[Mb-civic] Ray McGovern: Heck of a Job, Hayden!

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506A.shtml

Heck of a Job, Hayden! 
    By Ray McGovern 
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Thursday 05 January 2006

    The eavesdropping-on-Americans scandal came
as shock and betrayal to most employees of the
National Security Agency - and to other
intelligence officers, active and retired.

    The idea that the once highly respected
former director of NSA, Gen. Mike Hayden, had
allowed himself to be seduced into sinning
against NSA's first commandment, "Thou Shalt Not
Spy on Americans," was initially met with
incredulity. Sadly, no other conclusion became
possible as we watched Hayden and Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales spin and squirm before
the press on December 19 in their transparent
attempt to square a circle.

    For many of us veteran intelligence officers,
the press conference put a damper on the
Christmas spirit. The Gonzales-Hayden pas de deux
should trouble other Americans as well, because
the malleable Gen. Hayden, now bedecked with a
fourth star, is Deputy Director of National
Intelligence - the second highest official in the
US intelligence community. Only time will tell
what other extralegal activities he will condone.

    The framers of the US Constitution must have
been turning in their graves on December 19 as
they watched Gonzales and Hayden defend the
eavesdropping - especially as the two grappled
with the $64 million question: Instead of simply
flouting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA), why didn't the administration ask
Congress to change it, if the law really needed
to be made less restrictive? (And that remains a
big "if.")

    Well-briefed by executive branch lawyers,
Gonzales recited "our legal analysis - our
position" that Congress's authorization of force
in the wake of 9/11 gave the president the right
to disregard FISA's prohibition, absent a court
order, against using NSA to eavesdrop on
Americans. This "position," of course, is quite a
stretch; even the regime-friendly Washington Post
has termed it "impossible to believe" the
government's contention. While reading from his
script, the Attorney General presented his case
as well as it could be argued, but twice he
slipped while answering a question as to why the
administration decided to disregard the FISA law
rather than try to amend it.

    Letting the Cat out of the Bag

    Asked why the administration had decided to
take a "backdoor approach," Gonzales twice let
the cat out of the bag:

    "We have had discussions with Congress - as
to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow
us to adequately deal with this kind of threat,
and we were advised that that would be difficult,
if not impossible."

    They went ahead and did it anyway.

    Gen. Hayden's remarks were equally
intriguing, as he repeatedly emphasized the need
for "speed and agility." Describing the current
eavesdropping effort as a "more aggressive
program than would be traditionally available
under FISA," he seemed equally at pains to stress
that the program deals only with international
calls for short periods of time. He is saying, in
other words, that US citizens are monitored only
sometimes - and just a little, so we're dealing
with only tiny incompatibilities with the FISA
law - and, anyhow, the president has said he has
the authority anyway. New York Times reporter
James Risen, who broke the story on NSA
eavesdropping on Americans, says the
communications of "roughly 500 people in the US
have been intercepted every day over the past
three or four years," which hardly jibes with the
impression that Hayden seems to be trying to
foster.

    As for speed and flexibility, Hayden knows,
better than virtually anyone else, that both are
already built into the FISA law, which allows the
government to begin eavesdropping immediately, as
long as it sends catch-up paperwork to the FISA
court within 72 hours. His acquiescence in
administration instructions to make an end-run
around FISA is a serious blow to the morale of
those thousands who once worked for Hayden - and
had admired him - as director of NSA, as well as
to thousands of other intelligence officers, past
and present, hoping against hope for more
integrity at senior levels.

    NSA Alumni

    Appearing Tuesday on Democracy Now!, former
NSA officer Russell Tice talked about NSA's ethos
regarding eavesdropping on US citizens:

    "A SIGINT [signals intelligence] officer [is]
taught from very early on in their careers that
you just do not do this. This is probably the
number one commandment - you do not spy on
Americans. It is drilled into our head over and
over again in security briefings at least twice a
year, where you ultimately have to sign a paper
that says you have gotten the briefing. Everyone
at NSA, who's a SIGINT officer knows that you do
not do this - Apparently the leaders of NSA have
decided that they were just going to go against
the tenets of something that's gospel to a SIGINT
officer - Hayden knew that this was illegal."

    Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (ret.)
was assigned to NSA headquarters in the late
nineties while working for Gen. Hayden, who was
then head of the Air Force Intelligence Agency.
At that time she - like others - had a favorable
impression of Hayden and was therefore stunned
upon learning of his acquiescence in, and
rationalization of, eavesdropping on Americans.
In a recent conversation, Karen used as an
analogy what Gen. Brent Scowcroft said recently
about Dick Cheney, with whom he had worked for
many years - "I don't know Dick Cheney." As for
her, said Karen, "I don't know Gen. Hayden."

    Cancer Metastasizes at the Top

    It does not seem so very long ago that John
Dean saw fit to warn President Richard Nixon that
there was a "cancer on the presidency." Now
prevalent among top Bush administration officials
is a two-fold malady. One - GAGA
(Go-Along-to-Get-Along) - has been around a long
time. The other might be called "Colin Cancer,"
after former secretary of state and chairman of
the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell.

    At Christmas, the still unrepentant Powell
came out of limbo, just before the Vatican closed
it down. Once again he was feted in the
indiscriminate mainstream media, which has
decided to forgive and forget his unconscionable
role in spreading a trumped-up justification for
what he well knew was an unprovoked war (not to
mention the media's complicity in that same
deceit). Powell's claims that he had no
information that there were doubts regarding
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are
demonstrable lies.

    Has he forgotten the strong doubt expressed
by chief UN inspector Hans Blix and his people on
the ground in Iraq, who enjoyed virtually
unfettered access in the months immediately
before the US/UK attack on March 19, 2003, and
who pleaded in vain to be allowed to continue
their search for WMD? Does he not remember that
his own intelligence analysts at State had warned
him time and time again of the bogus
"intelligence" reports being manufactured at the
Pentagon and the aiming-to-please analysis being
served up at CIA? (Much of this is documented in
the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee
of July 2004.) Heck of a job, Colin!

    And is it not curious that Powell "forgot" to
take his own intelligence analysts along with him
to CIA headquarters for those (in)famous four
days and nights of preparation for his shameful
performance at the UN on February 5, 2003, and
that he neglected to heed his analysts' warnings
about the falsehoods and hyperbole they had seen
in early drafts of that speech?

    Sorry, but I find it impossible to feel sorry
for Colin Powell as he laments the fact that his
UN speech left a "blot" on his record. What about
the blot it put on the reputation of the United
States? What about the 2,200 US servicemen and
women who have died in Iraq - not to mention the
tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed
because he, and those like him, lacked to guts to
shake off the GAGA syndrome and try to halt the
march of folly? Powell was one of the very few
who might have stopped it.

    True to character, Powell continues to march
in lockstep with the president, telling ABC last
week that he saw "nothing wrong with the
president authorizing" warrant-less
eavesdropping, which, Powell added, "should
continue." As for the missing weapons of mass
destruction, Powell insisted to George
Stephanopoulos: "Some of the intelligence was
right. There's no question that Saddam Hussein
had the intention of having such weapons." It is
a very old, tiresome chestnut; but George just
smiled sweetly, not willing to challenge the
matinee idol.

    Suffice it to say that Powell's chutzpah and
the continued lionization of him in the media
give very poor example for younger generals, most
of whom lack antibodies for GAGA - which, in
turn, makes them all the more susceptible to
Colin cancer. What the Haydens of this world need
is positive example, but Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld has assembled a coterie of star-studded
sycophants. Joint Chiefs chair Marine Gen. Peter
Pace did summon the courage recently to correct
Rumsfeld and insist that our troops are required
to stop the torture they witness, not simply to
"report" it. We shall have to see how long Pace
lasts in the job.

    Hope in Whistleblowers

    The good news is that truth tellers (also
known as leakers) have stopped being intimidated
and are doing their patriotic duty. The New York
Times's James Risen, who first revealed the
program allowing eavesdropping on Americans, has
emphasized that this is the "purest case of
whistleblowers coming forward" that he has
encountered in his 25 years as a reporter.
According to Risen, many of then were "tormented
by their knowledge" of the way the Bush
administration was "skirting the law." "Something
was wrong - and they came forward, I believe,
simply to make the public aware of this," said
Risen who, appropriately, calls the truth tellers
"patriots."

    Risen pointed out that these are people
involved in the day-to-day struggle to defeat
terrorism and who have intimate knowledge of the
issues. "They came to us because they thought you
have to follow the rules and you have to follow
the law."

    Risen's sources, of course, are the very
people the Justice Department has launched a
major investigation to apprehend and, as the
saying goes, "bring to justice."

    Ray McGovern works at Tell the Word, the
publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in Washington, DC. After 27 years as a
CIA analyst, he co-founded Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a movement that
is holding former colleagues to the ethos of
truth telling in the analysis directorate.