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James Risen on "State of War," NSA, domestic spying, intelligence failures, use of domestic surveillance data, "Merlin," and CIA/military "harsh interrogation"

Excerpt from an interview with James Risen, New York Times reporter who, with colleague Eric Lichtblau, first wrote about the extra-legal NSA domestic surveillance program:

Q:  You suggest in your book that you think members of the Bush administration intentionally did not tell the President about interrogation techniques so the President would have deniability. 

Risen:  Yes.  What I was told was that the CIA Inspector General's staff was told that the President was not formally briefed on the details of the interrogation techniques and that Vice President Cheney and Condoleezza Rice and a few other senior aides were briefed but there was a sense that you didn't want to go into the Oval Office and go into graphic detail about the specific techniques. I think there are people at the CIA who later regretted that they didn't look the President in the eye and go over these in detail.

Q:  Why do you think they regretted it?

Risen:  Well, because now it's a big controversy over the use of harsh interrogation techniques and the torture debate and the debate over secret prisons.  Although they did get the... The Administration approved these techniques.  The question really is not over their approval, it's more a matter of did the President want some kind of deniability so he could go out and say, I never authorized torture.  And I think one of the issues for the CIA -- the CIA was the only agency that actually got such high level approval for the actions it was taking.  But the techniques that were used there were somehow... one of the things that I've been interested in understanding is how it began to use harsh interrogation techniques first against Al Qaeda captives in CIA custody, and then six months or a year later we end up having a scandal in a military-run facility in Iraq where there's questions about interrogation techniques.  The question that's never adequately been answered is, did something migrate away from CIA to the military -- or how did that all happen, where suddenly for the first time in modern history the US military is being accused of such broad mistreatment of prisoners. 

Q:  I want to ask you about another program that you write about in your book, State of War.  And this relates to something in the news right now which is that Iran is continuing with its nuclear program in spite of protests from the international community.  You wrote about a program called "Merlin."  What was this program?

Risen: Back in 2000 -- six years ago -- the CIA arranged for a Russian defector to give nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They were supposedly flawed blueprints. The idea behind the operation was to try to get the Iranians to build a nuclear weapon based on these flawed blueprints and it would be a dud.  But the operation was considered not to have been handled well, and it's not clear whether actually the blue prints aided the Iranians rather than set them back.  So there have been questions raised about how effective and how well-managed this was. 

Q:  Because this is supposed to be blueprints with flaws to mislead them, but some of the information in them was real information.  Tell the story about how the mistake was probably corrected [laughter] by mistake!

Risen:  What I was told was that the Russian defector could tell immediately that there were flaws in the blue prints and that he was not supposed to know that these were flawed...

Q:  This is the Russian defector who was supposed to be leaving these plans for the Iranians to see...

Risen:  ...Right.  And so the question raised was, if he could see it and he even sent the Iranians a letter saying you'll see -- I forget the exact wording of the letter -- you'll see there are problems and you'll need to get more help, or something like that.  So the question is, were the Iranians able to parse these designs and find the good stuff and get rid of the bad stuff.  They have plenty of Russian and Chinese nuclear scientists who consult with them and who could have helped them with this.  And even more important, AQ Khan and his network gave the Iranians nuclear blue prints on their own some time ago.  This operation was probably irrelevant to the larger debate, but it showed -- what I thought it showed was -- it raised real questions about the CIA's handling of WMD intelligence and whether or not they really know what they're doing.  Especially after Iraq, after we've seen how wrong they were about everything about Iraq's weapons programs.

Full interview with Risen here.

Truth and reconciliation

In a fascinating interview just now, Desmond Tutu says he believes America should set up a truth and reconciliation commission. 

He sees it acting in matters of racial injustice; I think such a commission should extend to one of the main causes of social injustice: the quality of leadership we have, its illegalities, our elections, the influence of money on policy, and the diminishing engagement in democratic process.

Can Democrats stop being icky?

Digby has some very funny comments on this Sunday morning's awful meet-the-press discussion shows:

What I learned on Press the Meat this morning: The Republicans' numbers are in the dirt but they are going to win decisively on the optimistic issues of endless war and endless debt. The Democrats' numbers are substantially better but they will never win anything because they are icky.

Which is a tremendous hurdle. Perception is everything.  You know from middle school that once you're icky, you're doomed.

Worse, there are growing numbers of Dems out here who think Dems are icky. They (we) are not suffering from Stockholm syndrome.  Dem "Leadership Council," Dem performance in Congress, Dem presidential campaigns, Dem advisors -- have been, during the past eight years and with few exceptions, pretty icky.

74 Moby Thesaurus words for "icky": bad, barfy, brackish, bum, cheesy, cloying, crappy, creepy, crummy, dirty, disgusting, fecal, feculent, fetid, filthy, flyblown, foul, fulsome, gloppy, godawful, goshawful, grim, gunky, hairy, high, horrible, loathsome, maggoty, malodorous, mawkish, mephitic, mucky, nasty, nauseant, nauseating, nauseous, noisome, noxious, odious, offensive, ordurous, overripe, poisonous, puky, punk, putrid, rancid, rank, rebarbative, repellent, repulsive, revolting, rotten, scabby, scummy, scurfy, shitty, sickening, slabby, slimy, sloppy, sloshy, sludgy, slushy, spoiled, sposhy, stinking, stinky, vile, vomity, weevily, wormy, yecchy, yucky

Shouldn't we come up with a short, Anglo-Saxon word which describes Republicans as well as "icky" describes Democrats?

For more fun, try this.

Skullduggery at Justice

Raw Story links to a story in the upcoming Newsweek about the processes within the Department of Justice which led to resignations and stepping-downs over NSA eavesdropping (and other excesses of the Bush administration, particularly the office of the Vice President). 

Here the article describes James Comey's departure from Justice -- he subbed for Ashcroft during the time that Ashcroft was ill and the White House was trying to get approval for warrantless domestic surveillance:

James Comey, a lanky, 6-foot-8 former prosecutor who looks a little like Jimmy Stewart, resigned as deputy attorney general in the summer of 2005. The press and public hardly noticed. Comey's farewell speech, delivered in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, contained all the predictable, if heartfelt, appreciations. But mixed in among the platitudes was an unusual passage. Comey thanked "people who came to my office, or my home, or called my cell phone late at night, to quietly tell me when I was about to make a mistake; they were the people committed to getting it right—and to doing the right thing—whatever the price. These people," said Comey, "know who they are. Some of them did pay a price for their commitment to right, but they wouldn't have it any other way."

As the article goes on to describe who "these people" were, and how they stood up to the White House, it's hard to imagine that they won't, at some point, speak out. 

These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey, had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror. Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, Goldsmith and the others fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. They did so at their peril; ostracized, some were denied promotions, while others left for more comfortable climes in private law firms and academia. Some went so far as to line up private lawyers in 2004, anticipating that the president's eavesdropping program would draw scrutiny from Congress, if not prosecutors. These government attorneys did not always succeed, but their efforts went a long way toward vindicating the principle of a nation of laws and not men. The rebels were not whistle-blowers in the traditional sense. They did not want—indeed avoided—publicity. (Goldsmith confirmed public facts about himself but otherwise declined to comment. Comey also declined to comment.) They were not downtrodden career civil servants. Rather, they were conservative political appointees who had been friends and close colleagues of some of the true believers they were fighting against. They did not see the struggle in terms of black and white but in shades of gray—as painfully close calls with unavoidable pitfalls. They worried deeply about whether their principles might put Americans at home and abroad at risk. Their story has been obscured behind legalisms and the veil of secrecy over the White House. But it is a quietly dramatic profile in courage.

The ability to work with reality, understand "shades of grey" and act with moral courage are not welcome in the Bush administration.

Judy Miller stays mad

Seems as though former New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, is looking to take offense where she can find it.  She battles Michael Massing  -- and disses her former editor, Bill Keller -- in the latest edition of the New York Review of Books.

Editor & Publisher has a good summary:

She disputes the complaint by Keller, the Times' executive editor, that he had not received a “thorough debriefing” about her part in the Plame/CIA leak case, noting several meetings on the matter. “If Keller was not ‘thoroughly’ briefed at these meetings, the fault is his, not mine,” she observes.

It appears that one of Miller's most pressing problems is that she just can't get over herself. Michael Massing puts it like this:

Judith Miller's letter leaves the impression that my entire article was devoted to her. In fact, she was the subject of a single paragraph; her own letter is twice as long…

And confirms the impression many have that Miller's judgment got left at home sometime in the early days of the Bush administration:

Ken Auletta, in an article in the December 19, 2005, issue of The New Yorker , cites Miller's own lawyer, Robert Bennett, as saying that he was ‘astonished’ that Keller and Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. had not inspected Miller's notebook from her interview with Lewis Libby before deciding to resist the Patrick Fitzgerald subpoena. ‘How could the Times have embarked on this venture without knowing all the facts?’ Bennett is quoted as saying. If Miller has a complaint on this point, it's with Keller, not me.

Auletta also asked Keller about his claim that Miller kept drifting back on her own into the national security realm. Keller described an extraordinary call he received from Miller in 2004 in which she said she was in the house of Iraqi exile Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, who had been a source for one of Miller's ‘discredited WMD stories,’ as Keller put it. The man was about to be deported and Miller wanted to write about it. Astonished, Keller told her to leave the man's house. This, he told Auletta, was a case of someone ‘who was way too invested in her sources.’

Miller's oft-repeated defense that she was wrong on WMD ‘because my sources were wrong’ ignores the fact that it's a key part of a journalist's job to assess the credibility of those sources.

As a matter of fact, Massing tells us:

In a new book titled Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11 —a collection of interviews with journalists by Kristina Borjesson—Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder, who wrote a number of stories questioning the administration's claims on WMD, note that they found many government sources who were skeptical about those claims. "There were some very senior people who had serious problems with the case that was being made," Landay observed. "Serious problems. That was the story." John Walcott, their editor, noted that "you didn't have to go very far to find people who had doubts." Miller seems never to have sought out such people.

Ralph Reed in trouble

From a report on NPR's All Things Considered 1/28/06.

Introduction:   One of Washington's parlor games these days is trying to guess who, on Capitol Hill or the Bush administration, might be caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal.  Abramoff is the Republican lobbyist who pleaded guilty to corruption charges earlier this month.  But the scandal reaches far beyond Washington.  Among others, it's dogging Ralph Reed, once the youthful leader of the Christian Coalition, now running for Lt. Governor of Georgia.  NPR's Peter Overby reports:

Peter Overby:  Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff go back a long way together.  In the early 1980's, they ran the national College Republicans organization.  Abramoff met his future wife through Ralph Reed.  Reed's problem with Abramoff began in 1998.  He just didn't know it at the time.  He'd left the Christian Coalition to be a political consultant and he sent Abramoff an email:  "Hey!  Now that I'm done with the electoral politics I need to start humping in corporate accounts.  I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts."  Within a few months, Abramoff had hired Reed to help kill off proposals for state-sponsored gambling in Alabama.  Their client was the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians who didn't want competition for their own casinos.  Similar projects followed.

[Sounds of crowd shouting... chanting "Ralph Reed, Ralph Reed"]

Overby: Now Reed wants the Republican nomination to be Lt. Governor of Georgia. Last weekend the Christian Coalition of Georgia held a candidates' debate.  It could have been like a homecoming for Reed.  But the crowd seemed about evenly divided between him and his chief rival, a veteran state senator named Casey Cagle.  The debate moderator was conservative talk-show host, Martha Zoller.

Zoller:  The first question. As Christians we're held to a higher standard.  People are always looking for us to fall. Is there anything you've done in your political life that you wish you hadn't done or that you'd do differently today?

Overby:  Reed was ready...

Reed:  I thought I might get that question! [laughter] Look:  I have been a longtime opponent of casino gambling expansion. 

Overby:  He went on to say that he'd been asked by a long-time friend -- that would be Abramoff -- to help stop the expansion of casinos...

Reed: ... with the understanding that I would not be paid by any revenues that derive from gambling.  I relied on those assurances.  If I knew then what I know now, I obviously wouldn't have done that work.

Overby:  Whether that really was the understanding isn't clear.  For example, emails from Abramoff's law firm's computer showed that Reed knew the Choctaw Tribe was putting up the money, although the Choctaw had other sources of income besides gambling.  In any case, Reed has another strategy too.  He played the "liberal media card." 

Reed:  Lemme tell you what I don't appreciate and what I think the voters of Georgia are going to reject, and that is an unfair attempt by the liberal media and others to engage in guilt by association and to associate me with the misdeeds of others.  It's wrong and it will be rejected at the ballot box.  [crowd cheers]

Overby:  Candidate Cagle never directly attacked Reed.  After the debate, he used the old-fashioned tactic of viewing the scandal "in sadness and not in anger."

Cagle:   Obviously, my opponent has to answer those questions and I will leave that to him to do.  There are clear indications through email and other sources that would cause someone to  doubt.

Overby:  And doubts there are.  Michelle Hanlon of Atlanta was at the debate.  She said she wasn't wild about Cagle...

Hanlon:  And I'm not impressed with Reed either because I know from everything I've read he's strongly in cahoots with the Abramoff scandal.  And I kind of like him, but I think he's a hypocrite.  So I don't know what I'm going to do!

Overby:  This leaves Georgia Republicans with a problem.  Governor Sonny Perdue looks strong in his own reelection bid.  But a recent poll suggests that Reed as a running mate would be a drag on the entire Republican slate.

Perdue:  I still think there's a chance that he will be prevailed upon to drop out. 

Overby:  Matt Towery is a former Republican strategist and candidate.  Now he publishes political newsletters in Atlanta.

Towery:  There is sort of a sotto voce belief that the White House will come to the rescue and say, Ralph, you need to take a pass on this.  I don't think that will happen.

Overby:  Reed isn't giving interviews to out-of-state media.  Meanwhile, he's lost his early fundraising momentum.  Last week, nine members of Reed's statewide steering committee switched to Casey Cagle.