Deep State

by Marc Ambinder

  14. Dan Morain, “Davis Defends Warning of Bridge Attack,” Los Angeles Times, November 3, 2001, http://articles.latimes.com/2001/nov/03/local/me-65203/2.

  15. Library of Congress, James Madison and the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/madison_papers/mjmconst.html.

  CHAPTER 4

  Fairly Modest

  By his own admission, Julian Assange’s goal is to expose the United States (and other ostensibly oppressive regimes) as duplicitous and hypocritical—smooth-talking behind the State Department podium while orchestrating coups d’état and other malevolence in smoke-filled embassies. Assange’s weapon, until it began to fall apart due to a lack of funding, government legal attacks, and personality conflicts within the organization, was an online database designed for anonymous officials, journalists, and whistleblowers to upload sensitive material for public consumption without fear of repercussions. His goal was the world stage. His method was laced with irony, which he has acknowledged. Nobody knows with certainty what secrets he possesses; his secrets are secret. And his modus operandi was to drip, drip, drip each classified document and government secret into the public record. Official denials and deflections are countered by evidence to the contrary. And by publishing these classified documents, Assange thought he could strike a shattering blow for transparency and accountability with such force as to jar loose the intellectually calcified philosophy whereby governments use secrecy to advance their nefarious, destructive agendas.

  Using his stated criteria for success as a metric, in many ways Assange has achieved a measure of his goals. The publication of State Department cables revealed the extent of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s corruption, and proved to be, if not a tipping point, then certainly a kind of fuel for public uprisings in the oppressed nation. Ben Ali’s abdication of authority and escape to Saudi Arabia (the Argentina of the East) not only liberated a people with minimal bloodshed, but also ignited what has become known as the Arab Spring.

  While Assange’s associates at WikiLeaks see themselves as journalists on a political mission, their methods go where cable news talking-head partisanship cannot. By posting original documents provided by leakers, WikiLeaks activists empower citizens to make decisions for themselves without the mediating influence of a newspaper’s editorial team or a news program’s producers.

  That’s what makes their decision on April 5, 2010, so bizarre in retrospect.

  On that day, WikiLeaks released a secret video recorded in 2007, marketing it as a “classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad—including two Reuters news staff.” The description continued, “The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.”1

  The video, as edited, uploaded, and advertised, brought the site unprecedented attention. Military analysts were skeptical of the site’s claims, however, and deconstructed the unedited thirty-nine-minute version. (Twelve minutes of context had been removed from the footage.) As Bill Keller of the New York Times wrote, “The video, with its soundtrack of callous banter, was horrifying to watch and was an embarrassment to the U.S. military. But in its zeal to make the video a work of antiwar propaganda, WikiLeaks also released a version that didn’t call attention to an Iraqi who was toting a rocket-propelled grenade and packaged the manipulated version under the tendentious rubric ‘Collateral Murder.’”2 This context is crucial, as rocket-propelled grenades are a direct threat to military rotary-wing aircraft. Anthony Martinez, a former infantryman familiar with such aerial footage, wrote of the unedited version:

  Between 3:13 and 3:30 it is quite clear to me, as both a former infantry sergeant and a photographer, that the two men central to the gun-camera’s frame are carrying photographic equipment. This much is noted by WikiLeaks, and misidentified by the crew of [Apache helicopter] Crazyhorse 18. At 3:39, the men central to the frame are armed, the one on the far left with some AK variant, and the one in the center with an RPG. The RPG is crystal clear even in the downsized, very low-resolution video between 3:40 and 3:45 when the man carrying it turns counter-clockwise and then back to the direction of the Apache. This all goes by without any mention whatsoever from WikiLeaks, and that is unacceptable.3

  Though Martinez, experienced in calling for air support, states that under the circumstances he likely would have recommended against Apaches engaging the targets, he takes special note that

  it has to be taken into consideration that there is no way that the Crazyhorse crew had the knowledge, as everyone who has viewed this had, that the man on the corner of that wall was a photographer. The actions of shouldering an RPG (bringing a long cylindrical object in line with one’s face) and framing a photo with a long telephoto lens quite probably look identical to an aircrew in those conditions.4

  In the instance of “Collateral Murder,” as well as the massive diplomatic cable release that followed, it seems clear that Assange expected more than he got, or rather, saw what he wanted to see. Certain secrets held by the government—the order of battle for an Iranian conflict, contingency plans for a South Korean invasion by the North, response scenarios to a nuclear attack on a major U.S. city—are secret only to the extent that they’re tactical and filed away. Once the trigger is pulled on any of those situations, and thousands more, the entirety of the plans become evident to the world. Likewise, should the Korean peninsula peacefully reunify, it stands to reason that the invasion contingency plans will eventually be declassified in the same manner as scenarios for nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

  Less dramatic, perhaps, but no less important are the thoughts of U.S. ambassadors abroad and their interactions with foreign officials and informants. As a practical matter, intelligence generated is very important today, but has a relatively short half-life. Eventually, the information will make it into the footnotes of obscure political science dissertations and collect dust in university libraries.

  All of this is to say that these secrets are certainly sexy and appealing to academics and enthusiasts (to say nothing of foreign intelligence), but should one of these plans or documents leak, it’s unlikely to bring the Republic to its knees or force change in the way the United States does business. When they leak, it’s really just a situation where they leaked illegally, but more to the point, leaked too soon.

  There are secrets, however, both official and unofficial, that the government doesn’t want to leak ever. In terms of foreign affairs, if it were discovered that the U.S. military intentionally poisoned a village’s water well and blamed it on the Taliban, U.S. credibility would be annihilated. Likewise, if a well was accidentally poisoned, Americans knew but said nothing, and civilians died as a result, American credibility would suffer for the same reason. It’s obvious why the government would want to keep such actions secret forever. But such secrets are now among the hardest to keep—both because the villagers can get their story out and because someone in the chain of secrets will have every reason to leak it and no reason to keep it.

  In the material provided by Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks, Julian Assange expected to find a lot of poisoned wells. Instead, he found a lot of fairly banal and expected activities by State Department officials. Insofar as there were surprises, they generally came in the form of missing puzzle pieces and moments of “I knew it!”

  When Assange set course to share tranches of his classified diplomatic cable cache with Der Spiegel, the Guardian, and the New York Times, he assumed that he would have more control over the documents’ publications than he eventually did. Assange could have simply published the cables himself, but even he recognized the damage to WikiLeaks’ credibility wrought by “Collateral Murder,” and the inherent power of established and trusted journalistic entities (even entities he believed to be penetrated and corrupted by the system). Sim
ply put, the New York Times still means something to Americans, and its stamp of approval confers legitimacy.

  Assange’s relationship with the Times soured very quickly when it became clear that the paper would not follow his calculated schedule for releasing the documents. (He has since publicly denounced the paper as a spineless pawn of the state and of falling victim to governmental pressure to accept an official spin.)5 It is telling that Assange assumed the Times would abandon the traditional journalistic balancing act of revealing news on one hand while protecting national security on the other. By vetting its information with the U.S. government, the New York Times influenced what American readers learned from the cables and provided a crucial avenue for the German and London papers to learn the American government’s perspective. Both the Guardian and Der Spiegel followed the lead of the Times on most redactions—and deliberately so. The Times was in a much better position to determine what was too sensitive to include.

  The process deciding what, exactly, was fit to print closely mirrored the methods of the very secrecy apparatus targeted by Assange. The Times received the classified material directly from WikiLeaks and immediately set up the newsroom equivalent of a government special access program—that is, a “black” department that no more than a half-dozen people knew even existed. (This roster would expand to about forty before publication of the diplomatic cables, giving the Times employees a taste, most likely, of how hard it is to effectively keep your own secrets.) Bill Keller, then the executive editor of the Times, tapped the paper’s longtime war correspondent Eric Schmitt to vet the documents so as to determine their legitimacy. (“Collateral Murder” put everything in doubt.) After careful scrutiny, however, Schmitt determined that the cache of documents was in fact the real thing.

  The New York Times spent the next six weeks rifling through the most highly sensitive of the State Department cables and deciding which were most newsworthy. Times technicians devised a software algorithm to sort the cables by keyword, classification level, origin, and destination. (For example, cables intended for distribution to the National Security Council were more likely to be important, and were thus elevated in the priority queue.) This process identified approximately 150 cables of serious journalistic merit involving matters of national security. Included in the WikiLeaks revelations:

  A 2009 cable from the U.S. ambassador in Pakistan reporting on the state of Abdul Qadeer Khan’s detention and observation. Khan is perhaps best known (or maybe feared is a better description) as the genius behind Pakistan’s atomic bomb and the mastermind of an international proliferation network. After handing his Third World home a First World bargaining chip, Khan sought to establish a global turnkey operation for would-be nuclear powers, approaching such nations as North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and Libya—in other words, the Axis of Evil and Crazy. A national hero in Pakistan, he never faced criminal prosecution but was reported to have been placed under house arrest. According to U.S. ambassador Anne W. Patterson, however, Khan’s house arrest has amounted to very little, “despite the [Pakistani] government’s protestations to the contrary.” The ambassador’s warning to Washington: a mad scientist with legitimate claim on the title of Most Dangerous Man in the World generally roams freely, with popular expectation that he is “free to lead a more-or-less normal life.”6

  A 2007 cable from the U.S. embassy in Pakistan warning of a certain shortsightedness in the previous year’s agreement to sell F-16s to the nominal ally. Embassy officials noted that non-U.S. and non-Pakistani aircraft and personnel are forbidden on the same military bases as the F-16 aircraft. (This is a common precautionary move to prevent foreign nationals from gaining access to secrets of sophisticated American weaponry—in this case, a fighter jet.) The problem: “Pakistan’s search and rescue helicopters are primarily of Russian and French origin.” Additionally, Pakistan makes great use of European-manufactured Casa 235 “short takeoff and landing” airplanes. “If Pakistan cannot base these aircraft with the F-16s, Pakistani personnel (and U.S. trainers) could be unnecessarily endangered. At the very least, operational effectiveness would be hurt by lack of access to Casa 235 capabilities.” Further, the embassy warned, the restrictions “prevent Pakistan from launching a unified strike package of U.S. and non-U.S. aircraft from a single air base. As pre-mission briefings are essential to safety and effectiveness, this would be a serious handicap for the Pakistan Air Force.”7

  A 2010 cable (scheduled for declassification in 2034) from the American embassy in Seoul. Within its pages, South Korean vice foreign minister Chun Yung-woo relayed word from China that nothing will stop the collapse of North Korea following the death of Kim Jong-il. According to Chun, North Korea has “already collapsed economically” and would last no more than three years beyond Kim’s death. Meanwhile, and contrary to widespread belief, China has little control over North Korea, and Pyongyang “knows it.” This is especially disconcerting as “the Chinese genuinely wanted a denuclearized North Korea, but the [People’s Republic of China] was also content with the status quo.” The message from China: if North Korea is determined to cultivate a nuclear program, they’re going to continue, external influence be damned. The expectation over the long term, however, is the collapse of the North and a reunified peninsula, “anchored to the United States” in a “benign alliance.” A nonaggressive partnership would satisfy China, which has little economic investment or incentive in North Korea, as well as Japan, which prefers a divided Korea but lacks the leverage to halt reunification.8

  A 2010 cable revealing that the Chinese government coordinated systematic intrusions into Google’s network. Reportedly, “the closely held operations were directed at the Politburo Standing Committee level,” and Google was not the only victim of such state-sponsored cyber crime. “Contacts in the technology industry tell [U.S. diplomats] that Chinese interference in the operations of foreign businesses is widespread and often underreported to U.S. parent companies.” This is in accordance with China’s goal of “exploiting the global economic downturn to enact increasingly draconian product certification and government procurement regulations.” As part of its strategy, the cable reported, China appeals to the nationalism of its citizenry by accusing the U.S. government and its Internet cohorts of forcing China to accept “Western values.” This strategy of information authoritarianism collapses under “Google’s demand to deliver uncensored search results,” which officials find “very difficult to spin as an attack on China.” As a result of Google’s stance, the heavily censored Chinese search engine Baidu “looked like a boring state-owned enterprise,” while Google seemed “very attractive, like a forbidden fruit.”9

  A 2007 message from the U.S. embassy in Berlin to the secretary of state, relaying ongoing discussions with German officials concerning Khalid El-Masri. In 2003, El-Masri—a citizen of Germany—was snatched as a suspected terrorist while vacationing in Skopje, Macedonia. (He was, in fact, confused with actual terrorist Khalid al-Masri.) A division chief at CIA headquarters in Langley approved extraordinary rendition for El-Masri. The innocent German greengrocer was beaten, bagged, and brought to the notorious Salt Pit just north of Kabul, Afghanistan. While at the “black prison” ostensibly operated by the CIA but kept off the books so as to allow for the most abusive of interrogations, El-Masri was tortured for information he did not and could not possess. Most damning, after CIA officers realized they had the wrong man, the spooks were spooked and kept El-Masri incarcerated. When George Tenet, director of the CIA, learned of this, he ordered an immediate release.

  Still, El-Masri remained at the Salt Pit. It took two further demands by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for agents (including a German intelligence officer, it should be noted) to finally acquiesce. The CIA deposited the emaciated man on the Albanian border, five months after kidnapping him, without so much as an apology, to say nothing of remuneration.

  Such a gross violation of the rights of an innocent vacationing citizen of Germany did not go over well with the Germ
an people or government, and calls arose for international arrest warrants against the field team. The possibility that an ally might drag the black operations of the global war on terror into the spotlight was similarly unwelcome in Washington, and diplomatic pressure was applied. In a suggestive statement as written in the leaked cable, “[U.S. deputy chief of mission John M. Koenig] pointed out that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German Government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S.” German officials pushed back with a weak hand, as one of its spies was on the ground at the Salt Pit. German deputy national security adviser Rolf Nikel assured Koenig that “the Chancellery is well aware of the bilateral political implications of the case,” but added that this case “will not be easy.” Facing an outraged press and a hostile political environment, the Chancellery “would nonetheless try to be as constructive as possible.” Koenig “hoped that the Chancellery would keep us informed of further developments” so as to “avoid surprises,” and Nikel reiterated that he could not “promise that everything will turn out well.”10

  Though the New York Times would face scorn for publishing sensitive material, it never deviated from an internal compass that erred on the side of caution. Protecting the identities of soldiers, operatives, agents, and diplomats in the field remained a top priority. Before reaching out to the U.S. government, the Times of its own accord redacted or otherwise obfuscated all names and identifying details that might be traced to sources operating within the borders of oppressive regimes. If a cable noted that a Chinese industrialist visited the American embassy on a certain date, that date would also be excised as a precautionary measure, given China’s predilection for routinely observing and recording the comings and goings of everyone from the American compound in Beijing. The New York Times therefore protected sources that might otherwise be identified by circumstance, as opposed to simply by name.