01/31/10
From The Washington Post <- OMG! the Post prints that Obama made mistakes!
Obama administration takes several wrong paths
in dealing with terrorism
By Michael V. Hayden
Sunday, January 31, 2010; A21
In the war on terrorism, this country faces an enemy whose theory of warfare
ends the hard-won distinction in modern thought between combatant and
noncombatant. In doing that for which we have created government -- ensuring
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- how can we be adequately
aggressive to ensure the first value, without unduly threatening the other two?
This is hard. And people don't have to be lazy or stupid to get it wrong.
We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day. We allowed an enemy combatant the
protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him. Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab is not "an isolated extremist." He is the tip of the spear
of a complex al-Qaeda plot to kill Americans in our homeland.
In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable
intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately
familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the
captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?
When questioning its detainees, the CIA routinely turns the information provided
over to its experts for verification and recommendations for follow-up. The
responses of these experts -- "Press him more on this, he knows the details" or
"First time we've heard that" -- helps set up more detailed questioning.
None of that happened in Detroit. In fact, we ensured that it wouldn't. After
the first session, the FBI Mirandized Abdulmutallab and -- to preserve a
potential prosecution -- sent in a "clean team" of agents who could have no
knowledge of what Abdulmutallab had provided before he was given his
constitutional warnings. As has been widely reported, Abdulmutallab then
exercised his right to remain silent.
In retrospect, the inadvisability of this approach seems self-evident. Perhaps
it didn't appear that way on Dec. 25 because we have, over the past year, become
acclimated to certain patterns of thought.
Two days after his inauguration, President Obama issued an executive order that
limited all interrogations by the U.S. government to the techniques authorized
in the Army Field Manual. The CIA had not seen the final draft of the order, let
alone been allowed to comment, before it was issued. I thought that odd since
the order was less a legal document -- there was no claim that the manual
exhausted the universe of lawful techniques -- than a policy one: These
particular lawful techniques would be all that the country would need, at least
for now.
A similar drama unfolded in April over the release of Justice Department memos
that had authorized the CIA interrogation program. CIA Director Leon Panetta and
several of his predecessors opposed public release of the memos in response to a
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on the only legitimate grounds for such a
stand: that the documents were legitimately still classified and their release
would gravely harm national security. On this policy -- not legal -- question,
the president sided with his attorney general rather than his CIA chief.
In August, seemingly again in contradiction to the president's policy of not
looking backward and over the objections of the CIA, Justice pushed to release
the CIA inspector general's report on the interrogation program. Then Justice
decided to reopen investigations of CIA officers that had been concluded by
career prosecutors years ago, even though Panetta and seven of his predecessors
said that doing so would be unfair, unwarranted and harmful to the agency's
current mission.
In November, Justice announced that it intended to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
and several others in civilian courts for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The White
House made clear that this was a Justice Department decision, which is odd
because the decision was not legally compelled (other detainees are to be tried
by military commissions) and the reasons given for making it (military trials
could serve as a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda, harm relations with allies,
etc.) were not legal but political.
Even tough government organizations, such as those in the intelligence
community, figure out pretty quickly what their political masters think is not
acceptable behavior. The executive order that confined interrogations to the
Army Field Manual also launched a task force to investigate whether those
techniques were sufficient for national needs. Few observers believed that the
group would recommend changes, and to date, no techniques have been added to the
manual.
Intelligence officers need to know that someone has their back. After the
Justice memos were released in April, CIA officers began to ask whether the
people doing things that were currently authorized would be dragged through this
kind of public knothole in five years. No one could guarantee that they would
not.
Some may celebrate that the current Justice Department's perspective on the war
on terrorism has become markedly more dominant in the past year. We should
probably understand the implications of that before we break out the champagne.
That apparently no one recommended on Christmas Day that Abdulmutallab be
handled, at least for a time, as an enemy combatant should be concerning. That
our director of national intelligence, Denny Blair, bravely said as much during
congressional testimony this month is cause for hope.
Actually, Blair suggested that the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG),
announced by the administration in August, should have been called in. A
government spokesman later pointed out that the group does not yet exist.
There's a final oddity. In August, the government unveiled the HIG for
questioning al-Qaeda and announced that the FBI would begin questioning CIA
officers about the alleged abuses in the 2004 inspector general's report. They
are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the
interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway.
The writer was director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009.
* * * * *
1. Micromanagement sucks.
2. Micromanagement by imbeciles sucks worse.
3. Micromanagement by imbeciles who blame the managees when it hits the fan is the ultimate suckitude.
4. Number 3 in time of war in the Military or Intelligence service should be a capital offense.