The Pennsylvania Progressive

Book Review: "Still Broken"

A.J. "Alex" Rossmiller exposes the weaknesses and failures of politicizing our intelligence structure in his new book.  A writer on national security issues for AmericaBlog, AJ has been must reading for me since he joined John Aravosis' team at this excellent blog.  AJ joined the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) after college and spent six months on duty in Iraq.  Following his tour he went to work on the Iraq intelligence team in The Pentagon. 

"Still Broken" is his personal story.  Intensely personal in some areas, something I thought sometimes distracted from his message, it did an a personal touch.  His tale of how our critical intelligence structure was broken by Bush Administration officials, the military hierarchy concerned only with pleasing Secretary Rumsfeld, and his riveting telling of what it was like serving in a war zone is recommended reading.

Rossmiller's basic message is one of political leaders interfering in intelligence analysis and forcing changes to fix the intelligence around the policy.  I kept thinking about the Downing Street Memo released by the British which detailed how the Bush Administration had made up its mind about war in Iraq and was fixing the intelligence to match their failed policies.  Alex's tale arrives later but shows this same mindset remained and was pervasive throughout DIA.  Analysts were constantly being told they were "off message" and forced to change their reports.  Often these were changed higher up the food change and differed completely from the expert, professional analytical conclusions.

For example Ales wasn't allowed to use the term "civil war" when, in his opinion, that was what was happening in Iraq.  "Off message" is a political term, not an intelligence one.  It means a campaign has drifted away from the message it is conveying to the public.  He also expressed surprise and dismay at the constant stream of lies being told to the country which were diametrically opposite what their intelligence had established.

The broken system resulting from these failures meant valuable analysts, people in whom we invested much, left government service.  Rossmiller is but one example.  Morale plunged, working conditions were abdominal with not even enough computers for the staff.  Some of this can be written off to Pentagon bureaucratic incompetence but remains inexcusable.  With a war going on and people's lives at stake those working on the intelligence didn't even have a permanent location or regular access to information systems.

If you want to understand why our intelligence system failed us and why it continues to do so read "Still Broken."  Then contact your representatives in Washington and ask what is being done to correct these problems.  A few excerpts:

"What I did see was broken policy, created and blindly supported by DoD and White House leadership against all rationality and common sense."  (page 78)

"It is also possible, however, that the environment the Bush administration has created, in which loyalty is the ultimate virtue and officials at all levels are afraid to report unwelcome information up the chain of command, has infected the intelligence community.  If approval depends upon telling supervisors what they want to hear, or if careers rely on giving "good" news, then the culture of corruption and atmosphere of fear created by the Bush administration has crippled our intelligence efforts.  Similarly, if intelligenc eis adjusted due to ideological considerations-because some officials place loyalty to their political allies above loyalty to facts and reasoned assessments-that, too, would cripple the intelligence process.  If those elements of conscious unwitting intelligence manipulation were the cause of the unremitting adjustments to analysis in my office, I have even more serious concerns about how senior analytic and managerial positions are awarded and maintained."  (page 158)

"This kind of behavior begins at the top, and many in the office blamed an administration that disdains accountability and rewards ineptitude."  (page 158)

"The bad habits created during the lead-up to Iraq were being reinforced rather than corrected, causing great potential harm to America's security and the U.S. intelligence community.  I started to wonder whether my very presence represented tacit approval of a system that I recognized as broken." (page 159)

Stll broken.

New Book Shows White House Power Grab

A former high ranking lawyer for the Justice Department has written a book detailing the power grab by George W. Bush and engineered by Dick Cheney's office that has violated American's constitutional civil rights in unprecedented fashion.  Jack Goldsmith was the head of DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel and charged with insuring there was sound legal basis for everything the Administration did.  The book, "The Terror Presidency," chronicles the misdeeds and flimsy legal basis White House lawyer David Addington, now Cheney's Chief of Staff, used to greatly expand the power of the President.

An example:

"After 9/11, they and other top officials in the administration dealt with FISA the way they dealt with other laws they didn't like: they blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations," Goldsmith wrote, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs spying by U.S. agencies within the United States.

This isn't news to people who have been paying attention.  What is news is how they did this, who was involved and the extent to which it was done.  Only proper and full Congressional oversight will reveal all these answers.  Goldsmith's job was to protect the laws and the rights of the people.  Addington constantly pushed and pushed for more power.

"As I absorbed the opinions, I concluded that some were deeply flawed: sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the President."

According to the book, when Goldsmith's legal opinions didn't agree with the White House Addington said:  "The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections. You cannot question his decision."

So, in this Administration the President is all powerful and answers to no one.  Tell us something we don't know Mr. Goldsmith.  Apparently he will and I can't wait for publication.

"At the Center of the Storm"

Now that election day is passed I'm catching up...on reading, lawn work, house work, you name it.  I finally got the chance to sit down with George Tenet's recent book and am about halfway through.  Reading a memoir is always something absorbed with a grain of salt.  This is directly one person's perspective, from their ivory tower (usually) and written in the way they'd like history to judge their actions.

Once you keep that in perspective they're treasures of information;  insights into who the person is, how they think, how they acted in moments of great import and stress.  They are peeks into history providing context for events we could observe only from afar.  Tenet's book is fascinating in the background it provides on the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the myriad of threats they were dealing with the months prior. 

Writing about national security issues I'm always cognizant of how little I actually know.  I have to rely on my historical knowledge, instincts, and context and knowledge gained from reading many such books over the decades.    On the outside, however, you never know the details of what's current.  Conversely those on the inside usually miss the historical context and larger picture.  Observing from the outside is seeing the forest and no trees while those inside the beltway see the trees but no forest.  Reading books like Tenet's gives me some insight into the trees he was seeing at the time. 

That's what's fascinating about these memoirs and why I love reading the books.  Tenet's book is also well written and moves along.  It may be the fact these were historic times of great interest.  I was disappointed he devoted less than two pages to Tora Bora.  This was the mountainous region where we lost Usama bin Laden.  Tenet acknowledges the CIA was leading the effort in Afghanistan instead of the Pentagon and this wound up costing us in Tora Bora.  I cannot help but wonder how we might have captured the terrorist there if the Pentagon had had a battalion available on ready standby status for just such an opportunity.

Regardless I thought the book omitted an awfully lot about that failure.  I'm very curious to read what he has to say about Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson and the exposure of one of his agents for political purposes and the reaction to that within CIA.  It appears only the final chapter deals with this issue and that surprises me as I'd think this had to be a major issue during his tenure as DCI.    I'm looking forward to reading this part of the book.  All in all I recommend it as good reading material.

Tenet Criticized

George Tenet's book about his years as CIA Director is getting a lot of attention.  I haven't had a chance to get it yet but will this week.  A few thoughts based on what I've heard thus far in interviews and print:  he seems to reiterate much of what Richard Clarke said in his book several years ago.  I don't necessarily see where he disagrees with Clarke.  The fact there was no substantive discussion about whether to go to war is extremely disturbing.

If Tenet and others knew the intelligence wasn't there to support what Administration officials were telling the public they had an ethical and moral obligation to speak up.  Lives were at stake.  Many hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and many more destroyed as a result of their inaction, their failures to speak up.  That cannot be pardoned.

A group of former CIA officers want him to donate proceeds of the book sales to those hurt by the war.  This seems just.  Tenet shouldn't be profiting from his failure to speak up when it was required.   Tenet  didn't even speak out after he left office when many were hoping he would.  He hit the speaking tour and even appeared at nearby Kutztown University and neglected to say these things:

In the book, and during the sometimes combative interview, Tenet said there was never significant debate among President Bush's top advisers about the threat Iraq posed before the invasion. He wrote that the White House had no strategy for the post-invasion period and that senior CIA analysts had warned Bush and others in the administration that a chaotic postwar situation in Iraq would be exploited by al-Qaeda.

But Tenet did not say those things publicly at the time of his resignation, when Bush was running for reelection and championing progress in Iraq, and he remained publicly silent for three years, until he completed the book, which garnered a $4 million advance.

His $4 million book advance prevented him from speaking up earlier when it might have saved lives.  He neglected to speak up at any time other than to enrich himself.  It's hard to excuse his conduct.

Update:  I found this fascinating article at Booman Tribune written by former intelligence officer Larry Johnson.  Must reading folks.

Man In The Middle

I just got back from Philadelphia and meeting John Amaechi.  What an impressive man, and I'm not talking about his physical stature, all 6'9" of that.  John is a former Penn State and NBA star and he recently came out.  This has sparked a media fascination since he's the first NBA player to ever come out as gay.  Now he's on a national book tour.  A bunch of us Penn Staters met at the Barnes & Noble in Rittenhouse Square to meet him and go for coffee afterwards.

About fifteen of us from a Penn State honor society which John also belongs to sat with him for at least two hours and discussed all sorts of issues.   This was after John had spent at least 90 minutes patiently answering questions and signing books.  He's gracious, generous, smart and comes up with the best answers of any interviewee I've seen in a long while.  Of course I watch a lot of politicians answering questions so maybe part of that is the breath of fresh air a non candidate brings.  Still, watching him on CNN recently I was incredibly impressed with how he answered the questions put forth. 

This afternoon he answered everything from the difference between being Black and gay in Britain and here (John was born here but raised in England), to his charity, to how old he was when he knew he was gay (9), to life in the NBA as a gay man.  There were also questions about Tim Hardaway, Ann Coulter and Rene Portland.  Someone even asked him to define gaydar for him and he did a fantastic job responding.

Over coffee afterwards he said almost every stop has someone who attends just to harass him about his sexuality.  I suppose that doesn't surprise me, especially after the poison emitted from the depths of Ms. Coultergeist last week but it must get grinding after a while.  He handles everything with such grace I'm amazed.  The group of (mostly) young Penn Staters was very encouraging to me.  This was a very impressive, dynamic bunch of people, all high acheivers.  As I sat there it occurred to me that not one of them would have qualified for the hat society in my day.  We were strictly a group of senior (white) men.  I've never been so proud of having worked for diversity as I was watching this group this afternoon.  This is what we strive to achieve, this is what it's all about.  Granted we aren't anywhere near our destination but it's significant progress.

Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter

Go buy this new book about Ann Coulter.  The author is one of the contributors at Crooks and Liars.