What’s the difference between a cover up and a crackdown on leaks?

Last week, CNN came out with a “blockbuster exclusive" about Benghazi. In a highly speculative report, the network guesses that the CIA may have been running guns into Syria out of the Libya and that this was the cause of the attack on the diplomatic compound there. Of course, the right is pleased as punch with this story, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with their original conspiracy theory that the administration had blamed the attacks on an anti-Islamic video to hide the fact that it was a terrorist attack.

The thing is, the CNN story is based on one simple and somewhat shaky bit of evidence — i.e., it sure looks like something is being covered up. The the linchpin bit of evidence is that:

Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency’s missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings.

The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.

Described by who as “pure intimidation?" Well, the CNN report doesn’t say. Could be a CIA operative who had to take a polygraph or it could be someone with an ax to grind who has nothing at all to do with the testing, the CIA, or Benghazi (i.e., the always untrustworthy “top congressional aide" sourcing).

Taking the weekend shift at Political Animal, Max Ehrenfreund tackled this report and found it not very convincing.

I am not persuaded that there was anything happening at the Benghazi annex significantly different from, well, whatever it is the CIA is doing in any of the place around the world where its personnel are stationed.

A much simpler explanation for the frequency of the polygraphs is that this administration is panicky. They have gone to absurd lengths to keep personnel from talking. As McClatchy reported, the administration’s “Insider Threat” program, launched in response to Pfc. Bradley Manning’s leaks, requires all federal employees, not just those working with sensitive information, to keep a careful eye on one another. Personnel are encouraged to report not just unauthorized disclosures, but any signs of psychological stress, including divorce, debt, or frustrations with colleagues. The logic is that these conditions can be what pushes a person like Manning to take information outside of an agency.

I’ve argued elsewhere that this program might the most disturbing of all the administration’s secret programs to be revealed in the past few months, because it shows how far intelligence agencies would go in examining the details of our personal lives if they had the authority.

So basically, if there’s a crackdown on leakers, it’s going to look pretty much exactly like this. And guess what? We know there’s a war on leaks. The problem with amping up secrecy to eleven — perception-wise, anyway — is that everything looks like a cover up. And that’s because everything is being covered up, regardless of whether it’s damning or trivial. You could probably look into any diplomatic mission in the world and find the same thing, but that doesn’t mean that there’s some huge conspiracy going on in Belgium or Sydney or Hong Kong. It just means that the administration is driving themselves to distraction with leak-plugging — ironically, the result of an attempt to avoid embarrassing distractions caused by leaks.

"The Obama administration seems to have inherited from the Obama campaign the same obsession with avoiding political controversy and carefully controlling the information that the public receives…" Ehrenfreund writes, “The frequent polygraphs CNN report are nothing out of the ordinary, not for a president whose staff has an unreasonable attachment to secrecy for its own sake."

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

White House Ignored Detainee Innocence

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake, but White House officials ignored the finding and insisted that all were "enemy combatants" subject to indefinite incarceration, according to a new book critical of the administration's terrorism policies. The CIA assessment directly challenged the administration's claim that the detainees were all hardened terrorists -- the "worst of the worst," as then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the time. But a top aide to Vice President Cheney shrugged off the report and squashed proposals for a quick review of the detainees' cases, author Jane Mayer writes in "The Dark Side," scheduled for release next week. "There will be no review," the book quotes Cheney staff director David Addington as saying. "The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it."

As far as I can figure out, this is the Bush admin. worrying that it might be embarrassed by the ham-handedness of their wide net approach to collecting detainees. Instead of admitting that they may have gone a little overboard, they kept innocent people in prison.

This creates a new class of political prisoner -- the inconvenient and unrectified mistake.

Griper Blade: The Koan of Torture

The reverse side also has a reverse side.
--Japanese Zen Proverb

With the destruction of CIA videotapes showing "harsh interrogation techniques" -- a PR buzz phrase for torture -- we find ourselves having a national discussion about torture. This discussion often veers off into the stupid, the inane, and the insane. Over at FOX News, ex-CIA spook Mike Baker compares torturing people to shooting a woodpecker that was poking holes in his house.

Because my mind tends to wander, I had an interesting thought while tossing some dirt over the dead bird. By the way, he did receive a proper burial and headstone. I view the situation with the woodpecker with the same attitude I have towards terrorists and dealing with terrorists. Frankly, this could be my best segueway ever.

Here's where I'm going... I'm a family loving, god fearing, good neighbor kind of person. Be considerate, play well with others, work hard, provide for your family, be honest and don't whine. You can go a long ways in life just following a few simple guidelines.

Concurrently, while trying to be a good person, I have no problems with infringing on the rights of terrorists through the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. Conflicted? Not a bit. No angst, no moral dilemma, no fuss no muss.

It goes on like that. A sort of rambling, roundabout route to his point -- despite having come up with his "best segueway ever" (it's just "segue," BTW). That point being that people who oppose torture are "all frothy at the mouth" and that we can torture and still be good people. The piece is actually a not very compelling argument -- torture is both really, really evil and something we shouldn't worry too much about. Baker tells us, "Personally, I think we can have our cake and eat it too."

It's typical of the incoherent arguments of torture apologists. The argument works pretty much like this -- torture is OK, because the stakes are so high and if we don't torture people we'll all die in a big flaming terrorist attack. But don't worry about; we don't actually torture, because that's bad. If we don't allow torture -- something we'd never, ever commit -- the light of Liberty will be extinguished in the world. And that's why we have to torture, because we don't...

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Griper Blade: "Waterboarding Works"

There's a trick in journalism known as "burying the lead." In this, a journalist, editor, producer, or whatever doesn't like what the story's clearly about, but finds the story impossible to ignore -- they have to report it. Which doesn't mean you can't spin it or sensationalize it. You can produce an absolutely factual piece, but you can change what the story's about.

Take the story of retired CIA officer John Kiriakou. Kiriakou spoke to ABC's Brian Ross about the capture and interrogation of terrorist suspect Abu Zabaydah. He told Ross that Zabaydah was waterboarded by the CIA. The suspect then caved. According to Kiriakou, Zabaydah "was able to withstand the waterboarding for quite some time -- and by that I mean probably 30, 35 seconds." Zabaydah later told interrogators that "Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate because his cooperation would make it easier on the other brothers who had been captured.

"And from that day on, he answered every question..." Kiriakou told Ross.

The story is that the CIA used waterboarding -- newsworthy because the CIA has destroyed tapes of interrogations. Many observers believe that destroying the tapes amounts to the destruction of evidence and the CIA was concerned that agents involved in waterboarding could be prosecuted. The 9/11 commission had requested such tapes and were told they didn't exist.

But back to burying the lead. Most of the headlines about this story are "Waterboarding Works." Take this, from the right wing CNS News Service, titled "Some Senators Wary of Waterboarding, Even to Save Lives."

With a vote pending to restrict the interrogation techniques of the Central Intelligence Agency, many senators were non-committal Tuesday on whether they would agree to outlaw waterboarding after a former CIA officer said the method of simulated drowning helped save American lives.

Former CIA agent John Kiriakou told ABC News and The Washington Post that the waterboarding of terrorist Abu Zubayda "probably saved lives," although Kiriakou did not participate in the waterboarding and does not support its use...

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Griper Blade: Lions Led By Asses

December 14th, 2004 was White House Happy Day. George Tenet wore the medal that made him look somehow like Dracula as the cameras flashed. A national hero was riding off into the sunset.

"Early in his tenure as [Director of Central Intelligence], George Tenet was one of the first to recognize and address the growing threat to America from radical terrorist networks," President Bush told the crowd of reporters and photographers. "Immediately after the attacks of September the 11th, George was ready with a plan to strike back at al Qaeda and to topple the Taliban. CIA officers were on the ground in Afghanistan within days. Seasoned American intelligence officers, armed with laptop computers, Afghan clothes and a visionary plan, rode horseback with the fighters of the Northern Alliance, identified key targets for our military and helped to free a nation." Bush said that Tenet had "brought justice to America's enemies and greater security to the American people" and that he was "a fine public servant and patriot."

They don't give those Presidential Medals of Freedom out to just anyone, you know. You've got to blow up the Death Star or something. Which makes a declassified report on September 11, 2001 a little embarrassing...

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George Tenet Slams Bush Admin.

You ever notice how no former insider who writes a book about the Bush administration ever says, "We did a great job?" What's up with that?

International Herald Tribune:

George Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a "serious debate" about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

[...]

By turns accusatory, defensive and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president's inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat," Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years.

Nor, he adds, "was there ever a significant discussion" about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Of course, this put the White House in double urgent bullshit creation mode.

Associated Press:

"The president did wrestle with those very serious questions [regarding invasion]," White House Counselor Dan Bartlett said.

Asked about Tenet's upcoming book, excerpts of which were reported Friday in The New York Times, Bartlett called the former CIA chief a "true patriot" but suggested he might have been unaware of the breadth of the prewar debate that led Bush to dismiss other options, such as diplomatic means, for reining in Saddam Hussein.

"I've seen meetings, I've listened to the president, both in conversations with other world leaders like (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair as well as internally, where the president did wrestle with those very questions," Bartlett said on NBC's "Today" show. "This president weighed all the various proposals, weighed all the various consequences before he did make a decision."

So, having Bush weigh all the options and come to the absolute worst possible conclusion is better how?