Neo-Conned! Again

by D Liam O'Huallachain

  Adding to the significance of the June 10th memo is the fact that the paragraph containing Valerie Wilson's name was clearly marked “secret,” denoting that at least some of the paragraph's contents were classified, and that none of it could be revealed to anyone but those possessing both a valid clearance and a need to know. This classification should have been a clear indication to White House officials, prior to the Novak leak, that Valerie Plame Wilson was an undercover CIA officer whose cover was classified. In retrospect it presumably implicates them in a clear violation of the 1982 intelligence identities act.

  The importance of the WHIG's emergence at the center of the Fitzgerald investigation cannot be underestimated. Judith Miller was one of the chief assets of the WHIG in the media. The WHIG was launched following the publication of the August 2002 op-eds by Brent Scowcroft and James Baker opposing any invasion of Iraq. It met weekly in the White House Situation Room to map out the war-propaganda campaign, and Miller was one of the journalists most frequently used to get out administration-cooked scare stories about Saddam Hussein's alleged quest for nuclear weapons. The idea of the Saddam nuclear bomb threat was the most compelling accusation that Cheney and others used to arm-twist members of Congress into voting to grant President Bush war powers in October 2002. It is likely that Miller's refusal to testify – and her current jail time – have more to do with her “special relationship” to the WHIG than to the Plame leak per se, given that she never published an article about Plame.

  Another recent twist in the saga is the growing evidence that John Bolton, currently the Bush recess apointee as UN Ambassador and the former State Department chief arms control negotiator, may also have had a role in the Plame leak. Bolton's chief of staff, Fred Fleitz, a CIA officer on loan to the State Department from the Agency, may have known Valerie Plame's identity, according to several sources, and passed it along to Lewis Libby via John Bolton.

  So far, however, much of this is speculation and behind-the-scenes deduction. John Dean wrote on October 3, 2003, at Salon.com that he strongly encourages Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame to file a civil lawsuit, perhaps against Karl Rove, to force evidence to the surface. Dean points out that, in the wake of the Watergate break-in of 1972, Democratic National Committee Chairman Larry O'Brien filed a civil suit against the Committee to Reelect the President, the organization directly implicated in the Watergate break-in. Dean – at the White House at the time – says that the civil suit caused more anxiety among the Nixon inner circle than any probes underway at the Justice Department. Perhaps the current President and vice president can also count on their political-appointee Justice Department officials to run interference. But a civil suit, with discovery, might pry open doors that would otherwise be shut.

  Meanwhile, Ambassador Wilson's take on the “outing” of his wife is that it was a warning – a “shot across the bow” – aimed at intelligence analysts and professionals who might have contemplated speaking candidly about pressure they felt to shape their conclusions according to preconceived administration positions on Iraq's WMD. As he pointed out to Josh Marshall in his September 16, 2003, interview, Congress was at the time encouraging anyone who felt pressured to speak up. Wilson feels the move against his wife was a message: “Should you decide to come forward, you too could be looking at this.” In fact he had respected journalists tell him that the White House was trying to get them off of the trail of how the infamous “16 words” got into the State of the Union address, and onto how the CIA position of his wife made his own testimony on the Niger yellowcake issue somehow suspect. He remembers one comment specifically: “White House sources insist the real story here is not the 16 words, it's Wilson and his wife.” This, plus the fact that – according to Newsweek for October 13, 2003 – Chris Matthews of MSNBC called Wilson and told him, “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game,” would seem to support Wilson's interpretation of events.

  Some people are convinced that the government prosecutors already know the names, whether they be Rove, Libby, or others, of the “senior White House officials” involved. “But surely they know already,” opined columnist William Raspberry in an article in the May 9, 2005, Washington Post. “Novak isn't talking about it, but it's inconceivable to me that they haven't talked to him and learned who tipped him; otherwise he'd be the one on the hot seat.” Raspberry's commonsense position has become more and more accepted, as recent discussions in the media have tended to circle around the obvious disparity between the prosecutorial attention that Cooper and Miller have gotten and the relative inattention to Novak. Some have speculated that perhaps Novak has been left alone because of the relationship between the source of his information and those running the investigation. Still others, on the other hand, like Novak's “conservative” friends, have called for him to explain what's kept him out of trouble; columnist William Safire demanded, for instance, that Novak write a column “explaining how his two sources … managed to get the prosecutor off his back.” Novak said at the time, in reply, that he'd “write a column when the case is closed” and “tell everything I know.” But many have speculated that his public outburst on CNN's Inside Politics on August 4, 2005 – where host Ed Henry later admitted that he “had told [Novak] in advance that we were going to ask him about the CIA leak case” – is proof positive that the pressure on Novak continues to mount, and perhaps he's not enjoying it.

  Whether Raspberry is right or whether, like Deep Throat, the identity of the actual leakers will remain unknown for decades (if not forever) – media speculation and our own investigation and deduction notwithstanding – this great blemish on the American body politic will not go away. No doubt it will haunt those who carried out this act of political vindictiveness – presumably team Bush, including Libby, Rove, and maybe Cheney and others – for years to come. One way or another, whether in a formal court of law, in an impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate, or through the tribunal of public opinion, the true authors and instigators of the Plame leak must be found and, for their high crimes and misdemeanors, brought to justice.

  1. Individuals I've interviewed include several high-ranking current members of the U.S. intelligence community, a number of former senior U.S. intelligence officials, four retired U.S. military intelligence officers, a former Israeli intelligence officer, and a wide array of journalists who specialize in national security affairs. A colleague of mine also interviewed four members of the Defense Policy Board and several former U.S. Ambassadors to Middle Eastern and African countries.

  1. See the postscript to the present chapter for more on this issue.—Ed.

  1. See Col. Gardiner's piece (p. 638) on the WHIG's place in the war's PR network.—Ed.

  CHAPTER

  30

  postscript

  The Anonymity Trap

  ………

  Jacob Weisberg

  IT’S BEEN OPEN season on Norm Pearlstine since the Time, Inc., editor-in-chief decided to turn over Matthew Cooper's notes to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. In the New York Times, Frank Rich accused Pearlstine of elevating corporate interests over press freedom. Times media columnist David Carr went on to chide him for transforming TIME “into a lifestyle bible that often leaves the more ambitious stories to others.” The New York Observer contributed a savage précis of Pearlstine's entire career.

  This attack speaks more to journalistic groupthink than to any real moral or legal reasoning. Pearlstine hasn't argued his case beyond the quotes he has supplied in a couple of interviews, but he's clearly struggled with the issue more deeply than New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., whose decision on the other side evinces no difficulty and no doubt. Can the nation's leading newspaper really find it an easy call to defy the nation's high court when faced with a ruling it doesn't like? Is corporate disobedience – which would have been a new one on Thoreau and King – really a principle the Times wants to establish?

  Pearlstine's conclusion that having traveled ev
ery legal avenue on behalf of its view of the First Amendment, a publication should obey the law seems persuasive to me. Indeed, this was the Times' own position in the landmark Pentagon Papers case, in which the paper clearly would have complied with the Supreme Court's ruling and withheld publication had it lost – even though a far more fundamental right was at issue than today.

  But Pearlstine's thoughtful and courageous rejection of the view of the journalistic establishment of which he is (or was) a pillar doesn't go far enough. There's a strong argument that journalists at TIME and elsewhere should not just cough up the names of the Valerie Plame leakers in court, but share them with their own readers as well.

  Journalists make a fetish of anonymous sources. They do so for reasons ethical, psychological, and anthropological, including genuine principle, the lure of heroism, and – especially in Washington – a culture of status based on access to inside information.

  But let's ignore the ulterior motives and focus on the principle Judith Miller has so forcefully asserted by going to prison. To Miller and the Times, confidentiality is the trump value of journalism, one that outweighs all other considerations, including obedience to the law, the public interest, and perhaps even loyalty to country.

  This is indeed a strong principle, but it is a misguided one. In the Mafia, keeping confidences is the supreme value. In journalism, the highest value is the discovery and publication of the truth. When this paramount value comes into conflict with others – such as following the law, keeping your word, and so on – hard choices have to be made.

  Thoughtful journalists sometimes do choose the value of revealing truth over the value of confidentiality. One example: testifying to the Iran-contra committee in 1987, Oliver North defended lying to Congress by citing what he claimed were congressional leaks of classified information. As an illustration, North cited details about the capture of the PLO terrorists who had hijacked the Achille Lauro in 1985. Jonathan Alter pointed out in Newsweek that North himself had leaked the details of that military operation to a Newsweek reporter. Alter's argument for outing North was that reporters who knew North was the leaker shouldn't be party to his deception.

  There are other examples of journalists unilaterally declaring a source's promised anonymity inoperative. In his book Uncovering Clinton, Michael Isikoff put Linda Tripp's off-the-record dealings with him on the record. His argument was that Tripp's grand jury testimony about their conversations had subsequently become public, so it would be ridiculous to continue to suppress his version. Bob Woodward was always planning to name Deep Throat after he died. His argument was the interest of history. In 1988, Milton Coleman of the Washington Post revealed that Jesse Jackson had used the terms “hymie” and “hymietown” in a private conversation with him. His argument was that prejudice on the part of a presidential candidate was too important to keep secret. In various instances, publications have fingered campaign operatives attempting to leak negative stories about opposing candidates, on the theory that the fact of the dishing was dishier than the dirt being dished.

  The argument for reporters outing the Plame leakers combines elements of several of these examples, and is slightly different from any of them. Talking to a source “on background” cannot be an offer of blanket immunity in all circumstances. If someone goes off the record to offer a journalist a bribe, or threaten violence, the importance of what the source has told a reporter may simply supersede the promise to keep mum. To take an extreme example, any reporter of integrity would reveal off-the-record information about an upcoming terrorist attack or serious crime. In the Plame case, the crime under investigation consists in speaking to reporters. No plausible shield law would, or should, protect a reporter in this situation, because there's no way for a prosecutor to develop a case against a perpetrator without evidence from the recipients of the leak. The New York Times might argue that the law against leaking undercover CIA agents' names should be repealed. But the paper can't coherently argue that the law should be enforced and that its own reporter should prevent its enforcement.

  The argument against ever outing sources is instrumental. Insiders won't leak to the press if they can't rely on a reporter's pledge of confidentiality, the argument goes, and so the public's interest in discovering wrongdoing ultimately won't be served. This is mostly humbug. As most modern presidents have discovered, leakers are a hardy breed. They act from various motives, of which unalloyed public-spiritedness is probably the rarest. Outing the Plame leakers wouldn't undermine the use of confidential sources. It would merely put leakers on notice that their right to lie and manipulate the press is not absolute and not sacred.

  THE EDITORS' GLOSS: The U.S. approach to the “war on terror” (GWOT) and its “detainees” has tarnished and undermined its conduct in Iraq too. Driven by media and Bush-administration rhetoric, which insists that Iraq is part of the GWOT and those fighting U.S. occupation are “terrorists,” we have lost all sense of what the law of armed conflict is about. Importing interrogation techniques from Gitmo and Afghanistan, where by our own admission they are permitted because the Geneva Conventions (GC) don't (sic) apply there, to Iraq, where they do, constitutes a crime against the law of war. Our detention of family members of insurgents to compel their surrender (documented by Col. Herrington, December 2003, and the Army Lessons Learned Center, May 2004; soldiers even left a note in one case (Washington Post, July 28, 2003): “If you want your family released, turn yourself in”) is both a clear violation of GC Art. 34 (“The taking of hostages is prohibited”) and further fruit of the “GCs-don't-apply” mentality.

  The “torturegate” mendacity appears pervasive. Lt. Gen. Sanchez said before a Senate Committee (May 19, 2004) he “never approved” fear-inducement as an interrogation technique, but his own September 14, 2003, memo approves item “E”: “significantly increasing fear level in a detainee.” At the same hearing, Maj. Gen. Miller denied discussing his visit to Iraq with DoD intelligence officials (“I had no direct discussions with Secretary Cambone or General Boykin”) but said to lawyers in August 2004 (Chicago Tribune, July 15, 2005) that he “out-briefed” Cambone “following [his] return in the fall.” Perhaps the reality is becoming clear to these men. As Air Force deputy JAG, Maj. Gen. Jack Rives, wrote in an explosive memo discussing acceptable interrogation methods, the “more extreme interrogation techniques … amount to violations of domestic criminal law” (New York Times, July 28, 2005). This is consistent with his service counterparts' advice, and some in the FBI (Newsweek, August 8, 2005). Liz Holtzman, NYC lawyer and ex-Congresswoman, says that “everyone up the chain of command, including the President, could be liable under the [1996] War Crimes Act for ordering or engaging in murder, torture, or the inhuman treatment of prisoners in Iraq.”

  As Col. Smith notes, when “investigations” confirm activities that are “degrading and abusive,” but don't violate “U.S. law or policy,” those who drafted the policy should be in the dock, not just those who acted on it. If the law is ever enforced, John Yoo's cavalier dismissal of the issue based on Bush's re-election – “the debate is over” – could prove presumptuous.

  CHAPTER

  31

  A Torture(d) Web

  ………

  Col. Dan Smith, USA (ret.)

  “What we know is only the tip of an iceberg.”

  —Prof. Theo van Boven,

  former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture

  THE STATEMENTS IN Army Regulation 190–8 and international law are unambiguous: “The inhumane treatment of enemy prisoners-of-war, civilian internees, [and] retained personnel is prohibited and is not justified by the stress of combat or deep provocation.”

  The counterclaim is that these rules were crafted in another age, for another reality, for another enemy – that on September 11, 2001, the enemy, and the world, changed forever.

  The shame of Guantánamo Bay (GTMO), Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib goes well beyond those who have been or will be criminally charged or otherwise disciplined,
and beyond the U.S. armed forces. Shortly after September 11, officials at the very highest levels of the U.S. government – including those entrusted with enforcing the law – actively searched for ways to circumvent customary and codified prohibitions against maltreatment and torture of individuals captured or otherwise detained during armed hostilities.

  Though the effort had been ongoing for some time, its extent became clear only in June 2004. Attorney General John Ashcroft, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 8, flatly refused to provide a copy of two memoranda originated by his department's Office of Legal Counsel dealing with protections accorded various classes of detainees under the Geneva Conventions (GC) of 1949. Partisan maneuvering in the Senate to obtain or block access to 23 related documents so supercharged the issue that the White House judged the controversy would not abate as long as it continued to withhold documents. News media calculated the White House alone released a two-inch thick stack of papers, with other documents coming from the Justice Department (DoJ) and the Pentagon.