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12/30/05:NPR: Daniel Benjamin: Links Between the Iraq War and 'The Next Attack'

Interviewer:  Robert Siegel

Robert Siegel:  A disquieting answer to the question, Are we winning the war against terrorism?  Daniel Benjamin used to work on the National Security Council staff during the Clinton administration.  He and Steven Simon have written their second book about counter-terrorism post-9/11.  It's called "The Next Attack" and Daniel Benjamin's answer to the question, Are we winning against the terrorists is an emphatic "no"!

Daniel Benjamin:  We know we're not winning the war by looking at a variety of factors that suggest, in fact, that there is a gathering storm out there of jihadist antipathy and, in fact, violence.  For example, we see a growing number of groups that have essentially picked up the Al Qaeda ideology without being connected directly, either organizationally or even by communications often with Al Qaeda.  We see these in Europe.  The Madrid cell is a classic case -- that's the one that blew up the trains in 2004.  The London cell which carried out the bombings in the subways.  We've seen it even in Pakistan where there is an established jihadist infrastructure.  There are other indicators as well.  We see that there is a large group of people who are increasingly attracted to the jihadist internet.  We also see the spread of Islamist violence in an area where there wasn't much and that is, incidentally, the Middle East!  We have seen a jihadist revival in Syria, a country that didn't have it for 20 years or so, didn't have Islamist activity because it had been crushed in the early '80's apparently.  We've seen the spread of bomb technology from Iraq to Saudi Arabia.  And perhaps most importantly we see a jihad underway in Iraq and the establishment of a jihadist sanctuary in western Iraq. 

RS:  What you're describing is not merely the growth of the Al Qaeda-directed organization chaired by Osama bin Laden, deputy Ayman al-Zwahiri, you're talking about groups which are simply cropping up without connection.

DB:  Yes.  They're inspired by the ideas that bin Laden and al-Zwahiri espoused and they view them as being global leaders but they have no direct connection to them.  So they're acting on their own.  They're acting because now you can self-enlist as a terrorist using all the information available to you over the internet.

RS:  But of all the places that you list where you see a jihadist or jihadism on the rise, you didn't mention New York, you didn't mention the Pentagon, or Los Angeles or Chicago.  So, in that sense, there hasn't been been a repeat of the sort of attack we witnessed on 9/11.

DB:  No.  That's definitely a success story.  But we shouldn't make the same mistake we made in the late '90's of ignoring what's going on overseas.  We have been fortunate not to be hit again.  We think there are a number of reasons.  One is that we are a more vigilant country because of what happened on 9/11.  I think it is also harder to get in here.  American Muslims have, to a certain extent, rejected the jihad idea.  But it's also true that the global jihad is getting what it needs in Iraq. 

RS:  As far as you're concerned, you and your co-author, Steven Simon, you believe that the war in Iraq was a distraction in the war against terrorism.

DB:  At a minimum it was a distraction!  In many ways it was a big step backwards because it gave the jihadists an enormous presence.  It confirmed their narrative to much of the Muslim world.  That is, bin Laden and his followers say, The US is our eternal enemy that wants to occupy our countries, destroy our faith, and steal our wealth.  And because we went into Iraq, we allowed them to point at Iraq and say, You see?  We were right!   That has made real inroads in the Muslim world.

RS:  You write about the enclave in the north of Iraq where, prior to the US invasion, a terrorist group had set up.  And the debate went on, what does it do about Anser al-Islam operating from this little nook of what we think of as the Kurdish north of Iraq. 

DB:  Yes.  There was a camp in a place called Kermal and the camp belonged to a Kurdish jihadist group but the person who had affiliated with them was none other than Abu Musab al-Zarkawi who has gone on to be the face of the insurgency in Iraq.  We had very good intelligence about what was going on there.  We know that they were, for example, making ricin, the biological agent which has been used in a number of conspiracies. 

RS:  And this was happening on Iraqi soil, but with a big proviso.

DB:  Well, it was Iraqi soil in a technical sense, but it was the autonomous Kurdish enclave under our protection from the air.  As a result the Pentagon, the uniformed military, was eager to strike at this enclave and thought that was the war on terror was about.  And twice the proposal was put forward to strike it, and twice the Administration declined.

RS:  When was this happening?  What years are we talking about?

DB:  Well, it happened I believe in 2002 and again, I believe, in 2003.  The first time, 2002, was the critical moment because it hadn't leaked to the press yet that we were watching this.  But the curious thing was not that first the Administration declined to take out this camp and second of all that we were just watching Zarkawi completely misunderstanding what he was doing there.  It was clear that he was preparing the insurgency but because the Administration was so focused on what it considered the greater threat of Saddam, we just gave them a pass. 

RS:  A tremendous amount has happened since 9/11.  Two foreign wars, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, reorganization of intelligence.  Your account of all this is not terribly encouraging about how much less vulnerable we might be after all this has happened.  Some glimmer of improvement here? something you can say about something that's been gotten right since 2001?

DB:  Well, our biggest advantage is, of course, that we're now a nation aware of the threat.  One of the concerns that we voice is that the lights are kind of going out on this.  Polling indicates that people are less concerned about terror than before.  But there certainly has been institutionalized a big concern.  I think we've lost an enormous amount of time organizing and reorganizing ad infinitum and the recent press accounts of the turmoil at the Department of Homeland Security I think are very much to the point.  I think that there is at least now the basis for building on that concern and a recognition of the threat.  But we are so far down the wrong road in terms of dealing with this threat that it will take some mighty efforts to get ourselves going on the right road.

And you thought we might achieve fair elections?

Here's some news, caught by Mahablog, which virtually removes hope for a fair election process.

The rapture is coming!

One of my favorite Christmas presents has been a pound of the best coffee beans I've ever had.  Man, that's good coffee!  It's mellow, sharp, acidic, smooth, deep, tickly, fresh, and sexy!  All the best tied together.

Which is how I read the Washington Post's newest news about yet another huge and dubious contribution to Tom DeLay.  Now here's  a story which brings together all the elements of Republican corruption:  fundamentalists, big oil, the 'murrican family, foreign donors, and -- yes, there he is -- Jack Abramoff who's about ready to plead. 

Maybe we're seeing a kind of rapture -- a rapture for the left, anyway -- in which the devil arises out of the ground like a black fog (see "Ghost") and seizes hypocritical religionists, oily corporate execs, supporters of the patriarchal family, dirty money men, and (pray, infidel, pray!) the entire Republican corruption machine. 

The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.

During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money's origins.

Two former associates of Edwin A. Buckham, the congressman's former chief of staff and the organizer of the U.S. Family Network, said Buckham told them the funds came from Russian oil and gas executives. Abramoff had been working closely with two such Russian energy executives on their Washington agenda, and the lobbyist and Buckham had helped organize a 1997 Moscow visit by DeLay (R-Tex.).

The former president of the U.S. Family Network said Buckham told him that Russians contributed $1 million to the group in 1998 specifically to influence DeLay's vote on legislation the International Monetary Fund needed to finance a bailout of the collapsing Russian economy.

A spokesman for DeLay, who is fighting in a Texas state court unrelated charges of illegal fundraising, denied that the contributions influenced the former House majority leader's political activities. The Russian energy executives who worked with Abramoff denied yesterday knowing anything about the million-dollar London transaction described in tax documents.

Whatever the real motive for the contribution of $1 million -- a sum not prohibited by law but extraordinary for a small, nonprofit group -- the steady stream of corporate payments detailed on the donor list makes it clear that Abramoff's long-standing alliance with DeLay was sealed by a much more extensive web of financial ties than previously known...

12/30/05: NPR: "Justice Department Confirms Hunt for Spy-Story Source"

Interviewer:   Robert Siegel

Robert Siegel:  The Justice Department has opened an investigation into a leak of information about domestic surveillance by the NSA.  Two weeks ago, a story in the New York Times [available here through Times Select]  revealed that the NSA has been spying on American citizens within the US without warrants for four years.  Now the Justice Department is not conducting an investigation into that spying, but rather it's looking into who might have leaked that story to the Times.  NPR's David Folkenflik is with us right now and, first off David, has there been any question about the accuracy of that Times story?

David Folkenflik:  None whatsoever.  Obviously the President, the Administration, is quite heated about the fact that it got into print, but there's been no challenge of the facts and some legal scholars and some former government officials say it's pretty clear that a 1978 law against domestic wire-tapping without warrants has been broken.

RS:  So the question the Justice Department is looking into is all about how that information was made public?

DF:  That's right.  This is a pretty classic clash between values -- the values of protecting national security and asserting government authority to do what is necessary and the question of the public's right to know -- the media watchdog role being fulfilled.

RS:  How do we know, if in fact, that national security has been endangered?

DF:  Well, we don't.  President Bush has asserted that it has but he hasn't publicly made that case.  In fact, he did do so privately to the publisher and the executive editor of the Times and they held the story for over a year and pursued additional reporting.  They held some information, but they decided to publish. 

RS:  So, if Justice is investigating who leaked this information to the Times, are they investigating people in the Administration, in Congress?  Or are they investigating the Times?

DF:  Well, it appears that they are most likely to be investigating the act of the leakers -- that is, current and former federal officials leaking classified information.  But one clear way to do that, as we know, is to do that through reporters who know who they spoke to.

RS:  Of course what's compelling here is that the Times just went through quite a dramatic event with the jailing of the reporter, Judith Miller, when she wouldn't reveal her sources.  Obviously they probably can't be eager for another confrontation of that sort.

DF:  I don't think they want it at all.  A spokeswoman for the Times said the newspaper wouldn't be commenting on this at this time, but nonetheless, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in that CIA leak case was able to get everything he wanted from every reporter involved.  It's not clear that there's much wiggle room here for the press.

RS:  Let me ask you this.  In the story disclosing the name of Valerie Plame Wilson, there was always a very small universe, it seemed, of potential leakers.  In the Times story about NSA surveillance of Americans, there was broad attribution to many people. 

DF:  I thought it was very interesting.  They referred to nearly a dozen government officials which would take in a number of branches of government.  Could be judges who learned of it and were upset.  Could be people on the Hill, people in the Administration.  They did say it was a very small circle of people who knew, just a handful of Congressional figures, a very few Cabinet officials, a few senior people at NSA, CIA and Justice.  So I imagine that would be the universe of candidates. 

RS:  What does it mean that Justice is looking into this?  We don't have a special prosecutor named, a special counsel or anything of that sort.  Are they interviewing people?  Do we know what they're doing yet?

DF:  We don't know what's going on.  Presumably people will be subpoenaed if you take past investigations as a guide.  People will check call logs and emails -- what phone conversations occurred -- and see if they can construct a case that James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, the two reporters who wrote the Times story, had contacts with these government officials.  But it's not yet known.

RS:  Is there any talk about an investigation?  Not just into the leak, but into the program of surveillance?

DF:  Well, Senator Arlen Specter -- he's a Republican from Pennsylvania and Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- said he does want to have oversight hearings on that very issue.  It hasn't been scheduled yet.  He's not exactly getting the vocal support of Republican leaders on the Hill.  And the Administration itself has shown absolutely no eagerness to investigate unless they say any more information that gets into the public will imperil the ability to protect the public.

12/30/05: NPR: "Deciphering the NSA's New Wiretapping Motivations": Timothy Naftali

Interviewer:  Steve Inskeep

Steve Inskeep:  When President Bush said he authorized eavesdropping without warrants in the US, he raised as many questions as he answered.  The President was responding to a report in the New York Times which has since said the program was even more widespread than the President acknowledged. What is not clear is exactly why the NSA is conducting the surveillance without warrant.  Ever since the 1970's, a secret federal court has been empowered to review evidence and permit surveillance within the law.  One person who's looking at the clues is Timothy Naftali who has written about intelligence matters.  To understand what the NSA is doing, he tries to understand the problem that the government would be trying to solve.

[NB:  There have been reports as late as today that NSA, in spite of protests to the contrary, continues to put "cookies" on the hard drive of visitors to their site.  The link above is not to NSA's site, but to an informational site about NSA with a link to the agency's site for those who'd like to see it.]

Timothy Naftali:  If you accept, as I do, that there is the possibility of Al Qaeda or its affiliates having cells in this country, how do you monitor these people if they're changing their cellphones and if they're moving from computer to computer?  How do you do that?

SI:  The Patriot Act appeared to address that very problem.  It made it possible to give a warrant that will follow an individual from one telephone to another..

TN:  What if you don't know the individual, Steve?  What if you're looking for patterns of behavior?  What if you don't know the individual's name?

SI:  What if you don't know the number?  How do you follow one person around when they're going into WalMart and buying a cellphone?

TN:  You don't follow one person around.  What you do is you listen to conversations.

SI:  You mean you listen to a million random conversations? in order to hear this guy?

TN:  The White House is saying that it is very careful not to listen to point-to-point conversations in the US -- from one point in the US to another.  But there is a way through data-mining to analyze where calls originate and where they go.   This is basically an attempt to look for patterns, use of words, length of telephone call, length of email. frequency of these communications, both voice and data, and then to look for suspicious patterns.  How do you define suspicious? I don't know.  But the now deputy director of National Intelligence, Michael Hayden, has talked about their being a subtle, soft trigger.  The computer learns what's suspicious and then it will act on its own.  So what we're talking about is a higher order, a smarter Google, if you will.

SI:  It matters a lot where the phone call is made to and from, right? whether it's inside the US or outside the US?  How do you judge that question when it's an email that might bounce around the world, end up in a server in London on its way to San Francisco?

TN:  That question is the reason why I'm convinced that the NSA is only looking at data transmissions that leave the country.

SI:  Because you're saying the NSA can't necessarily know whether the email that's cranking through this system that we presume it has originated outside the US or going outside the US.

TN:  It doesn't take great technological sophistication to bounce emails around, to hide where you're sending them and where they're coming from. 

SI:  I'm looking now at this letter from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the senior Democrat in the Senate Intelligence Committee.  He wrote a letter in 2003, a handwritten letter essentially recording what he'd been told about the program.  And in the process of this, he says, I was told about this program and then got more concerned (I'm paraphrasing) it reminded me, he says in effect, of John Poindexter's TIA project.  What is that?

TN:  This was a data-mining project that was designed to develop an understanding about suspicious activity. 

SI:  Poindexter is a former White House official who formerly

TN:  A former National Security advisor.

SI:  We can assume that whatever the NSA was doing  was similar.  At least it was similar in the mind of Jay Rockefeller who was briefed on the NSA program.

TN:  Of course.  In preparing the new President Bush, the NSA produced a transition document where the NSA is teeing up this question for the new administration.  It's not talking about data-mining.  It's talking about the inability of the current legislative framework to deal with the kinds of data-gathering that the NSA is doing to have to do now and in the near future.

SI:   Does the fact that the Administration went outside the system provide further clues as to what they may have been doing?

TN:  Certainly!  When this first leaked, it looked as if the Administration had a certain number of problem cases, a few hundred, that didn't fit in the FISA system.  But as we learn more, it became apparent that you have a program that as generated hits, some of which are US persons. 

SI:  And you're supposed to get a warrant...

TN:  You're supposed to get a warrant.  How do you sustain those investigations under the law?  when the law is designed to deal with identified suspects?  That's the challenge.

SI:  This has been a mystery to some people.  How can we be talking about current law being outdated when the FISA, by all available evidence, has nearly always granted warrants when asked.  Doesn't seem like that high a bar.

TN:  It's not a high bar at all if you know the name of the individual.  But -- again -- what if you're looking for suspicious data transmissions?

SI:  If you're just looking for these patterns you can't even ask for a warrant?

TN:  I don't think so.  I don't think the law is designed for that.

SI:  Mr. Naftali, thanks very much...  Timothy Naftali is author of "Blind Spot:  A Secret History of American Counterterrorism."

Available online through NPR:

The Rockefeller Letter (pdf)
Read a copy of a 2003 letter from Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., expressing his concern over a briefing about government surveilance activities.

NSA Transition Document (pdf)
This document is located at George Washington University's National Security Archive.

It's all about me! Bob! Bob Novak!

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak says he "probably" regrets disclosing the name of a CIA operative in a 2003 column that sparked a federal investigation.

In an interview with CNN Friday, Novak insisted he would not discuss the leak of Valerie Plame's identity, but he conceded he regretted disclosing her name in a column about her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson's, criticism of the Bush Administration's rationale for the war in Iraq.

"I probably do because it's caused me so much trouble," said Novak.... UPI...