A recurring theme in the Bush years has been discussions about just what does and what does not hurt our intelligence gathering capabilities. And it is a very complex issue that can be tackled from a number of different perspectives. One perspective is at the nation-to-nation level. For example, the CIA, Richard Clarke, and others have stated that the United Arab Emirates, and Dubai in particular, have been very helpful in providing intelligence on al-qaeda activities. That cooperation could dry up if Dubai feels alienated over the hostility to the DP World ports deal.
Another perspective is on the level of the recruitment of agents. Agents, as opposed to officers, are not on the payroll of the US Government. They get payed in cash and other accouterments and they are usually betraying the organization(s) they work for. Keeping such agents safe is the number one priority of our clandestine agencies. And if prospective agents lose trust that their work will be kept secret they will not agree to provide valuable information. That is one reason why the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson was so potentially damaging. All her agents, spanning a career that started in 1985, were potentially exposed. It not only put their lives at risk but it undermined the credibility of the CIA for keeping their agents confidential.
An open society will always have an uneasy relationship with its own intelligence agencies. The values of an informed public and the need for secrecy do not mix well. But, we must seek the correct balance.
I have defended, and even applauded, prior revelations that the press had dug up about our intelligence agencies. The NSA wiretapping and the extraordinary rendition program are two that immediately come to mind. But the latest revelations in the New York Times go too far.
Two German intelligence agents in Baghdad obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein’s plan to defend the Iraqi capital, which a German official passed on to American commanders a month before the invasion, according to a classified study by the United States military.
Saddam Hussein’s plan for the defense of Baghdad, obtained by German agents and provided to the United States in February 2003, a month before the war, according to a study by the American military.
In providing the Iraqi document, German intelligence officials offered more significant assistance to the United States than their government has publicly acknowledged. The plan gave the American military an extraordinary window into Iraq’s top-level deliberations, including where and how Mr. Hussein planned to deploy his most loyal troops.
The German role is not the only instance in which nations that publicly cautioned against the war privately facilitated it. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for example, provided more help than they have disclosed. Egypt gave access for refueling planes, while Saudi Arabia allowed American special operations forces to initiate attacks from its territory, United States military officials say.
But the German government was an especially vociferous critic of the Bush administration’s decision to use military force to topple Mr. Hussein. While the German government has said that it had intelligence agents in Baghdad during the war, it has insisted it provided only limited help to the United States-led coalition.
In a report released Thursday, German officials said much of the assistance was restricted to identifying civilian sites so they would not be attacked by mistake. The classified American military study, though, documents the more substantive help from German intelligence.
Before I even tackle this issue I want to say something I have said before in different contexts. Many things that happen in any war can be justified if the country is fighting for its survival and as a last resort. Those same actions become deeply immoral if the war is elective and/or based on lies, and has nothing to do with the security or survival of a nation. Still other things are immoral, or just plain stupid, no matter the reasons for the fight. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq has tainted everyone that has participated, or facilitated the American effort. Having said that, other nations must make difficult choices in trying to maintain relationships and alliances with the United States. And more to the point, certain long established relationships are built on long-term trust and transcend any one administration’s actions.
The Germans evidently had spies within Saddam Hussein’s inner circle. And they risked their lives and the lives of their families to provide the most sensitive information possible to the German Intelligence Services. In turn, that information was passed along to Tommy Franks and was ulitized to craft a better warplan. Germany did not need to that. They opposed the war. And because they opposed the war they undoubtedly expected to retain deniability in return for doing us an enormous favor.
On top of that, the New York Times goes on to site facts that could potentially identify the spies that leaked the information.
But on Dec. 18, 2002, Mr. Hussein summoned his commanders to a strategy session where a new plan was unveiled, former Iraqi officers and government officials told American interrogators. Among those attending were Qusay Hussein, the Iraqi leader’s son who oversaw the Republican Guard; Lt. Gen. Sayf al-Din Fulayyih Hasan Taha al-Rawi, the Republican Guard chief of staff, and other Republican Guard generals.
snip
The classified study contains a copy of the sketch supplied by the Germans. “The overlay was provided to the Germans by one of their sources in Baghdad (identity of the German sources unknown),” the study notes. “When the bombs started falling, the agents ceased ops and went to the French Embassy.”
By not only identifying the date of the meeting, some of the attendees and disclosing which embassy they fled to, the New York Times has put those agents of risk of retaliation. It is true that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power, but it is not true that his supporters are incapable of settling scores with people they consider to be traitors.
When information like this leaks out it damages our intelligence gathering capabilities on both a nation-to-nation level and on an agent recruitment level. The Times should have done a better job of disguising the way this information was obtained.
And we should all remember the tension that exists between our right to know and the government’s ability to keep us safe. That ambiguity is compounded when our government is not only engaged in efforts to keep us safe but is also violating our rights and breaking both domestic and international law.
You want to start the count of people, including me, who never would have known or thought to discuss this?
which parts?
It just shows that when real Security is at issue, the bush admin, the NYT, and others, have absolutely no frikkin’ clue.
Never would have thought to discuss it but have seen most of it referenced in other places individually. I take the issues seriously that you mentioned in the diary. I’ve been self-censoring for a long time and I hate that I have to do it. It’s hard to tell what is deliberately released by the admin to damage the other side for political gain. Those folks don’t seem to get prosecuted for leaks. I wouldn’t be surprised if the govt leaked sensitive info on purpose and then prosecuted individuals or journalists who repeat it.
this story in such detail. I’d sure like to know, however, who in the government leaked this
Is it an attempt to embarrass Merkel, or Schröder, or both? Or is it an attempt to enlarge the “coalition of the willing” after the fact?
Interesting to note that the “Pentagon official who asked to remain anonymous” and “United States commandos who asked not to be identified” were granted anonymity while all the other players and details are pointedly acknowledged.
Given the NYT’s past performance and obvious loyalties to, and willingness to carry water for BushCo™…this is highly suspect and doesn’t pass even the most cursory ‘smell test’.
This has all the earmarks of another BushCo™ psyop, propaganda operation.
Caution is advised.
Peace
Another realistic possibility is that it’s leaked and written that way precisely to be damaging to a longtime ally of ours. Does that still fall under the propaganda-psyop definiton…just curious about that.
IMO, more likely to be a ploy to force the acquiescence of congress to modify the FISA statutes, covering everybody’s butt, and squashing any investigation into the illegal domestic spying, and stalling any impeachment moves. If an ally or two gets hurt, so what…hell, they’ve gotten away, so far, with outing Plame, why would outing another countries intelligence assets be beyond them…it’s old history. The ends justify the means. And the end is that BushCo™ walks on another one.
Just another day at the office for these guys.
Call me a cynic, but I do not believe that this is what it appears to be.
Peace
Now available in orange.
Good analysis. More please. But I’ll keep reading them in green. Orange is a very loud color.
I’ve also come to the point that issues like the wiretap revelation don’t do much good. It’s still going on and all of the public outrage doesn’t seem to motivate our elected officials to change anything. We are all still under continuous surveillance. The main issue of how it will still be legal for the private companies to continue doing this anyway adds insult to injury.
Guess you’re not a big fan of Phillip Agee then, eh?
I am grateful that Agee spoke up, but he went too far in some regards. Remember the Plame investigation was originally about whether anyone broke the law that Agee inspired. And I have always supported prosecuting the Plame leakers under that law if it could be proven.
I’ve always disliked & feared that law which made for some contraadcitory disconnect in these topsy-turvy times as I hoped L&R would might be charged uner it.
I still fear its application. Risen’s whistleblowers are severely exposed right now.
Germany denies providing this information to intelligence
In turn, that information was passed along to Tommy Franks and was ulitized to craft a better warplan.
So exactly how did that great, improved warplan work, Tommy?
Maybe the US military can’t tell a real plan from planted disinformation.
Frankly, this doesn’t bother me, any more than it bothered me to see news of our secret prisons in Europe or the rendition flights — it serves to embarrass and undermine duplicitous governments that have been acting secretly to circumvent the overwhelming will of their own people. If I had to choose between seeing George Bush or Tony Blair go down, I’d have to think long and hard about it — which is worse, the main perpetrator or his enabler? And if Schröder was secretly collaborating with Bush while publicly denouncing his policies, that’s something German voters need to know.
And if this government gets less international cooperation, all the better. As long as the neocons are calling the shots, the proper stance of the rest of the world relative to the United States is one of containment.
The argument that this will do damage to future US governments is missing the point. That damage is already being done by the current US government, and it will continue to do more damage as long as it can operate in secrecy. If we had an honest government, it would be one thing, but right now we have a deeply corrupt and subversive government. More light, not less, is needed.
more actual lives are at risk, because of this administrations incompetence, and nefarious deeds.
Each American who puts his life on the line for his country, whether he has been co-opted, duped, whatever, should be of concern to us. Nobody would deny the real need for information to protect American lives. Those that choose to serve on the front lines, in any capacity,may be just body counts to the administration, and the media, but they are, in fact, real people, with real families…think Valerie.
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● United Arab Emirates: ‘good ally’ with checkered past
Clarke became side-tracked after 911, so I find it strange his approval of U.A.E. as a “supporter” in the WOT. Can you provide a link of Clarke’s statement?
See my diary and comments: U.A.E. Is a Rogue State
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
From a regular person perspective, this entire Islamic extremist situation seems to be one of convenience used by both teams. The same people who have done fearmongering for the past 5 years are now contradicting their own warnings. We have indeed gone through the looking-glass.
We, the readers, don’t actually know if the details in the NYT story are accurate on their face or whether, perhaps, they are cleverly mis-characterized with the specific purpose of masking the identities of the actual sources of this info within Saddam’s coterie of officials.
What strikes me about this however, is the point I haven’t seen brought up yet, (admittedly I have barely begun to review all the reports on this), that point being that if BushCo was apprised of Saddam’s defense plans then it would have been revealed that there were no WMD slated to be deployed. And if no WMD were going to be used, this would seem to make a strong case that they wouldn’t be deployed because there weren’t any. So BushCo would have known there were none and still insisted there were and invaded anyway.
This strikes me as the most salient point in this disclosure. Whether the story is accurate is another thing I’m not convinced of yet.
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BERLIN (Deutsche Welle) Feb. 24 — Two German spies in Baghdad provided intelligence to the US military during the Iraq war but did not help select bombing targets, a government report released late on Thursday found.
A day after a two-thirds majority voted against a parliamentary enquiry into the affair, the report released on Thursday stated that two German spies provided the United States with intelligence but were not involved in helping the US bombing campaign in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
The 90-page text, a fraction of the almost 300 pages of evidence which were analyzed by a parliamentary control committee, included details of Federal Intelligence Service (BND) President August Hanning’s decision on March 17, 2003 that the two BND agents would remain in Baghdad despite the evacuation of the entire German diplomatic corps from the Iraqi capital.
Earlier reports about BND agents in Baghdad, investigated their intelligence gathering to target decapitating Iraqi leadership in first U.S. attack of the Iraq War.
● Germany Denies it Gave Baghdad Defense Plan to US
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
“intelligence secrets”. Simply because it now seems an oxymoron watching the Bush bunch tear the crap out of stuff.