What Is Up With The DNI?

Saturday Update: 1 GI; 65 68 Iraqis Killed, 35 38 Wounded;
100+ Iraqi Troops Poisoned

Credibility! Integrity!

“It was absolutely a bad decision. I regret it happened. Certainly … I should have stopped it,” said John “Pat” Philbin, FEMA’s director of external affairs. “I hope readers understand we’re working very hard to establish credibility and integrity, and I would hope this does not undermine it.”

While it's more amusing than disturbing that one of the idiots who set up the fake FEMA press conference, John "Pat" Philbin landed on his feet after resigning as Director of External Affairs (whatever that is) and takes a job at Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell's office as the head of public affairs -- but putting that together what EmptyWheel says about McConnell's transformation from openness and candor to the Cheney-like Dark Side of secrets and lies makes for interesting speculation -- like, did Philbin also get a raise? A medal? A Presidential Hug?

Michael McConnell started his first two months on the job with a solid record for candor and accuracy. He avoided political doublespeak. And then something strange happened. He became a shameless and irresponsible political propagandist.

The game is definitely afoot! And the Game is called Bullshit!

McConnell reversed his earlier practice of declassifying and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates on the eve of a new NIE which will say Iran is years off from being a nuclear threat -- well after Bush/Cheney are out of power.

So let's see. We have Dick Cheney refusing to allow the information that refutes his warmongering to be declassified. We have these curious stories that both clash and happen to coincide with some of John Bolton's earlier warmongering. And we have Israel's and the US' choice to bomb this site rather than allow the IAEA to inspect it and tell us what it really was.

Bolton was feeding none other than Judy Miller his latest conspiracy theory on Syria trying to get nukes back in September -- the very same day those "before" pictures were taken of the site Israel knocked out. Now we'll never know for sure what was going on there, but the confluence of events, coupled with the news that there seems to have been zero activity at the site since 2003 when Bolton first got a hard-on for Syrian nukes -- inactivity that is now conveniently unprovable, makes me believe that a complex shadow-play is in the works. It's has a different effect on Pam's Panties -- but she's been first in line for the mustache rides for a while.

And from the world of "By The Way..." get a load of this:

The US military is building a base in Iraq less than 10 kilometers (about six miles) from Iran's border. The facility, known as Combat Outpost Shocker, is meant for American soldiers preventing Iranian weapons from being smuggled into Iraq. But it's also rumored that Bush authorized US intelligence agencies in April to run sabotage missions against the mullah regime on Iranian soil.

If ever there was a time when the director of National Intelligence needed a spin-meister with more balls than sense, it's now. Looks like McConnell found just the guy, someone capable of one heckuvajob.

[And by the way, Bolton is still up to no good. You see, he never finished the job he wanted to do to Iran.]

Higazy

Glancing at the Washington Post's Nation Section, I was pleasantly
surprised that beyond the headline of the day covered by every major
paper -- the California wildfires -- they were reporting on real news
this morning. It's a shame this "news" was stuff I already knew from reading blogs.

Nothing really new here, but the good news is that they didn't blow these stories off. Especially the Higazy case, which is the first time I've come across a court opinion that was yanked and reissued with sections redacted for "national security" reasons. Just because the story is a week old doesn't make it less important, both for the world to know about how the threat of torture or of retribution to one's family is a common practice in the law enforcement community -- even before "9/11 changed everything."

The Post also tips it's the hat to the blogosphere that not only kept the story alive, but preserved the evidence of what the government considers proper information to keep from the public -- which turned out to be more embarassing than any kind of state secret of sources or methods of intelligence gathering.

Oh, and I did learn something from the article. That radio Higazy was suspected of using as a homing beacon for the jets that crashed into the Trade Center Towers belonged to someone else.

Three days later, an airline pilot from Ohio who had stayed one floor below Higazy on Sept. 11 walked into the Millenium Hilton
and asked for his radio. Within two days, Higazy was released, and a
hotel security guard eventually pleaded guilty to making false
statements to FBI agents about the location of the radio.

"What if that pilot had not walked into the Millenium Hotel?" Abady
said. "We know that Mr. Higazy could have spent the rest of his life in
prison."

This case is the poster child of why torture, or even the threat of torture should be left to the pages of a more barbaric time and place. It doesn't work and we lose a bit of our humanity even discussing it's utility. There is no reason whatsoever to see it practiced in the 21st century.

For more background, including the redacted portions of the opinion and links to the original, look at my previous post from Tuesday.