Torture, Wiretaps, Lies to Congress: Old Spy Cronies a Drag on Obama's "Look to the Future"

The Obama national security team talks a big game about not dwelling on past national security misdeeds, but the persistence of so many Bush-era spy programs and spy bureaucrats guarantees that Obama's national security policy will stay fixed on the past.

Over the past week, a triple-whammy of developing national security stories reminded Americans and the Obama administration that the past is a stubborn thing.

CIA Director Leon Panetta informed Congress about what was a likely supersecret terrorist assassination program that had been kept secret from Congress reportedly by order of former Vice President Dick Cheney. Panetta made the disclosure immediately upon learning of the program's existence, some four months after his arrival at the CIA.

A report filed jointly by intelligence agencies' inspector generals revealed that warrantless eavesdropping on Americans netted virtually no worthwhile intelligence and were plagued by excessive secrecy, abysmal lawyering, and political micromanagement by Bush administration officials. Separately, a Federal court is inching closer to declaring the warrantless wiretap program illegal.

Attorney General Eric Holder is contemplating appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate torture, which might target policymakers and attorneys who authorized and directed the torture program. Or maybe just the low-level CIA officers who believed they had been authorized and directed to carry out the program, depending on which Department of Justice source reporters are referring to.

The Obama administration may wish that these developments would just go away, but its squeamishness about squarely confronting Bush-era intelligence abuses was evident back during the transition, when it became clear that the Obama national security team cast its lot with veteran intelligence officers like CIA field officer Steve Kappes, who is now Panetta's second-in-command at the CIA, and CIA analyst John Brennan, an Obama campaign adviser now serving on Obama's National Security Council.

Brennan had been Obama's presumptive CIA Director, but was appointed to the senior National Security Council post after Obama's vetting crew uncovered his connections to intelligence contractors and radioactive Bush national security policy.

Kappes' retention as CIA's number 2 appears to have been part of a bargain to placate CIA rank and file, Congress, and others in Washington that allowed Panetta, decried as an outsider, to take charge at the CIA.

Though both had been senior intelligence leaders during the Bush era, the Obama transition team rationalized that their experience and expertise would provide continuity and assuage morale concerns in CIA hallways.

But slavish devotion to continuity and currying favor with whiny intelligence officers come with a price.

Brennan, Kappes, and other former senior officers currently serving on the Obama national security team almost certainly played leadership roles in the Cheney's too-secret-for-Congress program, warrantless wiretaps, and the torture program.

Obama has put his trust in this "old guard" of intelligence cronies--who have much to lose in an airing of Bush-era dirty intelligence laundry--which goes a long way toward explaining why promises of transparency and intelligence reform have been all but discarded.

Even when the Obama administration actually decided to be transparent and publicly release legal memos drawn up by Bush administration lawyers to justify previously forbidden torture and extrajudicial imprisonment, for example, Brennan and Kappes argued against disclosure.

So far, the administration's trust seems misplaced. At a minimum, CIA Director Panetta should feel chastened that he hasn't gotten good counsel from the well-liked and plugged-in operations chief, Kappes.

It seems extremely unlikely, for example, that Kappes, the CIA clandestine operations chief touted as hallway-savvy and plugged-in, just learned in the last week or so (along with his boss, Panetta) about the secret Cheney intelligence operation, or that it hadn't been reported to Congress.

Even if Kappes was as much in the dark as Panetta about the CIA program or that CIA hadn't reported it to Congress, the failure strongly suggests that Kappes has poor control over his clandestine operations subordinates.

In short, Kappes and operations chiefs who facilitated the deception of Congress ought to come completely clean, or better yet, step down.

Brennan should also think about resigning. His continued presence as an Obama advisor who cannot be separated from past intelligence abuses ensures that the administration's forward look will never be realized.

Brennan's involvement as a driving force behind torture and warrantless wiretapping policies is well known. Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com cataloged Brennan's involvement with torture and warrantless wiretapping back in November while he was still the presumptive CIA Director-designate. He had even defended torture practices in television interviews during the Bush years, as well as legal immunity for telecommunications companies involved in warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

Brennan probably had a greater role than on-air cheerleader for NSA domestic surveillance programs. Tireless researcher and blogger Marcy Wheeler has suggested that Brennan's tenure as Director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center and Interim Director, National Counterterrorism Center put him squarely in the middle of warrantless wiretap efforts. Wheeler writes:

For at least a year and possibly two, John Brennan appears to have been the guy inventing "reasonable cause" to wiretap people in the United States. John Brennan was also likely the guy who put together the list of groups considered al Qaeda affiliates . . . that could be wiretapped.

Can individuals so personally embedded in these controversial intelligence policies reasonably be expected to be the architects of a transparent and accountable future?

With Obama, Panetta, and other senior national security policy makers invested so heavily in tarnished Bush-era intelligence warhorses like Brennan and Kappes, it's little wonder that Change has yet come to national security. And as long as these old cronies are on the team, their pasts will suck the life out of Obama's promise of a new day in national security.
--
Cross-posted from Examiner.com

Follow Frank Naif on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_naif

Comments

[DavidEBrown]

I hope I'm not being naive in viewing President Obama's apparent passivity through the same lens that you do. It makes sense that he would know that if he were perceived as "going after" the Bush Administration and their various examples of misfeasance and malfeasance, he would get bogged down in partisanship. On the other hand, if he allows a groundswell of pressure to build he can "reluctantly" respond to it.

Leaving the decision on pursuing the issues further to Attorney-General Holder could very well also be part of the effort to reduce the impact on the President's efforts to get his agenda implemented.

I suspect that a similar motivation could be behind the positions the Justice Department has taken in several court cases, where changing course suddenly might give the opposition ammunition that would serve to distract from the other parts of the administration's agenda, yet not interfere with later measures to change course on those issues. Meanwhile, if the courts rule against the administration's position so much the better - getting the result they want without giving the opposition free ammunition.

Dave

[Fotios]

I hope Obama is just letting momentum build up behind accountability and transparency before he drops the hammer. People voted for him to hold the past Administration accountable and set this country back on the path of the moral high ground. If we can't admit the things we did wrong, we're going to have to listen to evil people continue to try and convince us that it is ok to give up on our morals.

I'd love to see Obama, sometime next year, say, "Ok, enough is enough. I can't ignore past crimes anymore. I'm assigning a task force of special prosecutors to investigate any and all accusations of crimes committed by the past administration. We are going to air all this stuff and let the law sort it out so we can move on."

From all his appearances recently, it looks like Cheney is ready to testify under oath.