Iran's Shrinking Chemical Weapons Stockpile

By Cernig

Or rather, the shrinking assessments of the size of Iran's chemical weapons stockpile.

It appears the last NIE on Iran's nuclear program isn't the only intelligence community assessment to have dialed down the hype and rhetoric over Iran's Weapons of Mass Destruction ability. Successive assessments on Iran's chemical weapons have done the same.

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the Arms Control Wonk explains.

What next - the possibility that the U.S. intelligence community will admit that the "EFP's from Iran" narrative is flimsier than a Colin Powell presentation to the UN?

And if so would the Bush administration's Weapons of Mass Distraction - the mainstream media - even notice?

Update Meanwhile...

Last Friday, Dick Cheney was in Saudi Arabia for high-level meetings with the Saudi king and his ministers. On Saturday, it was revealed that the Saudi Shura Council -- the elite group that implements the decisions of the autocratic inner circle -- is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors," one of the kingdom's leading newspapers, Okaz, reports. The German-based dpa news service relayed the paper's story.

Simple prudence -- or ominous timing?

Crime And Cover-Up

By Cernig

You really should read the NY Times' editorial today. Both Tristero and BooMan have the same take on it - that it's about time the NYT and others in the mainstream woke up, smelled the coffee, and got as angry about Bush's impact on the underlying fabric of American civil liberty as leftie bloggers have been for years.

Here's a taste:

For more than two years now, Congress, the news media, current and former national security officials, think tanks and academic institutions have been engaged in a profound debate over how to modernize the law governing electronic spying to keep pace with technology. We keep hoping President Bush will join in.

Instead, the president offers propaganda intended to scare Americans, expand his powers, and erode civil liberties — and to ensure that no one is held to account for the illegal wiretapping he ordered after 9/11.

...The president will continue to claim the country is in grave danger over this issue, but it is not. The real danger is for Mr. Bush. A good law — like the House bill — would allow Americans to finally see the breathtaking extent of his lawless behavior.

The mainstream media gave Bush a pass on all his soft-totalitarian tricks for most of his presidency - the best part of eight long years - before finally deciding to speak up. Let's hope that they've already figured out that John McCain is just more of the McSame and won't give him the benefit of any doubt at all on his scaremongering tactics in the run-up to November.

Bush Asserts Right To Open Your Mail

By Cernig

Mostly un-noticed, Bush has claimed for himself powers to open domestic mail without a warrant in a 2006 signing statement which directly contradicted the bill it was appended to.

Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 [2006]after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.

A White House spokeswoman disputed claims that the move gives Bush any new powers, saying the Constitution allows such searches.

Still, the move, one year after The New York Times' disclosure of a secret program that allowed warrantless monitoring of Americans' phone calls and e-mail, caught Capitol Hill by surprise.

"Despite the president's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

"You have to be concerned," a senior U.S. official agreed. "It takes executive-branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."

...Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane changes. But the legislation also explicitly reinforces protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval.

Yet, in his statement, Bush said he will "construe" an exception, "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent ... with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances."

Note that "exigent circumstances" doesn't just refer to some "ticking bomb" mythical scenario but also to any longstanding declared emergency - like the general 'war on terror". The administration could already ask for a FISA warrant to open any suspect mail - and the Postal Service already has the rigfht to delay delivery. But that's not good enough for power-hungry Dubya.

The same Congress who are now being so tame on telecom immunity promised to look into it back then. I hope you didn't hold your breath because we've not heard a damn thing about hearings on the matter.

Via Larisa, who asserts:

I left the Soviet Union only to find myself back where I came from. The label might say America, but it is clear that America is a long forgotten dream

That's soft totalitarianism for you, Larisa.

Update Post edited to show that the signing statement and bill date to December 2006, as does the Congressional promise to look into the matter. Hands up those who knew about that signing statement or who've heard anything about that promised oversight.

Too Incompetent NOT To Use Torture?

By Cernig

So Bush has refused to rule out torture as a method of interrogation for the CIA and others - pretty much everyone except the Army really. But the spin on this veto is really sick - the Army doesn't get to use torture because it's made up of dumbass kids who wouldn't know how to torture someone properly Perino and McConnell both are pushing this spin. In Perino's words:

The Army Field Manual is a perfectly appropriate document that is important for young GIs, some so young that they’re not even able to legally get a drink in the states where they’re from.

But Think Progress has a different take - the Bush administration are saying that the CIA's folks are too incompetent to interrogate someone without resorting to torture.

ThinkProgress spoke with ret. Army Lt. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, who served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) during DESERT SHIELD/STORM. He called Bush’s veto a “mistake”:

I think that he will be sending an unclear message to the troops. … Gen. Petraeus has made it very clear in his letter to the troops that the standard is the Army Field Manual.

Soyster also sharply criticized McConnell’s defense of the techniques:

I would say that if Mike McConnell worked for me, I’d fire him. That is one of the weakest arguments. The Army has a lot of good training, 10-, 18-week courses at the school. And many of our interrogators have been in the Army for 28 years. They’re not 18-year old kids. […]

And the idea, in fact, these techniques [used by] the experts at the CIA — waterboarding, sleep deprivation, hypothermia, whatever those techniques are — it doesn’t take much expertise to use those. You know, dumb guys in the Middle Ages were doing the same thing. The KGB were strong on sleep deprivation. So there’s no skill required from the CIA. They may need those techniques because of their skill level. And they think that they need them.

Soyster added that one of the interrogation experts who had worked for him at the DIA laughed “at the idea that anyone would be so incompetent as to have to use any of these [torture] techniques.” Many interrogators, in fact, don’t even go to the extend that the Field Manual authorizes, “because good interrogators don’t need those techniques.”

I'm surprised that the Bomb Iran crowd, who are in the main an identical set to the Loving Torture set, aren't making more of this possible line of argument - if the CIA and other intel agencies are so incompetent as to need torture, then surely we should all just set aside the last Iran NIE, right?

Update Marty Lederman:

Bush's veto is, in effect, an attempt to retain the option to violate the Geneva Conventions, the Federal Anti-Torture statute, and the McCain Amendment. He would only retain this option, however, because his lawyers have made unreasonable interpretations of U.S. law to conclude that the most egregious of these techniques-- including waterboarding-- are lawful, instead of what they actually are: violations of federal law and breaches of Geneva.

...it is worth recognizing Bush's veto-- and indeed, many other future actions and acts of intransigence-- as part of an endgame strategy. At this point in Bush's Presidency he deals from a position of weakness, not strength. His major goals are to prevent criminal prosecutions of himself (unlikely in any event) and his aides (more likely), to keep the public from finding out much of what he and his advisors actually did and ordered done during his presidency (his fight for immunity for telecom companies who engaged in illegal surveillance should be understood as part of this larger strategy), to entrench the U.S. presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future, and do what he can to ensure that John McCain becomes President, or failing that, Hillary Clinton as a second best solution. He figures that McCain, and, to a lesser extent Clinton, are most likely to continue aspects of his policies and keep troops in Iraq for some time. The longer that the next president continues his policies-- including warrantless surveillance, his interrogation practices, and his war in Iraq, the longer these features will become normalized and/or the next President's problem.

What Bush does not want, above all, is to be followed by a repudiationist or reconstructive Presidency that establishes a new political order through systematic rejection of the themes of his Presidency.

Because then it might all unravel and he'd have to live in exile in Patagonia?

How's Iraq Doing? Shhhh, It's A Secret

By Cernig

While General Petraeus' next report to Congress will no doubt be subject to the same PR blitz and general folderol as last time - and deal almost entirely with military matters - the intelligence community's National Intelligence Estimate, which will deal far more with such matters as reconstruction and reconciliation, is to be kept under wraps.

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to be completed this month, according to U.S. intelligence officials. But leaders of the intelligence community have not decided whether to make its key judgments public, a step that caused an uproar when key judgments in an NIE about Iran were released in November.

The classified estimate on Iraq is intended as an update of last summer's assessment, which predicted modest security improvements but an increasingly precarious political situation there, the U.S. officials said.

It is meant to be delivered to Congress before testimony in early April by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, according to a letter sent last week by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.).

...Intelligence officials said that the National Intelligence Board -- made up of the heads of the 16 intelligence agencies plus McConnell -- will decide whether to release the Iraq judgments once the estimate is completed. But they made clear that they lean toward a return to the traditional practice of keeping such documents secret.

In internal guidance he issued in October, McConnell said that his policy was that they "should not be declassified."

Because, y'know, transparency and oversight on actual progress that counts in America's most expensive military adventure since WW2 is what the Bush administration are all about in the run-up to a general election...

(Just like they're all about oversight of the intel community in the first place)

Not.

Almost Every Telephone Customer In North America

By Cernig

Reading Michael Goldfarb's gloating yesterday over the imminent Dem capitulation on FISA, I was struck by a curious phrase:

...the industry now faces as much as $7.243 trillion in liability, as practically every telephone customer in North America is to be considered a victim...

He goes on to call any lawsuits that established such a liability both "frivolous" and a "threat to national security." It seems to me that they can't be both, though. If they're frivilous then the only liability is the cost of litigation, swiftly halted by the invocation of state secrecy, and the threat to national security is nil.

But what about that throwaway claim that almost every telephone user in North America - not just the U.S. - would have not just a chance at litigation but a real chance at establishing liability, in amounts sufficient to challenge health care or the Iraq occupation as a driver of the national debt? We're talking about a $20 million award per person here. Awards of that scale would have to follow some serious infringements of personal rights and would explain entirely why the Bush administration doesn't want to indemnify the telecoms.

Is Goldfarb talking out his ass here or has he just inadvertently spilled some insider beans? Well - he's a pretty well connected insider himself, isn't he? That's meant to be where he derives his authority for his smirking pose.

And then there's this, from Kevin Drum, who points to a WaPo quote of assistant attorney general for national security Kenneth Wainstein:

At the breakfast yesterday, Wainstein highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized....In response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA's current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States. The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because "essentially you don't know where the recipient is going to be" and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States.

Kevin writes:

But if there's no way to know in advance where the recipient of an email is going to be, then the Bush administration is basically asking for the ability to monitor all email communications that pass through a U.S. switch. And they interpret the text of PAA as giving them that authority. Right?

If that's what has been happening all along, then that entirely explains Goldfarb's claim.

Telecom Indemnity Deals?

By Cernig

Kevin Drum poses an interesting question today - do telecom companies have indemnity agreements with the Bush administration which would mean the government would cover any losses from lawsuits over surveillance measures? It would explain by the telecom companies themselves seem so low-key and entirely unbothered by the prospect of lawsuits and leave the Bush administration's real reason for wanting an immunity as the one we've always suspected - keeping the actual extent of surveaillance secret.

Kevin quotes a commenter of his, who is an attorney with considerable experience dealing with wiretapping cases.

"The general counsels and legal departments of telcos are extremely accomplished and always protect their company's interests meticulously. They have been dealing with wiretapping and surveillance agreements with the government and law enforcement for over seven decades, this was not a matter of first impression to them; and in difficult and unique cases, I have never seen them not insist on indemnification. Never."

Such deals would, of course, be classified.

Kevin writes that "Indemnification might be a good subject for some enterprising national security journalist to start prying into." Oh, definitely.

White House spins itself silly on FISA

By Libby

The WaPo and Newsweek are both promoting the latest White House propaganda on the expiration of the FISA 'fix.' DNI Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey are browbeating Congress and bleating about how the Democrats irresponsibly let the current temporary 'fix' lapse without rubberstamping the administration's preferred criminal cover-up, otherwise known as telecom immunity. They sent a handwringing letter crying over the telecoms reluctance to continue cooperating with the program. Of course, by the time the letter reached the press, the telecoms agreed to keep playing for pay. I don't want to think about what the White House promised them in return.

In terms of silly spin, this is the top ten. Maybe they forgot the reason the atrocious 'fix' expired in the first place was the work of Bush and GOP for purely political reasons. Glenn Greenwald reminds them.

McConnell acknowledged last week that the White House's refusal to extend the wiretapping law was meant to pressure Congress to pass the Senate bill.

So much for putting national security ahead of CYA politics. Even more amusing, since the White House spin has been that the telecoms did nothing illegal and they're just trying to protect the hapless corporations from bankruptcy via frivolous lawsuits, is this admission from the letter.

You imply that the emergency authorization process under FISA is an adequate substitute for the legislative authorities that have elapsed. This assertion reflects a basic misunderstanding about FISA's emergency authorization provisions. Specifically, you assert that the National Security Agency (NSA) or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) "may begin surveillance immediately" in an emergency situation. FISA requires far more, and it would be illegal to proceed as you suggest.

Sounds like a defacto confession of guilt to me. Which makes the lawsuits pretty damn relevant in uncovering the White House's criminality. I guess doublespeak even makes its best practitioners dizzy after a while. I don't know how it can get much sillier than this latest salvo.

On the plus side, it provides great fodder for creative YouTubes encouraging the Democrats to stand their ground and save the constitution. Meanwhile, if you lack the time and equipment to say it with pictures, here's this week's 30 second point and click activism. Sign the latest petition to stop telecom immunity.

White House still creating its own reality

By Libby

This White House press release on the FISA 'fix" is so incomprehensibly false that one might think they mistakenly published their audition for The Onion. As a parody it's hilarious. As a serious statement, it's beyond pathetic.

Steven Benen, taking the serious approach, parses the -- um -- misstatements thoroughly but I've struck on an easier method to decipher the piece. I think it's just a typo problem. If you substitute the word FACT for MYTH and substitute the word LIE for FACT, it makes perfect sense.

Bush Puts US At Risk For Corporate Welfare Scheme

By Cernig

Glenn Greenwald is truly on form today, but the last couple of graphs of his FISA post are classic.

The issue is not "intelligence gaps." Rather, as McConnell candidly admits, the "real issue" is "liability protection for the private sector." To take them at their word, George Bush and Mike McConnell are putting the nation at risk in order to ensure that AT&T and Verizon do not have to be held accountable in a court of law for having broken the law. Think about how twisted and corrupt that calculus is.

One other vital point: The claim that telecoms will cease to cooperate without retroactive immunity is deeply dishonest on multiple levels, but the dishonesty is most easily understood when one realizes that, under the law, telecoms are required to cooperate with legal requests from the government. They don't have the option to "refuse." Without amnesty, telecoms will be reluctant in the future to break the law again, which we should want. But there is no risk that they will refuse requests to cooperate with legal surveillance, particularly since they are legally obligated to cooperate in those circumstances. The claim the telcoms will cease to cooperate with surveillance requests is pure fear-mongering, and is purely dishonest.

Glenn notes that, this time, even the mainstream stenography departments have notices the blatant fearmongering spin, and aren't going along with it as on previous occasions.

GOP Unserious On FISA (Updated)

By Cernig

Kevin Drum has a proposal and a question about Republican concern-trolling over the FISA bill, with authority for surveillance due to lapse at midnight tonight:

Look, if it's that important, there's a simple answer: pass the bill without telecom immunity. Then come back and introduce immunity in a separate bill. If you've got the votes for it, fine. If not, too bad. I'm against immunity myself — though hardly hellbent on the subject — but whichever way the vote went, in the meantime we'd have the FISA extension and surveillance could continue normally.

But that's not on the table. The supposed grownups in the GOP are, apparently, perfectly happy to play around with "life and death" if it's in the service of a bit of demagogic brinksmanship over telecom immunity. Why?

Well, Kevin - there are two simple answers.

1) Given the Bush administration's record, do you really think they'll stop all programs authorised by the lapsing bill at midnight tonight? Me neither.

2) Stripping out the telecom immunity to become its own bill would make sense if they were planning to pass the FISA legislation as quickly as possible - but they aren't. Being able to yet again get behind the decades-old electioneering push to call Dems "surrendercrats" is, in their calculus, far more important than passing legislation they say is essential to national security.

Update While pretending to be outraged over the FISA authority lapsing, and actually in an attempt to prevent the House voting on contempt citations for Bolten and Miers, House Republicans staged a walk-out. They even interrupted Tom Lantos' memorial service to do it. The contempt vote passed 223-32 and House Minority Leader John Boehner is now in the position of having voted against a bill yesterday that today he says is essential to America's safety.

See what I mean about demagogic brinkmanship being the whole point?

Kyle writes:

When it comes down to it, Republicans have proven to be the most immature, whiny, cry-baby-ass brats in public service. I kid you not, and they proved it not once, but twice today.

Uh-huh. And that's them playing to their base's strengths.

The Rule Of Men

By Cernig

The Senate voted 31-67 to give retroactive immunity to telecoms corporations anabling Bush's surveillance programs. TPM Muckraker notes:

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) took to the floor last night to give a speech asking, "This is our defining question, the question that confronts every generation: The rule of law, or the rule of men?" The resounding answer: the rule of men.

and lists the Dem crossovers.

Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Evan Bayh (D-IA), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Tom Carper (D-DE), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Jim Webb (D-VA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).

Obama lived up to his promise to vote for stripping the telecom corps. of their immunity. Clinton didn't show up.

And I thought I was already in a bad mood today.

The Spooks And Media Stenography

By Cernig

The UK's Independent newspaper has an excerpt today from Nick Davies new book "Flat Earth News", in which he "argues that shadowy intelligence agencies are pumping out black propaganda to manipulate public opinion – and that the media simply swallow it wholesale". It's well worth a read.

Davies points to the way in which one minor terror figure - Abu Musab al Zarqawi - was hyped by propaganda which suceeded in turning him into the very thing they said he was, increasing Al Qaeda's influence in Iraq and endangering US troops in the process. Powell mentioned him in his 2003 address to the UN and every statement about Zarqawi turned out to be false. Letters from him appeared and were widely pushed by the Pentagon and media stenographers - even though those letters were fakes. And then:

the US campaign on Zarqawi eventually succeeded in creating its own reality. By elevating him from his position as one fighter among a mass of conflicting groups, the US campaign to "villainise Zarqawi" glamorised him with its enemy audience, making it easier for him to raise funds, to attract "unsponsored" foreign fighters, to make alliances with Sunni Iraqis and to score huge impact with his own media manoeuvres. Finally, in December 2004, Osama bin Laden gave in to this constructed reality, buried his differences with the Jordanian and declared him the leader of al-Q'aida's resistance to the American occupation.

But he also writes about the wider black propaganda war:

For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.

...This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of "strategic communications" which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda.

...So, who exactly is producing fiction for the media? Who wrote the Zarqawi letters? Who created the fantasy story about Osama bin Laden using a network of subterranean bases in Afghanistan, complete with offices, dormitories, arms depots, electricity and ventilation systems? Who fed the media with tales of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, suffering brain seizures and sitting in stationery cars turning the wheel and making a noise like an engine? Who came up with the idea that Iranian ayatollahs have been encouraging sex with animals and girls of only nine?

Some of this comes from freelance political agitators. It was an Iranian opposition group [the MeK - C], for example, which was behind the story that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was jailing people for texting each other jokes about him. And notoriously it was Iraqi exiles who supplied the global media with a dirty stream of disinformation about Saddam Hussein.

But clearly a great deal of this carries the fingerprints of officialdom. The Pentagon has now designated "information operations" as its fifth "core competency" alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own "psyop" element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department's campaign of "public diplomacy" which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

There's no actual law to prevent British intelligence producing such propaganda. And in the U.S., the Pentagon and CIA have made it clear that they follow the Bush administration's claim that Constitutional rights stop at the border. If the Pentagon produces black propaganda in Iraq or gives it to a UK newspaper, then that isn't illegal. If US media stenographers then pick up on those reports and import them wholesale and unexamined back to the U.S., then that's the media's lookout as far as they are concerned. But despite the Bush administration and its intelligence producers saying this clearly, the mainstream media continues to churn and repeat their overseas press releases as gospel.

Bin Laden, Mullah Omar Sheltering In Pakistan, Says US

By Cernig

Yesterday, a "senior US official" told a whole group of reporters - including journalists from the BBC, AP and Reuters by the looks of it - that both Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar were finding safe haven inside Pakistan. The BBC reports:

The US official, speaking on condition of anonymity in Washington, told reporters:

"There is no question that the iconic leaders of al-Qaeda - (Ayman al-)Zawahiri, Bin Laden... are in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

"We believe that the Taleban's shura (consultation) council leaders led by Mullah Omar reside in Quetta in Pakistan," he said.

The Pakistani government was quick to deny the allegations, saying that if the official was right "he would claim the bounty money, not speak to the media."

However, this isn't the first time that such allegations have been made. The BBC notes that:

Last month, captured Taleban spokesman Muhammad Hanif made similar claims about Mullah Omar's whereabouts, which were rejected by Pakistan.

Mr Hanif said Mullah Omar was protected by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai made similar allegations last year.

So, indeed, have the Indian intelligence services, NATO commanders in Afghanistan and British MI6. The latter were even reported to have provided the address of the ISI safe house where Mullah Omar was staying in Quetta...and his cell-phone number. The Pakistani government has also made a disturbing habit of releasing captured Taliban bigwigs and of doing peace-deals with Taliban commanders in the regions bordering Afghanistan.

Despite all this, the US official - an obviously publicly-known figure who has managed to speak to a gathering of reporters without any of them leaking who he was - also said that the US continues to back Musharraf. According to Reuters:

"There are multiple sources of pressure and instability on Musharraf and the sense here has been what he really needs is a dependable partner to see him through this period and that's been sort of the strategic logic of supporting Musharraf," the U.S. official said.

Musharraf over time has "given us evidence that he is worth that kind of commitment both in terms of the degree to which his forces have taken on al Qaeda in particular, and the extent to which we think he's doing quite well, given the hand he was dealt."

The Bush administration had also been very impressed with Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani and considered him a "promising partner," the official said.

Kayani was previously commander of the self-same ISI intelligence agency that has been accused of sheltering Mullah Omar and which was instrumental in setting up the Taliban back in the early '90's.

This may be astonishing naivete, it may be deliberate disregard for the objectives of the Bush administration's War on (Some) Terror - but it's far more likely to be a message to the Pakistani leadership that they must clean their ISI house or ultimately lose US support. The burning question if that is the case, however, will be "why did it take so long for the Bush administration to wake up and smell the coffee?"

Bolton Still Whining For NIE Do-Over

By Cernig

Via Memeorandum, I see that John Bolton is still whining because the last National Intelligence Estimate on Iran didn't produce the excuses for war he wanted. Today, the WSJ gives Bolton a platform to call for the wahmbulance - John wants a do-over. Nevermind that administration officials from Cheney on down have said they're just fine with the NIE. Bolton also wants the intelligence community purged of all those who won't toe the neocon party line. He says he wants the intelligence community to just shut up about policy: "Mr. McConnell should commit the intelligence community to stick to its knitting -- intelligence -- and return its policy enthusiasts to agencies where policy is made." But does anyone seriously think, in an administration that has made politicizing federal agencies into high art, that the neocon policymakers in the IC would be ousted along with those who might oppose them? Naaaah - not even Old Walrus-face beieves that crock of s**t - after all, politicizing intelligence is something he's had long experience at.

Faithfully, other neocons are jumping on Bolton's Bandwagon yet again. One has even spotted the obvious - that any reversal on the NIE now would mean McConnell's resignation or firing as DNI - and has a replacement in mind. If you guessed John Bolton then it wasn't exactly rocket science to figure out.

But I've a better idea. If the Bush administration, in lame-duck mode, really thinks it needs a new DNI then I suggest Zalmay Khalilzhad. He's a neocon of long standing. He knows the enemies of America well - in some cases he's had dinner with them and escorted them to parties. And he has the massive advantage of not being named John Bolton.

Update Via Think Progress comes news that DNI McConnell but back at Bolton for attempting to get the DNI fired.

Today during a Senate threat assessment hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell about Bolton’s assertions. McConnell replied:

MCCONNELL: Sir, I’ll start by saying that the integrity and the professionalism in this NIE is probably the highest in our history in terms of objectivity and quality of the analysis and challenging the assumptions and conducting red teams on the process, conducting a counter intelligence assessment about “were we being misled” and so on. So I would start by saying that the article you refer to is a gross misrepresentation of the professionalism of this community.

Stick that in your moustache, John.

Blaming The Messenger

By Cernig

The Center for Public Integrity and its offshoot the Fund for Independence in Journalism have released a searcheable database of 935 false statements made by the Bush administration to sell the invasion of Iraq. The Associated Press and New York Times have both picked up on the release with the latter writing:

Warnings about the need to confront Iraq, by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and two White House press secretaries, among others, can be combed line by line, and reviewed alongside detailed critiques published after the fact by official panels, historians, journalists and independent experts.

There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard M. Nixon used to dismissively call “wallowing in Watergate.”

Most rightwing commenters (c.f. Memeorandum today, second item set) have chosen to attack the messenger rather than the message, noting that the CPI is largely funded by George Soros. See, they cry in an overarching Liberal Derangement Syndrome that eclipses any BDS they've ever accused the Left of harboring, it's only an "organization funded by known political activists...a website with shopworn quotes taken mostly out of context and misrepresented". It's a "moonbat" group with "ties to BDS sugar daddy George Soros." It's just "Left-wing extremist propaganda". Nothing newsworthy here, move along.

But the CPI, despite being funded by Soros and others, is not just a leftwing talking shop as they would have you believe. It's previous studies have included, for example, investigations of lobbyist power, travel "perks" to lawmakers and of the funders behind the last presidential election race which were even-handedly critical of both Democrats and Republicans. Indeed they're reduced to linking to the wrong foundation (The Sunlight Foundation, not the CPI) in trying to prove that the CPI is "many George Soros fronts". Here's the actual list of CPI funders.

The other tack is to argue against the CPI's contention that the hundreds of false statements made by the Bush administration in the run-up to war with Iraq are actually lies. James Joyner makes the best of this line today, agreeing with:

the consensus view of all but the most rabid pro- or anti-Bush observers that the administration 1) thought Saddam was dangerous, 2) believed he had an active WMD program if not WMD possession, 3) feared Saddam would transfer said technology to terrorists and other enemies of the United States and 4) cherry picked information that bolstered their case for action while downplaying dissenting views and evidence.

That’s bad. It’s not the way democracies are supposed to work and undermines the public’s confidence in their leaders. But it’s light years away from simply lying to the people about WMD known not to exist, which is what the report alleges. [emphasis in original]

Such an argument, however, relies heavily on a parsing of what the word "lie" means. Any parent is familiar with their kids using "lying by omission" to get out of trouble. That's where you don't present facts you know but which would would shed culpatory light on your false statements. In that respect, it isn't the many false statements themselves which are a mark of guilt - it's the many instances of "we are sure", "Certain" and "know without a doubt" - the "slam dunk" qualifiers - that convict Bush and his administration of lies. In every case, as James admit, they had alternative interpretations, contrary intelligence or flst-out evidence that what they were saying was untrue and continued to press their narrative anyway. That's lying by omission.

Then there's the long litany of others outside the Bush administration who were likewise "sure" and "certain" of Iraqi WMDs or Saddam's alliance with Al Qaeda. They include the UK government - who rigged the Butler Report to exonerate themselves of complicity in what the leaked Downing Street memos clearly showed was lying by omission in order to "fix the facts around the policy". They include many former Clinton officials - like it matters because Clinton was a Dem, even though his administration was just as gung-ho to demonise Iraq (if not as gung-ho to invade) as any other set of hawkish US vote-seekers seeing an opportunity to bang the fearmongering drum. They include congresscritters and foreign intelligence agencies even though much of their opinion was based on briefings from the final product of all that narrative-making intelligence fixed around policy by the Bush administration. None of those exculpatory arguments really fly.

Unfortunately, syncretic group-think is the single biggest endemic problem in all intel operations. Because you're compartmentalised from the raw data the next guy has, you tend to believe what he tells you is the correct analysis of what he has seen. Then supervisors draw conclusions without seeing much of the raw data at all. It's all very susceptable to "emergent narratives". The only way out is to have a "red team" contrary analysis which is deliberately and forcibly given as much weight as the blue team one - which can't happen if the decision-makers are predisposed to take one narrative as gospel.

When, in as in the case of the Bush administration's push for war with Iraq (and, lately, the similiar push to demonize Iran) the guy in the next department is analyzing his data - as are you - oftimes in full career-threatening knowledge of what his bosses want to see, and any contrary data or analysis is played down and ignored...

...well, at that point it's perfectly possible to push the wished-for narrative as "slam dunk" proven. Which is what the narrators know all along is a lie.

FISA fight still on

By Libby

It appears earlier reports of the demise of telecom immunity were a bit optimistic. The latest news is that Reid will definitely bring this forward soon and it will be the version that contains the immunity amendment which will be more difficult to win against. Glenn Greenwald is not optimistic about our chances to prevail.

Indeed, as a general matter, betting on Democratic Congressional submission to Bush's demands is one of the surest bets there is. And with Reid and most of the Senate Democratic leadership specifically committed to delivering yet another victory for Bush and their telecom owners on the FISA bill, "uphill battle" is an understatement for describing the challenge which proponents of the rule of law face. As Froomkin put it on a separate, recent occasion in his column: "Historians looking back on the Bush presidency may well wonder if Congress actually existed."

Beyond that, immunity would be a complete evisceration of the rule of law, bizarrely protecting telecoms from the consequences of their lawbreaking and putting an end to any real hope for investigating and obtaining accountability for years of illegal spying on Americans by the Bush administration. When you put all of that together, telecom immunity embodies every form of lawlessness and corruption which are destroying our political culture -- everything that the Democratic presidential candidates endlessly claim in pretty speeches they are committed to fighting.

Proponents are already back to pushing the false meme that immunity is necessary to protect the ability of the administration to "spy on terrorists" and planting the frame that Democrats are enabling terrorism by blocking it. We're going to have to push back harder. Chris Dodd has his work cut out for him, and I hope everyone sent him a note of encouragement. He will pay a high price to stand up in this fight and he needs to know we have his back.

The ISI And The Militants

By Cernig

The NY Times today has a long report on how the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, began and directed most of the worlds major Islamist terrorist outfits as proxies of Pakistani foreign policy. But, get this, they say they don't do that post-9/11 and that the militants have escaped their previously tight control.

Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.

As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.

The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban in Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so.

...The threat from the militants, the former intelligence officials warned, is one that Pakistan is unable to contain. “We could not control them,” said one former senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We indoctrinated them and told them, ‘You will go to heaven.’ You cannot turn it around so suddenly.”

The article goes on to describe how Musharraf really is trying to fight the good fight, honestly. But he's being stymied by entrenched opponents within the ISI who want to retain some ability to use Islamist terror groups as proxies and he has little ability to change that.

Is anyone actually believing this BS? It appears so.

And yet a long litany of catch-and-release of major terrorist leaders, of terror groups still acting as direct arms of Pakistani policy in e.g. Mumbai, of public pardons not just once but multiple times for supposedly hostile Islamist leaders like the man accused of ordering Bhutto's assassination (possibly falsely), of obviously staged and quite laughably fallible assassination "attempts" on Musharraf himself, all point towards a very different interpretation.

That Musharraf, through hand-picked loyalists, has full control over the ISI and that protestations both that Pakistan is fully on board in the War on Some Terror and that the ISI is full of loose cannons are simply spin for gullible Westerners, designed to defuse foreign pressure on Pakistan in the wake of Bhutto's death and still keep the arms aid flowing.

CIA Knew About Israeli Nukes In '74

By Cernig

Via the Arms Control Wonk, comes a piece in Haaretz.

The Central Intelligence Agency, backed by bodies including the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Defense Intelligence Agency, determined in August 1974 that Israel had nuclear "weapons in being," a "small number" of which it "produced and stockpiled."

Israel was also suspected of providing nuclear materials, equipment or technology to Iran, South Africa and other then-friendly countries.

This top secret document, consigned to the CIA's vaults for almost 32 years, was suddenly released to the public this week, during U.S. President George W. Bush's visit to Israel and on the eve of his trip to the Persian Gulf.

...In both the original 1974 document and the 1975 State Department paper (in which it was retyped), the entire intelligence community determined, "Israel already has produced nuclear weapons." This analysis was based on "Israeli acquisition of large quantities of uranium," in part covertly; on Israel's ambiguous efforts to enrich uranium; and on the huge investment in the "Jericho" surface-to-surface missile "designed to accommodate nuclear warheads." Short of a grave threat to the nation's existence, Israel was not expected to confirm its suspected capability "by nuclear testing or by threats of use."

While Israel's nuclear weapons "cannot be proven beyond a shadow of doubt," several bodies of information point strongly toward a program stretching back over a number of years, the document states.

The 1974 document describes the Jericho project, from its inception in France through its migration to Israel to the replacement of the original inertial guidance system by an Israeli design "based on components produced in Israel under licenses from U.S. companies."

...The authors of the NIE wrote that the U.S. helped France expedite its nuclear program, France in turn helped Israel, and much like France and India, Israel, "while unlikely to foster proliferation as a matter of national policy, probably will prove susceptible to the hue of economic and political advantages to be gained from exporting materials, technology and equipment relevant to nuclear weapons programs."

Only a few months ago a portion of the document had been released under an FOI request "as an attachment to a 1975 State Department paper ostensibly disputing the the portrayal of Israel's nuclear weapons as a fact. This served the Department of State's effort to avoid addressing Israel's nuclear status in response to a query by Congressman Alan Steelman." Now the whole document has been released and Dr. Lewis at Arms Control Wonk has helpfully converted it to a PDF.

Haaretz speculates that the release of this information may be blowback for Israel's harsh words over the recent NIE on Iran, but it seems to me that it's just as likely to be pressure designed to bring Israel to the negotiating table with Arab states, who have been increasingly vocal of late about the pass afforded by the U.S. to the single actual nuclear power in the region when it comes to nonproliferation issues.

Bhutto Bomb Aimed At Gunman's Silence?

By Cernig

Larisa Alexandrovna has been talking to former U.S. spooks, who say that the real target of the suicide bomb at Bhutto's assassination may well have been the gunman.

Three former US intelligence officials have told Raw Story that not only is the gunman dead, he was likely the actual target of the suicide bomber.

According to a former high ranking US intelligence official, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the delicate nature of the information, the US intelligence community understands the gunman to have been killed in the blast following Mrs. Bhutto's assassination.

"He was killed, probably not knowing that the suicide bomber was there," said this source. "We don't know for sure if the two men arrived together. We do know that the assassin died in the explosion, and was probably meant to."

Several other US intelligence officials concur that the bomber was likely "inserted" to "clean up" evidence of the shooting, including eliminating the gunman.

When asked why it was important to determine the relationship between the gunman and the suicide bomber, one former CIA officer explained that such details are the key to understanding what happened, how it happened, and who was ultimately responsible. Such details also enable investigators to document patterns and methods used, in order to determine if a terrorist attack has indeed taken place or something else has occurred.

The official narrative that Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was responsible for Bhutto's death is fraught with difficulties - not least that he has denied it while calling for an independent international investigation or that no-one can independently verify the alleged transcript of his congratulating a minion by telephone for the assassination. Even if Mehsud was responsible, he's been pardoned by Musharraf three times already and Pakistani intelligence's links to the Taliban and other Islamist groups are fairly well documented. It takes a lot of determined looking the other way - as the Bush administration has done these past years - to ignore those ties. Musharraf isn't even looking for Bin Laden and his military is adamant that no foreign troops or intelligence agents will be allowed on Pakistani soil to conduct anti-terror operations or to help secure Pakistan's nukes.

The very muddled - perhaps deliberately so - narrative from the Pakistani authorities about how Bhutto died has also added to suspicions of a cover-up. That wasn't helped when Musharraf admitted that Bhutto may have been shot but said that it was her own fault for sticking her head up, not a failure to provide adequate security. British investigators are now looking for Bhutto's headscarf, in the hope that it may settle the question of how she died. There's a dearth of evidence because the crime scene was hosed down within hours and no autopsy was performed.

The Washington Post reports today that all of this is fuelling ethnic tension in Pakistan - where the Sindhi minority, from which Bhutto's family comes, are increasingly anoyed at the Punjabi majority who also make up most of the Army. It's a recipe for civil war in the maiking, but the West is in a very weak position right now with respect to Pakistan. Back to Larisa:

at this point, the US has “no workable solution” and cannot discontinue support for Musharraf, given the options.

“We are being held hostage to Musharraf's whim,” said one former intelligence official.

“What options do we have now? None. Under Musharraf, al Qaeda has grown. The tribal sheiks have also grown. It is a mess and there is not a damn thing we can do about it.”

Can Bush at least stop selling the General-in-plainclothes advanced weaponry (e.g. nuke-capable fighters, anti-tank missiles, airborne early warning platforms) more useful against his neighbours than extremists, even if it does help line US arms manufacturers pockets with US taxpayers' money?