National Security
Hold the Phone: House Passes FISA Sans Telecom Immunity
After weeks of threats, arguments and a secret session thrown in for good measure, the House on Friday passed a controversial bill to renew the administration's electronic surveillance program. Unlike the Senate-passed version, however, the lower-chamber's proposal would not give the phone companies amnesty for crimes they may have committed in cooperating with the program in past years without a judicial order. The House vote was 213 to 197.
House and Senate leaders now must meet to hash out the differences between the two bills. But as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) pointed out this afternoon, even Democrats don't believe the immunity language is likely to survive the process.
The White House has said that legal immunity is vital to entice the telecom industry to participate in the program in the future. Roughly 40 lawsuits have been filed against the companies on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union and others who argue that the warrantless wiretapping program violates the Fourth Amendment. Despite the threat of those suits, however, all the companies have agreed recently to cooperate in the program.
If We Arm the Terrorists, Who Detains Us?
It's not often that Washington Republicans will go out of their way to attack the world's largest oil supplier and Bush administration ally, Saudi Arabia. But that's precisely what three GOP House members did yesterday in an attempt to prevent a planned $123 million arms sale to the strategically placed monarchy.
McCain Camp Mum on Iraq Timeline (Updated)
Up at his ranch near Sedona, Sen. John McCain must be fuming. After everything he's done for President George W. Bush's campaign efforts -- the endorsement through clenched teeth after the bruising 20000 primary, stumping in 2004, etc. -- Bush couldn't even do McCain the simple courtesy of not completely undermining the Arizona senator's entire Iraq policy as he makes his bid for the presidency.
McCain Hesitant to Support GI Bill for Post-9/11 Vets
While Sen. John McCain is busy bolstering his friend-of-the-military image in the Middle East this week, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb is calling on the GOP presidential nominee to show similar troop support at home by endorsing a proposal to update the GI Bill, The Hill's Roxana Tiron reported today.
While 50 senators (including nine Republicans) have joined Webb in supporting the proposal, McCain has yet to do so, despite entreaties
from Webb. Webb spokeswoman Kimberly Hunter said that having McCain on board would "bring more
Republicans over to support the bill."
Petraeus: Best COIN-Ready Army Ever
Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D-Tex.) is talking about costs in terms of readiness. Petraeus replied that there’s another component of readiness: "How much more that our troopers get it about what it is we’re doing." In other words, the troops are better equipped to understand and execute a counterinsurgency strategy.
A Shout-Out to Novak
In the wake of yesterday's news that long-time conservative columnist Robert Novak is retiring pending treatment for brain cancer, most reports today are remembering Novak as the guy who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative five years ago. Probably, he was used as part of a White House conspiracy to discredit Plame's diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, who'd been critical of Bush administration plans to invade Iraq. But whatever future historian is writing the "Novak-was-a-Bush-administration-stooge" chapter should also recall a little-remembered Novak column penned in September of 2002 -- a full six months before the Iraq invasion -- in which the Prince of Darkness blasts the administration for a failure to acknowledge the exceedingly obvious: That of course we knew that Saddam once possessed highly-destructive weapons -- BECAUSE WE SOLD THEM TO HIM. From that column:
A War, a Democracy and a Vice President
Lest anyone think that criticism of Vice President Dick Cheney's now-infamous contempt for public opinion surrounding the Iraq war is a partisan contrivance, former GOP congressman Mickey Edwards had a revealing piece in The Washington Post Saturday, arguing that executive branch recognition of public sentiment in wartime is not just in everyone's interest, it's also the administration's constitutional duty.
And on the Sixth Day, the Intelligence Programs Plunged Into Uncertainty
For House Democrats, who left Washington last week without acting on legislation to expand White House spying powers, Attorney General Michael Mukasey has a few words of caution: The nation's intelligence programs, he wrote in a Feb. 22 letter (pdf here) to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), are now officially plunged into uncertainty due to your inaction.
And We Thought Hitchens Was Tough on Kissinger
On a slow, rainy Friday in Washington, when all eyes are on presidential politics, this little gem arrived over the ticker courtesy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Speaking at the Brookings Institution Monday, Gates said:
How's This for an Idea?
Could it be that the Paul Wolfowitz plan for rebuilding Iraq will finally have its day? Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) announced today that he'll soon unveil legislation to rescind $10 billion in unspent Iraq reconstruction funding to be used instead to develop alternative fuels at home.
Moderates Pushed House Dems to Adopt Telecom Immunity
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) was a leading voice in the negotiations that led to the controversial wiretapping proposal unveiled by Congress yesterday, and for that reason he's been quoted all over the news media defending the bill. (As we reported this morning, the legislation effectively lets the telecoms off the hook for their warrantless cooperation in the program -- a provision roundly criticized by civil libertarians.)
But to be fair to Hoyer, he was in a tough spot. Moderate House Democrats, fearing the fallout in their districts in November, were pressuring party leaders to do something on FISA. Inaction, on the campaign trail, would have been painted as putting the country at risk, and the White House wasn't going to sign anything that didn't contain immunity. The moderates, Hoyer said, were threatening to support a Senate-passed FISA bill that offered blanket immunity to the telecoms without any role of the district courts.
Reports: Air Force Officials Asked to Resign
The Air Force is booting its top officials, according to reports today from InsideDefense.com, a defense trade publication, and the Air Force Times. Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley, given the choice to resign or be fired, chose the former after a meeting with top Pentagon officials this morning, the reports said. Air Force Sec. Michael Wynne is soon to follow.
Senator Condemns China for Olympic Spying Plans
With just 10 days before the start of the summer Olympics in Beijing, GOP Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.) stepped up his denunciation of China on human rights, charging the nation's leaders with a conspiracy to spy on international hotel guests during the games. From a statement issued today:
"A Great Deal Is Permitted"
Sands has been shaking his head in defiance at nearly everything Feith says. And that’s not so surprising, considering that Feith has repeatedly said that if detainees received P.O.W. status it would have precluded interrogation. "A great deal is permitted," Sands says of interrogation consistent with Geneva Conventions protection. "What works is rapport building… The main problem with torture is that it doesn’t produce useful information."
"I Will Not Be Eligible"
One last Goldsmith post and then you'll have to forgive me but I can't take any more of this. I'll have a wrap-up piece later today.
"If The Detainee Dies, You're Doing It Wrong"
Levin just laid out a timeline for how we got from Geneva-compliant interrogations pre-9/11 to the torture of Guatnanamo Bay. A key step came in early October 2002, when a lawyer for the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, Jonathan Fredman, visited Guantanamo to discuss "aggressive" techniques for interrogation. Fredman explained "the wet towel technique," according to unclassified minutes of his meeting with senior Guantanamo commanders—also known as waterboarding.
"Lemieux, I Think Your Views On This War Are Affecting Your Reports."
Sgt. Lemieux related an incident to Congress that I don’t recall him saying at Winter Soldier in March, though my memory could be faulty and I don’t have my March notebook on-hand. He said that in one awful early 2006 day in Tamim, U.S. Marines responded to minimal sniper fire with massive amounts of ammunition. A group of Marines received "four rounds of poorly-aimed enemy fire," and returned it with "thousands of rounds" of grenade, machine gun and rocket fire "all into an area of Tamim known to be owned and occupied by local civilians.
"Pakistan Appears To Be Spinning Out Of Control"
Subscription-only StratFor, one of the leading private strategic-intelligence firms, makes a bold prediction: Pakistan is on its way to failed statehood. Now, there's been a lot of loose talk in the U.S. for years about Pakistan's lack of viability as a state for a long time, but central Asia experts tend to discount that as media blathering. The Pakistani military has proven -- brutally -- that it really is able to control the country, and isn't about to let things get out of hand: after all, as a recent book called "Military Inc." documents, the military runs major aspects of the Pakistani economy.
But StratFor says that even with many of those caveats in place, the indicators point to increased instability. Let's test the limits of fair-use:
"Shadow Intelligence Community" Spotlighted
Tim Shorrock at Salon has a great piece of investigative reporting on, what he calls, "the intelligence industrial complex." Shorrock chronicles how White House officials and contractors have benefited financially from the "war on terror," while leaving open the question of how the arrangements have affected intelligence gathering.
About 70 percent of the $50 billion budget for America's spy agencies goes to private contractors, often run by people that just left the Pentagon or intelligence community. Roger Creasey, the national security council's deputy director under Bill Clinton, says that the connections made working for spy agencies is "liquid gold" in the private sector. Joan Dempsey, a former top intelligence official in both the Clinton and Bush administration, is now vice-president of Booz Allen, a company she likes to see as a "shadow intelligence community."
"That Dream Turned Into Nightmares"
These are the words of Kristofer Goldsmith, who said he dreamed his entire boyhood of joining the Army. "That dream turned into nightmares. I joined the Army to kill people. I joined the Army to kill Iraqis, to kill Muslims. To kill people that were a skin tone other than mine and inhabiting the Middle East."
