Everything I know, and then some

So many neglected stories, so little time to comment. Let me point you toward some links you might want to check out:

For starters, here’s the White House’s “fact sheet” on Michael Mukasey, newly confirmed by the Senate as Attorney General. Half of the “facts” here consist of statements in praise of the man by people or groups whose favorable opinion is scarcely surprising and in any case not worth having.

The remaining facts fall into two categories: (a) summaries of his judicial experience; (b) excerpts from his op-eds. Notice that both categories highlight Mukasey’s views on terrorism and national security, and really nothing else. It’s as if the job of the US Attorney General involved cases only in those areas. What this lopsided “fact sheet” really shows us is that Mukasey was selected by Bush on the basis of his willingness to take the hardest possible (Bush/Cheney) line on any matters of national security. His viewpoint on any other law-enforcement issues? Whatever…

If by chance you never understood why so many have described Mukasey’s national-security views as horrifying, here are his responses to written questions from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee (large PDF). You might start with the fourth question submitted by Sen. Durbin (about two-thirds of the way into the PDF). Durbin asks whether foreign powers might be permitted to abuse American citizens in the ways that captives at Gitmo and elsewhere have been treated (waterboarding; forced nudity; mock executions; etc.). Mukasey, in response, hemms and haws and refuses to rule out the possibility. In that respect, at least, Mukasey is almost indistinguishable from Alberto Gonzales.

No doubt that explains why several Democrats in the Senate voted to confirm Mukasey yesterday. If Gonzales was good enough for the job, then whyever would Democrats object to Mukasey?

First, let’s be crystal clear about how the Democrats threw a vote they would have won on Michael Mukasey and torture -- and let’s be clear why this happened…

At a minimum the filibuster could have forced President Bush to accept a ban on waterboarding and torture as a condition of Mukasey's confirmation.

Democrats had 40 votes against confirmation on Thursday night plus the four presidential candidates who did not vote. In other words, Democrats had 43 or 44 “no” votes, if you add the presidential candidates. If the Democratic senators had the conviction to filibuster, they would have won…

Thursday was a new low for Democrats, who surrendered the fight they would have won and were morally obligated to make, on torture

Ah, but Democrats always have an explanation when they cave in:

Senate Democrats on Friday downplayed their decision not to wage a filibuster to derail the nomination of Michael Mukasey as attorney general, arguing it would have been a fruitless endeavor that would have set a dangerous precedent if a Democrat wins the White House in 2008…

Democrats on Friday argued that votes on a procedural motion, like cutting off a filibuster, should not be equated with a vote on an underlying nomination or bill. A Democratic leadership aide said there likely would have been enough support to cut off a filibuster, making it frivolous to schedule a time-consuming procedural vote to end debate. The aide also said that “filibustering a Cabinet nominee is a bad precedent,” given that there is a possibility a Democrat may occupy the White House in 2009.

More graphically, from Democracy in Action:




Want to give vent to your frustration by doing something useful? No, don’t commiserate with the cowards of Congress. Donate to Secrecy News. Steve Aftergood is a dynamo and we’d be much more poorly informed as a nation without him.

Speaking of Secrecy News, Steve has posted quite a few new PDFs of Congressional Research Service reports (which CRS declines to make public as a matter of policy). This report in particular caught my eye: "Renditions: Constraints Imposed by Laws on Torture". Unfortunately, it’s going to continue to be relevant. Might as well link to this one too, just in case it should become relevant: National Emergency Powers

Also, this post ought to be mulled over by the actual lawyers among you: AIPAC Court Adopts Silent Witness Rule

Last week, Judge Ellis approved limited use at trial of the so-called "silent witness rule," an unconventional tactic that permits prosecutors to withhold evidence from the public and to disclose it only to the parties, the witnesses and the jury. Because this amounts to closing the trial, it runs the risk of infringing on constitutional guarantees that trials will be public.

The cone of silence slowly descends over our system of justice, all in the name of national security.

This morning WH spokesman Gordon Johndroe held a press conference in which he insinuated that Pervez Musharraf was no more responsible for the political/judicial crisis in Pakistan than were the thousands of people he’s been arresting.

Q Why is your statement not putting the onus on General Musharraf? It seems fairly even-handed, when it's General Musharraf who is the one who is arresting all the lawyers, who's arresting the human rights activists. He's the one who's caused the current crisis, so I'm just kind of curious why the statement does not take some more even-handed, balanced approach to what's causing the problem there.

MR. JOHNDROE: Well, I would say that our position with regards to President Musharraf has been very clear. We've talked to him about having elections soon, ending the state of emergency, removing the -- removing his uniform. So our position is clear to him and to everyone in Pakistan.

But I would also say there are a lot more people involved on the ground than just one person, and the point is that all of these people need to work together. There needs to be a dialogue among all the various political parties, and that is the best way to end this situation.

Q You don't agree then that he is the cause of the current crisis?

MR. JOHNDROE: I believe that there are a lot of factors on the ground.

Just when you thought the Bush administration’s response to Musharraf’s declaration of martial law couldn’t get any more bizarre.

Q Gordon, what does it say about the President's phone call to Musharraf if, the day after, or is it two days after that, Benazir Bhutto is basically in house arrest? I mean, so what impact did President Bush's phone call actually have?

MR. JOHNDROE: You know, I don't think it's for me to be the political scientist or the pundit on what impact the President's phone call had. I read in the papers this morning it had a particular impact that led to an announcement, and now I hear this afternoon that perhaps it's led to another impact.

Peggy Noonan is daffy and makes things up. Cernig at Newshoggers has the goods on her latest nonsense. If you’re a fan of the old British show “Spitting Image”, you’ll want to take a look.

Marc Lynch at Abu Aardvark is always worth a read. Today he discusses the triumphalists who are desperate to declare victory in Iraq…but don’t seem to have any workable ideas about how to achieve reconciliation among Iraqis or how to get American troops out of the country. Predictably, the more Nuri al Maliki thinks his position is secure, the more abrasive he becomes to fellow Iraqis.

Those who study colonial empires will recognize the phenomenon.

crossposted from unbossed.com

US Intelligence budget has nearly doubled in last decade

Compelled by Congress this year (H.R. 1, sect. 601) to reveal the size of the annual intelligence budget, the Director of National Intelligence issued a terse statement putting the figure for Budget Year 2007 at $43.5 billion. Walter Pincus has sources who tell him that if you add in the other intelligence budgets not included in Mike McConnell's tally (tactical intelligence for the individual military branches), the total would reach $50 billion.

In 1997 and 1998, the last years for which we have an official figure, the intelligence budgets were $26.6 and $26.7 billion. Thus the annual intelligence budgets are approximately double what they were a decade ago.

In 2005, an intelligence official speaking at a public conference in San Antonio inadvertently disclosed that the annual budget (including military services) was $44 billion.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, expressed amused satisfaction that the budget figure had slipped out.

"It is ironic," Mr. Aftergood said. "We sued the C.I.A. four times for this kind of information and lost. You can't get it through legal channels."

The $44 billion figure never was officially confirmed, but we can now see that it is in line with the figures we do have. So the intelligence budget exploded in size (up about 63%) sometime between 1999 and 2005, and has grown another 14% since then. This vast and rapid expansion in the government's intelligence apparatus is paralleled only by a similarly steep rise during Reagan's presidency. During the 1990s, however, intelligence budgets had stopped growing. It was only in 1999 that the CIA asked for a significant increase in its budget (of unknown size).

Hence the vastly inflated figure released today is almost certainly, in brief, the story of the National Security State that George Bush and friends have been building since 2001.

The White House was far from happy to have this information brought out into the light of day:

Disclosure, including disclosure to the Nation's enemies and adversaries in a time of war, of the amounts requested by the President and provided by the Congress for the conduct of the Nation's intelligence activities would provide no meaningful information to the general American public, but would provide significant intelligence to America's adversaries and could cause damage to the national security interests of the United States.

That was Bush's position as of February. And yet, despite the grave danger that Bush said was presented by H.R. 1 (the bill to implement the Sept. 11 Commission's recommendations), never the less he signed it into law in July. Governmental hypocrisy—it's a hallmark of secrecy for its own sake.

the new White House statement [in February] also took sharp exception to provisions in the bill that would strengthen the Public Interest Declassification Board, enhance whistleblower protections for intelligence community employees, and require increased intelligence and information sharing with state and local officials.

H.R. 1 required McConnell to disclose the annual intelligence budget by Oct. 30, and he waited to do so until the very last moment. His news release states bluntly that the public should expect no further information than the single budget figure he provides.

Any and all subsidiary information concerning the intelligence budget, whether the information concerns particular intelligence agencies or particular intelligence programs, will not be disclosed. Beyond the disclosure of the top line figure, there will be no other disclosures of currently classified budget information because such disclosures could harm national security. The only exceptions to the foregoing are for unclassified appropriations, primarily for the Community Management Account.

After 2009, we probably will find that the annual budget becomes a state secret again. A House-Senate conference on H.R. 1 introduced a "compromise" provision that permits the President to refuse to disclose intelligence budget figures beginning in 2009 merely by submitting a statement declaring that disclosure could harm national security. What is the likelihood that that will not occur?

Not great, to judge by the arm-twisting that has done on up until now. The 1997 and 1998 budget information was made public only because Steve Aftergood of FAS filed FOIA requests. Thereafter, the CIA refused to release any further budget figures:

Although the aggregate intelligence budget figures for 1997 and 1998 ($26.6 and $26.7 billion respectively) had previously been disclosed ... , intelligence officials literally swore under oath that any further disclosures would damage national security.

"Information about the intelligence budget is of great interest to nations and non-state groups (e.g., terrorists and drug traffickers) wishing to calculate the strengths and weaknesses of the United States and their own points of vulnerability to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies," then-DCI George J. Tenet told a federal court in April 2003, explaining his position that disclosure of the intelligence budget total would cause "serious damage" to the United States.

Even historical budget information from half a century ago "must be withheld from public disclosure... because its release would tend to reveal intelligence methods," declared then-acting DCI John E. McLaughlin (pdf) in a 2004 lawsuit, also filed by FAS.

Deferring to executive authority, federal judges including Judge Thomas F. Hogan and Judge Ricardo M. Urbina (pdf) accepted these statements at face value and ruled in favor of continued secrecy.

McConnell belongs to that school of thought by which democracy thrives through ignorance. Although little noted, last week he took another step to save the public from the burden of having too much information about its government's activities:

U.S. intelligence agencies will release summaries of national intelligence estimates only if Americans are in direct and immediate danger, or if police and fire departments need the information, the top intelligence official says.

NIE summaries will not be published if doing so would complicate U.S. policy interests "by revealing negative assessments of leaders or countries whose cooperation is essential for the attainment of policy objectives," or otherwise affect military, diplomatic or spy operations, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said in an Oct. 24 memo to the intelligence agencies.

McConnell is reversing the recent trend of releasing key judgments from NIEs, the forward-looking analyses prepared for the White House and Congress that contain the views of the nation's 16 spy agencies on a single issue.

McConnell argues that making the Key Judgments of NIEs public may make analysts worry that their words will be scrutinized by those outside government, and may permit the NIEs to become fodder in political debate. Evidently, then, there was a Golden Age of government in which an ignorant public placed all its trust in wise and good leaders. That was the same Golden Age in which NIEs were anything but politicized.

The government began releasing NIEs about four years ago, most notably with the White House's July 2003 disclosure of key judgments from a controversial NIE on Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program. The White House was pressured to release those findings after parts of the NIE that supported the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq were leaked to the press.

Again, government secrets are critical to national security until they're not.

crossposted from unbossed.com