Attention Citizens, a Blue Dress Special

by Larry C. Johnson (bio below)

Well Porter, what are you going to do now? Is our illustrious CIA Director serious about protecting intelligence information or is he just talking political smack? In October 2003, Goss reacted to the unauthorized disclosure of classified information (e.g., the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame) by commenting:

I would say there’s a much larger dose of partisan politics going on right now than there is worry about national security. . . .But I would never take lightly a serious allegation backed up by evidence that there was a willful — and I emphasize willful, inadvertent is something else — willful disclosure, and I haven’t seen any evidence. . . . Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I’ll have an investigation.

In other words, he would act if he saw evidence that someone in the Bush White House had blown their load in public. Well, in the words of Herman Melville, “Thar she blows”. A recent flood of evidence in the Scooter Libby obstruction and perjury case erases all doubt. According to recently released documents in the case, the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name was neither accidental nor inadvertent. It was deliberate. Current and former Bush Administration officials told Jason Leopold that:

Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley led a campaign beginning in March 2003 to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for publicly criticizing the Bush administration’s intelligence on Iraq.

Exposing Valerie’s classified identity was part of this plan. … continued below …
But Dick Cheney and his nasty band of marauders did not stop there. We now know that Dick Cheney directed the leak of classified information for purely political gain that touched on but extended beyond the Plame affair. Murray Waas reports that Scooter told the grand jury that he was:

authorized” by Cheney and other White House “superiors” in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

In Friday’s op-ed complaining about “loose lips” and “leaks”, Porter Goss sets out a new standard that does not require a semen stained blue dress. Porter says:

I take seriously my agency’s responsibility to protect our national security. Unauthorized disclosures undermine our efforts and abuse the trust of the people we are sworn to protect. Since becoming director, I have filed criminal reports with the Department of Justice because of such compromises. That department is committed to working with us to investigate these cases aggressively. In addition, I have instituted measures within the agency to further safeguard the integrity of classified data.

If Porter Goss is serious about going after unauthorized disclosures then he should start with Dick Cheney. The Vice President’s access to classified material should be suspended. That’s what should happen if Goss were serious about this issue.

But it looks like Goss is more concerned about political cover for Bush than national security. The selective nature of the outrage sure suggests that what we are witnessing is political theatre designed to intimidate and silence political opponents. They don’t want to staunch all leaks; just the ones that make them look bad. The Bush Administration and its political allies want to be free to leak information when it suits their purpose.

Leaks are okay if you are going after a distinguished U.S. Ambassador who helped blow the whistle that the President did not tell the truth to the American people about Iraq’s supposed efforts to acquire uranium in Niger.
Leaks are okay if, on the eve of the 2004 Republican Convention, you release classified info to reporters about an Al Qaeda mole in order to burnish your candidate’s image.
Leaks are okay if you are trying to circumvent the intelligence community’s insistence that there is no operational link between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. You give the stuff to conservative reporter Stephen Hayes and then have Vice President Cheney point to that information to justify his views, which the CIA have said repeatedly are wrong.

Remember–leaks are bad if they show the Bush Administration is violating the law, ignoring Bin Laden, or not paying attention to flood waters filling New Orleans. Folks who tell the truth must be punished. Those who lie must be protected. And to think I once thought of George Orwell as a writer of far-fetched fiction.

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Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world. Further bio details.