-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: January 9, 2007 5:59:18 PM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Cheney Tightens His Grip on White House Foreign Policy
White House chose new Intelligence chief
to darken Iran Intelligence Estimate,
broaden domestic surveillance
Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: Monday January 8, 2007
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/
Intelligence_officials_believe_White_House_chose_0108.html
Nominee's company audited
SWIFT banking spy program
The nomination of retired Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike"
McConnell to be Director of National Intelligence is part of an
effort by the Vice President to tighten the Administration’s grip
on domestic intelligence and grease the wheels for a more
aggressive stance towards Iran, current and former intelligence
officials believe.
If confirmed, McConnell will replace current National Intelligence
Director John Negroponte, who was tapped Friday to become Deputy
Secretary of State under Secretary Condoleezza Rice. According to
officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, Negroponte’s exit
followed a lengthy internal administration battle between the
Office of the Vice President and the two-year-old Office of the
Director of National Intelligence.
According to officials close to both men, two issues surround
Negroponte’s departure and McConnell’s nomination: a forthcoming
National Intelligence Estimate on Iran – which the White House
could use to buttress a case for military force – and pressure from
the Vice President to augment domestic surveillance.
Negroponte had resisted both efforts. Tensions soared after
Negroponte made a public statement last year that countered the
administration position that Iran was an immediate threat and that
its alleged nuclear weapons program was in an advanced stage.
“The NIE on Iran is at issue,” said one former senior intelligence
officer close to Negroponte.
The National Intelligence Estimate is an interagency report that
synthesizes information across all intelligence agencies on a
particular topic, providing an overall assessment and analysis. In
private conversations with RAW STORY, current and former US
intelligence officials from various agencies raised concerns with
McConnell’s appointment and its effect on the Iran NIE.
“McConnell will go along with whatever [Cheney tells him to do] and
make sure that no objective NIE comes out,” one former senior
intelligence officer said.
A spokesman for the National Intelligence Director’s Office,
however, denied the Estimate would be affected.
“I don't have any reason to believe that the change with Mr.
Negroponte and Admiral McConnell will delay the NIEs on Iran or
Iraq at this point,” spokesman Chad Colton said Sunday. The Iran
Estimate is scheduled to be released some time this month.
All of the officials RAW STORY spoke with had reservations about
Vice Admiral McConnell.
In a call Friday, President Reagan’s Director of Intelligence
Programs for the National Security Council from 1984-1987 and Chief
of Operations and Analysis at the Central CIA's Counterterrorism
Center under President Bush Sr. Vincent Cannistraro called the
nomination “a disaster.”
Others said McConnell would follow the White House's direction.
“McConnell’s not an effective manager,” said former CIA officer
Larry Johnson. “He will be likely to acquiesce to White House
pressure on issues.”
"McConnell was not Rummeyesque," Johnson added. "He doesn't have a
clear vision. He's not a strong manager. "
Johnson called McConnell
The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran
Parts of an earlier Iran Intelligence Estimate were leaked to the
Washington Post in 2005. These excerpts asserted that Iran was at
least ten years away from possessing any significant nuclear
enrichment capability and contrasted sharply with White House
estimates, which had warned Iran could mount a full-scale attack in
3-5 years.
“The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among
U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public
statements by the White House,” the Post’s Dafna Linzer reported.
“Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered
proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal.”
Negroponte defended the published findings, attempting to push back
against pressure from the Vice President’s office, and maintained
his opposition to military action against Iran.
By March 2006, however, the Department of Defense – on orders from
the Vice President’s Office – had created the Iranian Directorate,
which was largely a recreation of the notorious Office of Special
Plans. The Office of Special Plans operated in the build-up to the
Iraq war and is believed by most experts to have been the conduit
through which pre-Iraq war intelligence was allegedly manipulated,
if not cooked outright.
In a previous RAW STORY article on the Iranian Directorate, John
Pike of Global Security – a Washington-based intelligence
clearinghouse – said, “It was created to, as Dean Acheson urged
Harry Truman, to scare hell out of the American people by making
things a little bit clearer than the truth.”
The creation of the Iran Directorate sharply undercut the Director
of National Intelligence and what sources say were Negroponte’s
efforts to collect the most comprehensive and accurate intelligence
on Iran and provide it directly to the President. The Office was
created in 2005 by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention
Act to centralize information coming out of all 16 US intelligence
agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
According to officials, Negroponte, while trying to work around
interagency tensions, was not given the requisite authority to
override pressure from Cheney’s office.
In October, Negroponte publicly cautioned against the use of force
with regard to Iran, telling President Bush that because of
“technical errors” in Iran's nuclear program, the situation was not
an emergency.
Domestic Surveillance
The other key area of concern for the intelligence community in
McConnell’s nomination is the Executive Branch’s attempt to expand
domestic surveillance programs, especially those conducted by the
National Security Agency.
Current and former intelligence officials say that Negroponte and
his staff were not comfortable with the level of domestic
surveillance or the use of NSA wiretaps that were being pushed by
the White House.
“[The office of the Vice President] could not get Negroponte to do
anything with NSA and domestic surveillance,” said one former
senior intelligence official. “McConnell worked with Cheney during
the Gulf War.”
“He is not competent, but he is someone they can control,” the
official added.
None of the intelligence sources would describe what types of
programs were at issue or confirm if these programs were those
already known to the public. But they emphasized that compared to
Negroponte, McConnell would be much more willing to accommodate the
White House position on domestic surveillance.
McConnell’s background is in surveillance programs, dating to when
he served during the Gulf War as Director of the National Military
Joint Intelligence Center, followed by a term as Director of the
National Security Agency. After leaving government service in 1996,
McConnell became a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, a major
defense contractor.
According to his online Booz Allen biography, McConnell led the
“firm’s support to the Presidential Commission on Critical
Infrastructure Protection, focusing on the vulnerabilities of the
banking and financial sector.”
McConnell’s unique banking intelligence experience aligns with a
major facet of President Bush’s international banking surveillance
efforts.
In June 2006, The New York Times revealed that the CIA had been
given authority by the Bush administration to mine the banking
records of suspected “Al Qaeda” members using the Society for
Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).
“The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing
transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by
reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking
industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily
between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions,”
Eric Licthblau and James Risen reported for The Times. “The records
mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money
overseas and into and out of the United States.”
The CIA and Treasury Departments both said they had instituted
safeguards for protecting privacy by hiring an “outside auditor” to
provide a check against civil rights violations. The company
auditing the SWIFT program is Booz Allen Hamilton.
In September 2006, Privacy International and the American Civil
Liberties Union issued a joint statement describing why Booz Allen
Hamilton was not a genuine “check” on the SWIFT program.
“Booz Allen is one of the largest US Government contractors, with
hundreds of millions of dollars in US Government contracts awarded
each year,” the groups wrote in a statement. “Booz Allen has a
history of working closely with US Government agencies on
electronic surveillance, including the Total Information Awareness
program. Among Booz Allen's senior consulting staff are several
former members of the intelligence community, including a former
Director of the CIA and a former director of the NSA. In its
private consulting practice, Booz Allen has been at the forefront
of the push to increased information sharing, calling for private
businesses to provide more information to the US Government.”
In addition to his work for Booz Allen, in 2004 McConnell also
joined the board of directors of security firm CompuDyne, which
hopes to obtain more federal contracts in the area of “signals
intelligence” – interception and surveillance, in common parlance –
an area which is well known as being McConnell’s specialty.
Muriel Kane contributed to the research for this article.
www.ctrl.org
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