UT Documents

Remaining April events

2011-03-29T05:50:00.001-07:00

On Thursday, April 28, in New York, at 7:00 p.m., I'll be speaking at FAIR's 25th anniversary event along with Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman and Michael Moore. Ticket and event information are here.

On Friday, April 29, in College Park, Maryland, at 4:00 p.m., I'll be speaking on civil liberties and the War on Terror. I'll be delivering the keynote speech for the University's Conference on "Human Rights in the Global Age." The event is open to the public and more information is here.

On Thursday, April 7, at 12:00 noon, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I'll be at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, giving a speech entitled "Undermining our Own Security: U.S. Policies in the Middle East and Beyond." The speech will be introduced by Professor Stephen Walt, who will also moderate the Q-and-A session that follows. The event is open to the public and will be held at Starr Auditorium, Belfer Bldg, 2nd floor (79 JFK Street, Cambridge).

On Thursday, April 7, at 7:00 p.m., in Providence, Rhode Island, I'll be at Brown University, speaking on Civil Liberties in the War on Terror and Age of Obama. The event, open to the public, will be in Salomon Center, Room 001 (69-91 Waterman St., Main Green).

On Friday, April 8, in Boston, Massachusetts, I'll be at the National Conference on Media Reform, appearing on several panels, including at least one on WikiLeaks (along with Amy Goodman, Greg Mitchell and others). Event information is here.

During the week of April 18-22, I'll be speaking at various events in California, including Berkeley, Stanford, Claremont McKenna and others. Details will be posted as the date approaches.

CNN headline

2011-03-03T18:20:00.001-08:00

March speaking events

2011-03-01T15:25:00.002-08:00

On Tuesday, March 8, at 6:30 p.m., I'll be in Santa Fe, New Mexico, speaking at an event sponsored by the Lannan Foundation; I'll be speaking on WikiLeaks and related matters. Details and ticket information are here.

On Wednesday, March 9, I'll be in Houston, Texas, at 7:00 p.m., speaking at LoneStar College in Kingwood, on The War on Terror and civil liberties. The event is open to the public; details are here.

On Thursday, March 10, I'll be in Wichita Falls, Texas, at 7:00 p.m., in the Akin Auditorium at Midwestern State University. I'll be speaking on American Foreign Policy and its counterproductive effects. The event is free and open to the public.

DOMA email

2011-02-24T08:25:00.000-08:00

Good morning

I saw you on Democracy Now! this morning and was very interested to hear you report that Obama is no longer supporting DOMA.

I am in a situation very similar to your own -- I am an American national living with my partner in his country of Costa Rica, where I am unable to marry him and be granted any immigration rights here.

Likewise, he has been repeatedly denied any visa to visit the United States, despite the fact that I have shown US Immigration interviewers evidence that he has been my partner for the past 5 years. Their response to our attempts has been to deny him residency and even a
tourist visa to visit the USA on the grounds that we cannot prove our relationship legally in Costa Rica nor the USA.

Obviously the situation is very frustrating to the both of us. Now that I have seen your report about Obama no longer supporting the Defense of Marriage Act, I have hope and expectation again that I may be able to bring my partner to the US. I'd be very interested in any
more information you have on the issue or any information on the next step for the immigration process, if you know it.

Thanks very much for making me aware of this issue. Good luck to you and your family.

Email from Stanford student re: Palantir

2011-02-11T04:21:00.000-08:00

Palantir is very well connected to the computer science community at Stanford; no one majoring in computer science here is more than two steps removed from Palantir. Everyone knows someone who works there or has tried to get a job there himself. I think that most CS students who know about Palantir's work in datamining surveillance data for the
Defense Department think it's a little sketchy but are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

They also are known for employing only the best of the best, and their exclusivity has made them a desirable employer. My friends who work there are some of the brightest programmers I know of at Stanford, which made their slide deck about attacking WikiLeaks (and you) a lot more
credible and worrying that it would otherwise have been.

Google Checkout options

2011-01-13T02:50:00.000-08:00

Instructions: After selecting the desired amount, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Google button:

Letter to AG from Gulet Mohamed's lawyer

2011-01-13T01:32:00.000-08:00

January 12, 2011

Mr. Eric H. Holder, Jr.
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

SUBJECT: Request for Justice Department Probe of FBI
Misconduct in Interrogation of American Muslim Teen
Detained in Kuwait

Dear Attorney General Holder:

I hope this letter finds you in the best of health and spirits.

It is my unfortunate duty to bring to your attention allegations of
official misconduct on the part of FBI agents who allegedly continued
interrogating my client, Mr. Gulet Mohamed, even after he repeatedly
invoked his constitutionally-guaranteed right to silence and to be
represented by an attorney.

As you may know, CAIR recently asked for an investigation by the
Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice into
allegations that Kuwaiti security personnel detained and tortured Mr.
Mohamed, a 19-year-old American citizen whose family lives in
Alexandria, Va. Mr. Mohamed believe he was detained at the behest of
American officials.

In media reports about this case, U.S. government officials confirmed
that Mr. Mohamed has now been placed on a no-fly list. He remains in
detention pending deportation from Kuwait, despite the fact that no
American official has made any allegation of wrongdoing on his part.

Mr. Mohamed was previously visited by FBI agents who sought to
interrogate him. At that time, he informed the agents that he has an
attorney and that he does not wish to answer their questions.

Today, Mr. Mohamed and his family members report that he was again
visited in detention by two FBI agents. He again invoked his right to
silence and to be represented by his attorney.

Despite these declarations, the FBI agents reportedly continued to
question Mr. Mohamed for two hours. Some of their questions allegedly
touched on Mr. Mohamed's religious beliefs and practices, including
whether he has memorized the Quran and whether he had prayed his
morning (fajr) prayer. Other questions indicated to Mr. Mohamed that
the agents sought to make him a government informant on his return to
the United States.

Mr. Mohamed and his brother who was present during part of this
interrogation both say that the FBI agents became visibly angry with
and physically intimidating toward Mr. Mohamed, to the extent that
Kuwaiti officials reportedly intervened to protect him from the agents.

Based on these allegations, I respectfully request that your office
initiate an immediate investigation into the conduct of the FBI
agents involved and that appropriate actions be taken based on the
results of that investigation.  It was manifestly unlawful for FBI
agents to continue their interrogation of Mr. Mohamed after he
requested the presence of his counsel.

All Americans, whatever their faith, deserve the same Fifth and Sixth
Amendment rights to due process of law and to be represented by an
attorney. Our government should demonstrate through its actions that
American Muslims have the same rights as other citizens and are not
subject to a two-tier system of justice in which their rights are not
acknowledged or respected.

If law enforcement officials have concerns about Mr. Mohammed or his
past actions, he should be allowed to return to the United States
where he may agree to being questioned in the presence of his
attorney -- free of the physical and psychological pressures of his
current detention.


Thank you in advance for your prompt attention to this important matter.
I may be contacted by phone at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mobile),xxxxxxxxxxxx (office)
or by e-mail at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Sincerely,

Gadeir Abbas, Esq.
Mr. Gulet Mohamed's Attorney

CC:

President Barack Obama
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
FBI Director Robert Mueller
Mr. Eric Treene, Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination,
U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division
Rep. James Moran
Sen. James Webb

Letter to DOJ from Gulet Mohamed's lawyer

2011-01-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

Mr. Eric W. Treene
Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination
U.S. Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20530

Via E-Mail: xxxx.xxxxx@xxxx.xxx

Dear Mr. Treene:

As you may recall, I copied you last week on a letter sent to the government of Kuwait requesting an investigation into allegations that Kuwaiti security personnel recently detained and tortured my client, Mr. Gulet Mohamed, an American citizen whose family lives in
Alexandria, Virginia. [Copies of the letter to the Kuwaiti government were also sent to the White House and the State Department.]

Mr. Mohamed reports that he went to the airport in Kuwait on December 20, 2010, to renew his visitor's visa to continue his Arabic studies in that country. He said that he had previously renewed his visa without incident. However, while waiting for his visa, Mr. Mohamed communicated via e-mail with his brother in the United States, indicating that there was a delay in the processing of his visa and that he suspected something was amiss. That was the last communication anyone had with Mr. Mohamed for more than a week.

In a conference call with me and other CAIR officials on December 28, 2010, Mr. Mohamed said he was taken into custody, blindfolded, handcuffed, and taken to a waiting SUV. Mr. Mohamed was reportedly held for more than a week at an undisclosed location by individuals
who told him they were with the "CIA of Kuwait." He states that during his lengthy interrogations, he was beaten in the face at least "one hundred times" and was hit with sticks on other parts of his body. This alleged torture occurred while Mr. Mohamed was blindfolded, handcuffed and unaware of his location or the identity of his interrogators.

The manner of his detention and the questions asked of Mr. Mohamed indicate to him that he was taken into custody at the behest of the United States. Over the weekend, Mr. Mohamed was visited by three FBI agents. He informed the agents that he had legal representation and that he did not wish to answer the agents' questions. The agents allegedly informed Mr. Mohamed that they could "facilitate" his release if he agreed to speak to them, but otherwise he might remain in custody for a lengthy period of time.

This troubling incident raises a number of questions that deserve answers.

1. Was Mr. Mohamed taken into custody at the behest of American authorities? If so, what was done to protect Mr. Mohamed from possible abuse by Kuwaiti security personnel?

2. Were American authorities aware of the torture allegedly being inflicted on Mr. Mohamed?

3. When American authorities were made aware of the allegations of torture by CAIR's letter to the Kuwaiti government, what actions were taken to protect Mr. Mohamed?

4. Have American authorities contacted the government of Kuwait to protest the alleged torture of an American citizen?

5. Did the FBI agents who sought to question Mr. Mohamed use his continued detention as a pressure tactic to force him to give up his constitutional right to silence or to have an attorney present when questioned?

Whatever concerns American or Kuwaiti officials may have about Mr. Mohamed, no one should be subjected to the kind of mistreatment that has been alleged in this case.

I therefore respectfully request that your department launch a full civil rights investigation of this incident and that appropriate actions be taken based on the results of that investigation.

I also request that the Department of State be urged to offer Mr. Mohamed all the protections due any American citizen and that his release be requested and facilitated.

Thank you in advance for your prompt attention to this important matter. You may contact me by phone at xxx-xxx-xxxx (mobile), xxx-xxx-xxxx (office) or by e-mail at gabbas@cair.com.

Sincerely,

Gadeir Abbas, Esq.

Cc: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama, FBI Director Robert Mueller, Rep. James Moran, Sen. James Webb

Email/comment to Ryan Singel

2010-12-30T10:31:00.001-08:00

Following is the email response I sent to Wired's Ryan Singel responding to his post, in which I asked him to post my response as an Update (he hasn't). I also left this as a comment on his blog, but he refuses to allow it even to appear:
_________________

You're the one misleading your readers with quotes. Here is the full sentence that I wrote, which you failed to quote -- on purpose in order to mislead (emphasis added):

"After my first article about Wired in June, Singel emailed me to defend Poulsen and contest my objections but wrote: 'I've long been a fan of your work and I'll continue to be'."

I included exactly that which you tried to imply I omitted -- that you "emailed me to defend Poulsen and contest my objections."

You also lied when claiming you didn't say our email exchange was on the record. On June 17, you sent me the first email that started our exchange and wrote: "Feel free to use any or none of this on the record." [Added: The email from which I quoted was your next one, sent the following day, June 18].

You should add this email as an update to your post, as it constitutes (a) my response and (b) my allegation that your post is misleading in two critical respects.

Email to Kevin Poulsen

2010-12-27T04:19:00.000-08:00

Email to Kevin Poulsen, 12/25/2010:

From: ggreenwald@salon.com
To: "Kevin Poulsen" (Kevin_Poulsen@wired.com)
Sent: Saturday, December 25, 2010 12:49:48 PM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: From Glenn Greenwald

Hi Kevin - Sorry to bother you on Christmas, but I'm writing for tomorrow about Charlie Savage's NYT article on WikiLeaks and Manning, in which Adrian Lamo claims that (a) Manning "did an actual physical drop-off [of classified documents] when he was back in the United States in January of this year" and that (b) Manning "had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files."

I realize that you believe the chat excerpts Wired published makes reference to (b), but I have two questions:

(1) Is there anything in the Manning-Lamo chats in which Manning told Lamo what is referenced in (a) -- i.e., that Manning "did an actual physical drop-off [of classified documents] when he was back in the United States in January of this year"? If so, do you intend to publish those excerpts?

(2) Is there anything in the chats beyond what you've published relating to (b) -- i.e., that Manning "had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files"? If so, do you intend to publish those excerpts? Thanks -

Glenn Greenwald
SALON

Email with Todd Gitlin, cc:d Franklin Foer

2010-12-07T10:07:00.001-08:00

GG email to Todd Gitlin, cc:d Franklin Foer

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: ggreenwald@salon.com
To: Todd Gitlin
Cc: Franklin Foer
Sent: Tuesday, December 7, 2010 10:51:58 AM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: Correction needed

Todd - A key premise of your TNR article about WikiLeaks is factually false. Contrary to your claim -- which has been widely repeated in numerous media venues -- WikiLeaks did not "indiscriminately" dump diplomatic cables.

To date, they have posted to their website only 960 of the roughly 250,000 cables they possess. Virtually every single one of those was first published by one of their partner newspapers: the NYT, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, El Pais, etc. And when WikiLeaks posted those cables to its site, they posted them with the redactions applied by those newspapers.

In other words, the reality is the exact opposite of what you stated in your article ("Wikileaks’s huge data dump, including the names of agents and recent diplomatic cables, is indiscriminate"). That claim is factually false. Here's an AP article detailing how WikiLeaks has followed the lead of media outlets in deciding which cables to publish.

It's obviously fine if you want to condemn WikiLeaks (though your last line is bizarre, given that Ellsberg himself has said Assange is one of his heroes and is doing exactly what Ellsberg did).

But it's not fine to repeat the widespread -- and unquestionably false -- claim that WikiLeaks has indiscriminately dumped diplomatic cables. The media has endlessly repeated the myth that they published 250,000 cables, and you probably got that from them, but it requires a correction.

Glenn Greenwald
SALON

TG to GG

I'm thinking about your points, and will reply more discriminately, as it were, but in the meantime, while we're clearing up falsehoods, I went over to Salon and saw the word "lies" in the headline. You're entitled to say "falsehoods" if, in fact, what I said was false. (I don't agree I wrote falsely, in fact, but will post on that later.) But "lies"? You really think I knowingly wrote something contrary to what I believed? This is false and outrageous. You should take down the headline.

Todd Gitlin

GG to TG

The headline describes "lies **and** propaganda" - it then enumerates multiple items. I didn't say you lied - I said you published "an absolute factual falsehood" and that you and TNR editors were guilty of "failing to undertake the most minimal due diligence (such as, say, checking WikiLeaks' website) before publishing this claim."

I don't know what you was in your mind when you wrote that. I didn't purport to know. And I don't think it matters. What matters is that it needs to be corrected.

This claim has been repeated everywhere, often by people who I do believe were lying. Whether you published it that way or as unintentional false propaganda is something I don't know and didn't claim to know. I think considerable light will be shed on the question by whether there is a real correction promptly forthcoming.

Email from Emory Professor David Cutler

2010-10-19T07:04:00.000-07:00

Glenn,

To further make fun of David Brooks' "math" you might ask where did the $1.4 billion number come from?

I assume the answer is the "OpenSecrets" folks who compile statistics on hard money in campaigns.

http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/index.php

$1.4 billion is almost the exact total raised for House and Senate races.

However, to put that number in context, almost $1 billion has ALREADY been spent as of the last month's reporting period, meaning as of Oct 1, it had already been spent on

a) fund raising itself
b) creating a staff and campaign structure
c) fighting contested primary fights.

The amount of "cash on hand" i.e. the amount that could still be spent is approximately $351 million for house races and $229 for the Senate. And those numbers are pretty close to evenly divided between the House and Senate.

There are 435 House seats, and 37 Senate races being run.

Average Cash on Hand for Democratic House Candidates: $430,153
Average Cash on Hand for Republican House Candidates: $376,720
Average Cash on Hand for Democratic Senate Candidates: $2,937,267
Average Cash on Hand for Republican Senate Candidates: $2,998,816

So, the average House race has less than $1 million cash on hand to spend for advertising in the last month, between both candidates.

The average Senate race has less than $6 million between the two.

So, let's say that Rove and his $60 million wants to target 30, close house races, and 10 close Senate races.

He could spend $3 million each on the 10 Senate races, DOUBLING the amount candidate spends.

He could also spend $1 million each in the House races, and effectively spend 3 TIMES more than the candidate.

Just $60 million is a HUGE amount targeted at just a few races.

And of course the "chamber of commerce" is spending even more than that.

Brooklyn Law School event

2010-09-18T05:44:00.000-07:00

E-mail exchange with Jeffrey Goldberg

2010-08-20T05:03:00.000-07:00

GG to JG

Hello again - Several people emailed me about your discussion today on On Point, in which you stated I had issued a "retraction" of the criticism I made of your Atlantic piece, specifically the contradiction I maintain you wrote about the 1981 Israeli strike.

I don't recall issuing any such retraction, and I'm pretty sure I'd recall it if I had done so. I'd like to write about this, so could you point me to my retraction? Thanks -

Glenn Greenwald

_____________________

JG to GG

You're right, I'm wrong. My apologies.

As I explained on my blog, I believe you are misreading one particular line in the Iran piece. The line, admittedly, isn't clear enough, but I think most people understood me to mean that the Israelis consider the Osirak raid to have been particularly effective since Saddam ultimately never fulfilled his nuclear ambitions. I should have added an extra line to explain that more clearly.

It does seem outlandish to think, doesn't it, that Jeffrey Goldberg, of all people, would believe that Saddam Hussein was defanged in 1981. I mean, I still think he's a threat, and he's dead. Or so they say, at least.

xxoo,

Jeff

* * * * * *

Jeffrey Goldberg, today: "I just noticed that Glenn Greenwald posted our private e-mail exchange, without asking me if that would be okay. Very nice."

Jeffrey Goldberg, June 25, 2010, threatening to publish emails from Journolist: "Nothing is really off-the-record. No conversation between more than two people is ever really off-the-record, and no e-mail is ever, ever off-the-record . . . . I've been leaked postings from JournoList before -- wonderfully charming things written about me, as you might have guessed -- and I haven't had the opportunity to use them, but would be happy to if the need arose".

Apparently, for some people, the prevailing ethical standards depend on whose emails are being published and who is doing the publishing. If any type of email is on-the-record and usable, it's one where someone writes and says: I plan on writing about X and would like your reaction.

E-mail exchange with Feinstein's office

2010-07-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

Gil Duran to Glenn Greenwald

Glenn:

Your blog post today makes unfair, untrue and inaccurate accusations about Senator Feinstein and her role as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. You falsely claim that Senator Feinstein would prefer to ignore the issues raised by the Washington Post series. These assertions are easily refuted by facts, but you did not call us and do any actual reporting before rushing to post your ad hominem attacks. However, I think Salon readers should have the benefit of the facts to counter these blatant distortions of reality, so here is the truth:

On Tuesday, Senator Feinstein opened the Intelligence Committee's hearing into the nomination of James Clapper for the Director of National Intelligence by referring specifically to the Washington Post series and the issues it raised:

"As the articles yesterday and today in The Washington Post had made clear, the DNI faces major management challenges caused by the enormous growth throughout those intelligence agencies and other parts of the government's national security complex since 9/11.

These articles raised several issues, such as the high infrastructure expansion of buildings and data systems. Yesterday's article specifically named -- and I won't read them out -- but one, two, three, four, five, six, seven huge new buildings, all of which, as was pointed out, will obviously have to accommodate individuals and all kinds of support services and positions.

The article also describes a contractor number that now reaches approximately 28 to 30 percent of the entire intelligence workforce, and carries out inherently governmental functions, contrary to policies of the Office of Management and Budget.

The authors count 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies that work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence.

Under the past two DNIs and CIA directors, the number of contractors has been coming down slightly, and I'm pleased that they are no longer being used to conduct interrogation.

Nonetheless, the use of contracts needs to continue to decrease substantially. And I intend to keep pushing on this point until contractors are not used for any inherently governmental purpose.

Our original fiscal year 2010 intelligence authorization bill contained a requirement that would have reduced the number of contractors across the community by 10 percent for 2009 to 2010. But because of the delay in passing the bill, this cut has not gone into effect.

Like the Post articles, this committee has found, as evidenced by our report on the Christmas Day plot, that intelligence growth has not always led to improved performance. Growth in the size and number of agencies, offices, task forces, and centers has also challenged the ability of former directors of national intelligence to truly manage the community."

The full transcript is here: http://transcriptswire.cq.com/do/transcriptView?id=169056392&print=1&mode=slug

In addition, Senator Feinstein has made reforming the Intelligence Community a centerpiece of her tenure as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

For example:

· The Fiscal Year 2010 Intelligence Authorization bill includes a provision to reduce the level of Intelligence Community contractors by 10 percent between FY09-FY10.

· FY 2010 bill also includes 10 provisions to hand the Director of National Intelligence additional authorities/flexibilities to manage the Intelligence Community.

· The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence continually reviews this subject as part of its oversight duties. This includes annual updated figures on the size of the problem; meetings with the top Intelligence Community Human Resources official; numerous discussions with heads of agencies on this issue, including CIA, NGA, and DHS intel.

· Senator Feinstein introduced legislation in 2008 and 2009 to ban the use of contractors in interrogations and detention operations and publicly congratulated Director Panetta (see attached press release) when he enacted this policy for CIA last year.

Senator Feinstein on the Use of Contractors:

1) http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=NewsRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=8CDFF3B7-5056-8059-760F-08F3052A5ADA

2) http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=NewsRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=39C559D5-5056-8059-7628-24DBD8F93DCD
________________

GG to GD

Gil - Which facts specifically did I get wrong? Which statements did I write which are false?

I wrote two sentences about Senator Feinstein: "It's probably best not to hold your breath waiting for Dianne Feinstein -- the Democratic Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who lives in lavish wealth as a result of her husband's investments in the National Security State (and whose Senate career has a way of oh-so-coincidentally bolstering their wealth) -- to meaningfully address any of the issues raised by the Post series. Despite Feinstein's rhetoric to the contrary, doing so is decidedly not in her interests for multiple reasons."

Which of those is false? I'm happy to publish your response, but since you're accusing me of making "unfair, untrue and inaccurate accusations," I'd like to know which specifically are inaccurate? Keep in mind that I did not deny that she speaks of the need to "reform" the intelligence community, but rather referenced her "rhetoric" in that regard and linked to an article which quoted her. That article, however, by the Post's Jeff Stein, expressed the same skepticism as I did about the sincerity and meaningfulness of this "intent."

Glenn Greenwald
__________

GD to GG

Glenn:

Every bit of it is wrong and false.

g

__________

GG to GD

She doesn't live a lavish life of wealth? That's not as a result of her husband's investments in the National Security State? Her actions in the Senate haven't coincidentally increased their wealth?
Did you click on the links I supplied? Are those factually false, too?

Transcript - Mac McClelland

2010-06-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

Glenn Greenwald: My guest today on Salon Radio is Mac McClelland, who is a reporter for Mother Jones, who has been providing some of the nation's best on the scene reporting of the BP oil spill, essentially from the start, including effort to restrict coverage, and we're here to talk about some of her reporting.

Thanks so much for joining me.

Mac McClelland: Thanks for having me.

GG: One of the things that has struck me about your reporting from the start is that it seemed to be conveying so much more urgency about the magnitude of the disaster than the American media generally was conveying, and so I wanted to begin by asking you what motivated you to go there and do this on the scene reporting, and when is it that you realized the magnitude of this crisis?

MM: I was actually already in New Orleans reporting a different story, and one day when I was supposed to be meeting soon, I looked at a map and saw the direction the spill was moving in, and so I drove down to one of the barrier islands that looked like it was going to be in the path of destruction, and I happened to arrive as oil was washing up on the shore. I think the second that you see it, literally the second you see it, you realize how massive this disaster is.

I mean, that was only the very, very beginning of the brownish rust-colored stick globules that have washed up, but still, they were all over the beach, and a lot of them are in tiny pieces and are broken up, and there is stuff all over the shore, and if you think about, how could somebody possibly pick this up and clean this up? Especially when it's going to be washing in in big black waves for the next many, many months. It's hard not to see the urgency of it, I think.

GG: One of the issues that you've been writing about most in terms of what is hard to find in other places, is the concerted effort on the parts of lots of different entities, law enforcement entities, and BP especially, to prevent coverage of what was really happening, and on May 22 - and this is one of just so many examples, but it was pretty stark - you wrote, quote:

It's Saturday May 22, a month into the BP oil spill, and I've been trying to get to Elmer's Island for the past two day. I've been stymied at every turn by Jefferson Parish Sheriff's deputies, brought in to supplement the local police force of Grand Island, a 229-year-old settlement here, at the very southern tip of Louisiana.

Can you talk about just in general the efforts that you encountered to prevent you and other members of the media from covering the spill?

MM: Sure. Well, it started with sheriff's deputies; I was encountering sheriff's deputies all over Grand Isle as soon as oil had washed up, and they're actually still there, doing the blockades now, a month later. They have also brought in private security contractors, and some of the actual just clean-up workers will be conscripted into security duties. They stepped up a lot of security shifts of the sheriff's deputies from several parishes here in Louisiana. One parish has 57 extra shifts per week that they are devoting entirely to, basically, BP security detail, and BP is paying the sheriff's office, reimbursing them for that overtime.

There's a lot of security down here, and you can see - someone from the local TV station down here was thrown off a beach. I still get thrown off of beaches, so as much as people are saying, we're not doing that anymore, and the Coast Guard is saying that the coast is clear, it's obviously not the case when you're actually on the ground.

GG: There's been some discussion about the role that the federal government has played in those efforts to prevent media coverage including restrictions on how low helicopters could fly, obviously the use of dispersants, it was suggested was an effort to prevent detection. Have you encountered that, the role of the federal government in what seems to be coverage-preventive efforts?

MM: Yeah, I was actually on a helicopter flyover, I guess it was about a week ago now, and the federal government had by that time already announced that they had eased the restrictions and that now helicopters that were carrying civilians or press - non-military or BP related people - could fly as low as 1500 feet, and that is absolutely not true. It certainly wasn't true when I was in the air; our pilot had to be at least 3000 feet in the air.

He had extreme restrictions, and we could see people related to the government or BP flying well below us, so they're still allowed in that lower air space, but we had to stay 3000 feet in the air. And even when we were that high up, there were military guys coming over the radio harassing my pilot for being in the area at all. So, that certainly is not the case that those restrictions are totally eased.

GG: One of the interesting things you write about in media criticism is that a lot of times people listen to media in a very kind of abstract and theoretical way, even if they sympathize with it, it's
very hard almost believe in a visceral that it's actually happening, and yet one of the things that often occurs is that when somebody has first-hand knowledge of an incident, because they're involved in it or seeing it, and then compare that to how the media is covering it, they really get a vivid understanding of how the media can distort things or how coverage can be distorted by the government or others, and prevent the media from covering it.

So, in terms of your being on the scene from the start, was there a disparity between the way the media was conveying what had happened here, the seriousness of it, and the reality, either because the media just did a bad job or because it was prevented from covering it in a way that would have informed people about what was taking place?

MM: I think it's hard, since I've not been here for two months, and the local media is freaking out, obviously. All of the front page stories on the local papers are about this spill. I imagine that that is not the case elsewhere in the country. Again, I check in with The Times and see that they're, it doesn't seem to be anywhere near the alarm bells ringing in other papers as there are down here. I think it's difficult to feel the whole distress of the situation unless you are really immersed in it, and it's possible that media outlets are concerned about people getting coverage fatigue because we've been talking about this for such a long time now. And we're going to keep talking about it for many, many months.

I lived here during Katrina and we saw the same thing, where people stopped talking about what was going on, and down here it was a totally different tone to the story. I mean, it's all anybody talks about. Every single radio show is about the oil spill. All the news shows are about the oil spill. The newspapers, the conversation, on the street, in bars, in diners - it's all-consuming because it really is going to change everybody's lives in a huge way.

GG: There was an incident this week that you documented, and have been investigating, and I'm going to link to your description of what took place, but still if you could just walk me through what it is that happened, how you learned about that, and what you were incensed, that would be really helpful.

MM: There is a conservation coordinator from the American Birding Association, as you can tell by his title, he's a very threatening individual, and he was videotaping himself giving a monologue about Corexit, and how dangerous Corexit is, in front of BP...

GG: Corexit is what?

MM: Is the chemical dispersant that they're using.

GG: Right.

MM: He was basically talking about how Corexit is going to kill us all, and was across the street on private property in a sugar cane field, but you could see the BP building was in the background. But it was across traffic and all the way across the street.

GG: When you say, it was on private property, it was not on BP private property, right?

MM: Oh yes, right. Not on BP-owned, private citizen property is that he was standing on.

GG: And he was essentially filming this narration with BP in the background to dramatize that it was BP that was releasing this dispersant that was so dangerous.

MM: Correct.

GG: And so then what happened?

MM: The a sheriff's deputy from Terrebonne parish approached him, and you can't see the deputy on camera, but you can hear him clearly and he tells him that BP doesn't want anyone filming there. He asked him for ID, and the guys asks, him, am I breaking any laws, and the cop says, not particularly, but BP doesn't really want people filming here, so all I'm going to do is strongly suggest that you need the of leave. I'm just going to strongly suggest that you leave And he tells him that a couple times.

He runs his information to see if he has any warrants, and he doesn't. and so the deputy leaves, and the guy goes on with his business After that, he packs up his camera, he gets in his car, and he drives away, and as soon as he starts driving away, the cop pulls him over, and...

GG: the same cop you had warned him to leave?

MM: Right Same cop. Pulls him over, except now he has somebody in the car with him, and it's a guy whose badge says Chief BP Security. So the cop went back to BP to pick up this security guy, and brought him back and together they pulled over this conservation coordinator. Basically the cop just stood by while the BP guy asked this citizen they had pulled over questions for 20 minutes. He asked him who he worked for, who he answered to, what he was doing there, why
he was in Louisiana, etc., etc. And then after, he called in, the BP guy was calling in information about this guy as he was answering it, and after about 20 minutes they let him go.

GG: Now I guess there was some kind of a-- someone notified you that the police officer was off duty and was working for directly for BP at the time, how did that happen?

MM: I finally got a hold of - you know, police departments aren't the fastest people to call the press back down here, and especially right now. but I finally got a hold of somebody from the
Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Department, and he said that that guy was not actually on duty, he was working private security detail. He was moonlighting basically, but the thing about that is is that in Louisiana, you can wear your uniform, your sheriff's uniform, no matter who you're working for, and use your car.

So, I mean, you wouldn't know that this guy was essentially a security guard and not a sheriff's deputy at that particular time, unless he pulled you over and you said, you are dressed like a cop, and in a cop car, but are you actually a cop right now? There's no way to tell who they're working for or on whose authority they're pulling you over or interrogating you.

GG: And when police officer had warned him to leave the area and to stop filming in front of BP headquarters though not on BP property, was the claim also that he was not acting in his official
capacity as a police officer?

MM: That guy never said anything about who he was working for at the time, and the guy he pull over had no idea, and so he just said, I'm going to strongly suggest that you leave because BP doesn't want you here. This guy assumes that he was speaking on behalf of the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Office. When I talked to the guy from the sheriff's office who was explaining to me that all of this behavior was totally on the up and up, it was completely standard, because that guy could have been a terrorist, so even though none of... this conservation coordinator was not breaking any laws, he was still be suspicious, and since he was being suspicious, it's fine that the sheriff pulled him over and let this BP guy interrogate him.

GG: I mean the reason, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about this is that I found this so incredibly creepy. I mean it's essentially, it sounds like a corporate police state, basically. In you experience, is this a one-time aberrational incident, or has there been a lot of cooperation along these lines between BP and law enforcement?

MM: There is definitely a lot of cooperation between BP and law enforcement. This Terrebonne parish sheriff's department, they alone have 40 of their deputies who are in the private employ of BP on they're time off, so just in that one little parish there's 40 cops who look like cops but are not necessarily always cops. In the rest of the parishes, where they have stepped up their security detail that they're working for BP, BP is paying them.

They're paying these sheriffs departments, so there' s obviously a lot of collaboration between and part of the things that had originally happened when I tried to get down to Grand Isle and I was originally encountering all of these restrictions, the BP liaison, who was married to a sheriff from the department that was telling me that I wasn't allowed through, said, we have a lot of sway over the sheriff departments. And of course the sheriff's departments will say that that's not true, but anyone down here can tell you that all the evidence points of the contrary.

GG: And have you found that your ultimately able to circumvent these restrictions and provide that coverage and get the access that you want, or have you been meaningful impeded in being able to convey what's going on there as a results of these police actions?

MM: I definitely haven't seen as much as I would be able to if there weren't a whole bunch of cops standing in my way telling me I can't go and look at stuff. I made it onto, there was one wildlife refuge I made it on to there after I had to wait for two days because the sheriff's blockade wouldn't let me through until BP gave me permission, and it took them - and you have to be escorted.

So it took me two days to get a BP escort as if I were in a war zone or something to get to this wildlife refuge and since then the way that I've beenkeeping up with it is that one of the clean-up workers who is on that island called me in the middle of the night and tells me what's going on, because there's not press on that island, and so he'll calling to give me updates like, hey, by the way, on this 8 mile stretch of wildlife refuge we only have 60 workers. And they're not really doing anything. And it looks worse every day.

Those are the sort of things that nobody is getting pictures of because it's hard to get on there. When I tried to get on to that island the second time, with PBS who's down here, and they asked me to take them and I did, and they couldn't get on because they were told they would have to wait for two days. And that's a story killer for a lot of people. I mean this guy can't just hang around and wait for a couple of days, and then the video wouldn't be ready for broadcast.

So they did actually totally successfully keep PBS from getting footage of this island, and that's only one of many beaches around here where I've been told that I have to leave or that I can't get on at all. Sometimes I can kayak cause a lot of these islands are pretty close - I kayaked to a couple of them to get around their restrictions. You can't get everywhere in the Gulf on a kayak

GG: Right. So, just the last question: can you - and it's a pretty broad question, so I'll let you kind of pick and choose what you think is the most important to hear and you talk about, just first-hand witness the extent of the devastation of the Gulf from this oil spill and the wildlife and wetlands and other things that you actually seen in a way that may be national media hasn't totally conveyed. Through no fault of their own, but just in terms of what you've seen, and also in
terms of the adequacy or inadequacy of the cleanup efforts , what kinds of things have you seen that would let you believe there there's not enough being done in response.

MM: The cleanup effort is probably most alarming me about the things that I've been looking at. You see the pictures, everybody knows that these beaches are covered in crude, and I think we're going to see more pictures of that now that Florida and these beautiful white sandy beaches are also being destroyed, but there seems to be no oversight of these cleanup efforts and they're pretty important obviously. That, like I said, Elmer's Island is a wildlife refuge; there were 60 guys on there.

I went to an island that five miles of beach - it was the island where those really famous AP photos of the birds that are just drowning in really, really thick crude, those photos - on that island there's 30 guys. There's 30 guys on that whole island and so there oil everywhere. It doesn't even look like anyone is trying to take care of the problems and to consider how much more is going to wash up, it's mind boggling to think that anyone will ever be able to restore these beaches at the the rate that it's going.

And I can't find any evidence that the government is really watching this closely and taking care of it. The Coast Guard sends out these press releases where they say, we have twenty-some thousand responders on the ground, and when I called the coast guard and I said, can I get a break down of these numbers, they said, Oh, that's BP's information, that's not actually our numbers, so we're going to have to ask them. So the government is not only disseminating official BP stats as a official government stats, but there not even fact checking it. They're not even following up and asking for a spreadsheet of who these volunteers are and where they are.

So the people down here who live here and whose lives are totally altered are also very concerned that the response isn't enough. isn't fast enough, and most importantly, nobody's watching, because nobody believes that BP has the citizens and the environment at the top of their priority list. So they really want someone who does those things at the top of their priority list paying attention and being in charge and that does not appear to be happening.

GG: Well your reporting has, as I said at the start and I really mean it, been really great. I've used it as one of my primary resources to feel like I have been able to be informed about what going one, and the most recent episodes involving the the deployment of a police force to carry out BP corporate interest in violation of the law by intimidating people who are trying to cover, is just unbelievably disgusting and outrageous and I hope you'll continue to write about that, and I'm sure you will, and the more attention that's brought to those kind of things the better. So thanks so much for the work you've been doing and taking the time to talk to me about it. I appreciate it.

MM: Of course.

GG: Thanks very much.

[Transcript courtesy of Thames
Valley Transcribe]

Odaini history

2010-06-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

Email exchange with Wired's Kevin Poulsen

2010-06-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

From: ggreenwald@salon.com [mailto:ggreenwald@salon.com]
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 1:19 PM
To: Poulsen, Kevin
Subject: Question from Glenn Greenwald/SALON

Kevin - I'm writing about the WikiLeaks/Manning story, and I wanted to
ask you a few questions:

Were you at all involved in/aware of the interaction between Lamo and
Manning prior to the time you learned that Manning had been detained?

Could you provide a little bit of information regarding your
relationship with Lamo? Do you consider him a friend, or is he just a
source, is it something in between?

Have you communicated at all with anyone from the Federal Government
regarding this matter -- either before the first time you wrote about
this story or after?

Thanks -

Glenn Greenwald

___________

From: "Kevin Poulsen"
To: ggreenwald@salon.com
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 6:44:43 PM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: RE: Question from Glenn Greenwald/SALON

Hi Glenn,

>Were you at all involved in/aware of the interaction between Lamo and
>Manning prior to the time you learned that Manning had been detained?

I was not involved with the interaction. Adrian reached out to me in late May to tell me a story about how he'd been contacted by an Army intelligence analyst who'd admitted to leaking 260,000 State Department diplomatic cables to a "foreign national." Adrian told me he had already reported the matter to the government, and was meeting the Army and FBI in person to pass on chat logs. He declined to provide independently verifiable details, or identify the intelligence analyst by name, because he said he considered the matter sensitive.

Several days passed before he was willing to give me the chat logs under embargo. I got them on May 27. That's when I learned Manning's name and the full details of his claims to Adrian.

>Could you provide a little bit of information regarding your
>relationship with Lamo? Do you consider him a friend, or is he just a
>source, is it something in between?

He's a subject and source. Though it seems to have been omitted from the anonymous, innuendo-laced BoingBoing comment that prompted your inquiries (and showed up on your Twitter feed), I've been covering computer crime, security, privacy and related matters for over ten years. I've covered more hackers than I can count, and I have a lot of sources.

>Have you communicated at all with anyone from the Federal Government
>regarding this matter -- either before the first time you wrote about
>this story or after?

Yes, and I'll continue to communicate with people in the federal government about this story, as will Kim Zetter, and countless other journalists around the country. If you're asking if I informed on Manning or anyone else, the answer is no, and the question is insulting. I stand by my reporting, and my reporting methods, on this story.
_____________

From: ggreenwald@salon.com
To: "Kevin Poulsen"
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 6:54:20 PM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: Re: Question from Glenn Greenwald/SALON

Kevin - Thanks for the responses. I honestly don't know why you're being so defensive. I wasn't trying to suggest or imply anything untoward at all -- if I had wanted to do that, I have done done it directly. I just found the whole thing odd from the start, others have raised questions, and so I put the questions to you with only one objective: finding out what happened. I don't have any preconceived ideas about any of this. As a journalist, you should understand that asking questions is how one obtains answers. I want to write about this story and emailing you was a way of understanding better what happened.

When you say that you that you have communicated and will "continue to communicate with people in the federal government about this story" -- do you mean that you've done so in your capacity as a journalist seeking information, or providing information? Again, not trying to be insulting, just wondering if any federal investigators have sought information from you.

Finally, the reason I asked about your relationship with Lemo is because of things and I read and this picture - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lamo-Mitnick-Poulsen.png- if you recall, could you tell me the circumstances when that was taken?

Thanks -

Glenn Greenwald

_____________

From: "Kevin Poulsen"
To: ggreenwald@salon.com
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 7:19:08 PM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: RE: Question from Glenn Greenwald/SALON

Glenn,

>When you say that you that you have communicated and will "continue to
>communicate with people in the federal government about this story" --
>do you mean that you've done so in your capacity as a journalist seeking
>information, or providing information? Again, not trying to be
>insulting, just wondering if any federal investigators have sought
>information from you.

I've communication with people in the federal government exclusively in my capacity as a journalist seeking information.

>Finally, the reason I asked about your relationship with Lemo is because
>of things and I read and this picture -
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lamo-Mitnick-Poulsen.png- if you
>recall, could you tell me the circumstances when that was taken?

The photo was taken around 2001, while I was editor at SecurityFocus, where'd I'd already written stories about Adrian Lamo and about Kevin Mitnick. Kevin came to town and hooked up with Adrian. I suggested they drop by and we get lunch together. We did, and a friend of Adrian's thought it would be fun to take a photo of the two old hackers with Adrian Lamo.

If I seem defensive, you need only look at Wikileaks' twitter feed (and now your own) to see why. I'm accustomed to personal attacks (we've covered Ron Paul), but there's a McCarthyistic flavor to the statements and innuendo coming from Julian that rubs me the wrong way. "Everyone knows," "how likely is it," "it's obvious," "could it really be," "how complicit is Wired?"

K

____________

From: ggreenwald@salon.com
To: "Kevin Poulsen"
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 7:27:05 PM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: Re: Question from Glenn Greenwald/SALON

Kevin - Julian is obviously unhappy with the whole incident, but I'm not Julian and WikiLeaks, so I hope you won't direct whatever you're feeling toward them to me. I did send that comment around on Twitter but not to endorse all of it, but because of the questions it raises.

But here's the issue: you have to admit there's something disturbing about all of this. You became insulted - and I understand why - when you thought I was insinuating that you acted as an informant against Manning. That's because that would be a bad thing to do as a journalist. But that, of course, is exactly what Lamo did, and there's a lot of animosity toward him for his doing that (which, I will acknowledge, I share).

Some of that animosity is rubbing off on you, because (a) you have a prior relationship with Lamo that seems friendly; (b) he obviously chose you to give the story to; and as a result (c) you've pretty much driven the story single-handedly, without uttering a word of criticism about what Lamo did. I'm not saying you have to criticize Lamo - it's perfectly legitimate to just play it as a straight reporter conveying facts -- but there does seem to be at least a congenial relationship between you and Lamo such that anger toward him is being re-directed (arguably mis-directed) toward you.

Last question: you published what were clearly excerpts of the chats between Lamo and Manning - did he provide you with the whole unedited version and if, so, do you intend to publish it? Or is what you published everything he gave you?

Glenn
______________

From: "Kevin Poulsen"
To: ggreenwald@salon.com
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 7:55:01 PM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: RE: Question from Glenn Greenwald/SALON

>Kevin - Julian is obviously unhappy with the whole incident, but I'm not
>Julian and WikiLeaks, so I hope you won't direct whatever you're feeling
>toward them to me. I did send that comment around on Twitter but not to
>endorse all of it, but because of the questions it raises.

Well, you know. I'm not hiding out. You could have gotten the answers first. :)

>But here's the issue: you have to admit there's something disturbing
>about all of this. You became insulted - and I understand why - when
>you thought I was insinuating that you acted as an informant against
>Manning. That's because that would be a bad thing to do as a
>journalist. But that, of course, is exactly what Lamo did, and there's
>a lot of animosity toward him for his doing that (which, I will
>acknowledge, I share).
>
>Some of that animosity is rubbing off on you, because (a) you have a
>prior relationship with Lamo that seems friendly; (b) he obviously chose
>you to give the story to; and as a result (c) you've pretty much driven
>the story single-handedly, without uttering a word of criticism about
>what Lamo did. I'm not saying you have to criticize Lamo - it's
>perfectly legitimate to just play it as a straight reporter conveying
>facts -- but there does seem to be at least a congenial relationship
>between you and Lamo such that anger toward him is being re-directed
>(arguably mis-directed) toward you.

But we're not just talking about animosity, are we? We're talking about smears. http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/15624063923

I haven't criticized Manning either, and I've done more than anyone else to report on Manning's apparent motives. My stories with Kim have quoted Manning's friends and family, and taken a focused look at the incident that he said compelled him to start leaking. And, as you've noted, I've posted large portions of the chat logs so other people can draw their own conclusions about Adrian and Brad.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/conscience/

There are outspoken people who think Manning is a traitor, but I'm not getting hate mail from them accusing me of propping up a spy, because there's no organization pushing a false narrative in that direction.

>Last question: you published what were clearly excerpts of the chats
>between Lamo and Manning - did he provide you with the whole unedited
>version and if, so, do you intend to publish it? Or is what you
>published everything he gave you?

He did, but I don't think we'll be publishing more any time soon. The remainder is either Manning discussing personal matters that aren't clearly related to his arrest, or apparently sensitive government information that I'm not throwing up without vetting first.

K
_____________

From: ggreenwald@salon.com
To: "Kevin Poulsen"
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 4:14:42 PM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: Re: Question from Glenn Greenwald/SALON

Hey Kevin - Thanks for being so responsive so far. I appreciate it - I just have a couple of more questions as I finish up my piece:

Do you have any idea how Manning found Lamo so quickly? Was the first contact by email or chat? And do you have also have the emails, and if so, do you plan to publish those?

Finally, I've emailed Adrian at the email address that I see on the email you published that Julian sent, but he hasn't responded. Do you have another way to get in contact with him? I'd really like to be able to talk to him for what I'm writing - thanks,

Glenn Greenwald
___________

From: "Kevin Poulsen"
To: ggreenwald@salon.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 4:38:07 PM (GMT-0300) Auto-Detected
Subject: RE: Question from Glenn Greenwald/SALON

I know he got email, but I don't have a copy. You might try him on twitter

Transcript: Interview with Josh Stieber

2010-04-09T14:19:00.000-07:00

To listen to this discussion, go here.

GG: My guest today on Salon Radio is Josh Stieber, who is a former soldier in the United States Army, who was deployed in Iraq during the war, in the same company as the one depicted in the Wikileaks video that was released this week, showing an Apache helicopter attack on a variety of Iraqis including a Reuters cameraman, and we're here to discuss that video and related issues. Josh thanks very much for...for joining me.

JS: Sure, thanks for having me on.

GG:Now before I ask you about the video itself, I just want to ask you to describe your background in the Army. How long were you in the Army? How long were you deployed in Iraq? What were your rank and duties?

JS: I was in the Army for not quite three years. It was in the infantry, and I left the Army with the rank of Specialist and actually ended up getting out as a conscientious objector.

GG: And you were deployed in Iraq the entire three years?

JS: No, I was there from February of 2007, to April of 2008.

GG: So that includes the time that this incident on the Wikileaks video took place?

JS: Correct, yeah, that's, this would have been in July so a few months after I'd been there.

GG: Ok. Now, the video, as you probably know, produced a lot of debate over the past week. And one of the debates that it triggered was between those who said that was depicted on the video was so horrifying, because it was just such an aberration, so unusual, such a departure from what the United States Military typically does and how it behaves.

And then others, like me, that actually the opposite was true, that there was nothing really unusual about what was depicted on this video other than the fact, that for once we were actually seeing what these wars actually entail and what they look like and that this is essentially a fairly, um, adequate and accurate depiction of what war is and what we do when we invade other countries and occupy them, especially ones with a heavy civilian population.

What's your view of that debate? Where do you come down on that?

JS: I mean, I definitely feel the latter position and that's why I'm choosing to try and make my voice heard about this, because, yeah, just the almost hysterical language that is being used to describe this video, is, you know, this is a horrible atrocity and one of its kind, just, yeah, does not add up.

And I guess one comparison that I would use is that maybe its being framed like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. If you were going to compare to a movie, when I feel its more like the Saw movies, where a character wakes up with a machine strapped to them and in order to make it out alive, they have to do something horrible to another person, so there's definitely that aspect of it. But its, yeah, its the nature of the machine, rather than, you know, the helicopter pilots just waking up one morning and like, alright, we're going to go out and kill some random people.

GG: Now, did you actually know any of the individuals involved in the incident depicted on the video?

JS: Yeah, I mean, I would have been on the mission that day and, I guess, something that goes to show how if it is, you know, a common thing, is that I had declined a couple of days earlier to follow a command that I didn't feel right in following so, so I was not allowed to go on this mission, or else I would have been in that video.

And then if you just look at the discussion coming up, like, on military.com, and other websites with a lot of military people on it, like they're defending it saying, you know, this is how things work, and how there are people make a big deal about it, this is what things look like, so I think even from people in the military, and people who argue that, you know, war is an effective way of solving things, even in the situation that they're saying, this is what things look like and don't criticize us for doing our jobs.

GG: Now the individuals who are in the video who you did know -- and even the ones that you didn't, in terms of the behavior that was depicted on the video -- were those individuals in any way unusual in terms of being particularly belligerent or sadistic or violent? Or is the behavior and even the conversations that we're seeing and hearing on the videos fairly much the norm as far as your experience is concerned?

JS: Well the people in the video that I know are the people actually on the ground, and the primary position of the video, was from the helicopter. But the radio conversation was between...I knew several of the voices on there, mostly the ones, you know, granting permission after the helicopters, you know, ask for permission to fire, so yeah, the troops on the ground are the ones that I'm familiar with.

But, yeah, I mean, even going, well I guess based on how some of these conversations have gone, saying, that, you know, the conversation that the helicopter pilot and gunner were having was unusually callous or cold-hearted like, I just thought back to my basic training. And how compared with the things that we heard on a day to day basis of how we were supposed to talk and how we were supposed to act, and like the mindsets that we were supposed to have, like, compared to what's...what's in the video, like, even compared to basic training, is not even that extreme.

GG: Now, you had mentioned that there was a mission that you had objected to, you also mentioned a little bit earlier, which I didn't know until we started talking that you were able to raise conscientious objector status. Can you talk a little bit about what it is that you motivated you to join the military and did your views change over time as a result of the things that you saw in Iraq?

JS: Yeah, I mean, I enlisted with a very limited and selective understanding of things. And, I guess, the way I would describe that I saw things when I enlisted was that, there are problems in the world, or there's people that embody evil and if I can be a part of a team of surgeons to go in and cut out, you know, those cancers, then the rest of the world can get along and everything will turn out alright.

And then, I think this video epitomizes that, that's not how things work, that, yeah, even if some people in that video or in a certain situation, pose a threat, that simply eliminating them, does not end all of your problems and does not make anything better and often it creates more problems. And, fighting violence in the name of violence or using fear to combat fear, just eventually when I saw these things going on, like is shown in this video, it didn't add up.

And I realized that the nature of this war is creating more people in the mindset and giving them justification and, you know, each side feels like its justified in doing what they're doing and the more things go on, like again, is show in this video, the more each side is going to feel justified and things aren't going to get solved or get changed.

GG: Now, one of the questions that people are like going to add if they hear you saying what you're saying about what's depicted in this video being a fairly common occurrence, is what your basis is for that. I mean, have you -- did you participate in, or witness or hear about lots of other incidents that were similar to the one that we all saw on the Wikileaks video?

JS: Yeah, I mean, again, I think there's a lot of things to point to to say that this is a very common occurrence and I was part of similar situations, and I guess the one thing that's kind of startling about, I guess just how sensationalized this one video is, is that, pretty much word for word. It's already been documented in the book The Good Soldiers, that didn't make any kind of national headlines when it was written about, so its more the image of it that people are uncomfortable with, but the actual content has already been released and nationally published, and there are--

GG: You mean, in the book by David Finkel, you're talking about?

JS: Correct, yeah.

GG: Alright.

JS: Yeah, so that book is about -- it talks about this very -- again, almost word for word -- what the video is about, and yeah, its about the unit that I was with, that again is shown in this video.

GG: Now, one of the things that made this -- and you know, it could just be that this is a case of a picture being a worth a thousand words, or a video being worth even more that, actually seeing it dramatized, prevents you from turning away from it in a way that words on a page may not do.

But, one of the things, I think, that made this video have such an impact for so many people, wasn't necessarily the first part of the incident, where the Apache shot at the group that included the photographer because a lot of people felt like there was ambiguity. What happened there, in terms of whether it was justifiable or reasonable to mistake a camera for a weapon or an RPG, or whether there really was an RPG being carried by one of the individuals.

But it was really the second incident that I think caused the greatest impact where the Apache fired on what was clearly, what were clearly unarmed men, rescuing an unarmed wounded man, crawling in a pile of his own blood on the ground. And one of the things that was so striking about that, was that the military concluded that the soldiers, even in that instance, did nothing wrong, that they acted in perfect accordance with military procedure.

Is that, too, your understanding of what standard procedure and policy would call for, for shooting even on unarmed individuals in a situation like that?

JS: I mean, that's obviously the most troubling part of the video, and yeah, I think it is very telling of the military's position on that, that isn't seen as any wrongdoing. And, yeah, as far as official guidelines or rules, like, our rules of engagement were constantly changing and no one really took those seriously just because of how arbitrary they were and could change from one day to the next.

And it pretty much became a quest for survival, you know, people pretty quickly lost the idealism that brought us there, and we were fighting to make it home alive. And so, yeah, I mean, there was a lot of controversy within the ranks of you know, how much is too much, but it was definitely a prevalent position to say, that even going above and beyond just responding to somebody with a weapon, but of responding to people who were potential threats even without weapons -- some people would claim that was justifiable for, again, this whole of making it home alive.

And I think we should be slow to judge somebody in that situation. Obviously, I ended up feeling like I couldn't participate in that, just because... but I feel like that is the nature of things and you put people in that situation where they are so fearful and where they are just wanting to make it out alive, and that is going to naturally lead to things like what was um, seen with the van.

GG: One of the things that surprised me about the last week, was just how many people were so insistent that this is not something we do typically, that this was some kind of an extremely rare thing, there were even people who said that, those who pointed out that this is a common occurrence were expressing hostility to the troops or hating the United States.

What do you think accounts for the obviously mistaken belief that incidents like this are extremely rare? Is it just people's unfamiliarity with what war is? Is it a desire to avoid accepting what it is that our country really does when we go to war? Do you have any insight on why people are so eager to believe that this is something that is such an uncommon occurrence?

JS: Yeah, I mean, I would have to think that people who would be quick to that reaction are probably more focusing on the reputation of something and are saying that this is something that could make the military look bad. But, again, I think that if you go to military.com, and just see the response of soldiers and from seeing the responses on my friend's Facebooks and connecting, with the soldiers I deployed with.

We know we've come out with different opinions but we still have mutual respect for each other, that the soldiers that have been in a situation like that are the ones who are saying, that we were justified in everything that happened in this video. And that if anybody's wrong in this situation, it's those people criticizing us, again for doing our job.

GG: Now, last question-- I would hope that whatever position somebody has about this video, the benefit and value of what this video entails in terms of how it was released and the debate that it has sparked could be appreciated.

What lessons do you hope are drawn from this video and for people who, you know, maybe for the first time are really coming to terms with the kinds of things that happen when we go to war? What do you hope this video can achieve?

JS: Yeah, I'd say there are two main lessons and the first one is that: this is the nature of war and I think there's a lot of different things, you know, in any society I guess, that we don't want to think about, or we don't really want to talk about, whether, its you know how our meat gets processed, or just the dirty aspects of society, but this video brings to the forefront the dirty work of what goes on in war.

So I think, if people are shocked by what they're seeing, then we should be a lot slower to say this is the answer and, especially if our stated goals are to bring freedom and democracy and to help the people of Iraq that, you know, you watch this video and if you're shocked by it, then, yeah, the means to that end seem extremely counterproductive, and so hopefully this video's bringing up kind of that gap in logic, like in asking that question, is this really how we're accomplishing these noble goals that we claim we are?

And then I guess, too, again speaking as a veteran, that, thinking about the nature of how the dialogue is turned back or has almost been turned into, for some people that, you know, look at how horrible these soldiers are and they're cold, heartless murderers. And, only pinning it all on the soldiers, but realizing that probably most people put in that situation would act similarly, and I guess we should redirect our judgment and our anger towards those soldiers and look at this system that is saying, this is what you need to do and this is how we want to accomplish our goals.

And that means, helping the soldiers that we put in that situation heal when they get back, because that again, is the situation and those are events that they're going through. Which, you know, goes all the more to say why, I guess why we need to think about what does support the troops mean. It doesn't mean, you know, don't criticize them. It means acknowledging this is what war looks like and if you want it, then you need to be out there really supporting the troops and helping them to heal. And hopefully, working for other ways to solve problems than through going about in this way.

GG: Well, I think you have a lot of really important things to say and I'm sure there's different pressures in speaking out in the way that you're doing, and I really appreciate the fact that you're doing it and that you've taken the time to talk me about it today. And I think it was very illuminating. Thanks so much.

JS: Sure, thanks for having me.

GG: My pleasure, bye.

JS: Bye.

[End Interview]

Email exchange with Newsweek.com's Devin Gordon

2010-02-25T12:51:00.000-08:00

From: "Devin Gordon"
To: GGreenwald@salon.com
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 11:25:47 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Your post today about our thread

Hi Glenn, I’m the editor of Newsweek.com, and I’m writing to follow up on your post about our email thread about terrorism. First let me concede that our thread was not as clear as it should’ve been—it was clear to us that we were having a discussion about the use of language in the media and in the public at large. Evidently that was less clear to you.

However, it strikes me that in your two posts about our conversation so far, you have conveniently screened out portions of what we wrote that helped illuminated our intentions. For instance, your post today implies that “the aversion” to using the term “terrorist” to describe Stack is *Newsweek’s* aversion—but you left out the rest of the sentence, where I note how the Wall Street Journal preposterously called him a “tax protester” in its headline. You also ignored the other question I raised with my group, which was even more unambiguously about the media and the public: my invitation to compare / critique our collective yawning over the Austin wacko with the reaction to the underpants bomber (which I described as “the media’s full-throated insanity”). Since this is the line that set off the entire internal discussion, it is significant that you presented it inaccurately to your readers, because that line contextualized everything that followed.

Given that context, Kathy’s “handy guide” struck all of us as self-evidently ironic—otherwise, would she really use the flippant phrase “handy guide” to discuss something so sober if she was indeed being sober? (Weren’t you surprised no one on our staff called her out for being so shockingly right-wing?) If we were truly articulating our own attitudes, wouldn’t there be far more of an uproar on the web, rather than a few scattered complaints from bloggers? Wouldn’t people be demanding Dan Stone’s resignation if they actually took at face value his line about how “terrorists have beards and live in caves”? I suspect the uproar did not occur because the vast majority of readers understood exactly what Dan (and the rest of us) meant.

Nonetheless, I will concede that we could have avoided this dust-up by being even more explicit. That is our error. What disturbs me is that you’ve had your misreading of our conversation corrected publicly by Ben Adler, our national affairs editor. And yet you continue to bash us for promoting views that you know we don’t hold and that you have never asked us to clarify. That strikes me as awfully unjournalistic behavior. Have you called anyone here to clarify exactly what we meant? Or to find out if you understood us correctly?

My hunch: you read our initial email chain too fast, and you were more interested in bashing us than in trying to understand what we were saying. And hey, we’re grown-ups, we can take it. It’s also the way of the web, and we get that. But we believe we’ve corrected the record. It’s time for you to do the same. Happy to continue this discussion either on the record or off.

-dg

____________________

From: "Devin Gordon"
To: GGreenwald@salon.com
Cc: "Devin Gordon"
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 11:38:44 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: RE: Your post today about our thread -- ONE MORE THING

Sorry, one important detail I left out: you need to correct something that you put in quotation marks in your post this morning and attributed to Kathy Jones, but that she never wrote. You wrote:

“…the very first response, from Managing Editor Kathy Jones, was to explain her "rule of thumb" that the word is only for foreigners …”

Kathy never used the phrase “rule of thumb.” You did. As I noted below, she called it her “handy guide”, which is a much more sardonic formulation. To you, this may sound like a distinction without a difference. To us, her choice of words is crucial to understanding her tone and her meaning. I think it is telling that you misquoted this part of her email in a way that blurs her meaning in favor of your attack on us. Please correct it.

Thanks.

-dg
_____________________

From: ggreenwald@salon.com
To: "Devin Gordon"
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 2:30:33 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: Your post today about our thread

Devin - I'm traveling today with all sorts of events, so it's hard for me to address this, but I do want to have this conversation with you. For the moment, let me ask you to re-read my original post about this, where I explicitly (1) noted that many of the comments were framed as discussing what OTHERS thought about this topic, not what Newsweek thought about it (and I criticized that as the Innocent Bystander Model of Journalism); (2) included the fact that several of the participants argued that domestic attacks should be and are considered Terrorism; and (3) discussed the possibility that some of the comments were offered ironically.

Between both your email and Ben Adler's response, I feel like I'm being accused of ignoring or excluding points which I EXPRESSLY included and addressed. Moreover, I excerpted substantial parts of the email chain and linked to the rest, even urging readers to read the WHOLE THING. That makes any suggestion that I've mislead anyone a bit frivolous.

Moreover, numerous people -- including The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan and Ta-Nehisi Coates -- read the discussion exactly as I did. At some point, if enough people "misunderstood" what you wrote, then the fault lies with you, not with the person supposedly distorting what you said. I read Ben's characterization of what the discussion was but I'm not required to accept it -- he speaks only for himself, and Newsweek presumably published it because they thought it would convey meaning as a stand-alone piece. You can't do that and then object when others read what you've written and critique.

I'll have more time tomorrow or over the weekend and am happy to discuss this with you more - either on the record or off.

Glenn Greenwald

___________________

From: ggreenwald@salon.com
To: "Devin Gordon"
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 2:31:36 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: Your post today about our thread -- ONE MORE THING

I think it's a completely meaningless distinction -- I also quoted her actual language in the original post and urged others to read it. Still, I did inadvertently quote it inaccurately today when I summarized the piece and will correct that.

_________________

From: ggreenwald@salon.com
To: "Devin Gordon"
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 2:34:09 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: Your post today about our thread -- ONE MORE THING

Only last point - I just saw Kathy Jones' "open letter" to me. She does not even suggest what you claimed -- that she was being satirical or ironic.

AFP article

2010-01-12T09:31:00.000-08:00

Drudge promotion

2010-01-11T04:36:00.000-08:00

Interview with Ben Wizner of ACLU

2009-12-15T09:55:00.000-08:00

Glenn Greenwald: My guest today on Salon Radio is Ben Wizner of the ACLU, who represents the plaintiffs in the case of Mohamed vs. Jeppesen , which is the case brought by five individuals who were the victims of the Bush torture and rendition program, and it's brought against the Boeing subsidiary that helped ship them to various places to be tortured. This is the case where the Obama Justice Department has repeatedly argued that the case must be dismissed on the grounds of the states secrets privilege.

Ben, you're in California right now in preparation for a hearing on Tuesday, a very significant hearing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in this case; describe just briefly what has happened in this case thus far, and what's happening tomorrow.

Ben Wizner: I will, and thanks, Glenn; this is a case that your listeners will know that you and I have talked about several times before. As you mentioned, this case back in February was the first test of the Obama administration's commitment to the rule of law on issues of civil liberties and national security, and it's a test that the Obama administration failed. Remember, the plaintiff in this lawsuit are foreign nationals who were abducted by the CIA, and transported either to CIA black site prisons, or to foreign intelligence agencies where there were brutally tortured.

This lawsuit as you mentioned targets a Boeing subsidiary called Jeppesen Dataplan, but before that company even had to file a response in the lawsuit, the Bush CIA intervened in the case, asserted the so-called states secrets privilege, with which we're all now too familiar, and had the case thrown out. We appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, heard argument in February as we both said, the Obama administration essentially repeated the same state secrets argument that his predecessor had, but, in April of this year, the three judges before whom we argued the case, issued a very, very strong ruling against that overbroad and premature assertion of the states secrets privilege.

They said, a case must go forward, that the government could protect its legitimate secrecy interests by invoking them with respect to specific evidence that would come up in the case, but they couldn't use this evidentiary privilege to have an entire lawsuit alleging grave human rights violations, thrown out before it even began.

Now, that would have been a opportunity for the Obama administration, with some cover, to say, we just need to do what the courts have told us to do, but they did the opposite. They asked the full Ninth Circuit to reheard that case, which they said was an error, and so here we are again, in the same city in the same court, but will be re-arguing the case tomorrow before 11 judges, not 3, in a panel called an en banc panel.

GG: Now the first line of one of the briefs you filed - there are five briefs - that says much is at stake in this appeal, and I want you to talk a little bit about why that is, and how this can affect not just this specific litigation, but litigations generally alleging executive law-breaking, and general transparency issues with respect to the government and what it does.

BW: That's exactly what is being decided in this appeal. We are now in the final months of 2009, eight years really to the week since the first of our five plaintiffs was snatched off the street in Sweden, stripped of his clothes, put in a diaper, chained to the floor of a plane, and flown off to Egypt where he was strapped to a wet mattress and tortured with electricity. Now obviously in the eight years since then there's been an extraordinary national debate about the legality, the efficacy, the morality of torture.

But one voice that has been conspicuously absent from that debate is that of the judiciary. We still have not had a single torture victim have his day in court; we still have not had a single court rule on the legality of the Bush administration's torture regime. And that is critically important, because somewhere down the line, some unscrupulous lawyer, named John Yoo or something else, is going to serve some unscrupulous president and he's going to say, you know, there is no legal authority out there. There's no definitive ruling that what happened was illegal; this is really just a difference of opinion that reasonable lawyers might have. The reason why you need accountability is not about the money the victims will get; it's not about the punishment that the perpetrators will get; it's about the vindication of the rule of law.

The country needs this ruling. We need it to settle a debate that if it ends up on Hardball, rather than the Supreme Court and the federal courts where it belongs.

GG: One of the claims that's often made, and I think the ACLU pretty much everybody agrees, is that there is a legitimate privilege called the states secrets privilege, that the government has for decades been able to assert in litigation, and the problem with the Bush administration wasn't that they used, but that they radicalized it, and distorted it beyond recognition, and turned it into something it never intended to be, something that the Obama administration is now doing as well and in exactly the same way.

Talk about the difference between the legitimate use of the states secrets privilege versus the
way the Bush and now the Obama justice departments are exploiting and misusing it.

BW: First, the purpose of this evidentiary privilege is the prevent the disclosure in litigation of genuinely secret evidence. You can imagine what that evidence might be - I shouldn't be able to use a lawsuit of out the identity of covert CIA spies. I shouldn't be able to use a lawsuit to reveal the weapons design of classified weapons. That's the way traditionally the states secrets privilege was used, and what we've seen it mutate into is a really a broad rule of immunity to shield executive law-breaking, so it's being asserted not in response to a request for evidence by the plaintiffs, but, as soon as the case is filed, in an effort to have the entire case thrown out. And I think that that is the tactical way in which the Obama and Bush administrations have the used the privilege.

But the other enormous difference is really the conduct at issue. The seminal state secrets case in the United States is a case called Reynolds, that involved the tragic crash of an Air Force plane, but again Reynolds was tort case. These are torture cases. This rule was designed to regulate evidence in ordinary cases of negligence.

When the claims go to the very heart of who we are as a country, I think the courts have to use more care, not less, to do everything possible to ensure both the victims can receive some measure of justice, but also that the rule of law can be vindicated with a ruling from the judiciary. Right now, the way the privilege operates, is that the CIA director has the first, the last and the only word on whether the renditions are lawful. He submits the declarations to the court explaining why he thinks his agency's awful conduct was a state secret, and that in itself is held in some courts to be enough to get an entire case thrown out. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.

GG: I think in your brief you said that if the Obama position were to prevail, it would mean that all torture would be denied a day in court solely on the basis of an affidavit submitted by their
torturers. And I think that's the heart of the case, that this provides full-scale immunity for the government as long as they claim that what they did was in a climate of secrecy.

Now, just a couple other questions: one of the principal arguments by the Obama administration, by the Bush administration first and now by the Obama administration, is that there is no such thing as trying to pick and choose certain evidence in this case that is secret, and allowing the rest of it to go forward, because the entire case itself involves something that is highly sensitive and highly secret, which is the relationships that our intelligence agencies have with the intelligence agencies of other countries, and that to allow this case to go forward no matter what you do, will be to jeopardize those important state secrets. What's your view of that argument?

BW: The argument is rational; unfortunately it's false in this case. We are at a point in the development of international law where the United States truly stands alone. Almost every other country that was involved in the rendition in these cases - Sweden, Yemen, the United Kingdom, Egypt - they have come forward and absolutely conceded their role in all of this. It's only the United States that stands by the tradition that it can neither confirm nor deny anything involving foreign intelligence agencies.

The other reason why the argument is false is the we don't need to prove which other countries participated in these events in order to hold Jeppesen liable for its role. So I think it's a big red herring, and I also think that if you accept that argument, that CIA categorically can decline to admit or deny anything involving its collaboration with foreign countries or with corporations like
Jeppesen, then you're essentially saying that all the CIA would have to do is act in concert with someone else, and it gets a blank check to violate the law in the most egregious ways. And that simply cannot be the law.

GG: The last question that substantively have for you is, early on when the Obama administration began asserting the states secrets privilege, I encountered a number of arguments in various places along the lines that Obama by asserting these positions, was
actually doing all of us a favor, because the plan that he had was he was hoping to lose, so that good precedent would be set and courts would forever reject these positions as being unrecognizable under the law, and yet here's a case in your case where you actually won an
important appellate ruling, and rather than let the precedent stand, the Obama administration asked the full court to vacate it, and rule that it had been decided incorrectly.

So how would you say the Obama DOJ's conduct in this case throughout the year can be reconciled, if it can be, with that theory that Obama was simply doing this to provide the gift of good precedent?

BW: Well, you just demolished that theory. The answer is that it can't be reconciled. But I would also say that it's not just the Department of Justice that is involved here. I do believe that there
intention within the administration about some of these extreme positions that the intelligence agencies are insisting upon, and I absolutely agree that Obama's position on this is political, I just
think it's political in a different direction. I think that he must have been persuaded by political and national security advisors, that he simply has nothing to gain taking on the CIA in a case like this, standing behind, as opposed to in the way of torture victims having their day in court, and it's just a political cost that he thinks that he will bear and that they're unwilling to bear.

And I say that because knowing this case the way I do, I'm quite certain that it could be
litigated to completion without divulging anything that the entire world doesn't already know. We're in the very awkward legal fiction, where facts that are discussed freely really throughout the globe, can be mysteriously transformed into state secrets when they are spoken in
the US courtrooms, which is where they belong above all else.

GG: Now, Ben, what time is the oral argument tomorrow, and is that something that people who are interested in doing so are able to listen to online?

BW: The arguments are scheduled for 10 AM Pacific time; I would say the west coast listeners, the US Court of Appeals is open; it will be quite, quite crowded. I'm told there will be spillover. If
people want to come and see it in person, I think at least they'll at least be able to get into a room and watch it on a monitor. In my experience, the Ninth Circuit very quickly puts audio of the entire recording on its website, maybe even by the end of the day, and if they do that, Glenn, I'll make sure that you have it.

GG: Ben, thanks very much for taking the time to talk; I know you're interested and eager to get into court and I know a lot of people are rooting for you to win. It's a very important case and the work they're doing is really appreciated. So thanks very much.

BW: Thank you, Glenn.

[ Transcript courtesy of Thames Valley Transcribe ]

The Weekly Standard's ACLU smear indicts only itself

2009-11-19T06:38:00.000-08:00

Even for The Weekly Standard, this bitter, juvenile McCarthyite attack on the ACLU by Thomas Joscelyn sputters with so much fact-free, impotent, and self-defeating rage that it's hard to believe it was printed. Right in the headline, it oh-so-cleverly smears the ACLU as "Al Qaeda's Civil Liberties Union"; it ends by proclaiming the group to be "al Qaeda's useful idiots"; and it's filled in the middle with all sorts of trite innuendo circa 2002 that anyone who believes in the Constitution -- i.e., radical "far leftist" doctrines such as "trials" and "due process" -- secretly harbors love for the Terrorists and hatred for America ("The ACLU has worked diligently to undermine America's stance in what was formerly known as the 'war on terror,' and has even been willing to disseminate propaganda on behalf of our jihadist enemies"). What the article actually -- and ironically -- reveals is how much contempt The Weekly Standard and much of America's Right has for the nation's core political values and how, in the process, they do more to aid Islamic extremists than even those who directly fund and advocate for them.

The primary piece of incriminating evidence Joscelyn waves around in his little briefcase is this ACLU-produced video featuring five Muslim men who were held at Guantanamo without charges for years and then released. In the video, they recount the torture and abuse to which they were subjected, as well as the impact which prolonged, due-process-free imprisonment by the U.S. has had -- and continues to have -- on their shattered lives.

Joscelyn insists that -- even though they've never been charged with, let alone convicted of, anything -- these men are guilty, evil Terrorists. To make his case against them, he relies on Bush-era documents containing unproven, untested, and uncharged allegations. But what he dishonestly -- though understandably -- fails to note is that each of these individuals are available to appear in the ACLU video because they were released from Guantanamo by the Bush administration [Moazzam Begg (released 2005); Omar Deghayes (released 2007); Bisher al-Rawi (released 2007); Ruhal Ahmed (released 2004); Shafiq Rasul (released 2004)]. If, as Joscelyn claims, the ACLU are Al Qaeda's "useful idiots" for producing a video containing interviews with these individuals, what are Bush officials who released them onto the streets? He also fails to note that time and again, government allegations against Guantanamo detainees -- the source on which he principally relies -- have failed to withstand even the most minimal judicial scrutiny to which the 2008 Supreme Court ruled detainees are constitutionally entitled. The Government has now lost roughly 28 out of 33 habeas corpus hearings brought by detainees since the Supreme Court's ruling, often before some of the most right-wing, executive-branch-deferring judges in the country, who have found there is no credible evidence to support the government's accusations.

So lame and desperate are Joscelyn's smears that his attack ends up indicting himself, his magazine and his political movement far more than his intended target. Here are the profoundly un-American "principles" he implicitly -- and at times explicitly -- embraces:

1. If the Government asserts accusations against Muslims, those accusations shall be deemed true, even if they're made in secret and without being tested by any court.
2. Even if the Government voluntarily releases Muslim detainees from captivity without charges, they should still be assumed to be guilty, dangerous and evil Terrorists.
3. Muslim detainees have no right to counsel, no right to be charged with a crime, no due process rights to contest the accusations against them, and no right to be free of torture.
4. Anyone who works to provide basic due process and legal representation to Muslim detainees, or who publicizes their wrongful detentions and abusive treatment, shall themselves be deemed suspect of harboring allegiances to Al Qaeda.

To see how alien this is to any political values historically understood as "American," compare The Weekly Standard's neoconservative manifesto to what Thomas Paine thought about such matters, as expressed in the final paragraph of his 1790 Dissertations on First Principles of Government:

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Or compare the neocon mentality to Thomas Jefferson's warning, in a 1789 letter to Paine, that trial by jury -- which the ACLU safeguards and most of America's Right despises -- is "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

Between (a) an organization that works tirelessly for basic due process and Constitutional liberties for everyone and (b) a political movement which demands their rejection, does it really take any effort to see which side is vigorously defending core American principles and which side is waging war on them? And given how due-process-free imprisonment is one of the most potent recruiting tools for Islamic extremists (as reported by David Rohde, Johann Hari, Gen. McChyrstal, and even the Pentagon's own 2004 Task Force) -- to say nothing of the endless aggressive wars cheered on by The Weekly Standard's play-acting warriors -- does it take any effort to see who Al Qaeda's "useful idiots" and stalwart allies truly are?

As Hari recently documented after interviews with ex-Muslim militants, the most effective weapon against Al Qaeda's recruitment efforts is when human rights groups in the West -- such as the ACLU -- demand equal, humane and Constitutional treatment of Muslims:

When they saw ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq War: "How could we demonise people who obviously opposed aggression against Muslims?" asks Hadiya. . . . [Another explained]: "So, when Amnesty, despite knowing that we hated them, adopted us, I felt -- maybe these democratic values aren't always hypocritical. Maybe some people take them seriously . . . it was the beginning of my serious doubts."

By stark contrast, the policies cheered on by Joscelyn's right-wing comrades have done more to fuel and enable Al Qaeda than any other single factor:

Every one of them said the Bush administration's response to 9/11 -- from Guantanamo to Iraq -- made jihadism seem more like an accurate description of the world. . . . [One ex-militant] started to recruit other students, as he had done so many times before. But it was harder. "Everyone hated the [unelected] government [of Hosni Mubarak], and the US for backing it," he says. But there was an inhibiting sympathy for the victims of 9/11 -- until the Bush administration began to respond with Guantanamo Bay and bombs. "That made it much easier. After that, I could persuade people a lot faster."

The ACLU (with which I consult) not only defends the most elemental American liberties (e.g., the State cannot imprison people without charging and convicting them of a crime), but also renders Al Qaeda's demonization-dependent recruitment efforts against the West far less effective. By stark contast, the Constitution-hating, warmongering and tyrannical template embraced by The Weekly Standard is precisely what Al Qaeda needs -- and desires -- in order to thrive. The more the U.S. is represented by the warmongering and anti-due process face of Bill Kristol, the better it is for Al Qaeda; the more it adheres to the liberties and rights guaranteed by the Constitution and defended by the ACLU, the weaker Al Qaeda becomes. Kristolian neocons want and need a strong Al Qaeda in order to justify the array of wars and civil liberties erosions they crave, and everything they advocate is designed to achieve that goal -- or, at the very least, guarantees that outcome.

The greatest irony of the last decade is that the very people who most despise core American principles and do more than anyone to fuel Islamic extremism have anointed themselves the arbiters of American patriotism and protectors of American security. The reality is that it is this very movement which simultaneously advances definitively un-American political values and strengthens anti-American Islamic radicals -- both by design and by effect. The Weekly Standard's due-process-hating manifesto this morning is a vivid exhibit for how that has worked.

The administration guts its own argument for 9/11 trials

2009-11-19T06:30:00.000-08:00

"What I'm absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism" -- Barack Obama, yesterday.

"Holder said five other Guantanamo detainees would be tried by military tribunals. The five include Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, who is accused of masterminding the 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen; and Canadian Omar Khadr, accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan" -- NPR, yesterday.

"'Administration officials say they expect that as many as 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo will be tried in federal court or military commissions . . . . and about 75 more have been deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary issues and limits on the use of classified material' . . . If true, that means that there are 75 so-called 'Fifth Category' detainees who might be subject to indefinite detention without trial" -- The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, yesterday, quoting The Washington Post.

* * * * *

Can anyone reconcile Obama's homage to "our legal traditions" and his professed faith in jury trials in the New York federal courts with the reality of what his administration is doing: i.e., denying trials to a large number of detainees, either by putting them before military commissions or simply indefinitely imprisoning them without any process at all?

During his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Eric Holder struggled all day to justify his decision to put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial because he has no coherent principle to invoke. He can't possibly defend the sanctity of jury trials in our political system -- the most potent argument justifying what he did -- since he's the same person who is simultaneously denying trials to Guantanamo detainees by sending them to military commissions and even explicitly promising that some of them will be held without charges of any kind.

Once you endorse the notion that the Government has the right to imprison people not captured on any battlefield without giving them trials -- as the Obama administration is doing explicitly and implicitly -- what convincing rationale can anyone offer to justify giving Mohammed and other 9/11 defendants a real trial in New York? If you're taking the position that military commissions and even indefinite detention are perfectly legitimate tools to imprison people -- as Holder has done -- then what is the answer to the Right's objections that Mohammed himself belongs in a military commission? If the administration believes Omar Khadr belongs in a military commission, and if they believe others can be held indefinitely without any charges, why isn't that true of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? By denying jury trials to a large number of detainees, Obama officials have completely gutted their own case for why they did the right thing in giving Mohammed a trial in New York.

Even worse, Holder was reduced to admitting -- even boasting -- that this concocted multi-tiered justice system (trials for some, commissions for others, indefinite detention for the rest) enables the Government to pick and choose what level of due process someone gets based on the Government's assessment as to where and how they're most likely to get a conviction:

Courts and commissions are both essential tools in our fight against terrorism . . . On the same day I sent these five defendants to federal court, I referred five others to be tried in military commissions. I am a prosecutor, and as a prosecutor, my top priority was simply to select the venue where the government will have the greatest opportunity to present the strongest case with the best law. . . . At the end of the day, it was clear to me that the venue in which we are most likely to obtain justice for the American people is a federal court.

Does that remotely sound like a "justice system"? If you're accused of being a Terrorist, there's not one set procedure used to determine your guilt; instead, the Government has a roving bazaar of various processes which it, in its sole discretion, picks for you based on ensuring that it will win. Even worse, Holder repeatedly assured Senators that the administration would continue to imprison 9/11 defendants even in the very unlikely case that they were acquitted, citing what they previously suggested was their Orwellian authority of so-called "post-acquittal detention powers." Is there any better definition of a "show trial" than one in which the defendant has no chance of ever being released even if acquitted, because the Government will simply thereafter assert the power to hold him indefinitely without charges?

I understand that sending even a limited number of Terrorism suspects to federal court is politically difficult and controversial, as the last couple of days have demonstrated. But by refusing to embrace and defend the core principle of justice at stake here -- that a distinguishing feature of our political system is that we don't imprison or kill people without charging them with a crime and proving their guilt in a real court, and that military commissions and indefinite detention are un-American (which Democrats argued under Bush) -- the Obama administration has made it for more difficult for it to defend what it is doing, as well as for those who want to defend their decision to give trials to 9/11 defendants.

To see how that works, here is part of the exchange I had on MSNBC this week with George Pataki, while debating trials for 9/11 defendants:

MR. GREENWALD: If you look at how the British treated the people who did the London subway bombings, the Spanish who treated the people who did the Madrid subway bombings -- even India just put on trial the sole surviving terrorist who perpetrated the Mumbai massacre last year. Even Indonesia gave trials in their real cities to the people who blew up the nightclubs in Bali.
It's only the American conservatives who are feeding the terrorist agenda by saying that we're too scared to hold trials --
MR. RATIGAN: Hold on, Glenn.
MR. PATAKI: Can I respond to that, Dylan? Only the -- only the -- only the American conservatives? Then tell me why Obama and Holder are using military tribunals against those who blow up Americans in acts of war overseas? They're just picking these particular terrorists for trial in New York because they blew up civilians in New York. So what their logic is, "Kill thousands of civilians and you can get a civilian trial; kill one or two overseas, and we're going to use military tribunals."
That makes no sense.

For those wanting to defend the administration, what's the answer to that? The same thing happened when Rep. Nadler, as part of the same segment, tried to defend the Obama administration's decision to try the 9/11 defendants in New York:

REP. NADLER: I think that our tradition is that people accused of heinous crimes get trials, and they get trials in the area in which the crime is committed, which is right here. And I think it's exactly the right thing to do. . . .That's the way it ought to be, and we ought to show the world that we adhere to our traditions of justice and that these terrorists are not going to cause us to abandon the law.
MR. PATAKI: ... We are going to use military tribunals. They're saying they're perfectly fine for some terrorists, but these terrorists they're going to try here. What's the justification for that, Jerry?
REP. NADLER: Well, I -- well, I don't think there is any justification.
MR. PATAKI: I don't either.

The administration should have the courage of its convictions and defend jury trials as a linchpin of American justice, which would entail giving them to all Terrorism suspects not captured on any battlefield. But by refusing to do so -- by exhibiting the very cowardice of which Holder accused Republicans, i.e. denying Terrorism suspects a trial -- the administration has no cogent argument to make in its own defense. It's just another case of the administration wanting to bask in the rhetorical glory of "the rule of law" while simultaneously trampling on it for petty political convenience.

Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jerry Nadler

2009-11-10T03:06:00.000-08:00

Glenn Greenwald: My guest today on Salon Radio is Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York, whose bill, the State Secrets Protection Act, was just approved last week by the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of 18-12, and if it passes the House and Senate, it will be the first bill, the first law ever, to regulate the states secrets privilege. Congressman, thanks for joining me.

Let me ask you to begin by explaining what the principal points of this legislation are, and where does it go from here?

Jerry Nadler: Well, let me just start with one bit of background. As you have pointed out in your many articles, there's an old maxim in law, and that is there's no right without a remedy. If you can't enforce a right, it doesn't matter what the Bill of Rights says or what the Constitution says or anything. And if the government invades your rights, if it kidnaps you and sends you to Syria to be tortured, if it invades your house, ransacks your papers, steals your guns, for the conservatives among us, whatever - what's your remedy? Your only real remedy is to sue. To sue the government in tort for damages or to sue for an injunction to say stop - that's your remedy.

If the government can simply walk into court, as soon as you file the complaint, and file an answer saying, "dismiss the case because the consideration of the case would necessitate the revelation of state secrets that would involve major national security" and the case is dismissed, just on the magic incantation of the words "state secrets," then you can't enforce any rights and none of us have any rights. The Bill of Rights becomes like the Soviet Constitution of 1936, which read very nicely, but didn't mean anything. So we've got to change that.

GG: Let me stop you right there, because you had a quote from last week that I found really striking, that I was about to ask you about, and you sort of answered it, but I want to ask you about another part of it. You said, quote, "The state secrets doctrine, as it has been reinvented in the last few years, is the greatest threat to liberty in this country."

Now, that's a fairly strong claim, and I think you just explained part of why that is. What do you mean when you say, "the state secrets doctrine, as it has been reinvented in the last few years"?

JN: Well, it was clearly reinvented because for 50 years, from the Reynolds decision by the Supreme Court in 1953, it was an evidentiary privilege, that is to say, the government could not stop a trial, but it could go into court and say, that document that you want in evidence, that piece of paper, that whatever, you can't have that piece of evidence because that piece of evidence is a state secret. So, it would shield a piece of evidence. But it would not stop the trial right upfront.

The Bush administration made two changes, both of which have been embraced by the Obama administration. One, it started using this doctrine, which was used very sparingly before, all the time. And secondly, it invented, not only to say, you can't see a document, but it invented the use of saying, you can't have a lawsuit, of coming into court right on the pleadings, right after the initial filing of the initial complaint, to say, stop the lawsuit, because, not that you can't see a document, but the very consideration of the lawsuit, the very consideration of the case, will endanger state secrets, and dismiss the case right off the bat.

And that hides everything. If you dismiss the case right off the bat, then you can't use the case to find out what's going on, to prove that the government is violating rights, is engaging in torture, or is wiretapping without a warrant or whatever. That's what I meant by reinventing. It was never used until the Bush administration to dismiss a case right upfront.

GG: And you feel that it's fair to say, as I think you just did say, that in cases involving rendition, brought by victims of torture, people alleging they were subjected to illegal warrantless eavesdropping, that the Obama administration has been using this privilege in exactly the same way, meaning in this way that's reinvented, by saying not just these specific documents are subject to the state secrets privilege, but the subject matter itself is?

JN: Yes. They said that in court on a number of occasions, and they've in a number of cases, the al-Haramain case, in another case the Jeppesen case, they've taken exactly the same position, saying that you can't consider the case, as the Bush administration did, and they've argued in courts, in appellate courts, they've sought review, to defend that position.

Now, they have, we've been talking, I've been talking with the administration since January about this, and what they've been telling us is, we're reviewing the policy, we're reviewing the policy, we're reviewing the policy. But meanwhile they go into court and take obnoxious positions.

GG: Except --

JN: Finally, they came out with this new position, the Attorney General a few weeks ago. So what that position amounts to is, we will use the doctrine more sparingly - and that may be true - no one person in the administration will have the ability to make the decision, it will have to be a group of people, committee, will review each case very carefully, we'll be more sparing in its use and we'll report to Congress. All of that's fine.

But all of that is minuscule because it still reserves to the Executive Branch the absolute power to try to stop any case, the absolute right. The court, the Ninth Circuit, three panel judges of the Ninth Circuit in one of the cases said the executive cannot be its own judge. That is key to the American system of justice; it's why we have three branches, that nobody can be your own judge. If the executive commits an act which someone else alleges is improper or is a crime or whatever, you go to court. A court has to judge that. And they're still saying, with respect to this, trust us. We won't use this doctrine when we shouldn't - trust us. But the court can't review it.

GG: Right. And even subsequent of course to the announcement by Attorney General Holder, there was a case just two weeks ago alleging warrantless eavesdropping, illegal warrantless eavesdropping, on the part of the Bush Administration and the Obama DOJ responded by asserting the state secrets privilege as a way to get rid of the entire lawsuit.

JN: And it may very well be true that before they did that, they had more people review it within the department and more people look at it carefully. But so what?

GG: Right. Now, let me ask you about the specific legislation. What is it that your legislation would do principally that would curb these dangers and abuses?

JN: Essentially the legislation would do two things. It's a little more complicated, but essentially it would do two things. One, it would say you cannot use the state secrets doctrine to block a case right off the bat. You cannot challenge right upfront on the pleading and say, you cannot consider the case because it would reveal state secrets. You can, move to suppress an individual document or evidence or whatever, and it's conceivable that if all the evidence is suppressed the case collapses. But that's because the evidence is suppressed.

Secondly, if you move to, if the government says, this document or this evidence, whatever it is, is so sensitive that you can't use it, the court has to judge that, not the administration. The court must hold a suppression hearing, an in-camera secret hearing, in which the administration has to allege and prove to the satisfaction of the court, why that evidence is so secret and so dangerous, that in fact it cannot be used in open court. And it may. I mean, there are some things that are. And if it proves that to the satisfaction of the court, and the court agrees with it, then it's got to see if it can make a summary of the evidence, or a redacted version of the evidence, that can be used in court. And that's essentially the bill.

GG: Right.

JN: There are some more details, but those are the essences.

GG: Right. Now, let me just finish up with a couple questions about the procedure and the politics of how this bill can become law. There was some speculation - it was just speculation, but it was there - when the DOJ announced its internal guidelines, that part of the intent was to render legislation unnecessary, on the grounds that the Justice Department is now solving the problem. Have you heard from the White House, either formally or informally, about what their position is on the need for this legislation?

JN: They have so far said that they are agnostic on the legislation. They have not taken a position. As I've said, we've been talking to them, we've been trying to get them to support the legislation, and I must say that they've been - it's not the White House, the Justice Department, we've been talking to, and the Counsel's office, I might add too, but mostly the Justice Department - and I think it's fair to say they've been slow-walking it. This has been taking months and months and we've been talking to them about since February, since they came into office, and they've not taken a position.

Now, hopefully, with the first time approval by the entire Judiciary Committee of this bill - I know staff is meeting with Justice Department staff this week, today and tomorrow in fact, my staff - we can get them to be a little more forthcoming. Also, there are some people who have suggested that maybe we ought to put into the same bill with the PATRIOT ACT reauthorization.

GG: Is that something you're considering doing?

JN: It's something I want to do; I don't know whether I can.

GG: Do you have any indication at all from House leadership about their willingness to bring this bill to the floor now that Judiciary has approved it?

JN: Not yet. I think the fairest thing to say about House leadership is that they've been completely and totally preoccupied with health care.

GG: Right - that's fair.

JN: If you consider: we've been talking to the leadership on staff level, and they're interested in this legislation. I don't think we can say anything more than that. Obviously they're going to have to make some decisions because we reported the PATRIOT ACT reauthorization with the changes that you're familiar with, also this week. And that's got to be taken care of; the legislation, it will lapse if we don't approve it by the end of the year, so they're going to have to pay some attention to it one way or the other.

GG: Absolutely. Well, I don't think it can be overstated the importance of this bill that you're sponsoring and pushing for the reasons that you explained quite well, so hopefully there will be some mechanism for the people who care about it, and there are a lot of them, to start exerting some pressure and help make it into law.

JN: I hope so. They should exert pressure on the leadership of both houses. One of the basic problems is that I have to think that the administration is not going to support the bill, and it's going to be very difficult to pass it. When you have a Democrat president, and they put out the word that they don't want this bill, it's going to be very difficult to pass it in the House.

GG: Right. There's supposed to be that whole separation of powers thing, and members of Congress acting independently, but I guess that's just theoretical now.

JN: And that's true to some extent, but of course, the administration and politics plays a large role, as we all know.

GG: Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate your efforts - I think it's, as I said, an incredibly important bill that you're working on, and I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me, and we'll definitely be following it.

JN: Thank you. I spent a considerable amount of time working with John Conyers and Bobby Scott, also on the Patriot Act. I think this is frankly more important that the Patriot Act.

GG: Yeah. Absolutely. I agree completely, and I've been writing about it a lot as you know, and will continue to follow.

JN: Good.

GG: Thanks, Congressman, appreciate it.

[Transcript courtesy of Thames Valley Transcribe]

U.S. actions in Arar

2009-11-03T05:46:00.000-08:00

Joe Klein on Journolist

2009-08-31T08:17:00.000-07:00

(in reverse chronological sequence) From: <joe_kl...@timemagazine.com> Date: Aug 29, 6:03 pm Subject: A letter from Mr. Billy Ralph Bierbaum of Waxahachie, Texas re: condensed journalism To: Journolist XXX--i think primary challenges are valid in some cases. I'd vote for Sestak over Specter in a heartbeat. They are much more tricky in the House...As for Greenwald, he knows little about politics, less about journalism and cares not a whit about the national security of the United States. I find the Limbaugh-like, knee-jerk devotion of his flock depressing. On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 3:41 PM, Joe Klein<joe_kl...@timemagazine.com> wrote: XXXX—Sorry, I misread your original p ost and didn’t realize that it was a district with 40% African-American Democratic primary electorate. But you won’t be surprised to learn that my essential point is unchanged: I am more interested in expanding the party than in purging it. I have very little sympathy with those who are more interested in whacking moderates than in making sure that moderate districts are represented by Democrats rather than Republicans. And I wouldn’t want to take the risk—or spend a scintilla of energy or $1 of funds—whacking a respected senior member of the House Democratic Caucus, even if he were less thoughtful and honorable than Cooper. But then, I’m more moderate than you are...and proudly so. As for Cooper and health care, HR3200 is more a bargaining chip than a bill—and a bad idea, at that. It forces Democrats like Cooper to take unnecessary votes on provisions like the public option and taxes that can come back to haunt them—especially when those provisions won’t be part of the final bill. On the cost containment front, Cooper is right--at least, according to Orszag—the House bill doesn’t do nearly enough to install the sort of comparative effectiveness monitoring that will reduce costs over time. But that doesn’t matter: the House bill will disappear as soon as the Senate Finance Committee reports something out. I’d be very surprised if Cooper votes against the ultimate product. > On 8/29/09 11:24 AM, "XXXXXXXX" wrote: Joe -- you need to get your facts right. The District is just over 25% black, and the Democratic primary electorate is 40%-45% black. Obama beat Clinton in Davidson County (Nashville -- ~90% of the District) 51k to 32k in the primary and beat McCain by 13 points in the general. Harold Ford beat Cob Corker 107K-67K in Davidson County. Nashville, much like Louisville, KY, is actually a rather cosmopolitan place; electoral complexities of deep south districts just aren't relevant there. You can criticize issue polling all you want, but it's a proxy for the fact that Cooper's Democratic constituents don't like him. And they have good reason, particularly on health care. Aside from his national shenanigans, Nashville General Hospital has been mired in budget crisis for years, and Cooper's done little to help, despite repeated requests, because he "doesn't do earmarks." Nashville General is the primary service provider to black Nashville, while wealthier residents go to Vanderbilt. "What's good enough for you" really doesn't matter. That epitomizes the village mindset. That you would, in ignorance, generalize from your personal affection for the man to a misguided strategic argument is ridiculous. He's from a District that can easily support a more progressive member, and the main obstacle to a primary challenge is Obama's eventual intervention. You should feel free to oppose a primary challenge against Cooper, but it's not jeopardizing a Democratic seat and it certainly holds the potential of electing a better team player to Congress. As for your litmus test, did you miss the fact that Cooper says he will vote against HR 3200? That's the only meaningful bill in the house with insurance reform, and Cooper has said he opposes it because of inadequate cost control measures. Holding out for Wyden-Bennett is a pretext far more fanciful than holding out for the public option. More generally, people who want us to drop the public option right now have almost no sense of the politics of this fight. If the public option is dropped, the $1.4 million/day worth of lobbyists aren't going to pack their bags and go home. They are going to turn their attention to the exchanges and the regulatory changes. And they will weaken if not completely ruin them, especially as dropping the public option will cost the Democrats their most dedicated activists and embolden opponents of reform. The further out you draw the line, the better the eventual bill will be. That dynamic typified the immigration fight, where ea ch compromise offered to mollify conservative objections only weakened the actual prospects for passage. EFCA was much the same. > On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 10:09 PM, Joe Klein <joe_kl...@timemagazine.com> > wrote: XXXX-- You actually believe polls about issues? On what basis? You think the public actually wants a public option...maybe what they really don’t want is a government takeover of health care. Or maybe both. Or maybe—no, this is actually the truth: they don’t know what the fuck they want. Maybe—no, again, the truth: they don’t have the time or interest to figure what any of this means. And they are one good negative 20-second spot away from being demagogued up the wazoo on this issue when the actual election begins. What you have here is a 40% African-American district in the south. I have spent the last 30 years watching these districts turn Republican—almost always the same way. A black candidate primaries a white moderate and wins, because the black vote is maybe 70% of the Democratic electorate, then loses in the general 55-45. I have seen this happen dozens of times. If you have a white Democrat who is voting like a Republican—Billy Tauzin, for example—I don’t really care if he goes down, though I’d prefer a Democr atic conservative to a Republican if it means that Dems keep control of the House. But Jim Cooper isn’t remotely like a Republican. He is thoughtful on a range of issues. He is in favor of insurance reform, expansion of coverage and robust exchanges. That’s good enough for me. And XXXX—I don’t mind litmus tests if they mean something. I would say that an unwillingness to vote for insurance reform would be an absolute, drop dead meaningful litmus test...and an unwillingness to expand coverage is another. But a public option is peripheral, especially if we have exchanges. Ultimately, a public option might be a nice test—especially if the exchanges and insurance reforms haven’t brought the private insurers into line. But you look at the way legislation happens in a mature democracy and it doesn’t happen all at once—usually it doesn’t happen at all. We have a chance to make major progress this year on health care reform (I’d bet that we will, in fact.) But I’d hate to see the Democrats blow that chance for a third time in my working life by insisting on a peripheral provision that the opposition can easily demagogue. I’d like to see the public option dropped right now, to make life easier for all those moderates who might vote no if it is included. I don’t want to give the nervous nellies a chance to turn against Right Now in front of some town hall audience packed with wingnuts, especially since the final bill, undoubtedly, will not include a public option. I’ve spent a lifetime watching Democrats eat their own. In the past, I’ve sometimes been one of the cannibals. I regret that as much as Ted Kennedy went to his grave regretting that he didn’t make a universal health care deal with Richard Nixon. At this point, the Republicans are down to an obnoxious purist sliver. I’d like things to stay that way. Things will not if Democratic purists and self-righteous political naifs like Greenwald successfully challenge moderate Democrats who have won in districts that could easily go Republican. > On 8/28/09 12:50 PM, XXXXXXXXX wrote: That seems a fairly wide departure from your initial argument, that Democratic activists have to accept "having Democratic moderate in district that would otherwise be represented by lockstep Republicans." You may like

Washington Post front page

2009-07-31T06:06:00.001-07:00

You have been blocked from following this account

2009-07-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

Not authorized

2009-07-27T17:40:00.001-07:00

Jonah Goldberg converses with critic

2009-06-14T03:58:00.000-07:00

On Jun 12, 2009, at 3:58 PM, Kurt Logan wrote:

Hi Jonah,

I read this today -- thought it was funny:

And then, finally, we have Jonah Goldberg actually anointing himself as the leading opponent of affirmative action on the ground that it unfairly penalizes and victimizes his group and allows achievement for reasons other than merit. This is someone who might be the single most compelling poster child for the ability of white males to advance in America for reasons having to do with everything except merit. His entire career is attributable to his mom. He was almost 30 years old and was working as the "Vice President" of her tiny company -- with no political or writing background -- when he leveraged his mom's sleazy involvement in the Lewinsky sex scandal and her contacts with the right-wing noise machine into a job with National Review, to which he has clung ever since. So much of the right-wing pundit class -- which also complains endlessly about the unfairness of affirmative action in undermining "merit-based" achievement -- similarly owe their entire careers to their moms and dads.

Yet this is the person -- Lucianne's nepotistic creation -- who is now prancing around as the Standard-Bearer of merit-based accomplishment and speaking out on behalf of fellow white males and Republicans who are treated so unfairly by our society and our media. Yet again, it amounts to nothing more than: my group -- the one I was born into and trained to love -- is being victimized and treated so badly. These claims of self-victimization persist even when their group historically occupied and continues to occupy positions of power and influence far disproportionate to their actual numbers. As Atrios put it on Twitter: so delusional and self-absorbed is the whole debate over Sonia Sotomayor's nomination and related affirmative action grievances that it amounts to nothing more than: "if only I had grown up a female Puerto Rican in a Bronx [public housing project], think of all the opportunities I would have had."

You can read the rest here.

Keep on rockin'.

Kurt
____________

On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 1:17 PM, JonahNRO <jonahnro@gmail.xxx> wrote:

It's all nonsense.

Sent from Jonah's iPhone
____________

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Kurt Logan wrote:

Dear Jonah,

Speaking of nonsense, this is why no one outside of your echo chamber takes you seriously:

"From what I can tell," explained Jonah Goldberg, the author of the 2008 bestseller "Liberal Fascism" and a writer for National Review, "his hatreds echoed the kind of stuff we hear from the Kos crowd, Chris Matthews, Andrew Sullivan et al." Goldberg called Von Brunn "objectively crazy," but argued that "his hatreds would be easier to find at an ANSWER rally than at CPAC."
Even by Goldberg standards, this is remarkable. Adam Serwer responded, "That's right. A neo-nazi who hates blacks, Jews, and thinks Obama wasn't born in the United States is going to be more at home with a group called 'ACT NOW TO STOP WAR AND END RACISM' rather than the political convention where they're selling Obama Waffles and conservative figures get applause for questioning Obama's citizenship."
I also found it interesting that Goldberg would draw a parallel between "an ANSWER rally" and the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Are they relative equals in Goldberg's estimation?
Either way, his remarks may be par for the course, but that doesn't make them any less ridiculous. James von Brunn wrote a pamphlet entitled, "Kill the Best Gentiles: A new, hard-hitting expose of the JEW CONSPIRACY to destroy the White gene-pool." He has also written that "Hilter's worse mistake" was that "he didn't gas the Jews."
If Goldberg thinks this "echoes the kind of stuff" we hear from Daily Kos posters, Chris Matthews, and Andrew Sullivan, Goldberg's perspective is even more twisted than I realized.

Have you ever taken an intellectually defensible position in your life, or do you just stick to right-wing propaganda?

Kurt

____________

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Jonah Goldberg <jonahnro@gmail.xxx> wrote:

Yawn. This is childish nonsense too. I'd defend myself in depth, but what's the point with someone like you? Suffice it to say, my #1 bestselling book has been translated into several languages and positively reviewed and/or taken quite seriously by quite a few people outside my "echo chamber." It was published by the tiffany imprint of one of the most respected publishing houses. I'm one of the most widely syndicated columnists in America (some non-echo-chamber editors must take me seriously). And non-echo-chamber outlets like NPR and countless universities invite me to speak regularly. Oh, about that idiotic Salon story, the guy knows jack shit about how I spent my twenties. I'd compare my resume to pretty much any prominent leftwing blogger. I know this all inconvenient to process and please don't take it as an invitation to debate, I'm done with you.

By the way, this email is not for publication.

_____________

On Jun 13, 2009, at 5:56 PM, Kurt Logan wrote:

Thanks, Jonah. Your wisdom is great and truly your record is impressive. But may I humbly point out that discussing your book sales and your success on the lecture circuit comes across as really, really desperate? I am sad that you are done with me; I have enjoyed our time together.

Keep on keepin' it real,
Kurt

_____________

From: JonahNRO <jonahnro@gmail.xxx>
Date: Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 4:29 PM
Subject: Re: Affirmative action
To: Kurt Logan <>

I'm sure it comes across as desperate to you because that's the only reaction you could have. I'm sure your own accomplishments are awe inspiring. Why don't you list them for me?

Sent from Jonah's iPhone

CAP email

2009-05-29T06:18:00.000-07:00

Glenn Greenwald, Salon, May 17, 2009: "Distorting Public Opinion on Torture Investigations":

That's an odd article to be running given that, according to Williams, it's a topic about which "nobody is concerned." And CAP's blog, ThinkProgress, has some of the best and most comprehensive coverage around of the debates over torture and investigations. . . .

CAP's Matt Yglesias disassociates himself from Williams' comments, noting that (1) "it’s not factually accurate to say that the American people don’t want an investigation"; (2) part of CAP's stated goal is "try to shape public opinion," not blindly follow it; (3) "some form of accountability for what happened in the past is important"; and (4) other CAP officials have called for investigations and proceedings against Bush DOJ lawyers [though, to my knowledge, all of them, including Yglesias, oppose (or at least have serious reservations about) prosecutions regardless of whether Bush officials broke the law].

Email from Allison Lessne, Center for American Progress Action Fund, 5/18/2009:

Dear Mr. Greenwald,

I write regarding your article yesterday titled, "Distorting public opinion on torture investigations."

We appreciate and value your coverage but want to clarify that ThinkProgress.org and Matthew Yglesias' blog, Yglesias, are projects of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the Center for American Progress’ 501(c)(4) affiliated organization. While the Center and the Action Fund share a mission, the Center is a research and educational institute, while the Action Fund transforms progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, partnership with other organizations, legislative action, and grassroots and political advocacy.

We hope you will keep the distinction between these two organizations in mind in the future.

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Best,

Allison Lessne

Drudge

2009-04-14T16:22:00.001-07:00

2009-04-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

Interview with Digby

2008-08-04T10:51:00.000-07:00

Salon Radio with Glenn Greenwald - Interview with Digby

Glenn Greenwald: I'm excited to welcome to the show today a blogger whom I've been reading religiously way before I even began blogging, and who's the author of some of the best insights about political and media criticism that you'll find anywhere on really a daily basis. And that of course is Digby. Welcome, and thanks for joining me.

Digby: Thanks Glenn, I'm thrilled to be invited.

GG: Thrilled to have you. So I want to start off by talking about something that you've been writing about over the past week, and I've been writing about it as well, and that's what's going on in the political campaign with Obama and McCain, and more specifically what's going on with the media behavior. And one of the interesting observations that you made a day or so ago was that right around this time in 2004, even though a little earlier is when the Bush-Cheney campaign launched the whole Swiftboat smear. This is obviously an important time when the media is starting to look for these kinds of filthy, scurrilous story-lines. So what do you think is, there's really been a change in the campaign narrative and in the McCain strategy. What do you think is been going on the last couple weeks and what's its significance?

D: Well, I think that there's a couple of things. The first is what you say, I think that they've probably been planning some kind of a campaign to raise Obama's negatives during this period. 'Cause it's the dog days of the campaign, we're going into the Olympics, and then the conventions - I think everyone expects Obama to have a good convention, you know, a lot of enthusiasm - so they want to get his negatives up as high as they can and this is the time to really build that because everybody's bored with the campaign at this point. And I'm not, obviously, Obama had a great trip to the Mid East and Europe and maybe they can knock him down quickly after that.

So that's part of it, I mean, I think that's just sort of a routine way that the Republicans have figured out to, you know, dominate the narrative during these presidential summers. But the other thing is, is just how, you know, McCain just hired this guy Steve Schmidt, who you've written about in the past, and so have I, and this really is his specialty. He's the guy who really pushed the narrative on Kerry, about being, you know, he was for it before he was against it flip-flopping. And he apparently created a lot of those themes that came out. So this kind of follows with that sort of thing, and a certain kind of, I don't know, nasty sophomoric quality to the kind of criticisms that you're seeing. This whole Britney Spears business, and, you know, the presumptuousness meme, all this stuff, it's very, it's a very certain, it's a very particular kind of pointed criticism that's aimed at trivializing a candidate as much as criticizing them for their positions or trying to position them in the campaign. This trivialization is very important, and I think particularly important with Obama, because they feel that they've got to something to work with there. The guy has a, you know, he's young, and he is, you know, his campaign is based upon, you know, aspirational kind of, you know,..

GG: That transcendence...

D: Yeah, that isn't really, you know, and, you know, they need to, they want to transform that into inexperience and passivity and shallowness.

GG: Yeah, and vainness, vanity,...

D: Vanity, you know, this is all started with, Maureen Dowd actually pioneered this one with Obama, she called him an anorexic starlet that, you know, chewed Nicorettes for, you know, for sustenance, you know, she's kind of been trying to feminize him for some time. She called him "O'Bamby", you know, for...

GG: For a long time, and yeah and she, for a long time, he was sort of a meek little submissive slave to the, you know, whip-wielding, masculine, emasculating....

D: Right.

GG: So I guess that meme has been, you know, growing in her mind in the sort of bacterial precincts in her mind for a long time and has found now expression more lively.

You know, isn't it really just unbelievable that — and I know this isn't a novel observation, it's been clear for a long time, it's still kind of never ceases to amaze I think — and you look at what our country has become, the extraordinary crises that it faces, the very systemic, you know, corruption and other problems that's plaguing it, and yet in order to talk about the presidential campaign, there's, we basically have to talk about things like "O'Bamby" and is he arrogant, and Britney Spears. I mean, you can't have a discussion about the presidential campaign unless you talk about the pettiest of matters because that's the only things that compose it. Isn't that kind of extraordinary, no matter how often you see?

D: It's really extraordinary this time, and I kind of thought that we managed to, you know, avoid it at least to this degree. I didn't think that it would gain this kind of traction this time. And in many ways, because we have two major things happening: there's a, you know, the war, obviously, which is still a major issue for people, but with the economy, you know, being this turbulent - I honestly didn't think people would put up with it. And, you know, the jury's out, we don't know if people will put up with it; it's possible they're going to reject all this stuff and just go, you're out of your minds, we've got real problems, which may actually grow as we go into the fall, that they may demand a little more seriousness.

But, I didn't expect it to be this bad this time, but it's seems to be that the language of modern politics is these little cultural references, it's as if we're, you know, it's all done in some kind of code, where we're making these momentous decisions about huge global issues, and issues in our own lives when we're talking about these economic issues that are confronting us. And we're doing it in this weird kind of popular culture code that's been developed. And not by the Democrats, this is really been a Republican project. And what it does is it dumbs down politics, trivializes it, and it allows them to sort of create these narratives that put the progressive and liberal candidates into these little stereotypes and archetypal boxes that really limit their ability to talk seriously about things. It's very clever, because the archetype plays to their strengths, you know, big tough guys — well, you wrote a whole book about it.

GG: Right. Well, let me ask you about that, you know, not about my book, but about that last point that you made, about the way in which the predominance of these petty personality themes drowns out any discussion of the issues, which obviously is a significant part of the point. I mean, the Republicans know this year, not just this year, every year really, but particularly this year, that if there were any kind of, you know, just objective examination of the issues, that's what would determine the outcome of the election, that they would have even less chance that they have now. I mean, McCain is inextricably tied to a whole litany of policies that the American public hates, and if you're, you know, McCain's handlers and running his campaign, it's perfectly rational that you would want the election decided on every ground other than substantive issues.

But I wonder, one of the points that a lot of people are making during the primary contest, was that one of the reasons why it became so nasty and so personal was because there were very few differences of any meaningful type between the candidates. I mean, when it was Hillary and Obama and Edwards, they were far more alike than different. And so you almost couldn't have a contest based on policy disputes because there weren't very many policy disputes between them. Is that the same in terms of Obama and McCain? In other words, if it weren't for the fact that Republicans were so adept at, you know, flooding the discourse of these themes, and if it weren't for the fact that the media ate them up because it's, you know, they're softballing, and it's easy to report, would we be having the kind of substantive debates that the country ought to be having, given where the candidates have positioned themselves?

D: Well, that's an interesting question. I mean first of all I would go back just to, you know, your original premise about the primaries. I think that it's true that the reason that things got so nasty was because there weren't a lot of differences, but I don't think that's the whole story. I think the story there was that people, because there weren't a lot of differences, people made the choices between the two candidates based on some very emotional and passionate personal identification. And I think that it was mostly in the affirmative, I think a lot of people, the people chose those two candidates originally — I'm talking about the two, Edwards, you know, kind of, he scrambled the deck a little bit, but he got out early and the rest of it really devolved into nastiness after he left the race. And so I think that they chose those candidates originally on a sense of personal identification, aspiration for, you know, women or African-Americans or whatever it was, you know, youth versus experience, you know, whatever. And so, when that happens, people get personally invested on a level that they don't in a normal political campaign where you don't have, you know, you don't look at the candidate with a sense of, he's me. So I think that was part of what fueled that, and so, I think that's distinct from what we're seeing with McCain and Obama.

You know, I, clearly I think both of them are trying to blur the issues, you know, they're, they both made some, you know, tacks to the middle, McCain less than I expected, because I thought that was his great strength, he'd be running from the Republican brand as far as he could, and his 'maverick-ness' would be the, you know, selling point — he was the guy who fought Bush, right? He's the one Republican in the country who can say that he wasn't Bush's toady for the last eight years. I thought that was his great strength, and he's been doing a lot less of that than I expected, although that may be what they roll out in the fall, because he hasn't secured his base yet. But the nastiness, I think, that's just Republican Playbook 101. I mean I think that's just what they go for — they want to diminish and trivialize the Democratic candidate. They've been doing this since Clinton, but really it was Gore, that campaign in 2000 that really crystallized this for them.

GG: Right. Well, you know, one of the enduring questions is why the press behaves in the way that they do, and it's not something you can answer with easily packaged answers or unifying theories because there's, the press is not any more monolithic than any other large collection of, you know, institutions and people with all kinds of competing motives. But what I do think is sort of distinct about the race this time, and I think it's why a lot of Democrats deluded themselves into believing that things would be different this time around, that things would be better this time around, is because the press clearly doesn't have the level of personal animosity that they have for Obama that they had for, say, John Kerry or Al Gore. Obama's a little savvier, he's kind of cooler, there's the drama that appeals to a lot of people in the media about first African-American president potentially. He's a little more personally engaging and charming. They tend to be finger in the air kind of people and so the fact that the Republicans are hated has taken the sheen off of a lot of the Republican appeal for a lot of people in the media. They're clearly more favorably inclined toward Obama as a candidate than they have been for any other Democratic candidate for quite some time. Certainly way more than, you go back in time to Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis, or anyone like that. And yet, the behavior in which they're currently engaged, you know, the constant repetition of these petty, stupid right-wing personality demonization attacks, is exactly the same. What do you think explains that?

D: Well, I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between the press and the right wing. The right wing doesn't care if the press likes their person or not. They see them as a useful tool, and so if the press likes them, like, you know, they like George Bush — terrific, great they can work with that, you know. If they're willing to carry every nasty little, you know, faux mot that they come up with research about Al Gore, they're happy with that. But they don't need it. They use the press to disseminate fear. And it doesn't matter if they're doing it, you know, in a positive way, and saying look at Al Gore, what an idiot he is, or if they're doing it in a negative way, as they're doing now with Obama in which they're refuting the smear, and at the same time they're putting the smear up in these big quotes on the screen that sit there for 10 minutes.

I just wrote about this a few minutes ago. I watched Andrea Mitchell actually get into it with Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, over this latest Britney Spears thing, right, and the press really seems to be angry about this, upset that McCain has gone so negative, but she's talking over Rick Davis who's going on a mile a minute and they're blah-blah-blah, she's saying, well, it's not right, and, you know, McCain's being negative and he promised he wouldn't and blah, blah, blah. But the whole time, the smear quote is up on the TV screen, and that's all you see, that's all you do, and that's all they want. They don't care that the press doesn't like them.

In fact, it works to their favor in this election, because they want to promote the idea that the liberal media is supporting Obama because the truth is that the media has been in the tank for McCain for years, and they want to get rid of that idea. Republicans need to run against the media; it doesn't do them well to be seen as friendly.

So, you know, the basic problem here isn't that the press is too friendly to Republicans or that they tend to, you know, beat into Democrats. The problem is is that they are not serious and they don't take their jobs seriously, and what they do is they say, are willing to spend their time, as you say, on this trivial stuff, and are willing to be used by the right wing to disseminate this stuff on whatever basis the right wing wants to do it, and that's how the campaigns end up becoming these shallow exercises in character study, which is become a stand-in for, you know, a discussion of the issues or, you know, even a discussion of what the public interest or what the voters' interest or anything else might be. And you end up with, you know, well, he's the guy you want to have a beer with or he's the tough guy who'll defeat the terrorists or whatever, you know, the rest of this is.

GG: Yeah, or he's the arrogant one, or he's the one, you know, whose values are an anathema to the....

D: He's the foreigner, he's the Muslim, he's the weirdo, we don't know who this guy is. He's big city, black guy, he's a, you know, guy from Hawaii. And Obama, being this sort of, I mean he's really a very modern fellow, coming from - and it has to do with his age, I think, most people under the age of 50 are much more, you know, there's a much more varied kind of family, racial make-up, you know, a lot more mobility...

GG: Yeah, backgrounds are more diverse...

D: People lived in different countries, I mean, you know, it's not that unusual, but it is unusual for a President. He's the youngest guy who's ever run, you know, I mean, he's the, born the most recently of anybody that's running for President. So this kind of stuff is coming up, the first in that line are always a big deal, so the right is exploiting that and exploiting fears, and racism and, you know, I mean, it's clear that that's going to be another subtext. They can't really come out with it full board but that's the probably the way McCain's going to solidify his base...

GG: So I guess the question is, I mean, clearly, you know — and you're absolutely right, the cultural appeals are how the Republicans will easily solidify their base regardless of whether McCain embraces every last one of their orthodoxies. But I guess one, you know, of the things Obama campaign has obviously concluded, at least as of now, is that responding in kind, you know, engaging in these same kind of personality assaults, either through surrogates or 527's or whoever, on McCain, is something that's not in their interests, or they're just not doing it for whatever reason. Is that something that you think is smart?

I mean, I think their expectation is, and I think Obama's expectation in the beginning is that the political climate in the country is different than it was in the past. It's different because it's dominated by a different generational sentiment for the reasons that you just described. It's different because the voting, the voter make-up is different and most importantly of all it's different because people are so — this sense of dissatisfaction is so acute, that the kinds of petty appeals that have worked in the past aren't going to work now they're banking on the fact that, you know, with big stream economics security, insecurity, and the low esteem in which all political and media institutions are held, that, you know, chattering about Britney Spears and lapel pins isn't going to have any resonance; it's going actually do the opposite, it's going to reflect poorly on the people who do those things. Do you agree with that strategy? Do you think that they need to be more aggressive, is, are they overestimating the extent to which things are different this time?

D: Well, you know, the funny thing is about that, I don't necessarily disagree with that. I mean, you know, it's fair enough to say that the Republicans' project is, you know, at least it's reached its peak some time back, let's put it that way. They definitely are in trouble. The Republican brand is being rejected, you know, nobody's really happy with Republicanism. But this doesn't mean that these attacks won't work. People kind of, you know, people make a lot of heuristic decisions in politics, maybe more than anything else. It's less cerebral than people think it is. It's, you know, based on certain, you know, instincts and, kind of, exposure over the course of your life to certain leadership models and, you know, the Republicans are really good at exploiting that stuff.

So, I don't think there's any guarantee. I thought up until very recently that there was absolutely no way the Democrats could lose this election, but because the economy doesn't seem to be, grabbing, as an issue, the way that I thought it would, at least so far — it seems to have been sort of derailed into, let's drill for, let's start off-shore drilling, and some other sort of arcane weird stuff rather than bread and butter issues. I'm a little less convinced than I was. I still think they're going to win. But, what I've been slightly disappointed with in the Obama campaign was obviously their field operation is reputed to be, you know, magnificent and really modern and they're going to have a get out and vote operation that will surpass anything that the Republicans did in the last election cycle, and that's really good news.

But on the messaging front, I'm kind of, I'm surprised they haven't been more creative. I don't think you have to go after McCain on these cultural issues, like, the story, maybe we should go after him because he's old, and why not, because they're taking on Obama, you know, because he's young, so why shouldn't they go after McCain because he's old?

I don't think they need to do that but they're, you know – McCain's corrupt. I mean, he really is. And he's not just corrupt, he's a man who is corrupt and has built his entire reputation on the idea of his moral rectitude. And, you know, I don't see why there hasn't been some strong pushback on that. His campaign's riddled with lobbyists, you know, you don't have to respond with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, but there's more...

GG: Right

D: ...you can't hit him hard on his own real vulnerabilities. And, you know, and so it just seems to me, there's a — I think the most disappointing thing to me in the Obama campaign seems to be the messaging side of it, it's just, that they're less creative than I expected them to be.

I thought they were going to come at this from a completely new angle, use different issues as sort of, you know, the kind of sweet spots where you can cross the partisan boundary lines. I mean, things, you know obviously things like Global Warming, that's a youth issue, it's one that's definitely, seems to be crossing into the evangelical groups. I mean, there's some things that you can use out there, some issues that aren't just traditional culture wars nonsense that, I think people are tired of that. And yet I'm not seeing the campaigning breaking away from that. Again, it's early; the fall campaigns could look completely different, this is a really weird time. But it seems to me this is a good time to kind of be hitting at McCain on some of this stuff and really trying to, you know, erase this nearly unassailable view of him as being a great man of honor and integrity. I mean there's really nothing except his POW experience — that's the only thing he has.

GG: Right, forty years ago, and it's all been straight downhill from...

D: Yeah, he's been...

GG: ...that point.

D: ...this opportunistic crook ever since then, basically and, you know, yet, you know, and that has protected him and of course, you know, the media's been in love with that whole thing. And, you know, it is a compelling story, I mean, you can't deny it. But it doesn't excuse everything he's done since, I mean, you know, nobody should be able to run on that forever. But yet he does, and there are ways to attack him I think, without getting petty about it, if that's what the Obama campaign is afraid of.

GG: Right. Now, one of the things I want to ask you, and we're running out of time, but I do want to touch on this a little bit, is, you were, you know, around in the blogosphere in, very active first as a commenter for, you know, at Atrios's blog, and then your own blog, you know, leading into and part of the 2004 election, whereas I was just kind of a distant observer then, not paying all that close attention to what blogs you were doing as part of the election.

But I have paid a lot closer attention this time around for obvious reasons, and what's surprised me a little bit, during the primary, was that - you know, for me the value of blogs is when blogs fill the roles are being unfulfilled by the establishment political media institutions. The more, the greater the uniqueness is of what we do, the greater the impact is. The more we sort of replicate what the political, the already existing political and media institutions are already doing, the less of an impact we'll have.

And I felt like during the primary season, the net roots had very little impact on either the media narrative or the course of political events, because by and large the functions that they performed were just duplicating what, you know, media outlets were already performing, and the political campaigns were already performing: cheering for one candidate, hating another, you know, embracing whatever narratives help their candidate, attacking the ones that undermine their candidate, regardless of whether they were true or false.

Do you think that's true, is that different than what it was like in 2004? And what do you think the role is that bloggers can play, if anything, in terms of having an impact in the general election?

D: Well, I think - I really like your definition of what bloggers should do, sort of filling this unfilled void out there. I think that's something that most bloggers should think about; they should try and put that into practice when they're thinking about what to write about and how to write about it. I mean, at least those who are, you know, sort of seriously committed to being, you know, progressive bloggers.

2004 was a preview of this, and it was, the problem was, that the primary was really truncated. Kerry ran away with it, and, but up to that point, there had been some pretty, it was building into a intra-party spat among what was the net roots then, which was a much smaller community than it is now. and certainly much less, I don't know, institutional in nature. We were, you know, all just hobbyists essentially at that time. But it was a preview, I mean, there was, you know, this Dean, Clark, Kerry, you know, people getting nasty overnight, people turning into complete freaks overnight, you know. Yeah, the same thing.

And I think that in a weird way it set up an expectation among people who didn't have a lot of experience with politics, you know, maybe younger people or people who sort of came into politics later in life. But that's how primaries work. So you had a short little fight for a couple of months before the primary started, and then the primaries would start and it would be over. The idea of long, drawn-out primary was really, you know, completely surprising to a lot of people and angering, like, you're not allowed to do this. The truth is that primaries have often been long, and this one was quite close by historical standards, I mean, it was really was, and there was a lot of passion involved. So, I think that the blogosphere, it was a sign of political immaturity that what happened this time, and I hopefully that experience will lead people to look at it differently. I assume, I'm assuming Obama will win and we won't have to look at this for another eight years but, you know, an open primary is an unusual...

GG: That would actually be the best, come to think of it, that's one of the best reasons to rout for Obama, is so that one doesn't have to be subjected a primary war for another eight years.

D: They're always miserable, Glenn. I mean, I've hated them my whole life, you know - not easy. mean, 1980 was a nightmare. You know, the whole Gary Hart experience, you know, heart-breaking, Jesse Jackson in the 80s, you know, this stuff this not, this intra-party fighting is really one of those things that's most difficult things — you're fighting with your friends, right? I mean this isn't..

GG: Over very little, over very little of real significance.

D: It's rarely over something, you know, major and, you know, and just, it's a family fight and you know how those are — they get really, really vicious, and people know...

GG: Right.

D: ...exactly how to, where to stick the knife in to really make it hurt so, you know, it's a dare(?) unpleasant. I don't people really got that. I shouldn't say people - plenty of people did, but there those who didn't. So the blogosphere I think kind of lost its way.

And I think the main way that it lost its way was in failing to, you know, as a progressive movement and as the net roots specifically and this online, you know, group of writers and readers in, you know, trying to use some leverage that we did have in these primaries, to, you know, extract certain promises or loyalty from the candidates. I think we failed to do that and I think it was a missed opportunity, because now we're sort of flailing around, you know. What can we say? We didn't ask anything...

GG: Right, we're captive, you're captive, right.

D: But the other thing is I think we dropped the media critique, and I think that was huge mistake, because, this, I truly believe, and it's not just because, you know, one of my main beats in the blogosphere, I really think it's true, that this critique of the media and the way that they do things, this is at the heart of our problem in American politics today, and we're one of the few, you know, quasi-institutions to take that on, from the outside, and be able to exert some pressure against it. And it's not much, but it's something, and it can have an effect over time. And I think it was a big mistake for bloggers to turn a blind eye to some of the things that happened in the campaign on both candidates.

GG: Or not even to turn a blind eye, but even worse than that, to start embracing terrific media figures who were horrific before and are going to be horrific again, whoever they perceived happened to be helping their particular candidate. I mean, you would see the most lavish praise being heaped on, you know, people on CNN and ABC and MSNBC who are completely integrated in the entire rotting media structure...

D: Absolutely.

GG: ...and part of the problem in every single way, because the had to, whatever they, whatever, you know, gossip they were passing on, or crap were disseminating, and because it was helping one or the other candidate, instead of constantly pushing back against that process and undermining it the way the blogs have been doing, you know, I think fairly successfully over the past four years. They not only turned a blind eye to it, they started openly embracing it, you know, this reporter is brilliant, and thank God for this station, they're the only ones who are speaking the truth. You know, Fox News or MSNBC or whatever it was, you know, suddenly bloggers became, you know, and the Politico became not only the most cited source, but some of the time the most approved source.

D: Oh, absolutely.

GG: Yeah, or even Drudge. So the complete reversal I thought was a little alarming, and I think you're right, I think that it's a by-product of that temporary situation. One wonders whether it will really be long lasting or if bloggers can sort of revert back to what they had doing before that, that was having, you know, a least relatively speaking, the greatest impact.

D: Yeah, well, I mean, I think I already see, you know, people - you know, there's a definite sense of people coming back down to Earth a little bit. And, you know, nothing that you and I have discussed before together, you know, nothing radicalizes you more than the right wing attacking. So it, you know,...

G: Right.

D: ...people tend to get a little more clear eyed about things once they see what happens with the right wing and how that affects whoever the liberal or progressive candidate is.

So, you know, I see it, I see them coming back down to Earth. We haven't had any real post-mortems on this, and I don't think we will until after the election, and we're moving into a new phase where Democrats are going to be in power and, as you know, with our mutual projects and other projects that we're doing, that presents a whole new set of kind of assumptions we're going to be making about to affect politics. And so we're in a period of transition trying to figure out how to be something more than just oppositional.

But the media critique remains the same. I absolutely...

GG: Yeah, constant.

D: ...believe that that is not something that should ever be sacrificed on the altar of politics, because it will just never work in our favor. These are huge corporate entities, the political establishment is a small sort of provincial village of people who all know each other, and all reinforce each other's prejudices and it's never going to rebound to our favor as liberals, it's just not; and we have to, you know, that's an essentially, definitionally conservative sort of institution...

GG: System. Yeah, and cult, yeah, absolutely.

D: ...doesn't work for us, and so we our jobs should really be — whatever we're doing politically, whatever tacks we decide to take, oppose or support politicians in various issue and what have you — that particular thing should remain constant. I think it's a big mistake to let that go. And I'm hoping, you see, there's a danger here, you know, Obama's going to be president, hopefully, knock on wood, and we're going to see a different media environment, and I'm hoping that we keep a clear eye on that because, you know, that is easily manipulated in ways that we may not see coming.

I watched Bill Clinton, you know, he had a very successful convention in 1992, and coming out of a weird campaign with Ross Perot, and, you know, the economy was in the dirt, and you know, Clinton had been revealed to be a womanizer and blah, blah, blah. And he came out of that convention like a shot. I mean it was a real, very, very powerfully well done event and the press was in love with him through the end of the election. They really were. I mean, he, whatever problems they've had with him before, sure there was some little gossipy things, but in some ways they actually helped Clinton. You know, his womanizing kind of made him seem more interesting and more baby-boomer and more generational change and what have you.

And, you know, the minute he got into office the press turned in a huge way, almost on a dime, and the right wing was ready there. And it wasn't just the right wing, it was also the conservative members of the Democratic party.

GG: Absolutely. Yeah, and that's, you know, I think, you know, any movement that wants to be new, and to have a purpose, needs to conceive of itself as outside of the establishment, and oppositional to it first and foremost. And whatever benefits can be derived from the establishment almost coincidentally, you know, are secondary at most. And, I think that's one of the most important things to keep in mind.

Well, thanks so much for spending the time in what I hope is just the first of many visits — "Digby Segments" we can call them, until we have a more creative name — to come. I think it was really interesting and I appreciate it.

D: You're very welcome and thanks for inviting me. Bye.

GG: Alright then, we'll talk to you soon.

D: Bye.

[Transcript courtesy of Peter Grey.]

Interview with the ACLU's Ben Wizner

2008-08-01T10:06:00.001-07:00

Salon Radio with Glenn Greenwald -- Interview with the ACLU's Ben Wizner

Glenn Greenwald: I'm speaking this morning with Ben Wizner, who's a lawyer with the ACLU and is calling from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he is witnessing the first war crimes trial held by the United States since World War II, the military commission of Salim Hamdan, who among other things is accused of being Osama bin Laden's personal driver. Thanks so much for joining me this morning from Cuba.

Ben Wizner: It's great to be here. I'm calling actually in from a place called Camp Justice, which is a complex of a bunch of air-conditioned tents, where they put journalists and observers like me, perhaps in part to give us the idea that is actually a war court instead of an illusion, an exercise.

GG: Well, it's very inspiring, Camp Justice, I'm sure, when you arrive in the morning and you see that name there, you're as inspired as I am. What can, can you talk about just briefly how, the capacity that you're there, how you came to be there, who else is there and what you're allowed to see?

BW: Yeah. When the Pentagon decided to go ahead with military commissions several years ago, one of their mantras was that these trials would, full, fair and transparent. And so a number of human rights groups the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, approached the Pentagon and said, look, if these are going to be transparent, you need to have trial observers from human rights organizations who can report to the world, especially since the government made the silly decision to conduct these trials here at Guantanamo. You know, this week, it's been more and more obvious that it would have made a lot more sense to bring one person from Guantanamo to the United States than dozens, and at some times hundreds of people from the United States to Guantanamo to watch one trial. But ever since these commissions have begun, the ACLU has been one of the organizations that has been here in an observing capacity.

GG: And you're able to be present for all parts of the proceeding?

BW: Well that was true until yesterday, actually. It's funny you ask. Yes, we've always been in the room for all parts of the proceedings. Today, yesterday for the first time, we were removed from the courtroom, everyone without a top-level security clearance was removed from the court room so that, two witnesses who I believe were affiliated with the Special Forces could testify about what they were doing in Afghanistan and so, it would be, just another embarrassment for the government this trial was determined on the basis of evidence that the press and the public didn't even get a chance to see.

GG: Was the defendant allowed to be present for that portion of the proceeding?

BW: The defendant was, but this is another one of those interesting government theories, right, that, you know, the, what they call the highest value detainees, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and all of them, you know, we're not allowed to be in the room when those people testify, we have to be behind a glass barrier with a 20 second sound delay in case, God forbid, they reveal classified information.

Now, what is that classified information? It was disclosed to them during their interrogation - in fact it was their interrogation - because they were tortured, and because they know what techniques were used on them, they can't be allowed to speak to the public, and so the government doesn't mind revealing that kind of information to the detainees because it doesn't plan ever to release them. And that's another really amazing feature of the military commissions, which is that, Hamdan has been designated an enemy combatant, so the government's position is, whether he's acquitted or convicted, he remains an enemy combatant. He will be detained until the cessation of hostilities in the so-called war on terror, whatever that means. So they're not worried about every releasing him and letting him speak.

GG: Right. So, in other words, so, let's take a step back briefly for those who don't know, and tell the story of Hamdan's detention, when he was first detained, how long he's been detained, and what the allegations are against him.

BW: Well, Hamdan was picked up in November of 2001, I think November 24th was the date. He had just driven his wife and child to the Pakistani border and was returning to Khandahar. You know, this is a time when the Taliban and the Northern Alliance were engaged in a civil war. You know by this time the United States had strongly come in on the side of the Northern Alliance, and people were being arrested in droves, by Pakistani authorities, by tribal war lords, by the Northern Alliance. Hamdan was picked up by Northern Alliance fighters; he was lucky not to have been killed right then. He was turned over to US forces - large sums of money were being paid by US forces to get detainees who were from Arab countries. Hamdan is from Yemen. And so anyone who was from an Arab country, rather than from Afghanistan was presumed to be a terrorist and he was turned over to the US military, detained in Bagram and other facilities in Afghanistan and then transferred to Guantanamo in 2002.

Now, there's no real dispute that Hamdan was one of several drivers for Osama bin Laden. The bin Laden family originally comes from an Yemenese tribal region. He has long had a very close affinity with Yemenis, and many of his bodyguards and drivers like Hamdan were from Yemen. Hamdan contends that he was not an inner level, upper level member of al Qaeda, that he was basically a driver. This is an orphan with a fourth-grade education, who was paid cash directly from bin Laden to be his driver, was not part of the al Qaeda financing.

There's been no dispute at this trial also that Hamdan was never involved in the planning or execution of a terrorist attack; and we've had a parade of government criminal investigators come to the stand and say, no, no, no, this guy wasn't involved in any terrorist attack, not in the Cole bombing, not in the embassy bombings, certainly not in 9/11. He was a driver. And so what is the government's theory? The government's theory is that he is guilty of providing material support to a terrorist organization, and also that he was a member of a conspiracy to murder.

And, you know, Glenn, that material support is pretty elastic concept. It was used to finally convict Jose Padilla after holding him in criminal isolation for several years. The government effectively was to able to send him away for 17 years for filling out an application al Qaeda summer camp. It's not hard to get a conviction for material support.

GG: And is the allegation of material support here that the fact that he, the material support was the driving services that he gave to Osama bin Laden?

BW: Well, sure, the driving services. The government says also security, that he drove weapons around. You know, the government alleges that at the time of Hamdan's capture there was a missile in the trunk of his car, that was being ferried to a battlefield. You know, again the defense theory is that was a civil war going on. Civil war is not terrorism. If he was bringing a missile to Taliban forces, that doesn't make him a terrorist, that doesn't make him a criminal and it certainly doesn't make him a war criminal.

And actually that's an important distinction because for the government to conduct this as a military tribunal - now, they could have and still could at any time bring Hamdan to the United States, indict him in Miami like they did Jose Padilla, and prosecute him for material support, which is a domestic crime in the United States and Hamdan could be prosecuted for it. The truth is he could probably be convicted for it. But the government is making a different argument: they are saying that Hamdan is a war criminal.

GG: Right.

BW: To do that, they have to say that the United States was in a state of armed conflict with al Qaeda for the period in which Hamdan's alleged act took place. I think the United States' theory is that, the United States and al Qaeda have been at war since the early 1990's, which is a pretty remarkable statement because, most Americans had never heard of al Qaeda until 2000. But their theory is that because al Qaeda in its speeches and its web-sites and its fatwas, said that they were at war with us, that that is sufficient under the laws of war. But that's a pretty preposterous theory, that any group of people, just by saying they're at war, can themselves generate a state of armed conflict.

GG: Well let me interrupt you here for a minute and ask you about this important distinction that you're drawing. I mean, of course the distinction between, that is, trying someone as a war criminal for war crimes, which is what these military commissions are intended to do, and charging somebody as a common criminal in a federal court as Jose Padilla and even others who were originally alleged to be involved in the 9/11 attacks were tried as, and prior terrorist attacks as well. From Hamdan's perspective, since as you say, he's been declared an enemy combatant, and according to the Bush Administration, he need not be convicted of anything in order to be held as enemy combatant, in fact he could be acquitted as part of this military commission and still be held as an enemy combatant. What really is the distinction between, as a practical matter, between trying someone as a war criminal, and trying them as common defendant, and what if anything is really at stake for Hamdan in this commission?

BW: Well, that's the sort of been the triumph and the tragedy in the Hamdan case all along. What we haven't mentioned yet is that it was Hamdan, with his Navy lawyer Charlie Swift and with Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal, who challenged the first iteration of the government's military commissions, took the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Got a ruling that really was a historic ruling on the separation of powers, maybe the most important ruling ever on executive power, and Hamdan's reward for having been named now in our law books for generations to come, is that the government...

GG: And we should mention I mean that that ruling was one where Hamdan prevailed, and the Supreme Court said that the President lacks the authority to constitute these military commissions, that Hamdan is entitled to, like all detainees including al Qaeda detainees, are entitled to Geneva protections, the protections of the Geneva Conventions, and yet here we are, you know, two years later, and he's a part of this sham trial, so what is, what can he even hope to gain?

BW: That's exactly right Glenn. because, as so many other time you've been cataloguing over recent years, defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, right? What was the result? Hamdan was overruled by the United States Congress and in the final days of the, 2006, the Republican Congress, the Military Commissions Act was passed. It reconstituted the military commissions, with virtually the same rules as before.

I was down here a couple of months ago, for a pre-trial hearing, in the Hamdan case, and Hamdan was explaining to the judge that he was considering boycotting this proceeding, that there was nothing in it for him, and the judge said, but Mr. Hamdan, you took on the President of the United States, and you won, and Hamdan said very pointedly, and what did it get me? You know, I've been with Mr. Swift for four years, I know the law better than he does now I think, you know, surely I won in the Supreme Court, that I'm in a solitary confinement cell and they're prosecuting me under a system that doesn't seem like a legal one. Did Congress make this new law just for me? Yes, that reflects his understanding.

And so, this is for all of the pomp and all of we how say this is historic moments for the United States, this is a Potemkin legal proceeding, basically put together to project an illusion of justice. The outcome doesn't make any difference. You would think, though, that if the government were going to through all the trouble of conducting such a sham trial, they would not chain themselves by starting with Osama bin Laden's driver. And what again we've heard from government witness after government witness, is not only that Hamdan was a marginal figure, but that he was actually a cooperating witness, that through dozens of interviews with at least 40 criminal investigators, he repeatedly provided information that was useful to the government. He identified al Qaeda figures from photo arrays. He said that he would even be willing to testify against others, you know, this is the kind of guy if he had a lawyer, and if he were in a real court system, would be a witness and not a defendant. It would be as if the Nuremberg Trials opened with the prosecution of Hitler's driver, someone who by the way was never charged, and who died of old age in his own bed.

GG: Right. Now, it's incredible for the mockery it makes of justice and it's equally incredible if not more so for the sheer ineptitude of the whole strategy. Let me ask you a lot of the commissions have focused on, not the question of what Hamdan did, rather on the question of what the United States government did and specifically the interrogators of Hamdan did, in terms of the treatment that the subjected him and there was a ruling early on, that certain evidence would be excluded because it was obtained in a coercive environment. Talk about what those issues have been, and I guess there was some pretty extraordinary events on Wednesday regarding the US government's sort of indifference to whether or not its best evidence would even be useable in this commission because it seems so inconsequential. So can you talk about some of those issues his treatment and the interrogation techniques that have been used on him?

BW: Well, what's interesting is that, there really are two Guantanamo's. There is the Guantanamo that's been presented by the government in this trial, and that's the Guantanamo where professional FBI interrogators, some of them who are fluent in Arabic like the famous Ali_Kisan bring fig newtons to the detainees, sit knee to knee on the floor, sometimes even lie elbow to elbow, talk about the family, arrange for phone calls home. have non-coercive professional polite interrogations that are amiable. Those are the people who of course are called in to testify against Hamdan at trial.

But there is another Guantanamo that we all know about, and that's the Guantanamo of Rumsfeld's memos, of November and December of 2002 and March 2003. A Guantanamo of stress positions, of extreme temperatures, a Guantanamo where someone like Hamed_Katani could be lead around on a dog lease and forced to defecate on himself. This was a laboratory for very brutal interrogation techniques that then migrated to other places. Really awful things were going on here.

But you would not know that in this trial. Because of what must be a remarkable broad protective order, this entire trial has been conducted as if the CIA doesn't exist. The name CIA may not be uttered in the courtroom. The closest we get is hearing that there might be other government agencies around, and there was an incredible moment in the court yesterday, where one of Hamdan's lawyers wanted to ask a question of an FBI witness that must have been about the CIA. The government objected on classification grounds. The defense lawyer held up the 9/11 Commission Report and said all I want to do is read one sentence from the 9/11 Commission Report. He was not permitted to read a sentence from the 9/11 Commission Report because in this trial that's considered classified even though it was on the New York Times best-seller list.

GG: Right. It was part of the public parts of the 9/11 Commission Report was public, he wanted to read into the record a public statement.

BW: He wanted...

GG: That was barred on...

BW: ...a public statement from the 9/11 Report and had a witness respond to what the 9/11 Report said. He was not permitted to do that. And so, there's this strange sense in that I am here, and I am sitting in the courtroom, you know - I'm in the one place where issues that the entire world has been discussing for four or five or six or seven years cannot be discussed. They can be discussed everywhere else, but not here, because of purported harm to national security, and look we've seen a lot of that, I mean, I have represented lots of people whose cases have been thrown out on state secrecy grounds for exactly the same reason, that it was determined that you could not litigate in court what could be written on the front pages of newspapers.

In this case, the government not only wants to ignore the existence of these interrogations, but waited until the eve of trial, and actually into the trial itself, to turn over some records that have confirmed what Hamdan has been alleging all along, which is that he was repeatedly woken in the dead of night, that one time he was sexually humiliated by a female interrogator. These allegations were ridiculed by the government's entire proceedings, documents that they disclosed to the defense during the trial confirmed that Hamdan was right. I wish I could tell you what those documents say, I can't, I can't see them, they're classified, they get handed solemnly around the court room and red folders marked 'top secret'. The defense can only very obliquely ask questions about them and we actually learn more about this in the post trial press conferences than we do in the courtroom itself.

Now the judge, Keith Allred, who's a Navy captain, is, seems to be a bright guy, actually is probably the best judge down here in terms of fairness to detainees. But, as an observer, you always feel like Charlie Brown who's tried to kick the football again. We always think that Allred's going to do the right thing and at the last moment he doesn't. Allred wanted to sanction....

GG: So in other words, he makes observations about government misconduct or about unfair aspects of the trial, he's seems concerned, even angry about what the prosecutors are doing, but at the last minute he always rules in such a way that ensure that the government essentially gets what they want, and the detainee doesn't?

BW: And yet for some reason we continue to think that the next time he's going to rule with the detainees, and that's why I described, I compared it to Charlie Brown and the football.

But in this case, Allred was genuinely angry that the government had waited until into the trial. Now remember, Hamdan has been government custody since 2001. The idea that these materials couldn't have been collected earlier and turned over to the defense just silly, but it reflects the deliberate compartmentalized system where the people who were going to prosecute the cases were in this bubble that would allow prosecution of the alleged crimes committed by the detainees without any discussion of the crimes committed against them by other government agents.

Allred said, look, I have to sanction you for your misconduct in turning over this material this late, and I'm going to say that with respect to one critical interrogation, that you want to introduce, that there's a presumption that it's coercive. I'm going to not allow it unless you can prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that it was not coercive, and so that was what happened the other day. The government brought forward absolutely no evidence that it was not coercive, they didn't put a single witness on the stand who knew anything about the circumstances that Hamdan, night time interrogations. But at the end of the day, Allred allowed the interrogations to be admitted, released what I can only describe as a hilarious ruling because it's five pages long, and I think one paragraph of it is not blacked out. I said to a reporter yesterday, this is Guantanamo in black and white, mostly black.

GG: Right. So in other words, so, the judge presiding over the trial told the government that unless you convince me with convincing evidence that these interrogations were non-coercive, which was the penalty for failing to produce these documents about his interrogations, I'm going to bar any evidence of what you said as part of these interrogations. The government ignored that, didn't present any evidence to try and even prove that it was non-coercive and he eventually allowed it anyway, the evidence from that interrogation. And then released a blacked-out order as to why that ruling was his ruling?

BW: That is exactly what happened here. And again, nothing really should surprise, and, but I really do think that there was a collective gasp among observers, and you saw that this particular witness was going to be allowed to testify with no penalty against the government. You know, there's another issue that is hanging over Hamdan's interrogation that is not about physical coercion. Now, Hamdan, you know, certainly has had a rough time being in US custody for all these years, but he's not someone who, like other detainees, was brought to black sites and exposed to them, to the worst enhanced interrogation techniques. He's not someone who was water-boarded, he's not somebody who was maintained in the worst stress positions.

But, you know, what's remarkable about this, is that, you know, the government has long made the claim, that we need these new rules, we need a military commission, because how can we expect our soldiers and our agents on the ground, in the battlefield, in caves, to be administering Miranda warnings? That may not be an unreasonable argument, to say that soldier who's on a battlefield doesn't have to give a Miranda warning, and in fact the law has never required that. But let's be clear about what's going on here. Hamdan was not interrogated on a battlefield. He was interrogated dozens of times in an air-conditioned trailer, thousands of miles away from, many, many months and even years removed from any battlefield, and so the rationale that the government has given for not providing warnings is utterly, utterly absent here. And so each government witness that has taken the stand has said that the reason why he didn't give Miranda warnings, is that it was government policy, and that the purpose of the interrogation was intelligence, not criminal justice.

Well, every single one of those interviews is now used, literally, to convict Hamdan with his own words, and Hamdan, by cooperating, sewed his own newt[sic]. Other detainees who refused to speak, are now in their home countries, because they didn't give the government any evidence for putting on a show trial. Hamdan, by sitting down and naively providing all of this information that he thought would be very helpful to the government and if fact was helpful to the government, was in fact writing the prosecution's case against him. And I think that's important because, you know, issues like Miranda and self-incrimination may seem marginal, but they really do go to the heart of what a fair trial system is. Someone has the right to know he is a criminal suspect when agents now, we heard testimony yesterday that the, one of the more experienced government agents who had not interrogated Hamdan, a year after all the other interrogations were over, flew down to Guantanamo with a military commissions prosecutor, to clean up Hamdan's interrogations for presentation at trial. At trial - this was not about getting additional intelligence, this was about, this very experienced witness described himself as an excellent trial witness, working with a prosecutor, in a setting with no warning to Hamdan, and no counsel to Hamdan, to go over all of the previous interrogations and plug any gaps so that the case against Hamdan would be airtight. And that witness took the stand yesterday and gave damaging testimony against Hamdan.

GG: Right, it's amazing that, you know, the idea, the rationale of terrorism is to bring publicity to a cause, in this the cause being that the United States is some sort of corrupt and rotten system that ought to be brought down, and yet, you know, the actions that have been taken that have advanced that cause far more than the others is the actions of our own government, in putting on sham trials like the one that we have. You know, it literally couldn't matter less what the outcome is to the detainee. Let me ask you this last question, what is likely to happen from here, how many more days are there to go, and has the defense began to present its case yet, and what is that case likely to entail?

BW: Well, I think some of the more grotesque indignities may still be to come. The defense just began its case yesterday, and I think that their case can be summed up as follows: there was no war between this rag-tag group called al Qaeda, and the United States of American, at least until September 11th 2001, until the authorization for use of military force. And so that anything that Hamdan may have done before that time, perhaps could prosecuted criminally in a domestic court, but certainly is not within the jurisdiction of a war court. And moreover, that Hamdan was never involved in the planning or execution of any terrorist attack, did not conspire, there was no meeting of the mind between him and some other member of the conspiracy to carry out these attacks, and so therefore he isn't guilty.

Hamdan will be convicted. These military officers who were brought down here were not brought down here to acquit him, they were brought down here to convict him. In the penalty phase of this trial, the government is planning to bring in 9/11 family members to give inflammatory victim impact statements. Now, that would be one thing if was the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed...

GG: Right.

BW: But this is the trial of bin Laden's...

GG: A low-level driver that nobody claims had any role whatsoever in the 9/11 attacks.

BW: That's exactly right, and the jury has already seen footage of the planes slamming into buildings, people shrieking, of charred bodies, of weird Arabs firing guns, and the idea that this trial, as with many measures is to take these low level actors, and put bin Laden's image and name into the trial as much as possible. So we'll see that next week.

It's hard to predict anything, Glenn. I would not be surprised if the witness portion of the case includes today, on Friday, but of course, there will be closing argument, there will be deliberations, and then there will be a penalty phase of the trial, so I may be in the Camp Justice for one more week.

GG: Right, well, at least you're at Camp Justice, the Camp Justice part of that, and just so listeners know, you are periodically writing about what you're observing at the ACLU Blog of Rights, which is at blog.aclu.org.

BW: That's right, and it's cross-listed at the ACLU Diary on DailyKos, which is aclu.dailykos.com.

GG: Excellent. And I'll definitely keep following that, and we'd love to have you back on to talk about next week's outrages as this sham trial proceeds. I really appreciate your taking the time this morning to talk to me.

BW: Thanks for having me Glenn, I really enjoyed it. Take care.

[Transcript courtesy of Peter Grey.]

Transcript of Interview with Tim Shorrock

2008-07-31T02:18:00.000-07:00

Salon Radio with Glenn Greenwald - Interview with Tim Shorrock

Glenn Greenwald: My guest today is Tim Shorrack, who's an investigative journalist, and I think, the leading expert on the relationship between the government and America's private sector in terms of the government's intelligence and surveillance activities. And Tim has a new book, essentially on that topic, entitled "Spies for Hire, the Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing," and Tim also recently wrote a piece for Salon last week that received a lot of attention on potential plans of the Congress to establish a Church Committee-like enterprise to investigate Bush surveillance and other activities and possible crimes. So, Tim, I'm really excited to have you, thanks for joining me.

Tim Shorrack: Thank you.

GG: So I want to begin by making an observation and then asking you a question, and my observation is this: you know, one of the interesting aspects of, about being able to write politically and sort of focus on these issues full time, is you realize how many things you don't know about, when all you're doing is kind of paying attention in sort of a standard way, by reading the New York Times and, you know, being a kind of high information citizen. One of the things that I really realized, since I started writing politically full time in 2006, is that there's, it almost is true there's, the most consequential things about our government, that our government does and that determine what kind of country we have, are in a lot ways the least discussed issues in mainstream political discourse.

There's almost an inverse relationship between how important something is politically and how much attention it receives in our mainstream political discussions. And, you know, one of the things that I've come to realize, really only quite recently, is that, is just how sprawling America's surveillance state has become - how limitless and out of control it is. And, I think, more importantly, how inextricably linked it is to what the private sector is doing, what telecoms are doing, what private military and intelligence-like corporations are doing, and how so many of these activities now reside in the private sector. These awesome intelligence and surveillance actions on the part of our government. It's very hard, though, to write about it, or to convey the magnitude of it. So, if we could just begin by having me ask you to sort of to describe what that, this behemoth is and what it's become, and sort of what the scope of it is in a kind of summary way. I think that'd be really helpful.

TS: Okay. Well, we have the most powerful collection, intelligence collection, of agencies in the world based in the United States. Let's start with the National Security Agency, which has, you know, this whole network around the world where they track, pick up telephone calls, cell phone calls, emails, all of this and try to download them and then monitor them and run them through databases. They can track anybody in the world. We've seen examples of how they've done this in Afghanistan and Iraq where they've used cell phone communications to track people to an exact spot and then blast them, and they can follow them around from place to place.

The United States can do this there; of course, it can do that here. It has extensive, the technology is as you say, awesome. There's another intelligence agency called National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for imagery and mapping and they too have incredible technology at their fingertips where they can, they send out U2's, and overhead spy planes, and also satellites that pick up imagery in incredible detail, and they can do, they do this and it's often used in Iraq to track, you know, to track insurgents and to track people that are fighting the United States, but of course that technology too can be used here in the United States and is used here in the United States.

And when you combine those two technologies - the eavesdropping the NSA does and the imagery that the NGA does - you have, they're starting to combine them in like single platforms, so you can actually watch people in real time. That's an incredible and incredibly powerful and also incredibly potentially dangerous technology to be in the hands of our security agencies as well as in the hands of the private sector.

And there's also one other agency, which is called the National Reconnaissance Office, which is the part of the Pentagon that manages all the spy satellites that they launch around the world, and they operate ground stations where all the data and information from the NSA and the NGA is combined and their analysts put it together and create intelligence, what they call actionable intelligence, out of all the information they receive and then they send the reports on to other agencies and up the chain of command, up to the President of the United States.

And, as you also said, all this technology and much of the analysis is provided by private sector companies. And, you know, they're active in all these areas, and so, we don't only have telecom communication, telecommunications companies that are cooperating with the NSA in terms of giving them access to their telephone, global telephone networks - we've got these, large number of companies which supply information technology and supply many of the analysts that do all this work inside the agencies. And so it's a, the line between private and public has disappeared, in my mind.

GG: So, let me ask you about that last observation. Can you give some sense for the trend in terms of, I mean I assume it's always been the case at least since World War II and during the World War II, that government and private companies have cooperated to one degree or another. But can you give some, convey some sense for what the trend is in terms of what proportion of our intelligence and surveillance activities are now undertaken by private corporations, as opposed to government agencies?

TS: Well, last year at Salon, and I reported this in my book of course, I got documentation, unclassified documents, showing that 70%, seven oh percent, of the entire intelligence budget is spent on private contracts. And when I went to that, took that number and tried to, you know, confirm it with the national intelligence officials, I got, I didn't get a, they wouldn't confirm it yes or no, but they did say, well, that's kind a historical figure, and also it covers everything from pencils to satellites, therefore, indirectly confirming the 70% number, but that number has been, this 70% has been there for quite a long time.

We've always spend a lot of money on corporations building things like U2 spy planes, the satellites that spied on the Soviet Union, on the, all the expensive cameras that went in those satellites. But over the last 10 to 15 years, a lot of that money that's spent in the private sector has begun to flow to actual analysis of intelligence, into covert operations that are undertaken by the CIA and Pentagon Military Intelligence Agency, for what's called, you know, human intelligence.

And so more of that percentage now is being spent on actual spying and surveillance and analysing data and so as a result the corporations have become a much much bigger player in the actual intelligence enterprise. And, both in, they supply the technology and analyze the intelligence that comes out of it, but also, they provide, you know, consulting, they help manage these agencies, that the Office of Director of National Intelligence, which is supposed, which is by law now supposed to be managing all of intelligence, a huge portion of their staff is contracted, and supplied by large corporations, like Science Applications International Corporation has one big contract to provide personnel there. And so they're thoroughly integrated up and down in the intelligence and that's what's different: is that in the past they used to be primarily supplying technology and then they would hire individuals to come back to an agency to consult with, but now it's spread across all areas of intelligence. So that...

GG: And so, right, and so, just in terms of the numbers, when you say 70% of the overall intelligence budget roughly is spent on, private corporations, is basically paid to private corporations to perform these functions, what amounts are we talking about?

TS: Well, we're talking, if the budget is 60 billion, and it's at least 60 billion now, I think. There's even estimates, estimates I've seen on the last couple of days, based on recent reporting, that it may be up to 66 billion dollars. And so that's the total intelligence budget and that includes of course supplementary funds that have been provided by Congress to the Bush Administration to, for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So we're getting close to 70 billion. So that's about, if you take that 70%, that's, you know, that's 45 - 50 billion dollar industry. That is how much money is going into the private sector.

GG: I ask that because I know that during the debate over telecom immunity and whether the telecom industry ought to be immunized for their participation in illegal spying programs, you know, it was often raised, the question was, well, what motive would telecoms have to agree to participate in programs that they knew were illegal? Why wouldn't they just tell the Bush Administration that they would, why wouldn't they just refuse? And it seems rather evident that if you're a high level executive at a telecom industry or any of these companies which could get part of that 60 billion a year pie, that last thing you would want to do is alienate the federal government and the first thing that you would want to do is cement your relationship with them. Is that, do you agree with that?

TS: Absolutely. And I think that what goes for the telecoms goes for these other companies too and I've been arguing in my book that, you know, when we talk about responsibility and, you know, legal protection, that the telecoms were clearly involved in supplying, you know, basically pipes to their international communication systems, to the NSA and other agencies. Well, and, they knowing did it when the program operating without warrants. They knowingly did it, you know, probably with some kind of assertion from the Bush administration, some kind of protective language from the Bush administration that what they were doing was legal. But the companies that supply the IT, the information technology and analysis must have known also they were dealing with information and data and intelligence that was obtained without warrants. And so I would say they're also culpable in the same way that the telecom companies are.

GG: Right. Well, let me ask you, let's take a step back a little bit, and, you know there's been some discussion, I started off by saying that these issues rarely get discussed I mean, there's been some discussion of having the government outsource what ought to be, you know, military and intelligence activities as a result of things like controversies over Blackwater in Iraq and private military contractors and there's been some discussion as a result of the telecom issue and the fact these telecoms are working so closely hand in hand with the NSA.

But at the end of the day, you know, in terms of this trend that you've described, where, it used to be that corporation would get paid to develop technology and then turn it over the government to administer, but now the telecom, the private corporations themselves are actually carrying out these functions, and the line between where the government ends and the corporations begins has almost blurred to the point of non-existence. Why do we really care? I mean what difference does it make if, you know, it's the NSA carrying out a certain program, or if AT&T is doing, of if the US military is doing something versus Blackwater, or if someone in the DNI is a private corporation employee rather than a government employee? Why do we really care about who's doing it?

TS: Well, let's start with the DNI, okay? Okay, with many of their employees, and we're talking senior level people, are actually working for these corporations. So in the last couple years, within the intelligence community outsourcing and contracting has actually become a big issue. Like at the CIA, there is concern because some companies were actually recruiting in the CIA cafeteria, and they were offering jobs to people, you know, at double or triple the pay, was having, it was having an impact on the CIA workforce and the CIA was starting to feel, well, you know, they actually, Director Hayden actually said, you know, the CIA has become the farm team for the contractors.

Well, if you get a high-level contractor at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and contracting itself is a political issue within the agency, and say the Director of Nation Intelligence walks out of this office and talks to his administrative aides, I see, I wonder if we should be outsourcing anymore, I wonder if we should cap it or something. Well, that aide who works for SDIC or one of these other companies, it doesn't really quite seem to be in his interest say, oh absolutely, we should stop contracting, we've gone way too far.

I mean you have this sort of built-in conflict of interest there, and that's at all levels I think. And that's just, that's one part of it. But I think, YK, when you have these corporations, like, I've done a lot of work on this new proposal by the Bush Administration and the intelligence agencies to create an office called the National Application Office that would basically be a clearing house to make it easier for domestic law enforcement and the FBI to obtain information and intelligence from spy satellites, from military spy satellites.

And, the government report that was, that formed the basis of that policy was written by a study team that was appointed by the DNI as well as the Department of Homeland Security. It was led by a high-level executive from Booz Allen Hamilton, this corporation that has a very key advisory role in intelligence, and half the staff came from Booz Allen, a couple of, the rest of them came from some other large companies like L3 Communications and Northrop Grumman and there was two or three government people in there in this study team. And you know naturally they came to the conclusion that such an office, National Application Office was necessary.

But what they don't say of course is that Booz Allen itself has a big stake in that because they provide services that allows intelligence agencies and military agencies to combine unclassified and classified information in one platform so to speak. And, so, of course, if they expand it, they're going to win business, and it's going to affect their bottom line - they'll make profits off of this very policy they're advocating. And I think there's lots of other examples of that kind of policy-making by corporations where, yes, it's just advisory role, but the agencies take it very seriously and they move on it and they act on it, and yet these corporations have a stake in the outcome, and I think that's really dangerous.

GG: That's interesting and, as you describe it, it's easy to see how that happens. What about the issue of oversight? You know, obviously, Congress, at least in theory, has the power to exert fairly stringent oversight over executive agencies with regard to spying and all other intelligence activities. They don't really exercise it these days but at least in theory they do have that ability. what if, you know, we are, instead of having these agencies engaged in these spying activities, and monitoring the activities of Americans, and collecting dossiers and things like that, these private corporations are essentially doing it instead. How does that affect whether there's oversight on these activities?

TS: Well, because most of these contracts, at least 80% in intelligence are classified, and they're you know, top secret often, Congress has had very little information, actually, about the size of the contracting work, how much contracts various agencies let out every year, and they've been asking for this information for a couple years. I think that it cripples their oversight capacity because so many programs are folded into what these companies do, and the oversight is limited anyway over intelligence. And so because it's all folded, these contracts are folding into a secret, secret compartments, within a larger secret budget, it's very difficult for Congress to actually get in and look at the details of these, of these contracts, especially the bigger contracts, what they're actually doing for the NSA and the CIA and other agencies. And it's become an issue over the last couple years annual intelligence spending bills which are just vetoed every time by President Bush because of various language the Congress puts in

But over the last years, particularly on the House side they've been demanding more transparency, more information about contracting and the whole size of the contracting work-force and, you know, what kind of jobs are outsourced and so on.

And, interestingly last year in 2007 House Intelligence budget report they actually said flat out that the government has no standards to determine whether something is inherently governmental or not, or whether it should stay in the government or be privatized or outsourced. And that was after 10 of expanding outsourcing, and so, they really have no, the government doesn't have any standards, and Congress doesn't have the information, and this year's bills are now pending, and they've asked for, you know, more transparency once again. And they've actually tried to set some standards for, you know, what should be done and what should not be done by private corporations. And there is a part of the bill that's in, that both the Senate and the House have approved, that would ban the CIA from using contractors for interrogation. Only the CIA; it doesn't apply to military intelligence agencies, which is also, which also do a lot of interrogation. But at least they've drawn the line at the CIA doing it. But, that's, once again, President Bush is going to veto it, because he thinks it puts too much controls on their, you know, intelligence effort, or as Cheney calls it, the 'dark side'. They don't want any controls, basically.

GG: Right, well, one of the things that you've written about I find really interesting is the idea that by transferring more and more of these activities away from the public sector, away from the government, into the private sector, you're basically draining the entire institutional memory of the intelligence agencies and the other defense contractor, defense agencies. And so that the real knowledge about how these programs function exists and resides in the private corporations, and no longer in government, career government employees, so that the government is reliant on, so dependent on, these private entities. And one of the, there was an article yesterday that I read about briefly, but that really illustrated how, kind of dangerous and even creepy this is. Which is, that Congress has been attempting for quite some time as you just suggested, to find out information from the telecoms about what they did with regard to Bush's spying program, because the Executive Branch won't help them.

And so, the Congress goes and says to Verizon and AT&T and these other companies, here's a subpoena, here's a letter, here are questions that we have about what you've been doing, we want you to tell us, the government, the congressional branch, the people's representatives, what it is that you've been doing, and these corporations say right to the Congress, we're sorry, we cant talk to you about that, because that involves national security, and that not something that we ever discuss, we wont answer your questions. And they've been telling state legislatures who are inquiring about spying programs on their citizens the same thing: national security prevents us from speaking about these things. It's almost as though, not almost as though, it is the case that these private corporations act like government entities. I mean they, in fact, more powerful than government entities, they know more than the Congress knows about what the government does and how Americans are spied on, and they exert superior authority to decide what will be disclosed and what wont be disclosed.

TS: That's right, and it's all within this framework of secrecy and you're right, it really is, you know, it's sort of an awesome situation where you have corporations, and they're a permanent part now of our intelligence apparatus, it's not like they're just outsourcing, you know, a few task, they are a part of it, they're integral, as you say. And they can, when Congress, I forget with committee it was, asked AT(&)T and Verizon and Qwest and other companies for information on wiretaps that they provided help with with the government. This was in 2007, most of them, with the exception of Verizon, for some reason, they all refused, you know, as you said, saying it's secret, we're told this is state secret, it's all classified, we can't give you any information. Verizon gave a lot of information, sent a very long letter to the, I think it was to one of the House committees - it wasn't Judiciary, it might have been one of the Commerce committees - sent them fairly extensive logs of and, you know, details about all the different wiretap programs they'd been involved with with the Bush Administration, with the exception of NSA, of course, they won't talk about that.

But they're, it's all this veil of secrecy hides all these activities and also, I believe, it really is a cover for, it prevents accountability Because, you know, Congress can't look at it and even when the case is, when people sue the government, sue the NSA, they use this state secrecy privilege and that's gone pretty far in the courts. The courts have basically gone along and said if it's a state secret the courts can't hear it. And of course now by Congress passing the immunity bill, those cases will never go forward anyway. But I think it's really, people, Listeners should understand that we're not just talking about, you know, outsourcing this and this and this, we're talking about a very close relationship between the private sector and our highest ranked, highest levels of intelligence.

GG: Right, now, speaking of that relationship, you wrote an article prior to, right after, I think, the President nominated Michael Mukasey(sic) to be the Director of National Intelligence, but before the Congress confirmed him for that position, in which you laid out in amazing details, with all sorts of public sources, you know, confirming it indisputably, just how inextricably linked Mike McConnell was to the telecom industry, and specifically to it's efforts to grow this framework between the private sector and the government. The same, the very same Mike McConnell who now that he's in government, is the one we all listen to about how the telecom industry that he used to serve needs immunity and needs all these protections and how important it is to continue to expand this relationship. Talk about what Mike McConnell did and what Booz Allen was in these issue.

TS: In that article which I believe appeared just as he was entering the nominating process back in January 2007, going back to his record at Booz Allen, he had been an advisor at Booz Allen, he had come there right after being Director of the National Security Agency under the Clinton Administration, and then he went directly to Booz Allen, where he became their top expert on this, you know, protecting national security communications systems. So he was very involved within communications and that, as you said, the telecom industry. And within a couple of years, he rose up the ranks and became actually the director of all of their military intelligence programs within Booz Allen. And Booz Allen of course has been working closely, advising the military, the Pentagon, various agencies there, since World War II. So it's had a very close relationship with the Department of Defense.

And of course the Department of Defense controls about 80% to 85% of the intelligence budget. All these agencies we talked about at the beginning of the show, NSA, NGA, NRO, for example, the big collection agencies are under the command and control system of the Pentagon. And, so, McConnell was running those programs as a Booz Allen executive, but playing an advisory role. If you look at his biography from the time when he was at Booz Allen, it actually states that he advised all the key agencies including the NSA, all the key collection agencies, and the Joint Chiefs, and the, you know, Secretary of Defense. And so he was right up there, he knew all about these programs and if you look at his record, you know he became Director of National Intelligence around February '07, and, you know, right away he starts talking about the need to have immunity for these companies, the telecom companies, within a few months he had actually stated, he was the first person to state publicly from the government side that indeed, they had received private sector support. And he became sort of the administration's key defender of giving them immunity and talking about the importance of having the telecommunication industry involved in intelligence.

But, to me, it was striking how quickly he could talk about the details of these surveillance programs that the NSA was running. Obviously he didn't have much of a learning curve. And as I showed in that report, Booz Allen under his directorship had been very involved in some of the most secretive aspects of Bush's so-called war on terror, including this so-called terrorist surveillance program that was run out of the Defense Research, DARPA Administration, that was run by Admiral Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame. And, you know, Congress started learning about this there started to be reports about it in the press that they were developing this massive database of American, you know, Americans, tracking their financial transaction and travel and so on. And people in Congress got a little bit leery about it, saying this is too much violation of our privacy laws. And they cut off funds for it, but the program continued to exist within black budgets within these classified budgets of the NSA.

So McConnell was very involved in these programs for the last dozen years, and I think his record as DNI shows that he is paid, he's really, very, his real loyalty to the private sector in the companies that have been involved. One term I picked up from him in some of his testimony before the House, before the Senate, a couple times he mentioned this, I talk about this in the book, he uses this term 'communications intelligence', and basically I think what they've done is moved from sort of being outside communication, being outside the intelligence system of the, that runs around the globe, to being an integral part of. And they use these privately controlled communication networks to spy on people. And they've burrowed into it. There was a 2000 report that the NSA did for the incoming Bush Administration where they said, one of the things they said there was from now on we have to live on the Internet. And by that, they meant, tracking everything that goes through, including telephone calls and e-mails, and these, the new forms of communication, at the time, cell phone, you know, Internet phone like we're talking on right now, and making sure they're collecting all of that, in addition to the communications that move over radar and move through the air, that are beamed from one country to another.

GG: Right. And I guess the most recent FISA bill, was most notable and disturbing aspects of it, was it really authorized the government to tap right into the telecommunications networks that are physically located in the United States without warrants for the first time. And it sort of established their permanent presence within the physical networks in the way that you were just describing in close cooperation...

TS: Yeah, that's right, it really gives a legal cover to this, and it makes it a permanent kind of effort where these companies are more or less permanent part of our intelligence infrastructure.

GG: Right. Now let me ask, I just wanted to, and we just have a little bit of time left, by asking you about the piece you wrote last week for Salon about the prospects that the Congress in the next session will convene some sort of Church Committee, to investigate all these intelligence abuses. Now, I have to say I read your piece, and obviously there was a lot of good work that went into it, and good journalism and there's something there, there's obviously people in Congress who would like to do this, and they might be even dreaming about it or fantasizing about what this might look like, but I have to say I'm quite pessimistic about the prospects that the Congress, certainly under the current Democratic leadership would do anything of the kind.

I mean, they would basically have to swim against the conventional Beltway wisdom that it's better to look to the future and forget about things that have happened in the past. they've shown no inclination whatsoever to investigate these sorts of things, and in fact, they've done the opposite as you said before where, they concealed and covered up these things by immunizing the law breakers. And many of them, many of the Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Jane Harmon and Jay Rockefeller were briefed, at least to some degree, about these programs and seem to have done nothing to stop them, and in some cases actually expressed their support. So, how likely do you think it really is especially all the laws of secrecy that we've been talking about layers have been put on top of it to ensure there's no transparency, how like is it that we'd have meaningful unearthing process that we had in the mid 1970s with regard to many of these surveillance programs?

TS: I share your skepticism and I try, my report was worded very carefully because I didn't to, you know, exaggerate the discussions that are going on. I thought it was significant that a former Church Committee staffer had written a memo outlining how such an investigation could work and had had discussions with these groups I named, in fact, you know, some aides to some to these, to Pelosi and others, had, you know, at least played a bit part in some of these discussions. But, you're right, the Democrat leadership completely folded on the FISA immunity issue, after making lots of noise, and, you know, even Obama talked about it as a candidate, and said he would not go for immunity, you know. But he went, in the end he voted for it, and many of these people were briefed, to what extent we still don't know, but they did approve these programs including the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, better known as torture, that clearly people like Jane Harman knew about.

So I think the chances that Democratic leadership will try to do anything that will expose their own leaders, top leaders, to that kind of scrutiny is unlikely. So I think that it's really going to take public pressure as well as, you know, maybe some more, you know, the media breaking more stories about domestic surveillance and how extensive it really is. And of course, they running into the whole issue of secrecy. Reporting that story was extremely difficult. I found people who know a lot about these programs, they just will not talk. They're afraid to. These are highly classified, compartmentalized, you know, even this dispute between Ashcroft, the Justice Department and the Bush White House over the approval of the surveillance program in '04. Even the Justice Department people who exposed that - James Comey for example, he talked about that confrontation in the hospital - they won't talk about the details because it's so highly classified, you know, even years later.

So it's really difficult to penetrate that sort of cloak of secrecy and get beyond, but it's going to take public pressure and I think we in the journalism community have a responsibility to keep digging into this because that's the way the Church Committee got started. Sy Hersh had this incredible story in, I forget what year it was in the 70's, about the CIA's domestic spying on Americans and dissidents, people opposed to the war. And we know that they'll been compiling these lists but we just got to keep picking and I think the important thing about the Church Committee that I try to bring out a bit in the article was that they didn't look only at the Nixon Administration, they went all the way back to the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, at the twilight of the, the beginning of the Cold War. The very beginning of the dawn of the Cold War I should say. And they unraveled all kinds of programs that had never seen public light and they, you know, exposed the NSA's warrantless wiretaps of Americans which led to FISA and in an investigation like that where you have subpoena power and you can go back and, you know, interview government officials and former government officials they could dig out a lot but I think it's going to take the same kind of pressure, you know, bloggers like yourself put on Congress around this immunity bill.

GG: Yeah, and I think you're right. Obviously Congress has the ability the establishment media has the ability, and with very rare exceptions, they, they're failing to do it and so I do think it takes the work of independent journalists like yourself and you're definitely doing your part. I think your reporting on these issues has been truly excellent and a truly great resource for me. I haven't read your new book yet, but I intend to, and I hope other people will as well. It's "Spies for Hire, the Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing," and with regard to this issue that's received way too little attention given it's importance your journalism is definitely leading the way. So I appreciate that and I appreciate your taking the time today to talk to me.

TS: Thank you very much, I really enjoyed being on your show.

GG: My pleasure.

[Transcript courtesy of Peter Grey]

Transcript of interview with David Sirota

2008-07-30T04:37:00.000-07:00

Salon Radio with Glenn Greenwald - Interview with David Sirota

GG: Welcome to Salon Radio with Glenn Greenwald.

My guest today is the author and columnist David Sirota, whose latest book is "Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington." Thanks for joining me today, David.

DS: Thanks for having me, Glenn.

GG: My pleasure. So I wanted to begin by asking you about the central argument, not just in your book, but in a lot of your political writings which I think is a controversial topic though a thought-provoking one. And as I understand it it's this: that there is not just discontent in the United States, but such severe discontent, such pervasive discontent with the government, with our corporate structure, with the ruling elite, that you actually think that we're on a path to, as you call it in your book, in the title, an uprising on the part of the citizenry. Is that a fairly accurate summary of how you see things, and if so can you elaborate on that a little?

DS: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it is an accurate way to put it. I think we are actually in the midst of an uprising. In the beginning of the book I say that an uprising is the state of the country when, between the typical disengaged chaos that marks a lot of history, and then those moments of full-fledge social movements that really bring about exponential change. And in between those times are uprisings, this sort of primordial soup of activism and anger and ferment. And I think we're in that uprising, and we're seeing those uprisings on the both the right and left.

GG: Now one of the principle pieces of evidence that you cite for, in support of your belief that there's an uprising is public opinion data which does fairly impressively demonstrate that there is widespread dissatisfaction among the citizenry. More than 8 out of 10 Americans believe that the country is fundamentally on the wrong course - historically high numbers in that regard. Most of our political and other elite institutions are held in the lowest esteem they've ever been held in, and that data is fairly indisputable I think.

At the same time I think a lot of people would object, and I might even be one of them, that there really isn't very much evidence that that abstract dissatisfaction, that that anger that is apparent if you go and find people and ask them how they feel about the government and our other institutions, that really isn't translating into any discrete or concrete action, whether that's because people have been convinced of their own impotence or the futility of that kind of behavior. I mean, beyond just this sentiment out there, what do you actually see if anything that suggests people actually believe that that anger can be translated into something meaningful?

DS: Well, I think that first and foremost, you see people at record numbers with record intensity, I think, getting involved just in the upcoming election, so I think that's one example of it. I think you see more and more people engaging online either in politics or just in expressing themselves politically. I mean, I think you've got an increase in the amount of people simply getting their news from different places, looking away from the traditional media, understanding traditional media is part of the problem.

And then I think you see a lot of the examples that are in my book, people taking matters into their own hands. I mean, I think you see a potentially renewed and reinvigorated labor movement. This year was the first year that labor added a significant amount of members since 1983. You see a third party become a very, very powerful force, the Working Families Party, in one of the biggest states in the country, New York. You see more and more share-holder resolutions being put forward to try to change company behavior. And on the right you saw, and it may be a little dissipated now, but I think you saw a pretty serious uprising and indeed a public uprising when it came to the issue of immigration. An uprising of such intensity that it managed to stop, I think, the immigration reform bill.

So I agree with you that not everybody in the country is angry and taking action; I think most people are angry in some way shape or form at the government. But not everybody's taking action but the old rule of rule of thumb in organizing – Solinsky's rule – is you only really need 5% of any given public in any given region or area or congressional district to really make a huge amount of change. I think we're at that 5% threshold.

GG: Let's put it a little bit into historical context. I mean one of the things I think is most impressive about the history of the United States is that truly fundamentally change has occurred in, almost continuously, in all sorts of unparalleled ways. You know you look at the emancipation of slavery, and the full integration of African-Americans into all of our civic institutions, the granting of the right to vote to women, the change in, fairly radical and rapid, in how gays and lesbians are perceived in the country. So a whole slew of very fundamental changes, social changes that have occurred in the United States.

And yet I think when you look at most of those changes that have occurred that aren't just incremental and on the margins but are truly central to how our country conceives of itself and how it functions, there's really, the hallmark of all of that change is a lot of upheaval, is turmoil in our political process. I mean a civil war was fought to free the slaves. You know, all kinds of people had to march in the streets in order for civil rights for African-Americans even to be possible. During Vietnam War there were massive protests and violent demonstrations outside of conventions and all sorts of social upheaval that I think largely if you look now is missing. Is that kind of upheaval necessary for fundamental change? I mean is it enough for people to simply organize in kind of passive and peaceful ways, or is a more tumultuous blow to the system necessary in order to result some fundamental change?

DS: Well, it's a very good question and I don't think we know the answer to it. What I can say is I think that your historical premise is right that a lot of change has come as a result of a lot of tumult and the question is whether our country expresses that tumult differently today than it did in the past or whether we're not at the precipice.

I think – my gut tells me that our country expresses its anger in the political arena differently than perhaps it did in other eras. We have new tools, again, like the Internet is the best example of one, new tools for people to express themselves politically that we didn't have 15, 20 years ago in any well-formed way. And I think that that has certainly changed the political culture of protest and activism. But I don't think it necessarily has dampened it. I don't think it has weakened it. I mean, I think you see big protests every now and again, a number huge protests against the war, a number huge protests for immigrant rights – what I can say is that we also need to remember that when change comes in this country it actually comes in exponential fashion.

The New Deal was passed, most of the New Deal was passed in two and a half to three years. A lot of the Great Society passed, again, in 4 to 5 years. So I think that with the economic crises facing the average person today – the housing, the credit crisis the corporate melt-down, the on-going off-shoring of jobs, the overall war on the middle class - with that intensifying I think people are becoming politicized around issues that weren't seen as political before. I mean housing policy and banking policy was never really seen as a super-political issue and now I think people are realizing in their day-to-day lives that they are political issues and some of them, again not all, but some of them are saying, I'm angry and I just can't just afford to watch TV and mutter about it, I've got to do something.

GG: Right, well, with regard to that idea, well, let's do something, I think one of the things that surprised a lot of people, even politically engaged people, high information political observers, was the 2006 election, because that was an example where it was a pretty extraordinary shift in the populace in terms of how people thought politically. People who had never voted Democratic in the past voted Democratic. There was a real watershed election in terms of just the results of no Democratic incumbent being defeated, both Houses of Congress shifting from the Republicans to the Democrats, multiple state legislatures doing the same, it's really a historically unusual election in terms of how lopsided it was and clearly so much of what motivated that was anger and dissatisfaction over the Iraq War and a desire to punish Republicans for that war and to give control to Democrats in order to end that war.

And yet as we all know, nothing of that sort happened. I mean that political sentiment didn't translate into any action. It's almost like the political class got into power after the 2006 election and just completely ignored what the citizenry had so clearly expressed. What is it that accounts for that complete disconnect between the citizenry and the political class, and are people likely to reach the conclusion that well no matter angry I get, no matter how involved in the process I become, no matter successful I am in changing who has their hands on the levers of power, nothing really changes and so this sort of defeatism gets spread.

DS: Right, and I worry about that. What I would say is that the way to explain what happened is that we have to first and foremost remember our government is, does first and foremost one thing: it makes war. We – our federal government has used war as its major tool of foreign policy engagement for most of our country's history. So stopping a war is a very difficult thing.

Now I completely agree that the Democrats in Congress, after campaigning on a promise to end the war, it is really just unbelievable, that, at one level, that they continue to cut blank checks for the most unpopular war to the most unpopular president in history. I mean it's just, it's really, at one level, it's incredible.

At another level it's predictable, in that we have to understand that it takes a long time to build the kind of social movement needed to stop a government from doing what its number one priority has been for the last century or so. And I think that this speaks to the idea that we're facing I think a collision of an effort to build a number of movements and America's new, I think, instant gratification culture, brought up in this twenty-four hour news cycle. You know, we have sort of indoctrinated to believe that change happens overnight and if it doesn't happen overnight that it'll never happen. But you know, the civil rights movement is just one example – the civil rights movement didn't happened in 1964. The civil rights movement was the product of decades and decades and decades of building an activism against a government who, that had basically been a proponent of Jim Crow laws for most of its history.

So these things take a long time and so what I would say is I agree with you, I worried about demoralization among people who feel like the war should be over – and I think it should be over – but feel like the war should be over and if it's not over right now it means it can never be over. We have to think of a longer view, a historical view. Not to say we should be patient – we should be impatient and we sound continue to push – but we shouldn't disengage and throw up our hands and say it's not worth it when we know that the movements to stop wars like this take a long time.

GG: Right. Now, one of the things you write about a lot is the way in which both parties are, and the political process generally as a result, are so dominated by corporations. I mean you can look at you know essentially any issue, even ones that aren't immediately, where the relationship to corporate interest isn't immediate apparent, and what you find at the center of them is essentially that exact problem where, you know, law-makers literally in Congress turn over the process of writing laws to the corporations and lobbyists, and citizens really haven't found a way to break through that process except in isolated cases.

One of the things that I find so interesting and a little mysterious about that process is, what is it that accounts the ability of these corporate interests and their lobbyists to maintain such on a stranglehold on our political processes? I mean if you look at things like contributions to congressional candidates and the like, it's certainly true that corporations and lobbyists donate a fairly substantial amount of money to various candidates and incumbents, but because of campaign finance laws and the like, it's fairly limited in terms of its scope. It isn't explainable only by their ability to contribute to candidates and therefore candidates are incentivized to carry out their agenda. Can you talk about you think are some of the systemic causes of how our political system, both Democrat and Republican, has, have been so annexed by corporations and their lobbyists and this sort of anti-middle-class, anti-populist agenda?

DS: Well, it think it has to do with money but I think you're right, contributions are not the only examples. Contributions are only one representative example. But money is really a much bigger thing than a campaign check. I mean, today you've got 527's and political action committees that basically threaten to run huge amounts of ads, third-party ads, against members of Congress who don't do what they want, and huge amounts of ads for the Congress people who do do what those interests want. So I think that's another piece of it. And then of course there's the whole issue of party. How much money can flow into state and national parties based on how a party uses its power on different issues.

So I think, I think it's the campaign finance structure as a whole. And then I also think that it is, what you write about so much, which is the creation of the echo chamber, which basically sets the parameters of debate around major issues. You have a traditional media that is largely corporate-owned and so when it purports to be objective, that's absurd. I mean a corporate-owned media has an ideology when it comes to issues regulating corporations. And so that corporate media, through all sort of ways, conscious and subconscious, sets the parameters of debate around major economic and foreign policy issues to make sure that the parameters are narrowed, so that any of the possible outcomes are those which do not challenge corporate power and big money. And you know it's through everything from the manipulation of where the actual center of American public opinion is.

You know the media tells us the center is one place even though we know through public opinion data says that the center of public opinion is far away from that place. Everything from that manipulation to berating anybody who has a progressive, power-challenging position of economic issues. The issue of trade for instance. You know, you talk about the issue of trade and if you don't want NAFTA, if you want to reform NAFTA to protect ordinary workers in both, in America and abroad you're labeled a protectionist or worse you're labeled anti-trade, when in fact we know the debate is about are you for one kind of trade or are you for another kind of trade. It's all of these ways: so it's campaign finance system and the propaganda system that is owned by those who have an interest in preserving the status quo.

GG: And you know one of the things that I find interesting is, there was an article from the Wall Street Journal from I think two or three days ago actually, that found what has been true over the last, really, eight years is that the income inequality the income gap in the United States has been growing and continues to grow and this latest report from the IRS found that the top 1% of income earners in the United States now earned more than 22% of the gross adjusted income in the United States, which is the highest since the IRS began compiling those statistics in the mid 1970's and according to a lot of economists probably the highest since 1929.

You know, I wonder if there is some sense among the corporate class and sort of the economic elite in the United States – there's almost some limit that they want to impose on themselves in terms of pursuing policies that widen this gap, out of fear that when the gap gets too wide, and economic distress becomes too acute, it can actually fuel the kind of uprising that you're describing into something much more threatening. Do you think that the corporate class and the elite think that way that strategically, that long term, or is it just kind of self-interest and greed that spawns them to keep pursuing policies that breeds this inequality without regard to the consequences?

DS: Well I think they have deluded themselves into believing that - believing the rising tide lifts all boats nonsense. And another iteration of that is, what's good for big business is good for America. You hear in these debates, you know, we have to grow the whole pie, we shouldn't focus on how to divide up the pie. That is the logic of, that justifies, or the illogic I should say, that justifies the policy, all the different policies that exacerbate this inequality. And I think that the folks at the top, the folks who are winning in this situation have created this defense mechanism to tell themselves, no, no, we really know that if we continue growing the pie instead of talking about how to divide it up, that's the way we'll lift everybody up. It's of course, it's nonsense, and we know it's nonsense now because we're now at this age and historical moment where worker productivity keeps rising, corporate profits have been rising, and wages have stayed stagnant.

I mean that's, in the past, because the economy, the rules of the economy were different, the laws were different, to protect workers and to protect all sorts of other economic interests, and because there was higher union membership, when worker productivity rose, and workers were making more things in a more efficient way, and when corporate profits were rising corporations were doing well, the workers would get some share of the benefit, that wages would rise. Now again we're at this moment where that's not the case. The productivity rises, profits rise, but workers' wages stagnate or go down. That means that the rising tide does not lift all boats and so what I think we have to do and I think what this uprising is really all about is the realization that the rising tide lifts all boat nonsense of the ruling class is nonsense and people are saying, you know what I've had enough of this, this doesn't work, this is actually hurting the country, and I think that realization – who can harness that realization into a political program will be the winners of the uprising.

You see the right trying to harness it by making it into scapegoating immigrants. I think it's awful but they have a very clear, that side of the uprising has a very clear message to try to scapegoat and use this moment. And I think progressives are more and more are saying, we can use this moment to define the us-versus-them not as foreigner versus native, ethnicity versus ethnicity but the have-not's versus the have's.

GG: You know one of the most valuable insights that I think you offer in the book is this challenge to the conventional wisdom that people on the left and people on the right, not political leaders, but people outside of the Beltway, are really diametrically opposed and you illustrate some of the important similarities in their sentiments. I mean I noticed that when I first started blogging, for example, that a lot of the rhetoric and a lot of the tone from the right-wing bloggers and the left-wing bloggers, despite their being, you know, vastly apart on very discrete and specific issue, the underlying sentiment was very much the same.

That we have this establishment media that spouts 'conventional wisdom', irrespective of what the truth is. That political leaders inside the Beltway are out of touch with the common American and are serving the establishment's interest and not the interests of citizens. This sort of populist anger that you're describing is very much not just present on the left and right but it really has a lot of common roots even though it manifests in different ways. But obviously there's been ways the establishment has kind of kept that from coalescing. I mean, there's these wedge issues that keep citizens that have common interests apart from one another. Do you see any prospect for those wedge issues to start losing their efficacy and, I mean, is there, are there signs that there's political developments that suggest these common interests can be represented in some way inside Washington, inside our political class?

DS: I think absolutely. I mean I think that as the economic and national security questions get more and more tense, and more and more real for regular people, that there's the possibility of forging coalitions around, right-left coalitions, around common issues, common agendas.

I mean I think that you know when I worked in the US House for instance with Bernie Sanders, the self described socialist, one of our best allies in that institution was Ron Paul the libertarian, around issues like trying to cut corporate welfare around issues like civil liberties. So I think there is the possibility for those coalitions inside the Congress and I think there's possibilities for coalitions among organizations and activists outside of the government to put pressure on the government. You saw that with the FISA fight, the fight over warrantless wiretaps. I think you may see it in many different ways as it relates to corporate power in general, issues of corporate power.

I mean I'll just tell you an example from my book. The guys at the border, the Minutemen, I mean they will tell you, they will say to you, I think our government is bought off and wants the status quo on immigration. And I think, while I disagree completely with their prescription, I think they're absolutely right. The government, in cahoots with big business, wants Americans and foreign workers in a wage-cutting competition to the bottom, and the people and the interests that perpetuate that status quo, rather than looking for any kind of solution, a humane solution, one that's fair, instead of looking they want that status quo. And it's the same kind of rhetoric you hear for instance from the union organizers in Seattle who are trying to organize Microsoft workers. Progressive unionist guys, they'll say, I think the government is bought off and is helping drive down the wages and benefits and job security of workers in the high-tech industry. So we see that the impulse across the spectrum is very, very similar. Now the prescriptions are different. That's the challenge. Can we find prescriptions to organize around that both the right and the left can organize around? I think on some issues we have examples where they can and on other issues it's going to take some work.

GG: One of the primary motivations or the sources of energy behind the Obama campaign of course is premised in this recognition that there's extreme dissatisfaction, not just on the left and not just among Democrats, but across the political spectrum with unaffiliated voters, independents, people who have never been involved in the political process before – this extreme dissatisfaction with the political culture generally, and obviously there's an attempt to, and it has been a fairly successful attempt on the part of the Obama campaign, tap into that with the whole change messaging and the idea that there's this outsider to the system who's going to come in and fundamentally re-work it. And clearly that has been a major part of what explains the success of the Obama campaign to defeat, you know, one of the most impressive political machines in the Clintons, and now to challenge the whole Republican structure. What is your view of the Obama campaign in terms of how authentic that message is? Or is it really just kind of an exploitation for political messaging purposes of some discontent that an Obama administration really wouldn't do very much about.

DS: Well, I think that the Obama campaign reflects the recognition that there is an uprising going on and that Obama has done a good job of positioning himself as a part of that uprising and in some ways a leader of the uprising. That where he's trying to position himself. What I would say is that how much he represents the uprising if and when he becomes president, will be a reflection of how much the uprising pressures him, and forces him to enact and champion real change. You know in the primaries, that controversial statement where Hillary Clinton said that Martin Luther King needed a president to pass civil rights legislation. You know I think that fundamentally misunderstood how power and politics works. You know, Lyndon Johnson did not wake up one morning after a career of opposing civil rights legislation and say, you know I'm going to be a nice guy, I've decided I'm going to be for civil rights now. This is not how it works in this country.

The way change happens is not through the messianic view of presidents, the paternalistic view of presidents, where they supposedly hand down change from Mount Olympus. What happens is is that uprisings and social movements change the political topography underneath politicians, make a politician, a consummate political calculator like Lyndon Johnson, wake up one morning and say, you know what, it's more politically safe for me to be for civil rights legislation than for me to be against it now. That effort, that work to change the political topography underneath the politicians has to continue, has to happen, and intensify, whoever is president. And if Obama does enact change, does champion real change in office, it will be because we have done that work and we have put that pressure on him. If we don't, I don't think there will bereal, substantive policy changes on a whole host of issues.

GG: Yeah, you know I think it's interesting, I've seen a lot of that debate recently of course with both the dissatisfaction that was expressed over Obama's reversal on the FISA bill and warrantless eavesdropping and retroactive immunity. This sort of sense that, well, there's really a danger in criticizing Obama too excessively or too vigorously, because to do that is to jeopardize his political prospects, sort of undermine his chances for success. Of the course the reality is that Obama as a politician like any other politician, responds to pressure points, and responds to the prospect of being rewarded and for being punished.

And so if you cede to the establishment, to the Fred Hyatts of the world and editorial boards across the country and TV stars, if you cede to them the prerogative to put pressure on politicians by saying if you stray too far from the establishment agenda, then if you become too populist or too radical, then we're going to demonize you and we're going to undermine your political prospects, then politicians are only going to respond to that. They're going to embraced the establishment agenda. The only real way to get them out of that form of thinking is to create an alternative pressure point that comes from populist movements or from organizing or from Internet complaints or from citizen anger, that says if you stray too far from our agenda, that's where the real punishment will lie and ultimately politicians need to realize that the price that they pay from betraying citizens is greater than the price that they pay from betraying the agenda of the ruling class. I mean is that is that fair way of looking at it, and do you think that...?

DS: Absolutely. I think it is a fair way of looking at it, and what I would say that we have to ask ourselves two things. One, what is an election really for? Is it for itself or is it an instrument of change? That what it's supposed to be for. Elections are supposed to be the instrument by which we make change and one of the ways to use the election as an instrument is to know as an election approaches, a politician gets more and more worried and more and more considering of popular public will, because the election is the moment of accountability.

And so if we as progressives don't use elections as a tool to pressure politicians, we are abdicating a huge amount of responsibility. I mean, we should see elections as the opportunity for us to most be able to pressure a politician to take positions and to take stands. As the election get closer the politician is going to become more and more nervous and that is an opportunity for a movement. Now to the argument that well, if you seize that opportunity too aggressively, using election too much as an instrument of just pressure, and you don't see that there is a need to win the election, then you will help lose the election. Well, you see, I even disagree with that premise. We saw this in the 2006 election. At the beginning of 2006, it's in my book, you can chart it chronologically, the Democratic Party was saying, we're not talking about the war at all. Nancy Pelosi is in the paper, we're not talking about the war, and there was a massive wave of pressure through protests, through Internet pressure, through campaign and primary campaign of Ned Lamont, to force that issue into the political debate and ultimately the Democratic Party was forced to take a much stronger position against the war. Its candidates were taking much stronger positions on the war because they were pressured to take those positions and that was the single most important reason that they won the 2006 election. So in other words the pressure on the party, on the politicians to take stronger stands, was decisive in winning the election, not losing the election. What would have lost the election is if there was no pressure, if there was no pressure because the establishment said if you put too much pressure on you'll lose the election. If we listened to that, we wouldn't have won the 2006 election.

GG: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You know, there aren't many opportunities in American society to get people focused on and engaged with political issues. National elections are really the one time when the country focuses on those issues more than any other, and to squander that opportunity or to abdicate one's responsibility to use that process to effect the change that one thinks is necessary strikes me as really self-defeating and...

DS: It is and I would say if you believe you are pushing a majority issue, a majority policy, that the government and the politicians in question are not embracing, and if you can prove that – which with public opinion and actual data you can actually prove that on some issues – if you are pushing a majority position, if you are pushing politicians to take a majority position then your pressure only serves to help them win the election because they need a majority to win the election.

GG: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right and as you suggest earlier what is viewed as the majority or as the centrist position gets deliberately skewed by, you know, our political media and the by the political establishment. And so that kind of pressure can actually illuminate where the center really is for a candidate. I think you're absolutely right. Well, David I really appreciate your taking the time. I think your book is truly really interesting and raises all the right questions about what the real state of the country is and how that can be funneled into meaningful change, and I think it's provoked some really great debate and I hope it will continue to do so.

[Transcript courtesy of Peter Grey]

Transcript - Interview with Daniel Ellsberg

2008-07-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

Salon Radio with Glenn Greenwald -- Interview with Daniel Ellsberg

GG: Welcome to Salon Radio With Glenn Greenwald. …

My guest today is Daniel Ellsberg who was the key figure in the Pentagon Papers controversy in the early1970s and who was one of the key figures in government in the 1960s and early1970s and today is really one of the most incisive commentators on a whole variety of current political issues.

DE: It’s really a pleasure to be with you Glenn. I’ve been following your work at Salon and even before that for the best window into what’s happening constitutionally in this country.

GG: Thank you. I appreciate that. I think a lot of people especially younger Americans are familiar with what you did as a citizen to stop the Vietnam War but not familiar with a lot of the details. So could you summarize what your role in that controversy: can you just describe what your background in government was and how you came to be involved with and have access to some of these sensitive documents on the Vietnam War?

DE: I worked for the RAND Corporation as a consultant to the Defense Department on issues of the command and control of nuclear weapons and nuclear war plans. I moved from that into the government as a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1964 working on the escalation of the war in Vietnam, the secret decisions to get us involved in a big way under President Johnson. Once that had happened I volunteered to go to Vietnam in the State Department, where I was eventually a special assistant to the Deputy Ambassador. I used my previous training as an infantry officer, I was a company commander in the Marine Corps in peacetime in the 1950s, to walk with troops in combat, and I saw the war up close.

I saw most provinces in Vietnam as part of evaluating pacification programs in the two years I was there, before I came back with hepatitis. I then worked at the RAND Corporation on a study for Secretary of Defense McNamara on Vietnam decision-making that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers after I released it to the newspapers and to the Senate a couple of years later.

GG: During the time when you were working at the Pentagon and you went to Vietnam in the 1960s, is it fair to say that you on the hawkish side of the political debate, that you were in favor of the war, that you thought it was a good idea, you had worked on escalating it?

DE: No, well, yes and no. [laughing] I was certainly a Cold Warrior. That was my profession, trying to defeat communist expansion as I understood it, not very well, at that time. I went to Vietnam having been there very quickly in1961 and perceived it as a losing proposition, very much, under the dictator we had installed, President Ngo Dinh Diem. We clearly had no prospect of defeating the Communist-led liberation front, which had the prestige in Vietnam of having defeated the French in the northern part of Vietnam. So I saw it as not the place to plant our cold war flag, if possible, but when the President did do that I thought it was my duty, responsibility, to get into the war to do the best I could to make something out of it, without much hope.

I think there were a few months when I was first there when I thought that our large-scale involvement should make it possible for us to achieve something there. Within months it was pretty clear that we were not going to achieve any kind of success of any kind, and people were being killed and we were losing Americans to no justifiable purpose or effect. And that was seen, I think, by most people who went to Vietnam. I can’t speak for them. Three million of them went. I think within months or a year – I was there two years – most people came to realize there was going to be no success and that the war should really be ended. The question really was, what to do about that?

When I came back from Vietnam my efforts for a couple of years, still within the system, now as a consultant again, were to work with Presidential candidates, both Republican and Democrat, trying to convince them that we ought to get out of Vietnam. I also worked with Congress people on that. To no effect.

And eventually, having worked with President Nixon and [his National Security Assistant] Henry Kissinger in the first months of their administration on Vietnam as a consultant, I learned from those contacts in the White House in 1969 that President Nixon was going to walk in the same footsteps as all of his predecessors, footsteps that were very well documented in the Pentagon Papers. I had full access to the Pentagon Papers as a researcher who was working for the Pentagon on learning “Lessons from Failure in Vietnam.” I was studying those at the RAND Corporation and read them as a record of four presidents’ lies, crimes, breaking treaties, deceiving Congress and the public into war in much the same way as we were deceived into the Iraq War. There’s a very close parallel there.

And I hoped when I learned that Nixon was going to continue the war and even expand it and was making secret threats, including nuclear threats, at that time, that Congress might better resist that or be skeptical of it if they understood the background. So I copied and gave the Senate [Foreign Relations Committee] the 7,000 top-secret pages of the study. The official name of which was “History of United States Decision-making on Vietnam, 1945-1968.” So it ended before Nixon came in, and unfortunately it didn’t prove the point that I wanted people to get, that President Nixon was pursuing the same kind of course and that the war would continue as it did. But at least it would show people that maybe they should be skeptical of what they were hearing from the President and exercise their own judgment: and maybe even take a risk of their careers in opposing it.

As far as I was concerned I was totally influenced by the example of some of the young Americans I met who were going to prison not just to protest the war but to refuse to participate in it, knowing that it was wrong. Well I felt the way that they did and I thought if they can do that--and I thought it was right for them to do that, to be willing to go to prison--then it should be right for me too. And I expected by giving these top-secret documents even to Congress, as I did, and later to the press that I would be prosecuted and go to prison for the rest of my life.

I had a wrong understanding of the law, which was shared by nearly everybody. We don’t actually have an Official Secrets Act—yet, although I think that might well lie in our future--which criminalizes any unauthorized disclosure of classified information. Almost nobody knows that we don’t have such a law, so [laughs] when they pass it I’m not sure they will notice. But in fact I was the first person to ever be prosecuted for leaking unauthorized documents. Did you know that, by the way?

GG: I didn’t. I knew that there were efforts in the 1990s to have an Official Secrets Act passed like the one they had in Britain where it is criminal to leak any classified information and President Clinton was opposed to that bill, to his credit. But I didn’t know that you were the first one prosecuted and I actually want to ask you about that.

You had said the Pentagon Papers ended in terms of the scope in 1968 which was three, almost four years earlier than the time that you were leaking them. What was the very grave concern in the White House on the part of the Nixon administration about what the impact of these papers would be? Why were they so affected by what it was that you were doing?

DE: Nixon and Kissinger immediately hated the precedent of anybody revealing secrets like that because they were rightly afraid that people would leak their own secrets. So they were anxious to have me prosecuted: even though no one ever had been, which I’m sure they didn’t realize.

GG: You mean prosecuted as a warning or a deterrent to others who might want to expose their wrong-doing?

DE: That was the reason for their prosecution. In terms of getting the actual material out, as the tapes from the Oval Office have shown, they were actually happy about that.

That mainly showed that the Democrats had gotten us in, the Democrats had done the lies. And although, oddly, Rumsfeld, who was in the White House then, and Haldeman were a little uneasy about the fact that it did reveal that presidents do lie, Nixon was actually not worried about that. He bet on the likelihood that the public would still credit the statements of the incumbent president no matter how much demonstration there was of past lying. And basically he was right. I didn’t succeed in convincing people that President Nixon was doing the same, until later.

But, though the public and even I didn’t know it at the time, Nixon did understandably become totally worried that I had documents on him beyond the Pentagon Papers. And I did have some. I didn’t have, unfortunately, as much as he feared. But to stop me from putting out documents on his nuclear threats and his plans to escalate he took a number of actions that at that time were clearly illegal.

I was overheard on warrant-less wiretaps. Nixon started a group nicknamed the White House Plumbers, supposedly to stop leaks. But the leaks they were afraid of were leaks that I might yet make, hadn’t done yet. To stop me from doing that, this group burglarized the office of my former psychoanalyst looking for information that I wouldn’t want known, that could blackmail me into being silent about further revelations.

I was already on trial at this point facing twelve felony counts, fifteen with my co-defendant Anthony Russo, including a conspiracy count; I had twelve counts, which added up to a possible sentence of 115 years. In the midst of that trial he sent people into the doctor’s office; later he sent some of these same people, with a bunch of Cuban, former CIA employees, assets from the Bay of Pigs, in order to “incapacitate me totally,” to kill me-- according to the prosecutor—or, I think, just incapacitate me, to keep me from talking.

These crimes had to be kept secret, so he in effect bribed a number of them to commit perjury about what they knew about earlier crimes in front of the grand jury [after they had been caught in the Watergate offices a few weeks after the attempted assault on me]. That constituted further crimes that had to be kept secret, obstructions of justice, and he was digging himself in further and further, safely he thought, unless somebody talked. And [John] Dean did talk and that ultimately brought the house of cards down. And it did lead to the ending of my trial, but more importantly it did face him with impeachment and prosecution and got him out of office, and actually had an effect in shortening the war.

GG: So much of what you just said is so fascinating as a historical matter and then also so relevant in so many self-evident ways to our current political crises. The eavesdropping is just one aspect and the deceit about how we got into the Vietnam War and stayed in it is another. But one of the things I’ve always found most interesting about your story is that you were really someone who was quite embedded in the political establishment. You had extraordinary classified access and top-secret clearance. You had been at high levels of the government for the entire decade. You had graduated from Harvard. You were at the RAND Corporation, the sort of peak of the military-industrial complex in some way.

And for you to take the risk that you did – and as you said, you expected to end up in prison for life – is a really extraordinary decision that we’ve seen very little of over the last years. We’ve seen a little bit of it. But really we’ve seen very little of people risking their own personal interests to expose severe government wrongdoing. What was the thought process that really led you to take that risk? You said that you were inspired by some of the young people, but the risk that you were taking was of an entirely different magnitude. What pushed you to do that?

DE: The risks they were taking were, actually… exposed them to a few years of prison, which [laughs] is long enough to deter most people. But they had very, very little incentive in the sense of any sense that by sitting in the doorway of an induction center or by refusing to send back their change of address to a draft- board--which was enough to send you to prison if it was deliberate-- that it would have any effect on the war. Now it did have a big effect on me. I felt the power of that on my own life, the example of somebody willing to take that risk. I wouldn’t have thought of doing something that would put me in prison forever without that example.

Why the Pentagon Papers, in turn, have not encouraged people to do [something similar], with its demonstration that it did in the end have some effect, through Nixon’s actions against me and the vulnerabilities that that exposed him to, why more people haven’t done that, [I don’t really know]. I’ve been asking people for several years in the government through every channel I can--which is inadequate; they don’t let me get in front of an audience in the State Department and Defense Department any more, I wish they did--but when I can, as in the Harper’s article I wrote a couple years ago, which is on my website, ellsberg.net--I’ve been saying to such people:

“Don’t do what I did.

“Don’t wait until the new war has started in Iran, or Iraq in the past. Don’t wait till the bombs are falling and more thousands of people have died, before you do what I wish I had done in 1964 or 1965, years before I did do it: go to Congress, go to the press—both, by the way, not just Congress or they won’t act, as I found—go with documents and tell the truth. And do it at risk to your own clearances, your careers. These are not light risks. But there’s a war’s worth of lives at stake.”

I frankly don’t have an answer as to why more people, or actually any others, have not done that. You’re asking what my own thought process was on that. It was really quite simple at the time. I had been willing as a Marine and I actually did in Vietnam as a civilian take the kind of risks of my life that hundreds of thousands of people took in Vietnam and hundreds of thousands have taken now in Iraq, risks to my body, risks to my life. That was regarded as very normal in the service of your country, not pathological, just ordinary patriotism.

Why people who have risked their lives and their bodies – in many case the same people, in the government or Congress– why they are not willing to take any risk at all, as far as I can see, of their clearances, their jobs, their office, I don’t understand. It’s easy to see why a lot don’t do it, the costs are great. But why nobody?

I think we should demand more of people in terms of their willingness and their obligation to carry out their oath of office. You know, I took that oath as a Marine Corps officer and as a Defense Department official and as a State Department official, over and over, and it’s the same oath that every officer takes and every member of Congress. And that’s not an oath to the President. We don’t have a Fuehrer, that we swear a blood oath to. And it’s not an oath to secrecy. The oath of office is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Now I would say that every member of Congress who recently voted for this FISA Amendment Act--I would say very frankly--violated that oath, just as innumerable members of the Administration have violated that oath of office. And…they should stop doing that.

GG: Well I certainly as you all know, agree with that assessment but what I think is particularly interesting in your case is that I think there’s this sense that unfortunately has now arisen…you talked earlier how one of the things that Nixon or at least Haldeman and Kissinger feared was that the release of the Pentagon Papers would undermine this sense of Presidential infallibility, that was the real harm of it, but that if…

DE: Nixon disagreed. Nixon knew that that sense of Presidential infallibility is so strong, people desire to believe the President or at least not get into a public confrontation with him. Nixon thought even the Pentagon Papers wouldn’t affect it, and he was basically right.

GG: Right, although certainly the Watergate abuses [DE: right]. and the things the Church Committee uncovered eventually led to things like the FISA bill which was based on the premise that we don’t trust the President to eavesdrop without judicial supervision because it had been abused. And yet what we just saw again is a complete abandonment of that realization by once again vesting with the President the power to spy on Americans and our conversations without warrants, to cover up the crimes that have been committed over the past five years when we know that the President has been spying on our communications without warrants. We don’t bother to find out how he spied or to what end that power was used and don’t bother hold him accountable in a court of law.

As somebody who was actually subjected to surveillance of that kind, whose psychiatrist’s office was broken into by the federal government in order to obtain damaging information on you and keep you in check or blackmail you or otherwise render you incapable of challenging the government and our political leaders in some way-- exactly the kind of abuses that FISÅ was intended to prevent and that Congress just once again enabled--how did you react, kind of, as a citizen? I know you said that you felt they violated their oath to the Constitution, anyone in Congress who voted for that. Could you elaborate on that a little as well?

DE: Well, I couldn’t help noticing as far back as 2001, when the so-called PATRIOT Act was passed, that acts that had been taken against me which were crimes had suddenly been legalized. The break-in to my psychoanalyst’s office, even without a warrant, is as I understand it, covered by the “sneak and peak” provisions of the PATRIOT Act. The use of the CIA against me in a psychological profile, which was illegal then, against their charter, was now legalized. The CIA has now been “freed” to cooperate directly with the FBI and with law enforcement to be part of a kind of secret police, a political police. The overhearing by warrant-less wiretapping is of course something that they had been doing all this time [and is now legalized by the FISA Amendment Act]. So acts that confronted Nixon with impeachment and were clearly repudiated when they were discovered back in the 1970s and led to the ending of my trial but more importantly later consequences for the president, those acts in the wake of 9/11 have been legalized.

There’s a contrast here. If the President had done these various things for a day or a week or a month in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I think very few people would have bothered or felt like criticizing that in an emergency, of necessity, when they didn’t know what was happening. But to keep these things going secretly for six or seven years is a different matter.

And worst of all, as you point out, Congress when actually called on moved to legalize these things now. I’m not a lawyer--I’m a defendant [laughs]--but it’s a question in my mind whether you can simply amend the Çonstitution by majority votes like this, whether they can really make these things legal against the Fourth Amendment and other amendments of the Constitution. But at least Congress did what they could with the amendments to the FISA act to legalize these things when the President called on them to do it.

So here’s the difference in the situation. As I say, I thought it was ominous even in 2001. I think it’s worse than ominous now. There has been a kind of fait accompli. I call it a coup; and with the complicity of Congress. Namely: there was a theory that President Nixon espoused, when he told David Frost after he was out of office: “When the president does it, it’s not illegal.” That was a philosophy that he acted on; but it was rejected then, as clearly incompatible with our form of government, with our Constitution, with democracy, with freedom as we understood it and practiced it.

This president has done the same acts, maybe on a larger scale but pretty much the same (and for that matter even Johnson had done it). He’s done it with a clear-cut philosophy that Nixon shared, “When the President does it, it’s not illegal.” As you put it there’s a two-tier system here, “laws that apply to the rest of us don’t apply to the President, he is beyond the law.” And Congress has with this vote essentially ratified that and confirmed it. So it seems to me it’s not a straw in the wind anymore; the government has changed, as I see it, with the complicity of Congress. The Supreme Court isn’t fully aboard yet on some five-four decisions, but one more Supreme Court Justice under McCain would switch that.

Let me refer back to Benjamin Franklin’s comment about our government when he was coming out of our Constitutional Convention. And he was coming out and a woman asked him—because the proceedings having been secret up until then-- “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” And he said, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Well, as of now, as of July 2008, I would say we haven’t kept it. We don’t have a republic in the sense of the constitutionally-limited kinds of powers that the Constitution required. When people go to the polls in November…and especially in light of the fact that even Barack Obama--who I support, and I think it’s essential, necessary that he be elected--but with his support of this FISA amendment he’s indicated very clearly that it is not his intention to roll back this usurpation of presidential powers, he’s accepting the powers that Congress and this president are going to bequeath him-- so I think [in November] the people will be choosing between two…what?… not presidents in the sense of the Constitution…but two kings, two people with dictatorial powers.

GG: Two emperors.

DE: Am I going overboard when I say that? What is your opinion?

GG: I think it always seems that hard core indictments of one’s own time and one’s own political system are exaggerated because people only see the extremism of their time retrospectively. I think it strikes people as hyperbole because they just think we don’t have a king, we don’t have an emperor, just instinctively believe that. But if you just look at the very definition of what an empire is, of what a monarchy is, and the sort of defining attributes of what those systems of government are, certainly we’re a lot closer to that in terms of how we now function practice than we are to the constitutional republic that we began as.

DE: The republic has been threatened by these actions and by the complicity of Congress over these seven years, but I think a turning point, a tipping point, has been reached here. You know, “republic” isn’t a definitely defined thing. There was the Union of Soviet Socialist “Republics,” there was the German Democratic Republic, the East German satellite dominated by the Stasi, the secret police. Well, I’d say that the National Security Agency has just been set free of legal restraints to do a kind of surveillance that the Stasi couldn’t technically dream of at that time.

And that means that the ability of this government to blackmail anybody--the way, for example, that Nixon precisely hoped to blackmail me, by illegally gaining information about my private life, that’s exactly what he had in mind – they could do that against every Congressperson, every journalist and source, every political activist. [DE: I question whether you can long preserve a real democracy with that kind of capability, that unlimited knowledge of private affairs, in the hands of the government.]

GG: And of course we don’t know the extent to which they’ve been doing that, if they’ve done it at all because it has been kept behind a wall of secrecy. One of the reasons why I think you’re such a relevant person on these issues and why I was so anxious to talk to you including as the debut guest for what we’re doing is because one of the things that happened in the 1950s and the 1960s and into the early1970s was there was this accumulation of executive power where we believed in the presidency as this infallible office and there was very little oversight. And it was only this political turmoil of Nixon’s impending impeachment and high political officials going to prison and true oversight and investigation by the Church Committee and other Congressional investigations and real political dissatisfaction did we at least reverse at least a little bit of that and start to impose some restraints on presidential power and restraints on what the president can do.

One of the reasons that I’ve been so disturbed and concerned about this bipartisan attitude among Obama supporters and certainly among all the McCain supporters is that whoever the next President is you should just let all this go or write it off as just a good faith error or just something that we don’t want to spend time investigating is because if you do that you lose what historically has been the only real mechanism for reversing some of these really bad trends and for creating some remedies.

If we just decide that when Barack Obama is inaugurated or John McCain is that we are just going to forget about everything that has happened these last seven years which is what a lot of people are suggesting, how will it even be remotely possible to reverse some of those trends over the last seven years? Won’t we essentially then just be buying into this form of government that you call a kingdom or a monarchy or an empire more or less irrevocably? What mechanisms exist for reversing some of it if we just decide that we’re going to overlook it all and not apply to the rule of law and just sort of let it go?

DE: Unfortunately, as of right now, the prospects for changing that--for upholding the rule of law--in terms of what has been happening and the powers that the president will continue to have in the next administration, are not too promising. It’s not that I think, I have no reason to believe that Obama is against the Constitution and against the rule of law, in the sense, by the way, that David Addington--the chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, who has been the chief architect of many of these policies--and Cheney and Bush themselves, are, I think, enemies of the Constitution, in the sense that the oath of office refers to when one swears to “uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

I think that in that sense Cheney and Bush have been and are domestic enemies of our actual Constitution, as written. And I don’t say that rhetorically. I’m not saying that they’re traitors or disloyal in their feelings toward this country, or that they don’t want the best for this country. I think they want the best for this country, but what they think is best is something other than our Constitution of the last two hundred years. It is something like an elected dictatorship.

They have a right to believe that. But they don’t have a right to act on that as they have [after taking that oath]. The question here is, as you’re raised, how can we change that if we don’t hold them to account somehow? Well, I think we have to be very creative here in finding ways to repudiate that point of view and roll it back and restore our Constitution. Perhaps some way other than impeachment: which is the straightforward way, but which by every indication the Democrats are simply determined not to give us and are not going to do it now this year, unfortunately.

And Obama has indicated as of now… with his advisor Cass Sunstein, who I think you demolished when you interviewed him the other day--I would have been dizzied, listening to him if I was in your place, and as an advisor to Obama…there were just wild descriptions of what democracy requires--but with that kind of advice, we have to assume that Obama, who also wants to bring people together and to reach across the aisle and to look towards the future, none of those indicate he will be interested in pursuing these issues.

It does give us a strong incentive to try in the remaining months to get Congress to at least assert in some way or other the kind of investigation that Conyers has not yet made in the Judiciary Committee, and that none of the committees have, that define these things as illegal and unconstitutional and to educate people as to what the Constitution requires.

GG: Just on that point, I certainly think that if you were to sit down with Obama and in an academic setting or conversational way and ask him about his views on many of these constitutional issues, that he would say many of the right things and believe them. I don’t think that he’s an advocate of or a believer in this monarchical Article II perversion that has governed our country for the last seven years. The problem though is that if you look at some of those investigations – the Church Committee and the Watergate Committee and things of that sort, what you had was a very aggressive action on the part of the Congress, at least ultimately, and Democrats and Republicans alike because it was really an investigation of things Nixon and the White House had done. What you have here by contrast and I think critical contrast is something that the Bush administration did but that it purposely involved many of the top Democrats in Congress by briefing them, by getting their tacit or explicit approval and so the appetite for really uncovering what happened I think is greatly diminished if not eliminated completely by the fact that the people who are running the Congress on behalf of the Democrats feel to some extent or another feel implicated in some of those actions.

DE: I had come to that suspicion earlier. I actually heard John Conyers, head of the Judiciary Committee, say in a meeting that he was open to the idea and that he would propose to Speaker Nancy Pelosi a Select Committee like the Ervin Committee which looked into the Watergate abuses or the Church Committee that looked into the abuses of the intelligence community in the 1970s – both of them, by the way, prior to impeachment investigations, they were just investigations of crimes by whoever, not necessarily the president. Of course they enlightened us very much and they did lead to legislation that was useful in their time.

There should have been and there should now be a Select Committee – the point of a Select Committee being that it crosses jurisdictional lines, it doesn’t just keep things in the Intelligence Committees: which, I would say, deserve investigations themselves, possibly by a prosecutor. Hard to get, but that’s what you need. It’s clear now that these Committees were made aware of clear-cut blatant crimes that were proposed and were ongoing. I’m talking about torture, rendition and the illegal surveillance. The leaders were made aware of that. They not only didn’t expose it, they approved it. They didn’t even tell, as the law required, their colleagues on the committees.

What other crimes have we not yet learned that they have approved, that are going on?

So they are totally complicit. So at least the Judiciary Committee--which I understand was not brought in on the negotiations about this FISA deal though it clearly had been in their purview--they should be brought in across committee lines. They should have a special staff, with better lawyers then the committees now have by the way – I would love to see you in on such an investigation, like a Watergate investigation--with good budgeting and enough time to look into this.

We can’t count on Obama--not because he’s complicit himself, he wasn’t, and like you he’s a constitutional lawyer - but what President has ever eschewed and cut back powers that were bequeathed to him? It seems engraved on the desk in the Oval Office, “You must leave this office at least as powerful as when you entered it.” They all seem to sign on to that, though it’s not, in fact, their oath of office.

GG: Right.

DE: So we just can’t count on any president to do that by himself, or we can’t count on the present Democratic leadership in Congress. We do need a Democratic Congress rather than Republican because the Republicans are even worse, as in the case of presidential candidates. But that’s not enough. We have to change the attitude of the Democratic leaders in Congress, to bring them more in line with their oath of office and with the Progressive Caucus and away from these Blue Dog Lieberman Democrats that have dominated what they’re doing. Maybe you want to comment on that. You have raised possibilities for political action that may actually change priorities in Congress and I think that’s of extreme urgency.

GG: We’re a little over time and this is an ongoing segment now, three times a week, I will absolutely have you back on again very shortly. And we can talk about, having kind of explored the road how we got here, we can talk more, focus on more how if at all it’s possible to start reversing it.

DE: Yeah, we haven’t talked about how to fix it, that’s important. But just to define the situation we’re in, I’d like to sum up what I’ve been saying, by saying, unhappily, that when I pledge allegiance as of now, after that recent [FISA Amendments] vote, I will be pledging it “to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stood.”

And that’s a situation I want to change.

GG: And, hopefully, “can stand again.” “Can stand again,” I think, is the aspiration, to be able to add on to that phrase.

DE: We’ve got to get it back.

GG: Yeah.

DE: As Langston Hughes said, “O, let America be America again--/ The land that never has been yet--/ And yet must be—”…

He said…I just looked that up again, actually, because it stuck in my mind.

“ O yes,/ I say it plain,/ America never was America to me,” (as a black man) “And yet I swear this oath--/America will be!”

GG: Well it’s a very eloquent and inspiring note to end on.

Washington Post ad -- July 8, 2008

2008-07-07T15:45:00.001-07:00

The following ad will appear as a full-page ad in Section A of The Washington Post on July 8, 2008. Click on both the top and bottom parts to read the text:

Obama's new statement on FISA

2008-07-03T17:12:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama has issued a new statement on FISA in response to the growing number of his supporters objecting to his position. Genuine credit to him for being responsive this way and for having his site be a forum for disagreement among his supporters and himself. Providing a forum for those sorts of debates is a sign of a secure and healthy campaign.

Despite that, the statement contains many dubious claims and, in a couple cases, outright misleading statements. Worse, Obama's statement only addressed the objections to the telecom immunity provisions of the bill, while ignoring the objections to the (at least) equally pernicious new warrantless eavesdropping powers the bill authorizes. Taking Obama's claims in order:

It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That's why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate.

Obama says he will vote to remove immunity from the bill, but he knows full well that this effort will fail and that the final bill will have telecom immunity in it. The bottom line is that he will nonetheless end up voting for this bill with immunity in it even though he previously vowed to support a filibuster of "any bill" that contains retroactive immunity. Put another way, Obama claims he opposes telecom immunity but will vote for a bill that grants it.

But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year.

Whether it's better than the Protect America Act (PAA) is irrelevant. The PAA already expired last February. If the new FISA bill is rejected, we don't revert back to the Protect America Act. We just continue to live under the same FISA law that we've lived under for 30 years (with numerous post-9/11 modernizing amendments). So whether this bill is a mild improvement over the atrocious, expired PAA is not even a coherent reason to support it, let alone a persuasive one.

The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any president or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court.

The current FISA law -- as a federal court ruled just yesterday -- already has the same exclusivity provision, and it did nothing to stop the President and the telecoms from breaking the law anyway. The fact that Obama is now going to vote to end the telecom lawsuits and immunize the lawbreakers means that there will be no consequences for their having broken the law. How can Obama possibly claim that the "exclusivity" provision in the new FISA bill has value when the current law that they broke already has the same provision?

As I wrote today:

They're presenting as a "gift" something you already have, and telling you that you should give up critical protections in exchange for receiving something that you already have -- namely, a requirement that the President comply with eavesdropping laws. What they're doing is tantamount to someone who steals your wallet, takes all the money out, gives the empty wallet back to you, and then tells you that you should be grateful to them because you have your wallet.

Exclusivity is obviously no reason to change the current FISA law since it already has exclusivity in it. Obama:

In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people.

The government already has "the authority to collect the intelligence it needs to protect the American people." That authority is called FISA, which already allows the Government extremely broad authority to spy on any suspected terrorists. The current law results in virtually no denials of any spying requests. So how can Obama -- echoing the Bush administration -- claim a new law is needed to provide "the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people" when the current FISA law already provides that?

But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited. As I've said many times, an independent monitor must watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people. This compromise law assures that the FISA court has that responsibility.

This is just false. The new FISA bill that Obama supports vests new categories of warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President (.pdf), and allows the Government, for the first time, to tap physically into U.S. telecommunications networks inside our country with no individual warrant requirement. To claim that this new bill creates "an independent monitor [to] watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people" is truly misleading, since the new FISA bill actually does the opposite -- it frees the Government from exactly that monitoring in all sorts of broad categories.

Why else would Bush and Cheney be so eager to have this bill if it didn't substantially expand the Government's ability to eavesdrop without warrants?

The Inspectors General report also provides a real mechanism for accountability and should not be discounted. It will allow a close look at past misconduct without hurdles that would exist in federal court because of classification issues. The recent investigation (PDF) uncovering the illegal politicization of Justice Department hiring sets a strong example of the accountability that can come from a tough and thorough IG report.

Having the Executive Branch investigate itself for alleged lawbreaking is not "oversight." In our system of Government, government officials and corporations which are accused of breaking the law are subjected to courts of law -- just like everyone else -- not to "investigations" by agencies within their own branches of government with very limited powers. Marcy Wheeler has more on the extremely limited capacity of Inspectors General to investigate lawbreaking at high levels of government.

The ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counter-terrorism tool, and I'm persuaded that it is necessary to keep the American people safe -- particularly since certain electronic surveillance orders will begin to expire later this summer. Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise.

This is the most misleading part of Obama's statement. The "certain surveillance orders [which] will begin to expire later this summer" -- that Obama claims we must maintain -- are warrantless eavesdropping orders that were authorized by the PAA, which Obama voted against last August. As I asked the other day:

Had Obama had his way, there never would have been any PAA in the first place, and therefore, there never would have been any PAA orders possible. Having voted against the PAA last August, how can Obama now claim that he considers it important that the PAA orders not expire? How can he be eager to avoid the expiration of surveillance orders which he opposed authorizing in the first place?

Moreover, the Government already has "the ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States" under the current FISA law. Citing the need for such monitoring in order to justify this new FISA bill is just pure fear-mongering ("you better let us eliminate FISA protections if you want us to keep you safe from the Terrorists"). Obama has always said in the past that "the FISA court works." When did he change his mind and why?

I do so with the firm intention -- once I'm sworn in as president -- to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.

This expression of Obama's "intention" has so many equivocations and vague claims as to be worthless. In a society that lives under the rule of law, government officials and corporations which break our laws are held accountable by courts of law, not by vague promises from politicians of some future "review" and "recommendation" process grounded in claims that we can trust the Leader to do the right thing, whatever he decides in his sole discretion and infinite wisdom that might be. That is no consolation for blocking courts from adjudicating whether laws were broken here, which is what the bill that Obama supports will do.

E-mail to Obama adviser Greg Craig

2008-07-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

For information on Greg Craig's FISA statements -- and my interview about it with him -- see here.
_______________________

From: ggreenwald@salon.com
To: Gregory Craig
Sent: Wednesday, July 2, 2008 6:32:10 AM GMT -04:00 Atlantic Time (Canada)
Subject: Interview questions from SALON

Mr. Craig - You're quoted in a New York Times article by James Risen this morning as follows:
______________

Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer who advises the Obama campaign, said Tuesday in an interview that Mr. Obama had decided to support the compromise FISA legislation only after concluding it was the best deal possible.

“This was a deliberative process, and not something that was shooting from the hip,” Mr. Craig said. “Obviously, there was an element of what’s possible here. But he concluded that with FISA expiring, that it was better to get a compromise than letting the law expire.”

______________

When do you believe FISA is scheduled to expire? Why doesn't Sen. Obama want it to expire?

Glenn Greenwald
SALON

Letter from Comcast's counsel

2008-06-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Greenwald:

We are writing on behalf of our client, Comcast Cable Communications, in
response to your request that Comcast run a television spot regarding U.S. Rep.
Chris Carney, sponsored by the so-called "Blue America PAC." Since this spot
would not be considered a candidate "use" under Section 315 of the Communications
Act (47 USC 315), Comcast would face potential liability for any defamation
contained in the spot.

As you know, the spot contains the following audio regarding Rep. Carney: "He
wants to pardon phone companies who broke the law and gave thousands to his
campaign." That audio is spoken over a video image showing the logos of the
following entities: AT&T, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association
("NCTA"), Verizon, Embarq and Comcast. A Monopoly-type "Get out of jail free"
card is then superimposed over the images of the logos. Thus, the express
language of the spot combined with the images shown implies that the entities whose
logos are shown "broke the law" and face either "jail" or a potential
"pardon," both of which would be applicable to a criminal conviction.

In support of the statement that these entities "broke the law," you have
provided links to the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ("EFF") and,
in the case of Verizon, the ACLU, "demonstrating that listed telecoms are
defendants in the lawsuits based on illegal spying." For the proposition that
"[t]hese telecoms broke the law with their illegal spying," you provide a link to
your own opinion blog in Salon.com. None of the links provided implicate NCTA
in any way.

A ll of the lawsuits for which you have provided links are civil suits that
would not result in criminal liability, even if decided against the defendants.
More importantly, however, there have been no adjudications in any of these
lawsuits against the defendants , including Verizon and AT&T. As I am sure you
know, the mere filing of a lawsuit, whether civil or criminal, is not
equivalent to a finding of liability or wrongdoing by the defendant unless so decided
by a judge following prosecution of the litigation (or, in the case of a
criminal complaint, a guilty plea by the defendant). In fact, the EFF website shows
that the civil suits against Comcast (and other carriers) ha ve been
dismissed: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/mdl3.pdf .

Under the circumstances, the spot you have provided is factually incorrect
and potentially defamatory against the entities shown. Under Pennsylvania law, a
false allegation of criminal wrongdoing is considered to be defamation per
se. While Comcast tries to accommodate all requests to run political
advertising, regardless of the position taken (even if critical of Comcast itself), the
company cannot accept a spot that is false and defamatory. Accordingly, we have
advised Comcast to decline your request to run this spot, and they have
concluded that they have no choice but to do so . If you believe you have
additional documentation that would alter our conclusion, or if you care to submit an
alternate spot that is factually correct, you are, of course, free to do so.

Thank you,
David Silverman | Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
1919 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 200 | Washington, DC 20006-3402
Tel: (202) 973-4200 | Fax: (202) 973-4499
Email: davidsilverman@dwt.com | Website: www.dwt.com

Anchorage | Bellevue | Los Angeles | New York | Portland | San Francisco |
Seattle | Shanghai | Washington, D.C.

E-mail to Mike Allen

2008-05-30T04:36:00.000-07:00

Mike - I found your comments on the Mike Gallagher Show -- described and recorded here -- to be very interesting. I intend to write about them tomorrow and have a few questions for you with the hope of including your views in what I write:

(1) Is anyone who believes that the media was too deferential to the Bush administration in the run-up to the war a "left-wing hater"?

(2) Can you give a few examples of the "left-wing haters" you were referencing? Katie Couric this week said that she agrees with that view. Is she a "left-wing hater"?

(3) Are there "right-wing haters"? If so, any examples you can provide?

(4) Have you ever read any of the numerous books and articles written in all sorts of mainstream venues documenting the case that the media failed in its duties in the run-up to the war to critically examine pro-war claims from the Bush administration?

(5) Have you read the mea culpas from the NYT 's Editors and The Washington Post 's Howard Kurtz making the case that their papers suppressed anti-war views and/or uncritically promoted pro-war views from the Bush administration?

Thanks.

Glenn Greenwald
SALON

Email to McCain campaign

2008-05-24T05:42:00.000-07:00

A blogger at Wired posted yesterday that a McCain campaign representative (Chuck Fish) said that McCain opposes telecom immunity until (a) there are "hearings to find out what actually happened and what harms actually occurred" and (b) the telecoms apologize for what they did (see here).

That marks a substantial (and, in my view, extremely favorable) change in Sen. McCain's position on this important issue, given that, back in February, McCain voted in favor of the Senate Intelligence Committee bill which contained telecom immunity (see here).

I'm writing a piece on this for Salon and would like to know:

(a) Did Chuck Fish accurately describe McCain's position on telecom immunity?

(b) Does McCan believe that telecoms -- in the absence of hearings to find out what they did and in the absence of an apology -- should be immunized from liability, even if they broke the law when enabling government spying?

(c) Does McCain believe that telecoms did break the law by allowing government spying on their customers without warrants?

(d) Has McCain's position on telecom immunity evolved in any way since the February vote?

Any answers you could provide for the piece I'm writing will be included. Thanks -

Glenn Greenwald
SALON

Carney - Full page newspaper ad

2008-05-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

Galloway column and Galloway/Di Rita email exchange

2008-05-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

Commentary

After losing war game, Rumsfeld packed up his military and went to war

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Of those generals who have stepped forward to criticize Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his conduct of the Iraq War, none has pointed
out the mistakes of a man who admits no error with more specificity than
retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper.

Van Riper is widely respected as a military thinker who emerged from combat
in Vietnam determined to help get to the bottom of what went wrong there and
why and how it should be fixed.

Van Riper, who commanded both the Marine War College at Quantico, Va., and
the prestigious National War College in Washington before retiring in 1997, told
an interviewer in October 2004 that the military got the lessons all wrong
after World War II and that mistake resulted in two disasters - Korea and
Vietnam.

"My great fear is we're off to something very similar to what happened after
World War II, that is getting it completely wrong again," the general said of
the course in Iraq.

The general made it clear he is no anti-war crusader. "We have to stay," he
said of Iraq this week. "We have to finish it, but let's do it right."

Van Riper told Knight Ridder that in looking at Rumsfeld's leadership he
found three particular areas of inability and incompetence.

First, he said, if any battalion commander under him had created so "poor a
climate of leadership" and the "bullying" that goes on in the Pentagon under
Rumsfeld he would order an investigation and relieve that commander.

"Even more than that I focus on (his) incompetence when it comes to preparing
American military forces for the future," Van Riper said. "His idea of
transformation turns on empty buzz words. There's none of the scholarship and
doctrinal examination that has to go on before you begin changing the force."

Third, he said, under Rumsfeld there's been no oversight of military
acquisition.

"Mr. Rumsfeld has failed 360 degrees in the job. He is incompetent," Van
Riper concluded. "Any military man who made the mistakes he has made, tactically
and strategically, would be relieved on the spot."

One event that shocked Van Riper occurred in 2002 when he was asked, as he
had been before, to play the commander of an enemy Red Force in a huge $250
million three-week war game titled Millennium Challenge 2002. It was widely
advertised as the best kind of such exercises - a free-play unscripted test of some
of the Pentagon's and Rumsfeld's fondest ideas and theories.

Though fictional names were applied, it involved a crisis moving toward war
in the Persian Gulf and in actuality was a barely veiled test of an invasion of
Iran.

In the computer-controlled game, a flotilla of Navy warships and Marine
amphibious warfare ships steamed into the Persian Gulf for what Van Riper assumed
would be a pre-emptive strike against the country he was defending.

Van Riper resolved to strike first and unconventionally using fast patrol
boats and converted pleasure boats fitted with ship-to-ship missiles as well as
first generation shore-launched anti-ship cruise missiles. He packed small
boats and small propeller aircraft with explosives for one mass wave of suicide
attacks against the Blue fleet. Last, the general shut down all radio traffic
and sent commands by motorcycle messengers, beyond the reach of the
code-breakers.

At the appointed hour he sent hundreds of missiles screaming into the fleet,
and dozens of kamikaze boats and planes plunging into the Navy ships in a
simultaneous sneak attack that overwhelmed the Navy's much-vaunted defenses based
on its Aegis cruisers and their radar controlled Gatling guns.

When the figurative smoke cleared it was found that the Red Forces had sunk
16 Navy ships, including an aircraft carrier. Thousands of Marines and sailors
were dead.

The referees stopped the game, which is normal when a victory is won so
early. Van Riper assumed that the Blue Force would draw new, better plans and the
free play war games would resume.

Instead he learned that the war game was now following a script drafted to
ensure a Blue Force victory: He was ordered to turn on all his anti-aircraft
radar so it could be destroyed and he was told his forces would not be allowed to
shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue Force troops ashore.

The Pentagon has never explained. It classified Van Riper's 21-page report
criticizing the results and conduct of the rest of the exercise, along with the
report of another DOD observer. Pentagon officials have not released Joint
Forces Command's own report on the exercise.

Van Riper walked out and didn't come back. He was furious that the war game
had turned from an honest, open free play test of America's war-fighting
capabilities into a rigidly controlled and scripted exercise meant to end in an
overwhelming American victory.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Danita No. 1:

From: DiRita, Larry, CIV, OSD [mailto:xxxxx.xxxxx@xxx.xxx]

Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 6:58 AM

To: Galloway, Joe Subject:

Your column about Gen Van Riper is just silly, Joe. To tag the Secretary of
Defense with being responsible for every sparrow that falls out of every tree
is just ludicrous.

General Kernan, who was commander of the Joint Forces Command when Van
Riper's wargame occurred, had very pointed things to say about Van Riper when Van
Riper made his first notoriety on this whole thing.

To tag Rumsfeld with a wargame when there were about three or four layers of
the chain of command between Rumsfeld and the wargamers just misunderstands
the way the world works.

Let's at least be honest about this: there is a lot of change taking place,
and that change forces people to re-examine the way we have always done things.
That is bumpy, and that can make people anxious.

I don't have any idea what might have happened in Van Riperâ€™s experience with
this wargame, but to blame the secretary of defense for it just sounds crazy.

You talk about "Rumsfeldâ€™s fondest ideas and theories" as if you have the
first clue as to what those are. I have worked with him side-by-side for five
years, and I wouldn't even try to divine what his fondest ideas and theories are.

The debate about defense transformation was going on long before Rumsfeld
showed up at the Pentagon. I'd wager that the war game Van Riper was so offended
by probably began in planning before Rumsfeld showed up.

Van Riper has never even met the secretary to my knowledge. For him to make
such sweeping comments as he did in your piece is just irresponsible.

As a journalist, don't you think you owe it to your readers to challenge when
people say things like that as though they have firsthand knowledge? Also,
you ought to talk with Buck Kernan, who commanded JFCOM at the time.

You're just becoming a johnny-one-note and it's only a couple of steps from
that to curmudgeon!!

Best....

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From Galloway in response to Da Rita No. 1:

Larry: I am delighted that folks over in OSD continue to read my columns with
great attention. Who knows, it might make a difference one day. Iâ€™ve always
understood that the guy in charge takes the fall for everything that goes wrong
on his watch. This is why the U.S. Navy courts martial the captain of any
ship that is involved in an accident or is sunk for whatever reason. This is why
a President, Harry Truman, always kept a sign on his desk in the oval office
that said simply: The Buck Stops Here. Trouble with this administration is the
buck never stops anywhere, on anybody's desk. "Victory has many fathers;
defeat is an orphan" --Count Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law in 1945

Last I knew Mr. Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense. His is the ultimate
responsibility. And I am damned if I can understand how you could work for the
man for as long as you have without knowing what he likes and doesn't like in
the way of strategy and tactics and fighting wars. In the meantime, I hope you
will take note of the fact that throughout the discussion of this and other
columns with you I have never once implied that you were "silly" or "crazy" or
"ludicrous" or even a "johnny-one-note.â€ I will be leaving this town in three
weeks, Larry, and there's a lot of people and places I will miss. You aren't
exactly at the top of that list... Joe Galloway

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Da Rita No. 2:

That's not what you're describing, though, in your Van Riper piece.

I also served long enough to know that officers who hide behind anonymity and
complain to you and other journalists about what they don't like are causing
great harm to the institutions they serve and to the country.

Anyway, I think your columns have been representative of a school of thought
within military circles that I don't believe is particularly widespread.

The army is so much more capable and suitable for the nation's needs that it
was 5 or 10 years ago. To my mind, the voices your columns represent missed
the forest for the trees.

I regret you took offense at our exchanges. Apparently people can tell a
journalist the most damnable things about Rumsfeld or Myers or Franks or the
President and it's okay, but a little feisty email exchange in response you find
offensive!!

Best wishes.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Galloway Response to Danita No. 2:

Subj: Re: Date: 5/3/2006 4:56:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time

From: Jlgalloway2

To: xxxx@xxxxxx.xx

Larry: the army you describe as "so much more capable" than it was 5 or 10
years ago is, in fact, very nearly broken. Another three years of the careful
attention of your boss ought to just about finish it off. This is not the word
from your anonymous officers; this is from my own observations in the field in
Iraq and at home on our bases and in the military schools and colleges. You
can sit there all day telling me that pigs can fly, with or without lipstick,
and I am not going to believe it. Seemingly the reverse is also true. One of us
is dead wrong and I have a good hunch that it would be you. You go flying
blind through that forest and you are going to find those trees for sure. Whether
or not Paul Van Riper has ever met Secretary Rumsfeld is not at issue. One
does not have to be a personal acquaintance to find that a public figure's
policies and conduct of his office are wanting. Secretary Rumsfeld spent a good
number of years as the CEO of various large corporations. He knows about being
responsible for the bottom line in that line of work. So too is he responsible in
his current line of work; actually even more so given the stakes involved. So
grasp that concept harder, friend Larry. Urge your boss to step up to the
plate and admit it when he's gotten it wrong at least as quickly as he steps up
to run those famous victory laps with Gen Meyer back in the spring of '03. Best
Joe Galloway

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Danita No. 3:

Subj: Re: Date: 5/3/2006 5:09:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time

From: xxxx.xxx@xxx.xxx

To: xxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx

Time will tell. The army is faster, more agile, more deployable, more lethal.
At least that's what Schoomaker thinks. The army of 2000 could not have
sustained rotational deployments indefinitely. Retention is above 100 percent in
units that have frequently deployed. Would all those soldiers be rushing to join
a "broken" army? Do you really believe we were better off with tens of
thousands of soldiers in fixed garrisons, essentially non-deployable, in Germany and
Korea? I appreciate your depth of feeling. What bugs me though is your
implication that Rumsfeld doesn't care about it as much as you do. Also, if Van
Riper et al confined their "analysis" to the issue at hand, your comment would be
valid. Their comments were ad hominid, and that is a neat trick for someone
they never met.

Anyway, time will tell. Best...

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Galloway response to Da Rita No. 3:

Larry: [You say] the army of 2000 could not have sustained indefinite
deployments

My response: neither can the army of 2003 or the army of 2005 or 2006. It is
grinding up the equipment and the troops inexorably. recruiting can barely, or
hardly, or not, bring in the 80,000 a year needed to maintain a steady state
in the active army enlisted ranks....and that is WITH the high retention rates
in the brigades. And neither figure addresses the hemorrhaging of captains
and majors who are voting with their feet in order to maintain some semblance of
a family life and a future without war in it. And what do we do about a year
when average 93 percent of majors are selected for Lt Col in all MOSs....and
100 plus percent in critical MOSs. The army is scraping the barrel. Then there
is the matter of 14 pc Cat IV recruits admitted in Oct 05 and 19pc in
Nov....against an annual ceiling of 4 percent??? The returning divisions, which leave
all their equipment behind in Iraq, come home and almost immediately lose
2,000 to 3,000 stop-loss personnel. Then TRADOC goes in and cherry picks the best
NCOs for DI and schoolhouse jobs.

Leaving a division with about 65 percent of
authorized strength, no equipment to train on, sitting around for eight or
nine months painting rocks. If they are lucky 90 days before re-deploying the
army begins to refill them with green kids straight out of AIT or advanced armor
training. If they are even luckier they have time to get in a rotation to
JROTC or NTC and get some realistic training for those new arrivals. If not so
lucky they just take them off to combat and let em sink or swim. This is not
healthy. This is not an army on the way up but one on the way to a disaster. We
need more and smarter soldiers. Not more Cat IVs. So far it is the willingness
of these young men and women to serve, and to deploy multiple times, and to
work grueling and dangerous 18 hour days 7 days a week that is the glue holding
things together. All the cheap fixes have been used; all the one-time-only
gains so beloved of legislators trying to balance a budget and get out of town.

The question is what sort of an army are your bosses going to leave behind as
their legacy in 2009? One that is trained, ready and well equipped to fight the
hundred-year war with Islam that seems to have begun with a vengeance on your
watch? or will they leave town and head into a golden retirement as that army
collapses for lack of manpower, lack of money to repair and replace all the
equipment chewed up by Iraq and Afghanistan, lack of money to apply to fixing
those problems because billions were squandered on weapons systems that are a
ridiculous legacy of a Cold War era long gone (viz. the f/22, the osprey, the
navy's gold plated destroyers and aircraft carriers and, yes, nuclear submarines
whose seeming future purpose is to replace rubber zodiac boats as the
favorite landing craft of Spec Ops teams, at a cost of billions) meanwhile the
pentagon, at the direction of your boss, marches rapidly ahead with deployment of an
anti-missile system whose rockets have yet to actually get out of the launch
tubes. At a cost of yet more multiple billions. you say I blame your boss for
things 3 or 4 levels below him that he can't possibly be controlling and quote
accusations from present and former flag officers who he has never eyeballed
personally.

Well the above items are things that he directly controls, or
should; things he came into office vowing he was going to fix or change
drastically. And in the latest QDR, his last, he made none of the hard choices about
wasted money on high dollar weapons systems that make no sense in the real world
today. The same QDR quite correctly identifies an urgent need for MORE Psyops
and civil affairs and military police and far more troops who have foreign
language training appropriate to where we fight. And we budget a paltry 191
million, I say MILLION, bucks to do all that. not even the cost of the periscopes
on those oh-so-necessary submarines, or the instruments on one of those F22s.
this is what has my attention; this is what has me in a mood to question over
and over and over, waiting for answers that never come, change that never
comes, course corrections that never come. You wanted some specifics. There are
some specifics. Joe Galloway

PS: those tens of thousands of soldiers in fixed garrisons in Germany who
could not deploy were called VII Corps in the Persian Gulf War. They deployed.
They formed the armored spear that penetrated Kuwait and broke the republican
guard. The garrisons were guarded, while they were gone, by the German army and
police. They would have been so guarded in OIF too had we tried a bit of
diplomacy instead of bitch-slapping Old Europe as your boss did at a crucial
moment. Those bases in Germany were paid for by Germany; still are. And they are a
good deal closer to the action at present and in the foreseeable future than
fort riley, Kansas. Now we envision counting on rough and crude forward bases,
occupied only occasionally, in places where we have such good friends and
allies like the fellow who just ordered us to get out because we harrumphed when he
slaughtered a few hundred or thousand peaceful demonstrators against his
theft of yet another democratic election. You say that by doing this we are pos
itioning ourselves better for the wars of the future. But what if, once again, a
curtain of iron descends across Europe and once again the Fulda Gap must be
guarded against the new Red Army of our good friend and ally Putin. Your boss is
fond of saying that this or that thing is "unknowable.â€ The most unknowable
thing of all is who your enemy is going to be next time and where you are going
to need allies and bases from which to attack or defend. pulling out of
Europe and south Korea may be one of the larger mistakes charged off against your
boss five years from now or ten, if we are lucky enough to have a whole decade
to repair some of the damage he has done while congress turned a blind eye,
too busy doing earmarks for flea circus museums in Dubuque and bridges to
nowhere, Alaska, to do the necessary oversight and questioning of cockamamie ideas
with even more dubious estimates of future savings of billions that begin
dropping like a rock before the ink is even dry on the report. All I can say is
what the hell are you doing questioning my columns when you ought to be in there
at the elbow of your boss reading those columns aloud to him every Wednesday
afternoon and urging him to pay attention to them. Best wishes Joe Galloway

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Da Rita No. 4:

Thanks for these insights, Joe. None of this is easy. Your perspective seems
pretty fixed but I do appreciate the experience you bring to it.

Again, what bothers me most about your coverage is your implication that the
people involved in all of this are dumb or have ill-intent or are so sure of
what they know that they don't brook discussion. That's the part you're just
way off on, friend.

This is tough stuff, and we're all hard at it, trying to do what's best for
the country.

Best wishes.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Galloway response to Da Rita No. 4:

I like to think that is what I am doing also, and it is a struggle that grows
out of my obligation to and love for Americaâ€™s warriors going back 41 years
as of last month. There are many things we all could wish had happened. I can
wish that your boss had surrounded himself with close advisers who had, once at
least, held a dying boy in their arms and watched the life run out of his
eyes while they lied to him and told him, over and over, "You are going to be all
right. Hang on! Help is coming. Don't quit now...â€ Such men in place of those
who had never known service or combat or the true cost of war, and who pays
that price, and had never sent their children off to do that hard and unending
duty. I could wish for so much. I could wish that in January of this year I
had not stood in a garbage-strewn pit, in deep mud, and watched soldiers tear
apart the wreckage of a Kiowa Warrior shot down just minutes before and tenderly
remove the barely alive body of WO Kyle Jackson and the lifeless body of his
fellow pilot. They died flying overhead cover for a little three-vehicle
Stryker patrol with which I was riding at the time. I could wish that Jackson 's
widow Betsy had not found, among the possessions of her late husband, a copy of
my book, carefully earmarked at a chapter titled Brave Aviators, which Kyle
was reading at the time of his death. That she had not enclosed a photo of her
husband, herself and a 3 year old baby girl. those things I received in the
mail yesterday and they brought back the tears that I wept standing there in that
pit, feeling the same shards in my heart that I felt the first time I looked
into the face of a fallen American soldier 41 years ago on a barren hill in
Quang Ngai Province in another time, another war. Someone once asked me if I had
learned anything from going to war so many times. My reply: yes, I learned
how to cry. Jg

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Da Rita No. 5:

I appreciate what you are saying but your continued implication that Rumsfeld
does not understand all that is at stake is wrong and offensive.