The Republicans are calling for an investigation into who leaked information about secret detention centers to the Washington Post.
They want to know three things:
1: was the information provided to the media classified and accurate?
2: who leaked this information and under what authority?
3: what is the actual and potential damage done to the national security of the United States and our partners in the Global War on Terror?
Let me be clear about a couple things. Whoever leaked this information probably committed a crime. Their action probably harmed our ability to continue to operate these facilities. If these facilities are deemed important for our national security, then the leaker(s) harmed our national security.
Now, having said that, let’s not beg the question. The information has not been refuted, so it must be largely accurate. Are the facilities legal under American law? Are they legal under international law? If they are illegal, then the leaker is a whistleblower. The Republicans have downplayed the leaking of Valerie Wilson’s name, because the leak served to protect the administration. They now decry the leak of the secret detention centers because it hurts the administration. This is an inverted standard.
Leaking classified information should be a crime. If the leak serves to expose official wrongdoing that should mitigate the crime. The government cannot commit crimes and then turn around and prosecute the only people in a position to expose those crimes.
This is an essential safeguard in a democracy.
So, when the intelligence committees conduct their investigation of this leak, they should not only determine whether the leak harmed our national security, but they should determine whether the facilities were illegal.
The Republicans are beginning to make a habit out of arguing that we must violate the law in order to protect the country from attack. I don’t believe we can operate that way. Either we change the laws, or we stop conducting ourselves in violation of the laws.
the letter is below the fold
Honorable Peter Hoekstra
Chairman
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
United States House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
Honorable Pat Roberts
Chairman
Select Committee on Intelligence
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Chairman Hoekstra and Chairman Roberts:
We request that you immediately initiate a joint investigation into the possible release of classified information to the media alleging that the United States government may be detaining and interrogating terrorists at undisclosed locations abroad. As you know, if accurate, such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences, and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks.
The purpose of your investigation will be to determine the following: was the information provided to the media classified and accurate?; who leaked this information and under what authority?; and, what is the actual and potential damage done to the national security of the United States and our partners in the Global War on Terror? We will consider other changes to this mandate based on your recommendations.
Any information that you obtain on this matter that may implicate possible violations of law should be referred to the Department of Justice for appropriate action.
We expect that you will move expeditiously to complete this inquiry and that you will provide us with periodic updates. We are hopeful that you will be able to accomplish this task in a bipartisan manner given general agreement that intelligence matters should not be politicized. Either way, however, your inquiry shall proceed.
The leaking of classified information by employees of the United States government appears to have increased in recent years, establishing a dangerous trend that, if not addressed swiftly and firmly, likely will worsen. The unauthorized release of classified information is serious and threatens our nation’s security. It also puts the lives of many Americans and the security of our nation at risk.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
William H. Frist, M.D.
Majority Leader
U.S. Senate
J. Dennis Hastert
Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
Boston Joe has the same story posted in another diary here. When I read his title, I thought a moderate Republican had called for an independent investigation of the Plame thing!… Silly Me!
BTW BooMan, How is your shoulder coming along??
is healing slowly, but I am pretty sure I’ll need surgery if I ever want to be able to use my right arm normally, or throw a baseball again.
Does your shoulder affect your typing or mouse usage and Booman I hope your arm heals without surgery…Best to you booman and (((hugs)))) too…
Wanna bet he hasn’t gone to the doctor?
I’ll take that bet…wait, none of us thinks he’s gone to the doctor yet, do we?
BooMan, you’ll have to suck it up and go to the doctor and win the bet, since we all think you haven’t. And I know you have the name of an excellent doc, so call and GO!!! You’ll be using that shoulder for several more decades, you know.
(I’m sorry, I think Ductape’s unsolicited advice-giving has rubbed off on me)
🙂
The best part is that he’d get lots of DRUGS!
I believe that this whole thread about spanking Boo, etc. has been torture!!!!
tell me where it hurts
I’m just appalled!
Too funny. How ’bout it, Boo?
how bout i give him a spanking if he doesnt see a doctor?
Wait, is that supposed to encourage him to go, or discourage him from going?
hmmm
you are right
as long as I am not made to taste these crappy edible panties 🙂
Fucking hypocrits! I just read this before stopping in here at the pond. I even thought of doing a diary but you beat me to it Boo. God, what they won’t do. SOunds like a distraction Rovian type move to me.
If a law was broken, the attorney general already has authority to investigate, IIRC. If he has a conflict of interest, then you get into independent counsel territory.
Congressional investigation of this reminds me of a certain movie I finally got to see this weekend out here in flyover territory.
leaked this information. Trent Lott made the announcement saying that after the weekly private republican lunch where this situation was discussed either a senator or an aide of a senator reported it to WAPO.
So THAT’S how they’re going to get rid of John McCain!
George Bush better learn how to beg nicely.
That’ll put an end to that. The Democrats ought to join Frist and Hastert and push for this investigation.
Nancy Pelosi is on it:
But you missed the best part!
Lott said……..
“We can not remain silent. We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
Freudian slip?
stick
BooMan, all of a sudden, I’m confused.
(Btw, GREAT post — very important stuff)
As I read your post, a name popped into my mind.
DANIEL ELLSBERG
He broke the law. He revealed classified information. He is regarded as a hero.
So, where does he fit into this discussion? Or, hopefully (?), others like him?
But since they asked, we should give it to them. A complete and thorough investigation.
But what do WE believe?
We vehemently oppose the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson.
But we laud the release of classified documents by an Ellsberg.
If that’s correct, what are the differences?
Valerie Wilson’s identity had nothing to do with anything. The Pentagon Papers had everything to do with everything. Exposing the government’s lies is far different from exposing assets of the people.
related to a crime
i cant remember what ellsberg leaked
but to me thats the difference
its the difference between a whistle blower and a traitor
So the backlash has already begun. I’ve been wondering as well about the next Ellsberg.
Increased scrutiny & prosecution of those who would disclose classified information. It seems simple enough to distinguish between a whistleblower disclosing illegal gov’t behavior & gov’t officials leaking disinfo to cover their asses. “Correcting the record” is a smokescreen, but will likely cloud the issue.
Up is down, liberals are progressives, Sharon is a Man of Peace, a propogandizing journalist is a First Amendment martyr — you’re right, it’s confusing to be caught up in the vocabulary spin!
Something else your post made me think of… This administration is one of (if not the most) secretive in US History. If everything is classified, how will we ever be able to use our checks and balances to make sure our government is playing fair? In other words, should there be limits to what they can keep “secret” in the first place? Can whistleblower status be given to those who simply think the people have a right to know what their government is doing?
Plame was an act of revenge and served no purpose other than retaliating against her husband. That is a far cry different than say leaking the Iran-Contra Affair or Watergate or the nasty phych warfare the CIA does in other nations or so-called secret detention facilities for torture.
Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced the idea of breaking the law and paying the consequences for it when our country behaved unjustly. I see the Ellsberg leak as an act of civil disobedience. While the leak of Plame was an attempt to COVER UP an unjust policy (ie going to war under false pretenses.)
I’m pretty confident that even the ill-informed American public will be able to see that the Republicans are always on the side of injustice as represented in these cases.
Is it just me, or are the GOP leaders calling for this investigation walking themselves into a political trap?
I find it hard to believe they don’t see where this investigation would lead is not some place they want to go.
Are they really that shortsighted that they want to score some quick political points and distract from WarGate?
Because the old chess player in me – and I haven’t played in a while – sees this as a major blunder on their part.
it’s just Frist asking his buddy Roberts to come up with some words that absolve everyone in the guise of an investigation.
Roberts’ stonewalling of “phase II” of the Iraq war intelligence investigation is what led Harry Reid to invoke Senate rule 21. I see no reason for any of these Republicans to actually investigate. This is PR.
I had the same thought. They seem to forget that the intelligence community is out to destroy them, Porter Goss and John Negroponte notwithstanding.
Cheney’s latest campaign to make the CIA responsible for torture is really making the pot boil over at Langley, and they don’t stand a chance of covering up their crimes in this atmosphere.
Half the leadership of the Directorate of Operations has resigned, and I doubt they are sitting quietly on the sidelines. They are out for blood.
Couldn’t agree more! If they investigate the use of overseas “off the record” prisons then they admit that those prisons exist. If they admit they exist then it seems to me that they’d have to provide some rationale beyond McClellan’s repeated “keeping the American people safe after 9/11” line.
If the proposed investigation shows that the sources were foreign, then it wouldn’t seem to me that they’ve accomplished much more than showboating. And risking having even more information released.
If the proposed investigation indicates a “got-religion” and now we’re “really gonna’ start investigating” theme, then they’ve opened themselves wide to charges about all the things they are not investigating–Plame/Wilson; Halliburton Contracts; KBR single source/no bid contracts; Cattan allegations of Iraqi Fund mismanagement; U.S. corporate shenanigans with the Oil for Food program; and the sources for the Vice President’s energy policy. And on and on.
A cynical person like me would think they might do this on purpose to give more weight to a total clampdown of all information.
Washington is leaking like a sieve lately because officials in and out of the intel community have had it with the Bush Crime Family. This is a clear attempt to strike fear in the hearts of the leakers. Hoeksta and Roberts are both whores who do their best to cover up this administration’s dirty deeds.
are occurring. Good God though they are so stupid they really need to be careful what they ask for for damn sure! They are messing with people far smarter than they are and I wouldn’t be surprised if trying to uncover the leaker or leakers wasn’t boobytrapped with something HUGE and DISGRACEFUL being further discovered and known to the public that this administration would really like nobody to know about!
emphasis added:
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
Let’s get to the bottom of this.
The CIA has been hiding? Is Porter Goss running a “rogue agency”? The Administration has been hiding and doing who knows what to who knows who. The Administration has lied and broken the law repeatedly claiming “national security” when it suits their agenda, and a few “bad apples” when they get called on it.
Sorry Boo. Holding anyone secretly breaks the law period. And, if these people were truly some of its “most important al Qaeda captives” as our government claims, there would be no reason to hold them in secret. Shit, they announce the capture of the number two al Qaeda man bi-monthly.
that the facilities are illegal. But the intelligence committees need to make that determination before they go looking to force the WP to expose their sources and then prosecute those sources.
They have a right to determine whether a crime was committed, and to determine if that crime harmed our national security. But before they exercise their right to find out who committed the crime, they should first determine whether the information that was leaked actually exposed a crime.
I think it did. And therefore, the culprit(s) should be afforded whistleblower protection. Basically, they shouldn’t try to get the WP to divulge their identity unless they determine that the facilities are legal, and harm was done.
No investigation will nail Americans unless it nails foreign operatives:
according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
And will the American participants say? They were just trying to control the way the story gets published and don’t ask them why in public.
This is not a CIA operation exclusively. It is an international operation susceptible to every manner of blackmail and no manner of oversight.
It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA’s covert actions.
Anyway, the sweep of the culpable is small:
known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country
The White House is off its game.
And Hastert is getting closer and closer to the fire.
By the way, doesn’t this sound like official clearance:
The desperation of this letter measures the severity of what will be found behind that curtain.
The intelligence committees have nothing to do with whether secret prisons are illegal or legal, and do not make any determination on what’s legal or illegal. We’re mixing branches of government here.
Neither the executive branch nor the legislative branch decide whether a crime was committed. They should never be given unchecked power on deciding whether national security has been harmed or not. Let’s not further erode checks and balances, please.
When the executive branch or the legislative branch decides either, we’ve consolodated power and gutted due process.
will be particularly interesting to the intelliegence committee members who were deemed not reliable enough to get a briefing from Cheney.
William H. Frist, M.D.
(Mengele to the Dictator)
But I am so pleased that all over the tv news the names Bush and Cheney are alternating with the word torture. How many days of this will it take to push those poll numbers all the way down?
I watched part of the White House Daily Press Briefing today. McClellan was doing one of his better dodge and weave acts trying to separate the torture from the Pentagon guidelines from the Vice President from the President from the Congressional visits by the Vice President from the Iraqi Prison scandals.
What McClelland couldn’t do was answer whether or not the President and the Vice President were on the same page about exempting the CIA from the Pentagon Guidelines. What he did do was try to incorporate 9/11 in each and every attempt at an answer..”We do not torture…we will do everything necessary to protect the American people.” When asked if “everything necessary” means torture or aggressive questioning McClellan went back to dodging and weaving.
From the referenced WaPo article:
Oh yeah, I forgot, we Americans don’t acknowledge the existence of the thousands of foreign language dailies all over the world. Nor do we acknowledge the work of journalists worldwide who have been chasing this story for years.
Yeah. Gotta be a leak. Our people are the only ones who know. Shhhh. Don’t tell the rest of the known intelligent universe about a story likely known in their neck of the woods for quite awhile. Lessee, the Syrians, Egyptians, & Jordanians wouldn’t tell (too late anyway). “Eastern Europeans”? Nah, they don’t have any reporters there either.
That about nails it. The US of A is the only place the information could’ve come from. Forget the families, Consulates, intelligence services, and lawyers for the “disappeared” chasing the information.
Eyeah, eyeah, eyeah. Go beat that dead horse one more time.
is someone who has a conscience.
is a republican according to Trent Lott and just reported on CNN 3:05PM
Or someone who wants people to believe that he/she has a conscience, IMO. The repubs have lied so many times that it is impossible for me to believe anything that anyone says.
This is from Chamonix’s very recent diary entry over at kos:
could it be McCain?
RECOMMENDED!
The big question that never gets discussed is what gets classified and who gets to decide?
The Bush admin has classified more stuff than ever before. Much of it is done either to prevent people from finding out how they are being screwed or to prevent people from finding out how the government has screwed up.
If the government classifies the identity of a bank robber and the local police go after him have the violated national security?
The over classification of stuff has to stop. Very little of it is related to national security. Most is related to national obscurity. Why should the location of overseas prisons be classified. According to international standards not only should the prisons be known, but the identities of the prisoners as well.
The only exception would be keep a person clandestinely so as not to tip off his confederates. Since everyone in now a potential “terrorist,” then everyone captured must be kept incommunicado by this logic.
What is the rule for divulging “classified” information about illegal government actions anyway?
The Republicans would never allow an objective investigation. As implied in your article, and made pretty clear in the letter, it’s the breaking of the law in releasing the information that they would want to focus on.
Do we focus on the accuracy of the information released–a humiliating revelation about America’s secret prisons–or do we focus on the fact that letting the American people know about this blot on our republic is against the law? If we focus on the release of the information then we have a new Pentagon Papers Trial, since the Post’s publishing of this classified data would also be against the law. If we focus on prosecuting the Senator who released the information, then we have the show trial so dear to the hearts of tyrants, demonstrating to all who dare to betray the silent code of oppression the cost of independence.
The CIA has referred the matter to the Justice Dept.
I think Dana has been going head to head with these guys for a while now.