Category Archives: National Security

Here's a example of why, when the CIA squares off with its sleazy and dangerous new Director, Porter Goss, I find two sides I can root happily against.

C.I.A. Said to Rebuff Congress on Nazi Files: For nearly three years, the C.I.A. has interpreted the 1998 law narrowly and rebuffed requests for additional records, say Congressional officials and some members of the working group, who also contend that that stance seems to violate the law.

These officials say the agency has sometimes agreed to provide information about former Nazis, but not about the extent of the agency's dealings with them after World War II. In other cases, it has refused to provide information about individuals and their conduct during the war unless the working group can first provide evidence that they were complicit in war crimes. …

“I think that the C.I.A. has defied the law, and in so doing has also trivialized the Holocaust, thumbed its nose at the survivors of the Holocaust and also at Americans who gave their lives in the effort to defeat the Nazis in World War II,” said Elizabeth Holtzman, a former congresswoman from New York and a member of the group. “We have bent over backward; we have given them every opportunity to comply.” …

“I can only say that the posture the C.I.A. has taken differs from all the other agencies that have been involved, and that's not a position we can accept,” Mr. Ben-Veniste said. In a separate interview, [former prosecutor Thomas H.] Baer said: “Too much has been secret for too long. The C.I.A. has not complied with the statute.”

Hard to imagine how releasing this info could harm national security today. But it might not look so good for the CIA.

Update to TSA Metastasizing, the item on American Airlines demanding intrusive personal info from EFF's Cory Doctorow at Heathrow, and then being unable to explain why they wanted it or how they would keep: Ryan Singel writes to AA and gets a reply. Trouble is, as Cory Doctorow explains, it's a pretty weaselly reply.

Cryptome has obtained and put on line Homeland Security Operations Morning Briefs – 27 September 2004 to 14 January 2005 (“FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY”). They detail a large number of security incidents ranging from the potentially serious to the puzzling or picayune.

As Jan. 20 Nears, Terror Warnings Drop: In April, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced that al Qaeda terrorists might strike during this week's presidential inauguration festivities in Washington. The warning was part of a drumbeat sounded by U.S. officials throughout 2004 that terrorists were seeking to launch attacks both during and after the election season.

Nine months later, the threat level has been lowered, and Ridge, speaking at a news conference last week, said there is no evidence of a plot to disrupt President Bush's inauguration. Previous warnings, Ridge explained, stemmed from threat reports tied to the elections — not to the inauguration more than two months later.

In other words, we lied to you then, and now we're lying to you about what we said then. And by the way Social Security is in crisis, and we're not thinking about invading Iran.

Waterboarding is torture. And the Administration wants to ensure that the CIA can keep doing it and its ilk.

White House Fought New Curbs on Interrogations, Officials Say: At the urging of the White House, Congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure last month that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by American intelligence officers, Congressional officials say.

The defeat of the proposal affects one of the most obscure arenas of the war on terrorism, involving the Central Intelligence Agency's secret detention and interrogation of top terror leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and about three dozen other senior members of Al Qaeda and its offshoots.

The Senate had approved the new restrictions, by a 96-to-2 vote, as part of the intelligence reform legislation. They would have explicitly extended to intelligence officers a prohibition against torture or inhumane treatment, and would have required the C.I.A. as well as the Pentagon to report to Congress about the methods they were using.

But in intense closed-door negotiations, Congressional officials said, four senior members from the House and Senate deleted the restrictions from the final bill after the White House expressed opposition.

I suppose this answers the question 'Why isn't Congress doing something about the torture issue?' — the answer is 'Because Bush & Co are working hard to prevent it.'

Is there no one who will filibuster Gonzales — as a fundamental moral issue — by reading all the Pentagon (and FBI) reports on torture into the record? And the photos. And the secret photos and movies, which could be placed on the public record under Congressional privilege . (The latter may be asking too much; although Senators are Constitutionally protected from prosecution from declassifying material when they speak on the floor of the Senate, the consequence would be to lose the clearance that allows them future access to such materials. It might still be worth it.)

Update: Marty Lederman's reaction to this NYT article makes a number of important points including:

• The story confirms the hypothesis that he and I have both been pushing, that one of the engines driving the torture memos was a need to either legitimate, or at least fail to repudiate, ongoing CIA practices
• Once you allow waterboarding by the CIA against foreign persons held secretly abroad, it's not going to be limited to 'top terrorist leaders' but rather, “It's somewhat unrealistic to hope that the policy will not as a practical matter have ramifications far beyond the class of persons for whom the policy was designed.”
• This Administration has talked a great deal about how it is committed to treating detainees “humanely,” but all the while it has fought tooth and nail to be able to treat detainees inhumanely, i.e., in a manner that would be unconstitutional if done in the U.S.
• We'd all be better off if these issues were debated openly rather than having these fundamental moral choices — with, one may add, significant anti-US propaganda implications — made in the dark.