“Unlike so many of the hacks placed in charge of important government agencies during the past six years, Hayden possesses powerful qualifications for the job…By the admittedly dismal standards of the Bush administration, then, Hayden is an unusually good appointment.” As former NSA head and probable CIA director-to-be Michael Hayden navigates the confirmation process (leaving all his Snoopgate-related answers for the secret session), he procures an endorsement from an unlikely source: Salon‘s Joe Conason: “[D]espite his military uniform, Hayden is likely to be more independent of the Pentagon and the White House than Goss was. It will help that, unlike Goss, he actually knows what he’s doing.” Hmmm. Update: Hayden is through committee on a 12-3 vote. (Feingold, for his part, voted no: “Our country needs a CIA Director who is committed to fighting terrorism aggressively without breaking the law or infringing on the rights of Americans.”
Category: Civil Liberties
Chinese Phone Tag.
Even more Snoopgate fallout: As last week’s bombshell story in USA Today makes the covers of the major newsweekies, two ABC reporters say their calls to sources are being monitored. “A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources. ‘It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,’ the source told us in an in-person conversation.”
McCarthy McCarthy’ed.
“‘When the president nominated Porter Goss [as CIA director in September 2004], he sent Goss over to get a rogue agency under control,’ Steven Simon, a colleague of McCarthy’s at the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999, said Goss’s aides told him. Simon said McCarthy’s unusually public firing appeared intended not only to block leaks but also to suppress the dissent that has ‘led to these leaks. The aim was to have a chilling effect, and it will probably work for a while.‘” The WP delves deeper into the firing of CIA officer Mary McCarthy last month, and discovers it may well have been due to both her opposition to secret gulags and her anger over CIA lies on the subject.
Goodbye Gulag?
“The most important aspect of the president’s comment isn’t just that he acknowledged, at least tacitly, that Gitmo is a disaster and must be closed; or even that he acknowledged that detainees have a basic right to some adjudicatory process. These two concessions are momentous, but they pale next to his admission that he is in any way bound by the decision of the high court — that the court will have the last word on anything to do with the war on terror.” Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick dissects some surprising recent comments by Dubya on Guantanamo Bay, and ponders the future of the Gitmo Gulag. “[Recent] silent mass releases do suggest that Donald Rumsfeld’s famous 2002 claim, that the then-760 prisoners at Guantanamo were ‘the worst of the worst,’ was something of an overstatement. They were probably closer to ‘the best of the worst,’ or as I’ve suggested, ‘the least lucky of the middling.’ The actual worst of the worst have been relegated to a whole other secret prison system that actually makes Guantanamo look rather attractive.”
Hiding in Plain Right.
“Many of us are disturbed by the calls for investigations or even impeachment as the defining vision for our party for what we would do if we get back into office.” Concerned about the desire for possible investigations of Dubya (as well as calls for withdrawal from Iraq) among the party’s grassroots and left-wing, the Democratic hawks of the DLC make a case for running on national security issues. I dunno..at first glance, it sounds like the same-old stale brand of warmed-over protective camouflage that the DLC’s been pushing on us for years…first you’d have to convince me that calling Dubya out for his multiple civil liberties violations and breaches of the public trust, as well as putting the brakes on our badly mismanaged foray into Iraq, aren’t national security issues.
Hayden for a Fight?
Dubya officially nominates Michael Hayden to replace Porter Goss at CIA, despite bipartisan criticism of Hayden’s military background. “U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said, ‘This appointment…signals that we are not that concerned about having an independent intelligence community independent of the Department of Defense.‘” Nevertheless, some top Dems, including the House Intelligence Committee’s Jane Harman and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, have indicated that they’re both ok with the pick and will, likely, avoid the NSA wiretaps issue like the plague during the hearings.
Chum in the Water.
“My guess is that something will pass this year. In the end, no one wants to be against decency in an election year.” In order to increase his standing among social conservatives and protect his right flank for those all-important 2008 primaries, Catkiller Frist has started angling for a strict broadcasting indecency bill. The bill “would increase indecency fines on broadcasters and threaten to take away their licenses after three violations.”
Torture…again.
US officials find repeated instances of detainee abuse at six more Iraqi prisons, and — unlike last time — are not removing all the tortured prisoners from their place of custody, thus violating a promise made by Joint Chiefs chairman Peter Pace last November. “Pace said at a news conference Nov. 29 with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, ‘It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it.’ Turning to Pace, Rumsfeld responded: ‘I don’t think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it’s to report it.‘” Now, why make that distinction, Rummy?
Whistle Blown.
“[Y]ou have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the White House for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what’s really wrong in Washington, D.C.” Following the recent dismissal of CIA historian and Africa specialist Mary McCarthy for telling the Post about our secret gulags, several Dems, including John Kerry and Rep. Jane Harman, question the Dubya double standard regarding leaks. Update: Was it not McCarthy after all?
Pulitzer Punches.
As you likely heard, the 2006 Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday. Special kudos go to the WP team of Susan Schmidt, James Grimaldi, and R. Jeffrey Smith for helping to expose Casino Jack; to the Post‘s Dana Priest for disclosing Dubya’s secret gulags; to the NYT‘s Nicholas Kristof for his consistently excellent commentary on world issues that merit more US (and GitM) attention; to historians David Oshinsky, Kai Bird, and Martin Sherwin for their recent books on polio and J. Robert Oppenheimer respectively; and to the inimitable Edmund Morgan — one of my favorite historians — who won a special citation for his “creative and deeply influential body of work” over the last half-century.