The Secrecy Game by Scott Horton = "politically manipulated use of intelligence"

[L. Coyote]

The Secrecy Game
by Scott Horton - Oct 27, 2007
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001527

Max Weber taught us that secrecy is the implacable foe of democratic society. ... left unchecked, secrecy becomes a tool in the hands of the political schemer, who will use it to play political games with his domestic adversary ....

The Bush Administration’s six year epic of incompetence and failure on the national security front can be taken as a very persuasive proof of Weber’s thesis on many fronts.

And at this point, that fact seems slowly to be sinking in on the national intelligence establishment itself. Every administration plays some game with intelligence classifications. But over time the Bush Administration’s games have gotten successively cruder, the veil of legitimate purpose successively thinner. The artifice of claims of “state secrecy” once greeted with deadly earnest, now draws derisive smiles. And in the end this will not serve the nation’s interests either, because it increases the risk that legitimate secrets will be exposed as the illegitimate and politically motivated claims of secrecy are rejected.

Analysts I have spoken with in the last few weeks are increasingly nervous about the highly abusive and politically manipulated use of intelligence classifications. I posted an interview with career CIA covert operative Valerie Plame (http://harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001505) on Thursday, , in which she describes how secrecy claims were used to protect political operatives in the White House whose criminal conduct in violating security classifications was in question ...

... The audience that the Administration wants to keep in the dark is the American public. The objective of this exercise has nothing to do with national security. It has to do with covering the political posterior of the Administration, .....

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[L. Coyote]

1. Six Questions for Valerie Plame = "use of psychotropic drugs–causing problems"

Six Questions for Valerie Plame
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001505


Valerie Plame was a career CIA covert operative whose work focused on efforts to detect and thwart Iranian nuclear proliferation ..... I put six questions to Valerie Plame. ....

H. ........ Do you believe that the Administration is now attempting to distort intelligence concerning the Iranian nuclear program? Can you cite any specific examples?

P. ...... given all that we know today about how this administration distorted and cherry picked very thin intelligence on Iraq’s WMD programs to build a rationale for going to war, it is fair to say that the credibility of this administration and our country has suffered immensely–one of the unintended consequences of the debacle in Iraq. My hope is that the story told in my book about the importance of holding your government to account for its words and deeds will inspire Americans to ask good, hard questions about our foreign policy and initiate a robust debate about our role in that region before giving this administration authority to conduct a military action in Iran. ....

H. .... To what extent are the Bush Administration policies favoring highly coercive techniques–waterboarding, long-time standing, hypothermia, sleep deprivation in excess of two days, the use of psychotropic drugs–causing problems within the Agency?

.......

[L. Coyote]

2. fairgameplame.com = CasePage: Wilson et al v. McConnell et al

http://fairgameplame.com/



An Unusual and Troubling Prior Restraint

On May 31, 2007, Plaintiffs Valerie Plame Wilson and Simon & Schuster, Inc., publisher of Ms. Wilson’s memoir entitled FAIR GAME: MY LIFE AS A SPY, MY BETRAYAL BY THE WHITE HOUSE, sought declaratory and injunctive relief in the District Court under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution to prevent an unlawful prior restraint by the executive branch defendants in violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

The specific background of the dispute is not as widely known as other aspects of the case. The dispute arose from the executive branch decision to prohibit plaintiffs from republishing information voluntarily disclosed in unclassified form to Valerie Wilson by CIA ..........

[L. Coyote]

3. antiwar.com: Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network

Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
by Jim Lobe - Aug 7, 2003
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lobe080703.html

An ad hoc office under US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have acted as the key base for an informal network of mostly neo-conservative political appointees that circumvented normal interagency channels to lead the push for war against Iraq.

The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith's domain, was originally created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official US intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long charged that the two offices exaggerated and manipulated intelligence about Iraq before passing it along to the White House.

But key personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003.

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[L. Coyote]

4. Report depicts Pentagon that purposely manipulated intelligence before U.S. invasion of Iraq

Report Says Pentagon Manipulated Intel
Report depicts Pentagon that purposely manipulated intelligence before U.S. invasion of Iraq
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/09/ap/politics/mainD8N67L6O1.shtml


A "very damning" report by the Defense Department's inspector general depicts a Pentagon that purposely manipulated intelligence in an effort to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, says the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"That was the argument that was used to make the sale to the American people about the need to go to war," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. He said the Pentagon's work, "which was wrong, which was distorted, which was inappropriate ... is something which is highly disturbing."

The investigation by acting inspector general Thomas F. Gimble found that prewar intelligence work at the Pentagon, including a contention that the CIA had underplayed the likelihood of an al-Qaida connection, was inappropriate but not illegal. The report was to be presented to Levin's panel at a hearing Friday.

The report found that former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J. Feith had not engaged in illegal activities through the creation of special offices to review intelligence. Some Democrats also have contended that Feith misled Congress about the basis of the administration's assertions on the threat posed by Iraq, but the Pentagon investigation did not support that. Two people familiar with the findings discussed the main points and some details Thursday on condition they not be identified.

Levin has asserted that President Bush took the country to war in Iraq based in part on ....................

[L. Coyote]

5. After 24 hours, this issue gets 66 hits. Ghosts and ESP many thousands. Do the math

and consider if all the Dem and Congress bashing on DU might be applicable here also.

Are things actually moving forward here on DU?
Are we accomplishing anything besides discussing totally useless sh*t?
Is it a waste of time to post significant issues?