Who’s Running the White House? [Updates]

(bumped up from Wednesday morning)

George Soros, maybe? The problem in appeasing these activist groups is that there are profoundly serious intelligence-gathering and counterterrorism implications, and extraordinarily time- and energy-consuming legal tasks and confusing agency expectations behind what Obama is suddenly proposing that could suck all the oxygen out of his presidency and the entire federal intelligence apparatus. We’ll explore those prospects below.

Update #1: Worry not about my position. I am solidly anti-torture and pro-punishment. Heck, I wrote articles daily for over three years about Bush/Cheney’s torture policies. I’ve written about heroes like FBI Special Agent Dan Coleman who extracted confessions from the African embassy bombers sans torture and Alberto Mora, a conservative Republican and the U.S. Navy’s chief legal counsel who fought tooth and nail against Addington et al. . But I’m extremely worried about Obama’s motives, far-left influences, and lack of thought behind these momentous decisions. He appears clueless about the can of worms he’s opened. I also think that the POVs of two heroic Americans, Bob Baer and Gary Bernsten, deserve a platform. Agree or not, they’ve walked the walk. They’ve been inside Al Qaeda safehouses and dealt directly with these monsters.

Update #2: I strongly recommend Andrew J. Bacevich’s CNN essay that asserts that Obama can’t simply being the “un-Bush” and (ouch!) adds, “Pragmatism devoid of principle provides an inadequate basis for coherent strategy.” Besides being “devoid of principle,” Obama’s positions are confusing as all get out — which further stresses, not only us, but also our essential intelligence service members!]

UPDATE #3: See Politico’s “Obama muddles torture message.”

After patting the heads of CIA employees as if they were little children — “So don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks. Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn,” he told the assembled crowd at CIA headquarters yesterday – he did a flip-flop today following intense pressure from his far-left base on which he counts for, what else, money. Reports CNN’s Ed Henry:

[I]n the last 24 hours we’ve seen groups like MoveOn.org on the left come out and write a petition to the Attorney General saying they want accountability from the Bush administration. Is this an example of this White House giving in to pressure from the left?

It’s early to see what’s going to happen next. But I’m pointing to the disturbing clockwork flip-flop, the motive (always money), and Obama’s lack of thought about what this is all going to entail.

Furthermore, after having decided to release the formerly classified “torture memos” and to not seek prosecution of those involved, he hastily pivots and opens a big can of worms. From the UK Telegraph’s “Barack Obama opens Pandora’s Box with green light for ‘torture’ prosecutions“:

Barack Obama’s decision to give the nod to Congress and his attorney general to investigate and possibly prosecute former Bush administration officials opens a Pandora’s Box that could ultimately consume his presidency.

When he released the four so-called “torture” memos – the Obama administration has now all but abandoned their use of the t-word – the new president, who has yet to pass the early landmark of 100 days in office – insisted he wanted to “move forward”.

He added that “at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past”.

[...]

The platitudes about drawing a line under the past were still being mouthed but they rang decidedly hollow as Gibbs talked of an investigation on the scale of the 9/11 Commission – which took two years and millions of dollars.

Obama reversed himself because of press from Congressional Democrats, who want to haul officials before their committees for what could become the political equivalent of show trials, and Left-wing groups such as MoveOn.org.

The problem for Obama is that many on the Left will not be happy until President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are in leg irons and sharing a cell at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado along with the likes of the Unabomber.

[...]

The hornet’s nest that Obama has just stirred up is bad enough even in the current climate, when it is more than seven years since the US has been attacked by al-Qaeda.

It will be nothing, however compared to the aftermath of another terrorist attack on US soil – which many intelligence officials believe is inevitable – when Americans will once again be clamouring to find out why Obama did not “connect the dots” and demanding to know how he will stop another Islamist strike.

This is why I had to write about V.P. Joe Biden’s astonishingly reckless remarks recently in “Motor Mouth Joe’s Telepathic Certitude” when he told CNN reporters that “I guarantee you we are safer today, our interests are more secure today than they were any time during the eight years” of the Bush administration.”

These two are setting themselves up for a major backlash, along with blowback, if their actions and words fail them.

“Barack Obama opens Pandora’s Box with green light for ‘torture’ prosecutions“ brings up another important point, echoed last night on CNN’s AC360 by highly experienced former CIA agents Bob Baer and Gary Bernsten, both friends of Larry Johnson. Writes the Telegraph:

Already, the fightback on the Right has begun. Although it might be questionable whether Cheney’s re-entry into the political fray benefits Republicans who are themselves trying to move on from the Bush years, his argument that more memos ought to be released is hard to argue with.

Cheney and other former Bush administration officials, as well as the former CIA chief Michael Hayden – a intelligence professional and no political partisan – maintain strenuously that the interrogation techniques yielded information that saved American lives. The former vice-president maintains that there are memos that details this. If there are, we need to see them.

We know that Bob Baer and Gary Bernsten are anti-torture, but they agree that a careful, prudent review is in order and they too want to SEE the documents. Bernsten also questions the wisdom of Obama’s release of the “torture memos.” From AC360’s transcript Monday night

COOPER: Vice President Cheney has been saying this for a long time, that — that these activities, water-boarding, worked.

A, do you believe that? And, B, do you think those memos which showed, according to him, what the results were should be released?

ROBERT BAER, INTELLIGENCE ANALYST, TIME.COM: Could I answer that?

COOPER: Yes.

BAER: Look, Cheney’s right. We have to start out by finding out, is it worth it? I don’t know of any cases where, specifically, it saved lives. No case has been made in the public. And we need to see that, to see whether this is justified, and then you can carry on the argument whether it should be done or shouldn’t.

But, so far, Michael Hayden, and no one else, has said, look, Abu Zubaydah led to the saving of American lives.

When I see that, I will trust it, but I haven’t seen it yet. So, Cheney’s right. I hate to agree with him, but he’s right.

COOPER: Gary?

GARY BERNTSEN, AUTHOR, “HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, COUNTERTERRORISM AND NATIONAL LEADERSHIP: A PRACTICAL GUIDE”: I agree with Bob. Let’s take a look and let’s examine the record.

Look, both sides, whether they be Republicans or Democrats, when they’re in charge of the White House, spin on the issue of terror. And let’s have a fair examination of what was said.

… And the argument has been out there that — that these documents should have been — should not have been released because it’s already been in the press.

I can say this. Having been inside of al Qaeda safe houses myself and gone through the documents, frequently, they like official American documents. They download them. They study them. They train off of them.

COOPER: You’re saying this is giving too much intelligence to the enemy?

BERNTSEN: Too much. I don’t think we should have released these documents in the first place.

This portion is fascinating since both Bernsten and Baer are EXPERTS on Al Qaeda and how it collects information on the United States methodologies and operating procedures:

Joining me, Robert Baer, former CIA officer and intelligence analyst at TIME.com. Also, Gary Berntsen, former CIA officer and author.

Gary, before the commercial break, you basically made the point that, by doing this, by releasing these memos, we’re basically giving all this information to our enemies, to al Qaeda to know exactly what they will face if they are ever caught. ROBERT BAER, FORMER CIA OFFICER, INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: You know, it wasn’t much of a secret because in “The New York Review of Books,” it details, Mark Danner’s article exactly what happened. And you look at the SERE (ph) manuals, escape invasion manuals that the military puts out. and you pretty well know what the program is and you’ve got some original documents.

Now, I agree with Gary, you don’t want to take intelligence and splash it across the papers. It’s the worst thing to do, but it’s already out there. The problem is that, once these guys start being released, they have detailed exactly what happened to them, in greater detail that was in those memos.

So the secret was out, and it was doomed from the beginning that we’d ever be able to keep this secret.

COOPER: Gary?

GARY BERNTSEN, FORMER CIA OFFICER, AUTHOR: Not all of them were debriefed in the same ways. But I’ll say this, that al Qaeda doesn’t cut out — wasn’t cutting out newspaper articles and saving them. They were looking for official documents, training manuals. The SERE (ph) manual Bob’s talking about, they had that, too. They had a lot of things. They’ll download documents from the White House Web site.

COOPER: What about the argument that this makes it — if the U.S. is doing this kind of stuff, then when an American is held captive somewhere and tortured, there’s not much we can complain about.

BERNTSEN: Americans are kidnapped and tortured all the time. We received no protection under the Geneva Convention from Hezbollah, from Hamas, from al Qaeda, from the Taliban. There are no American prisoners there. They kill and torture every one of us.

COOPER: But in a war if we’re captured in state by a state by a government…

BERNTSEN: By a state, they’re going to sign the Geneva Convention. These guys didn’t sign the Geneva Convention.

COOPER: But doesn’t this then, essentially, nullify the Geneva Convention? Doesn’t it make it OK by North Korea or anyone else?

BERNTSEN: Under the Geneva Convention — well, first of all, the issue of enemy combatants is really what we’re discussing. The al Qaeda members don’t, you know, receive Geneva Convention treatment, because they don’t meet the four standards: you know, not under — not in uniform; not carrying arms openly; not under the authority of a competent person; and finally, not conducting themselves in courts with rules of law. They don’t meet that. They’re marauders.

I’ve argued that many of those people could have been and should have been executed for their participation in this. I’m not a supporter of torture, but I will say this, though. We live in very, very dangerous times. Eventually, we’ll face a situation where we have WMD, someone will be picked up with this, and then President Obama, if he’s, you know, in two terms, one or two terms, in the future we’re going to face — a president will face a situation where they’re going to have to make very difficult decisions. And you should never say never.

COOPER: Bob, does this stuff work?

BAER: No, it doesn’t work. On torture we’ve looked, over the years. The Israelis have looked at it. The French have tortured people in Algeria, and it generally leads to false leads.

You know, there’s a question of the ticking bomb: is it going to go off and you get the right guy? But in general, it’s good, old- fashioned espionage that works. And that’s what we should be doing.

BERNTSEN: We want good, old-fashioned espionage. I agree. Torture, sadly, works very, very well. A lot of horrible governments use it. And they’re getting incredibly — incredibly accurate results off of it. And that’s how a lot of these terrible dictators have held themselves in power.

That’s not to say that we should be doing it. What we need to recognize, we live in a world now where we’re going to see WMD used in terror. That’s the next phase. Hang onto your hats.

COOPER: Bob, it’s interesting, you know. For years, really, we have heard sort of unnamed sources telling reporters over the course of time, you know, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded, or these two suspects were waterboarded a handful of occasions. Now it turns out we’re talking about, you know, dozens, more than several hundred times.

BAER: Well, the man was — the man was completely broken morally and physically, as well. It’s clear. You look at his affidavit, when he ended up in Guantanamo, and it’s pure dribble. I see no evidence in that affidavit that he gave up any al Qaeda operations, if he knew them, in fact, that saved American lives.

Again, it goes back to the Cheney argument. The government better prove that this actually worked, and there’s no reason why they can’t take these interrogation reports and put them out. It’s not violating sources and methods.

COOPER: Gary, do you take the fact that we did it so much that it worked or that it didn’t work?

BERNTSEN: I wouldn’t put them out, but he had a ten-year operational history, Khalid Mohammed. That’s probably why they did this so many times.

BERNTSEN: You know, we’ve got to go remember, only three people were waterboarded: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh and I believe it [Abe Zubaydah], the guy who did the attack on the Cole. There were only three that were waterboarded. So this wasn’t broadly done. …

I’m with Larry Johnson and Jane Mayer, who’s done more investigative reporting than any other journalist to prove that torture does not work.

But these are not ordinary enemies. These are not the soldiers for a nation. They’re extra-national operators who are willing to do ANYTHING to bring the United States down.

But we also need to consider what these experts say, and we must consider — very deliberately — the implications of what Obama is doing, at the bidding of the far left, of George Soros, of MoveOn, of the ACLU, of the Daily Kossacks.

In my book, national security trumps revenge, no matter how sweet it may be against the likes of Dick Cheney and repellant attorneys like John Yoo. So it seems prudent to at least consider the blowback from public hearings, special prosecutors, and the revelations of more classified documents.

It’s easy as hell for MoveOn et al. to demand that President Obama do this or that. MoveOn and its noisy members have no skin in the game. They’re typical hard-core lefties who want what they want when they want it.

One should be very careful about caving in to such demands without considering the ramifications. And dancing back and forth on such grave matters hardly builds confidence amongst the American people and, I would venture, the intelligence community.

For more on this growing debate and division of viewpoints, check out Memeorandum.com here and here.