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| This Isn't Just 'Dissent': The CIA's leakers lack the Cold Warriors' sense of purpose. |
| 2006-05-12 |
| We used to live in simpler times. From 1950 to 1991, America's enemy took the form of a country with hundreds of ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads aimed at the U.S. mainland, and a global espionage force called the KGB with a single address, Moscow. This was the Cold War, and in those days the U.S. intelligence community had a common worldview. That ideology was laid out in the now-famous National Security Council document 68, delivered in April 1950 to President Harry Truman. The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb the previous August. NSC-68's first page--"Background of the Current Crisis"--describes a Soviet Union that is "animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world." NSC-68's chapter headings were not about mere policy but the basics, describing "The Fundamental Purpose of the United States" and "The Underlying Conflict in the Realm of Ideas and Values Between the U.S. Purpose and the Kremlin Design." Who could disagree? Well, many did--ceaselessly outside the government, mostly in academic centers and policy journals. It was a lively, titanic debate. But not inside the government, or at least nothing that compares to what has been leaking out about the war on terror. The most serious bureaucratic disputes within the government's Cold War intelligence agencies involved disagreements over arms-reduction proposals in the SALT talks and the like. But there was no serious disagreement with the ideology or threat described in NSC-68. Today we have neither institutional discipline nor a shared ideology. The foundational U.S. document in the war on terror is the June 2002 Bush Doctrine, a response to September 11. But here the threat itself is debated endlessly. Islamic terror has no address. Obviously swaths of the national security bureaucracy--the Pillars, Wilsons and McCarthys--not only don't buy into the Bush Doctrine but feel obliged to take their disagreements with it outside the government. Since Vietnam, a war as in Iraq is no longer a national commitment but a policy matter. As a result, the security bureaucracies have become a confused tangle of oppositional ideas over the war in Iraq, discrete policies such as the warrantless wiretaps, and the nature of the threat from Islamic terror. Out of this confusion of policy and purpose have fallen leaks as sensitive as the al Qaeda secret prisons and as oh-golly-gee as yesterday's "leak" about the government analyzing billions of phone-call patterns to pick up terrorist activity. If confirmed, Gen. Michael Hayden's biggest problem at the CIA will be that some of his employees are the products of a culture that no longer understands or respects the sense of purpose, discipline and honor of the best Cold Warriors, who understood that the government is an elected hierarchy of constitutional responsibility and not a faculty senate free to undermine mere presidents. He will have to make clear that any official who finds internal dissent procedures inadequate to his or her "moral obligation" to overturn strategic doctrine, affect election outcomes or destroy an intelligence operation should get out or be willing to risk criminal prosecution. And it would help this country's sense of purpose if he made that clear not only to the CIA but in public to the American people. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #6 When a public agency is no longer willing to prosecute its own for even heinious crimes or malice, it starts becoming a bureaucratic/ institutional "useful idiot" or idiots for the very enemy(s) or antagonists it is supposed to be protecting American from. BILL CLINTON'S "MONICA" DEFENSE - Bill really Really REALLY R-E-A-L-L-Y BELIEVED, D*** IT, HE TOLD THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THE "STRAIGHT ARROW = DAMN THE TORPEDOES" TRUTH WHEN HE KNOWINGLY AND WILFULLY LIED TO THEM. DID HE!? A Fascist = Communist ,America = Russia-China, a GOP-Conservative = Dem-Leftist, Socialist = Capitalist/Federalist, Cops/Judges /the Law = Crooks-Mafiosi, Laissez Faire-Libertarianism = Regulation/Governmentism /Centralism, etc. ..............@. WHETHER AMERICANS-ALLIES WANT TO OR NOT, LIKE IT OR NOT, AMERICA-ALLIES MUST NOW EITHER DE FACTO, PUBLICLY OFFICIALLY FORMALLY AND OVERTLY, RULE THE WORLD, OR ELSE BE DESTROYED. The "Serve and Protect" Public Sector just becomes a subjective or pseudo-Mafia-Crime syndicate. *SHANGHAI COOP ORG Milex > CONTROL ANY AND ALL SIDES AND DESTROY YOUR TARGET FROM ANY AND ALL SIDES, FROM WITHIN AND WITHOUT, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. What does mainstream America get, or even the US Left > Chicoms/Commies = 200Milyuhn-plus of America's 300Milyuhn population get the death camp/gulag or both anyways! Our national holocaust + loss of 1/2-plus of CONUS-NORAM territory is good for everybody, even for us. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-05-12 21:47 |
| #5 When you get “Cleared for Weird” you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. It states that you can be prosecuted for violating this agreement. Clearly some people have broken that agreement or we would not have heard about this program. File charges and let the chips fall where they may. I guarantee you that after the first couple of leakers/traitors get frog marched past credit union, very few people will want to come within 10 miles of a reporter. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2006-05-12 17:38 |
| #4 There is a solution -and its in the Constitution: A Jury of their peers. Get a judge and prosecuter and defense attnys that can get the requisite clearance, and draw the jury pool from cleared people at other agencies and the DoD. |
| Posted by: Oldspook 2006-05-12 15:44 |
| #3 It's very tricky prosecuting spies. Their whole knowledge base becomes vulnerable to public exposure during trial. The prosecution would have to reveal even more information to make its case than the defendant had already leaked or sold. It's not legal to just 'disappear' them in this country (though I suspect in an extreme case that is exactly what would happen.) |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2006-05-12 15:04 |
| #2 "Gen. Michael Hayden's biggest problem at the CIA will be that some of his employees are the products of a culture that no longer understands or respects the sense of purpose, discipline and honor of the best Cold Warriors, who understood that the government is an elected hierarchy of constitutional responsibility and not a faculty senate free to undermine mere presidents." These kinds of peopleahve poisoned the Intelligence Community. They don't take their oath seriously, and were more loyal to themselves and political affiliation than they were the safety of our nation. More interested in emprie building within the agency than protecting the nation. More interested in how they could spin something instead of how to convince and alert people who needed to know. And this is why I am no longer working directly for the government. The Intelligence Community I knew rotted from within in the 1990's under political CYA appointees and the people they promoted who were like themselves. From what I hear, Hayden did a wonderful job rooting out this crap at NSA, and he desperately needs to be given the whip hand and tear it out by its roots at CIA, civil service rules be damned. |
| Posted by: Oldspook 2006-05-12 13:57 |
| #1 When confirmed gen Hayden needs to haved a couple dozen leakers perp-walked the front doors of Langley. Not all at once draw it out for a couple of weeks. After that, the NYT et al won't have anybody willing to talk to them. A matter of fact why haven't we heard of someone facing charges about the string of leaks? |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2006-05-12 10:45 |