The Torture Report

Amazing.  The Senate's torture report is out and, despite my one-time obsession with the subject, I feel no urge to post about it.  One thing should be kept in mind.  Horrifying as this report is, it is only the tip of the iceberg.  It addresses torture in secret sites by the CIA.  It does not address far more widespread, though probably more amateurish, use of torture by the military (see Abu Graib).

Maybe if I have a strong stomach, I can get to it later.  But 500 pages (to say nothing of 6000!) is formidable.

Cross-posted at Essayist-Lawyer.

About That Intuition --

Okay, I didn't see that coming. I have argued before that when terrorists attack, first intuitions about who they are are usually good. This latest one in Norway is an exception. My initial intuition was exactly the same as most people's -- that these were jihadis, probably with Al-Qaeda. Why?

Well, going over old attack , my intuitions have generally been sound. With the first attack on the World Trade Center, I (like most Americans) had no idea who it would be and did not expect and answer for months. It came within a week -- Mideastern Islamic terrorists. Okay.

With the Oklahoma City Bombing, a lot of people immediately assumed Mideastern terrorists, now in the Heartland. I didn't. I was working for the state legislature at the time and the right wing was in the midst of a freakout over having a Democrat in the White House. We were getting inundated with their literature.* So they were very much in my mind at the time of the bombing. But there was more than that. The Oklahoma City Federal Building just didn't seem like a "sexy" enough target to interest Mideastern Terrorists. An attack on the World Trade Center is an attack on America. An attack on the Oklahoma City Federal Building is an attack on the federal government.** Granted, jihadis probably don't make the distinction -- but our own domestic militias certainly do. (Besides, how many Mideastern terrorists could find Oklahoma City on a map?)

The 9-11 attacks were something different altogether. That had to be the work of Mideastern terrorists, probably Al-Qaeda. First of all, it was manifestly an attack on America, something our homegrown militias would never do. Second, it was unthinkable that our domestic terrorists would do anything that big. And third, well, Bin Laden had been in the news a lot lately, so he seemed like the obvious choice.

Much the same applies to the Madrid bombings of 2004. The Spanish government tried to blame them on the Basques, but it just wasn't credible. The Basques just didn't do anything on that scale. Jihadis did.

My intuitions have usually been sound. When a gunman shoots up Virginia Tech, I assume a crazed loner because almost all mass shootings are the work of crazed loners. When a bomb goes off at the Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Washington, I assume white supremacists because (1) there is a lot of white supremacist activity in the Spokane area and (2) Mari tn Luther King Day is an obvious target. When a bomb is found in Times Square, I don't pay much attention to people who think it is someone opposed to Obamacare because (1) Manhattan isn't exactly militia central, but it has a lot of Muslims, who may include at least some extremists and (2) a bomb in Times Square bears no apparent connection whatever to Obamacare. It looks more like an attack on America. When a gunman shoots down an Arizona Democratic Congresswoman meeting with constituents, I dismiss all thought of jihad and assume either a lone crazed nut or an angry constituent. (Admitted, I thought his anger would be over something a little more substantial than her inability to explain the meaninglessness of language).

So, when I read that a gunman in Norway is mowing down teens at a youth camp, I would assume lone crazed nut. Hearing it happened within an hour of a car bomb in Oslo that targeted the prime minister's office, I assume the attacks must be connected, and further assume Mideastern terrorists, probably Al-Qaeda. Why? Because although the shooting could be a crazed loner, a bomb outside the Prime Minister's office just screams terrorist. Because the two events happening so close is too neat to be a coincidence. They have to be coordinated, and that type of coordination is a hallmark of Al-Qaeda. Both the bombing, which looks like an attack on Norway's entire system of government, and the senseless slaughter of innocents at the youth camp reek of Al-Qaeda. I was surprised that the attack was in Norway instead of Denmark, land of the cartoons, but the newspapers gave plenty of possible Islamist connections. Even the news that the gunman was a blond, Nordic-looking fellow with an east Norwegian accent was not conclusive. He might be a convert, after all, chosen so as not to look suspicious.

But now it appears he is a right-wing anti-immigrant nationalists. I didn't know Norway had right wing anti-immigrant terrorists. Learning that there are doesn't really surprise me. What utterly surprises me is his choice of target. I would expect an anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant terrorist to hit a mosque, or an Islamic cultural center or maybe an immigration office, but not the Prime Minister's office, and definitely not a youth camp. I can only assume he staged the attacks in hopes that Muslims would be blamed.

Update: So, it appears he chose his targets as an attack on the liberals who are enabling Muslim immigration. I realize it is a mistake to project too much about a general movement from the actions of one deranged member. But it suggests a radicalization of at least the more extreme members of the anti-immigration movement, a willingness to move away from attacks on immigrants to attacks on the core of the political establishment. (In US lingo, to move from mere hate crime to real terrorism). This is the sort of thing that is going to make authorities take right-wing threats much more seriously than in the past.
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*With the sole exception of one petition signed by the John Birch Society, they were all prepared literature from out of state and not from constituents.
**Also, the bombing took place on April 19, which seasoned militia watchers says is a sacred day to militias. I did not know this at the time.

Giving Up Our Values: Been There, Done That

I suppose one of the reasons I have so little patience with the argument that Islamic terrorism poses such an existential threat to us that our moral value are a luxury we just can't afford is that I am old enough to remember hearing such arguments before during the Cold War.

Granted, at least back then no one was arguing that we should torture. But we had plenty of allies who tortured, and we often abetted them and encouraged them. Any concern for freedom, democracy or human rights beyond our borders was dismissed as simply expendible in view of the emergency. Even within our borders, there had been revelations of shocking abuses by our government -- domestic spying, harassment of political opponents and the like. Plenty of people argued that the Russians had a hopeless advantage over us because they were not constrained by democracy and open government, that democratic accountability was an unsupportable burden, and, in short, that the only way to defeat the Soviets was to become as much like them as possible. To anyone who argued that if we became just like the Soviets, what was the point of beating them in the first place the answer was simply survival. We and the Russians had enough nuclear missiles pointed at each other to destroy each other many times over. With the stakes that high, maintaining our values and remaining free and democratic had to take second place to protecting our existence.

I remember those times and those arguments. As I listened, I hoped they were wrong and feared they were right. And then 1989 came along, Communism collapsed all across Eastern Europe, and doomsayers were proven gloriously wrong. The Soviet Union was unmasked as nothing but a Third World country with nuclear missiles. Its despotism and secrecy, far from being sources of strength, were continually undermining it. Our openness and accountability were not fatal weaknesses, but vital strengths. Arguments by many that the Soviets had a hopeless advantage in intelligence because they controlled the flow of information and we did not turned out to be false. In fact, the Soviets found our free flow of information baffling if not incomprehensible.

With freedom and openness so vindicated at the end of the Cold War, I had hoped such debate was at an end. But with the September 11 attack came the same arguments, often by the same people, that against such a ruthless and devious enemy, our freedom and values were a luxury we simply could not afford. Well guess what. The Soviet Union was a nation spreading from Leningrad to Vladivostok, with more people than the US and enough nuclear missiles to destroy us many time over. Al-Qaeda never had more than a few thousand members, hiding and sneaking around, with no more than small arms. It's late in the game to be saying this, I realize, but if we could survive the Cold War and keep freedom intact, we can do the same for the War on Terror. If enough nuclear missiles to destroy us many times over couldn't turn us into a dictatorship, then neither should terrorist with box cutters. Anyone who would argue that our values can't survive a challenge should read up on old Cold War literature making the exact same arguments -- and remember how it all turned out.

Some Very Unoriginal Thoughts on Torture and Finding Bin Laden

I know it's late to be addressing the role of torture and finding Osama Bin Laden, but now that everyone else had put their two bits worth in, I might as well, too. In fact, it may have been better to delay and allow more information to come out.

Let me begin with a qualification. Every report that comes from insiders with an agenda to promote should be take with a grain of salt. I remember too well the story of John Kiriakou, the CIA agent who implied that he was personally involved in the interrogation of Abu Zubayda. By his account, Abu Zubayda gave only limited information in response to conventional interrogation, but after a single water boarding broke and gave extensive information. It later turned out that Kiriakou was not present but was merely repeatig what he had been told, that Abu Zubayda was treated far more brutally that he had been led to believe, and that his role was much exaggerated.

That being said, this account by top investigative reporter Michael Isikoff appears to be based on multiple sources, many of which were not inteded for public disclosure, and may be treated as the best account we currently have. He gives the following chronology:

Even before 9/11, US intelligence knew that Bin Laden communicated with the outside world by way of couriers. Identifying his couriers was therefore a high priority among US interrogators.

December, 2001, Mohammed al-Qahtani, believed to be the 20th hijacker for 9/11 is captured at the battle of Tora Bora and taken to Guantanamo. Once is identity is learned (by fingerprints) he is savagely tortured and reveals that he was trained in computers by "Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti," a high level courier working for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM). This is what is generally reported as giving the courier's nickname or nom de guerre. It also reveals an important bit of information since "al-Kuwaiti" means exactly what it sounds like -- he was from Kuwait. (That Abu Ahmed was an associkate of KSM, also a Kuwaiti, further established that they were different people). Abu Ahmed means father of Ahmed and may mean that he actually had a son by that name, or it may be purely symbolic. The torturers also learned that the Kuwaiti was at Tora Bora, but, of course, not what became of him after that.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Al-Qaeda association uncertain, arrested in Mauritania September 29, 2001, bounced around various countries and tortured, and ends up in Guantanamo, where he is also tortured. He reports that the Kuwaiti was killed at Tora Bora. (Note: Since Slahi was arrested in another country before the battle of Tora Bora, he could not possibly know what had become of the Kuwaiti).

March 1, 2003, KSM is captured in Pakistan. He is savagely tortured, including being waterboarded 183 times, in various black sites. Months later, when asked about the Kuwaiti, KSM acknowledges his existence, but denies that he was of any importance and says he is retired.

January 23, 2004, Hassan Ghul, whose role in Al-Qaeda and identity remain a mystery, is captured i Iraq and sent to a black site. After apparently brief torture, he confirmed the Kuwaiti's importance as a trusted messenger in the very top ranks of the Al-Qaeda hierarchy, but said the Kuwaiti had disappeared and he (Hassan Ghul) had no further contact with him. He also identified Abu Faraj al-Libi (the Libyan) as the new number three in Al-Qaeda. Hassan Ghul is no longer in US custody, and his fait remains unknown.

May 2, 2005, More detailed account of the phone callAb Faraj al-Libi is captured in Pakistan. Subjected to torture but not to waterboarding, the Libyan denied knowning the Kuwaiti and gave a made-up name for Bin Laden's courier. KSM also denied Hassan Ghul's account.

According to Isikoff, there were many mentions of the Kuwaiti by many detainees and many tidbits gleaned about him -- that he spoke Pushtun as well as Arabic (very useful when operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan), that he was good with computers, that he was a member of the inner circle, and that he was present at Tora Bora. Much of the information was false. But sorting through it, the CIA reached the conclusion that the mysterious Kuwaiti, true identity unknown, was probably Bin Laden's contact with the outside world. Hassan Ghul's statement that he had dropped out of sight was taken as evidence that he was hiding with Bin Laden. KSM and the Libyan's denials of his importance were taken as signs that they were hiding something.

Unknown date in 2007, the CIA determines the Kuwaiti's identity, though not his location. How they did that remains unknown, as does his original name. It should be noted that this took place during the Bush Administration. This means that at least some of the Bush officials touting the value of torture (though probably not all) know how this was determined. No one from either the Bush or Obama Administration is revealing how the Kuwaiti's real identity was determined. This probably means it involved some source that is still active.

Unknown date, 2009, courier's phone call to someone being monitor reveals his location. The CIA begins tracking him.

August, 2010, CIA tracks the Kuwaiti courier to a compound in Abbottobad. Its extreme security measures draw their attention. By September, they increasingly begin to suspect the compound houses Bin Laden.

March 14, 2011, although aerial surveillance has not actually spotted Bin Laden (apparently he never left the house, even within the compound), the CIA is confident enough to begin discussing options.

So what are we to conclude from all this? First, torture did not lead any Al-Qaeda operative to reveal the location of Bin Laden, the location of his trusted courier, or the true identity of the courier. Quite possibly, none of the captives knew this information. Neither is it clear that anyone under torture even revealed that the Kuwaiti was Bin Laden's contact with the outside world at all. Abu Faraj, the Libyan, had to have known this information, but gave a false name. It is unknown whether any of the others knew.

Second, torture apparently did yield many partial leads that the CIA was able to compile into a composite portrait of Bin Laden's trusted courier, who they determined to be the unknown Kuwaiti. This appears to have taken some time, and to have involved some blind alleys, such as the false name the Libyan gave.

Third, once the CIA had assembled its portrait, it turned to conventional intelligence gathering methods. In other words, it appears to have relied on torture, 2001 to at least 2005 and conventional intelligence gathering, 2007 to 2011. It is not clear what was going on 2005 to 2007.

To offer this as a defense of torture moves into some very disturbing territory. After all, all defenses of torture up until now have presupposed some degree of urgency. Ticking bombs give way to slow fuses, but the assumption has always been that there is some sort of a deadline and some sort of dire consequence if it is not met. Here there was no deadline. It took five years from when the CIA first learned of the Kuwaiti and three years from Hassan Ghul's confirmation of his importance to learn his identity, another two years to locate him, another year to trace him to the compound, and many months of surveillance to be comfortable (without ever positively confirming) that Bin Laden was there. And what would the consequences of not finding him have been? Simply the continuation of a status quo that we had learned to live with quite comfortably.

What proponents of torture are essentially arguing for is the mosaic theory of intelligence gathering. This amounts to the view that every scrap of intelligence, no matter how tiny, is worth while because it can be assembled into a larger picture. I have no general quarrel with this view. It is, as I understand it, how much of intelligence gathering works. But in the Bush Administration, the mosaic theory was used to justify indefinitely detaining and torturing anyone, innocent or guilty, high level or low level, for any scrap of information that might fit somewhere in the mosaic. My answer to anyone who would argue that torture was necessary because it filled in vital part of the mosaic would be that I would hold the mosaic theory to the same standard as the ticking bomb. We will never know if, in the absence of torture, we might have gleaned enough information from conventional interrogation, captured documents, and the like to assemble an adequate portrait of the mysterious Kuwaiti courier. To this day, we do not know how the CIA determined his identity.

The ticking bomb argument itself is dangerous -- how can we possibly know any situation is not a ticking bomb? But the mosaic theory of torture pushes the justification beyond any limits whatever. Or, as this Daily Kos poster puts it, "[I]f torture is acceptable to gain a sliver of information that MAY, given 6 years of hard conventional intelligence work down the line, be of value, then why have any rules at all on anything? After all, anything MIGHT work at some point in the future, including massacre of civilians."

Some General Thoughts on Killing Bin Laden

I know it's a little late to weigh in on Bin Laden, but let me give a few general thoughts. I hope to get to the question of torture soon. But let me add a few, mostly bureaucratic, thoughts.

Abbottabad

Look, I know this isn't very original, but when I heard that for all these years Bin Laden had been hiding, not in the Pakistani border areas, but in a town only about 30 miles from Islamabad, my first thought was that the Pakistani intelligence service must be either grossly incompetent, or more complicitous than we ever suspected.

Our intelligence services

First and most obviously, congratulations to our intelligence services for a job well done. This is the sort of cooperation among agencies that everyone has been advocating. That being said, it is also easier to achieve this sort of triumph given (1) unlimited time and resources, and (2) a narrow and limited objective. The second point is the more important. It is always easier to achieve a narrow and specific objective like "find Bin Laden" than than an extremely broad, general, open ended one like, "identify and stop all possible threats to us." And yes, I know, in order to avoid tunnel vision we really do need broad, open-ended mandates like figuring out what threats are out there. My point is not that we should give up broader objectives for narrower ones, but that we should not expect this impressive success to mean that our intelligence agencies are now infallible. They aren't.

Raid vs. bombing

From what I understand, Obama was presented with three choices -- send in special forces, bomb the compound, or watchful waiting. Without claiming any special information, I would guess that the military probably favored bombing (it would be their men whose lives were on the line, after all), and the intelligence services favored the raid. I would expect the intelligence services to favor a raid in hopes of capturing documents, laptops and other such information. By all accounts, their hopes have been well vindicated. Bombing would have destroyed all this valuable information. Bombing would have had other drawbacks as well, most notably the risk of collateral damage. After all, the compound was in a residential area, and might not have housed Bin Laden. (Apparently he never left the house, so aerial surveillance was not able to confirm his presence). So, once again, congratulations on a job well done.

The birth certificate

Yes, seriously. Seeing the raid come so soon after Obama released the long form certificate reminded me of The Essence of Decision, a history of the Cuban Missile Crisis with a particular focus on the bureaucratic operations of the respective governments. It discusses how Kennedy sought to conceal preparations for the confrontation by carrying on with normal activities, such as meeting with astronauts and foreign dignitaries and making commitments in Connecticut and Cleveland. He succeeded in distracting the Washington press core and (through them) the general public. But there were signs of a crisis brewing that could not be hidden from more sophisticated observers in Washington. Lights were burning late in the Pentagon and the State Department. Cots were being moved into offices. Certain prominent officials became inaccessible while their cars assembled together at the White House. Observing which sections were lighting up revealed where the crisis would be. British intelligence was able to figure out what was happening within 36 hours. Top investigative reporters for the New York Times and Washington Post figured out what was happening withing five days and had to be persuaded not to print the story ahead of the President's public announcement. One organization that was not able to figure out what was going on, despite an extensive intelligence apparatus in Washington, was the KGB.

It seems safe to assume that al-Qaeda does not have anything like the KGB's intelligence network in Washington, to say nothing of the slowness of communication by courier, but Obama still had to keep the attack secret until it was over. So a part of me wonders whether the timing of the birth certificate was a clever (and highly successful) ploy to distract. The timeline, if nothing else, is interesting:

March 14, 2001: The first of five national security meetings on how to respond to the compound.
Thursday, April 21: White House counsel asks the President's personal counsel to contact Hawaiian officials about how to request a waiver.
Friday, April 22: Obama sends the request to the Hawaii Department of Health
Monday, April 25: Counsel goes to Hawaii to pick up the birth certificate
Tuesday, April 26: Birth certificate delivered to the White House
Wednesday, April 27: Obama releases the long form
Thursday, April 28: Obama is asked for the final decision on the attack
Friday, April 29: Obama authorizes the commando attack on the compound, but it is delayed by inclement weather
Saturday, April 30: Obama attends the White House Correspondent's dinner and roundly mocks Donald Trump
Sunday, May 1: Bin Laden killed

It will, no doubt, be some time before we learn about all the meetings going on in Washington in the days leading up to the attack, but top officials must have had some idea it was near at hand. So I wonder if close observers of the Washington scene, ones too shrewd to be distracted by Birther nonsense, could observe signs of a crisis brewing, similar to the ones before the Cuban Missile Crisis.

A Perfect Ticking Bomb (Not!)

This latest terrorist plot seemed made to order for the ticking bomb scenario. A terrorst plot has seemingly been thwarted. Large numbers of brilliantly disguised bombs, powerful enough to destroy an airplaine in flight, are being sent out on multiple planes to multiple targets. The plot can't be aborted because the bombs have already been shipped out. Sure, we've stopped some of the bombs, but how do we know there aren't more out there? And now a suspect has been arrested? Can't we torture her to find out if there are any more bombs out there and, if so, where?

I was going to write a post explaining that no, not even this was a true ticking bomb. Granted, it comes remarkably close to what I have called the three essential conditions of a ticking bomb: (1) an immediate, known danger that we lack one critical piece of information to stop, (2) a suspect in custody known to have that information, (3) no possibility of finding the critical information to stop the attack other than torture. This actually does look remarkably like the first aspect of the ticking bomb -- a crystal ball with just one clouded spot. In this case, we have mostly thwarted the plot, but there may be more bombs out there. And we had the suspect who mailed the bombs.

So I was preparing to argue that the final condition -- no other way to find the bombs -- had not been met. The fact is, we now have a huge amount of information, rapidly growing. And, more importantly, we know what to look for and where it came from and that, too, cannot be changed now that the packages have been sent off. Yes, searching every package to come out of Yemen for that past few days will be a huge hassle, but it is doable. The inconvenience it causes is the sort of thing people can tolerate, considering the danger.

That was the post I was preparing to write, but events got ahead of me. It turns out the suspect was not, after all involved in the plot, but a simple victim of identity theft. Case closed.



(PS: Oh, and kudos to all the people, across many countries, who stopped the plot. A job well done!)

Despair: What Comes Next?

So, we've had another failed terrorist attack and the Obama Administration has agreed to suspend the Miranda Warning in order to avoid the frightful results that didn't happen when we read the Miranda Warning to Richard Reid and Umar Abdumatallab. So why haven't I had any posts on the War on Terror lately? Despair, mostly. Glenn Greenwald enjoys flailing wildly in impotent rage. I do not. But what other options are open when the Obama Administration:

Orders the extra-judicial killing of a US citizen;

Retroactively legalizes telecom reps setting up shop in FBI office to bypass usual warrant requirements;

Prosecutes two whistle blowers when the Bush Administration never prosecuted any;

Issues procedures for military commissions the presiding judge describes as "only a marginal improvement, and which go beyond the Bush rules by forbidding credit for time served;

Escalates covert operations against Iran and resorts to new tricks to keep them unaccountable;

Makes no changes to Bangram prision in Afghanistan which is Bangran: worse than Guantanamo, and where two-thirds of the 600 prisoners are estimated to be innocent;

Etc. Etc.

It's not that I blame Obama exclusively. At least he's not quite as bad as Congress, which is passing legislation to prevent lawyers for Guantanamo detainees from offering any effective defense, seeking to forbid the release of any detainee even if proven innocent, and even discussing legislation requiring terror suspects (including US citizens) to be locked away forever in military detention without a trial.

Any one of these developments would once have inspired me to an outraged post. But now what is there left?

The unfortunate fact is that terror suspects have no political power, and are up against the combined might of the military, the intelligence community, and much of our domestic security apparatus. There is no political upside in acknowledging they have any rights the white man is bound to respect, and much in proving how "tough" you can be. Matthew Yglesias describes the dynamic well, "If you have an incumbent administration being urged by the opposition to seize more power, and the public wants the administration to seize more power, then you get what we have today." The current escalation in jihadi plots can only escalate this dynamic.

So is there any alternative to despair? Any at all? I see only one, and it is a weak one. But if more right-wing terror plots are thwarted, although it will not convince anyone that Arabs have human rights, it might at least convince right wingers to limit Obama's power lest it be used against them.

Mostly, though, I can only think of despair.

A Few More Straws in the Wind

So, the Obama Administration has decided that if it isn't going to torture anybody or indefinitely detain Abdulmutallab without trial, it might as well at least expand the no-fly list, create a bigger hassle at airports, and subject passengers from whole countries, including Nigeria, to greater scrutiny. I suppose given heights of Republican hysteria, a Democratic administration has to mistreat somebody to show that it cares.

In a possible piece of good news, right-wing correspondent Michael Yon was senselessly hassled and subject to mindless scrutiny by TSA screeners. Good! The only way it will ever be politically safe to advance civil liberties is if a right-winger is hassled by a liberal administration. Maybe Yon can inspire the right wing to get some sanity back into airport procedures.

Of course, sanity in airports will only increase the pressure to torture people. . .

In other news, Glenn Greenwald has some excellent links, one explaining all the random noise distracting intelligence from real leads. (Alas, he does not give any figures on what percentage of tips are things like reports from the suspect's own father and how many are anonymous tips from paid informants, fourth-hand rumors and the like. Recognizing that some things have to be classified, that sort of general information can still be useful in figuring out what is going on and how the system went wrong).

The other explained the amount of distraction that accompanies even well-targeted intelligence gathering. Radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki is an obvious and very legitimate intelligence target. And, in fact, his e-mails are being monitored. He corresponded by e-mail with both Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hassan and underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. So did tens of thousands of others. How do you know which two correspondents out of tens of thousands will turn out to be the terrorists?

Update:

Apparently the Secret Service is regularly interviewing birthers. Good! For the same reason as screening Yon.

A Very Good Point

Adam Serwer has a very good point, amplifies by Obsidian Wings. We should all be grateful to Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab's father for approaching the US embassy to mention his son's alarming radicalism. Would he have done that if he had believed it would lead to his son being tortured, then locked away forever without a trial in a very ill-famed prison?

Another important question is, why aren't Democrats shouting this to the skies. Yes, I know, it is hard to call for sanity when the opposing party is denouncing sanity as unpatriotic. Torturing the Other and locking him away forever as far away as possible has a lot of appeal and recognizing the Other as human is hard, especially when one of Them just tried to kill a lot of Us. But it is time for the Obama Administration to grow the part of itself that Abdulmutallab damaged and make the attempt. The only way you will ever relieve the pressure to hurt more Muslims it to convince people that Muslims are human, too. And what better way to show it than to point out that the senior Abdulmutallab, himself a Muslim, was willing to tip off the US against his own son.

Read the torture memos over. Don't ask if it's torture. Ask if it's something a father would willingly expose his son to. And remind people, this father was willing to tip off a foreign country against his own son only because he was convinced of our justice and humanity. Anything that undermines that reputation is going to undermine the flow of tips.

Emphasize the importance of such tips. They have served us well up till now. Worried parents and the CAIR tipped of the FBI when five American Mustlims went to Pakistan to join the jihad. In Saudi Arabia today 60-70% of all information about al-Qaida suspects now comes from relatives, friends and neighbors, rather than security agencies or surveillance. Obama, Administration spokesmen, and leading Democrats should be hammering on this theme over and over again. Not all Muslims are our enemies. They have provided us with countless useful tips. To keep the tips coming, we must be seen to be fair and humane. Interviews with the senior Abdulmutallab and some of the parents who turned in their sons would help.

[And while we're at it, if Obama really wants to close GTMO, he should be revealing the stories of people wrongly held their who have gotten on with their lives after release. Of course, that would just emphasize more the crimes of his predecessor and heighten partisan attacks . . .].

Torture Memos, Continued

The memos describing torture authorized almost perfectly match the accounts given by the detainees to the Red Cross. At the time the Red Cross report first came out, there were questions as to its accuracy, but the parallels make amply clear that it is accurate.

The third memo authorizes a general process of 30 days, with the option to renew. The Red Cross accounts describe processes of a month or two.

The second memo authorizes sleep deprivation by chaining to the ceiling for up to 180hours (seven and a half days). The Red Cross report describes chaining to the ceiling for up to seven days.

The first memo authorizes placing Abu Zubayda in a cramped box, although he was wounded. Abu Zubayda described being placed in a cramped box, although wounded.

The memos authorize slamming subjects against a false wall, with a rolled towel around their necks to prevent whiplash. The Red Cross report describes subjects slammed against a wall with rolled towels against their necks to prevent whiplash. Zubayda mentions that the first time he was slammed against a solid wall, but afterward a plywood false wall was placed to soften the impact.

The memos state, and the Red Cross reports confirm, that only the three highest value detainees were waterboarded.

And so forth.

But in the end, this fine parsing over what is and is not torture might not be so bad if one keeps in mind that the Convention Against Torture (Article 16) requires each member to "prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture." In other words, the distinction between torture and "merely" "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment" is hard to make, but it is not in any event the distinction between lawful and unlawful, but only between a more and serious offense. That is what makes the final memo particularly appalling. One can argue over whether the CIA black sites cross over the line into torture or are merely "cruel inhumane and degrading," but the final memo argues that they are not cruel, inhumane or degrading, either.

First, the memo points out that since the black sites are other countries, they are not in "territory under [US] jurisdiction." The memo thus interprets the treaty as allowing members to evade this provision by taking their prisoners into each other's territory and engaging in cruel, inhumane and degrading conduct there. The memo further argues that, in ratifying the treaty, the Senate said it interpreted "cruel, inhumane and degrading" as equivalent to "cruel and unusual" under the Constitution. Since the Constitution does not apply to non-citizens outside the US, Article 16 allows us to be as cruel, inhumane and degrading as we want so long as it stops just short of torture and happens to non-citizens on foreign soil. Finally, the memo "enhanced interrogation" is being done to people who have not been convicted of a crime, and is not meant as punishment, but only to make them talk, government interest in fighting terrorism will outweigh any harm done. The memo then argues in detail its great care not to harm detainees by never dousing them with water cold enough to cause hypothermia, not allowing them to hang by the wrists when suspended from the ceiling, waterboarding with saline so they don't get pneumonia or electrolyte depletion, and other such acts of tender solicitude.

The worst part is, at least some Supreme Court justices these days would probably buy this argument. Antonin Scalia sees it as positively an affront to suggest that non-citizens outside the US have any rights. He has also expressed the general opinion that the ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" applies only to people who have been convicted of a crime. Before then, it is open season. And in the odious case of Martinez v. Chavez, the Supreme Court effectively approved the use of torture to extort a confession so long as the police ultimately conclude the subject was innocent and do not prosecute him. However, I am confident that Justice Kennedy would disagree, and that such a viewpoint would be rejected by today's Supreme Court on a vote of 5 to 4.

The Final "torture memo" released was the CIA Inspector General's Report. It adds relatively little, partly because it heavily quotes the original Yoo memo, partly because the three later memos quote heavily from it, but mostly because whole pages are blacked out. It makes the point that only some of the high value detainees were subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques," but that "unenhanced" techniques included forcible shaving, stripping, hooding, isolation, shackling upright, and sleep deprivation and diapering for up to 72 hours. It discusses the necessity of torture for gaining information, the difficulty in knowing whether a detainee is withholding or not, (Abu Zubayda continued to be waterboarded on orders from above long after his immediate interrogators believed he had told all he knew), the damage torture might have to America's moral standing, and fears of getting caught.

The most significant part of the Inspector General's Report is probably pages 85-89, in which they attempt to assess the effectiveness of their techniques. They conclude that torture did, in fact, yield valuable information, but they cannot determine which techniques were most effective since all were used at once. Page 87 identifies individuals, and page 88 plots that the subjects revealed under torture, although they did not uncover any evidence these plots were imminent.

In other words, no true ticking bomb. They cannot say that these plots could not have been discovered by other means, or even that they would have occurred at all. And, for what it is worth, FBI Agent Ali Soufan disputes this account, attributing much of the information the CIA says it obtained by torture in fact came from other sources. Not having any inside information, I cannot presume to judge.

I am well aware that many people, especially in light of the most recent attack, will say so what. The CIA black sites housed only a handful of high-value detainees, all high ranking Al-Qaeda members, all with important information, and all vile and evil terrorists who deserved what they go. And perhaps if those few had been the only ones tortured, one might dismiss the whole episode as a detail, a regretable incident that may or may not have been necessary. But what all too many people today are forgetting is that torture was not limited to a handful of high value Al-Qaeda detainees. The Senate Armed Services Committee has extensively documented that torture by the military was extensive, systematic, extending far beyond high level detainees or even low-level insurgents, and ordered from the very top. Any serious discussion of torture under the Bush Administration has to take into account that it was a regular, planned military policy -- and is probably still going on, albeit without official approval, to this day.

Torture Memos

This post addresses an unpleasant subject, one I have intended to write about for months, but somehow always managed to avoid -- the Torture Memos. Not the original one by John Yoo, that claimed the President had authority to torture, any law to the contrary notwithstanding. These are the memos explaining why various acts did not violate existing laws against torture, released by Obama before the general firestorm of controversy convinced him not to let anything else from the Bush Administration be released.

They begin with August 1, 2002 memo signed by John Yoo that (apparently) got things started. Abu Zubayda had been captured, and the CIA suspected he was holding back information and wanted to use "enhanced" techniques. They asked whether such techniques would violate anti-terrorism statutes. The outcome was predetermined. Yoo dissected the law in a manner familiar to anyone who has attended law school, breaking it down into constituent parts and determining which parts are met. (For instance, to violate the torture statute, an action must (1) take place outside the US, (2) be done under color of law (3) on a person in custody, (4) inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering, and (5) be intentional. Needless to say, conditions 1 through 3 can be safely assumed). The opinion, cool, detached and clinical, shows a stunning lack of imagination about what these techniques mean in the flesh and blood rather than on paper. Stress positions and long time standing can't possibly be painful because they will be limited by muscle fatigue. (Does he not realize that muscle fatigue, if severe, is itself painful?) Sleep deprivation can't be so bad because it has been done for 11 days in controlled experiments without long-term harm. (He obviously hasn't read memoirs of Soviet prisoners describing what prolonged sleep deprivation, for considerably shorter times than 11 days are like). And, of course, there is waterboarding. Severe pain is not distinguished from severe suffering. Prolonged mental harm is considered torture if it "profoundly disrupt[s] the senses," or involves the threat of imminent death. He acknowledges that waterboarding is an "imminent threat of death," but it doesn't cause prolonged mental harm because soldiers do it in SERE training. (Does Yoo not understand the difference between what is done at gunpoint and what is done in a training exercise?) But not to worry, even if you do end up causing severe pain or suffering or prolonged mental harm, you didn't intend to do it because I told you it was okay.

Apparently this memo was just a little too disingenuous because it was followed up by the Bradbury memo of May 10, 2005, which is somewhat more legally sophisticated than its predecessor. For instance, it acknowledges that experiencing many of these techniques as a prisoner may not be entirely the same as experiencing them as a trainee. It acknowledges that some things like muscle fatigue, waterboarding, or sleep deprivation, though not specifically painful, might be considered "suffering." But no problem. Pain, if sufficiently severe, is always torture, suffering, no matter how severe, is not torture unless sufficiently prolonged. (That clears waterboarding). And, unlike the earlier memo, it acknowledges the sleep deprivation, if sufficiently prolonged, may "profoundly disrupt the senses," (once again, try reading memoirs of Soviet prisoners to understand just how profound the disruption is, and just how unbearable). But it still approves the technique on the theory that prisoners will get over it once they sleep again. Unlike the earlier memo, which says there is no precedent on what is torture because no one has ever been prosecuted under the torture statute, the later memo admits there is precedent on what is torture when some other country does it -- and then engages in self-congratulatory preening for not being as bad as all that. (In fact it cites a case finding that prolonged sleep deprivation and waterboarding, described as "water torture," were torture, at least combined with other techniques such as beating).

But if it is legally more nuanced than its predecessor, the second memo is also more graphic. It described prisoners being kept awake for up to 180 hours by shackling them to the ceiling, which, it assures us, is not painful. (Care to try it?). Being held on one's feet for seven days causes swelling in the legs, but no problem, the swelling is not painful (ditto). It also gives a disturbingly graphic account of waterboarding. This is where it is revealed that it was done to Abu Zubayda 83 times and KSM 183 times. It also says that, unlike SERE training, which merely cut off oxygen and allowed CO2 levels to rise, waterboarding by the CIA allowed water to enter the upper respiratory tract, where it could be inhaled and cause pneumonia. Subjects also responded by swallowing as fast as they could. Some apparently drank so much water that the interrogators had to switch to saline to prevent electrolyte depletion. (Just how much water is that?) Finally, the memo offers the reassurance that a doctor will at all times be standing by to prevent harm. Somehow, though, that is not very reassuring because torturers regularly do exactly that -- to prevent the subject from being killed by accident.

Another memo follows, even more disturbing, that described the techniques as used in combination. Although the description of the techniques in combination is even more graphic and disturbing than reading about them separately, the memo naturally approves them. It engages is a certain self-congratulation for not using all the techniques at once, although all that means is that it is not possible to make a prisoner hold a stress position, slam him into the wall, hold him in a cramped box, and waterboard him all at the same time.

But perhaps most disturbing of all, even as the memo continues to insist that no "prolonged mental harm" is caused, it also explains that the purpose of the milder techniques is to "bring the detainee to 'a baseline, dependent state," 'demonstrat[ing] to the [detainee] that is has no control over basic human needs." (quotation marks and brackets in the original). The purpose of the harsher techniques is "to create a state of learned helplessness and dependence." I am reminded of nothing so much as the Star Trek episode Catspaw:

KIRK: So, are you going to wave your magic wand and destroy my mind, too?

SYLVIA: There's no damage, really, just a removal of all knowledge and will.

KIRK: You don't call that damage?

(Quoted from memory, minor errors are possible. Subject continued in the next post).

Data Mining: The Needle in a Haystack Problem

Let us be fair to Obama. He does appear to be committed to ending his predecessor's policies of torture and indefinite detention without hearing. He has, admittedly, been rather timid and incomplete in his approach, often more interested in covering up his predecessor's crimes than rooting them out. And even this tepid approach has engendered considerable resistence, which can only escalate in the wake of the most recent attack. But there is a clear and identifiable difference here between the Obama and Bush approaches.

By contrast, Obama has not created any daylight between himself and Bush on wiretapping (as it was finally approved by Congress). Nor is that all. The Bush Administration's approach to wiretapping attracted the most attention because of its blatant illegality, but it was only a small part of a larger whole that we still know very little about, and that the Obama Administration has embraced, apparently without modification. Consider:

The Inspector General's Report on surveillance found no evidence of intentional misuse of the warrantless surveillance program (p. 13), but warned that in its current, legal form it involves "unprecedented collection activities" that must be closely monitored (p. 38). The IG report gave only the vaguest hints what the warrantless surveillance consisted of, other than to quote NSA director Michael Hayden to the effect that saying the activities were "more aggressive" than FISA allowed, but "less intrusive" because the period of time was much shorter than authorized by a FISA warrant (p. 16). This appears to confirm reports by the Washington Post that computers were sifting "hundreds of thousands" of calls, faxes and e-mails into and out of the US. After various levels of screening, some agents were allowed to listen to some conversations -- about 5,000 people according to one source.

The Post article denied that any domestic calls had been subject to warrantless surveillance. But USA Today famously reported that the NSA was also keeping an immense database of all domestic phone calls, "the largest database ever assembled in the world," looking for suspicious patterns. The legality of this program has never been settled. The same goes for the less publicized Homeland Security program keeping score on international travelers to assess their threat risk.

There is no question about the legality of of National Security Letters, which allow the FBI to command the production of a wide variety of information without having to resort to a subpoena, let alone a warrant. FBI use of NSL's has been extensive, with some 140,000 such letters issues from 2003 to 2006, an average of nearly 50,000 a year. Approximately half of those letters did not lead to any prosecution at all, and most others were used in immigration, money laundering or fraud cases. Very few were used to prosecute actual terrorists. The total number dropped to 16,000 once such abuses were revealed, but soon began edging up again afterward. Also legal is the ever-expanding terrorism watch list, along with the much smaller No-Fly list, which nonetheless contains many dubious entries and torments even more innocent people who happen to have the same name as a tangential terror suspect.

And then there were plans that were rejected at first, only to be adopted in other form such as TIPS, which sought to recruit mail carriers, meter readers, repairmen and so forth as spies and informants. Or Total Information Awareness, that was supposed to analyze patterns in everything. These did not so much disappear as mutate. These are the Bush era policies and programs that the Obama Administration is keeping intact. All fit under the broad rubric of data mining.* All seek to vacuum up huge quantities of data and analyze it for patterns indicating terrorist activity.

Data mining has its defenders. For instance former libertarian Richard Posner argues that there is no danger to civil liberties because the initial scrutiny is done by machine, and only seen by human eyes (or ears) if the program indicates a threat to national security. The only danger could be in abuse the blackmail political rivals. Others at the time of the USA Today article argued that because of the sheer volume of data, there could be no danger to privacy.

The basic problem with looking for terrorists by data mining is there just aren't that many terrorists out there. The estimated number of Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen is 300. Another 200 are estimated to be in Pakistan. John Ashcroft's sweeping dragnet after 9-11 netted a grand total of one (Ali Saleh al-Marri). The sleeper cells predicted at the time never appeared. (I realize, of course, that Al-Qaeda is not the only terrorist organization in the world. But it is the only one that targets us). In short, we are looking for a needle in a haystack. Data mining in such an instance poses serious problems.

Security expert Bruce Schneier explains well. When searching for a needle in a haystack, adding more "hay" does not good at all. Computers and data mining are useful only if they are looking for something relatively common compared to the database searched. For instance, out of 900 million credit card in the US, about 1% are stolen or fraudulently used every year. One in a hundred is certainly the exception rather than the rule, but it is a common enough occurrence to be worth data mining for. By contrast, the 9-11 hijackers were a 19-man needle in a 300 million person haystack, beyond the ken of even the finest super computer to seek out. Even an extremely low rate of false alarms will swamp the system.

And that does, in fact, appear to have happened. The FBI, frustrated with all the false leads generated, began referring to them as "calls to Pizza Hut." An NSA data miner acknowldged, "Frankly, we'll probably be wrong 99 percent of the time . . . but 1 percent is far better than 1 in 100 million times if you were just guessing at random."

But there are obvious problems with generating so many false leads. The first is whether it is useful at all. The Inspector General's Report was unable to quantify its usefulness to any degree, other than to say that Hayden vouched for its usefulness and said that it would have captured two of the 9-11 hijacker. But has it thwarted any actual terrorist attacks? Most thwarted attacks have begun with a specific tip. (This is worth an entire post). Another, which Schneier focuses on, is the waste of manpower investigating false leads that might be put to other use.

But besides uselessness and the time and effort wasted on false leads, there are real civil libertarian dangers as well. Bush's defenders are quick to point out that none of the data mining led to COINTELPRO style abuses. So far as I know, this is true. But there are other kinds of dangers as well. When a system regularly generates false leads and forces police to investigate them, these fruitless investigations, too, are an infringement on the liberty of people senselessly investigated and expose everyone to the risk of such pointless investigation. Investigation of false alarms differs from COINTELPRO-style abuses in being mindless rather than malicious, but it infringes on liberty nonetheless.

The other danger is that any police force tasked with looking for needles in a haystack, there will be strong institutional and bureacratic pressure to find something. If no needles are turning up, the temptation will be to find a prickly piece of hay and try to convince people that it is sort of like a needle. This can, indeed, lead to COINTELPRO sorts of abuses. In Maryland, state police investigated everyone from anti-war groups to PETA to customers protesting a 72% rate increase as possible terrorists. (The article also cites abuses by city police and the FBI, but links are not functioning).

Obviously, this is not the best time politically to call for a cutback in data mining activities. Obama is already under sufficient attack for not torturing, for using civilian trials, and for releasing GTMO detainees determined not to be terrorists. For him to move away from data mining now would lead to a wingnut feeding frenzy. But what we need is not any more information to swamp the system, but better analysis of what we already have. And no ridiculous rules against leaving your seats for the last hour of flight.

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*Actually, NSL's quite probably are not a data mining tool so much as a method to streamline data collection that it is easy to get sloppy and overuse.

In Retrospect, Were We Paranoid about Bush?

I planned this post even before the Underpants Bomber struck, but that attack makes the matter all the more timely.

In light of "death panels" talk and all the hysterical, frenzied paranoia about Obama, and in light of the recent spate of terrorist plots, one of which came uncomfortably close to fruition, and with the perspective of distance, were we paranoid about George Bush? Was our side just as guilty then as the Teabaggers are today? To what extend did we exaggerate the threat he posed to freedom? To what extent were his actions reasonable policy disputes, or necessary responses to terrorism? And to what extent is the Obama Administration the same as its predecessor?

I'll start with the obvious. There were, in fact, some paranoid Bush haters. The Truthers were the most extreme example, followed by people who thought he wanted to cancel the 2008 election and proclaim himself President for Life. Also on the list of obviously paranoid were people who were sure Diebold voting machines were rigged to make a Democratic victory impossible, people who thought he would start detaining political opponents, and people who thought opponents would be shipped off to GTMO.

But there were other, more reasonable fears that people had, some confirmed, some refuted, and some still uncertain. One fear I confess to having that was proven false was the fear that he would treat a Republican victory in the 2008 election as a matter of national security and resort to Nixonian dirty tricks. Didn't happen. Another was the fear that he would pardon everyone in his Administration before leaving office. That didn't happen either, probably because he had assurances from Obama that there would be no prosecutions. (Could such assurances have something to do with why he did not resort to dirty tricks in the election? Or am I just being paranoid again?)

I divide the concerns of Bush opponents into several categories, and analyze them, as opponents saw them at the time, in hindsight, and in comparison with the Obama Administration.

Fear mongering and warmongering. It's really hard to know to what extent the Bush Administration saw itself as doing what was necessary for the protection of the American people, and to what extent it merely exploited fears for partisan advantage. Certainly scheduling a vote on the invasion of Iraq for right before the 2002 Congressional election -- and demonizing Democrats for any hesitation sounds a lot like exploiting fears for partisan advantage. Tom Ridge has more or less admitted that the Administration manipulated alert levels for partisan advantage. And I see no reason to doubt either that the Administration manipulated intelligence to justify the Iraq War, or that it scheduled the vote before elections as a means of political pressure. And not only Bush, but Republicans in general have been using fear of terrorism (and fear in general) as their favorite technique to win elections and continue to do so to this day. Obama, by contrast, does not fear monger, but he does a lot manipulating behind the scenes to get his way. [Hope to find link later]. Pick your poison.

Treating the federal government as a patronage organization. This is one of those areas where we have a lot of suspicions, but no proof. There is some evidence when going into the 2006, running scared and facing major losses, the Bush Administration used, or attempted to use, a variety of federal agencies as patronage organizations to advance Republican prospects. There is also evidence that US Attorney David Iglesias was fired for declining to use his office to advance Republican electoral fortunes. However, the reasons for the other US Attorney firings remains unclear, as does the extent to which the federal government in general, and the Justice Department in particular, was corrupted to serve as a patronage organization. File this under undetermined. As for the Obama Administration, I do not know if they want to stoop to such measures. But given Republicans' intense opposition and eagerness to jump on them for any misstep, it seems safe to assume that it would not be able to get away with it. Partisan divisiveness has its advantages.

Indefinite detention, extraordinary rendition, and torture. Bush critics were absolutely right to condemn these. We may, however, have made a mistake in how we attacked them. Criticizing this as a civil rights or constitutional issue allowed the retort that civil rights and constitutional rights do not apply to non-citizens outside the United States. Legally, this is accurate. Treating this as a matter of civil rights and constitutional liberty also creates the impression that US citizens tremble in fear of GTMO and torture, which Bush supporters could indignantly (and correctly) deny. Quite correctly, they could point out that the right of ordinary Americans to due process of law was not in danger, that Bush never committed any civil liberties violations comparable to, say, Woodrow Wilson's Palmer Raids in WWI, the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII, or COINTELPRO during the Cold War. All of this was true, and to the extent Bush opponents claimed otherwise, they could fairly be accused of paranoia.*

But these policies, nonetheless, fully deserved our condemnation, even though they posed no domestic danger. The proper criticism was not that these violated civil or constitutional rights, but that they violated universal human rights. It was pure paranoia to suggest that US citizens were in danger of losing their freedom to such methods, or to fear monger about them. But it was entirely appropriate to point out that the Bush Administration's use of torture (and torture-lite), its lack of regard for innocence or guilt, and its absurdly rigged procedures for determining detention were, indeed, the stuff of dictators, and to be angry about it. There is an old jibe that a liberal is someone whose immediate interests are not at stake. Let's turn that insult into a boast that a liberal is someone whose immediate interests are not at stake who cares anyhow.

These are policies the Obama Administrations appears fully committed to ending. It also appears fully committed to covering up the crimes of its predecessor. This is certainly unfortunate, as learning more about the crimes of the Bush Administration, particularly against innocent people, might finally convince many people that they were actual crimes. But given the degree of Republican obstructionism, the hysteria they are whipping up, and the lack of political upside to protecting Scary Brown People, I thing he does deserve some credit here.

Executive powers. One of the most alarming things about the Bush Administration was its insistence, in effect, that the President was exempt from all laws, so long as he said "national security" first. Whenever Bush considered any law unduly restrictive of his power, he simply said, "national security" and broke it. Congress, confronted with his actions, invariably retrospectively legalized them. Once he got what he wanted, Bush backed off of his more extreme claims to be exempt from laws. Unsurprisingly, Obama, having been given so much power by Congress, shows no inclination to give it back.

Some people, like "Anonymous Liberal" argue that this is a significant improvement over Bush-era lawlessness. As s/he puts it, "What was once illegal is now legal. So what we're now debating are proposals to change or amend existing law to make it better. We're working within the democratic framework to try to effect policy change, which is how things are supposed to work. Three years ago we were debating whether the law even had to be followed." I find this argument unconvincing. What the Bush Administration has proven is that if the President breaks the law, Congress, instead of reigning him in, will change the law to validate his actions. A more dangerous or subversive position is hard to imagine.

Data mining. Although the Bush detention and torture policies are better described as human rights than civil rights issues, many of his policies raised legitimate civil rights concerns. These included his warrantless surveillance, national security letters, searches for patterns in phone calls and e-mails, tip hotlines, terrorism watch list, no-fly list, Total Information Awareness, and so forth. Though they diverge in detail, all of these policies fit under the broad rubric of data mining. It is these policies that the Obama Administration gives every sign of intending to keep in unmodified form.
Because these are the Bush era policies that pose the greatest civil liberties (as opposed to human rights) concern, because they are the ones that Obama appears to have adopted lock, stock and barrel, because so little is known about them so far, and because they are the policies most likely to be stepped up in the wake of the latest terrorist attack, these policies deserve a post of their own. Coming up.
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*There do, however, appear to have been some CONINTEPRO-like activities on the state level, at least in Maryland.

That Said, What Do We Do About It?

All right, granting that this and previous terrorist attacks (or attempts) are largely an expression of frustration that the Obama Administration hasn't changed much from Bush, this means that more will undoubtedly follow. What should we do about it?

Don't invade Yemen.

So far there haven't been any calls to invade outright, but how long can it be? It is always hard for a Democrat to overcome accusations of "softness," and the temptation will be there for Obama to invade just to show how tough he is. Hopefully, our recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan will make that temptation resistable, although some people have already forgotten that Iraq was a tough slog. In any event, if not invading will cause political damage now, running into another Afghanistan or Iraq will be a lot worse.

Not more, but better.

This is the most difficult part. Our current sledgehammer approach to airline security has got to be changed. A terrorist tried to blow up a plane just as it was landing. TSA responds by proposing to forbid all passengers from leaving their seats in the last hour of flight. Everyone recognizes how spectacularly dumb this is. But only slightly less dumb are proposals some people are making to extensively search all Muslims and complaints that Abdulmutallab should have set off alarm bells by his religion alone are only marginally less dumb. Abdulmutallab is a Nigerian. Nigeria is not a hotbed of jihadi activity. No Nigerian had ever taken part in a terrorist attack against the US before. Granted, unlike shoe bomber Richard Reid, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab at least had a Muslim name. But how many people with Muslim names fly our planes all the time? I don't know either, but since 9-11, exactly one (Richard Reid did not have a name that would attract any attention) has attempted to blow up a US bound plane.

A more reasonable question is whether the Obama Administration should have "connected the dots," recognized Abdulmutallab as a danger, and denied him entry (or at least subjected him to closer examination). What they had was as follows:

(1) Intelligence from Yemen indicated that a Nigerian was being prepared for a terrorist attack.

(2) His own father reported his son's radical views and disappearance to the US embassy in Nigeria about a month before the attack. (It is not clear from newspapers whether his father reported that he had been to Yemen).

(3) At the time of the report, Abdulmutallab had a visa to enter the US.

(4) He had been denied a visa to study in Britain because he sought to register in a bogus course.
(5) Abdulmutallab was a man traveling alone, without baggage on a trans-Atlantic flight, who paid cash for a one-way ticket.

Of all these warning signs, the last is by far the most damning. The others have to be seen in the context of the "noise" that constantly pervades intelligence. Consider, for instance, that our terrorism database contains 550,000 individuals. Approximately 1600 new tips come in per day. By way of contrast, the Yemeni government believes there are "hundreds" of Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen, perhaps as many as 300. The hunt for terrorists is a hunt for a needle in a haystack. The 550,000 member terrorism watchlist is a smallerhaystack than the entire world population, but it is still a haystack.

Currently, of all the people on the watch list, approximately 4,000 are on the no-fly list, and 14,000 receive additional scrutiny. The temptation will be to get out the sledgehammer and place all 550,000 on the no-fly list (with another 1,600 being added daily). This must be resisted. The current list of people forbidden from flying of subject to extra restrictions is 18,000, down from a peak of 30,000 in early 2007. Recall that problems associated with even a 30,000 list. Aside from countless instances of confusion from people who had the same name as someone else, many perfectly innocent and harmless people were on the list. Perhaps most notoriously, Catherine Stevens, wife the the Alaska Senator, was stopped and asked to prove that she was not the singer Cat Stevens. Cat Stevens, in turn, was on the list because of donations to suspect Palestinian charities. Investigating Catherine Stevens, or even Cat Stevens, does nothing whatever to make our flights safer. Even granting that of the names on the terrorism watch list, less than 5% are US citizens or legal residents, the list doubtless contains numerous foreigners as innocent as Catherine Stevens or Cat Stevens. So vast an expansion of the no-fly list (especially with all the problems associated with mistaken identity) would make air travel nearly as intolerable as keeping passengers in their seats for the last hour of a flight, with only slightly more improvement in security.

What is needed is a smarter approach to the list. Clearly 550,000 people and 1,600 tips a day are more than is humanly possible to investigate. What about a computer database? By this I don't mean foolish attempts to datamine every phone call and e-mail in the world, but simply a datamine of the much smaller haystack that is the tips we receive. Abdulmutallab's father tipped off the US embassy in Nigeria. It was one of approximately 1,600 tips received that day. Give it extra weight because it came from his father, and run for cross-matches. Intelligence in Yemen reported a Nigerian planning an attack. How many other tips were coming in specifically from Nigeria? How many other terrorist plots were being rumored from Yemen? Did the senior Abdulmutallab mention that his son's last known whereabouts were in Yemen? I have no idea, but the answers are critical to determine how many alarm bells this tip should have rung. And how alarming is it that he was denied a visa to Britain because he claimed to be signed up for a bogus course? No doubt many people try to sneak in to Britain on false pretenses for sinister reasons like terrorism or drug dealing, but others sign up for nothing more sinister than trying to make money. Should there have been extra alarm bells because he was rich already? And how many multiple cross-references are simply false alarms? And at what point does cross-referencing lead to utter paranoia? I have no idea of the answer to any of these questions. But they are critical in determining how to handle the watch list.

But sometimes the most useful danger signs are the ones closest to the ground. Our intelligence agencies found nothing useful toward thwarting the Millenium Bombing plot. Instead it was customs inspectors who sensed that something was just wrong that led to the bomber's capture. Similarly, even if all dangers signs about Abdulmutallab were legitimately lost in the "noise," the fact that he was traveling alone, with no luggage on a trans-Atlantic flight, on a one-way ticket purchased with cash should have set off alarm bells that he was, if not a terrorist, at least a drug smuggler (a much more common occurrence) and subjected him to closer scrutiny.

While I oppose any measure (such as full body scans) that would make air travel any more hellish for innocent passengers, I would favor thorough scrutiny (including full body scans and drug or explosive chemical detectors) applied to people who meet a profile that sets off alarm bells. That profile could include suspicious behavior such as one-way tickets purchased with cash, or getting enough hits on the terrorism watch list, so long as it is done rationally. And, just for the record, I don't see a problem with ethnicity or religion being a factor in determining the profile, so long as it is not the sole or dominant factor.

In short, not more, but better, means narrower but more thorough scrutiny. It means, specifically, narrowing scrutiny because the time and effort involved are limited resources and must be expended wisely. Alas, shrinking the no-fly list and making airports easier for the general public will probably look like inexcusable softness, so the pressure will for more security, more exclusion, more harassment, for the sole purpose of showing we are doing something.

Don't make enemies unnecessarily.

Although we get far more tips than it is possible to investigate, it is undoubtedly true that good tips are the very bulwork of successful intelligence. Consider:

Pakistani intelligence tipped us off to the Najibullah Zazi peroxide bombing plot.
CAIR tipped the FBI off to American Muslims going to Pakistan to join the terrorist movement there.
And, of course, Adbulmutallab's own father tipped off the US embassy to his son's radicalism.

It would seem to follow that what we need is not just a good screening procedure to determine which tips are worth following up on, but also good and constant supply of incoming tips. And the people who are best placed to know about Islamic extremist plots the soonest are fellow Muslims, whether intelligence services, local communities, or even family members. This, in turn, points up the importance of maintaining good relations with Muslim countries and communities.

War on Terror hawks will point out, quite correctly, that it is not reasonable for us to make policy based on how angry, alienated, and often mentally disturbed people will react. Quite true. But we can quite reasonably refrain from angering and alienating broad communities. We can use brute force to compel another country to do our will. Sometimes it may even be necessary. But how difficult would it be, really, for a coerced "ally" to find a hot tip about a terrorist plot and just not pass it on? Our great advantage over Europe in general and Britain in particular is that our Muslim community is not angry and alienated. That makes it all the more important not to alienate Muslims, foreign or domestic, with offensive measures like intrusive surveillance, religious and ethnic profiling, beligerent anti-Muslim rhetoric, and, of course, endless war. Granted, very few Muslims will respond to such measure by becoming actual terrorists. But how many will respond by becoming more sympathetic to terrorists, and by not tipping us off to the terrorists in their midst. It can't be easy for a father to inform against his own son. Let's not make it any harder.

A change in style.

Finally, Republicans do have a point when they complain about Obama's three-day silence following the attack. Yes, they are exploiting it for partisan ends, and no, this failed bombing is hardly a crisis on the scale of 9-11. But Obama is showing signs of a troubling crisis management style that he first displayed during the 2008 campaign.

His normal reaction to a crisis is to outwardly appear to shut down. In fact, he is not really shutting down. He is huddling with advisors, getting fully briefed, and planning a response. After a few days, he emerges, now properly prepared, and gives a public speech. This response is partially defensible. As John McCain learned to his cost in the campaign, there are few crises so urgent that reacting fast is more important than reacting wisely. It is better for the President to get fully briefed and consider his options before making a decision. The President can better respond to questions when he is fully prepared.

But the outward appearance of shutting down is not acceptable to the American public. We need to know in a crisis that the President has not fallen asleep at the switch. Perhaps Obama thinks it better to stay busy at the switch than to take time out to make a public speech that, before sufficient information is in and before he had made a decision, will be not much more than a few vapid platitudes. But the public needs its platitudes, along with the assurance that the President is at the switch and will give a more detailed speech when he and his advisors have pinned things down. In the next crisis, give a public speech, however insubstantial, just to reassure us.

Addendum

I highly recommend the analysis in this post.

Update:

The Washington Independent has some excellent analyses here, and here.

The Obligatory Terrorism Post

It's time to face facts. There has been a spate of terrorism going on these last few months. Aside from the usual fluff of bumbling would-be jihadis looking for Al-Qaeda and finding FBI agents instead, we have had five Americans seeking to join an overseas group, an Afghan overseas plot to , Nidal Hassan shooting up Ft. Hood, and now Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab trying to blow up the TSA plane. This is getting to be more than a coincidence; we have a pattern here.

So it is fair to ask, does this have anything to do with Barrack Obama being President. My answer would have to be yes -- but not in the way some people think. I do not think this is fulfilling Joe Biden's prediction that Al-Qaeda would test a new president. Nor is it because he just hasn't been torturing enough people (there is no evidence that anyone we now have in custody would know anything about this recent spate of plots) or because we haven't been monitoring enough overseas phone calls (Hassan's e-mails with the radical Yemeni cleric were monitored, but didn't seem dangerous). It isn't because Obama hasn't started enough wars, or because Muslims saw his promise to close GTMO as a sign of weakness to be exploited. And it certainly isn't because he just hasn't been sounding off belligerently enough, as some Republicans seem to be implying. (Seriously, does anyone believe that if Obama would just use the word "war" more often, terrorist attacks would stop?)

So what is going on here? Quite simply, the actions we are seeing by terrorists are somewhat the counterpart of progressive rage at the absence of public option in the healthcare bill. People who once believed that their quarrel was with the Bush Administration rather than the United States pinned their hopes on Obama. Now that those hopes have been disappointed, they are responding with rage.

Politics Eclipse Policy, Part II

So, having criticized the MSM for focusing on politics over policy in the current health care debate, why have I written only on the politics and not made a single post on substantive healthcare policy? For two reasons. First of all, I consider Republican conduct here to be sufficiently disturbing that for me the politics of the issue really do eclipse the policy.

The second reason is that ultimately, healthcare reform is not my biggest issue. I didn't vote for Obama to pass universal healthcare. Yes, it is an important issue, and one that I favor. But it wasn't the reason for my vote.

I voted for Obama in hopes that he would clean up the mess Bush left. He hasn't done it. Given the choice between Bush with universal healthcare and Bush without universal healthcare, I will take the healthcare. But I was hoping for a President who wasn't George Bush and am now despairing of getting one.

Consider the Bush policies I saw as important and how Obama has responded so far.

Get out of Iraq. Check. Granted, he is following the timetable negotiated by Bush, but he is following in, not trying to subvert it as some hawks have desired.

Develop a rational policy in Afghanistan. None in sight.

Stop relying on defense contractors. We are, if anything, relying on them more than ever.

Practice diplomacy. Okay, we are making at least some progress there.

Close Guantanamo. A stated goal with approximately zero chance of happening. Granted, Congress has a large hand in that.

End torture. Well, the Obama Administration has formally committed itself not to torture and has closed down CIA "black sites" that weren't being used anyhow. But torture continued unabated at Guantanamo with no attempt to stop it, and who knows what is going on at Bangram.

End warrantles wiretaps. The Obama Administration seems quite content continuing the mysterious "basket warrants" allowed under the Protect America Act and sweeping the entire issue under the rug. Is the program appropriate? Is it entirely out of control? Just how much of our foreign communications are being surveilled? Who knows?

Stop the abusive use of National Security Letters. Who knows? I'm guessing not; they are just too convenient.

Stop infiltrating and surveilling innocent organizations. Who knows?

Stop heavy-handed PATRIOT Act investigations of innocent dissent. Who knows?

Put the No-Fly List on a rational basis. Not a sign of it.

Either abolish our color-coded system of alerts, or put them on a rational basis. No. In fact, orange appears to be the new norm.

Stop using the federal government (including the Justice Department) as a system of partisan patronage. Who knows?

Stop interfering with the independent judgment of government scientists. Who knows?

Stop the heavy-handed immigration raids that give the country a police state feel. It is my understanding there has been progress here, and the emphasis has shifted to deporting criminals and cracking down on employers.

Stop heavy-handed treatment of foreign tourists for small technical violations. Who knows?

Lighten up on the war on drugs. Once again, it is my understanding the feds have stopped raiding medical marijuana facilities. Otherwise things remain heavy-handed, but at least be are back to pre-Bush.

Allow unfriendly demonstrators in your vicinity and critics into town hall meetings. Yes, give Obama credit, he has done this. In fact, he was disappointed how few showed up on the health care tour.

Introduce accountability into the bank bailout and stop treating it as a handout. For the most part, no. As funds began to run low and everyone knew Congress would not approve any more, the Administration had started being more parsimonious, which is all to the good, but even the Bush Administration would presumably have done the same. Maybe Obama will offer a reasonable set of banking regulations and somewhat redeem himself on this one, but I am not holding my breath.

Run a more open Administration. Despite a few encouraging signs, the overall record is most unimpressive.

Expose what the Bush Administration was up to. This was the critical one for me. Only by revealing what they were up to can we really get a handle on what (if anything) was justified and how to reform it. Unlike, say, Glenn Greenwald, I can understand why prosecution is politically impossible, but exposure it essential. And, while there have been a few forced disclosures so far, on the whole this Administration has been fighting tooth and claw to keep its predecessor's actions secret. What are we to conclude but that it wants to reserve authority to continue them?