Since Crazy Pete is out demagoging the Fort Hood killings, I thought I would put together a list of his most notable lies to serve as a reminder to journalists that they ought to think twice before crediting anything Crazy Pete says. So here goes: six of Crazy Pete’s classic lies:

Nancy Pelosi lied when she said the CIA didn’t tell her they had waterboarded Abu Zubaydah

It was clear from the start that this was a lie, given that Porter Goss’s statements about the September 2002 briefing accorded perfectly with Pelosi’s assertions about that briefing. And when pressed, Goss refused to alter that statement even after Hoekstra’s attacks on Pelosi. But in a recent uncontroverted statement, the House Intelligence Committee confirmed that the CIA had lied to Pelosi (and Goss) in that first briefing.

Seven CIA Directors claimed Obama was hurting CIA morale with the investigation into torture

In an op-ed invoking the letter seven CIA Directors had sent, Crazy Pete (and John Shadegg) pretended to quote from the latter:

[The letter from the CIA Directors] noted the “distraction and devastating impact” that reopening an investigation into enhanced interrogation of al Qaeda suspects is having on “CIA morale, America’s counterterrorism efforts and our foreign intelligence partnerships.”

But they appear to have just made those quotes up out of thin air. In the grand scheme of Crazy Pete’s long catalog of lies, this partisan attack might not be that big–except that I’m stunned two sitting Congressmen would just make shit up and claim a bunch of retired Spooks-in-Chief had said them.

Eureka!!! WMD in Iraq!!!

Remember when Crazy Pete and Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum claimed that a few piles of canisters filled with now-inert chemical weapons were the WMDs we went to war to find?

Yeah.

I’d just leave it at that–but it bears mentioning that the pattern of the demagoging is the same as Crazy Pete is employing now: claiming that the intelligence community is not being forthcoming with secret information that Crazy Pete has been privy to, and if they only would reveal what they know, Crazy Pete would score political points. In other words, we’ve heard precisely the kinds of claims Crazy Pete is making now before–and in the past those claims proved to be bullshit.

CIA didn’t reveal those expired munitions because key CIA officials want to help Al Qaeda [update]

As Spencer notes below, shortly after Crazy Pete trumpeted his inert chemical find, he upped the ante, suggesting that certain people within the intelligence community want to help al Qaeda. Crazy Pete wouldn’t name those al Qaeda sympathizers, but thought it important to make the claim nevertheless, explaining it is simply naive to not make the claim, even if there is no evidence to substantiate it.

Al Qaeda will kill unemployed Michiganders if Gitmo prisoners move to Standish

In his efforts to scare the people of Standish, MI, out of hosting Gitmo’s prisoners, Crazy Pete claimed both that Al Qaeda would target the families of those working at Standish and that none of the jobs at Standish would go to locals–they would instead go to military personnel.Now, either of those might have been true–but Crazy Pete was just making stuff up. I know that, because at the time Crazy Pete was making these claims, even Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin did not know the hypothetical plan for Standish. Which Crazy Pete pretty much conceded in his next stunt about Gitmo, when he had a resident from Standish testify at a House Intelligence Committee hearing to highlight the fact that no one knew what was going to happen if Gitmo moved to Standish. There’s more to Crazy Pete’s demagoging on Standish–as a bunch of retired counter-terrorism officers laid out in a scathing letter.

Democrats would require individual warrants to wiretap foreigners overseas

Ah, the Joe Klein embarrassment! The time when Crazy Pete told Joe Klein something that clearly contradicted public documents, and Klein printed it unquestioningly. Not only is this Crazy Pete lie one of his most classic, it also ties very closely the demagoging he’s doing now: he is claiming our domestic surveillance (rather than our personnel management) is insufficient at a time when bills affecting domestic surveillance are working their way through Congress. In 2007, we know, Crazy Pete was willing to make shit up to try to support more intrusive domestic spying powers. I would suggest he may be doing the same today.

CIA harbors

Now, I’m not saying that Crazy Pete’s current demagoging may not have merit (though the silence from Crazy Pete’s counterpart in the Senate, Kit Bond, sort of makes me very very skeptical). After all, it’s nut-collecting season here in Michigan, and every day I see the dumbest looking squirrels manage to find a nut or two.

But Crazy Pete’s history of making audacious lies ought to make every single journalist question his claims, wait, ask for further proof, before they print any of his partisan, authoritarian claims.

It’s for Fingar’s comments about the latter that ACW links to his speech–to highlight Fingar’s revelation that the White House ordered declassification of that 2007 NIE.

This example is drawn from the highly contentious 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. It became contentious, in part, because the White House instructed the Intelligence Community to release an unclassified version of the report’s key judgments but declined to take responsibility for ordering its release.

Remember, at the time Dick Cheney and Israel were both trying to force a military response to Iran’s nuclear program … but now we learn the White House ordered the NIE be released?

Was Bush (presumably with Condi’s help) playing Cheney’s games against him, releasing classified information without telling Cheney he ordered its release? As ACW notes, Fingar explains the logic behind the release–which was designed to show that there was time, but some urgency, to resolving the Iran situation diplomatically.

In other words, the message it was intended to send to policymakers was, “You do not have a lot of time but you appear to have a diplomatic or non-military option.” Prior to the publication of this Estimate, the judgment of the Intelligence Community—and of many pundits and policymakers—was that there was no chance of deterring Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon and that the only use of force—military options—could prevent Tehran from acquiring the bomb. The estimate also judged, and stated clearly, that Iran at a minimum had retained the option to pursue a weapon and that whether to do so would be a political decision that could be made at any time.

The entire speech is worth reading. Fingar provides an explanation for the crappy 2002 Iraq NIE.

In my experience, most policymakers ask themselves, and often ask their intelligence support team, whether the reported or projected development requires immediate action on their part or can be deferred while they work on more pressing issues or more attractive parts of their policy agendas. That is a natural and rational approach. To compensate for this, intelligence has a built-in, and on some subjects, like terrorism, a recently reinforced propensity to underscore, overstate, or “hype” the findings in order to get people to pay attention, and to fireproof the IC against charges that it failed to provide adequate warning. I note in passing that this propensity was one of the reasons for the errors in the infamous 2002 Estimate on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

While the explanation is not a surprise, there are several implications of it–not least that the former Number 2 in DNI is suggesting that estimates about terrorism are overstated, with the possible result that terrorism has remained a larger policy focus than other pressing issues. (Elsewhere, in his discussion about the Global Trends 2025 report, Fingar does note that the results of terrorism will be increasingly dangerous, largely due to bioterrorism.)

Which brings us to Fingar’s description of the genesis for the climate change NIA.

I should probably take it as a badge of achievement that Members of Congress began to press for an NIE on global climate change in late 2006 and early 2007. The reason I say this is that I made improvement in the quality of analysis, notably NIEs, and the restoration of confidence in the quality of IC analytic work my highest priorities when I became Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council in mid 2005. By 2007, we had regained the confidence of a growing number of Members who began to request NIEs in order to have reliable and objective assessments of important issues. Or so they said. Many of these requests came from Democrats who may have had an additional motivation, i.e., to use NIEs as a stick with which to pummel the administration. That is a tale for another time; here I want to focus on climate change. The short setup for the story I’m about to tell is that whether climate change is occurring, the extent to which it is caused by human activity, whether the US was incurring too high a price for being out of step with its allies on the importance of combating global warming, and a host of other politically-charged issues provided the backdrop for the initial requests that the NIC produce an NIE on climate change. Another factor was the release and reception of former Vice President Al Gore’s book and documentary on global warming entitled An Inconvenient Truth.

In order to tell the story, I will compress a number of conversations with several Members and staff into a single and greatly simplified set of invented exchanges that
accurately reflect the dialog.

Member: We need an estimate on climate change.

Me: We don’t do climate change, talk to NOAA or the National Academy of Sciences.

Member: But we trust you and know we will get an objective assessment.

Me: Thank you, but the NIC doesn’t know anything about climate science.

Member: But we trust you, and the NIC does analyze geopolitical developments, right?

Me: Yes, but we still don’t have any expertise on climate change.

Member: OK, then do an NIE on the geopolitics of global climate change.

She had me. Congress eventually ordered us to produce an Estimate on the geopolitical implications of global climate change.

(While Fingar insists this was entirely fictional, the gender of his imagined interlocutory suggests Nancy Pelosi or DiFi as possibilities for the member asking for the estimate.) Again, not a surprise, but out of this request came–in Fingar’s estimation–a document that provided some early resource allocation suggestions and red flags for dealing with climate change.

Most of the rest of the document talks about Fingar’s attempts to improve the process of collaborative documents like the NIEs and NIAs, which gives a glimpse of how our intelligence community attempts to improve its analytical process. Well worth reading the whole thing.

House Judiciary Committee members Reps. Jerry Nadler and John Conyers

Well, lookee here. Look what the House Judiciary Committee has scheduled for Thursday.

Classified Hearing on: the PATRIOT Act and Related Matters

Thursday 10/29/2009 – 2:30 A.M.

HVC-301

Full Committee

By Direction of the Chairman

As you’ll recall, the Senate Judiciary Committee had such a classified hearing, as well. The day after that hearing, the Democrats gave up their plans to actually improve the PATRIOT Act, and instead gave the Administration everything they wanted, making it easier to conduct fishing expeditions on Americans. As you’ll probably also recall, the Administration submitted those changes via Jeff Sessions, one of the most loathsome Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, giving the Democrats thin cover for utterly caving on the Fourth Amendment.

So which Republican do you think the Administration will hide behind while gutting improvements on the PATRIOT Act this time? Some choices are:

• Lamar Smith, the Committee’s Ranking Member and a Texan, with all that suggests
• Darrell Issa, former member of the House Intelligence Committee and quite a capable asshole
• Steve King, a close match for Sessions in terms of being a loathsome idiot

Enter your guess in the comments for a chance to win a coveted hub cap. And ready your calling fingers Monday to remind Democratic Committee members of their duty to protect the Fourth Amendment.

[Ed. Note: Monday is today! So, Call the Democrats on the Committee and remind them that the Fourth Amendment does not include any exceptions for fishing expeditions.]

EFF's logo for its case against NSA warrantless wiretapping (graphic by hugh electronic via Flickr)

Well, you just don’t see this every day. As MadDog noted in comments last night, Judge Jeffrey S. White has entered a new order in NDCA denying the government’s request for a stay pending appeal in the telco documents FOIA case brought by the EFF. And he did it before the government ever even really asked for a stay!

This is the case Marcy discussed in The Blob That Passed Telecom Immunity after the internets went code red over an article in Wired that the Feds supposedly admitted telcos were an appendage of the government. To recap, the EFF filed a FOIA case against the ODNI seeking government documents evidencing telecom lobbying on immunity for corporate participation in Bush’s surveillance program. On September 24, 2009, Judge White found in favor of plaintiff EFF and ordered the records disclosed on or before October 9. On September 30, the government asked White for a stay so they could contemplate an appeal; White refused their request.

The EFF describes what transpired next in their press release:

On October 8, the day before the documents were due, the DOJ and ODNI filed an emergency motion asking the Court of Appeals for a 30-day stay while the agencies continue to contemplate an appeal. Around noon on October 9, the Ninth Circuit denied their emergency motion, telling the government it had to file for a motion for a stay pending appeal in the district court first.

Later that afternoon, the government filed again in the federal district court, but once again did not seek a stay pending an actual appeal. Instead, for the third time, the government insisted it could delay the release of telecom lobbying records while it considered the pros and cons of appealing. Briefing was complete by noon today, and Judge White denied the third attempt at delay this afternoon.

Get that? The government once again did not request a stay from Judge White. And he went ahead and ruled against them as if they had. See, I told you there was a reason they tried to bypass Judge White the first go around. I guess Vaughn Walker is not the only judge in NDCA that is fed up with the disingenuous pleading and concealment of unconstitutional activity the government relentlessly spews forth.

Judge White’s five page Order has some really sweet passages:

There has been no material change in circumstances and the Court is still not persuaded that it should exercise its discretion to stay its directive that Defendants disclose the disputed documents pending a decision whether or not to appeal the Court’s original Order. At this point, because a notice of appeal has been filed, a properly noticed motion for a stay pending appeal would have been appropriately filed before this Court. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 62(c). However, such a motion is not before the Court and Defendants have repeatedly reiterated that they have not filed such a motion. Regardless, the Court will address the substantive factors in ruling on such a motion in order to obviate the need for the parties to return once again to this Court before addressing the issue of a stay pending appeal.

White is tired of being jerked around by the disingenuous antics of Obama’s DOJ and he decided to move them along to the 9th; and why not, they are going there anyway, no reason to let them delay and obfuscate on the way.

Then White sets the table for dissection of the DOJ specimen:

The Court reviewed and explicitly rejected Defendants’ contentions that any exemption under FOIA or privilege barred disclosure of the disputed documents and information. Having made no new argument, the Court does not find that Defendants have made a strong showing that they are likely to prevail on the merits of their appeal. Second, the Court finds that the public interest and the balance of hardships squarely favor timely production of the requested documents.

Nice. Then he lowers the boom. And, all things considered, it is simply a devastating blow:

Considering the delay in disclosure thus far in this matter, the current administration’s pointed directive on transparency in government, and the public’s renewed interest in the question of legal immunity for the telecommunications companies that participated in the warrantless wiretapping program while considering currently pending legislation repealing the amendments to FISA, the Court finds that the public interest lies in favor of disclosure. This Court has already found, when deciding the motion for preliminary injunction in this case, that “irreparable harm exists where Congress is considering legislation that would amend the FISA and the records may enable the public to participate meaningfully in the debate over such pending legislation.” Electronic Frontier Foundation v. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 542 F. Supp. 2d 1181, 1187 (N.D. Cal. 2008). The Court finds that same harm to the public interest exists in the context of the current debate regarding legislation designed to repeal the retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. The unusual circumstances of the continued debate on the issue of legal immunity for the telecommunications companies that participated in the government’s warrantless wiretapping program distinguish this case from the common FOIA matter. Although timely disclosure would negatively affect the Defendants’ position on appeal, it is not clear that Defendants will even pursue the appeal already filed and, regardless, the Court finds the equities weigh in favor of denial of a stay.

Ouch. In the first sentence, he hammers the government for its delaying tactics, pricks Obama for his earlier, but now seemingly abandoned, claim to favor transparency, and upholds the public’s right to know. Beautiful! And then, for good measure, he repeats the inherent interest the public has in the warrantless wiretapping issue as well as the attempt to immunize the telecoms.

Any bets on whether there is a copy of this decision sitting on Vaughn Walker’s desk? We shall see what the 9th Circuit does once this is back in their lap, but Judge Jeffrey S. White has left no doubt whatsoever what he thinks. Oh, and by the way, Judge White set the next disclosure deadline for October 16, 2009 at 4:00 p.m. PST. That would be this Friday. I bet there is some serious scurrying around by the DOJ today and Thursday.

As the Obama administration reconsiders its Afghanistan policy, White House officials are minimizing warnings from the intelligence community, the military and the State Department about the risks of adopting a limited strategy focused on al Qaida, U.S. intelligence, diplomatic and military officials told McClatchy.

Got that? Intelligence, diplomatic and military officials think the White House isn’t listening enough to intelligence, diplomatic and military sources! Unpossible!

In just as uncanny a development, the sources interviewed for this story believe pretty much everything that would tend toward an escalation of forces along the line Stanley McChrystal desires–the Taliban is closely tied to Al Qaeda, they would offer the terrorists safe havens if they returned to power, they would help in plotting attacks abroad, etc. Almost all of the sources are anonymous, too, except for this guy:

The White House, as well as Congress and U.S. military, “have got to level with the American people, and they are not doing it,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department intelligence analyst now with the Middle East Institute. “They are taking the easy way out by focusing on the narrow interest of protecting the homeland” from al Qaida.

Yeah, that “narrow interest,” protecting people from harm and such. How dare they abandon the much more necessary and realizable goal of turning Afghanistan into a vibrant representative democracy!

The problem with any story about this region that focuses on intelligence reports is that the intelligence can easily offer contradictory information:

Nearly all of the insurgents battling US and NATO troops in Afghanistan are not religiously motivated Taliban and Al Qaeda warriors, but a new generation of tribal fighters vying for control of territory, mineral wealth, and smuggling routes, according to summaries of new US intelligence reports.

Some of the major insurgent groups, including one responsible for a spate of recent American casualties, actually opposed the Taliban’s harsh Islamic government in Afghanistan during the 1990s, according to the reports, described by US officials under the condition they not be identified.

“Ninety percent is a tribal, localized insurgency,” said one US intelligence official in Washington who helped draft the assessments. “Ten percent are hardcore ideologues fighting for the Taliban.”

Both of these stories feature advocates for a particular policy using traditional media as a pass-through to leak intelligence favorable to their side. But the McClatchy story is so brazen in a “they’re not listening to our Chicken Little act!” way, that it really shouldn’t have been published by any self-respecting newspaper.

Instead of arguing the intelligence, argue the policy. And in that respect, you have a choice between Dianne “do whatever the general says” Feinstein, or Russ “let’s actually make a decision based on achievable goals” Feingold. Only one perspective gets on the Sunday shows, however.

She was the best of nominees. He was the worst of nominees. The fates of Dawn Johnsen and John Brennan after the first attempts to put them into high levels of the Obama Administration tells us everything we need to know about Obama’s commitment to the rule of law.

The nomination of Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice represented, in my opinion, the best possible candidate for a crucial position. During the Bush-Cheney years, OLC memos of incredibly shoddy workmanship were churned out in abundance in a blatant attempt to provide legal cover for torture and other lawbreaking by the Bush Administration. Featured here is Johnsen at the American Constitution Society in October, 2007, where she states that "OLC and the Attorney General have to be prepared to tell the President ‘no’; that’s what the law requires" in describing how OLC needs to be independent above all else in providing legal advice to the Administration.

Johnsen’s selection as head of OLC was announced by Obama on January 5, 2009. Her nomination has languished, with a hold placed by John Cornyn, and Obama has done nothing to move things along.

John Brennan served as Barack Obama’s primary advisor on intelligence policy during the campaign and very shortly after the election, his name was at the top of most lists to serve as either Director of National Intelligence or Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Fortunately, because Glenn Greenwald and others pointed out how much Brennan had supported torture and illegal surveillance, Brennan withdrew his name about a week after a barrage of information about Brennan’s views was made public. For example, Greenwald provided this quotation from Brennan to CBS News where Brennan is indistinguishable from Cheney:

SMITH: You know, this all becomes such a giant issue because the president has gone on record so many times saying the United States does not torture. If we acknowledge that this kind of activity [waterboarding] goes on, you know, what does that mean, exactly, I guess?

Mr. BRENNAN: Well, the CIA has acknowledged that it has detained about 100 terrorists since 9/11, and about a third of them have been subjected to what the CIA refers to as enhanced interrogation tactics, and only a small proportion of those have in fact been subjected to the most serious types of enhanced procedures.

SMITH: Right. And you say some of this has born fruit.

Mr. BRENNAN: There have been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists. It has saved lives. And let’s not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the deaths of 3,000 innocents.[Emphasis from Greenwald]

Despite removing his name from consideration as DNI or DCI, Brennan remained at a high advisory level to Obama within the National Security Council but at a position not requiring Senate confirmation. Last week, it was announced that Obama would form a new "interrogation team" that would take over the job of interrogation of high level detainees. Here is Andrea Mitchell reporting on the team:

Senior White House and Justice Department officials briefing reporters on a conference call just now insisted that the White House would not be involved in tactical decisions about the interrogation of detainees under new procedures approved by the president. Officials said the National Security Council interagency role would be "policy guidance" — only.

The new unit will be headquartered at the FBI and overseen by the NSC’s counter terror chief, John Brennan, who used to run the counter terror center at the CIA.

The briefers said they would also create a unit to do scientific studies of "best practices" of interrogation to find out what works.

They pledged that the U.S. would no longer "render" suspects to countries that torture prisoners and that renditions would be overseen by the State Department.

Given Brennan’s previous comments about rendition {Example from the Greenwald link:I think it allows us to have the option to move a person who is involved in terrorism or terrorism-related activities to a country where they can be effectively questioned or prosecuted.), I would think that we will have to watch carefully to see which countries are involved in this "new, improved" program.

"Civil liberties extreminsts" felt they had reason to celebrate when Barack Obama was elected President. We felt that the eight year nightmare of rampant lawlessness by our government would come to an end and that those who broke the law would be held to account. The nomination of Dawn Johnsen was particularly symbolic, as she would root out the corruption in the Office of Legal Counsel and set a tone for legal advice to the new Administration that falls squarely within the law. The sad facts that she has not yet been confirmed and that Obama is doing nothing of substance to get her confirmed while John Brennan has survived one derailed nomination attempt only to reappear in a position to continue his favored versions of lawlessness tell us that the nightmare continues.

If Obama truly cared about civil liberties and the rule of law, he would dismiss John Brennan from government service and make a recess appointment of Dawn Johnsen to head OLC. I’m not going to hold my breath on that happening.

photo by Mr Jaded

This story reports on an extraordinary 2004 article by a Harvard lecturer and former Chief of Neuropsychiatry at Guantanamo Bay, which made the shocking claim that "hard-core zealots" had "brains that are structurally and functionally different from us." Furthermore, the article stated, 100,000 "zealots" within the Muslim body politic would have to be eliminated, the way "malignant [cancer] cells" are removed from a healthy body.

The author of the article, "Terrorism – The Underlying Causes," in the Winter/Spring 2004 issue of the Intelligencer, Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies (PDF), house organ for the American Federation of Intelligence Officers (AFIO), was William Henry Anderson, M.D. Anderson’s piece received a stinging protest letter to the editor from psychologist and military ethics expert, Jean Maria Arrigo, but I’m not aware of any other complaint regarding this racist, fascistic article in the pages of a major intelligence services journal.

In fact, when, during her stint on the 2005 Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force of the American Psychological Association (APA), Dr. Arrigo tried to get the TF membership, stacked with military psychologists from Special Forces, SERE, and the CIA, to discuss the significance of the Anderson article, she was met with indifference and assurances that the matter was of no consequence, since Anderson had by then retired. The record of this can be seen by perusing the PENS listserv, posted by ProPublica a few months back.

The text of Anderson’s article is not online, as Intelligencer does not post its articles on the Internet. However, I have obtained a copy, and can report what I read.

The article starts out as a bloviating howler. Anderson quotes Sun Tzu, recapitulates the Aristotlean causal categories, and fulminates about "credulous enablers" and "useful idiots" that sabotage U.S. efforts to mount an effective defense against its enemies. Anderson regrets that the enablers and idiots will be with us for a long time, as they represent unfortunate but necessary aspects of human nature.

It is only when we get to the "zealots" that we, supposedly, enter new territory. The zealots are "a pathological departure" from "human nature" (emphasis added to quote below).

No, the zealots are another kind of person. They may be thought of as cells of a social body that have undergone malignant change.

Let us consider terrorism with an analogy from medicine — that of terrorism as a cancer. There are about 1.4 billion Muslims in the world. Embedded withing this healthy body are, perhaps, 100,000 people who are eager and active in pursuit of the goal of killing us. Just as successful treatment of cancer requires killing of the malignant cells, we will need to kill this small minority, since we have no evidence that they can be induced to change their minds.

Dr. Anderson is not content with making proclamations. He has an entire section of his article devoted to pseudo-scientific justifications for his claim that the "zealots" minds cannot be literally changed.

My hypothesis is that they, or some of them, at least have brains that are structurally and functionally different than ours. Their single-minded purpose is made possible by an underlying dysregulation of the brain.

Only fair use limitations prevent me from fully deconstructing Anderson’s strange neuroscience, where "overvalued ideas" arise from damage to the brain’s amygdala and frontal cortex. The damage is ostensibly due to hereditary factors (made worse by all those Muslim "consanguineous marriages," don’t you know), poor nutrition and environmental toxins found in Muslim countries, and possible birth injuries.

Anderson’s scientific racism calls to mind the similarly medicalized racism of the Nazis, as psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton described it over 20 years ago. In his book, The Nazi Doctors, Lifton quoted Nazi doctor Fritz Klein, in words not too different from Harvard lecturer and Massachusetts General Hospital Senior Psychiatrist Anderson:

Of course I am a doctor and I want to preserve life. And out of respect for human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind.

Dr. Arrigo caught this whiff of racist ideology in a letter to the Intelligencer published in Winter/Spring 2005. Note: the text at the link is not perfect. I have taken my quote from the original publication, which is not online.

William Henry Anderson’s essay… appears to me invalid and unsuitable for publication in this journal. I write to you as an AFIO member and a social psychologist who studies ethics of intelligence….

… in proposing direct extermination of Middle East terrorist zealots, Anderson adopts the infamous racist metaphor used by the Nazis — "tumors as Jews, Jews as tumors" in the body politic…. Anderson’s argument may be valuable historically as a sample of the thinking of the military authorities at Guantanamo Bay, but publication without editorial reservations appears to make The Intelligencer complicit with Anderson’s unsupported racism.

Dr. Anderson had a rejoinder to Arrigo’s criticism. He unrepentantly claimed "a robust scientific literature" that supposedly supports him, and dismissed Arrigo’s criticisms as "gratuitous name-calling," which failed to understand "the necessity, without delay, to focus on the danger at hand: to eliminate the cancer of terrorism."

Even more incredible was an accompanying editorial note from the Intelligencer editor, who reminded the AFIO audience that the journal is a forum for discussion, "as well as projections of future possibilities and theories." The editor assured the reader the journal will "remain open to a wide range of views," including "provocative views," and then adds:

What sounds politically incorrect today, might be the very thing that ensures our survival, tomorrow.

What is frightening about the Anderson article is that it so clearly represents a respected point of view within the intelligence services. It may not be the majority view, but it clearly has influence. Anderson himself was a featured commentator in the Joint Military Intelligence College 2005 publication, The Sources of Islamic Revolutionary Conduct. The JMIC is part of the Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, itself a component of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

As politicians and the punditry argue over whether or not there will be any accountability for torture or other war crimes committed by the Bush administration, the rot has spread much deeper, as evidenced by the AFIO article and its response. It will take a committed and determined cleansing of the Defense Department and the intelligence agencies to root out the evil that has insinuated itself there. It seems unlikely the current administration and political configuration is up to that immense task. But wishful thinking will not make racist ideologues like Anderson go away.

Chris Hayes, who doesn’t even cover the same beat, surpassed it.

Read Chris’ cover story for the new issue of The Nation. I’ve just finished reading it for the second time. It’s about the legacy of the Church Committee, the enduring relationship between secrecy and abuse, and the need for a new architecture of legislative restriction and refinement — and enhancement, since the proposition that secrecy is necessarily the ally of intelligence work is actually a dubious one — on the intelligence bureaucracy. If it doesn’t win an award, that proves journalism panels are corrupt.

I really could go on and on. Chris, with great precision, strips the cant and the myth away from the committee. This, for instance, is a subtle and overlooked point:

As historian Kathy Olmsted argues in her book Challenging the Secret Government, Church was never quite able to part with this conception of good Democrats/bad Republicans. Confronted with misdeeds under Kennedy and Johnson, he chose to view the CIA as a rogue agency, as opposed to one executing the president’s wishes. This characterization became the fulcrum of debate within the committee. At one point Church referred to the CIA as a "rogue elephant," causing a media firestorm. But the final committee report shows that to the degree the agency and other parts of the secret government were operating with limited control from the White House, it was by design. Walter Mondale came around to the view that the problem wasn’t the agencies themselves but the accretion of secret executive power: "the grant of powers to the CIA and to these other agencies," he said during a committee hearing, "is, above all, a grant of power to the president."

Exactly so. Church’s willingness to excuse Democratic abuses contributed to the misconception of the CIA as a rogue agency — the precise opposite of the agency’s relationship with the presidency. Presidents make conscious decisions not to pay attention or be informed about what their policies demand the CIA perform.

I really could go on. But just read the piece. I don’t know how someone this perceptive and this insightful and this diligent is allowed to go on television.

Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief US Prosecutor at Nuremberg

Attorney General Eric Holder said it before, and he said it again yesterday (emphasis added):

The men and women in our intelligence community perform an incredibly important service to our nation, and they often do so under difficult and dangerous circumstances. They deserve our respect and gratitude for the work they do. Further, they need to be protected from legal jeopardy when they act in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance. That is why I have made it clear in the past that the Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees. I want to reiterate that point today, and to underscore the fact that this preliminary review will not focus on those individuals.

And with these words, Holder baptized the infamous OLC memos as legally binding doctrine that validates the conduct of anyone who wishes to offer the same defense put forward by the defendants at Nuremberg: "Befehl ist Befehl," or in English, "an order is an order."

As one who has explored my own German heritage in depth, Nuremberg is quite familiar to me, and I can recognize "Befehl ist Befehl" in whatever language Holder would care to use to express it. That he would invoke it on behalf of agents of my own government is beyond odious.

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg and one of the architects of those proceedings, would be in tears to hear these words coming from one of those who followed in his footsteps as Attorney General of the United States.

Contrast Holder’s words above with those of Justice Jackson in his opening statement at the Trial of the Major War Criminals at Nuremberg on November 21, 1945 (Vol. 2, pp. 104-105):

It is my purpose to open the case, particularly under Count One of the Indictment, and to deal with the Common Plan or Conspiracy to achieve ends possible only by resort to Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity. My emphasis will not be on individual barbarities and perversions which may have occurred independently of any central plan. One of the dangers ever present is that this Trial may be protracted by details of particular wrongs and that we will become lost in a "wilderness of single instances". Nor will I now dwell on the activity of individual defendants except as it may contribute to exposition of the common plan.

The case as presented by the United States will be concerned with the brains and authority back of all the crimes. These defendants were men of a station and rank which does not soil its own hands with blood. They were men who knew how to use lesser folk as tools. We want to reach the planners and designers, the inciters and leaders without whose evil architecture the world would not have been for so long scourged with the violence and lawlessness, and wracked with the agonies and convulsions, of this terrible war.

Quite a difference, don’t you think? Holder says "never mind the planners and their orders — just go after those who went beyond their orders." As bad as that is, the comparison gets worse. . . .

Again from Jackson (p. 112), we get a picture of the kind of crimes he was talking about:

Secret arrest and indefinite detention, without charges, without evidence, without hearing, without counsel, became the method of inflicting inhuman punishment on any whom the Nazi police suspected or disliked. No court could issue an injunction, or writ of habeas corpus, or certiorari.

All this was set up with orders, memos, and legal opinions, listing procedures to be followed and directing the efforts of those lower down the chain of command, many of them secret but well documented within the circles of power. Sound familiar?

More Jackson (p. 144):

International law, natural law, German law, any law at all was to these men simply a propaganda device to be invoked when it helped and to be ignored when it would condemn what they wanted to do. . . . Of the criminal nature of these acts at least, the defendants had, as we shall show, clear knowledge. Accordingly, they took pains to conceal their violations.

Why does the DOJ’s classification of the OLC memos and their efforts to keep them away from the prying eyes of those in Congress charged with oversight until well after the fact come to mind? Why would an OLC opinion stating that the president has the unilateral power to withdraw from treaties [pdf] be classified at all?

Back to Jackson (p. 150):

Of course, the idea that a state, any more than a corporation, commits crimes, is a fiction. Crimes always are committed only by persons. While it is quite proper to employ the fiction of responsibility of a state or corporation for the purpose of imposing a collective liability, it is quite intolerable to let such a legalism become the basis of personal immunity.

The Charter [Articles 7 and 8] recognizes that one who has committed criminal acts may not take refuge in superior orders nor in the doctrine that his crimes were acts of states. These twin principles working together have heretofore resulted in immunity for practically everyone concerned in the really great crimes against peace and mankind. Those in lower ranks were protected against liability by the orders of their superiors. The superiors were protected because their orders were called acts of state. Under the Charter, no defense based on either of these doctrines can be entertained. Modern civilization puts unlimited weapons of destruction in the hands of men. It cannot tolerate so vast an area of legal irresponsibility.

Yesterday’s statement by Holder repeated his grant of personal immunity to those in lower ranks who followed orders, and earlier repeated statements by the Obama administration have made it clear that they don’t want to investigate the higher-ups in the Bush administration for fear of being seen as politicizing the work of justice and for fear of having their political agenda elsewhere derailed by the furor over such an investigation. In so doing, the Obama administration has taken the careful work of the most impressive judicial tribunal in history, and the legal doctrines outlined by one of the giants of the US legal system, and overturned them both.

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, British Deputy Chief Prosecutor, and de facto day-to-day head of British legal team at Nuremberg, described the actions of those at the upper levels of the chain of command like this (August 29, 1945, vol. 22, pp. 235-236):

They carried out orders which on the admission of many of them bit deep into the remnants of their consciences. They knew that they were doing what was wrong, but they now say "Befehl ist Befehl"–an order is an order.

All decent men find it difficult to blame others for absence of moral courage–they are only too conscious of their own failings in that direction. But there comes a point when, faced with crimes which are obvious murder or barbarity, there is a higher duty. . . . Great captains are not automata to be weighed against a rubber stamp. I need not traverse the history of our military figures–the philosophy of Montrose, the brooding thoughts of Marshal Ney, the troubled heart of Robert E. Lee in 1861–to find examples. Two of the greatest names in German military history spring to one’s mind: Von Clausewitz leaving the Prussian Army to serve in that of Russia; Yorck von Wartenburg making his decision of neutrality–both put what they deemed the needs of Europe and humanity above the orders of the moment. How much more clear and obvious was the duty when the work of drafting, issuing, and carrying out [various specific orders] meant the defiling of every idea which every soldier cherishes and holds dear; when–as all of them who ever served upon the Eastern Front could see with their own eyes–they were asked to support and co-operate in a calculated system of mass-extermination and utter brutality.

Great captains are not automata, and neither are great legal officers. Justice Jackson and Sir Maxwell-Fyfe understood that; Attorney General Holder apparently doesn’t.

Spencer talked about this a couple of weeks ago, noting how very bad an idea it would be for an investigation to ignore what he called "the climate of command responsibility within which any interrogator operated." But at least some of the interrogators knew their Nuremberg history, as Marcy noted at the end of her working thread on yesterday’s document dump:

One officer expressed concern that one day, Agency officers will wind up on some "wanted list" to appear before the World Court for war crimes stemming from activities [redacted] Another said "Ten years from now we’re going to be sorry we’re doing this … [but] it has to be done."

Attorney General Holder now sits in the upper levels of the chain of command, and he is being confronted with exactly the kind of "higher duty" question when it comes to investigating not simply the underlings who exceeded their authority but the very people who granted the authority in the first place. Sadly, he prefers to let the rubber stamp of authority rule over the needs of the nation to hold those in authority to account.

I guess this means he won’t be using my opening statement for the prosecution in the trial of US v. Bradbury, Bybee, and Yoo. Perhaps it might come in handy if (or when?) the House Judiciary Committee opens impeachment hearings on Judge Bybee. Oh, Mr. Conyers . . .

Patterns via -sel-. Gorgeous macro detail and color.

Today, it’s another inane installment of the continuing saga of the GOP’s longest-running program wherein the buck stops anywhere but here.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the overwrought and not-so-dulcet tones of Kit Bond and friends, in Accountability For Thee, But Not For Me:

U.S. Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.) was joined by U.S. Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and other senators today to express concern about recent reports that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder intends to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate CIA officials who interrogated al Qaeda terrorists.

“We are deeply concerned by recent news reports that you are ‘poised to appoint a special prosecutor’ to investigate CIA officials who interrogated al Qaeda terrorists. Such an investigation could have a number of serious consequences, not just for the honorable members of the intelligence community, but also for the security of all Americans,” the senators wrote in a letter to Holder.

Shorter GOP: "No matter what illegal and unethical policies we may have championed or enabled, no matter what illegal activities may have been perpetrated, no matter what agencies of the federal government we have helped to corrupt, manipulate or mangle. . . accountability is only for the other guys. Never, ever for us."

If they were at least manning up to the need for investigations of illegality that reach however high such misconduct may have occurred, I might have the slightest glimmer of respect for them. Because, frankly, leaving line agents holding the bag for Dick Cheney, David Addington and the neocon crew isn’t exactly appropriate, now is it?

But nope, that’s not their point.

It’s bad enough that the special prosecutor mandate doesn’t seem broad enough at this juncture to encompass policy making at all levels. Because that sends a signal that if you hold power, you aren’t held to account. Only the little guy is.

Is it any wonder that so many things in this country are a mess right now when "look the other way" is considered appropriate behavior from our leadership?

I wouldn’t condone that as an excuse from my 6 year old. And I’m sure as hell not going to accept it from a sitting Senator who takes an oath to uphold the laws of this country and its constitution.

Emptywheel, Spencer, CCR, Glenn and the ALCU have more on the CIA docs. I’m still reading through — looks like it will be a highlighter and post-its kinda week. 

(H/T to reader wb.)