Bogus Letter Became a Case for War

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

The Washington Post's Peter Eisner reports on the front page today (4/3/07):

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong.

Nonetheless, the uranium claim would become a crucial justification for the invasion of Iraq that began less than two months later. When occupying troops found no nuclear program, the 16 words and how they came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war.

Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.

Some of the information in the article is not new, but the piece does fill in many details. Seymour Hersh reported some of the core information in his 10/27/03 article "The Stovepipe," one of the first major post-invasion pieces on the Bush's administration's cherry-picking of intelligence. Blogger Josh Marshall also covered several aspects of this story over at Talking Points Memo (here's parts one, two and three). In a previous post we mentioned some of Slate's coverage on then DCI George Tenet being asked to fall on his sword for false tales the CIA had debunked (here's Jack Shafer, here's William Saletan, and here's John Dickerson). Then there's this section from Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctine, occurring after the CIA had debunked several pieces of "evidence":

Relentless pressure is a strategy. Usually quite successful. It was employed both in the "war on terror" against al Qaeda, and by the White House against the CIA.

[...]

Libby and Hadley, meanwhile, continued to push, and push hard, on the analysts, asking the same question Tenet was often asked in high-level meetings. Aren't these potential threats precisely why an invasion is necessary? Is there even the slimmest possibility—a one percent chance—that uranium was bought in Niger, that the aluminum tubes were usable in uranium centrifuges, or that Mohammed Atta managed to meet with an Iraqi, any Iraqi, in Prague?

The thing to watch out for with a program of relentless pressure is the blowback.

On Friday afternoon, January 10, Jami Miscik, the head of the DI walked down the hall on the seventh floor shaking with rage.

Josh Moseman, Tenet's chief of staff, saw her as she passed his office.

"You okay?"

"No, I'm not okay. I'm definitely not okay!"

A moment later, she'd made it to Tenet's suite.

She barely could get out the words. Stephen Hadley, Condi's second, has called from the office of "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

They wanted her down at Libby's office in the White House by 5 p.m. At issue was the last in an endless series of draft reports about the connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. How many drafts? Miscik couldn't remember. The pressure for the White House—and from the various intelligence divisions under the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense—had started a week after 9/11.

Cheney's office claimed to have sources. And Rumsfeld's, too. They kept throwing them at Miscik and CIA. The same information, five different ways. They'd omit that a key piece had been discounted, that the source had recanted. Sorry, our mistake. Then it would reappear, again, in a memo the next week. The CIA held firm; the meeting in Prague between Atta and the Iraqi agent didn't occur.

Miscek was no fool. She understood what was going on. It wasn't about what was true, or verifiable. It was about a defensible position, or at least one that would hold up until the troops were marching through Baghdad, welcomed as liberators.

A few days before, when she had sent the final draft over to Libby and Hadley, she told them, emphatically, This is it. There would be no more drafts, no more meetings where her analysts sat across from Hadley, or Feith, or the guys in Feith's office, while the opposing team tried to slip something by them. The report was not what they wanted. She knew that. No evidence meant no evidence.

"I'm not going back there, again, George," Miscek said. "If I have to go back to hear their crap and rewrite this goddamn report... I'm resigning, right now."

She fought back tears of rage.

Tenet picked up the phone to call Hadley.

"She is not coming over," he shouted into the phone. "We are not rewriting this fucking report one more time. It is fucking over. Do you hear me! And don't you ever fucking treat my people this way again. Ever!"

They did not rewrite the report.

And that's why, three weeks later, in making the case for war in his State of the Union address, George W. Bush was not able to say what he'd long hoped to say at such a moment: that there was a pre-9/11 connection between al Qaeda and Saddam.

One down. But two salient points—wobbly, but still standing—on the heart-stopping issue of nuclear weapons remained in the text: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

Both statements were crafted to carry the clarion ring of proof, and both were known, by people inside the CIA and the White House, to fall short of that standard.
(pp.189-191, hardcover edition)

Then there's all of Plamegate. This was not some innocent, bureaucratic snafu, and that's the one aspect of this article I don't trust — not that bureaucratic gaffes might not have complicated matters. There are dozens of stories and incidents like the one Suskind relates, but the key element never changes: the Bush administration acted in bad faith. They never sought an objective threat analysis on Iraq. They wanted to go to war, and dug and scrounged for justification, not proof. They didn't care if Iraq was an imminent threat or not (or, for some, they were so certain it didn't matter). They were interested in what would sell. Iraq was never a challenge of national security for the Bush administration. It was a challenge of PR.

There are folks out there that know this material backwards and forwards, and I'll be interested to see what they make of this new article. Yet to my mind, its main value is that this is The Washington Post, front page, confirming earlier reports and filling in some details. Even more importantly, more people seem willing to speak out now. This is nothing for the Bush administration to celebrate. These sort of issues tend to build up a critical mass (witness all the peripheral scandals the Attorney scandal has started to flush out). As the saying goes, sunshine is the best disinfectant, and with this administration, there can't be enough of it.

Update: It's no surprise that TPM weighed in on the Eisner article, and they offer a valuable perspective.

Also today, Eisner discussed the article online with readers, and clarified several points. Apparently, he's got a book coming out on this whole deal.

The Hiding of Illegal Actions

Glenn Greenwald has produced two more splendid, definitive columns. Unquestionably one of the best writers in any medium on the illegal NSA wiretaps, Greenwald points out that the Bush administration always knew the program was illegal in "Gen. Hayden admits the Administration knew it was violating FISA." And, if you missed it, this weekend Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stated that the Bush administration can and may prosecute journalists for publishing leaked, classified information that makes it look bad. Crooks and Liars has the video here. In "Imprisoning Journalists," Greenwald observes that even Nixon didn't go this far, and persuasively argues that the illegality and the efforts to cover it up are of course related. However, the main thrust of his post is a passionate defense of Freedom of the Press. The only sad thing is that it's at all necessary to write in the first place.

(In a third post, Greenwald also has a nice account of National Review editor Rich Lowry's latest hypocrisy.)

When hostility toward the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the Constitution are accepted as mainstream ideas, we're in deep trouble. When essential civil liberties are viewed as an inconvenience and basic honesty is seen as a nuisance by the key players in the White House – and no one with the power to do so challenges them - we're in grave danger.

The consistent line of the Bush administration has been: "The incompetence and illegality of our actions is not the problem. It's the damn media reporting it." Greenwald cites a Thomas Jefferson quotation that's been much used on the blogosphere of late:

"If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter."

Republicans Move to Obstruct Judicial Review of NSA Program

Glenn Greenwald links to an article from The Hill that reports:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and conservative members of his panel have reached agreement on legislation that may determine the legality of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance program, GOP sources say.

Specter has mollified conservative opposition to his bill by agreeing to drop the requirement that the Bush administration seek a legal judgment on the program from a special court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.

Instead, Specter agreed to allow the administration to retain an important legal defense by allowing the court, which holds its hearings in secret, to review the program only by hearing a challenge from a plaintiff with legal standing, said a person familiar with the text of language agreed to by Specter and committee conservatives.

Glenn's post on this is one of the most chilling, dismaying things I've read in a long time. As bad as the systematic attack on civil liberties by the Bush administration has been, I had wanted to believe that when push came to shove, Congress would stand up for the Constitution. One absolutely infuriating paragraph reports:

Conservative Republicans who pushed for the change say that it will help quell concerns about the measure’s constitutionality and allow the White House to retain a basic legal defense.

BULLSHIT. The change does not help quell "concerns about the measure's constitutionality." It avoids them. This is unconscionable. If this move succeeds, it will cause lasting, serious harm to the Constitution and our country. How the hell can anyone who serves in Congress believe for a second that this move is either moral or responsible? This move is so transparently vile civility cannot stand. As The Hill reports:

An expert in constitutional law and national security, however, said that the change would allow the administration to throw up huge obstacles to anyone seeking to challenge the program’s legality.

The Hill article goes on to quote this expert, "Mary Cheh, a law professor at George Washington University who specializes in constitutional law" at some length over the serious problems this move creates.

As Glenn Greenwald points out yet again:

Could anything be more obvious at this point than the fact that the Bush administration deeply fears having the legality of its eavesdropping activities adjudicated by a federal court? They have engaged in one maneuver after the next to prevent that adjudication.

One would think that if they really believed that they had the clear-cut legal justification for warrantless eavesdropping which they claim to have, they would be eager to have a court rule on this issue so that this unpleasant controversy -- with all of these mean-spirited and utterly baseless allegations of lawbreaking -- can finally be put to rest. And yet, time and again, they do precisely the opposite: they desperately invoke every available measure to prevent any judicial ruling as to the legality of their behavior.

Specter has sold out the American people and apparently his own conscience. Despite all his talk of oversight, of scrutinizing the NSA program, or grilling Bush's nominee to head the CIA, General Michael Hayden, when the time for meaningful action comes, Specter backs down. This is the man who refused to put Attorney General Alberto Gonzales under oath even after Gonzales had clearly lied to Congress. If Jack Cafferty's right that Specter "might be all that stands between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country," we are in deep trouble.

No reasonable person objects to hunting down terrorists. And there may be some far right politicians who truly believe the currently illegal NSA programs should be legal. This move has nothing to do with that, however, because it seeks to avoid having that discussion in the courts. This move is about avoiding accountability and protecting political power, nothing more. The politicians pushing for this are trying to avoid a greater scandal, greater public backlash, and personal embarrassment. Ironically, in their attempt not to look bad, they're revealed themselves as utterly craven. They're conducting a fundamental assault on American democracy for short-term political gain. The danger of this cannot be overestimated and no rhetoric opposing it can be too alarmist. The center cannot hold. It has been ransacked by the right.

The Hill article reports that more than 20 cases are "in the pipeline" that could challenge the NSA program, although if this GOP legislation passes, those cases will face an uphill battle. Let's hope Specter and other key Republicans rediscover their souls before then. In the meantime, it's time for some progressive activism.

The Gutting of the CIA?

Even as George Tenet's failings and merits as CIA head continue to be evaluated in books and articles, the recently ousted Porter Goss remains a polarizing figure, as does the man President Bush has tapped to take over this important job, General Michael Hayden. What state has Goss left things in?

Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report did a guest post at Crooks and Liars on 4/25/06 detailing how recently ousted CIA head Porter Goss was given instructions to purge Democrats from the CIA.
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius provides further insight into the dynamics of the CIA under Goss in a great 5/11/06 piece entitled How the CIA Came Unglued. A new Newsweek article by Mark Hosenball on "Dusty" Foggo supports Ignatius' piece and touches briefly on what many bloggers are calling "Hookergate."

Before delving into the Ignatius and Hosenball pieces, for a broader perspective I wanted to visit a conservative who champions both Goss and Hayden. In a Washington Post online chat, Peter Brookes, "a former intelligence officer with the CIA's Directorate of Operations and now a senior fellow in National Security Affairs at the Heritage Foundation," provided some interesting responses:

Washington, D.C.: What sort of job has Porter Goss done and why would Hayden be any better or worse?

Peter Brookes: Porter Goss did a good job under very difficult circumstances. The agency was in disarray after 9/11 and the failure to find WMD in Iraq. In my view, he shook things up and set the agency off in a new direction. It's a good time for someone else to step in and take the helm.

Note that Brookes blames the CIA for the failure to find WMD in Iraq. Hmm, shouldn't someone that works in a think tank be aware of the 11,000th whistleblower article on how the Bush administration misused prewar intelligence? They ignored not only significant internal dissent in the CIA as to whether Iraq possessed WMD or posed any serious threat, but also actively ignored or suppressed evidence that Iraq did not posses nuclear material and was not building a centrifuge.

Brookes pleads ignorance on the witch hunt charges, which is fine, I suppose, but it raises questions about how tapped in he really is:

San Diego, Calif.: Do you have a comment about the recent reports that Director Goss was conducting a review of the political party affiliations of CIA personnel? If that's true, did it play a part, one way or the other, in Goss's departure?

Peter Brookes: Haven't heard anything like that...

Brookes does take at least one polite but fairly pointed question on Goss:

Richmond, Va.: Thanks for taking questions. The Bush administration has blamed the CIA for bad intel about WMD in Iraq (and I don't believe them). This administration has outed an operative as a means of discrediting her husband, and claimed that they can declassify information at will. This administration has chosen to place a greater value on the DOD intelligence group. Putting Porter Goss in as Director served to purge a lot of valuable talent out of the agency. It seems to me Gen. Hayden could be just the fellow to finish the CIA off, or get pretty close to it. Your thoughts?

Peter Brookes: There is another school of thought that says that many of those that left the CIA since Goss came in were responsible for many of the failures in recent years. So should Goss have kept them? I don't think Hayden is being sent to Langley to close the place down.

Brookes essentially offers a "there are two sides to every story" defense of Goss while completely ducking the most troubling points made by the questioner. I find it hard to believe that any intellectually honest person following the news could believe that the Bush administration did not misuse and cherry-pick intelligence. While the CIA had its problems, it's clear that the Bush administration scapegoated the CIA (Tenet's role taking the undeserved blame regarding the uranium claims in the SOTU is well-documented at this point; for just a taste, see a Slate piece by Saletan from 2003 and a 2005 piece by Dickerson).

To be fair to Brookes, an online discussion necessitates expediency, and you can read his opinions in more depth here, including an enthusiastically pro-Hayden piece. Regarding Hayden, he takes a supremely relevant question:

Louisville, Ky.: Gen. Hayden seems to have a shocking misunderstanding of the Fourth Amendment, pleading ignorance of probable cause in recent interviews.
Please calm my fears that Hayden disagrees with the President, and does not think it acceptable to spy on average Americans without a warrant.

Peter Brookes: My belief is that the NSA wiretapping program should be legal and focused on the bad guys. That said, I think we'll see a lot more discussion of this during Hayden's confirmation hearings.

Brookes' answer is cursory and somewhat unclear here. Does he then acknowledge that both revealed NSA programs are currently illegal? Does he acknowledge that the call-tracking program currently targets innocent Americans by collecting everyone's phone records versus only the "bad guys?" I can credit Brookes for taking a good question, but he immediately loses all credit by completely ignoring it! Here he ducks the glaring issue of the 4th Amendment and also glosses over Hayden's apparent ignorance of, or disregard for, the essential law that governs his very important job! At this point, I have to put Brookes in the polite cheerleader camp. He trusts the guys in charge and will not address any of the glaring, serious concerns about their conduct. I'm using Brookes as an example because he purports to be a serious thinker and is much more civil than many another Bush administration backer (and his responses have been much on my mind).

As to evaluating the job Goss did, on 5/11/06 Dana Priest provided some insight in her weekly WaPo online chat:

Pittsburgh, Pa.: How do you read the move to reinstate Stephen Kappes at the CIA? This seems very unusual does it not? Do you know him?

Dana Priest: I certainly know of him, so to speak. It was truly a stunner, given the direct political slap it was to Goss' judgment. Kappes was the first senior officer to leave in protest when Goss took over. I read it as a way for the White House, through Negroponte, to ask for forgiveness and to get them back into business. I would also think he would actually be running the place much like George Tenet did and maybe Hayden would do more of the interagency work and vision thing.

Meanwhile, Ignatius' column reports on the deadly trio at the CIA, Porter Goss, his staff director Patrick Murray, and Goss' #3, "Dusty" Foggo, whose house was recently raided by FBI agents with the cooperation of the CIA. Ignatius posits that Foggo's "rise illustrates the conservative cronyism, leak paranoia and political vendettas that undermined Goss's tenure." He elaborates by describing the dangerous agency culture created by Goss:

When Goss and Murray arrived at the CIA in the fall of 2004, their first choice for the agency's No. 3 job of executive director was a former CIA officer named Michael Kostiw, who had many friends in conservative political circles. But Kostiw's nomination was sabotaged when a CIA insider leaked the fact that he had once been accused of shoplifting. The charges were dropped after Kostiw resigned and agreed to seek counseling. Kostiw's past made him an inappropriate choice for such a senior position, in the view of many career CIA officers, but to Murray the leak was evidence of a liberal cabal at the CIA that was determined to obstruct the Bush administration's agenda.

Goss's second choice for executive director was the ingratiating logistical officer. As is standard procedure with such senior appointments, Murray and other senior aides were briefed on Foggo's file, which included what one former CIA official describes as instances of "dumb personal behavior." The briefers included Mary Margaret Graham, then chief of counterintelligence, and Jeanette Moore, then head of the Office of Security, who, according to ABC News, had once reprimanded Foggo about alleged insubordination, though the CIA says a formal letter was never filed. Murray rejected the material about Foggo as petty and is said to have warned Graham, "If this leaks, you're dead."

Foggo was duly installed on the seventh floor and, to the amusement of his colleagues, began placing pictures of himself prominently around headquarters. Meanwhile, a period of internal bloodletting ensued that was worthy of the Soviet NKVD under Joseph Stalin. The associate deputy chief of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, Michael Sulick, complained angrily to Murray about his tongue-lashing of Graham, arguing that he was treating CIA officers as if they were Democratic congressional staffers. An indignant Murray thereupon demanded that Sulick be fired for insubordination. His boss, Operations Deputy Director Stephen Kappes, refused Murray's demand, and both he and Sulick resigned.

The aforemention Newsweek article by Mark Hosenball supports the views of Priest and Ignatius (Newsweek is owned by The Post, which also owns Slate):

May 22, 2006 issue - Until a few days ago, Kyle (Dusty) Foggo was one of the most feared men at the CIA. A hot-tempered former cop, Foggo was chosen by CIA Director Porter Goss to be the powerful No. 3 man at the agency, in charge of hiring and firing. Foggo seemed to put a lot of effort into firing. With Goss's blessing, he carried out what amounted to a purge of the agency, forcing out most of the CIA's top management, as well as spies and analysts who were thought to be too close to former director George Tenet, or too close to the Democrats. When Foggo walked down the corridor, people worried he was coming for them.
_________________________
It's now up to Goss's replacement—presumably Gen. Michael Hayden, if he survives the confirmation process—to clean up the mess the Goss crew left behind. Last week Negroponte said he wants to appoint Stephen Kappes to fill the job of deputy director. The announcement was a very public slap at Goss. A former Marine and veteran case officer with a storied career, Kappes was head of the CIA's clandestine service when Goss took over the agency. Years earlier, when Bill Clinton was president, Goss's Capitol Hill aides had feuded with Kappes over an incident at the CIA station in Belgrade. CIA officers, informed they were about to be attacked, fled the building without first burning all of the secret papers. Goss's aides demanded that the station chief be fired, even though an investigation, led by Kappes, showed no secrets had been compromised. Kappes refused to fire the official. Goss and his aides never forgot it, and when Goss became director Kappes was one of the first to be shoved out. Kappes, who now lives overseas, has been back to Washington for talks and is believed to be interested in returning to Langley. Thanks to the previous tenants, there will be plenty of work for him to do—and undo.

But what sort of mandate will exist to fix the CIA? And according to whose idea of "fixing?" Ignatius concludes his column:

The chronic mismanagement of the CIA under Goss and Murray has been an open secret for many months, and the real question is why it took the Bush White House so long to fix it. When I posed this question a few weeks ago to a senior administration official, he repeated the line that the agency was full of leakers and obstructionists. The political vendetta against the CIA went to the top, in other words. It did real damage to the country before President Bush finally called a halt.

Goss apparently still has fierce champions in the Bush administration, even though Brookes is apparently unaware of the party line on this, pleaded ignorance, or tried to adopt a disinterested stance. Who really made the call on Goss stepping down, or pushed for it, and why? While tensions did exist at the agency, the firing criteria for Bush has almost exclusively been perceived disloyalty and never horrible mismanagement. Goss was rooting out Bush's perceived enemies, and it's hard to see him objecting to that. Despite the official denials, the most credible narrative right now remains that Goss' resignation was primarily (but not necessarily exclusively) to minimize the erupting scandal centered on the activities of Dusty Foggo.

Moving forward, Kappes appears to be highly regarded by just about everybody. Meanwhile, some reporters and pundits posit that Negroponte wants Hayden to serve as a bulwark against the highly influential Donald Rumsfeld (Dana Priest discusses this view here). How partisan is Negroponte, and how much is Hayden? Hayden has critics and supporters of every political stripe. He deserves intense scrutiny as the head of the NSA during its highly controversial and unconstitutional warrantless spying programs. While it seems Kappes' return to the CIA would surely make the agency better, Hayden's stated ignorance of, or disdain for, the 4th Amendment does not give great comfort. I'll be watching Specter's NSA and CIA hearings with great interest.

The Iceberg Cometh

I find I disagree with William Arkin's analysis occasionally, but his Washington Post blog Early Warning often provides valuable information about the U.S. intelligence community. His coverage of the Pentagon's surveillance programs were among the most comprehensive you'd find anywhere. Today, his entry is "Telephone Records are just the Tip of NSA's Iceberg." He reports:

The National Security Agency and other U.S. government organizations have developed hundreds of software programs and analytic tools to "harvest" intelligence, and they've created dozens of gigantic databases designed to discover potential terrorist activity both inside the United States and overseas.

These cutting edge tools -- some highly classified because of their functions and capabilities -- continually process hundreds of billions of what are called "structured" data records, including telephone call records and e-mail headers contained in information "feeds" that have been established to flow into the intelligence agencies.

The multi-billion dollar program, which [sic] began before 9/11 but has been accelerated since then. Well over 100 government contractors have participated, including both small boutique companies whose products include commercial off-the-shelf software and some of the largest defense contractors, who have developed specialized software and tools exclusively for government use.

Arkin goes on on to list "some 500 software tools, databases, data mining and processing efforts contracted for, under development or in use at the NSA and other intelligence agencies today." I'd be interested to know how many of the programs Arkin mentions are domestic versus foreign, and how many of these programs target ordinary, innocent Americans. As one commentator points out, one program is ironically named "Freedom." Other commentators added a few more programs to the list!

The Post typically has some very smart, well-informed readers. A few other comments struck me:

"1. A secret spy agency under investigation by the US Department of Justice told the Justice Department to stop... and it did.
2. I paraphrase Benjamin Franklin "Those who would give up liberty for a sense of security deserve neither."

"Didn't Bush say yesterday, when questioned about NSA's examination of phone records: "We're not mining or trawling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. . ." I know Bush claims they are not examining the content of the calls, only usage patterns, etc., but isn't Bush's statement denying "mining or trawling" simply not true? Has the press pointed this out?"

""The multi-billion dollar program, which began before 9/11 but has been accelerated since then." I find this potentially very alarming. How long "before" 9/11 did this program begin ? who asked
for it, what were the stated reasons at the time (before 9/11) ????"

"Spying is a necessity in a hostile world and this has been recognized for ages. What is new and very dangerous is that this is now happening in America WITHOUT OVERSIGHT."

Yet again, no sane American would claim that the government should not monitor terrorists. However, there's no reason not to do it legally. Any system without oversight and accountability invites abuse. For all this activity, Osama bin Laden is still free… and guess what, he's not hiding out in Topeka and making phone calls to Domino's. Despite the consistent, obtuse cries that revealing such programs helps the enemy, of course terrorists, like mobsters, suspect every phone call might be tapped! Bin Laden reportedly uses hand-written notes and I'm sure al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations use disposable cell phones. The Moussaoui trial reminds us that the FBI's problem regarding 9/11 was not that they lacked the intelligence they needed; they didn't act on it. It's really quite shameful that bin Laden has still not been caught, especially since we had the opportunity to do so at Tora Bora. However, the Constitution, and its observance domestically, is a much more important issue. Fear should never lead to curtailing essential civil liberties. But even that misses the point somewhat; choosing between fighting terrorism and upholding the Constitution is a false dilemma dangerous to embrace.

The NSA Call-Tracking Program

I think it's safe to say that the liberal blogosphere is more shocked that USA Today is the paper to break an essential story than they are by the story itself: The NSA has been collecting the phone records of ordinary Americans for the past five years or so in a massive database with the full, willing knowledge of three of the biggest phone carriers - At&T, Verizon, and BellSouth.

Anyone who remembers Alberto Gonzales parsing his words carefully before the Senate about the NSA warantless wiretap program, and his refusal to answer a question about whether other hidden NSA programs existed, will not be shocked. Anyone who's been following this administration will not be shocked. President Bush defied logic today when he:

denied that the government listens to Americans' phone calls without court approval and maintained that citizens' privacy "is fiercely protected in all our activities."

"We are not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of Americans," Bush said. "Our efforts are focused on links to al-Qaeda and their known affiliates."

How al-Qaeda is targeted by casting a wide net over innocent Americans is beyond me. This is not a surgical strike we're talking about. This is a massive data collection effort. How this does not violate the 4th Amendment is also beyond me.

Not surprisingly, Glenn Greenwald has written the most superb early post on this matter (that I've read, anyway). I have no doubt he'll pen more, but he highlights the same two key elements that struck me. First, per the USA Today article, these guys use bullying tactics to get their way:

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

A second, more important issue is raised by the next two paragraphs:

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

As Greenwald incisively observes:

We continuously hear that the Bush administration has legal authority to do anything the President orders. Claims that he is acting illegally are just frivolous and the by-product of Bush hatred. And yet, as I detailed here, each and every time the administration has the opportunity to obtain an adjudication of the legality of its conduct from a federal court (which, unbeknownst to the administration, is the branch of our government which has the authority and responsibility to interpret and apply the law), it does everything possible to avoid that adjudication.

This continuous evasion of judicial review by the administration is much more serious and disturbing than has been discussed and realized. By proclaiming the power to ignore Congressional law and to do whatever it wants in the area of national security, it is seizing the powers of the legislative branch. But by blocking courts from ruling on the multiple claims of illegality which have been made against it, the administration is essentially seizing the judicial power as well. It becomes the creator, the executor, and the interpreter of the law. And with that, the powers of all three branches become consolidated in The President, the single greatest nightmare of the founders.

As horrendous as the situation in Iraq still is, as bad as the aftermath of Katrina still is, as dire as the fiscal mismanagement has been, I have long felt that it's the Bush administration's consistent, aggressive, and systematic assault on civil liberties, due process and the Constitution itself that represent the gravest and most lasting threat to our country. An assault on the law itself – and good, essential law at that – will be far harder to reverse than the other mistakes. It sets a horrible precedent. For god's sake, has anyone in this administration read The Federalist Papers?

There is absolutely no reason America cannot fight terrorism (and of course it should) within existing laws. There is absolutely no reason to bypass FISA other than to avoid oversight and accountability. If Gonzales wants to complain about the paperwork again, perhaps he should resign and allow someone who can handle the workload to do the job. If Bush cannot honor the oath he swore to "uphold the Constitution" he should do the same.

I predict this NSA story will be the dominant one at least until Monday, and that Bush's approval ratings will finally drop below 30% (most polls place him at 31% now, with a 3% margin of error). Certain issues deserve widespread public outrage and full disclosure, and this is one of them.

Curveball

The Los Angeles Times has presented the best, most in-depth tale yet of Curveball, the Iraqi defector who provided most of the false intelligence that justifed the push to war. In its own way, this article gives Stephen King a run for his money.

Many maddening elements emerge. One is the persistent, ridiculous and needless turf battles between groups that are supposed to be on the same side. On 9/11 it was policeman and firemen tragically not communicating; before 9/11 it was the FBI and CIA, among others, who did not share information; here, it was Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (the BND) preventing the American CIA any access to their prize informant, Curveball. The lack of access was exacerbated by mistranslations... LA Times journalists Bob Drogin and John Goetz report:

It got worse, like a children's game of "telephone," in which information gets increasingly distorted. The BND sent German summaries of their English and Arabic interview reports to Munich House and to British intelligence. The DIA team translated the German back to English and prepared its own summaries. Those went to DIA's directorate for human intelligence, at a high-rise office in Clarendon, Va.

Still, for any mistranslations that contributed to the false belief that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his WMD programs, at several points the CIA was told that Curveball was not reliable at best, and a liar at worst. George Tenet claims he never received this information. However, as Director of Central Intelligence at the time, and considering Curveball's accounts played a crucial role in the public case for war, it is inconceivable Tenet did not know the intelligence was suspect.

Hanlon's Razor states that one should "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." One could easily add in ignorance and incompetence. If DCI Tenet really did not know that Curveball was unreliable, then the CIA was even more poorly managed than previously reported.

Turf battles apparently occured within the CIA as well. Several sources in the article comment on the CIA's stubborn unwillingness to admit its own mistakes and learn from them. Apparently, those agents who questioned Curveball's veracity were punished for making waves. David Kay, who searched for WMD after the war, observes that the CIA is "very, very vindictive." While the article shows that there were (and no doubt still are) very capable, professional CIA agents, their efforts appear to have been stymied. Something in the culture or the management prevented the accurate view on Curveball to emerge, let alone dominate.

Psychologists have long known that typically, human beings tend to look for evidence to support their views, not for evidence to contradict them. This dynamic makes the thorough vetting of critical intelligence all the more crucial. Consider the following incident:

Soon after U.S. troops entered Baghdad, the discovery of two trucks loaded with lab equipment in northern Iraq brought cheers to the CIA weapons center.

Curveball examined photos relayed to Germany and said that while he hadn't worked on the two trucks, equipment in the pictures looked like components he had installed at Djerf al Nadaf.

Days later, the CIA and DIA rushed to publish a White Paper declaring the trucks part of Hussein's biological warfare program. The report dismissed Iraq's explanation that the equipment generated hydrogen as a "cover story." A day later, Bush told a Polish TV reporter: "We found the weapons of mass destruction."

But bio-weapons experts in the intelligence community were sharply critical. A former senior official of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research called the unclassified report an unprecedented "rush to judgment."

The DIA then ordered a classified review of the evidence. One of 15 analysts held to the initial finding that the trucks were built for germ warfare. The sole believer was the CIA analyst who helped draft the original White Paper.

Hamish Killip, a former British army officer and biological weapons expert, flew to Baghdad in July 2003 as part of the Iraq Survey Group, the CIA-led Iraqi weapons hunt. He inspected the truck trailers and was immediately skeptical.

"The equipment was singularly inappropriate" for biological weapons, he said. "We were in hysterics over this. You'd have better luck putting a couple of dust bins on the back of the truck and brewing it in there."

The trucks were built to generate hydrogen, not germs, he said. But the CIA refused to back down. In March 2004, Killip quit, protesting that the CIA was covering up the truth.

Rod Barton, an Australian intelligence officer and another bio-weapons expert, also quit over what he said was the CIA's refusal to admit error. "Of course the trailers had nothing to do with Curveball," Barton wrote in a recent e-mail.

The Iraq Survey Group ultimately agreed. An "exhaustive investigation" showed the trailers could not "be part of any BW program," it reported in October 2004.

Why the intial rushed and erroneous assessment? Were the CIA and DIA too eager to please? Were they biased toward the idea that Iraq just must have WMD? Why is it that, with sober analysis, 14 of 15 analysts said the trucks couldn't have been used for WMD, but that the wrong view initially prevailed? The Bush administration must take a large share of the blame. Many people forget, as mentioned above, that Bush claimed weapons of mass destruction had in fact been found, and he repeated this claim several times. He later went on to deliberately substitute the argument that "Hussein had WMD" to "Hussein wanted WMD."

On Jan. 20, 2004, Bush lauded Kay and the Iraq Survey Group in his State of the Union Speech for finding "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities…. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction program would continue to this day."

I still find this deeply insulting. While some media outlets pointed out Bush's craven slight-of-hand, this sort of deceptive skullduggery requires loud trumpets. ("The President is trying to pull a fast one!") No one doubted Hussein wanted WMD. The question was whether he had them, and whether he could actually get them.

Other articles have explored how Bush's White House Iraq Group (WHIG), Feith's special plans group, and related parties "stovepiped" intelligence from the CIA, bypassing the normal (or perhaps not so normal) vetting process. The CIA author of the White Paper mentioned above, whose view was that Hussein had WMD, had his views elevated and hocked while more measured, professional and experienced views were ignored. What does it say that, consistently, the more knowledgeable intelligence experts were shunted aside while Bush excitedly crows publically, 'we found the WMD!'...? This is not good leadership, management, or empiricism. Later on, was Bush ever given the "fourteen out of fifteen" figure? I would love to know exactly when their assessment was known, because I believe Bush repeated that the WMD were found several times... Just as Cheney repeatedly claimed an Iraq-Al Qaedea link, Rice claimed huclear weapons, ans so on. This abuse of intelligence is what still needs to be investigated fully, and what Pat Roberts is still fighting to impede.

Paul O'Neill's greatest lament was that Bush lacked honest brokers, advisors who would tell him the truth even if unpleasant, and who were not pushing their own agenda. Granted, Cheney and Rumsfeld are forceful personalities, but ultimately, it's Bush who chose to value their views over others.

Normally, while politicians may lie to the public, behind closed doors on matters of genuine importance, they don't lie to each other... or at least, career civil servants don't. However, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq was only generated at Congress' insistence, and was deeply flawed and misleading. However, not only Congress, but Colin Powell, a key figure in the Bush administration, appears to have been misled:

More problematic were the three sources the CIA said had corroborated Curveball's story. Two had ties to Chalabi. All three turned out to be frauds.

The most important, a former major in the Iraqi intelligence service, was deemed a liar by the CIA and DIA. In May 2002, a fabricator warning was posted in U.S. intelligence databases.

Powell said he was never warned, during three days of intense briefings at CIA headquarters before his U.N. speech, that he was using material that both the DIA and CIA had determined was false. "As you can imagine, I was not pleased," Powell said. "What really made me not pleased was they had put out a burn notice on this guy, and people who were even present at my briefings knew it."

But BND officials said their U.S. colleagues repeatedly assured them Curveball's story had been corroborated.

"They kept on telling us there were three or four sources," said the senior German intelligence official. "They said it many times."

Powell also claims he really pushed his CIA briefers on Curveball's veracity, but was constantly and consistently told the man was reliable. If Powell's account is accurate, someone in the room knew better and was either lying or gutless.

Whatever Powell is, he's no idiot. And if he was being so misled, as he claims, was Bush getting anything close to an accurate picture? Did he put a premium on demanding one?

When I studied World War I in college, one of the most striking elements was learning that so many countries wanted war. In Germany in particular, the votes to go to war were overwhelming. Not only did many countries possess a nationalistic fervor, war had previously been profitable to some in power, and no modern war had ever devastated the home front before. They simply had no idea what they were in for.

If only folks like Dick "they will greet us as liberators" Cheney has studied history, or reality, rather than their own neocon fantasies. As soon as Bush and his gang started speaking about the threat of Hussein, it was rather obvious he wanted to go to war. Of course the intelligence was cherry-picked. Of course the Bush administration had more information than Congress. Of course, as the Downing Street memo states, intelligence was "being fixed" around the need to go to war. At best the administration was incompetent, but at worse they were liars. Some of them are far too smart not to know they were being deceptive. While I'm sure some of them believed they were lying to achieve a greater good (the liberation of Iraq... and to their minds, the re-election of George Bush), they were still willfully deceptive. To finish:

Other warnings poured in. The CIA Berlin station chief wrote that the BND had "not been able to verify" Curveball's claims. The CIA doctor who met Curveball wrote to his supervisor shortly before Powell's speech questioning "the validity" of the Iraqi's information.

"Keep in mind that this war is going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say and the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about," his supervisor wrote back, Senate investigators found. The supervisor later told them he was only voicing his opinion that war appeared inevitable.

(REVISED somewhat 12/15)