Just the Facts
Just the Facts It's conventional wisdom. In fact, it's more than conventional wisdom. It's an article of faith among the enlightened: There was no connection, at least no significant connection,...
...Terrorist threats are not just another species of consumer information," the Times reminded its readers...
...Meanwhile, responsible news organizations might also want to consider explicitly endorsing a joint congressional investigative committee's call for the extension of such surveillance to U.S.-based targets...
...So "responsible news organizations" would want to be especially "mindful of the security concerns" when reporting on these surveillance initiatives...
...His colleague, Carl Levin, member of both the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee, says Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda was "nonexistent...
...It is an outrage that George W. Bush did what the New York Times recommended—according, most notably, and weirdly, to the New York Times itself...
...The following comes from the Telegraph's translations of the documents: The envoy is a trusted confidant and known by them.According to the above mediation we request official permission to call Khartoum station to facilitate the travel arrangements for the above-mentioned person to Iraq...
...Our reporting so far convinces us of the reality and the significance of the terror connection...
...The story, as Risen tells it, goes like this: Beginning in early 2002, the National Security Agency began monitoring telephone numbers and email addresses discovered in the computers, cell phones, and address books of captured al Qaeda operatives, and it has continued to do so, following resultant leads into an expanding, digital network of terrorism suspects...
...Or, if that is too onerous a process—and lots of time has already gone a-wasting—it should simply release all the documents, perhaps with whatever is known about their provenance and likely authenticity, and let news organizations, experts, and others make their own judgments...
...That was in April 1989...
...And these people are demonic...
...But at what cost to the nation's most highly classified and clandestine counterterrorism programs...
...Neither does there seem to be any physical or logistical obstacle preventing NSA from sneaking into James Risen's bathroom and stealing his toothbrush, of course...
...Sure, hundreds of lives might be saved, in the near term, by such an announcement...
...It is past time that he insist that his subordinates get the facts out...
...they are a form of intelligence that depends on secrecy in collection, expertise in interpretation and extreme care in dissemination...
...James Risen repeatedly calls the program "illegal," but offers not a single word of serious statutory or constitutional analysis to sustain the conclusion...
...military expanded its role inside the country with the creation of the new Northern Command, the first military command in recent history that is designed to protect the U.S...
...Aren't most of these documents classified...
...Which is to say: Risen's new book, too, is vaguely sourced—and vague in many other key respects, as well, for that matter...
...And the Bush administration has been as quiet as a mouse—and just as meek...
...2) Another internal Iraqi Intelligence memo, this one from the mid-1990s, reports that a Sudanese government official met with Uday Hussein and the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in 1994, in order to set up meetings between bin Laden and Iraqi Intelligence in Sudan...
...There he was presumably obliged to communicate with his sources by means of dead-drop microfiche deposits in hollowed-out tree stumps...
...A note at the bottom of the page from the director of one IIS division recommends approving the request, noting, "we may find in this envoy a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden...
...Perhaps a few documents could not be released...
...The documents note that bin Laden's envoy extended his trip by one week, departing on March 16...
...But a great many could be...
...In fact, some of these documents have already been the subject of media reports: (1) A 1992 internal Iraqi Intelligence memo lists Osama bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset in "good contact" with the Iraqi Intelligence section in Damascus...
...But what did the president actually do...
...Not all that many years ago, the New York Times editorial page believed that even here "the answer ought to be no...
...Imagine: Our military now has a specific assignment to guard and defend the territorial United States, and certain of its base-command officers might eventually establish cordial relations with the police departments in neighboring communities...
...The Bush administration has shied away from engaging the issue of Saddam and his terror ties...
...government should release the documents...
...So the conventional wisdom reigns...
...Let us—all of us—read the mass of documents captured after the fall of the Saddam regime...
...Can we ever really know the whole truth—or almost the whole truth...
...The creation of Northern Command has already raised the specter of military intelligence agents operating on U.S...
...And the answer seems to remain, as it always ultimately does, that the NSA is currently to be feared because the NSA currently takes its orders from George W. Bush and the "neo-cons" whom Bush is "controlled by...
...So: The U.S...
...Just the same, because nowadays "many purely international communications—telephone calls and email messages from the Middle East to Asia, for example—end up going through telecommunications switches that are physically based in the United States," eavesdropping on any call so routed "might be a violation of the regulations and laws restricting the NSA from spying inside the United States...
...The al Qaeda emissary came to Baghdad on March 5, 1998...
...And it was to clarify that American counterterrorism investigators should never make such a mistake again that President Bush seems to have signed the NSA surveillance order that's now got everybody's underwear in such a wringer...
...Programs involving "electronic intercepts and other data obtained by advanced satellites and other devices" were a particular concern...
...It's an article of faith among the enlightened: There was no connection, at least no significant connection, between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups...
...And why should they be...
...When bin Laden left Sudan for Afghanistan in May 1996, the Iraqis sought "other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of his current location...
...The IIS memo directs that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement...
...It was, of course, through a superabundance of caution about what "might" be a violation in such circumstances that American counterterrorism investigators notoriously failed to monitor certain phone calls and email traffic exchanged by the 9/11 conspirators...
...David Tell, for the Editors...
...The permission of Mr...
...3) Another set of Iraqi Intelligence documents were recovered by two journalists scouring the bombed-out headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in Baghdad...
...there is no Iraqi response provided in the documents...
...And even well-intentioned public disclosures might give those bad guys an advantage: "Valuable sources of intelligence would dry up as terrorists aware of information leaks sought to eliminate the leakers...
...After all, Saddam's regime is gone, all the information is at least three years old— and where there are still actionable items relating to individuals, that information could of course be redacted...
...The documents, taken from the IIS accounting department, show that on February 19, 1998, the Iraqi Intelligence Service had finalized plans to bring a "trusted confidant" of bin Laden's to Baghdad in early March...
...Stephen Hayes's reporting, including his article in this issue, suggests to us that these documents would confirm the argument for a terror connection...
...The U.S...
...there seems to be no physical or logistical obstacle" preventing it at present...
...It should authenticate documents where possible, and then release them promptly, as they are authenticated...
...The CIA and the National Security Agency, which does electronic eavesdropping, will also have to devote more of their efforts to analyzing international terrorist threats inside the United States," the New York Times announced in July 2003...
...As recently as November 2000, the paper of record still thought it "understandable" for the government to investigate and prosecute media leaks that compromise "the secrecy of the nation's most sensitive intelligence gathering systems...
...Now, over two years later, the Times has decided to reveal that on the very day its editorial page offered this suggestion, just such an NSA domestic surveillance effort was already underway, on orders from the president...
...Senate minority leader Harry Reid put it this way: "There was [sic] no terrorists in Iraq...
...Nevertheless, no better-detailed account of the NSA surveillance program in question has yet appeared in print...
...Notes in the margins of the Iraqi Intelligence mem-os indicate that someone named, or using the name, Mohammed F. Mohammed stayed as the guest of Iraqi Intelligence in Room 414 of the Al Mansour Melia Hotel...
...And that our body carry all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him...
...The Weekly Standard candidly confesses that we've never been entirely clear on these last two points...
...Should the government disclose terrorist threats to the public and let passengers make their own decisions about how to react...
...And all of a sudden, responsible news organizations everywhere are loudly warning that the End of Democracy is nigh...
...According to the jacket-flap bio, Risen, principal coauthor of his paper's vaguely sourced NSA-spying scoop last month, lives with his wife and three sons at an unspecified location "outside Washington, D.C...
...And, now having read State of War, the just-published book-length expose of Bush administration "covert lawbreak-ing" by Times national security correspondent James Risen, The Weekly Standard further confesses that we are more confused than ever...
...In our judgment, the evidence for such ties has become more convincing, not less, as more information has become available...
...intelligence community has these documents and believes that they are authentic...
...Why can't the American public be permitted to read these documents in their entirety—and all the rest...
...William Kristol The Worst of Times What if the CIA or FBI should catch wind of an imminent plot to blow an American airliner out of the sky...
...The question remains: Why on earth would they want to...
...He complains that, "for the first time since the Watergate-era abuses, the NSA is spying on Americans again, and on a large scale"—a reference, once more, to those 500 al Qaeda email buddies he's mentioned, who together represent 1.7 ten-thousandths of one percent of the U.S...
...Actually, no...
...Four days later, on February 23, final approval is granted...
...God help us all...
...He mentions but a single example: "In 2002, the U.S...
...Shifting gears, Risen next raises alarm over the possibility that NSA could begin domestic spying on a large scale if it wanted to...
...This is both foolish and unmanly...
...But we want all the facts— and we trust the purveyors of the conventional wisdom will join us in asking for all the facts as well...
...Best to keep everybody in the dark...
...The al Qaeda leader also proposed "joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia...
...The more they learned about American signals intelligence capabilities, after all, the easier it would become for our "adversaries to cut off access to vitally important information about threats to the United States...
...the document states that the Iraqis agreed to honor this request...
...population...
...Bad guys read the newspaper, too, in other words...
...Bin Laden requested that Iraq's state-run television network broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda...
...Even by Risen's account, an overwhelming majority of the program's targets are located overseas—currently "about 7,000 people" abroad, along with "about 500" other people they've contacted here in the States...
...Among the "most worrisome aspects" of the NSA program, Risen writes, is its place in a much "broader series of policies and procedures" that now "threaten to erode civil liberties in the United States...
...And what exactly is so outrageous about it...
...soil, permanently developing new links with local law enforcement agencies, particularly near large military bases...
...But few prominent Republicans have challenged these assertions...
...According to the Iraqi document, bin Laden was "approached by our side" after "presidential approval" for the liaison was given...
...The former head of Iraqi Intelligence Directorate 4 met with bin Laden on February 19, 1995...
...We have argued in these pages that the connections between Saddam and terrorists were substantial and significant...
...The Defense Intelligence Agency told 60 Minutes the document is authentic...
...Deputy Director of Intelligence has been gained on 21 February for this operation, to secure a reservation for one of the intelligence services guests for one week in one of the first class hotels...
...Senators Reid and Levin are Democrats, to be sure...
...Pentagon analysts told the New Yo^k Times that the document appears authentic...
...The president is neither...
...homeland...
...But let everyone make up his own mind, based on his own reading of the documents...
...Then we can have a serious debate, and reach a better-grounded judgment, about the terror connection...
...We have long dissented from this conventional wisdom...
...Stephen Hayes—among others—has reported over the past three years on extensive evidence of terror ties to Saddam's regime...
Vol. 11 • January 2006 • No. 17
