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July 25, 2005
Democrats Stage a Show Trial
Democrats continue their efforts to frame the investigation into the alleged leak of a CIA agent's secret identity with the template of Watergate. Last week, Sen. Byron Dorgan and Rep. Henry Waxman staged a media event at which a handful of former intelligence analysts accused the Bush administration of jeopardizing national security for failing to take action against Karl Rove and others. Democrats have demanded that the President's chief political advisor be fired or at least stripped of his security clearance despite the fact that he has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
The participants referred to the meeting as a hearing, but it was not an official function of any committee of Congress. Therefore, no witnesses could be subpoenaed to submit to questioning and those who voluntarily spoke were not under oath and had no obligation to give truthful testimony at the risk of committing perjury. What transpired was theatre, an amateurish show trial.
Waxman produced a list of eleven alleged security breaches in the case, using media accounts to make his claims. He cited Executive Order 12958 to call for immediate disciplinary action against Rove, since the threshold for taking punitive measures is far lower than the standards of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.
On center stage was a panel of "expert" witnesses, former intelligence officers railing against the disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity. Several of them hyperventilated about the damage that could be done by the outing of a covert agent, statements that normally could be taken seriously except when those making the protests are political operatives.
The panel of witnesses was lead was Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and counter-terrorism specialist with the U. S. State Department until 1993. He offered blistering criticism of the White House and concluded his remarks by saying, "Where are these men and women with any integrity to speak out against this? ...I expect better behavior from Republicans."
The question that needs to be asked is where Johnson and his colleagues were when the Clinton administration decimated America's intelligence capabilities with reduced budgets and restraints like the Gorelick Wall. It is doubtful that he spoke out against the "Torricelli Principle," which prohibited CIA agents in the field from recruiting informants who may have committed “human rights violations.” The disastrous result was that by 2000 the CIA had no human intelligence assets in the world's most troublesome region.
But Johnson, who left government service to found BERG Associates, an international business-consulting firm that helps multinational corporations and financial institutions manage risks and counter threats posed by terrorism, did offer his opinions in July 10, 2001 article in the New York Times. In the piece titled, "The Declining Terrorist Threat," Johnson said that except for pursuing business interests in some dangerous places Americans "have little to fear" from terrorism.
He declared that he was not "soft on terrorism," but complained about using the threat of terrorism to violate constitutional rights. It is no surprise then that agents who might be suspicious of Muslim men taking commercial flight lessons would not risk their careers by running afoul of political correctness. In the late 1990s, sensitivity training became more important than investigative techniques at the intelligence agencies.
Johnson blamed the 24-hour broadcast news operations (most likely referring to Fox News) as hyping the threat posed by terrorists. Ironically, his article appeared only two months before the most devastating terrorist attacks in American history. Osama bin Laden's plan was well under way when the former counter-terrorism analyst was downplaying the danger of radical Islamists.
He goes on to suggest that terrorism was a manufactured enemy that bureaucracies in the military and the intelligence agencies used after the fall of the Soviet Union to justify their budgets. Johnson concludes by saying, "terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way."
History has shown that Johnson could not have been more wrong. Analysis like his suggests a mindset in the intelligence community that misunderstood and underestimated the motivation and determination of al Qaeda, despite its increasingly bold attacks over the previous eight years.
As a result of the flawed analysis of intelligence like Johnson articulated, America was left vulnerable and unprepared in every way to deal with the greatest threat of the 21st century. Perhaps he should have testified before the 9/11 Commission to answer for his incompetence instead of representing his foolish conclusions as some kind of expert opinion on the editorial pages of the New York Times. In any event, the outrage he expressed last week should only be viewed as the theatrics of a partisan opportunist.
Posted by jeffgannon at July 25, 2005 11:40 AM
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