Posted on 02/22/2007 3:44:45 AM PST by CutePuppy
BY JAMES TARANTO
February 21, 2007
A Real Outing
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pilots18feb18,1,3175908.story
The Los Angeles Times boasts that it has identified three CIA pilots who are facing kidnapping charges in Germany over a 2003 counterterrorism operation there:
The names they used were all aliases, but The Times confirmed their real identities from government databases and visited their homes this month after a German court in January ordered the arrest of the three "ghost pilots" and 10 other alleged members of the CIA's special renditions unit on charges of kidnapping and causing serious bodily harm to Khaled Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, three years ago.
None of the pilots responded to repeated requests for comment left with family members and on their home telephones. The Times is not publishing their real names because they have been charged only under their aliases.
But it does offer plenty of details about them:
In real life, the chief pilot is ...
His copilot, who used the alias ...
The third pilot, who used the alias ...
Remember all the outrage when Robert Novak "outed" Valerie Plame, who apparently worked a desk job at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.? Here the L.A. Times is publishing extensive personal details on three men who have actually done dangerous work defending the country. Where's the outrage?
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
ping
Selective outage outrage alert.
I'm outraged and I DO NOT read the Los Angeles Times.
Period.
Thanks for the ping, piasa.
(As an aside, Zarqawi used to read the Los Angeles Times. I don't know if Hell subcribes to it, so unsure if he still does.)
http://internet-haganah.com/harchives/005285.html
19 November 2005
"Zarqawi: 'I read it in the Los Angeles Times'"
http://internet-haganah.com/hmedia/19nov05-zarqawi-latimes.mp3
Divulging secrets is not new to the Times.
If they were allowed to get away with it before,what stops them now?
The problem is that they have been allowed to go unrestrained with their treasonous actions .
The LA Times needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for this outright piece of treason and breach of National Security. What its editorial and newsroom staff has done is akin to describing OSS agents working in Vichy France during World War II. Its that bad!
bump and ping
The TIMES had access to the government database??
Sure sounds that way.
God, these people tick me off!!!!
Thanks for the ping! Though I'm sympathetic to Taranto's sentiment, he's stretching a bit here. If the LAT confirmed the Agents' ID's from government databases, it's not really analogous to the allegations in Plamegate (I say "allegations" because as you know there was no deliberate "leak" to Novak, but in any case that's the ostensible allegation there, in contrast to here where the press isn't citing any leak sources). This would be closer to Woodward's initial article on Watergate mentioning that James McCord disclosed his CIA affiliation in court.
No act is wrong unless it was a conservative, Republican and/or religious person who did it.
I think the question is really HOW the LATimes found out that these were THE pilots "involved" in the first place. Without the answer to that, the database is useless.
The second question is, if they're "classified" CIA agents what are their names AND home addresses are doing in the database accessible freely (?) by news media... or the database was accessed illegally...? Novak found Plame's name because it was out in the open in "Who's Who", entry bought by Wilsons themselves.
I'd say this maybe more serious than Plamegate, and we might need a SP to get to the bottom of this, at least to find out if news media was illegally breaking into secret (or possibly "classified") CIA database, and/or how they identified that these were THE pilots. Should somebody at CIA send a referral to DoJ, just to find out?
When I first read it, I assumed they got their basic information from access to the court and parliamentary proceedings mentioned in the article ("Relying on the operatives' passport numbers, hotel records, credit card bills and aviation records, German prosecutors are seeking to properly identify the 13 Americans. . .Elsewhere in Europe, legal and parliamentary investigations have focused a harsh spotlight on the CIA's program. . .On Friday, an Italian judge issued arrest warrants for 26 suspected CIA operatives. . .None of the aliases used in Italy match those in the German case. . .Flight records show that. . .according to catering invoices obtained by the prosecutors. . ."). Supplementary information seems to have come from public-source data in the US (e.g., "Federal aviation records show. . ."). The Intelligence Identities Protection Act only applies if a source with authorized access to classified information was involved. It does not cover cases of the media learning such information from other sources, such as the European proceedings and federal aviation records mentioned. The only part of the article I see citing information that seems to be based on a source with authorized access to classified information is this one:
One former CIA operation officer who was involved in the Italian case at CIA headquarters, speaking on condition of anonymity because the case is classified, said he and his colleagues were increasingly nervous about traveling in Europe for fear of getting swept up in the investigations.
However what's being disclosed here is not the identities of those involved, but the fact that those involved are nervous about travelling in Europe because of the investigations. I'm more concerned about the investigations by our European "allies" than I am about this article. I doubt this article revealed anything the European left doesn't already know thanks to these investigations.
Wouldn't it be great to see the CIA operatives use some of their training and contacts to "F" with the LA Times in a big way? Maybe provide some sensitive info on an owner or an editor to say... Fox News? Payback could be a bitch.
"speaking on condition of anonymity because the case is classified" bit is interesting and may shed some light on origins of how information was gathered by LAT. The "government database" still seems like an open issue, i.e. could foreign agencies get access to this info legally or openly (via Internet, request, inter-agency exchange) or only some like media (FOIA, contacts). If latter, then the Italians would need someone like LAT to do the deed for them, while technically not being under IIPA. Isn't that somewhat akin in reverse to what Agee did, publishing his "book" in England, because he couldn't do it here?
No, I don't expect current DoJ to do anything about it, or CIA to send referral because this matter doesn't "involve" or speaking more directly, can't hurt Bush administration officials, which was alpha and omega of Plamegate. But I do think somebody, "diligent" enough, like Fitzgerald, could make a federal case out of it.
Re our European "allies", a magistrate judge in Italy or Germany is not much different than our federal court judge that decides he/she can run the war and make decisions regarding rights of enemy combatants "given" to them by US Constitution. In other words, our left are the same as their left. Yes, it's disheartening.
I was thinking it might be akin to it from the perspective of the European courts, if LAT was being leaked information from European sources who had access to classified or otherwise restricted information but did not want to risk potential legal repercussions from publishing it in their own country. But I don't know what laws operate on the Continent in that respect. Of course Britain has the Official Secrets Act which would cover their equivalent of classified information, but I don't know what rules apply in Italy or Germany. I don't know if there was any information involved that would be classified from an Italian/German perspective, but I would not be surprised if some laws regarding the privacy of court/parliamentary proceedings were violated. Again just a guess--hard to say much more without knowing how the information was obtained and what laws apply in Europe.
Suspicion of Kidnapping Fox News Grapevine
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.