Results of CIA investigations continue to be leaked. Concern was expressed at this norm-breaking. The norms exist for a reason, though. The CIA’s reason for existence is national security.
The President of the United States is acting in conflict with the recommendations of his national security agencies and in conflict with national security. Sending troops to the border for political effect. Sharing another nation’s highly classified intelligence with an adversary. Bragging about a plane that he believes is invisible. Failing to visit the troops in war zones. And more.
This is a conundrum for the national security agencies. The internet and the availability of information are changing their roles too.
Information once of limited availability is now on the internet. Some are free, some for sale. Overhead satellite photos, court documents, historical archives, social media that inadvertently shows significant features.
Non-governmental organizations can check up on government claims. Here is a report analyzing overhead photos of a North Korean missile base. An interactive website tours the Russian nuclear test site on the Novaya Zemlya island chain, far above the Arctic Circle. A Twitter thread outlines the project.
So, @annemp13 and I built an annotated tour of Russia's Novaya Zemlya nuclear test site. I wanted to talk about what has been one of my favorite all-time projects.https://t.co/FoqU5H1iP0
— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) November 15, 2018
The Bellingcat group has investigated the two GRU agents who probably carried out the poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal by nerve agents and the incident between Russian and Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait. Emptywheel has mined court and other documents to understand the Mueller investigation of Russian influence on the 2016 elections.
The nongovernmental organizations share their work, sometimes in progress, on the internet. Twitter is a particularly effective platform because others can easily critique the work. (Disclosure: I have worked with both the Middlebury Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies and Bellingcat in this way. I’ve offered occasional comments to others.)
These investigations are of as high a quality as can be achieved by national intelligence organizations. But typically the national intelligence organizations would keep their investigations secret.
There are two major reasons for that secrecy: to keep others from knowing the information, and protection of sources and methods. The others from whom the information is kept may be other nations, but they may also be the citizens of the agency’s own nation. Both Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush lied about bringing the United States into wars. That becomes more difficult with open-source intelligence to check the claims.
For example, Trump has claimed that North Korea has ended its nuclear weapons programs, but satellite photos show that missile emplacements are still operating and even expanding.
The intelligence agencies may well collect similar information and come to similar conclusions. They watch the open-source version make its way across the internet, independent of their actions. Inadvertent acquisition of this information on computers may require that the computers be scrubbed.
And then there’s the possibility that the open-source investigators will beat the agencies to a conclusion. The agencies have been reluctant to use open sources. I’m not sure how they feel about that these days.
Conversely, excessive requirements of secrecy can make governing harder. The nature of the Russian violation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty has just been made public, after several years of American claims denied by the Russians. There is no obvious reason why the information on which the claims are based could not have been made public, and the impasse might have been solved.
Governments have always used declassification or leaks to make selected information public. Turkey is currently releasing information, a bit at a time, about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi to confound both the United States and Saudi Arabia. Turkey has managed to keep the story in the headlines in this way and can be expected to continue until President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan feels he has accomplished his goals or is dissuaded from them.
“Information conflict” might be a better descriptor of what is commonly called “cyberwar.” An analogy with dropping bombs and shooting is misleading. Cyberweapons have a liability that physical weapons do not: once they are used, the opponent can develop defenses against them.
On the one hand, that makes secrecy about capabilities and intentions in information conflict more important than in conventional warfare, and on the other, it makes those weapons much more transient. New ones must constantly be developed.
Breaking secrecy can become a counter. US Cyber Command is sending messages directly to known Russian operatives and is making their code public. This is as destructive as, say bombing a factory. It is also a tool that can be used more than once, so it is much more powerful than operations carried out purely with code.
Casting governance as an information system may give insight into better ways to defend from the social-media sabotage aimed at the 2016 US election.
The internet is changing intelligence gathering and information warfare. We need entirely new ways of thinking that are only beginning to develop.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner.
jl
Wonder if this info was classified too? And I thought this dude survived by keeping his head down and not talking about anything not strictly related to his military business. Trump has already outed him as a liberal Democrat! He’s been outed and is under suspicion by our Dear Leaders.
@Acosta
Mattis at Reagan Library today on Russia: “There is no doubt the relationship has worsened. He (Putin) tried again to muck around in our elections this last month and we are seeing a continued effort along those lines.”
https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1068968191567654912
I wonder how much of the bizarre Russian meeting drama at the summit is related to this? I assume it’s true, since the Trumpsters have said different.
Ruckus
In many, many more areas than just the intelligence community.
trollhattan
From one of your links, this seems awesome.
Revenge of the Nerds!
Cheryl Rofer
@jl: That’s an interesting question, and I can’t even guess. Mattis seems to be a straight arrow, so from that I would expect that what he said was declassified. It’s only a very general statement that Putin “mucked around” in the election, so that would be easier to declassify than specifics. Mattis has a fair bit of classification authority, although the President is supposed to be the ultimate authority. It would be his judgment whether to consult the President.
Cheryl Rofer
@trollhattan: There’s a lot more in most of my links above. I tried to give a broad overview, to highlight the big points. But yeah, some interesting things are happening.
NotMax
Quibble: LBJ lied to obtain Congressional carte blanche to escalate an ongoing war, not to start one.
Mike in NC
Now that Pompeo is no longer at the CIA, perhaps the intelligence professionals at Langley will make a greater effort to protect classified material from getting into the money-grubbing hands of the Trump Crime Cartel, who’ll eagerly pass it along to their contacts in the Kremlin for a profit. They did all get millions from Putin’s cronies.
On an unrelated note, there’s a very good column by Marc Fisher in the Washington Post today about Trump’s long, sordid history of dealing with the underworld as a NYC real estate tycoon. He’s done so much business with the mafia that he thinks and talks like them. Just call him the “Mobster-in-Chief”.
Deep Southerner
Perhaps the CIA leaks are coming because the CIA has decided to leak it? Would that really be terribly surprising given the Commander In Chief they serve, and his relationship with his own intelligence community?
I think once he’s out of office, and someone halfway sane succeeds him, they could very well clam right back up.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@NotMax:
That was Kennedy. And before him, the French.
Omnes Omnibus
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Ever hear of Eisenhower?
Dan B
Paul Rosenberg has an interesting piece in Salon and Raw Story that’s nominally about Democrats not attempting to compromise but several parts apply to this schism between the IC and Trump / Tea Party. He details the cycles that have repeatedly pushed the GOP to the extreme Right and away from problem solving or serving the public. Mattis and the IC seem to be in a previous cycle where some belief in serving the public interest still remains.
His piece outlines a few policies that would follow the public’s desires and would advance a progressive agenda.
Schlemazel
One positive to this nightmare is that it should prove once and for all that the CIA did not have JFK killed.
Hair furor would be stone cold by now it they worked that way
Jay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: @Omnes Omnibus:
Goes all the way back to Truman.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Schlemazel: Well of course it wasn’t the CIA. Ted Cruz’ dad killed JFK, remember?
Schlemazel
@NotMax:
If you listen to the tapes LBJ worked very hard to expose the lie. He sent McNamara to the Pentagon to obtain proof that the Tonkin thing was fake. Sadly, it was election season and doD had him over the barrel. Since he could not disprove it he had to accept it.
It was a moral failing but the alternative could have meant a GOldwater administration and that would have been much worse
Schlemazel
@(((CassandraLeo))):
:)
because of his Cuban/CIA connections. It could have been Castro but we can be sure now it is not the CIA
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: I would argue that Truman was merely providing support to the French.
J R in WV
Thinking of a Secretary of Defense Curtis LeMay, for one tiny example, star of Dr Strangelove.
Major Major Major Major
Ooh, that link (and its links) look very interesting. We read a number of papers like this in grad school that I keep meaning to track down the authors of.
Schlemazel
@Omnes Omnibus:
The dagger in the heart was Ike/Dulles destroying the Geneva agreement on unification of Vietnam. He sent Marines there in 1957 and prevented the election that would have given Ho Chi Min control of the nation.
Schlemazel
@J R in WV:
Exactly. LBJ made a cowardly decision that cost tens of thousands their lives. He was wrong. But the alternative could have been so much worse
raven
Fuck LBJ
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@raven:
Medicare, Civil Rights Act of 1964, VRA, expansion of Social Security, etc. Vietnam really overshadows a lot of the good LBJ did. I’m not saying that excuses Vietnam, but I think we should judge him based on everything he did at the same time.
raven
@J R in WV:
raven
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Fuck LBJ and fuck you with that shit.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@raven:
Sorry. Was editing it to say none of that excuses Vietnam before I saw this post. Vietnam was definitely a waste
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@raven:
I also understand you’re a Vietnam veteran, right? That must have been hard for you, especially losing friends you knew.
Chetan Murthy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: @raven: LBJ was a complex man. I read _The Best and the Brightest_[1] and it seems clear that he -sacrificed- Vietnam [both our soldiers, and the Vietnamese people], on the altar of getting these domestic things done.
raven had [IIRC] to pay for this with the blood of his friends, and some part of his youth, maybe his health [I don’t remember, sorry]. It is only fair and reasonable that he can and should have such an attitude about LBJ. It doesn’t change anything that LBJ did those laudable things domestically: he did it via a devilish bargain.
[1] Maybe the book is biased; I haven’t seen anything that makes that argument though.
Johnnybuck
Fuck Kirby and his trick play bullshit!
raven
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: That’s the name of that tune.
raven
@Johnnybuck: GO DAWGS!!!!
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah… I forgot about that re: raven. He has every right to feel the way he does in light of that. I tried to hedge when I was editing it (the sentence you bolded) because I realized how it came out and I remembered that raven was a vet (I think).
Johnnybuck
@raven: That one hurt bad,
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@raven:
I don’t get the reference. What are you saying?
raven
@Johnnybuck: We got beat by the best team in college football by a touchdown. No one has, or will, come close to that this year. The play was not executed well but they were running up and down the field at will in the 4th and that would have given us a shot.
Omnes Omnibus
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Sometimes it is best to just drop it.
Chetan Murthy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Raven [, other veterans, and their families] aren’t the only ones who have a right to feel anger towards LBJ. We citizens give a sacred trust to our tribunes, that they’ll only expend blood and treasure when it really matters. Amongst the excellent reasons that Dubya is the second-most-reviled President in history, is his prosecuting an illegal and pointless [indeed counterproductive to American interests] war.
You don’t have to be a veteran, to realize that the Vietnam War was counterproductive: all you need to be, is awake and with your eyes open to see that Vietnam is nearly an ally today. Then you read the history of the region, and you realize that they were never going to be China’s ally long-term.
No President should expend blood and treasure as a way of shoring up domestic support for their agenda.
Chetan Murthy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Goku, um, I feel that, one can’t *merely* apologize to veterans and their families; one can’t say one empathizes with them, or sympathizes with them, or whatever, and think it ends there [, as if that’s enough]. The JOB was to ensure that they didn’t risk their lives and health for BULLSHIT. That was the job, and we all failed at that job. So we need to ensure that next time, we don’t fail, is all.
Maybe that’s not what raven’s saying. But it’s an old, hidebound, and meaningless refrain: “The nation thanks you for your service and your sacrifice”. B/c again: the greatest thanks would be ensuring that it’s not in vain.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
The Roosevelt Administration’s position was to support decolonialization after the War. Against the advice of the OSS liasons, and people who knew what was what in Vietnam, the Truman Administration supported French Recolonization, predominantly because the cash flow would help France rebuild faster.
Of course, positive cash flow from Vietnam didn’t last long.
By 1949, 80% of military aid being sent to France under the Marshall Plan, for France to rebuild her Military, wound up in Vietnam.
Kennedy wrote home during his 1951 Tour of Vietnam that it was an “unwinnable” Colonial War, and that in the end, the Vietnamese would win. The “history” of the Vietnam War is basically one Administration after another “staying the course”, until finally, they couldn’t any more.
raven
@Chetan Murthy: yup
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Yes, thank you for the patronizing lecture on the subject. I have never read a book on it myself.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@raven: @Chetan Murthy:
Well, I truly am sorry for offending you, raven. I mean that. It wasn’t my intention to minimize what you went through. And I’ll never know what it was like, unless I went through it myself. Your experiences are your uniquely your own.
raven
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: don’t sweat the small shit
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Chetan Murthy:
Don’t disagree with any of that.
Chetan Murthy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Can you see that
is fundamentally in conflict with
??
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Let me put it really, really bluntly: How many American soldiers would you authorize to be killed [as President] if you could enact Medicare-for-All? That is the calculus anybody who thinks we should “judge LBJ’s record a a whole” is advocating.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: My uncle who was in Nam went on a DC Honor Flight back in September.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
You are welcome. There’s many books on Vietnam I can recommend if you want to address your ignorance.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: God, I didn’t know they were doing them for us already.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Chetan Murthy:
Well, I guess if put bluntly like that, I would have to decline doing that. I’d have to find a different way to enact universal healthcare.
Frank Wilhoit
@Chetan Murthy: The difficulty is that there is no way to make tradeoffs — no matter how cynical or Machiavellian — within a broken system, because the results are not predictable.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Yep. You are old.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Fuck you.
@Chetan Murthy: @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Obama made that calculation.
raven
@Chetan Murthy: Hey Hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?
Look up yonder in the sky, now, what is that I pray?
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a man insane, it’s my President LBJ.
He’s flying high way up in the sky just like Superman,
But I got a little piece of kryptonite,
Yes, I’ll bring him back to land.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Omnes Omnibus:
I miss him.
I couldn’t believe he said that, either.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: Omnes, you have a way of forcing people to think about things they really don’t want to. It’s a good habit. I’m whipsawed between agreeing with you, and disagreeing. You have any pointers to things I could read to help inform me?
(1) first reaction: Ugh. You’re right. He felt he had to go along with the national security establishment in order to govern at all. You’re right, that this is a version of that calculation.
(2) OTOH it sure seemed to me that he was pretty centrist, foreign-policy/empire-wise, from the get-go.
And while he wanted our major wars to end, he WAS NOT a peacenik. In short, I don’t quite see him as making a tradeoff. Which is, well, maybe that’s even worse.
(3) but then I remember that he replaced (as much as possible) “boots on the ground” with drones. [and sure sure, the impact on the people being targeted isn’t that different, but at least, less “American blood” — and sure, that’s a pretty parochial POV.]
(4) and it seems like over time, he learned that these overseas “interventions” were not good things, and he reined them in.
[Thru ignorance somewhat, though I feel like I was pretty well-informed during Obama’s tenure] I never got the sense that he -had- to cozy up to the national security state to get his agenda passed. Instead, it felt to me like me started off cozy with them, and bit-by-bit learned that they weren’t exactly as smart as they seemed, ended up in the position where he could back off from his own “red line” in Syria, for instance.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: No, I was just making an observation. Where you go with it is up to you.
J R in WV
@raven:
Hard to admit that Curtis LeMay wasn’t all bad, then.
Could have ended the earth’s biosphere as we know it, leaving a ruin… nothing but glow-in-the-dark cockroaches and six-legged rats.
Also Geo. Wallace’s running mate, there’s a nearly contrast, tho George wasn’t the bigot he pretended to be for political purposes. Grew up in Columbus, Ohio.
J R in WV
@Jay:
Fuck you, you arrogant snot !!
You are not the be all and end all of anything, anywhere.
Begone, faithless serpent!
ETA: My last name is on that wall in DC, and I’ll point out that all the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Hmong, etc names are MISSING from that wall, no room for that many names.
Again, Fuck you and your lame claim to knowledge others here don’t have in spades. Ass! Trumpian monster!!
Johnnybuck
@raven: You may be right about that, but having Fields out there? I would have punted and give my defense a little more room to work. It’s all good, and I agree no one else will come close.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fuck you too.
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I politely pointed out that America’s failed Vietnam Policies started with Truman, not Ike, and were known at the start, that they would fail.
For that, the condescending piece of shit wrote a condescending piece of shit response.
If you can’t take it, you shouldn’t dish it.
What other wars of late have continued Administration after Administration because of “staying the course”?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jay:
Iraq and Afghanistan?
Cheryl Rofer
Why don’t you all lighten up a little. Happy Hanukkah on the next thread!
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: In the interest of comity, let me explain my irritation. Goku suggested the JFK started the troop build up in VN. I said that it was Ike. You then brought up Truman. I commented that I would argue that Truman was just supporting the French. Then you responded with a multiple paragraph exposition of what I had just said as though I had no knowledge of the topic. That is annoying to some. YMMV.
Mike in DC
@Jay: Successful counterinsurgency campaigns, while uncommon, do happen to take a very long time to succeed(30 years is not unheard of). Keeping boots on the ground for a long time isn’t necessarily a marker of failed policy, though a noticeable lack of progress usually is.
Steve in the ATL
@Johnnybuck: goddamn right.
Steve in the ATL
@raven: goddamn right!
Jay
The Moro’s started their “insurgency” ( decolonization War) against Spain in 1656. It’s still going, despite Spanish “counter insurgencies”, American, Japanese, American again and the Phillipines.
Boots on the Ground don’t win “counter insurgencies”, Heart’s and Minds do. It start’s with having a better Goverment.
Despite spending billions in Afghanistan, ( trillions in Vietnam) we havn’t helped the Afghan’s create a “better Government”. We did create massive Corporate profits, and make billionaires out of the same Warlords, Drug Dealers and War Criminals that tore Afghanistan apart, before, during and after the Soviet Afghan War.
How are “we” doing in Somalia?
27 years and counting.
Raven
@Jay: dog, you wandered into the wrong place.
Ladyraxterinok
@raven: What happened to LeMay , then?
I remember reading about his scary views and statements he made in 60s?70s.
km
Really interesting post. At a product development company where I used to work a habit of excessive secrecy resulted in a bad business decision not being outed for years. Easy for me to imagine avoidable mistakes occurring in government because the ideas behind them were protected by secrecy.
Ladyraxterinok
@Jay: The Senate Republicans White Paper on Vietnam of 1968–I learned here that HoChiMin appealed to US and Britain for aid when French came back after WWII to retake their colonial French Indochina. When the US and Britain refused to help, despite the fact that the Vietnamese had fought the Japanese, Ho turned to the Soviets.
Ladyraxterinok
@Ladyraxterinok: In 1954 Nixon wanted US to send troops to aid the French in DienBenPhu. Eisenhower said he was never sending American boys to fight snd die in a landwar in Asia.
When I was in Germany in 62 as part of my graduate study, I met a US serviceman stationed there.. He said everyone in the service there was requesting transfer to Vietnam. Because that’s where the action was and therefore the opportunity for advancement.
Ladyraxterinok
@raven: Hey, hey, ho, ho, Hell no we won’t go!
Saw in Germany at time of HW’s First Gulf War–Rolf, Rolf, Nicht zum Golf!
Another Scott
@Ladyraxterinok: He was Wallace’s running mate for VP in 1968.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jerry
Speaking of open source intelligence on the net, I remember OSS.net back in the early 2000s. I think that dude may have fallen off into the deep end lately, but his site back then was a valuable resource for open source intelligence especially when it came to the Iraq war.
There was another site that I frequented back then that focused on leaked intelligence and satellite imagery. For the life of me, I cannot remember the name of that site. Maybe someone here remembers it based on my scant memories of it?
rachel
@raven: Our Vietnam stupidity started under Eisenhower, revved up further under JFK, and then LBJ for continued to send Americans off to kill and die there. When he had a chance to stop it, Nixon schemed with Anna Chennault and Bui Diem to scuttle LBJ’s peace negotiations, leading to 4 more years US involvement in Vietnam.
You know all this of course, but I wanted to explain that while I say “Fuck LBJ,” I want to add “and fuck Eisenhower and Kennedy too, but most especially fuck Nixon with Satan’s own cock.”