Tierney: Wrong Again

by

by hilzoy

Since, for reasons I do not fully understand, I still have access to TimesSelect, here’s an excerpt from John Tierney’s column today:

“This case, if you can remember that far back, began with accusations that White House officials violated a law protecting undercover agents who could be harmed or killed if their identities were revealed. But it now seems doubtful that there was a violation of that law, much less any danger to the outed agent, Valerie Wilson.

The case originally aroused indignation because the White House appeared to be outing Wilson as part of a campaign to unfairly discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of ignoring his 2002 report debunking evidence that Iraq was trying to acquire material for nuclear weapons. But a Senate investigation found that his report not only failed to reach the White House but also failed to debunk the nuclear-material evidence – in fact, most analysts concluded the report added to the evidence.

So now the original justifications for the investigation have vanished, which is why I think of this as the Nadagate scandal. But the prosecutor has kept at it for two years. Besides switching to the vague law against disclosing classified information, he might indict Libby or Rove for perjury or obstruction of justice – crimes that occurred only because of the investigation.”

Wrong, Tierney. This case did not begin because of accusations that anyone had violated a specific law. It began with accusations that someone in the administration had outed an undercover CIA agent. Those accusations were true. The case aroused indignation not just, or even primarily, because the White House outed Plame to discredit Wilson, which is also true, whatever his report did or did not say. It aroused indignation because outing undercover CIA agents is wrong under any circumstances, and it’s especially wrong when it’s done not for some reason connected to the national interest, but for political gain. This justification has not “vanished”; it’s still in force, and it is why I have said that whether or not indictments are handed down, this administration acted contemptibly in outing Valerie Plame.

Do apologists for this administration really want to take the line that exposing intelligence assets for political gain is just one of those things that everyone in Washington does; that it’s no big deal? Do they really want to say that what the Republican party stands for is not restoring honor and integrity to the White House, not doing what it takes to keep America safe, not the sort of basic decency that would lead them to stick by people who put their lives on the line for their country, but this? Do they really want to try to rally people behind the slogan, “Compromising national security: everyone does it!” — ? (And for the record, everyone doesn’t. Just try thinking back to the last time an administration outed one of its own agents.)

The reasons why leaking Plame’s identity was wrong are not rocket science. They are obvious, at least if you understand basic moral values like loyalty, decency, and honor. And no party that claims to honor moral values should pretend that outing an undercover CIA agent is just business as usual.

Below the fold, I’m appending a long excerpt from a Stratfor report cited on dKos (h/t rilkefan), just in case Tierney or Richard Cohen or anyone like them should happen by and wonder what the big deal is. (It’s a long excerpt because the original is behind a wall.) It makes the issues very clear.

“Then there are those with non-official cover, the NOCs. These agents are the backbone of the American espionage system. A NOC does not have diplomatic cover. If captured, he has no protection. Indeed, as the saying goes, if something goes wrong, the CIA will deny it has ever heard of him. A NOC is under constant pressure when he is needed by the government and is on his own when things go wrong. That is understood going in by all NOCs.

NOCs come into the program in different ways. Typically, they are recruited at an early age and shaped for the role they are going to play. Some may be tracked to follow China, and trained to be bankers based in Hong Kong. Others might work for an American engineering firm doing work in the Andes. Sometimes companies work with the CIA, knowingly permitting an agent to become an employee. In other circumstances, agents apply for and get jobs in foreign companies and work their way up the ladder, switching jobs as they go, moving closer and closer to a position of knowing the people who know what there is to know. Sometimes they receive financing to open a business in some foreign country, where over the course of their lives, they come to know and be trusted by more and more people. Ideally, the connection of these people to the U.S. intelligence apparatus is invisible. Or, if they can’t be invisible due to something in their past and they still have to be used as NOCs, they develop an explanation for what they are doing that is so plausible that the idea that they are working for the CIA is dismissed or regarded as completely unlikely because it is so obvious. The complexity of the game is endless.

These are the true covert operatives of the intelligence world. Embassy personnel might recruit a foreign agent through bribes or blackmail. But at some point, they must sit across from the recruit and show their cards: “I’m from the CIA and….” At that point, they are in the hands of the recruit. A NOC may never once need to do this. He may take decades building up trusting relationships with intelligence sources in which the source never once suspects that he is speaking to the CIA, and the NOC never once gives a hint as to who he actually is.

It is an extraordinary life. On the one hand, NOCs may live well. The Number Two at a Latin American bank cannot be effective living on a U.S. government salary. NOCs get to live the role and frequently, as they climb higher in the target society, they live the good life. On the other hand, their real lives are a mystery to everyone. Frequently, their parents don’t know what they really do, nor do their own children — for their safety and the safety of the mission. The NOC may marry someone who cannot know who they really are. Sometimes they themselves forget who they are: It is an occupational disease and a form of madness. Being the best friend of a man whom you despise, and doing it for 20 years, is not easy. Some NOCs are recruited in mid-life and in mid-career. They spend less time in the madness, but they are less prepared for it as well. NOCs enter and leave the program in different ways — sometimes under their real names, sometimes under completely fabricated ones. They share one thing: They live a lie on behalf of their country.

The NOCs are the backbone of American intelligence and the ones who operate the best sources — sources who don’t know they are sources. When the CIA says that it needs five to 10 years to rebuild its network, what it is really saying is that it needs five to 10 years to recruit, deploy and begin to exploit its NOCs. The problem is not recruiting them — the life sounds cool for many recent college graduates. The crisis of the NOC occurs when he approaches the most valuable years of service, in his late 30s or so. What sounded neat at 22 rapidly becomes a mind-shattering nightmare when their two lives collide at 40.

There is an explicit and implicit contract between the United States and its NOCs. It has many parts, but there is one fundamental part: A NOC will never reveal that he is or was a NOC without special permission. When he does reveal it, he never gives specifics. The government also makes a guarantee — it will never reveal the identity of a NOC under any circumstances and, in fact, will do everything to protect it. If you have lied to your closest friends for 30 years about who you are and why you talk to them, no government bureaucrat has the right to reveal your identity for you. Imagine if you had never told your children — and never planned to tell your children — that you worked for the CIA, and they suddenly read in the New York Times that you were someone other than they thought you were.

There is more to this. When it is revealed that you were a NOC, foreign intelligence services begin combing back over your life, examining every relationship you had. Anyone you came into contact with becomes suspect. Sometimes, in some countries, becoming suspect can cost you your life. Revealing the identity of a NOC can be a matter of life and death — frequently, of people no one has ever heard of or will ever hear of again. (…)

Imagine, if you will, working in Damascus as a NOC and reading that the president’s chief adviser had confirmed the identity of a NOC. As you push into middle age, wondering what happened to your life, the sudden realization that your own government threatens your safety might convince you to resign and go home. That would cost the United States an agent it had spent decades developing. You don’t just pop a new agent in his place. That NOC’s resignation could leave the United States blind at a critical moment in a key place. Should it turn out that Rove and Libby not only failed to protect Plame’s identity but deliberately leaked it, it would be a blow to the heart of U.S. intelligence. If just one critical NOC pulled out and the United States went blind in one location, the damage could be substantial. At the very least, it is a risk the United States should not have to incur. (…)

Ultimately, the Plame affair points to a fundamental problem in intelligence. As those who have been in the field have told us, the biggest fear is that someone back in the home office will bring the operation down. Sometimes it will be a matter of state: sacrificing a knight for advantage on the chessboard. Sometimes it is a parochial political battle back home. Sometimes it is carelessness, stupidity or cruelty. This is when people die and lives are destroyed. But the real damage, if it happens often enough or no one seems to care, will be to the intelligence system. If the agent determines that his well-being is not a centerpiece of government policy, he won’t remain an agent long.

On a personal note, let me say this: one of the criticisms conservatives have of liberals is that they do not understand that we live in a dangerous world and, therefore, that they underestimate the effort needed to ensure national security. Liberals have questioned the utility and morality of espionage. Conservatives have been champions of national security and of the United States’ overt and covert capabilities. Conservatives have condemned the atrophy of American intelligence capabilities. Whether the special prosecutor indicts or exonerates Rove and Libby legally doesn’t matter. Valerie Plame was a soldier in service to the United States, unprotected by uniform or diplomatic immunity. I have no idea whether she served well or poorly, or violated regulations later. But she did serve. And thus, she and all the other NOCs were owed far more — especially by a conservative administration — than they got.

Even if that debt wasn’t owed to Plame, it remains in place for all the other spooks standing guard in dangerous places.”

26 thoughts on “Tierney: Wrong Again”

  2. cleek: funny you should ask…

    “Perjury, of course, was the charge that Kenneth Starr accurately pinned on Bill Clinton, but the public didn’t buy it. People realized that whatever the affair and the cover-up said about Clinton’s character and judgment, the scandal was not a crime.
    Unless Fitzgerald comes up with something unexpected, neither is Nadagate. For now, it looks as if the outing of Valerie Wilson was done by officials who didn’t think it was illegal and believed they were replying truthfully to a partisan who had smeared them. Hardball politics isn’t pretty, but it’s not criminal, either.”

  3. Hilzoy thanks,
    he did a clever little winkwink there … “the public didn’t buy it (yeah, you, JQ Public – you didn’t buy that, did you?)”
    i got three words for that: Rule Of Law, MthrFkkr. (last one wasn’t really a word)

  4. I got it. Cheney takes full responsibility, resigns with a speech. Bush pardons everybody and they stay in place. Watch.

  5. Jeez. They didn’t think it was illegal? “Oh, I’m sorry your honor, I didn’t think spraying buckshot around was going to hurt someone….”
    Does Tierney think we’re morons? Or is HE one?

  7. OT, everyone really should watch the Frontline documentary that just aired, “The Torture Question”. It will be available online tomorrow at noon. I mean, a lot of it was not new, but some of it is, and in any case it’s worth having it one place and actually on TV, even only if on PBS.
    What actually struck me was: they’re not even mentioning Bagram, the Salt Pit, a lot of the deaths in custody I can name off the top of my head; they gave a very cursory account of rendition with no specifics except al-Libi; etc. etc. etc.–and none of this because they aren’t doing an absolutely fantastic job. I’ve not seen or read a better account of what the situation was actually like for interrogators in Iraq; the mortar attacks on Abu Ghraib. But to fully report this story–if it can be done in a documentary at all, it’d be one of those Ken Burns nine parters.
    They also have a wealth of information available on their website. For example, I cannot recommend highly enough the interviews with military interrogators Tony Lagouranis and Roger Brokaw. Really–please read them, even if you don’t have time to watch the documentary. These men have no reason to lie; Lagouranis sounds like he may be opening himself up for possible prosecution (though it sounds like he was very careful about getting his orders in writing, so maybe not.) And every time someone asks you about the ticking time bomb hypothetical, send him or her to read it. Tell him that this is how it actually happens, and ask him how many more times it has to happen before we grow up, put aside the Jack Bauer fantasies and the wildly implausible fantasies and actually deal with it.

  8. Katherine, thanks for the links. I don’t have a TV, so I am particularly grateful to your links to the transcripts.
    I fear that it’s hopelessly blogospherocentric to think, in reaction to these interviews, “Thank God Phil Carter is out there now.”
    Both of the interviewees seemed like good, strong, decent men who were found themselves in situations outrageous, intolerable, and oddly unaccountable. And the younger one trained as an interrogator pre-9/11, and the older one did his training years ago.
    I’m starting to get a better picture of what happened: from the torture memo down the command chain, people eased prohibitions and simply let things happen. There was no penalty (and perhaps even benefits, but we’ll find all that out later), for many months, and so things escalated.
    We’ll probably never manage to pin a pro-torture stance on the Bush Administration–the appalling measures in committee to gut the McCain anti-torture statue notwithstanding. What might work is some political version of criminal negligence.

  9. Probably irrelevant, but I took a cursory read of the last ten posts on Redstate, and they are in deep coming apart mode. We have Erick the Red falling back on Rush Limbaugh for some lucious rage againt their President and, I think, Mark Kilmer, quoting someone on how no one gets out alive by crossing George Jefferson Clinton Bush and lives to tell about it.
    Yeah, we know.
    So, regarding the Fitzgerald suspense, I feel like I’m on my 12th volume of the Left Behind series and still no apocalypse. I’m beginning to understand how Pat Robertson feels; God sends the disasters but he forgets the pony.
    I find it mildly disappointing too, that a be-togaed Roman historian has not shown up in the Redstate comments threads, denouncing the hate — the hate emanating from the erstwhile Redstate commentariat lately. You’d think he’d include equal time as a middling feature of the consistent life ethic.
    That said, I hope we can all live together after whatever, if anything, is coming down comes down. It will be a very somber Schadenfreude celebration or some bitter crow.
    Principles are all very nice in their place.
    I hope we’re on the eve of an era of renewed compromise.
    But I doubt it. Especially since the other side has decided to clutch at their wretched principles in defiance of the guy who has brought them within reach of alot of dead Medicaid patients. The shark*, the great white one, has been jumped. Shame, really.
    *Yeah, I know, I’m riding the shark, too.

  11. No, I don’t think negligence. “Negligence”, as a legal term of art in a criminal case, implies that you don’t necessarily know the risk; if you do know the risk and you proceed merrily along, that’s called “recklessness.”
    I think the evidence proves not only recklessness but “recklessness manifesting an extreme indifference to the value of human life”. And in some cases probably more than that. (You have to remember that I know the most about rendition, which is where the “few bad apples” defense holds the least water.)
    But look. To take this out of legalese, there was a quotation from Human Rights Watch after Abu Ghraib: “they opened the door to a little bit of torture, and a whole lot of torture walked through.” That sounded about right to me at the time, and it’s been confirmed over and over again.

  13. This case did not begin because of accusations that anyone had violated a specific law. It began with accusations that someone in the administration had outed an undercover CIA agent.
    I would say it began with both, Hil. There were no small number from the Left, claiming that whoever outed Plame committed treason. Even the “interesting” Paul Krugman hinted at it shortly after Novak’s column.
    Reuel Marc Gerecht, an actual onetime CIA case officer, offered a saner perspective nearly two years ago:

    The Bush administration’s critics in the Wilson affair should be commended for worrying about the possible “blowback” on foreign contacts when operatives like Valerie Plame are exposed. The odds that any of her contacts are suffering, however, are small: Casual, even constant, open association with CIA officers isn’t necessarily damning even in countries that look dimly upon unauthorized CIA operational activity within their borders. The CIA is an intelligence arm of the United States, not the Soviet Union. The French, the Indians, the Turks, and the Pakistanis–at times troublesome foreigners with first-rate, often adversarial internal-security services–know the difference.
    And if Plame, as has been suggested, was overseas as a non-official cover officer, known in the trade as a NOC, her associations are even less at risk, since foreigners have vastly more plausible deniability with NOCs, who are not as easy to identify as officially covered officers. It is important to note that if Plame was ever a NOC, her associations overseas were jeopardized long ago by the Agency’s decision to allow her to come “inside”–that is, become a headquarters-based officer (even one with a poorly “backstopped” business cover like Plame’s Boston front company, Brewster-Jennings & Associates).
    This officially sanctioned “outing” of NOCs is a longstanding problem in the CIA, where non-official cover officers regularly tire of their “outsider” existence (“inside” officers dominate the Directorate of Operations). It is not uncommon to find former NOCs serving inside CIA stations and bases in geographic regions where they once served non-officially, which of course immediately destroys the cover legend they used as a NOC. Foreign counterintelligence services naturally assume once a spook always a spook. Since foreign counterespionage organizations often share information about the CIA, this outside-inside transformation of NOCs can readily become known beyond one country’s borders.
    Whether or not Valerie Plame was engaged in serious work inside the Agency’s Non-Proliferation Center, one has to ask what in the world her bosses were doing in allowing her husband, a public figure, to accept a non-secret assignment which potentially had a public profile? Journalists regularly learn the names of clandestine-service officers. Senior agency officials may well have thought very little of Ambassador Wilson’s “yellowcake” mission to Niger, which explains CIA director George Tenet’s statement about his ignorance of it. They may have thought Wilson an ideal candidate for this low-priority, fact-finding mission. But neither is an excuse for employing a spouse of an undercover employee if senior CIA officials thought Plame’s clandestine work was valuable. The head of the Non-Proliferation Center ought to be fired for such sloppiness.
    […]
    America’s clandestine-service officers would be much more likely to defend us effectively against the threats coming from the Middle East and elsewhere if Congress, the White House, and the press took cover much more seriously. Ambassador Wilson is, at least on this one issue, unquestionably right. It is, as any NOC will tell you, the fundamental building block of any successful operation.

    This piece is also pretty informative, mostly sourced from the SIC investigation. Whether or not the outing broke the law, the leakers should be fired, first and foremost because it was an insidious act. If Cheney was responsible, so be it. I didn’t think he should’ve been vice president for a second term anyway.

  15. Charles: I would say it began with both, Hil. There were no small number from the Left, claiming that whoever outed Plame committed treason.
    No, Hilzoy is right: the case began with accusations that someone in the administration had outed an undercover CIA agent.
    Speculation about precisely what that meant – which included some extremely sexist and stupid speculations from the Right that Valerie Plame couldn’t possibly have been a NOC because she’s a GIRL – has ranged from
    “No crime was committed because she wasn’t undercover, it was just standard political payback and Joseph Wilson deserved it” to
    “Karl Rove committed treason”.
    The things that I think we can be certain of, at this point in time, are:
    1. Valerie Plame was undercover. (If she was not, the entire case falls to the ground, and I think we can conclude that it has not.)
    2. Someone senior in the Bush administration told Novak, and other journalists, that Plame worked for the CIA.
    3. Their motivation for doing so was to punish Joseph Wilson.
    4. Leaking Plame’s identity to journalists so recklessly for such a partisan and petty reason was a vile act, and whoever did it is scum.
    What we don’t know for sure is:
    1. Who did it.
    2. Who knew who was going to do it before it was done.
    3. Who knew who did it after it was done.
    4. Precisely what offense the people from 1, 2, and 3 can be charged with.
    5. Whether they will be found guilty on those charges.

  16. Charles: like Jes, I think the case began with concern over the fact that someone had outed a CIA agent. But in any case, Tierney uses his claim that it began with concern about a specific law having been violated to conclude that the original basis has disappeared. And even if it began with both, Tierney’s just wrong on that one.

  17. CB, I think if the investigation had commenced because Michael Moore was going around accusing Karl Rove of treason, or Joe Wilson, for that matter, it would make sense for people to be trying to sift through what facts are public to decide whether a crime can even have been committed.
    The investigation was not commenced by Joe Wilson, though. It was commenced by the CIA. Now I’m not saying that I think the CIA knows its *ss from a hole in the ground when it comes to information about our enemies, but surely, SURELY it knows the status of its own employees.
    On to the main point though: accountability. If it turns out that it was Rove, and that Bush knew it was Rove all along and actively concealed this information from you — making misleading if not directly false statements — while seeking your vote for another term, what do you think Bush owes you?
    (I’m not sure he owes me anything. I already thought he was a liar, including about this is particular, and my opinion of the man’s personal ethics could not go lower).

  18. No, Hilzoy is right: the case began with accusations that someone in the administration had outed an undercover CIA agent.
    The “case” for treason was in the court of public opinion from the get-go, Jes. That was why I brought Mr. Interesting.
    If it turns out that it was Rove, and that Bush knew it was Rove all along and actively concealed this information from you — making misleading if not directly false statements — while seeking your vote for another term, what do you think Bush owes you?
    If that were the case, then Bush provably lied, Charley. The result would be calamitous because he’s already stretched his support from conservatives too far. If you haven’t checked out Redstate recently, you should. Publicly being caught in a lie would be a breaking point for me and a whole host of other conservatives.

  19. “That was why I brought Mr. Interesting.”
    Big whoosh there, CB.
    “a breaking point for me”
    Though it would be hard to believe I’m being sincere in saying this, I regret the discomfort I imagine you’re feeling in this matter.

  20. Publicly being caught in a lie would be a breaking point for me and a whole host of other conservatives.
    I mean this with both utter ignorance and utter sincerity: if it were proven publicly that Bush had lied on this matter, how exactly would this change conservative support for Bush or the Bush Administration?

  22. Charles: The “case” for treason was in the court of public opinion from the get-go, Jes.
    Yes, Charles. But the cause for the accusations of treason was that a senior member of the Bush administration had outed an undercover CIA agent.
    Publicly being caught in a lie would be a breaking point for me and a whole host of other conservatives.
    You’ve had a lot of breaking points so far, then, without his losing your support.

  23. Charles,
    The Gerecht piece is interesting, but underlying his viewpoint is his belief that the CIA has been broken since Casey. Thus, any assertion that the outing of Plame damaged the US and the intelligence gathering abilities will be dismissed by Gerecht. If he feels that the agency is already broken, worrying about Plame is irrelevant.
    That this view seems a bit too convenient is not a big stretch. After all, this was the same Gerecht who, a year ago,:
    strongly defended the administration’s case for war and argued that Hussein does, indeed, have ties to Al-Qaeda. He also said the African uranium story may well be true because British intelligence independently backs the claim, albeit without providing any evidence.
    But Gerecht says the main issue in the battle between the CIA and “hawks” in the administration was not over individual intelligence claims but over the very notion of war with Iraq. He accuses the U.S. intelligence establishment of harboring a deep ideological bias against overthrowing Hussein, which affected its threat assessment.
    “For the State Department and the [CIA] it was undoubtedly ideological,” Gerecht says. “It was driven by the belief that the war would be destabilizing in the Middle East and would cause disturbance to the status quo. And that is something that the State Department dislikes intensely because it’s very much a status quo institution, where its relationships overseas as they exist are what matters.”
    It is much easier to take the attitude that Gerecht does if you feel that 1) the CIA is already broken beyond repair and 2) Wilson’s debunking of the uranium claim was false and that there was actually some truth to what are generally agreed to be porrly forged documents. Or, by analogy, if someone believes that the sun goddess is coaxed out of her lair every spring, you really can’t trust that person’s opinions on meteorological research.

  24. For what it’s worth, Valery Plame’s name, and relationship to Wilson (last paragraph) was public knowledge on the internet in 2002 (before scandal), on Mr. Weilson’s biography.
    (from Justin Katz)

  25. DaveC, are you really falling for this? It’s not her name. It’s her job.
    Her name and relationship to Wilson was known to everyone at her wedding, everyone on her street, all the people she sees at parties, etc, etc.
    What all those people did not know until Novak’s column is that she was CIA, not working for the private outfit she told everyone she worked for.
    Besides, as Slart has been reminding us, it’s still a violation of the provisions of the leakers’ security clearance to leak classified information, even if its already been disclosed somewhere.

  26. DaveC: For what it’s worth, Valery Plame’s name, and relationship to Wilson (last paragraph) was public knowledge on the internet in 2002 (before scandal), on Mr. Weilson’s biography.
    But not that she was a covert CIA agent, Dave.
    After all, my real name, and my relationship to my father, is public knowledge (well, it’s public if you know my real name, which, you know, some people do…) but it’s not public knowledge that I’m an undercover MI6 agent*. Or that you are.
    *Just in case anyone from MI6 is reading this blog: yes, that was a joke.

Comments are closed.