January 15, 2009
What's Hayden Hidin'?
By Ray McGovern
LINK

Outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden is going around town telling folks he has warned President-elect Barack Obama "personally and forcefully" that if Obama authorizes an investigation into controversial activities like water boarding, "no one in Langley will ever take a risk again."

Upon learning this from what we former intelligence officers used to call an "A-1 source" (completely reliable with excellent access to the information), the thought that came to me in the face of such chutzpah was from Cicero's livid oration against the Roman usurper Cataline: "Quousque, tandem, abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra!" — or "How long, at last, O Cataline, will you abuse our patience!"

Cicero had had enough. And so, apparently, has Obama, who has been confirmed once again of the wisdom of his vote against Hayden's becoming CIA director. It was striking that Obama did not even mention Hayden on Jan. 9, when the president-elect formally named Leon Panetta as his choice to run the CIA and Dennis Blair to be director of national intelligence.

Obama did announce that Mike McConnell, whom Blair will replace after he is confirmed, has been given a sinecure/consolation prize—a seat on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Hayden, a former Air Force general, should be given a seat in the military prison in Leavenworth (see below).

It is not only a bit cheeky, but more than a little disingenuous that Hayden should think to advise Obama "personally and forcefully" against investigating illegal activities authorized by president George W. Bush, since Hayden himself can already be described as an unindicted co-conspirator based on publicly available information. He has bragged loudly about the crimes in which he was directly involved, and has defended others, like what he has called "high-end" interrogation techniques—water boarding, for example.

Could it be clearer? "Water boarding is torture," said President-elect Obama last Sunday to George Stephanopoulos. Torture is a crime. Obama added, twice, that no one is "above the law," although also citing his "belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backward."

Despite the President-elect's equivocations, it seems that President Bush and the current CIA director have a problem. And apparently Hayden's palms are sweaty enough to warrant, in his view, a thinly veiled threat.

In the outrage category, that threat/warning goes well beyond chutzpah. What an insult to my former colleagues at the CIA to suggest that they lack the integrity to fulfill their important duties in consonance with the law; to suggest that they would treat the incoming president like a substitute teacher!

"Should Have Been Court-martialed"

So spoke the late Gen. Bill Odom on Jan. 4, 2006 referring to Hayden. Odom's comment came before being interviewed by George Kenney, a former Foreign Service officer and now producer of "Electronic Politics." And President Bush "should be impeached," added Odom with equal fury.

Odom ruled out discussing during the actual interview the warrantless eavesdropping that had been revealed by the New York Times just a few weeks earlier. In a memorandum of conversation Kenney opined that Odom was so angry that he realized that if he started discussing the issue, he would not be able to control himself.

Why was Gen. Odom so angry? Because he, like all uniformed officers, took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; because he took that oath seriously; and because, as head of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988, he did his best to ensure that all employees strictly observed NSA's "First Commandment"—Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.

Also disappointed was former NSA Director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who led NSA from 1977 to 1981, was one of the country's most highly respected senior managers of intelligence, and actually authored parts of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. At a public discussion at the New York Public Library on May 8, 2006, Inman took strong issue with Hayden's flouting of FISA:

"There clearly was a line in the FISA statutes which says you couldn't do this," said Inman. He went on to call specific attention to an "extra sentence put in the bill that said, 'You can't do anything that is not authorized by this bill.'" Inman spoke proudly of the earlier ethos at NSA, where "it was deeply ingrained that you operate within the law and you get the law changed if you need to."

Hayden the Martinet

In contrast, Michael Hayden, who was NSA director from 1999 to 2005, chose to salute when ordered by Vice President Dick Cheney to create and implement an aggressive NSA program skirting the strict legal restrictions of FISA. Hayden then proceeded to do the White House's bidding in conning the invertebrates posing as leaders of the Senate and House intelligence "oversight" (more accurately—"overlook") committees.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller is a sorry example of the fox co-opted by the hens. There is precious little the administration and intelligence community did not get away with under his feckless tutelage of the Senate intelligence overlook committee. For a discussion of how politicians like Rockefeller and other intelligence "overseers" work hand-in-hand with the folks they are supposed to be overseeing, see:
"Jay Rockefeller Awarded Intelligence Public Service Medal: For Telecom and Torture Immunity?"

The timid Rockefeller famously sent a hand-written note to Cheney expressing some misgivings about warrantless eavesdropping, but then misplaced the copy he had squirreled away in his safe. Cheney ridiculed him recently on TV, revealing that Rockefeller recently asked him if he could please make him another copy and send it to him.

In Dec. 2005, when the NSA program of warrantless eavesdropping hit the press, Hayden agreed to play point man with the smoke and mirrors. Small wonder that the White House later deemed him the perfect man to head the CIA.

Examination of Conscience (Short Form)

A whiff of conscience showed through during Hayden's nomination hearing, though, when he flubbed the answer to what was supposed to be a soft, fat pitch from administration loyalist, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri, now vice-chair of the Senate intelligence overlook committee:

"Did you believe that your primary responsibility as director of NSA was to execute a program that your NSA lawyers, the Justice Department lawyers, and White House officials all told you was legal, and that you were ordered to carry it out by the president of the United States?"

Instead of the simple "Yes" that had been scripted, Hayden paused and spoke rather poignantly—and revealingly:

"I had to make this personal decision in early October 2001, and it was a personal decision...I could not not do this."

Why should it have been such an enormous personal decision whether or not to obey a White House order? No one asked Hayden, but it requires no particular acuity to figure it out.

This was a military officer who, like the rest of us, swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; a military man well aware that one must never obey an unlawful order; and an NSA director totally familiar with the FISA restrictions.

That, it seems clear, is why Hayden found it a difficult personal decision. Did the new, post-9/11 "paradigm" – created by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Cheney's lawyer David Addington – trump the Constitution? Was not illegal electronic surveillance a key part of the second article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, approved by a 28 to 10 bipartisan House Judiciary Committee vote less than two weeks before Nixon resigned?

No American, save perhaps Admiral Inman and Gen. Odom, knew the FISA law better than Hayden. Nonetheless, in his testimony the general conceded that he did not even require a written legal opinion from NSA lawyers as to whether the new, post-9/11 comprehensive surveillance program, to be implemented without court warrants and without adequate consultation in Congress, could pass the smell test.

Hayden said he sought an oral opinion from then-NSA general counsel Robert L. Deitz, whom Hayden has now brought over to CIA as a "trusted aide." In the fall of 2007, Hayden launched Deitz on an investigation of the CIA's own statutory Inspector General, who had made the mistake of being too diligent in investigating abuses like torture. Enough said.

Hayden Comfortable With Torture

As the Senate Armed Services Committee has now confirmed, President Bush, by executive order of Feb. 7, 2002, gave carte blanche to torture. That was four years before Hayden was confirmed as CIA director. But when asked to be chief apologist for abusive interrogation techniques, Hayden again saluted. And after nearly two years as chief of CIA, Hayden confirmed (on Feb. 5, 2008) that, in 2002-03, "9/11 mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other "high-value" detainees had been water boarded.

Water boarding, an extreme form of interrogation going back at least as far as the Spanish Inquisition, has been condemned as torture by just about everyone—except the legal experts of the Bush administration, including Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who is still having trouble making up his mind on this issue—for reasons that should be abundantly clear.

Oddly, Mukasey is on record as saying that water boarding would be torture if applied to him. And National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell told Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker magazine, "Whether it is torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture."

McConnell then let the cat out of Mukasey's bag, saying, "If it is ever determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it." It is a safe bet that this would be an extreme embarrassment, at least, for anyone in charge of an agency engaged in torture. Small wonder that Hayden has now summoned the chutzpah to warn the incoming president against launching an investigation into such matters.

Former CIA head George "we-do-not-torture" Tenet who—with the president's Feb. 7, 2002 executive order in hand—was responsible for implementing torture policies, has also evidenced some unease regarding the possibility that he might be held to account for taking liberties with national and international law. Tenet included these telling sentences in his memoir:

"We were asking for and we would be given as many authorities as CIA ever had. Things could blow up. People, me among them, could end up spending some of the worst days of our lives justifying before congressional overseers our new freedom to act." (At the Center of the Storm, p. 177-178)

Protesting Too Much

As the revelations piled up, Hayden again went front and center defending water boarding and offering pitiable excuses for the destruction of tapes of the interrogation of high-value detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

On Fox News last June, for example, Hayden insisted that after 9/11, "it was the collective judgment of the American government that these techniques would be appropriate and lawful," including water boarding, which he referred to as a "high-end interrogation technique." Hayden protested, "Now, if you ask me was it lawful, the answer is absolutely."

He went on to explain, "Literally thousands of Americans" have been water boarded in training, and suggested that this experience provided "a body of knowledge as to what the transient and permanent effects would be." Hayden made it clear that he was prepared to instruct his torturers to water board again, if the president ordered it.

Never mind that all those folks water boarded in training knew it would stop as soon as they cried Uncle; never mind that the "technique" is among the most iconic and notorious forms of torture, for which American officers as well as Japanese and Germans have been prosecuted and convicted; never mind Hayden's dubious claims that valuable intelligence has been gotten through water boarding.

And never mind the crystal-clear observation made on Sept. 6, 2006 by Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, head of U.S. Army intelligence: "No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that."

Chalk it up to my bias—and my experience as an Army intelligence officer—but I'll take Kimmons' word over any blue-suited desk jockey—no matter how many stars on the shoulder of the latter.

Sanctimonious Sam

What brings up Cicero's outrage again is the aura of sanctity with which Michael Hayden has attempted to envelop himself. His blind fealty in implementing and then defending the administration's defiance of the law on eavesdropping made him well qualified, in the administration's eyes, for the job of CIA director. And he gave every evidence of eagerness to be in charge of water boarding and other "high-end" interrogation techniques.

Hayden likes to brag about his moral training and Catholic credentials. At his nomination hearing, for example, he noted that he was the beneficiary of 18 years of Catholic education. That set me to counting my own years of Catholic education—only 17. Seems I missed the course on "Ethical High-End Interrogation Techniques."

The sooner Hayden is gone the better. I fully expect him to join the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) channels as "expert commentator," and to warm some seats on defense-industry corporate boards. As the President-elect was quick to see, Hayden's credentials appear much better suited for that kind of work.

Quousque, tandem, abutere, Hayden, patientia nostra!

This article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com

Authors Bio: Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. As a CIA analyst for 27 years, he worked under nine directors, several of them at close remove. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Leon Panetta: CIA Director

Dennis Blair leading contender for NID
By: Jen DiMascio, Politico, November 24, 2008
LINK

Retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, is surfacing as a leading contender for the director of national intelligence, sources say.

The director oversees the nation’s intelligence activities and is the principal adviser to the president and his National Security Council.

In addition to leading Pacific Command and filling several high-powered jobs within the military, Blair was the associate director of central intelligence for military support, coordinating intelligence and military operations during the Clinton administration. He retired from the Navy in 2002.

Blair receives high marks from those in the defense and intelligence communities.

“He brings the perfect balance of understanding intelligence – how it’s operationalized and how it feeds into the policy process,” said one analyst.

But the picture isn’t entirely rosy.

From 2003 to 2007, Blair was the president of the Institute for Defense Analysis. And his time at IDA could provide fodder for a contentious confirmation hearing.

Blair worked on a report that helped the Air Force decide to pursue a multiyear contract for F-22 Raptor fighter jets. At the same time, he was on the board of EDO Corp., a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin on the F-22 project.

After news reports about the apparent conflict of interest, Blair resigned as the head of IDA and his board seat at EDO.

Sources familiar with his background said they don’t see the incident as an impediment to his confirmation. But the Project on Government Oversight, which investigated the incident, said it’s concerned.

Blair is currently on the boards of Tyco International and Iridium Satellite.

He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1968 along with Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen and former Marine Corps Commandant Michael Hagee. And he was a Rhodes Scholar and a White House fellow.

Saturday, Dec. 20, 2008
With Dennis Blair, Don't Expect Smarter Intelligence
By Robert Baer, TIME.com
LINK

The nomination of retired admiral Dennis Blair as the Director of National Intelligence was predictable, if not quite inspired.

In Blair, Barack Obama no doubt saw someone who was, first and foremost, not involved in the Bush intelligence scandals — namely extraordinary renditions, secret prisons, and torture. And while Blair's brief stint at the CIA during the Clinton Administration didn't turn him into a seasoned intelligence operative, he's at least seen the belly of the whale from the inside. (Read more about Obama's White House)

The downsides to Blair's appointment are that there's little chance he'll lead the much-needed charge to streamline the intelligence community. As the former commander of the Pacific Fleet, Blair had a vast and sprawling staff that makes the bloated intelligence community seem downright efficient.

Then there's also the fact that, like most military officers, Blair is a believer in tactical intelligence. Let me explain why that's problematic: During the last Gulf war, the Pentagon badgered the CIA for things like sand samples and stress limits of Iraq bridges, the terrain its Abrams tanks would roll across. Yes, that information was nice to have, but such requests diverted CIA resources from strategic intelligence. Rather than answering the question of whether Saddam had kept his weapons of mass destruction, the CIA sent its clandestine sources into Iraq with baggies and little plastic shovels.

On top of it, the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have diminished the role of the CIA. It's the military in those two countries that collects the body of intelligence. Pragmatically, it couldn't have been otherwise. A lieutenant leading a patrol through an Iraqi village is much more likely to collect relevant information than a CIA officer confined to an office.

Whatever Blair's personal biases and inclinations are, as long as the U.S. remains in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting two wars that have neither been won nor lost, he will have no choice but defer to the Pentagon. You can't fight over money and people in the middle of hot wars. If the Pentagon says it needs sand samples, that's what the intelligence community has to go out and get.

Leaving Robert Gates at the Pentagon and appointing Blair as DNI is a pretty clear sign that Obama intends to live with the national security status quo. Obama knows all too well that intelligence reform is the third rail of American politics, one he does not intend to touch as long the country teeters on the edge of depression.

Weekend Edtion
December 26-28, 2008
How Obama's New Intelligence Chief Ran Interference for Indonesia's Butchers
The Skeletons in Dennis Blair's Closet
By BRADLEY SIMPSON, CounterPunch
LINK

The presumed appointment by President-elect Barack Obama of retired Admiral Dennis C. Blair as his new Director of National Intelligence is being greeted with cheers by the national media, who hail his experience, bureaucratic infighting skills and comparatively moderate views on national security issues. The New York Times, in a recent profile, seemed much impressed by the fact that the 34-year Navy veteran once water skied behind an aircraft carrier, in addition to his stints with the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Institute for Defense Analysis (from which he resigned in 2006 over conflict of interest charges involving the F-22 raptor).

But human rights supporters are right to be worried that Dennis Blair will hardly lead the charge for reform in the nation’s intelligence community after the Bush Administration’s embrace of torture, rendition and other crimes. For in the period leading up to and following East Timor’s August 1999 referendum on independence from Indonesia Blair, from his perch as US Commander in Chief of the Pacific (CINCPAC) from February 1999 to May 2000, ran interference for the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) as they and their militia proxies committed crimes against humanity on an awesome scale.

Following the ouster of long-time dictator Suharto in 1998, Indonesian president B.J. Habibie signaled that Indonesia would be willing to allow East Timor an up or down referendum on independence following 24 years of brutal Indonesian occupation. The Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI), hoping to sway the vote in Jakarta’s favor, launched a campaign of terror and intimidation led by the Army, Police and local militia proxies in which they killed hundreds of people displaced tens of thousands, most infamously on April 6, 1999, when militia forces massacred 57 Timorese in a church at Liquica on the outskirts of the capitol Dili.

As readers of the Nation will recall from the reporting of Alan Nairn, two days after the massacre the Pentagon dispatched Blair two days later to meet with Wiranto and demand that he disband the militias and allow a fair vote in East Timor. Instead, Blair offered assurances of continued US support for the TNI and invited Wiranto to Pacific Command Headquarters in Hawaii as his personal guest. According to top secret CIA intelligence summary issued after the massacre, however (and recently declassified by the author through a Freedom of Information Act request), “Indonesian military had colluded with pro-Jakarta militia forces in events preceding the attack and were present in some numbers at the time of the killings.” A Top Secret Senior Executive Intelligence Brief from April 20, 1999 stated plainly that “to restore stability, the Indonesian security forces must stop supporting the militias and adopt a neutral posture.” A Top Secret CIA Intelligence Report dated May 10, 1999 reported that “local commanders would have required at least tacit approval from headquarters in Jakarta to allow the militias the blatant free hand they have enjoyed.” Blair’s performance, which prompted a rebuke by the State Department, was part of a fierce bureaucratic struggle between the Pentagon and State Department and Embassy officers seeking to reign in the TNI’s terror.

Immediately after the August 30, 1999 referendum, in which nearly 80% of Timorese voted for independence from Indonesia, TNI forces and their militia proxies launched a murderous scorched earth campaign, killing nearly 1,500 Timorese, forcing a third of the population from their homes and destroying most of the territory’s infrastructure. Following a global outcry and enormous pressure from Congress and grassroots activists, President Clinton finally severed military ties on September 8, with Dennis Blair personally conveying news of the cutoff to General Wiranto.

By this point the TNI’s – and by extension Wironto’s - control of the terror operations in East Timor was being widely acknowledged internally by both State Department and CIA sources. On September 10 the US Embassy in Canberra, Australia dispatched a secret telegram to Washington reporting in the subject line that that the TNI was “controlling and assisting militia” in East Timor. Yet in Pentagon news briefing two weeks later Blair continued publicly to push the ‘bad apple’ line – characterizing the TNI’s deliberate destruction of East Timor and murder of hundreds of people as “a bad breakdown of order with some elements of TNI contributing to it and not helping it.” He went on to insist that US training of the Indonesian Armed Forces had paid dividends, with “many of those officers who did have training and education in the United States … are leading a very strong reform movement within TNI.” As Dana Priest of the /Washington Post/ later reported, however, fully one third of the Indonesian officers indicted by Indonesia’s national human rights commission for “crimes against humanity” committed in East Timor in 1999 were US trained. Wiranto, also indicted, is now considering a run at the Indonesian presidency in 2009. The clear links between US training and TNI terror clearly did not trouble Blair, who spent much of his remaining time as CINCPAC fighting to restore the military ties to his allies in Jakarta that grassroots activists and their Congressional allies had worked since 1992 to sever, finally winning their resumption in 2002.

Blair’s apologetics for murder and torture by the Indonesian armed forces in East Timor, and his opposition to trials, international or otherwise, for the high level perpetrators of mass violence, offers a sobering indication of the positions he is likely to take as Director of National Intelligence. President-elect Obama’s choice suggests that he will resist - as Blair almost certainly will - demands for the prosecution of high-ranking Bush Administration officials, much less lower level employees in the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency, for torture, rendition and other crimes carried out in the name of the so-called War on Terror.

Bradley Simpson is assistant professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University and a research fellow at the National Security Archive in Washington, DC, where he directs the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project. He is the author of Economists With Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968.