In Leak Case, Reporters Lack Shield For Sources

Washington Post ^ | 11-29-04 | Charles Lane

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One intriguing possibility, noted by several lawyers familiar with the case, is that Novak may have invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and that Fitzgerald has not yet chosen to give him immunity from prosecution to compel his testimony.

[cyncooper]

The CIA may not be a judge or jury, but they have piles of lawyers who check books to make sure that nothing classified is leaked.

Well, they do a lousy job. The August 2001 PDB was leaked from the CIA and, as with all these leaks of classified information seeking to undermine President Bush, it was mischaracterized.

Just like Wilson's trip to Niger was mischaracterized.

[cyncooper]

I can just guess what lawyers are making that idiotic analysis.

[Snapple]

You can just guess?

You mean you don't know?

[Snapple]

You know the PDB was mischaracterized?

How do you know that?

How do you know who leaked it?

[cyncooper]

How would I know the names of the lawyers guessing what Novak has or has not done?

[cyncooper]

You know the PDB was mischaracterized?

How do you know that?

How do you know who leaked it?

I know it was mischaracterized because when it was leaked it was purported to say one thing and when Fleischer and Rice first described it, they said something else. Then, lo and behold, when the brief was declassified last year, just guess which version was true? Why, the WH representation.

I know it was leaked by the CIA because the Presidential Daily Brief is composed there and the initial false characterizations of it were meant to convey (and indeed resulted in the notorious NY Post headline) "Bush Knew" 9/11 was going to happen and did nothing to stop it.

The mother of all leaks of classified information in order to try and impeach President Bush (and yes, that word was invoked, just as it was when the Wilson scam came along).

[Southack]

"The CIA may not be a judge or jury, but they have piles of lawyers who check books to make sure that nothing classified is leaked."

The New York Times in a page one story on 11/17/04 reports that a leaked, classified CIA memo from Goss to CIA employees tells them to "support the administration and its policies in our work."

Goss emphatically stated in his memo: "As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."

He added, "We provide the intelligence as we see it - and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker."

The leak of Goss' internal, confidential memo is a just the latest example in a string of CIA leaks.

[Southack]

The CIA Fights Back
The Agency fights back as Porter Goss and the Bush administration push for institutional reform.
by Stephen F. Hayes
11/15/2004 11:00:00 AM

ON NOVEMBER 5, 2004, a top aide to new CIA Director Porter Goss warned the associate deputy director of counterintelligence about unauthorized leaks to the media. It was an admonition that might be considered unnecessary: secrecy is a hallmark of the agency and, in any case, such leaks are often against the law. But several officials bristled at the forewarning and after a series of confrontations the deputy director of Operations, Stephen R. Kappes, offered his resignation as a protest.

How do we know about all of this? The details were leaked and appeared Saturday on the front page of the Washington Post. Both the Post and the New York Times ran follow-up stories on Sunday. That evening, CBS News anchor John Roberts was already suggesting a failure, asking reporter Joie Chen, "What went wrong?" And so we have, three months into Porter Goss's tenure at the agency, a full-blown war between the Bush administration and the CIA.

In fact, this war has been underway for years but only one side--the CIA--has been fighting. The White House response to this latest assault will be an important sign of its willingness to gut the rotten bureaucracy at the CIA.

Dana Priest, co-author of the two Washington Post stories and one of a dozen reporters who regularly receive CIA leaks, previewed this current battle in an online chat on October 13, 2004. A reader from Bethesda, Maryland, asked: "What's your take on Porter Goss's leadership at the CIA after nearly a month in office? Is

he making an effort to reach out to the rank and file or is he pretty much relying on his 'special advisers' to run the place for him?"

Wrote Priest: "He's created quite a stir among employees who are anxious and worried about his intentions. Mainly this is because he brought with him a group of Congressional aides who were not well respected, so I hear, by people in the building. Now, the question is: are they not well respected because they have axes to grind or because they represent change at an agency that has a hard time changing; or, are they not well respected because they don't know enough about intelligence and are mean spirited. Time will tell."

Now we know. According to the Post, top advisers to Goss are "disgruntled" former CIA officials "widely known" for their "abrasive management style" and for criticizing the agency. One left the CIA after an undistinguished intelligence career and another is known for being "highly partisan."

On the other side, though, are disinterested civil servants: an unnamed "highly respected case officer," and Stephen Kappes, deputy director for operations "whose accomplishments include persuading Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to renounce weapons of mass destruction this year." (Persuasion? Were the Iraq war and subsequent capture of Saddam Hussein mere details?)

With this description of the participants is it any wonder that the anti-Bush-administration leakers often choose the Washington Post? What exactly has the Goss leadership team done to deserve such a cheap shot? Unfortunately, the Post articles give us few answers.

[Southack]

http://www.americandaily.com/article/4286
Langley Leaks
By Dave Franklin (09/21/03)

The Central Intelligence Agency has long been accused of planting stories within the mainstream press, both in domestic and foreign outlets. Agency critics have worried that infiltration by the CIA in this nation’s press represents a threat to our freedom. While these concerns are well founded, equally valid propositions assert that carefully placed press reports can be used to verify sources, check for leaks and confirm suspicions. Nonetheless, Americans must be able to have confidence that the government’s intelligence service isn’t exercising influence in our political process. Sadly, such confidence is eroding.

Anyone who reviews press accounts involving the CIA since September 11, 2001 should question whether an agenda is emerging from Langley. None could argue that the events of that day were not the result of a horrible intelligence failure. Twenty men from countries where terrorists are likely to reside, who had connections with a known terrorist named Osama bin Laden, had obtained visas from American Embassies or Consulates under the nose of the CIA’s local station chief. Then they entered this country to train as pilots and hijack airliners.

If this phenomenal series of visits were not noticed by the CIA, or were noticed without notification to domestic law and immigration enforcement, it is particularly remarkable. Given that the U.S. government had intercepted a terrorist plot to hijack airliners and smash them into buildings in 1995 – a plot called Project Bojinka – how did the CIA neglect Mohammed Atta and the 9-11 attackers? Maybe they didn’t. In what can only be called a strategic cover-six, “intelligence sources” told Newsweek immediately after 9-11 that they had warned the FBI about two of the hijackers on August 21, 2001.

According to the report, the CIA had done the best it could prior to 9-11-01. The United States has since executed military operations against two governments that were involved with Al Qaeda. In Afghanistan, the U.S. cornered Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora. But according to yet another leak from unnamed “CIA Officials”, ABC News reported that the terrorist escaped. And in its justification for war against Saddam Hussein’s despotic regime in Iraq, the Bush administration started by asserting links between Iraq’s now deposed government and Al Qaeda.

Suddenly, after assertions were made about the fact that Saddam was in cahoots with the terrorists, “senior intelligence officials” discounted links between the Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda. The Washington Post reported what they had been told by their sources in September 2002 that no evidence had been found linking Saddam to Osama. Despite news reports cited in this space on the connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the CIA’s contact with the Washington Post discounted these links.

“Most specifically, analysts who have scrutinized photographs, communications intercepts and information from foreign informants have concluded they cannot validate two prominent allegations made by high-ranking administration officials: links between Hussein and al Qaeda members who have taken refuge in northern Iraq and an April 2001 meeting in Prague between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent,” the Washington Post article says.

The Post continued, “As a result of the CIA's conclusions, the Bush administration has accepted the notion that its stronger case against Iraq is Baghdad's apparent ongoing attempt to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. President Bush is expected to focus on this aspect during his speech Thursday to the United Nations in which he will present the administration's Iraq policy.”

Here we have the foundation for weapons of mass destruction being elevated as justification for knocking out the Saddam regime. Even as late as June 2003, the CIA was still leaking to the press that they doubted any Iraq-Al Qaeda link. The Guardian, a British newspaper that has been distinctly clear in its opposition to the war, reported then that, “the CIA knew for months that a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda was highly unlikely.”

The Guardian report also directly cites CIA leaks. “As President George Bush was forced for the second time in days to defend the decision to go to war, a new set of leaks from CIA officials suggested a tendency in the White House to suppress or ignore intelligence findings which did not shore up the case for war.” It seems the “CIA officials” are talking, singing like a bird.

Yet the Bush administration is very clear about the connection. While neither the President nor his senior administration leaders have ever said that Saddam was behind September 11th, both George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have said in recent days that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda. The only two men who are accountable to every voter in the United States have stated the case that Saddam was involved by proxy in a ten year “campaign of terror” throughout the 1990s, which culminated on September 11, 2001.

This yields a question, why had the CIA not known about these connections? Plenty of reports are now available which identify the Al Qaeda connections to Iraq, as is now acknowledged by both President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Yet the agency continued to leak its doubts about it even three months ago. The leaks appear to be a cover-up of yet another intelligence failure, one that was so serious that it has caused problems for the President of the United States during a time of war. And Americans are left to ask even further, why is the CIA leaking to the press in the first place?

The agency seems now to be blatantly open in its manipulation of the press. In February 2002, the CIA employed former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to inspect reports about Iraq’s efforts to acquire uranium from Niger. After the war and after Bush cited British Intelligence about more general efforts by Saddam in the African continent, Wilson inexplicably wrote about his work for the CIA in the New York Times, accusing the President of engaging in “selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq”. Wilson never wrote an official report about his suddenly not-so-secret mission in Niger -- nothing about his findings were given to the White House. It seems the CIA now reports to Jayson Blair’s former employer, instead of elected leaders in the United States.

So none should be surprised when they learn that a former CIA terrorism specialist, Vincent Cannistraro, now speaks to the press, and is cited as an ABC News consultant. He was among the first to decry Vice President Cheney’s acknowledgement on Meet the Press that Saddam’s government worked with Al Qaeda. Cannistraro told the Boston Globe that Cheney's ''willingness to use speculation and conjecture as facts in public presentations is appalling.'' Oh really?

The first bomb going off at the World Trade Center in 1993 was appalling. The attacks on the U.S. military base at Khobar towers were appalling. The bombs that destroyed U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were appalling. The attack on the U.S.S. Cole was appalling. The events of September 11, 2001 were appalling. Both former and unnamed current CIA personnel are ratting like punks to the press, attempting to cast doubt on U.S. military efforts to end terrorism that should have been launched years ago.

Thousands of good Americans have served and do serve their country in the CIA, right next to a few bad apples who are talking to the press. And Bill Clinton’s appointee as Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet remains in office. That’s appalling.

CIA Manipulation of the Media – by Geoff Metcalf
http://www.etherzone.com/2002/metc080502.shtml

Bojinka – Dropping the Ball
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24515

Guardian news report on CIA about Iraq-Osama link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,974182,00.html

Wilson writes about CIA work in New York Times
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm

Vincent Cannistraro talks to Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/259/nation/Cheney_link_of_Iraq_9_11_challenged+.shtml

CIA Officials tell ABC News bin Laden escaped
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/escape020114.html

Bush says Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=1&u=/ap/20030917/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_saddam_4

Washington Post Cites anonymous CIA officials decrying Saddam-Osama link
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59403-2002Sep9?language=printer

Newsweek reports that CIA warned FBI about two hijackers on 8/21
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/629606.asp?cp1=1

[Southack]

http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/print.php?storyid=833
Insider Leaks to Reporters Spread as CIA Turns Wary on Iraq

MediaInfo.com -September 29, 2004

NEW YORK Conditions in Iraq appear to be deteriorating so badly that CIA officials are now leaking to reporters left and right, signaling a new dynamic in press coverage of the war. Columnist Robert Novak noted this on Monday in a column titled, "Is CIA at War With Bush?"

The latest example: today's Washington Post, which includes a lengthy article by veteran war-at-home watchers Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks, based mainly on anonymous insider comments. They explain that many interviewed would only talk anonymously, "either because they don't have official authorization to speak or because they worry about ramifications of criticizing top administration officials."...
Priest and Ricks write, "A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials, according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense.

"While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public appraisals, officials who fight the Iraqi insurgency and study it at the CIA and the State Department and within the Army officer corps believe the rebellion is deeper and more widespread than is being publicly acknowledged, officials say."

"People at the CIA 'are mad at the policy in Iraq because it's a disaster, and they're digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper,' said one former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials. 'There's no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments.'

[cyncooper]

[Snapple]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13258-2004Nov25.html

The CIA were the ones who asked for the Plame leak to be investigated. The prosecutor is investigating two White House Aides to see if they leaked.

[Southack]

The Telegraph reports on the CIA leaks against Bush:

Jim Pavitt, a 31-year CIA veteran who retired as a departmental chief in August, said that he cannot recall a time of such "viciousness and vindictiveness" in a battle between the White House and the agency. ... Relations between the White House and the agency are widely regarded as being at their lowest ebb since the hopelessly botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by CIA-sponsored exiles under President John F Kennedy in 1961.

There is anger within the CIA that it has taken all the blame for the failings of pre-war intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes. Former senior CIA officials argue that so-called "neo-conservative" hawks such as the vice president, Dick Cheney, the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and his number three at the defence department, Douglas Feith, have prompted the ill-feeling by demanding "politically acceptable" results from the agency and rejecting conclusions they did not like. Yet Colin Powell, the less hardline secretary of state, has also been scathing in his criticism of pre-war intelligence briefings.

In the latest clash, a senior former CIA agent revealed that Mr Cheney "blew up" when a report into links between the Saddam regime and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist behind the kidnappings and beheadings of hostages in Iraq, including the Briton Kenneth Bigley, proved inconclusive. Other recent leaks have included the contents of classified reports drawn up by CIA analysts before the invasion of Iraq, warning the White House about the dangers of post-war instability. Specifically, the reports said that rogue Ba'athist elements might team up with terrorist groups to wage a guerrilla war.

[Southack]

"The CIA were the ones who asked for the Plame leak to be investigated. The prosecutor is investigating two White House Aides to see if they leaked."

Yes, the CIA is making that demand because the CIA wants to take down the current Administration.

Yes, you heard me: the CIA is actively trying to terminate the current American government. The Agency is treasonous.

[cyncooper]

The rogue faction made noises about wanting an investigation as part of their tall tale about the WH seeking retribution on the Wilsons. Tenet requested the real investigation.

Also from the article:

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is trying to pinpoint precisely when and from whom several journalists learned that Joseph C. Wilson IV, an outspoken critic of the administration, was sent on an Iraq-related intelligence mission after a recommendation by his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA employee. Plame's name first appeared in a July 14, 2003, column by Novak.

Don't forget that before Wilson wrote his op-ed he was leaking his story to the press himself.

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Sounds like the CIA was right.

[cyncooper]

Sounds like the CIA was right.

About what?

[Snapple]

The CIA appears to have been right when they warned "the White House about the dangers of post-war instability. Specifically, the reports said that rogue Ba'athist elements might team up with terrorist groups to wage a guerrilla war."

[cyncooper]

Really?

You are aware that "warning" was mischaracterized, too...(I guess you aren't aware of that).

[Southack]

http://www.transnational.org/forum/power/1997/pow08-10.html
8/10/1997
By JONATHAN POWER

VIENNA, Austria--The fuss over Iran--the major investment by the French oil company, Total, and the alleged indirect support of Russia for Iran's nuclear bomb program--is taking our eyes off the real ball. It was the same three years ago when CIA leaks about North Korea's bomb ambitions were part of an effort to steamroller President Bill Clinton into ordering the bombing of North Korea's nuclear installations.