I’ve studied intelligence matters since I was in middle school. The whole topic of clandestine operations has always fascinated me. And I know that we have a real problem when it comes to divulging the secrets and abuses of the Bush administration.
You can think about it like this. When you try to recruit someone to spy for you against his own government your number one obstacle is not overcoming their innate patriotism. You’ve probably already identified some weakness on their part (substance addiction, homosexuality, a sick child, etc.) that you can exploit. Your number one obstacle is convincing them that you can keep the arrangement a secret and that you can take care of them if anything goes wrong. If your government cannot keep a secret, them you’ll have a hell of a time convincing anyone to spy for you. Therefore, it’s bad idea for the government to discuss clandestine operations in public.
What’s true about recruiting agents is tenfold more true about foreign intelligence services. You cannot expose a foreign intelligence service as being complicit in torture, for example, and think that they will ever cooperate with you again on sensitive intelligence matters.
That’s the legacy that the Bush administration left us. If we have a full airing of the black sites, the extraordinary renditions, and the ‘enhanced interrogations’, it will severely damage our vital relationships with several foreign intelligence services. And that can really and truly put our country at unnecessary risk.
It’s a bit of a no-win situation, and you get disputes like this:
A fierce internal battle within the White House over the disclosure of internal Justice Department interrogation memos is shaping up as a major test of the Obama administration’s commitment to opening up government files about Bush-era counterterrorism policy.
As reported by NEWSWEEK, the White House last month had accepted a recommendation from Attorney General Eric Holder to declassify and publicly release three 2005 memos that graphically describe harsh interrogation techniques approved for the CIA to use against Al Qaeda suspects. But after the story, U.S. intelligence officials, led by senior national-security aide John Brennan, mounted an intense campaign to get the decision reversed, according to a senior administration official familiar with the debate. “Holy hell has broken loose over this,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because of political sensitivities.
Brennan is a former senior CIA official who was once considered by Obama for agency director but withdrew his name late last year after public criticism that he was too close to past officials involved in Bush administration decisions. Brennan, who now oversees intelligence issues at the National Security Council, argued that release of the memos could embarrass foreign intelligence services who cooperated with the CIA, either by participating in overseas “extraordinary renditions” of high-level detainees or housing them in overseas “black site” prisons.
Brennan succeeded in persuading CIA Director Leon Panetta to become “engaged” in his efforts to block release, according to the senior official.
John Brennan is 100% correct. Unfortunately, Eric Holder is also 100% correct. We actually need to know what was done in our name. But, we also have to protect our relationships.
You can hate Bush and Cheney all the more for putting us in this situation, but you shouldn’t condemn the people who are unfortunate enough to have responsibility for cleaning this mess up.
Even if we all agree that we should never repeat the mistakes and sins of the Bush administration, we still have to maintain our relationships.
