Civil Liberties Advocates Question New FBI Division

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Fri, 1 Jul 2005 21:53:03 -0700 (PDT)

John Negroponte-Spying, Civil Liberties Advocates Question

New FBI

 

 

 

 

http://www.guerrillanews.com/headlines/3584/Civil_Liberties_Advocates_Question_N\

ew_FBI_Division

 

 

 

Civil Liberties Advocates Question New FBI Division

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 22:30:57 -0700

 

Summary:

 

President Bush yesterday handed Director of National Intelligence John

Negroponte broad authority over the United States' disparate and

often-competing spy agencies, bringing domestic and foreign

intelligence operations more closely under White House control. The

new office would be part of the FBI, but Negroponte would have

authority over its budget and priorities, a move intended to reduce

barriers between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering.

Civil-liberties advocates blasted the changes at the FBI, saying they

represent a radical step toward creation of a secret-police force in

the United States. Given Negroponte's background, it's a disturbing

prospect.

 

 

 

 

 

By Shannon McCaffrey, Knight-Ridder

Republished from Common Dreams

The nation's new intelligence czar, John Negroponte, will oversee

domestic spying unit.

 

WASHINGTON – A White House plan to create a massive new domestic

intelligence division within the FBI raised concerns on Wednesday

among civil liberties advocates who feared it could lead to a return

to the bureau's dark days of spying on Americans.

 

The nation's new intelligence czar, John Negroponte, will have a say

over the budget of the new FBI national security section and will help

select an official to oversee it.

 

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a news conference Wednesday

that agents working in the new division would continue to report to

FBI Director Robert Mueller and to respect " the privacy rights and

civil liberties of all Americans. "

 

But Timothy Edgar, national security policy counsel of the American

Civil Liberties Union, said giving the nation's spy chief power over

the FBI was worrisome.

 

While FBI agents are bound by the nation's Constitution, he said,

spies operate abroad with fewer constraints.

 

" What we could see is the spies in charge of the cops, " Edgar said.

 

" You have a DNI (director of national intelligence) who is in charge

of mostly secret foreign intelligence and now is also in law

enforcement. So does that mean we have a secret police? Our concern is

we could be going down that road. "

 

Justice Department officials said they'd retain control over FBI

agents' day-to-day operations but that key details still need to be

worked out.

 

Negroponte's deputy, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, said Wednesday that the

national security service " is not something we've done before as a

nation. "

 

But, Hayden said, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the nation came

to a " collective judgment " that it could no longer afford the

long-standing walls between foreign and domestic intelligence gathering.

 

Allowing an outsider to help select a powerful post overseeing a

massive chunk of the FBI's manpower is seen as a dramatic step at the

bureau, which has guarded its turf over the years. But the FBI has

been left vulnerable by a series of withering reports that assessed

the bureau's missteps leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks.

 

The changes at the FBI were part of a larger package of reforms

recommended by a presidential commission investigating intelligence

failures leading up to the war in Iraq. The White House on Wednesday

accepted 70 of the panel's 74 recommendations, including the creation

of a National Counter-Proliferation Center to combat the spread of

weapons of mass destruction and the appointment of an individual to

oversee all human intelligence gathering, while keeping the CIA's

clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations, intact.

 

White House Homeland Security Adviser Frances Townsend said Wednesday

that she believed the reforms would result in a " fundamental

strengthening " of the nation's intelligence-gathering capabilities.

 

Under longtime director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI became notorious for

spying on Americans such as Martin Luther King Jr., political

dissidents and suspected communists. The Hoover years led to changes

in the nation's intelligence-gathering laws.

 

Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondent Warren P. Strobel contributed

to this report.

 

© Copyright 2005 Knight-Ridder

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.guerrillanews.com/headlines/1199/Hail_Hail_The_Gang_s_All_Here_Negrop\

onte_Will_Fit_Right_In

 

By Ray McGovern

Republished from TomPaine.com

President Bush is strengthening his cabinet's capacity to mislead

Congress and trample civil liberties.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who is John Negroponte?

 

http://counterpunch.org/hassan06042004.html

 

 

June 4, 2004

 

 

Ambassador to Death Squads

Who is John Negroponte?

 

By GHALI HASSAN

 

The White House has appointed Mr. John Dimitris Negroponte to be

United States ambassador to Iraq. He will preside over the largest

embassy in the world, and housed in the Republic Palace (misleadingly

named Saddam's Palace by the U.S. occupation). He will be protected by

high concrete walls, barbed wires and more than 150,000 occupation

force, including several thousands of foreign mercenaries armed to the

teeth with the most violent tools. Mr. Negroponte is Greek-American

diplomat. He is currently leading the diplomatic war against the

people of Iraq as the U.S. envoy at the United Nations (UN) in New

York. Negroponte is Jewish. A friend in Spain expressed his deep

concern to me recently: " to appoint a Jew as ambassador to the Arab

country that has been devastated because of the will of a cabal of

Jewish neocons headed by Wolfowitz ­ Bush is just an accessory -, is

like trying to put off a fire using buckets of gasoline " .

 

Mr. Negroponte has served as U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from

1981-1985; a period during which the U.S. military aid to Honduras

grew from $5 million to nearly $100 million, and more than $200

million in economic aid, making Honduras the largest aid recipient in

the region. Honduras was the launching pad from which the Reagan

administration runs its violent " war on terror " in Central American.

The U.S-backed atrocities and terror were condemned by the

International World Court in the Hague (1). Like most of his

colleagues in the Bush administration, Mr. Negroponte is a " recycled

reaganites " .

 

At the time Mr. Negroponte was in Honduras, Honduras was a military

dictatorship. Kidnapping, rape, torture and executions of dissidents

was rampant. The military top and middle ranks were U.S-trained at the

School of the Americas (SOA), the Harvard version of the CIA, based in

Fort Benning, Georgia. According to Human Rights Watch, graduates of

the SOA are responsible for the worst human rights abuses and torture

of dissidents in Latin America. Some of its 60,000 graduates are

notorious Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo

Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of

Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia

and Gustavo Álvarez Martínez, Honduras security police chief and later

Honduran top military commander.

 

In Honduras the army intelligence unit, Battalion 3-16, which was

involved in kidnappings, rape, torture and killing of suspected

dissidents. In 1995 Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson of The Baltimore Sun

unearthed massive and substantiated evidence from various sources

pointing the finger at Mr. Negroponte knowledge of the crimes. The

reporters also found that hundreds of Hondurans " were kidnapped,

tortured and killed in the 1980s by a secret army unit trained and

supported by the CIA " (2). Reliable evidence from the Inter-American

Commission on Human Rights in Honduras alleged that Negroponte oversaw

the expansion of U.S training camp and military base on Honduran

territory, where US-trained Contras terrorists, and where the military

secretly detained, tortured and executed Honduran suspected dissidents.

 

During his years in Honduras, Negroponte acquired a reputation,

justified, as an old-fashioned imperialist, and devoted to Realpolitik

(3). Mr. Negroponte will bring to Iraq his version of " democracy " à la

Latin America, where the people vote for one of two candidates every

half decade, in which civilian leaders have to obey U.S-controlled

militaries or face dismissal by military force. Mr. Negroponte will

find the Iraqi soil fertile for his version of democracy and human

rights. The U.S. administration turn blind eye to violations of human

rights by their own troops and mercenaries. Nazi's methods of torture,

sexual abuses and murder of Iraqi prisoners by the racist soldiers of

the occupying forces are in use immediately after the invasion and

occupation of the Iraq.

 

The occupying powers also ignores the criminal activities of four

militia thugs, which according to exile Iraqis have murdered many

Iraqi academics and intellectuals. The Iraqi-born novelist and artist

Haifa Zangana wrote in the Guardian of London: " the peshmergas of the

two Kurdish parties; the Badr brigade of the Supreme Council for

Islamic Revolution in Iraq; Ahmed Chalabi's troops; and the

ex-Ba'athist Mukhabarats under Iyad Alawi's national accord. These

militias are run by members of the IGC and no one can touch them " (4).

The occupying powers have not put an end to these violent crimes.

 

Recently, Mr. Negroponte talked about: " real dialogue between our

military commanders, the new Iraqi government and, I think, the United

States mission as well " . He said: " the American military is going to

have the freedom to act in their self-defence, and they are going to

be free to operate in Iraq as they best see fit " . Negroponte stint at

the UN was to shield Israel crimes against the Palestinians, and to

coerce smaller nations at the Security Council exercising the threat

of U.S. power.

 

Negroponte diplomatic responsibilities were appalling. Democracy and

human rights are not on Negroponte preferred menu. Negroponte will be

serving the interests of U.S. tyranny and U.S. Corporations in Iraq.

Negroponte will bring to Iraq the economic disasters inflicted on the

people of Latin America by the U.S. and U.S-backed corporations.

Negroponte is not suitable to serve in the current political

environment of Iraq.

 

[1]. Noam Chomsky, Terror and Just Response,

www.chomsky.info/articles/20020702.

 

[2]. Gary Cohn & Ginger Thompson, Former envoy to Honduras says he did

what he could, The Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1995.

 

[3]. Stephen Kinzer, Our Man in Honduras, The New York Review of

Books, 48(14), September 2001.

 

[4]. Haifa Zangana, The Enemy within, The Guardian, 10 April 2004.

 

Ghali Hassan is in the Science and Mathematics Education Centre,

Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. Hassan