national security - Quaker Ranter

Classifying Intelligence Blunders

Martin Kelley — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 17:24:40 +0000

The U.S. Justice Department might be throwing out its prosecution of suspected Al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui because it doesn’t want to allow him to question another Al Qaeda detainee in court. Without the testimony of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the judge might throw out the entire indictment against Moussaoui. What’s the Justice Department’s rationale? It says any testimony “would necessarily result in the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”

Almost three years later, what kind of classified information could Moussaoui possibly have? Surely nothing that future terrorists could use. The only thing he could talk about is conditions in the prisons. Bin al-Shibh is being held in a secret location under military law but has reportedly confessed to being part of the 9/11 attacks. Surely all the information he knows about the attacks is also known by dozens of other Al Qaeda members still at large. Why is U.S.Attorney John Ashcroft’s Justice Department so nervous about letting bin al-Shibh speak in public?

A government will classify a piece of information if it feels that its disclosure would threaten national security: that with it, its enemies could use it to launch some new attack. But everything that Moussaoui and bin al-Shibh know is already known by our enemies. Governments sometimes will abuse their power and declare something classified if it contatins information that would be embarrassing to its reputation or its political leaders.

It’s a big deal to risk throwing away a case like this, and it seems likely that Ashcroft is trying to keep some piece of information from the American people. He could be trying to keep skeletons of past U.S. misdeeds safely in the closet, using “national security” as the blanket to cover up the truth. The two suspected terrorists might know quite a bit about U.S. intelligence cooperation with Afghani terrorists during the 1980s (when they were aiming their attacks at the Soviet Union). They might know about U.S. intelligence mistakes that could have prevented 9/11. They surely know about conditions in the secret prisons were even detainees’ names and locations are considered “classified information.” Who’s security would be threatened if this kind of information got published?

William Gibson: the future will find you out

Martin Kelley — Sat, 28 Jun 2003 11:50:47 +0000

An interesting article on George Orwell and the future we’ve become. What would Orwell have thought about the big brother of national security and the never-ending war on terror. And what would he have thought of the internet and blogs? Here’s a snippet:

“In the age of the leak and the blog, of evidence extraction and link discovery, truths will either out or be outed, later if not sooner. This is something I would bring to the attention of every diplomat, politician and corporate leader: the future, eventually, will find you out.

The Selling of the Iraq War

Martin Kelley — Sat, 21 Jun 2003 17:16:14 +0000

The New Republic has a long article by John B Judis & Spencer Ackerman detailing the subversion of the intelligence agencies to the political agenda of the pro-war hawks in the Bush Administration. The job of the Central Intelligence Agency is to provide the U.S. with credible information on threats to national security. Subverting it to fit a political agenda is the real threat to national security.

“Had the administration accurately depicted the consensus within the intelligence community in 2002–that Iraq’s ties with Al Qaeda were inconsequential; that its nuclear weapons program was minimal at best; and that its chemical and biological weapons programs, which had yielded significant stocks of dangerous weapons in the past, may or may not have been ongoing–it would have had a very difficult time convincing Congress and the American public to support a war to disarm Saddam.”