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February 11, 2006

NY TimesWatch: Ah! Those Missed Opportunities!

Another day on Capitol Hill, another missed opportunity to leak classified national security information to our enemies:

AT the Central Intelligence Agency, we are more than holding our own in the global war on terrorism, but we are at risk of losing a key battle: the battle to protect our classified information.

Judge Laurence Silberman, a chairman of President Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said he was "stunned" by the damage done to our critical intelligence assets by leaked information. The commission reported last March that in monetary terms, unauthorized disclosures have cost America hundreds of millions of dollars; in security terms, of course, the cost has been much higher. Part of the problem is that the term "whistleblower" has been misappropriated. The sharp distinction between a whistleblower and someone who breaks the law by willfully compromising classified information has been muddied.

Last month, a news article in this newspaper described a "secret meeting" to discuss "highly classified" techniques to detect efforts by other countries to build nuclear weapons. This information was attributed to unnamed intelligence officials who "spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the effort's secrecy." Whether accurate or not, this is a direct acknowledgment that these unnamed officials apparently know the importance of secrecy.

Recently, I noticed renewed debate in the news media over press reports in 1998 that Osama bin Laden's satellite phone was being tracked by United States intelligence officials. In the recent debate, it was taken for granted that the original reports did not hurt our national security efforts, and any suggestions that they did cause damage were dismissed as urban myth. But the reality is that the revelation of the phone tracking was, without question, one of the most egregious examples of an unauthorized criminal disclosure of classified national defense information in recent years. It served no public interest. Ultimately, the bin Laden phone went silent.

Perhaps the most frequently asked question in Congress of late has been, "why didn't President Bush brief all of Congress on the highly-classified NSA terrorist surveillance program"? Whatever could the President have been thinking? After all, if we can't trust our public servants with secret information, who can we trust?

Good question:

- Just this Spring, former Clinton Aide Sandy Berger pleaded guilty to removing secret documents from the National Archive, yet received only a slap on the wrist.

- In 1985, Democrat Senator Pat ("Leaky") Leahy:

‘inadvertently' disclosed a top-secret communications intercept during a 1985 television interview. "The intercept … made possible the capture of the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered American citizens. …" "The reports cost the life of at least one Egyptian operative involved in the operation."

- In 1986, Leahy again revealed secret information:

Senator Leahy's history with regard to failing to protect confidential information goes back nearly 20 years, to 1986. It was in that year that he leaked classified information about a covert U.S. operation to overthrow the government of Libyan leader Moamar Gaddafi. Leahy's stated reason for leaking the information was that he (Leahy) thought the proposed operation was "the most ridiculous thing I had seen." The planned military operation, no longer a secret, was called off as a result of the publicity generated by Leahy's making classified information public.

- Flash forward one year and Leahy is forced to resign his seat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:

In July, 1987, Leahy resigned from his post on the Senate Intelligence Committee after a six-month investigation into charges that he had compromised our nation's security by leaking classified documents. The investigation revealed that Leahy had also been caught in the act of allowing a network news reporter access to the Senate Intelligence Committee's confidential documents in 1986.

- Richard Shelby (R., Alabama) was investigated for leaking information about classified messages intercepted by the NSA on the eve of 9/11. He was cleared by the Senate ethics committee with no explanation.

- In December of 2004, Senators Jay Rockafeller (D., WVa), publicly lambasted a classifed satellite program up for reapproval after he and three other Democrat Senators (the aptly-named Dick Durbin, Weyden, and Carl Levin, refused to approve the project, terming it "dangerous to our national security"). Mysteriously, articles about the highly SECRET program appeared a few days later in the NY Times and Washington Post. I wonder how that happened?

These men are in the vanguard of the charge against the White House in the War on Terror. They have leaked national secrets, yet they the nerve to ask why the President didn't "trust Congress" with sensitive national security information. But they have no monopoly on silliness: the Senate Judiciary Committee's recent inquisition of Alberto Gonzalez was just more of the same disingenuous blather:

...Arlen Specter... wondered why the Bush Administration couldn’t just submit its program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for its evaluation. Mr. Gonzales was too polite to remind the Senator of what my students learn early in my Con Law class: courts don’t issue advisory opinions.

And then there’s the slippery slope, mentioned by Senators Leahy, Kennedy, Feinstein, and Schumer. Are we opening mail, undertaking purely domestic warrantless surveillance, and otherwise breaking the law? Gonzales quite properly asserted both that the Administration was not breaking the law, as he had explained it, and that he was focused on the issue on which the Committee had insisted on holding a hearing. It makes no sense to discuss actions the Administration isn’t taking, which only plays into the hands of its critics. It also would be irresponsible to reveal and defend other secret national security programs. Grown-ups understand this, even if senators pretend not to.

Finally, there’s Joe Biden, who wonders whether any criminal referrals have resulted from the NSA program.

The breathtaking stupidity of this last one is a real stunner.

Apparently our Democratic Brethren in Christ would like us to do two things:

1. Reveal to the enemy exactly how effective our monitoring efforts against them have been,, exactly how we got this information, and just who has been apprehended as a consequence. This is information they don't currently have. Can someone remind again me why we want to give it to them?

2. Should it be revealed, by some wild chance, that we haven't yet convicted anyone, Senator Biden would like us to conclude that the danger has gone away and simply stop listening to terrorist communications. The beauty of this plan is that when we are attacked again, the DNC can ask why were we asleep at the wheel.

It would seem, on reflection, that the Democrats aren't really missing all that many opportunities. I think they're doing just fine.

They and the NY Times make a great team.

Posted by Cassandra at February 11, 2006 10:00 AM

Comments

Posted by: Crckt at February 12, 2006 02:30 PM

Posted by: Cassandra at February 12, 2006 04:49 PM

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