Murray Waas & Larry Johnson on "double standards" and cover-ups

Is There A Double Standard On Leak Probes?
By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006

When the CIA announced on Friday that it had fired an employee who the agency claims "knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence" with a newspaper reporter, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, immediately praised the agency's action, saying that "unauthorized disclosures of classified information can significantly harm our ability to protect the American people."

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Roberts, one of the staunchest defenders of the Bush administration's effort to stop the flow of sensitive information to the press, said in a statement that "hose who leak classified information not only risk the disclosure of intelligence sources and methods, but also expose the brave men and women of the intelligence community to greater danger. Clearly, those guilty of improperly disclosing classified information should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

But three years ago on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Roberts himself was involved in disclosing sensitive intelligence information that, according to four former senior intelligence officers, impaired efforts to capture Saddam Hussein and potentially threatened the lives of Iraqis who were spying for the United States.

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But Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and State Department counterterrorism official, disagrees: "During this administration, there have been any number of CIA officers who have brought up issues through channels internally. There have been intelligence officers who have brought up things within their own agencies, and even spoken to congressional intelligence committees or presidential commissions. But they have found themselves completely ignored."

Between Conscience and Unconscionable

by Larry C Johnson

Now that Newsweek has slowed the Mary McCarthy lynch mob with its story that Mary emphatically denies she was the source of the leak, it is worth considering whether there are good leaks or nothing but bad leaks. Watching the right wing whackos on this issue is particularly fascinating and entertaining. When it comes to exposing the identity of Valerie Wilson, a case officer who worked most of her career as a non-official cover officer, Bush loyalists do more back flips and rely on more contortionist mental jumps than the Soviet national gymnastic's team in its hey day to justify her exposure. They will say anything to excuse inexcusable behavior. Come to think of it, they are acting like their fearless leader, George W. Bush.

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There is a fundamental moral and ethical difference between someone who leaks information in order to serve the public good and someone, like George Bush, who authorizes leaks only for the purpose of saving his sorry political ass. It is important to remember that Bush and Cheney went after Joe Wilson because he wrote an op-ed that said that there was no sound basis for George Bush to claim in the State of the Union speech that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium. So, while Bush was plotting on leaking selected bits of intelligence as part of a scheme to discredit Joe Wilson, his White House and his CIA admitted that the 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union. In other words, Wilson got it right and the White House sought to destroy the reputations of Ambassador Wilson and his CIA wife. Are we following the logic here?

Why so desperate? Because, in light of the recent revelations, the White House was terrified that if Bush lost his credibility on this issue it would undermine his reelection campaign. George Bush took us to war on a lie. Pure and simple.

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The firing of Mary McCarthy and her trial in the media is a travesty. Particularly when George Bush continues to harbor leakers who put selfish political motives above the welfare of this nation. It remains to be seen if Mary McCarthy had anything to do with the leak of secret prisons. There is no doubt, however, that Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Stephen Hadley, Dick Cheney, and George Bush directly participated in a campaign to leak misleading intelligence information to the American people. Patrick Fitzgerald's court filings make that point abundantly clear. Under George Bush, America is being asked to tolerate Gulag Politics. That is something I find intolerable and unconscionable.

Link: http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/04/between_conscie.html

Link:

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0425nj1.htm

McCarthyism: Mary and Joe
By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 25 April 2006

As additional information on the firing of CIA official Mary McCarthy just ten days short of her retirement becomes available, what is afoot is becoming quite clear. We are witnessing a Stalinesque show trial sans the actual trial and inevitable execution. The purpose is intimidation, not extermination. We should be thankful for small favors, I suppose.

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But what about her secrecy agreement? The international issued a statement on these difficult decisions on September 9, 2004. Perhaps Mary read it; perhaps now her colleagues will.

I have not spoken with Mary McCarthy in ten years, but it seems clear to me that she and many of her colleagues are confronted by an unwelcome choice between her oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and the secrecy agreement all of us signed when we entered on duty with the CIA. Her entire record shows that she did not take such restrictions lightly. None of us did; none of us do.

But agency alumnae/i, at least those of my vintage, believe we must always give priority to the Constitution - and the "Nuremberg obligation."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042506R.shtml

TO: Current Government Officials
FROM: Concerned Alumni

SUBJECT: Truth

It is time for unauthorized truth-telling.

Citizens cannot make informed choices if they do not have the facts—for example, the facts that have been wrongly concealed about the ongoing war in Iraq: the real reasons behind it, the prospective costs in blood and treasure, and the setback it has dealt to efforts to stem terrorism. Administration deception and cover-up on these vital matters has so far been all too successful in misleading the public.

Many Americans are too young to remember Vietnam. Then, as now, senior government officials did not tell the American people the truth. Now, as then, insiders who know better have kept their silence, as the country was misled into the most serious foreign policy disaster since Vietnam.

Some of you have documentation of wrongly concealed facts and analyses that—if brought to light—would impact heavily on public debate regarding crucial matters of national security, both foreign and domestic. We urge you to provide that information now, both to Congress and, through the media, to the public.

Thanks to our First Amendment, there is in America no broad Officials Secrets Act, nor even a statutory basis for the classification system. Only very rarely would it be appropriate to reveal information of the three types whose disclosure has been expressly criminalized by Congress: communications intelligence, nuclear data, and the identity of US intelligence operatives. However, this administration has stretched existing criminal laws to cover other disclosures in ways never contemplated by Congress.

There is a growing network of support for whistleblowers. In particular, for anyone who wishes to know the legal implications of disclosures they may be contemplating, the ACLU stands ready to provide pro bono legal counsel, with lawyer-client privilege. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) will offer advice on whistleblowing, dissemination and relations with the media.

Needless to say, any unauthorized disclosure that exposes your superiors to embarrassment entails personal risk. Should you be identified as thesource, the price could be considerable, including loss of career and possibly even prosecution. Some of us know from experience how difficult it is to countenance such costs. But continued silence brings an even more terrible cost, as our leaders persist in a disastrous course and young Americans come home in coffins or with missing limbs.

This is precisely what happened at this comparable stage in the Vietnam War. Some of us live with profound regret that we did not at that point expose the administration’s dishonesty and perhaps prevent the needless slaughter of 50,000 more American troops and some 2 to 3 million Vietnamese over the next ten years. We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm’s way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties.

A hundred forty thousand young Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq for dubious purpose. Our country has urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials. Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.

SIGNATORIES
Call to Patriotic Truth Telling

Edward Costello, Former Special Agent (Counterintelligence), Federal Bureau of Investigation

Sibel Edmonds, Former Language Specialist, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Daniel Ellsberg, Former official, U.S. Departments of Defense and State

John D. Heinberg, Former Economist, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor

Larry C. Johnson, Former Deputy Director for Anti-Terrorism Assistance, Transportation Security, and Special Operations, Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism

Lt. Col Karen Kwiatowski, USAF (ret.), who served in the Pentagon's Office of Near East Planning

John Brady Kiesling, Former Political Counselor, U.S. Embassy, Athens, Department of State

David MacMichael, Former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council, Central Intelligence Agency

Ray McGovern, Former Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency

Philip G. Vargas, Ph.D., J.D., Dir. Privacy & Confidentiality Study, Commission on Federal Paperwork (Author/Director: "The Vargas Report on Government Secrecy" -- CENSORED)

Ann Wright, Retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel and U.S. Foreign Service Officer

Link to supporting documents and September 13, 2004 article by Ray McGovern:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/appeal_for_truth_telling.php?dateid=20050322