The View from Right Field

Honoring Chelsea Manning. The Coastal Elite Doesn’t See a Problem

Harvard invited, and then uninvited, Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning) to speak at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University as a Visiting Fellow last week.  I do not want to go into the question of whether it was appropriate to invite Ms. Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, to be a Visiting Fellow.  I don’t think it was, but that is not the point of this post.  Rather, what is most interesting to me is that Douglas Elmendorf, the dean of the Kennedy School, invited Ms. Manning in the first place.

Mr. Elmendorf’s, and the Kennedy School’s, invitation was incredibly tone deaf.  It was as if they were living in an isolated little community up in the hills somewhere where TV reception was spotty and the Internet didn’t reach.  Except they are in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Though, perhaps, they are just as isolated, in their own way.

David Petraeus and Hillary Clinton. One Was Convicted and Faces Demotion. The Other Is Running for President.

A couple of exclusive stories yesterday combine to raise a very interesting question about Hillary Clinton’s email system.

An exclusive story at The Daily Beast reported that Defense Secretary Ash Carter is reviewing General David Petraeus’s misuse of classified information and is considering whether to retroactively demote General Petraeus, even though he officially retired almost four years ago.  According to The Daily Beast:

“Carter is said to be concerned that because he has recommended other generals be reduced in rank for actions not becoming an officer, he’ll be seen as inconsistent if he doesn’t do the same for Petraeus.  The decision is as much about timing and politics as it is Petraeus’s own transgressions. 

‘This is about Ash Carter, not David Petraeus,’ the defense official said.”

Fox News had the other exclusive.  They reported that, according to an unclassified letter from the Intelligence Community Inspector General, I. Charles McCullough III, a review of emails on Hillary Clinton’s personal email server identified several dozen additional classified emails. 

Here’s Why Iran Won’t Violate the Nuclear Agreement – Or At Least Why We Won’t Say They Are

An editorial in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune notes that, while negotiations with Iran were going on, Secretary of State Kerry said Iran was going to have to disclose its past work on building nuclear weapons, i.e., weaponization, as part of any deal.

When the agreement was finally announced, the International Atomic Energy Agency was delegated the job of finding this out.

But the Obama administration is now hedging.  The Administration is saying it doesn’t need Iran to say what it has been doing.  “[W]e believe we already know about Iran’s past activities,” it claims.  This from intelligence agencies that have gotten virtually nothing right about the Middle East for decades.

What Does David Petraeus’s Case Have to Say About Hillary Clinton’s E-mail Account?

Earlier this week General David Petraeus agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information.  General Petraeus gave Paula Broadwell, his biographer (and mistress), access to eight black notebooks that contained highly classified information from his time in Afghanistan.  He let her look at them in connection with the biography she was writing about him.  While no classified information appeared in the book (according to the agreed-upon “Factual Basis” filed in court by the Department of Justice and General Petraeus), he showed her the classified information, and he lied to the FBI about it.¹

The Factual Basis filed in General Petraeus’s case is of special interest because it contains statements that are of interest with respect to one of the other big stories of the week: Hillary Clinton’s rather unusual way of handling her e-mails while she was Secretary of State.  As the stories have reported, former Secretary Clinton never used, or even had, a government e-mail address while she was Secretary of State.  Instead, all of her e-mails went through a private e-mail system with a registered address at her home in Chappaqua, New York.  In addition, former Secretary Clinton did not provide copies of her e-mails from her time in office to the government until the State Department affirmatively asked for them almost two years after she left office.  And even then, she only provided copies of e-mails that her people decided belonged to the government.  As far as the news reports indicate, State Department officials did not look at the e-mails to see if they agreed that former Secretary Clinton had turned over everything that was required.

So, how does General Petraeus’s case relate to this? 

Like a Rolling Stone: Why Didn’t the People Writing the Senate CIA Report Talk to the CIA?

As I said yesterday, if there are certain interrogation techniques that the United States, as the country it is, should not be using, and I am sure there are, then we shouldn’t use them, whether they allegedly work or not.

But another comment needs to be made.  It appears that the Senate Report was prepared without talking to or interviewing anybody at the CIA.  That is astounding.  That sounds like the Rolling Stone article.  Talking to people at the CIA might not have changed the report, but it would have been fair play.

Senate CIA Report: Better Hindsight Than Ted Williams’ Eyesight

Ted Williams was famously said to have 20/10 eyesight.  But that is nothing compared to the hindsight of the Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

First, though, a caveat on the following comment(s): I have not read the report.  I have only read articles about it.  With that qualification, let me say this:

Some of what was done appears to have been horrible.  It may be that some of those things should not have been done.  However, I would argue that if they were that bad, then we shouldn’t have done them regardless of how effective they were.  Right and wrong does not depend on effectiveness.  If they were wrong, they were wrong.  Even if they worked. 

Saying something is wrong if it doesn’t work and right if it does is not the rule.  Because you’re never going to know for sure what works and what doesn’t work.  That is pretty clear from the report and the comments on it.  The Senate Democrats say the techniques didn’t work; others say they did.  But how bad these things were doesn’t depend on whether they worked.

Spying on Germany – “So Much Stupidity Makes You Want to Cry”

A week ago, I mentioned a story I had read in the German press about Germany’s arrest of an employee of its foreign intelligence agency on charges of spying for the United States.  It wasn’t, and hasn’t been, big news in the United States, what with the “children’s crusade” down south and all, but it has been in Germany.  Especially once the Germans announced they were investigating a second German government employee on suspicion of spying for the US.  Last Thursday Germany “asked” the United States’ top CIA official to leave the country.  That is normally the kind of thing you do to the Russians, not an ally.

Needless to say, this is a big deal for Germany.  Chancellor Merkel first spoke about it when she was in China recently, even though it obviously had nothing to do with her trip there.  The Chicago Tribune reported that, on Saturday, Chancellor Merkel said:

“It is not how about how angry I was.  For me it is a sign that we [i.e., Germany and the U.S.] have fundamentally different conceptions of the work of the intelligence services.”

“We are not living in the Cold War anymore and are exposed to different threats.  We should concentrate on what is essential.”*

Josh Earnest, President Obama’s new Press Secretary, tried to tell Chancellor Merkel to cool it:

“[W]hen differences arise, we’re committed to resolving those differences through the established channels. … We don’t believe that trying to resolve them through the media is appropriate.”*

Clearly, however, given Chancellor Merkel’s comments on Saturday, Germany doesn’t think that “established channels” are working. 

Eli Lake at the Daily Beast explains why he thinks it makes sense for the US to spy on Germany.  Still, it was only last fall that Chancellor Merkel discovered the US was listening in on her private cellphone calls.**  Spying and governmental monitoring of people’s private phone calls, etc., are a sensitive issue in Germany because of the Nazis and Stasi periods in German history.

Given that, and given all of the problems around the world where we need Germany’s help, I find it a little hard to believe that the United States would be risking our relationship with the Germans and Chancellor Merkel by this spying.  It seems dumb.  Clearly, the Administration needs to get its act together.  If leadership at the CIA, the State Department, and the White House knew about spying, they need to get smarter.  If they didn’t know, it’s even worse, and the Administration needs to figure out how it can know – and control – what the CIA, et al, are doing.

The bottom line is, as German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said last week: “[This] is just so stupid, and so much stupidity makes you just want to cry.”
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* “Merkel: U.S., Germany at odds over intel methods,” Chicago Tribune, July 13, 2014.  (It was a short, seven-paragraph story on the far-inside pages.

** Why should Chancellor Merkel be any different than anybody else?  Lots of people in the US have traded in their answering machines, figuring the NSA can just pass on any messages it thinks are important.  Just kidding.  I think.

The 3:00 AM Calls Keep Coming. Is Anybody There?

According to Michael Morell, the CIA’s number two official, who is retiring after 33 years with the agency, Syria is the top threat to U.S. security.  This from The Wall Street Journal:

“Michael Morell says the risk is that the Syrian government, which possesses chemical and other advanced weapons, collapses and the country becomes al Qaeda's new haven, supplanting Pakistan. …

‘It's probably the most important issue in the world today,’ he said, ‘because of where it is currently heading.’  Its current track is toward the collapse of its central government, he said. …

The Syrian government's weapons, Mr. Morell said, ‘are going to be up for grabs and up for sale’ as they were in Libya.  The violence in Syria has the potential to spill over into Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.”

This is a concern because I don’t think President Obama has a clue what we should be doing in Syria.  Last year Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus urged President Obama to supply arms to Syrian rebels.  (Here, too.)  President Obama said no (inter alia, there was a campaign on), but now he has changed his mind.  Sort of.  There are apparently so many rules and conditions tied to our aid, it is unclear when the aid will get there and how much good it will do.  The biggest problem, though, is the Syria’s weapons.  Given how poorly we and our allies did in keeping track of Libya’s weapons after Moammar Gaddafi was overthrown, Syria scares me.  There is no reason to think we are ready.

With respect to other threats facing the United States, Mr. Morell listed:

• Iran [given how well President Assad respected the “red-line” we drew with respect to Syria using chemical weapons, I am sure Iran won’t be a problem];
• global Al-Qaeda [I thought President Obama said we beat them];
• North Korea; and
• cyberwarfare [at least the NSA is getting in some practice on its spying].

Mr. Morell summed up by saying: "I don't remember a time when there have been so many national-security issues on the front burner as there are today."

Given that President Obama’s solution to most domestic issues is to blame congressional Republicans and then go someplace to give a speech, House Republicans should get ready to be blamed for a lot of foreign problems, too.  And the White House better make sure the President’s teleprompter works on 220 current.

Seriously, if Mr. Morell is right about Syria, we are in trouble because I don’t think President Obama knows what to do.

Iranian Nukes, North Korean Nukes, And What We Don’t Know

As readers of this blog know, I am very skeptical about the Administration's statements that they will know a year in advance before Iran gets nuclear weapons.  They say this, I assume, to reassure us that they will have time to act (doing what I am not sure) before this occurs.  But will they really know?  Consider this report from The New York Times last Thursday on North Korea’s nuclear capability:

“The nation’s top intelligence official said Thursday that a one-paragraph assessment about North Korea’s ability to arm a nuclear missile was mistakenly declassified by the Pentagon’s intelligence agency, an inadvertent disclosure that revealed competing views on the country within the United States’ spy agencies.

… [T]he official, James R. Clapper, Jr., the director of national intelligence, issued a statement saying that the position by the Defense Intelligence Agency did not reflect the consensus view of the 15 other intelligence agencies.

But Mr. Clapper, in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, offered new details and a fuller explanation of why the D.I.A.’s conclusion last month – with ‘moderate confidence’ – that North Korea has learned how to shrink a nuclear weapon to fit into a nuclear warhead was at odds with all the other intelligence agencies.

‘The difference has to do with the confidence level in the actual ability of the North Koreans to make a weapon that will work in a missile,’ Mr. Clapper, said ….

Mr. Clapper continued: ‘D.I.A. has a higher confidence level than the rest of the community on that capability. That’s the difference.’”

This is exactly my point about the Administration’s apparent confidence that we will know a year before Iran gets nuclear weapons.  We can’t be sure.  Our intelligence agencies don’t agree, and even if they did, they often get it wrong. 

I understand we probably know more about Iran than we do about North Korea.  As Olli Heinonen noted in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the International Atomic Energy Agency visits Iran’s major uranium-enrichment facility about twice a month, so we have an idea what is happening there.  But Iran has surprised us before, and Iran won’t let the IAEA visit all of the facilities it wants to.

We can’t count on knowing a year in advance as to Iran getting nuclear weapons.  We need a bigger safety margin.  Because being wrong could be very dangerous.

Iran Will Get Nuclear Weapons (If They Want Them) – In Spite of What President Obama Says

Earlier this month Vice President Biden said that President Obama is “not bluffing” when it comes to stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.  Secretary of State John Kerry said, “Lines have been drawn before and they’ve been passed.  That’s why the president has been so definitive this time.” 

So why do I think Iran will get nuclear weapons?  Because I do not think we can stop them.  And that’s mainly because by the time we decide we need to act, it will be too late.  Either Iran will surprise us and already have a nuclear weapon before we realize it or we will wait so long it will be too late to act even if we know about it ahead of time.  Or most likely, some of both,

Olli Heinonen, a Finn who retired as deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (“IAEA”) in 2010, said in an interview with David Feith of The Wall Street Journal on March 2, 2013, that "if you go back to the nuclear programs which have been revealed {elsewhere}, they all came with a surprise.” 

There are at least two scenarios on how a surprise (or partial surprise) could happen.  Olli Heinonen explains one of them.  Though it is not a complete surprise, it would have much of the same effect:

“[I]t could go the North Korea route – defined by Mr. Heinonen as deciding ‘Enough is enough, to heck with this, we'll build a nuclear weapon’ – in ‘a month or two,’ he says.  The precise timing would depend on how (and how well) Iranian engineers go about enriching their uranium stocks to weapons-grade purity. But in any case, Mr. Heinonen notes, Iran's breakout would likely outpace the ability of the ‘international community’ to respond.

First, IAEA inspectors would have to detect the breakout.  This could take up to two weeks because they visit Iran's major uranium-enrichment facility about 24 times a year.  (Roughly half of the visits are announced, meaning inspectors give the Iranians 10 days' notice, and the rest are unannounced, meaning about two hours' notice at any time of day.)  Once inside, inspectors would quickly recognize from the enrichment machinery that Iran was dashing to a bomb, says Mr. Heinonen, but that would hardly be the end of the story.

The inspectors would formally alert the IAEA board, which takes ‘a few days' time.’  The board would meet and pass a resolution (which ‘needs a few days’) and then engage the United Nations Security Council (‘also not an overnight decision’).  ‘In reality,’ he says, ‘one month is gone.  Well, during that one month [Iran] may have achieved their goal, at least to have enough high-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.  What next?’  Iran would have become the world's ninth confirmed nuclear state.”

The other scenario is the full surprise.  It assumes that Iran has secret facilities, and as Mr. Heinonen says: “If there is no undeclared installation [in Iran] today . . . it will be the first time in 20 years that Iran doesn't have one.”

This scenario could go like this:  Iran will continue to say that they do not want, and do not have a program for, nuclear weapons.  They will maintain they are enriching uranium only for research and energy, not for weapons.  And they will keep saying this until just before they announce that they have a nuclear weapon.  But when they announce they have a nuclear weapon, they will not admit that they were lying when they said they were not developing nuclear weapons.  Rather they will say that they were forced into developing a nuclear weapon to protect themselves against the West.   The sanctions – and threats of attack – forced them to develop a nuclear weapon, even though they did not want one.

But why won’t we know about it?  Because it is hard to know for sure.  Expecting our intelligence agencies to tell us exactly when Iran will get nuclear weapons is expecting too much of them.  They have not been able to get things like that right in the past; why do we think they can do it now?*

Stephen Carter writes about Gordon Corera’s new book on the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6:

“As Corera points out, the enemy of good intelligence work is often time. It can take months or years to determine whether a bit of information is even true -- longer still to figure out what it means. The faster the spies have to work, the greater the likelihood of error.”

After everybody’s intelligence agencies got it wrong about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the CIA, et al., will not want to make the same mistake again.  Instead of rushing, this time they may hesitate too much.  They will wait because they are not sure. 

Just as there our intelligence agencies will hesitate in telling our leaders about the status of Iran’s nuclear program, our leaders will hesitate in deciding to act.  Saying we will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons is easy.  Actually stopping them is hard.  It is so hard, in fact, and so dangerous, that the ultimate decision to do something will keep getting put off (as it has been).  By the time the intelligence agencies tell our leaders it is time to act and by the time our leaders decide to act, it will be too late, if it is not too late already. 

Iran will get nuclear weapons if they want them.  And it is hard to see why they would not want them.

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* For a post expanding a little on this point, see here.