulate him into uncritically feeding Time's readers the Rush Limbaugh Line -- namely, that Democrats are giving equal rights to Terrorists and preventing the Leader from eavesdropping on foreign Terrorists. And Klein dutifully wrote down what he was told in Time without bothering to find out if it was true and without ever bothering to talk to any of the bill's Democratic proponents. And no Time Editor knew enough or cared enough to bother correcting any of it. And thus, the unfortunate 4 million Americans who read and trust Time now think that the Democrats' FISA bill does the exact opposite of what it actually does.

That is the real story here. That's how our political system works. Scheming GOP operatives feed whispered lies to their favorite, most gullible, most slothful and/or dishonest Beltway journalists. Gleeful and grateful that they have been chosen for this dirty task, these journalists then scamper and write down what they were told and think that, by doing so, they are engaged in what they call "original reporting" -- which means uncritically passing on what they're told by government sources. As a result, they continue to obfuscate every key political issue and mislead Americans by doing the opposite of what journalists are supposed to do.

Oh, Klein is Time's "liberal." Thank you, so-called liberal media.

Can someone please explain to me why Congress will not now launch immediate and top-priority investigations into this matter? Here's an excerpt from Scott McClellan's new book that should make everyone take notice.

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the President himself.

According to the former presidential press secretary, the President of the United States was involved with this cover-up, one only involving the exposure of a covert CIA operative.

Heck, as ThinkProgress notes, even a Republican presidential contender is taking this seriously. Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee told Chris Matthews that:

MATTHEWS: Scott was told to do something, Scooter did it. I mean, it’s fairly parallel here.

HUCKABEE: Well, they’re serious allegations, but we don’t know yet whether they’re true. Scott’s not saying this under oath. It’s not being denied under oath. And I have a feeling that before it’s all finished through the wash, that’s what’s going to happen.

But these are serious allegations. They deserve to be thoroughly examined, investigated, and the truth brought to the American people.

MATTHEWS: Do you think the American people deserve a statement from the president in this regard, personally?

HUCKABEE: Oh, I think he will have to respond to it, because the closeness and the fact that Scott McClellan was one of his most trusted aides and in the position of press secretary. (emphasis added)

This is a serious matter. Did the president know about the plans to expose a covert CIA operative for political reasons? Did he approve of the cover-up afterwards? Did he knowingly send out his press secretary to mislead the American people about the matter?

We deserve to know. It is time for one of those accountability moments about which President George W. Bush used to speak so fondly.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich is not very impressed with former CIA Director George Tenet.

Although, I think portraying the president as Snidely Whiplash is quite an insult. To Snidely.

(h/t: Truthdig)