April 23, 2009
CIA's spies running scared
The Obama Administration's Hamlet-like indecision about the fate of anyone involved in the interrogation of terrorists held by the U.S. (To prosecute or not to prosecute, that is the question ...), coupled with the apalling decision to release the classified memos dealing with the interrogation policy, has the CIA running scared.
As a general rule, when fighting a ruthless enemy dedicated to your nation's destruction, it's not a good idea to have your cloak and dagger types looking over their shoulders, more worried about the threat from American politicians and Federal prosecutors than the terrorists themselves.
The Washington Post's David Ignatius reports that the threat of criminal prosecutions is having an entirely predictable result.
At the Central Intelligence Agency, it's known as "slow rolling." That's what agency officers sometimes do on politically sensitive assignments. They go through the motions; they pass cables back and forth; they take other jobs out of the danger zone; they cover their backsides.Sad to say, it's slow roll time at Langley after the release of interrogation memos that, in the words of one veteran officer, "hit the agency like a car bomb in the driveway."
President Obama promised CIA officers that they won't be prosecuted for carrying out lawful orders, but the people on the firing line don't believe him. They think the memos have opened a new season of investigation and retribution.
The lesson for younger officers is obvious: Keep your head down. Duck the assignments that carry political risk. Stay away from a counterterrorism program that has become a career hazard.
Obama tried personally to reassure the CIA workforce during a visit to Langley on Monday. He said all the right things about the agency's clandestine role. But it had the look of a campaign event, with employees hooting and hollering and the president reading from his teleprompter with a backdrop of stars that commemorate the CIA's fallen warriors.
By yesterday, Obama was deferring to the attorney general whether to prosecute "those who formulated those legal decisions," whatever that means.
Obama seems to think he can have it both ways -- authorizing an unprecedented disclosure of CIA operational methods and at the same time galvanizing a clandestine service whose best days, he told them Monday, are "yet to come." Life doesn't work that way -- even for charismatic politicians.
[...]
Put yourself in the shoes of the people who were asked to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners in 2002. One former officer told me he declined the job, not because he thought the program was wrong but because he knew it would blow up. "We all knew the political wind would change eventually," he recalled. Other officers who didn't make that cynical but correct calculation are now "broken and bewildered," says the former operative.
[...]
One veteran counterterrorism operative says that agents in the field are already being more careful about using the legal findings that authorize covert action. An example is the so-called "risk of capture" interview that takes place in the first hour after a terrorism suspect is grabbed. This used to be the key window of opportunity, in which the subject was questioned aggressively and his cellphone contacts and "pocket litter" were exploited quickly.
Now, field officers are more careful. They want guidance from headquarters. They need legal advice. I'm told that in the case of an al-Qaeda suspect seized in Iraq several weeks ago, the CIA didn't even try to interrogate him. The agency handed him over to the U.S. military.
The fallout from our feckless president's handling of the issue isn't limited to just our own intelligence services; Ignatius says that foreign governments -- our allies in this war -- are hesitant to share their intel with us, act on our behalf, because they have no confidence that what they do or say won't end up on the front page of the New York Times ... or on a teleprompter as Pres. Obama delivers yet another mea culpa for America's alleged misdeeds.
Former Vice Pres. Cheney stirred up the Obamabots when he said that the release of the interrogation memos had damaged national security, that Pres. Obama's actions had made us less safe.
News like this -- that our spies are running scared, that our allies' spymasters are loathe to help us -- seem to confirm the validity of Cheney's charge.
Say what you will about the failures of the previous administration, no terrorist succeeded in carrying out an attack on U.S. soil after September 11, 2001. And, as was revealed by Pres. Obama's director of intelligence in a memo this week, the interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration foiled a mass terror attack on Los Angeles.
Who will be willing to prevent another such attack?
Thanks to Pres. Obama, it's uncertain that there'll be any volunteers at Langley.
Hope 'n change.
Are you feeling safer?
Posted by Mike Lief at April 23, 2009 09:17 AM
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Comments
The economics of the battlefield will prevail here. A captured terrorist who can't be interrogated is nothing more than a mouth to feed and a body to house, and is therefore more valuable dead than alive. Anyone who believes special operators and CIA officers will be immune to this reality is a hopeless naïf.
Posted by: LT at April 23, 2009 12:42 PM
LT --
I couldn't agree more.
I've said from the beginning of the unprecedented shift from warfare to lawfare, that the unintended consequence of granting not just POW status, but esentially the same rights and privileges of a criminal defendant in the United States, to spies, saboteurs, pirates and other unlawful combatants, is to encourage our troops to say, "It ain't worth the trouble," and simply take no prisoners.
No prisoners, no problems.
Or, to borrow from the Las Vegas visitor's bureau, what happens on the battlefield, stays on the battlefield.
Posted by: Mike Lief at April 23, 2009 12:57 PM
Now that the Obamabots have released the dragon, Pelosi's crew in Congress are grabbing their behinds. It seems those on the intell committee(Pelosi included) were briefed about the waterboard plans before any were implemented. See it all here:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0409/Pelosi_I_didnt_know_about_waterboarding.html
It would be funny if it wasnt so damn serious. Libtards!
Posted by: Schmedley at April 23, 2009 09:07 PM
Fred Thompson sums it all up well here: http://www.basilsblog.com/2009/04/21/fred-thompson-ripping-into-potus-and-ag/
Posted by: Schmedley at April 23, 2009 09:21 PM