Hail, Hail The Gang's All Here

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Fri, 18 Feb 2005 13:07:46 -0800 (PST)

Hail, Hail The Gang's All Here

 

 

 

 

 

Hail, Hail The Gang's All Here

Ray McGovern

February 18, 2005

 

The appointment of John Negroponte to be director of National

Intelligence is the latest evidence that President Bush is

strengthening his cabinet's capacity to mislead Congress and trample

civil liberties. Ray McGovern, 27-year veteran of the CIA, examines

the meaning of the Negroponte appointment and the dark trend it confirms.

 

Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, is co-founder of

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He chaired National

Intelligence Estimates in addition to preparing the president's Daily

Brief.

 

The nomination of John Negroponte to the new post of director of

National Intelligence (DNI) caps a remarkable parade of Bush

administration senior nominees. Among the most recent:

 

* Alberto Gonzales, confirmed as attorney general: the lawyer who

advised the president he could ignore the US War Crimes Act and the

Geneva Conventions on torture and create a " reasonable basis in

law...which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution. "

* Michael Chertoff, confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security:

the lawyer who looked the other way when 762 innocent immigrants

(mostly of Arab and South Asian descent) were swept up in a post-9/11

dragnet and held as " terrorism suspects " for several months. The

dictates of PR trumped habeas corpus; the detentions fostered an image

of quick progress in the " war on terrorism. "

* John Negroponte: the congenial, consummate diplomat now

welcomed back into the brotherhood. Presently our ambassador in

Baghdad, Negroponte is best known to many of us as the ambassador to

Honduras with the uncanny ability to ignore human rights abuses so as

not to endanger congressional support for the attempt to overthrow the

duly elected government of Nicaragua in the '80s. Negroponte's job

was to hold up the Central American end of the Reagan administration's

support for the Contra counterrevolutionaries, keeping Congress in the

dark, as necessary.

 

Introducing...Elliot's Protégé

 

Stateside, Negroponte's opposite number was Elliot Abrams, then

assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, whose

influence has recently grown by leaps and bounds in the George W. Bush

administration. Convicted in October 1991 for lying to Congress about

illegal support for the Contras, Abrams escaped prison when he was

pardoned, along with former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger (also

charged with lying to Congress), former National Security Adviser

Robert McFarlane and three CIA operatives. Indeed, their pardons came

cum laude , with President George H. W. Bush stressing that " the

common denominator of their motivation...was patriotism. " Such

" patriotism " has reached a new art form in his son's administration,

as a supine Congress no longer seems to care very much about being misled.

 

President George W. Bush completed Elliot Abrams' rehabilitation in

December 2002 by bringing him back to be his senior adviser for the

Middle East, a position for which the self-described neoconservative

would not have to be confirmed by Congress. Immediately, his

influence with the president was strongly felt in the shaping and

implementation of policy in the Middle East, especially on the

Israel-Palestine issue and Iraq. Last month the president promoted him

to deputy national security adviser, where he can be counted on to

overshadow—and outmaneuver—his boss, the more mild-mannered Stephen

Hadley.

 

It is a safe bet that Abrams had a lot to do with the selection of his

close former associate to be director of National Intelligence, and

there is little doubt that he passed Negroponte's name around among

neocon colleagues to secure their approval.

 

As mentioned above, like Abrams, Negroponte has a record of incomplete

candor with Congress. Had he been frank about serious

government-sponsored savagery in Honduras, the country would have

forfeited U.S. aid—thwarting the Reagan administration's use of

Honduras to support the Contras. So Negroponte, too, has evidenced

Abrams-style " patriotism. " Those in Congress who still care, beware.

 

Civil Liberties At Stake

 

The liberties that Gonzales, Chertoff and Negroponte have taken with

human rights are warning signs enough. The increased power that will

be Negroponte's under the recent intelligence reform legislation makes

the situation still more worrisome.

 

How many times have we heard the plaintive plea for better information

sharing among the various intelligence agencies? It is important to

understand that the culprit there is a failure of leadership, not a

structural fault.

 

I served under nine CIA directors, four of them at close remove. And I

watched the system work more often than malfunction. Under their

second hat as director of Central Intelligence, those directors

already had the necessary statutory authority to coordinate

effectively the various intelligence agencies and ensure that they did

not hoard information. All that was needed was a strong leader with

integrity, courage, with no felt need to be a " team player, " and a

president who would back him up when necessary. (Sadly, it has been

24 years since the intelligence community has had a director—and a

president—fitting that bill.)

 

Lost in all the hand-wringing about lack of intelligence sharing is

the fact that the CIA and the FBI have been kept separate and distinct

entities for very good reason—first and foremost, to protect civil

liberties. But now, under the intelligence reform legislation, the

DNI will have under his aegis not only the entire CIA—whose operatives

are skilled at breaking (foreign) law—but also a major part of the

FBI, whose agents are carefully trained not to violate constitutional

protections or otherwise go beyond the law. (That is why the FBI

agents at Guantanamo judged it necessary to report the abuses they saw.)

 

This is one area that gives cause for serious concern lest, for

example, the law enjoining CIA from any domestic investigative or

police power be eroded. Those old enough to remember the Vietnam War

and operation COINTELPRO have a real-life reminder of what can happen

when lines of jurisdiction are blurred and " super-patriots " are given

carte blanche to pursue citizen " dissidents " —particularly in time of war.

 

Aware of these dangers and eager to prevent the creation of the

president's own Gestapo, both the 9/11 Commission and Congress

proposed creation of an oversight board to safeguard civil liberties.

Nice idea. But by the time the legislation passed last December, the

powers and independence of the " Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight

Board " had been so watered down as to be a laughingstock. For

example, the Board's access to information from government agencies

requires the approval of the DNI and the attorney general, who can

withhold information from the Board for a variety of reasons—among

them the familiar " national security interests. " In addition, the

Board lacks subpoena power over third parties. Clearly, if the Board

does not have unfettered access to information on sensitive law

enforcement or intelligence gathering initiatives, the role of the

Board (primarily oversight and guidance) becomes window dressing. In

short, the Board has been made lame before it could take its first step.

 

" What the hell do we care; what the hell do we care " is the familiar

second line of " Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here. " Suffice it to say

that, with Chertoff, Abrams and now Negroponte back in town, those

concerned to protect civil liberties here at home and to advance them

abroad need to care a whole lot.

 

Corruption, Politicization of Intelligence

 

Gen. William Odom, one of the most highly respected and senior

intelligence professionals, now retired, put a useful perspective on

last summer's politically driven rush into wholesale intelligence

reform. In a Washington Post op-ed on Aug. 1, he was typically

direct in saying, " No organizational design will compensate for

incompetent incumbents. " I believe he would be the first to agree

that the adjectives " careerist and sycophantic " should be added to

" incompetence, " for incompetence often is simply the handmaiden of

those noxious traits. And the failure of the 9/11 Commission and the

Congress to insist that real people be held accountable is a major

part of the problem.

 

Intelligence reform in a highly charged political atmosphere gathers a

momentum of its own, and the reform bill Congress passed late last

year is largely charade. The " reforms " do not get to the heart of the

problem. What is lacking is not a streamlined organizational chart,

but integrity. Character counts. Those who sit atop the intelligence

community need to have the courage to tell it like it is—even if that

means telling the president his neocon tailors have sold him the kind

of suit that makes him a naked mockery (as with the fashion designed

by Ahmed Chalabi).

 

Is John Negroponte up to that? Standing in the oval office with

Gonzales and Chertoff, will Negroponte succumb to being the " team

player " he has been...or will he summon the independence to speak to

the president without fear or favor—the way we used to at CIA?

 

It is, of course, too early to tell. Suffice it to say at this point

that there is little in his recent government service to suggest he

will buck the will of his superiors, even when he knows they are

wrong—or even when he is aware that their course skirts the

constitutional prerogatives of the duly elected representatives of the

American people in Congress. Will he tell the president the truth,

even when the truth makes it clear that administration policy is

failing—as in Iraq? Reports that, as ambassador in Baghdad,

Negroponte tried to block cables from the CIA Chief of Station

conveying a less rosy picture of the situation there reinforces the

impression that he will choose to blend in with the white-collar,

white, White House indigenous.

 

The supreme irony is that President Bush seems blissfully unaware that

the politicization that Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary

Donald Rumsfeld, and he have fostered in the intelligence community

has lost them an invaluable resource for the orderly making of foreign

policy. It pains me to see how many senior careerists at CIA and

elsewhere have made a career (literally) of telling the White House

what they think it wants to hear.

 

If that proves just fine with the new DNI and he contents himself with

redrawing wire diagrams, the security of our country is in greater

danger. If, on the other hand, Negroponte wants to ensure that he and

his troops speak truth to power–despite the inevitable pressure to

fall in line with existing policy—he has his work cut out for him. At

CIA, at least, he will have to cashier many careerists at upper

management levels and find folks with integrity and courage to move

into senior positions. And he will have to prove to them that he is

serious. The institutionalization of politicization over the last two

dozen years has so traumatized the troops that the burden of proof

will lie with Negroponte.

 

The President's Daily Brief

 

The scene visualized by President Bush yesterday for his morning

briefing routine, once Negroponte is confirmed, stands my hair on end.

I did such morning briefings for the vice president, the secretaries

of State and Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and

the National Security Assistant from 1981 to 1985—each of them

one-on-one. Our small team of briefers was comprised of senior

analysts who had been around long enough to earn respect and trust.

We had the full confidence of the CIA director; when he was in town we

would brief him just before lunch, hours after we had made the rounds

downtown.

 

When I learned a few years ago that former director George Tenet was

going down to the oval office with the briefer, I asked myself, " What

is that all about? " The last thing we wanted or needed was the

director breathing down our necks. And didn't he have other things to do?

 

We were there to tell it like it is—and, in those days, at least, we

had career protection for doing so. And so we did. If, for example,

one of those senior officials asked if there was good evidence of

weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and we knew that the serious,

honest analysts thought not, we would say " No sir. "

 

But you ask, " Even if the director has said it was a `slam dunk?' "

Yes. Even after the director had said it was a slam dunk! But bear in

mind that in those days the task was not so heroic. We did not have

the director standing behind us to " help. "

 

From what President Bush said yesterday, John Negroponte, the man

farthest removed from substantive intelligence analysis—not to mention

the background and genesis of the briefing items chosen for a

particular day—will be the president's " primary briefer. " I am told

that President Bush does not read the President's Daily Brief, but

rather has it read to him.

 

Who will do the reading? Who will attempt to answer the president's

questions? Will there be a senior analyst there in a supporting role?

Will s/he have career protection, should it be necessary to correct

Negroponte's answers? Will Negroponte ask CIA Director Porter Goss to

participate as well? Will the briefer feel constrained with very

senior officials there? Will s/he be able to speak without fear of

favor, drawing, for example, on what the real experts say regarding

Iran's nuclear capability and plans? These are important questions.

A lot will depend on the answers.

 

We had a good thing going in the '80s. Ask those we briefed and whose

trust we gained. It is hard to see that frittered away. Worst of all,

the president appears oblivious to the difference. I wish he would

talk to his earthly father. He knows.

 

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