The following letter was written by Tom Twetten, the former Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA, to the omsbudsman at the New York Times. It is in regard to an article that the Times wrote about the extraordinary rendition planes:
I have read your June 19 article, which attempts to reply to and reassure your unhappy readership. Before you pat The New York Times on the back too heartily, I request that you consider a few more points. Your reporters and editors have a bias toward publishing all interesting news. As you say, sensible people can disagree on where the line should be drawn on national security issues. In this case, your readership (and I ) believe you strayed well over the line. My bias is that of a former C.I.A. operations officer.
Your reporter, having lived in the U.S.S.R., equates that totalitarian government with “excessive secrecy” by his own government. He then proposes that an aggressive press will “improve the effectiveness of intelligence agencies.” You will want to be careful about that word “excessive,” because your reporter will next decide that in a free society, he is the arbiter of what is “excessive.” And his bias will lead him to want to print anything that he can ferret out, then justifying his actions as uncovering “excessive.” In the case of the aircraft, the problem is clear from his article. It is the difficulty of having aircraft do secret work in a free society. It wasn’t “excessive” secrecy; it was too little.
The question of interrogation and rendition is an important one to debate. You may not be in a position to judge how valuable rendition has been to damaging Al Qaeda and its like-minded terrorist allies. The Times could yet focus on this issue in a responsible way. But the aircraft in question might be used for many purposes. They might even be secret, without being “excessively secret”, and all uses are now put at risk by The New York Times.
Your reporter and editors might also consider that there is still a group of persons who want to bring another 9/11 type of apocalyptic terror to New York City. It is a larger, albeit less well organized group, because of our actions in Iraq. Your first line of defense against another Qaeda atrocity is the C.I.A. Consider the president’s claim that about 75 percent of the former leadership of Al Qaeda is now dead or in custody. Have your reporter do a little research on those individuals. I think you will find that the operations officers of C.I.A., in cooperation with others in the intelligence community, are responsible for all ranking Qaeda operatives who are no longer capable of terrorist actions in New York City or elsewhere. And those C.I.A. operatives, in some cases, used the same aircraft that you eagerly expose to get the job done.
It isn’t good enough to say that if The New York Times can put these details together, surely Al Qaeda can do so. You have simply made it easier for a larger number of terrorists by showing them how.
The second loser as the result of your expose is the United States taxpayer. I would assume the nature of your article will require changes in C.I.A. sources and methods. That will take time away from operatives who should be focused on Al Qaeda. American operations officers are placed at more risk by the specificity of your unnecessary detail. These operations officers are United States citizens dedicated to our protection, and their security is important to the nation.
I am not reassured, as you are, by the lack of a C.I.A. response to your summary. How much detail (not how often) has The Times deleted from your stories on sensitive intelligence matters at the request of the intelligence community since 9/11? Is it 1 percent? Could it be as high as 5 percent? Has it occurred to The New York Times that you might no longer be considered a responsible interlocutor? Commenting on a summary from your reporter carries a high risk of further erosion of C.I.A. sources and methods. It is another one of those national security judgment calls. It should give you pause, not reason for justification, that C.I.A. chose silence.
You have not given your readership a “broad picture,” to use your words. Instead you have given them more detail than they want. You have written a “thoughtful” article, as you like to say to your readership that is protesting. You have made the work more difficult for hard-pressed officers who are in the front lines against our most vicious, Al Qaeda, enemies.
The above are my views only. They should in no way be construed as those of C.I.A., from which I retired 10 years ago.
Respectfully, Thomas A. Twetten
Retired deputy director for operations, C.I.A.
Twetten makes some compelling points. But I ultimately disagree with him. The problem is not the use of airplanes by the CIA. The problem is the deeply immoral use of torture by proxy. The New York Times is exposing the methods of the CIA because the methods need to be debated. If these planes were being used to fly prisoners to America for interrogation, and that interrogation was in accordance with American law and treaties, then there would be no compelling reason to reveal the methods, airfields, cover companies, etc. But that is not the case. The New York Times is reporting on an ongoing crime being committed by our intelligence services. When our government breaks the law, it should not expect the deference of our most important news organizations.
