CIA and the Washington Post: Joined at the Hip
By Melvin A. Goodman
<http://pubrecord.org/commentary/867-cia-and-the-washington-post-joined-at-the-hip.html>http://pubrecord.org/commentary/867-cia-and-the-washington-post-joined-at-the-hip.html
Under the stewardship of
<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/fred+hiatt/>Fred
Hiatt, the editorial and op-ed pages of the
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/>Washington Post
have gradually moved to the right. Post
editorials and op-eds have defended the decision
to go to war in Iraq; opposed any improvement in
bilateral relations with Russia; refused to
acknowledge Israel's misuse of military power in
the Middle East; and lobbied against the need for
investigation of the detention and interrogation
programs of the Bush administration.
As part of the campaign to prevent a rigorous
examination of "enhanced interrogation
techniques" (read: "torture and abuse"), the
Washington Post's editorial pages have been
particularly protective of the Central
Intelligence Agency and its senior leaders--the
ideological drivers for torture and extraordinary
renditions policies. These CIA leaders,
particularly deputy director
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Kappes>Steven
Kappes and acting general counsel
<https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/leadership/john-a-rizzo.html>John
Rizzo, are not trying to protect the reputation
and mission of the CIA; they are trying to
protect themselves.
Surely senior journalists from the mainstream
media must understand that reliance on anonymous
CIA clandestine sources is neither good reporting
nor professional journalism. Many of these
"anonymous sources" almost certainly are former
and current CIA officials seeking to protect
themselves.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tenet>George
Tenet,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._McLaughlin>John
McLaughlin, and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O._Brennan>John
Brennan are individuals who fit that description.
In the past several days, the Post has carried
e<http://pubrecord.org/administrator/index.php?option=com_content§ionid=1&task=edit&cid%5B%5D=867>ditorials
and op-eds by its own editorial writer
<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/david+ignatius/>David
Ignatius; its longtime national security writer
<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/walter+pincus/>Walter
Pincus; former CIA director
<http://www.nndb.com/people/719/000038605/>Porter
Goss; former CIA operative
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scheuer>Michael
Scheuer; and
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042002818.html>Marc
Thiessen, a former chief speechwriter for
President George W. Bush. These articles have
been similar in content and similar to the
statements of other CIA directors past and
present
(<http://www.politico.com/arena/bio/leon_e_panetta.html>Leon
Panetta,
<http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=5746>Michael
Hayden, Goss, Tenet, and
<http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/deutch/biography.html>John
Deutch) who opposed the release of the memoranda
of the Justice Department's Office of Legal
Counsel that justified the use of torture and
abuse.
The
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042403459.html?hpid=opinionsbox1>Scheuer
article is particularly scurrilous, accusing
President Obama of self-righteousness and
intellectual arrogance" in deciding to release
the torture memos. Scheuer believes that an end
to torture will lead to future terrorist attacks
that could involve the "loss of major cities and
tens of thousands of countrymen," and that the
president will bear some responsibility. Scheuer,
an aggressive proponent of torture and abuse, was
the leader of the
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43899-2004Nov11.html>CIA's
Osama bin Laden unit in the 1990s. His behavior
at CIA was so bizarre that he was eventually
quarantined by the Agency, spending the last few
years of his employment in the Agency's library
without access to classified documents.
These Post articles also reflect the opinion of
key members of the
<https://www.cia.gov/offices-of-cia/clandestine-service/index.html>CIA's
National Clandestine Service and
<https://www.cia.gov/offices-of-cia/general-counsel/index.html>Office
of the General Counsel, who want to cover up CIA
war crimes and prevent any authoritative
investigation of the CIA's creation, operation,
and maintenance of its detention and
interrogation programs. The CIA took a similar
stance in trying to block investigations of such
intelligence failures as the inability to track
the decline of the Soviet Union in the 1980s; the
9/11 intelligence failure in 2001; and the
provision of specious intelligence to the White
House and the Congress of the United States in
the run-up to the war with Iraq in 2003.
The leader of the Washington Post editorial squad
has been Ignatius, who has developed close
relations with CIA clandestine operatives over a
period that spans three decades. Ignatius' key
source in the 1970s was the late
<http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/rcames.htm>Robert
Ames, one of the most successful clandestine
officers in the history of the CIA. Ames was the
source for most of Ignatius' writings on the
Middle East as well as for his novel about CIA
clandestine tradecraft,
"<http://www.amazon.com/Agents-Innocence-Novel-David-Ignatius/dp/0393317382>Agents
of Innocence."
Over the years, retired and active members of the
directorate of operations have taken their
stories to Ignatius; they have been rewarded by
Ignatius' one-sided accounts of CIA derring-do
and willingness to ignore operational and
analytical failures. Ignatius is welcome to his
opinion on these matters, of course, but he
should not be permitted to create facts that
don't square with the history of the recent past.
A comparison of last week's op-eds by
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042102969.html>Ignatius
and
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042403339.html>Goss,
a former CIA clandestine operative and a former
chairman of the House intelligence committee as
well as the CIA director during the period of
torture and abuse, is particularly revealing.
Both Ignatius and Goss argue that foreign
intelligence services will not share sensitive
intelligence with the United States and the CIA
because of the declassification and release of
the torture memoranda. That is nonsense!
The truth is that European liaison services as
well as other intelligence services have tempered
their cooperation with the CIA because of the use
of torture and abuse as well as the extraordinary
rendition of innocent individuals from their
countries to intelligence services in the Middle
East. The CIA's extra-legal activities have
complicated and undermined the task of
maintaining credible relations with our allies in
the battle against terrorism.
Both Ignatius and Goss argue that, because of the
release of the memos, CIA clandestine operatives
will keep their heads down and avoid assignments
that carry political risk, and that the decline
in CIA "morale and effectiveness" will harm
American national security. More nonsense! CIA
operatives and analysts are professionals who
pride themselves on service to the country and
their oath to the Constitution.
Very few of them took part in the corruption of
intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
and very few participated in the policies of
torture and abuse. They know that the law should
not be broken and they want to get these issues
behind them so that they can continue to serve
the national interests of the United States. They
know that painful truths must be acknowledged and
that some price must be paid by all for the
chicanery of a few.
If Agency personnel were permitted to share their
opinions about torture and abuse with the press,
a large majority would oppose the practices.
Unfortunately, only those officers seeking to
cover-up their own activities have the temerity
to talk to reporters. The notion that the
declassification of these memoranda have given
the "enemy invaluable information about the rules
by which we operate" is particularly ludicrous.
The enemy has had this information for more than
five years, ever since every major newspaper in
the world published the unconscionable
<http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/03/24/abughraib>images
from Abu Ghraib. General officers who have served
in Iraq and Afghanistan have testified that these
images are the most important recruitment tool in
the hands of terrorists and fundamentalists and
have contributed to the deaths of many American
men and women.
Two of the most senior Post writers,
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/biographies/david-s-broder.html>David
Broder and Walter Pincus, who have been reporting
on national political and national security
issues for decades, joined the apologists for CIA
actions. Pincus
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042402441.html>argues
that previous investigations of CIA
transgressions damaged the Agency. He ignores the
fact that the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee>Church
Commission in the 1970s led to the creation of
the Senate and House intelligence oversight
committees as well as the introductions of
"findings" that made sure a president had to vet
plans for covert action with the oversight
committees. And he fails to note that the
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm>CIA's
illegal role in Iran-contra led to the creation
of an independent, statutory Inspector General to
make sure that CIA transgressions could be
inspected internally and reported to the Justice
Department whenever necessary.
Broder
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042402902.html>wrongly
tells us that the Justice Department memos on
torture demonstrate that the Bush administration
conducted a "deliberate and internally
well-debated policy decision, made in the proper
placesŠby the proper officials." If he had read
the memos more carefully, he would have concluded
that there were no policy debates regarding
torture and abuse, extraordinary renditions, and
secret prisons. Professional interrogators, for
example, were excluded from the discussions.
Thiessen, the chief speechwriter for President
Bush and perhaps the author of Bush's claim that
"we don't torture," resorts to
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042002818.html>misinformation
to make his case. He states that the
waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed
(waterboarded 183 times) led to the discovery of
a plot to destroy a building in Los Angeles, but
that operation had been compromised more than a
year before KSM was captured.
<>
Thiessen claims no critical information would
have been gained from Abu Zubaydah
(<http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/04/22/abu-zubaydah-waterboarded-83-times-for-10-pieces-of-intelligence/>waterboarded
83 times) without the use of waterboarding. FBI
and CIA officials have testified, however, that
all relevant information from Zubaydah was
obtained with traditional interrogation measures
and that Zubaydah didn't have a great deal of
intelligence to offer. Thiessen's assertion that
the 2004 report of the CIA's Inspector General
concluded that waterboarding "yielded critical
information" is almost certainly made up out of
whole cloth; it is unlikely that Thiessen has
seen that report, which has not been released.
Actually, we know from the authoritative 2004
report from the
<https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/cia-briefings-of-presidential-candidates/blurb.htm>CIA's
Inspector General that there was no proof that
torture enabled the Bush administration to thwart
"specific imminent attacks" and that the CIA's
Office of Medical Services (OMS) concluded that
the risks to the health of prisoners outweighed
any potential intelligence benefit.
It is noteworthy that once the OMS got involved
in the use of waterboarding, the tactic was
halted. FBI Director Robert Mueller also has
stated that no intelligence from "enhanced
interrogation techniques" disrupted any attacks
on the United States. The CIA IG added that the
CIA had no way of distinguishing detainees with
relevant information from those who did not,
which meant that many prisoners were tortured
unnecessarily.
Even the editorial gurus of the Washington Post
must know that White House speech writers are
unlikely to have access to such documents and are
unlikely to have sufficient information to
discuss such issues authoritatively. But that
doesn't stop them from publishing propaganda from
Thiessen or regular commentary from
<http://www.cfr.org/bios/12454/michael_j_gerson.html>Michael
Gerson, another chief speechwriter and apologist
for President Bush. Thiessen's charge that
President Obama's decision to release the torture
memoranda is "one of the most dangerous and
irresponsible acts every by an American president
during a time of war-and Americans may die as a
result" is obscene and irresponsible.
Ironically, Goss acknowledges at the end of his
op-ed that the "bottom line is that we cannot
succeed unless we have good intelligence."
Professional interrogators from military and
civilian agencies have testified that torture and
abuse do not lead to good intelligence. And
Broder concludes that we needed an investigation
after 9/11 to understand "the flawed performances
and gaps in the system and make the necessary
repairs to reduce the chances of a deadly
repetition."
Like 9/11, only a serious investigation will
allow us to understand the flawed processes and
the gaps in the system. Unlike 9/11, the Bush
administration's approval of torture and abuse
served to undermine the reputation of the United
States, the legitimacy of our aims, and the moral
fiber of the people who engage in such depravity.
Melvin A. Goodman, a regular contributor to
<http://www.pubrecord.org/>The Public Record, is
senior fellow at the
<http://www.ciponline.org/>Center for
International Policy and adjunct professor of
government at Johns Hopkins University. He spent
more than 42 years in the U.S. Army, the Central
Intelligence Agency, and the Department of
Defense. His most recent book is
<http://www.amazon.com/Failure-Intelligence-Decline-Fall-CIA/dp/0742551105/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236824645&sr=8-1>"Failure
of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA."
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