Brennan and Gates: a Big Win, a Continued Loss

Sunday before last, Glenn Greenwald provided substantial pushback on the possibility of one-time George Tenet deputy John Brennan heading the CIA for the Obama Administration. Ten days later, Brennan withdrew his name from consideration, specifically citing a “firestorm” in the “liberal blogs” for blocking his ascent. Well, here’s what I think of that:

It's not so much a victory for the blogosphere as it is a victory for transparency, openness, and the media—be it establishment or new—paying attention to the things that matter to America.

The Obama transition team might be vetting the heck out of prospective administration hires to make sure that they haven't done anything embarrassing on a personal or financial level, but it is up to blogs and other media professionals to vet our next government for things that embarrass us as a nation. That means torture, that means rendition, that means completely mishandling and exploiting the threat of terrorism.

Only with a full airing and open discussion of the viewpoints of potential Obama teammates can we really get the change we voted for, the change we deserve.

. . .

Only hours later, word got out that President Elect Obama would retain the services of Bush Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at least for the foreseeable future.

On Tuesday evening, Jane Hamsher appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to raise doubts about the pick because it hinted at a continuation (an escalation?) of failed tactics in the Afghan theater—which it most certainly does.

However, that is only one part of the problem with this non-pick pick.

Gates, of course, was already covered with the stink of Iran Contra when he was nominated to head the CIA by President Reagan in 1987. So covered, in fact, he had to withdraw from consideration. Four years later, after a report from the panel investigating Iran Contra found that Gates had lied to investigators about what he knew and when he knew it, but that his lies did not rise to the level that warranted prosecution, Daddy Bush re-nominated Gates for DCI. It was a long, contentious confirmation hearing, but Gates lied his way through it—again contradicting the findings in the Iran Contra report.

All of that is to say that Robert Gates is no straight shooter. He is a self-serving liar who has always put his own image and career ahead of duty, honor, and country. There is no reason for a President Obama to expect anything different from the DoD version of Gates just because he is in a different job, or because he is reportedly building his dream house for a much anticipated retirement.

Further, Gates does not really represent “competence.” As Glenn Greenwald recently observed, you can't really separate competence and ideology:

[I]sn't competence determined, at least in part, by ideology? For instance, isn't someone's support for the Iraq War -- the most consequential political issue of the last decade, at least -- a negative reflection on that person's judgment, competence and expertise, just as someone's opposition to that war is a positive reflection on those attributes? How can selecting only pro-war Cabinet members and advisers be justified on the grounds of "competence" -- as though one's support for the War has nothing to do with competence?

If you want to competently re-focus US foreign policy away from the interventionist model, you have to appoint people at the very top who buy into your new approach. Just because Gates has appeared relatively rational when compared with his predecessor, Don Rumsfeld, does not mean that he represents a shift in strategic thinking. If he did, we would have seen a drawdown of our presence in Iraq, and far less reliance on reckless, immoral, and counterproductive aerial bombing in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Leave it to the careerists to provide the continuity—the folks at the top need a vision. We want something more than technocrats; the moment calls for something more than technocrats.

Additionally, since the Truman Administration, we've only had three Secretaries of Defense that were Democrats. Democratic Presidents need to promote the idea that there is a liberal point of view on military engagement. If we keep promoting Republicans to this post, we are going to keep getting advice shaped by their worldview.

The left—or even the center-left—should do a better job of promoting their military minds. Perhaps this community needs to produce more leading voices, but there are certainly enough liberal thinkers in this field to provide more than enough potential staff for top jobs at the Pentagon.


(cross-posted on firedoglake)

Before you think too kindly of House Republicans...

Let me start with an extended quote from Glenn Greenwald:

Retired New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston, writing at The New Republic yesterday, makes a critical point, in a piece entitled "Celebrating the Bailout Bill's Failure":

Whether you favor the $700 billion bailout or not, the House vote today should make you cheer -- loudly.

Why?

Because the majority vote against it shows that Washington is not entirely in the service of the political donor class, by which I mean Wall Street and the corporations who rely on it for their financing. These campaign donors, a narrow slice of America, have lobbied and donated their way into a system that stacks the economic rules in their favor. But faced with as many as 200 telephone calls against the bailout for every one in favor, a lot of House members decided to listen to their constituents today instead of their campaign donors.

Johnston's celebration that "Washington is not entirely in the service of the political donor class" is probably premature given that Congressional leaders are falling all over themselves to assure everyone that this deal will pass in a few days after it is tinkered with in one direction or the other. . . . The corporate donor class and political establishment may lose a battle here and there, but they almost never lose the war, since they own and control the political battlefield.

Still, Johnston's overarching point is absolutely right. For better or worse, yesterday's vote was the rarest event in our political culture: ordinary Americans from all across the political spectrum actually exerting influence over how our Government functions, and trumping the concerted, unified efforts of the entire ruling class to ensure that their desires, as usual, would be ignored.

I like both Greenwald and David Cay Johnston a lot—I have especially appreciated Johnston’s writing on this latest manufactured “crisis”—and I hate to rain on anyone’s parade, but I think both of these men are giving “We, the People,” too much credit for making our voices heard, or, if not quite that, giving they, the House Republicans, too much credit for listening to we, the people.

Though Greenwald will correctly point out that whether Republicans are listening out of concern for their constituencies or concern for their jobs is a distinction without a difference, there is another possible—and I think probable—motivation at work. It is not the fear of losing their jobs, but the desire to make political hay, to use this bailout to destroy Democratic prospects (this year, and, even more so, in 2010), that is most likely the unifying force behind the Republican revolt.

Well, that prospect, and a guy named Newt:

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported this morning that conservatives may have been taking their marching orders from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who “was whipping against this up until the last minute” — despite issuing a statement supporting the bill as the vote was taking place:

MITCHELL: I’m told reliably by leading Republicans who are close to him, he was whipping against this up until the last minute when he issued that face-saving statement. Newt Gingrich was telling people in the strongest possible language that this was a terrible deal, not only that it was a terrible deal, that it was a disaster, it was the end of democracy as we know it, it was socialism. And then at the last minute comes out with a statement when the vote is already in place.

Reacting to the news, NBC’s Mike Barnicle said he had been told by congressional conservatives that the move was “the opening salvo of Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign four years hence.”

That is not to say that the phone calls by concerned Americans were pointless—not at all—but it is to say that one should never assume there is the possibility of common cause to be struck with the post-Reagan Republican Party. They, like their latest standard-bearer, John McCain, are interested in power for power’s sake, and are the very embodiment of the corporate donor class-backed political establishment that Greenwald and Johnston believe took a body blow on Monday.

It is not so long ago that Gingrich haunted the corridors of power with his nasty brand of us-versus-them politics and sanctimonious hypocrisy. It was never enough that he and his party should win, it was also necessary that Democrats loose.

The man and his caucus are little changed today. If progressive Democrats want to stop the NPLB (No Plutocrats Left Behind) bill and advance a real economic fix, then they are going to have to do it themselves.

. . .

As to that final point—progressives doin’ it for themselves—there is an alternative bill with the less than compelling name “No BAILOUTS” (it’s an acronym—don’t ask) now introduced in the House. It is a mixed bag, but on the whole, much better—and much cheaper—than Paulson-plus. Sirota has a rundown and a plan of action.

The Senate plans to vote on a bill similar to the House version of Paulson with some tax cuts to woo the right and some incentives for alternative energy to then woo back liberal members. It’s still a monumental piece of crap. It will not fix the problem—though it will artificially inflate the markets for a while—in the long run, it could make things much worse. If you feel like picking up the phone today, please ignore my above cynicism and call your Senators—urge a “no” vote on this Paulson-plus plan. Instead, ask your Senators to pass the stimulus package previously approved by the House.

Then, while you’ve got that bakelite in your hands, call your US Representative, tell them of your continued opposition to a $700 billion bailout, and ask him or her to consider something like No BAILOUTS as an alternative.


(cross-posted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

FISA: the worst of times

As the House leadership stumbles toward tumbling on FISA—giving the Bush Administration pretty much everything it has sought in this fight—I would like to urge those who are not regular readers of Glenn Greenwald to take a look at a few recent posts—first, because they say things that I have consistently found central to this debate as I have thought and written about it over the past couple of years, and second, because they say it so damn well.

Let me give you a taste of just a few of the central points.

On Friday, after President Bush held a presser to once again dissemble and fear-monger about warrantless surveillance (I posted some video of it here), Greenwald caught the president in a rare instance of frankness:

. . . Bush is finally being candid about the real reason the administration is so desperate to have these surveillance lawsuits dismissed. It's because those lawsuits are the absolute last hope for ever learning what the administration did when they spied on Americans for years in violation of the law. Dismissal via amnesty would ensure that their spying behavior stays permanently concealed, buried forever, and as importantly, that no court ever rules on the legality of what they did. Isn't it striking how that implication of telecom amnesty is never discussed, and how little interest it generates among journalists -- whose role, theoretically, is to uncover secret government actions?

It is, I suppose, comforting to know that the president has finally cottoned to what we all knew last fall.

Greenwald’s Sunday post observed that nothing so well exemplifies our political shift to the right than the debate over FISA. We forget today just how much of a departure the original FISA act was from our previous expectations of Constitutionally protected privacy. Imagine, a secret court where only the government is allowed to present evidence and only the executive branch and small number in Congress are ever privy to the court’s findings—does that sound like America to you?

It sure didn’t to many at the time. For instance, conservative NYT columnist, and former Nixon speechwriter, William Safire, who called FISA “the most sweeping authorization for the increase and abuse of wiretapping and bugging in our history.”

The telecom industry, which, back in 1977, went by the name “AT&T,” was also opposed to the process because it compelled them to cooperate with any order from the attorney general that was affirmed by the FISC. As described by Greenwald, this law turned Ma Bell into an active arm of Big Brother. As also noted on Sunday, the fact that the history shows that telcos have always been compelled to obey a FISC-ordered warrant lays waste to Bush Administration claims that without full amnesty, telecoms would be less inclined to help the government.

The confluence of Bush’s accidental candor and Greenwald’s careful excavation of the history does then beg the bigger question: What do Bush and his black-baggers have to hide?

As this chart (again, h/t Glenn) shows, FISC almost never refuses to issue a warrant. As the history shows, with a warrant, the telecom industry is compelled to cooperate. So, what does the White House want to do—more to the point, what have they been doing—that is so outside the bounds of the super-secretive and wildly permissive original FISA law?

Actually, the answer seems fairly clear to me. There has already been evidence of pre-9/11 spying introduced in court. There have already been published accounts of the current administration using spy agencies to pursue journalists and their contacts. And, there is ample documentation that the NSA has had most of the telecoms build splitters into their systems that would send copies of every electronic communication that passed though the network to the spy agency.

What would make a FISC judge blanche? What would give an entire justice department pause—as happened back when Abu Gonzales, Andy Card, James Comey, and John Ashcroft had their little hospital room contretemps? Let’s hazard a guess: Spying on United States citizens inside the United States without going through the standard warrant process in traditional courts as outlined in the US criminal code.

I get this. Greenwald gets this. I even suspect that you, dear reader, get this. So, the question is, why doesn’t the Democratic Leadership get this? (And, of course, why doesn’t the establishment media get this—or, at least, care? But that is almost a rhetorical question at this point.)

Which bring us to Glenn’s most recent FISA-related column.

Greenwald has long ago written off the desire of most of our Congressional leaders to stand up for the rights of Americans, to stand against an increased permissiveness under a new FISA, to stand against amnesty for the telcos and, in all reality and obviousness, the Bush Administration, and to stand with the majority of Americans who oppose warrantless surveillance and telecom immunity. Some electeds actually side with Bush, some want to cover their own tracks, and many just don’t grasp why this is important (or, some just don’t grasp it at all). But what baffles Greenwald, and has baffled me and so many others in the past as it does now, is why then have the Democrats played this fight as they have? These are professional politicians—if they wanted to simply score a political point, then why have they failed so miserably?

[W]hat is somewhat baffling in all of this is just how politically stupid and self-destructive [the Democratic Leadership’s] behavior is. If the plan all along was to give Bush everything he wanted, as it obviously was, why not just do it at the beginning? Instead, they picked a very dramatic fight that received substantial media attention. They exposed their freshmen and other swing-district members to attack ads. They caused their base and their allies to spend substantial energy and resources defending them from these attacks.

And now, after picking this fight and letting it rage for weeks, they are going to do what they always do -- just meekly give in to the President, yet again generating a tidal wave of headlines trumpeting how they bowed, surrendered, caved in, and lost to the President. They're going to cast the appearance that they engaged this battle and once again got crushed, that they ran away in fear because of the fear-mongering ads that were run and the attacks from the President. They further demoralize their own base and increase the contempt in which their base justifiably holds them (if that's possible). It's almost as though they purposely picked the path that imposed on themselves all of the political costs with no benefits.

Even with their ultimate, total compliance with the President's orders, they're still going to be attacked as having Made Us Less Safe -- by waiting weeks to capitulate, rather than doing so immediately, they opened up critical intelligence gaps, caused us to lose vital intelligence, made us less safe, etc. But now, they have no way to defend themselves against those accusations because, at the end of the day, they are admitting that the President was right all along, that telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping are good and important things that the President should have had all along. So why didn't they just give it to him before the law expired? It was a loss for them on every level.

I doubt there are very many Americans who expect at this point that the Democratic leadership will take a stand against the President due to any actual beliefs. But shouldn't politicians be at least a little bit shrewd about their own political self-interest? As craven and ugly as their capitulation will be, the political "strategy" they chose is actually just more self-destructive than it is anything else. Obviously, they have no real political principles, but don't they have any strategic instinct at all?

Well, at this point, Glenn can’t answer it. And neither can I.

Please sir, can I have some more?

I suppose you want your FISA update, don’t you?

Well, Tuesday saw the House vote out a 15-day extension of the PAA before they go the hell out of Dodge. That leaves this again up to the Senate, specifically the Senate Republicans, who now have to do a small twist (rather than a full pivot) if they want to accept for a fortnight what they just yesterday swore they would not.

I expect that Senate Republicans, with a gleeful push from some of our less bright Democrats, will agree to the extension. And though this will probably permit a period during which the Senate will consider amendments to the miserable SSCI FISA bill, the chance of any of the truly good amendments passing are slim.

If, by some miracle, any one of a number of these amendments is accepted, it might render the bill unsignable in the eyes of President Bush. Which, again, would be pretty much a victory from my standpoint—assuming Democrats are willing to say “shut up” to what will almost certainly be a pathetic whining from the White House and its spook-happy allies about how vulnerable this Democratic need for oversight and accountability would make us.

Of course, it wouldn’t make us the least bit vulnerable, as Democratic Representative from New Jersey Rush Holt explains (as transcribed by Glenn Greenwald):

[Even if the Protect America Act] expires, a perfectly satisfactory eavesdropping framework called "FISA" is already in place, along with the PAA's authorization that any programs begun under it can continue for one year after expiration.

(Greenwald also has video of Holt)

Holt even opposed the 15-day extension of the PAA, favoring its expiration if the Senate won’t take up the House version of the act (which, again, is far superior to the SSCI version). And Holt is right to do so—the PAA is a black mark on our nation’s history, not to mention a low point in the history of the supposedly Democratic controlled 110th Congress. As Greenwald reminds us:

With all the focus on the travesty of telecom amnesty, it has been easy to forget just how Draconian the Protect America Act really is, how radical are the warrantless eavesdropping powers it vested in the President. In essence, that bill allowed the Government to eavesdrop on every single international telephone call made or received by an American with no restrictions or judicial oversight whatsoever, and further empowered the Government to read every international email sent or received by an American with no restrictions or judicial oversight.

I also believe (as I previously explained) that the PAA has basically made each and every one of our e-mails fair game for warrantless surveillance—no matter where they go or who their from. In fact, the FISA regime, or lack thereof, under the PAA has likely cast so big a net that it has (as has been previously reported it would) overwhelmed our analysts with too much noise to provide anything resembling actionable intelligence on terrorism. It does, however, give this administration all the tools necessary to repress dissent, undermine a free press, and do opposition research on political opponents.

Don’t trust me. It’s already happened. Just ask Lawrence Wright. The Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Looming Tower has pretty good evidence that his phones were tapped starting in 2002. (And that was under a less permissive FISA structure.)

No, you don’t have to trust me—but why would you ever trust the Bush-Cheney Administration? As Senator Russ Feingold explains in the Greenwald piece that I link to above, “trust us” is all the assurance the White House ever gives, and all the oversight they will accept. After all that has happened in the last seven years, however, it is the last version of “oversight” that the Democrats in Congress should accept.

Nor should they have to. Practically no one in the country trusts this administration anymore. Everyone knows they have a penchant for secrecy and a complete disrespect for the rule of law. Everyone knows they are alternately venal and incompetent. And vast majorities of Americans rate the president and practically everything his government does as just plain awful.

Every time that Bush has spoken over the past three years or so, his popularity has gone down. So let him rant and wail; let him demand a FISA law with provisions that polls show a majority of Americans reject. Let the PAA expire and do so in the name of our Constitutionally guaranteed rights, have the gumption to stand up to telecom lobbyists, their bought-and-paid-for legislators, and an unpopular, lame-duck president, and I promise you good things will come. (Fail to stand up, and most likely bad things will come. Does the Democratic leadership not remember how their PAA “blink” was received last August?)

No one sided with the proprietors of the workhouse in Oliver Twist. No one thought, “That cheeky boy, why is he not happy with his one glorious bowl of gruel? How dare he make noise!”

Instead of meekly accepting another bowl PAA/FISA gruel, why not look down Pennsylvania Avenue and demand more of something much more fulfilling? Please sir, can we have some checks and balances, proper oversight, our Constitutionally guaranteed rights to privacy and due process—can we have more of those? Ask for that, instead of cowering to the politics of fear, and the American people will eat it up.


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

Warrantless surveillance: Jay rocks the 9/11 lie. . . again

It was apt that West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller chose Halloween to publish an op-ed in the Washington Post that once again tried to justify warrantless surveillance of US citizens by invoking the specter of 9/11.

In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, the Bush administration had a choice: Aggressively pursue potential terrorists using existing laws or devise new, secret intelligence programs in uncharted legal waters.

. . . .

Within weeks of the 2001 attacks, communications companies received written requests and directives for assistance with intelligence activities authorized by the president. These companies were assured that their cooperation was not only legal but also necessary because of their unique technical capabilities. They were also told it was their patriotic duty to help protect the country after the devastating attacks on our homeland.

Though I for one am not scared by the regurgitated talking points of the cowardly and oft-bunkered Vice President Dick-in-a-Box, I am terrified that a purportedly fully briefed Senator—a Democrat, no less—thinks that any of us should be satisfied with his contorted explanations for illegal spying and retroactive immunity.

Glenn Greenwald does a fine job of debunking the circular logic used by Jell-O Jay as he tries to distract us from his cozy relationship with the people and companies that he’s indemnifying, but he misses what is to me the most glaring fabrication.

In case you missed it, let me reprise a select sentence:

Within weeks of the 2001 attacks, communications companies received written requests and directives for assistance with intelligence activities authorized by the president.

Well, I’m tired of niceties on this one, so I’m just going to state it plain; THIS. IS. A. LIE.

As has been noted in books, newspapers (and here), magazines (and here, and here), wire services, and blogs (and here, and here, and here, and here, to link to but a handfull) repeatedly over the last two years, the Bush Administration, directly from the White House or through the NSA, approached telecommunications companies about eavesdropping and data-mining on US citizens within the United States over six months before the attacks of 9/11/01. This assessment has now been confirmed by documents unsealed in the case of former Qwest head Joseph Nacchio.

Since we believe that J-Rock, as a then ranking member of the SSCI, was briefed on some or all of these warrantless spy programs early on, and since he now assures us that he’s seen all appropriate documents concerning telco involvement, unless by “within weeks of the 2001 attacks” Rocky means within 27 weeks before the attacks, Senator Rockefeller is lying. He is not only invoking 9/11 to once again scare Americans into accepting unfettered violations of their privacy, he is using the terrorist acts of 2001 to directly deceive us about the nature and intent of the illegal surveillance programs.

I perhaps am not overwhelmingly shocked that another senator has been compromised by administrations bullying and corporate cash, but I am a little dismayed that critics of Rockefeller, the new Senate FISA re-write, and the Bush Administration’s domestic spying programs in general, still often fail to cite this very disturbing and revealing truth.

It is not simply a matter of scheduling; it goes to the root of all arguments both for and against the surveillance programs. Since the telecommunications companies were approached by the administration in February of 2001, then none of this is a response to the attacks of 9/11. And, since the spying is not a response to those events, then what were the NSA and the White House looking for?

If they were looking for terrorist conversations, then the September ‘01 attacks prove that the program was a flop. In fact, it is possible to go so far as to say that the giant dragnets cast by the intel/telco partnership flooded the NSA with so much data that it actually overwhelmed the system and buried much more valuable and readily apparent terrorist signal intelligence.

As I struggle to remain up to speed on illegal surveillance issues, I know all too well that there is a heck of a lot to read out there, but I think it essential that on this key point, all off us, the SSCI, the establishment media, and the blogosphere, need to be on the same page. Warrantless domestic surveillance of US citizens by the Bush Administration started long before the 2001 hijackings. Bush, Cheney, their attorneys, their intelligence bureaucracy, and the telecom industry may all have their reasons for collecting signal intelligence on Americans without a court order, but, back when the spying started, 9/11 wasn’t one of them.

(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)