Abolish the CIA

I'm currently reading Pulitzer Prize winning author Tim Weiner's 20-years-in-the-making history of the Central Intelligence Agency, Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (2007, Doubleday). All of Weiner's facts are sourced and on-the-record, including numerous recently declassified sources (some of which the government is attempting to re-classify).

This review of the book by Chalmers Johnson, a former outside consultant for the CIA, does a good job of pointing out some of the highlights and arguing at the conclusion for the abolition of the CIA and letting the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research fill in for the foreign intelligence function.

Weiner's book points out how the CIA has been mismanaged since its creation from the ashes of the Office of Strategic Services, failing to come up with accurate information about major events of significance and leaving a wake of damage from failed covert ops designed to stop the spread of communism even where there was none. And it has regularly deceived presidents, massaged or fabricated intelligence information, and violated the laws of the United States. Johnson writes:

Nothing has done more to undercut the reputation of the United States than the CIA's "clandestine" (only in terms of the American people) murders of the presidents of South Vietnam and the Congo, its ravishing of the governments of Iran, Indonesia (three times), South Korea (twice), all of the Indochinese states, virtually every government in Latin America, and Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The deaths from these armed assaults run into the millions. After 9/11, President Bush asked "Why do they hate us?" From Iran (1953) to Iraq (2003), the better question would be, "Who does not?"

This paragraph understates the case--Johnson goes on to describe how the CIA provided funding for Japanese and Italian politicians. Weiner's book observes that the CIA helped a convicted war criminal become prime minister of Japan in 1957 and bribed the leading officials of the Liberal Democratic Party, which it helped maintain in power until the 1990s. CIA broadcasts from Radio Free Europe called for uprisings. To their surprise, former Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy, who had been expelled from the Communist Party, announced on state radio a break with Russia, and within days formed a new coalition government in October 1956, but CIA Director Allen Dulles rejected him because he had been a communist and RFE attacked him. RFE broadcasts as much as promised U.S. assistance to Hungarian rebels, only to leave them to die on their own in November 1956 when the Soviets crushed the rebellion. Tens of thousands of people were killed and thousands shipped off to Siberia. Dulles lied to Eisenhower about the content of the broadcasts, transcripts of which only became available in English in 1996, and claimed the U.S. had done nothing to encourage the Hungarians.

I've still got much to read in the book (I'm only up to 1958), but so far it is eye-opening and appalling.

UPDATE (August 11, 2007): The CIA has issued a press release taking issue with Weiner's book for its bias.

UPDATE (December 16, 2009): The CIA has published a review critiquing the accuracy and reliability of Weiner's book.

Bush doesn't care that his staff leaks the names of CIA agents

Originally, he said that he would take action if he found that someone on his staff was responsible for leaking the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA covert agent to the press. Then, he said he couldn't comment because an investigation was underway, then, that he couldn't comment because a trial was underway. Now that the trial is over and he can comment, he pretty much comes right out and says he doesn't give a damn.

BAE, Bandar, and Bush

Defense contractor BAE is under scrutiny in the British press for paying over a billion pounds through Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C. to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, at the rate of 30 million pounds per quarter over the last ten years. This resulted in a British fraud inquiry by its Serious Fraud Office that was stopped last December by attorney general Lord Goldsmith, on grounds that according to the Guardian, "British 'government complicity' was in danger of being revealed unless the SFO's corruption inquiries were stopped." Tony Blair said that he accepted "full responsibility" for stopping the fraud investigation. The OECD has begun its own investigation.

Riggs Bank, which was used to launder money by the Saudis, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and the government of Equatorial Guinea, had relationships with the CIA, as did Bandar and Pinochet (through his secret police chief Manuel Contreras, who banked at Riggs).

Riggs was investigated by the Treasury Department and the Senate, and admitted failure to report suspicious transactions or take actions to prevent money laundering schemes, for which it paid $25 million in fines levied by Treasury in May 2005.

Bandar and BAE claim that there is nothing wrong with their arrangement and that it did not constitute bribes paid to Bandar. The accounts Bandar used belonged to the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defense and Aviation, but he spent huge amounts of money on personal expenses such as $17.4 million to build a palace and $400,000 on a luxury car purchase. When Bandar was interviewed by PBS Frontline for a show about terrorism, he made the following statement about corruption in the Saudi government:

But the way I answer the corruption charges is this. In the last 30 years, we have implemented a development program that was approximately ... close to $400 billion worth, OK? Now, look at the whole country, where it was, where it is now. And I am confident after you look at it, you could not have done all of that for less than, let's say, $350 billion.

If you tell me that building this whole country, and spending $350 billion out of $400 billion, that we misused or got corrupted with $50 billion, I'll tell you, "Yes." But I'll take that any time. There are so many countries in the Third World that have oil that are still 30 years behind. But, more important, more important -- who are you to tell me this? ... What I'm trying to tell you is, so what? We did not invent corruption, nor did those dissidents, who are so genius, discover it. This happened since Adam and Eve. ... I mean, this is human nature. But we are not as bad as you think. ...

Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, is a friend of the Bush family. George W. Bush's uncle and major campaign fundraiser, Jonathan J. Bush, was a senior executive at Riggs Bank.

I suspect there is more scandalous information waiting to be uncovered.

UPDATE (June 15, 2007): The U.S. Department of Justice is now investigating BAE.

Ron Paul in last night's GOP debate

My buyer's remorse about contributing to his campaign has been greatly reduced, if not eliminated.

MR. GOLER: Congressman Paul, I believe you are the only man on the stage who opposes the war in Iraq, who would bring the troops home as quickly as -- almost immediately, sir. Are you out of step with your party? Is your party out of step with the rest of the world? If either of those is the case, why are you seeking its nomination?

REP. PAUL: Well, I think the party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy.

Senator Robert Taft didn't even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy -- no nation-building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There's a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.

Just think of the tremendous improvement -- relationships with Vietnam. We lost 60,000 men. We came home in defeat. Now we go over there and invest in Vietnam. So there's a lot of merit to the advice of the Founders and following the Constitution.

And my argument is that we shouldn't go to war so carelessly. (Bell rings.) When we do, the wars don't end.

MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

REP. PAUL: What changed?

MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Congressman?

REP. PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

Notice that Giuliani misrepresented Paul's statement by quoting Goler's phrase about "inviting" the attacks of 9/11, and is lying when he says he's never heard the idea that the U.S. was attacked by al-Qaeda because of U.S. actions in the Middle East, such as having troops in Islam's holy cities. Paul later clarified on The Situation Room that he's not defending a position any different from that in the 9/11 Commission Report, that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is a significant factor in why the terrorists have attacked us. That's not blaming the American public or saying that they "invited" the attacks--leave that argument to Dinesh D'Souza and George W. Bush, who say they attacked us because they "hate our freedom," therefore let's do everything we can to take away that freedom.

(Transcript from Sheldon Richman's blog. More sophisticated analysis of Paul's position may be found from Tim Lee and Brian Moore at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog, Jeff's Thoughts blog, and Andrew Sullivan--who also points out that Ron Paul and John McCain were the only two GOP candidates to condemn torture.)

White House involvement in Duke Cunningham scandal

Talking Points Memo has been discussing the fact that the very first contract that Mitchell Wade's MZM, Inc. got with the federal government, back in July 2002, was with the Executive Office of the President, allegedly for office furniture.

It now turns out that it was actually to screen mail for anthrax.

How did MZM, Inc., which had no record or experience, get such an important contract? Who did Mitchell Wade bribe to get that one?

Rep. Henry Waxman is asking for answers.

And remember, the Cunningham/MZM scandal is what San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam was investigating when she was asked to resign, the day after she announced that she was going after "Dusty" Foggo, then #3 at the CIA.

More at Talking Points Memo.

CIA and White House block Cunningham investigation

The Duke Cunningham scandal, which reaches into the Central Intelligence Agency due to contracts awarded for intelligence-related contracts, has been stalled due to CIA refusal to cooperate with DoJ prosecutors.

And now the White House has asked San Diego U.S. Attorney Carole Lam to resign.

There's still a lot of federal corruption that needs to be cleaned up, but it looks like the big fish are being protected from the top.

Wikipedia has some good entries on Dusty Foggo of the CIA, his pal and contractor/Cunningham briber Brent Wilkes, California Rep. Jerry Lewis, and former CIA Director Porter Goss.

UPDATE (January 17, 2007): San Diego U.S. Attorney Carole Lam has resigned. And, due to a provision in the USA PATRIOT Act (inserted by Sen. Arlen Specter), the Attorney General has the right to appoint replacement U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval. Previously the AG could only appoint interim U.S. Attorneys that had to be confirmed within 120 days or be subject to replacement by the relevant federal district court.

UPDATE (February 13, 2007): Foggo and Wilkes were both indicted today on charges of money laundering and "honest services wire fraud."

Redacted Iran op-ed shows Bush administration insanity

As an undergraduate, I read Victor Marchetti and John Marks' book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Marchetti, a former CIA officer, was forced to redact large portions of the book, and the publisher decided to print the book with a bunch of blank spaces to show where the redactions occurred. This led to a fun game of trying to fill in the blanks. (The only section I tried to fill in--successfully, as this was years after the book was published--was about CIA-operated air transportation companies operating out of Pinal Air Park in Arizona near Marana.)

Now the New York Times has printed an op-ed by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann about Iran using the same strategy--it's filled with black marks indicating the CIA-demanded redactions. This op-ed actually contained no classified information, but the Bush administration applied pressure to the CIA to get them to demand redactions. Leverett and Mann write, in an explanatory preface:

Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.

Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.

These aspects have been extensively reported in the news media, and one of us, Mr. Leverett, has written about them in The Times and other publications with the explicit permission of the review board.

Leverett and Mann provide citations to other published material which describes the redacted sections, allowing the blanks to be filled in.

The Bush administration's behavior here is simply insane.

UPDATE: The Onion addressed this issue back in 2005.

How planespotting uncovered CIA torture flights

The Village Voice has an excerpt from the book Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, which is fascinating reading. The hobby of planespotting--watching and recording information about planes that take off and land--led a few individuals to deduce that planes spotted at "Base Camp" in Nevada were being used by the CIA to transport prisoners to locations in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Individuals correlating data with each other over the Internet and comparing to flight logs and testimony from released prisoners yielded very specific results. Civil Air Landing Permit data was used to identify obscure companies with clearance to land anywhere they want, including restricted military bases--such as One Leasing, Richmor Aviation, Stevens Express Leasing, Tepper Aviation, Path Corporation, Rapid Air Trans, Aviation Specialties, Devon Holding and Leasing, Crowell Aviation, and Premier Executive Transport Services. The planes owned by some of these companies were found to be visiting military bases, Guantanamo Bay, Morocco, Romania, Poland, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Jon Sifton of Human Rights Watch has conducted analysis of the resulting flight data to determine which stops were merely for refueling and which were for destinations--acute angles for inbound and outbound flights from a stop are indicative of a destination rather than a refueling stop, for example.

CIA warned Rice, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld of probable al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. before 9/11

On July 10, 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black gave a briefing to Condoleezza Rice warning that al Qaeda was preparing for an imminent attack on the U.S. In Bob Woodward's new book, State of Fear, he writes that they felt like they got "the brush-off" from Rice.

But she asked that the same briefing be given to John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, and they received it on July 17, 2001, as confirmed by Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack.

These briefings were not reported in the 9/11 Commission Report, and 9/11 Commission counsel Peter Rundlet has accused the White House of hiding the July 10th briefing from the Commission. But George Tenet specifically told the 9/11 Commission about these briefings, yet they didn't include it in the Report:

Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel's executive director and the principal author of its report, who's now Rice's top adviser.

Ashcroft has claimed that he didn't receive a briefing from Tenet, saying through a spokesman that he does not recall a July 17, 2001 briefing. A Pentagon spokesman had "no information" about whether Rumsfeld received such a briefing.

On August 6, 2001, the CIA's Presidential Daily Briefing was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US."

Rice said this to the 9/11 Commission:

"Well, Mr. Chairman, I took an oath of office on the day that I took this job to protect and defend. And like most government officials, I take it very seriously. And so, as you might imagine, I've asked myself a thousand times what more we could have done. I know that, had we thought that there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it. And I know that there was no single thing that might have prevented that attack."

Some of the above is covered in this truthout.org piece by William Rivers Pitt, but it mistakenly says that the 9/11 Commission was not informed of the Tenet/Rice briefing. The question is not only why Rice, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld didn't take action in response to these briefings from the CIA, and not only why Rice didn't report it to the 9/11 Commission, but why the 9/11 Commission didn't put it in their report.

UPDATE (October 7, 2006): Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines and started flying only on private planes shortly after July 17, 2001, as reported by CBS News on July 26, 2001. This was allegedly due to an FBI "threat assessment" which had advised him to only fly by private plane for the rest of his term of office.

Soap writer Kola Boof joins the bogus sex slave claim party

There's a market for books by women who claim to have been the sex slaves of the famous. In Cathy O'Brien's book, Trance Formation of America, she claims to have been raised to be a mind-controlled sex slave for presidents and celebrities on behalf of the CIA. The book is filled with completely absurd claims and unbelievable scenarios, and written in such a way as to be simultaneously titillating gossip about famous people and condemnation of such immoral acts. In short, it's pornography for gullible prudes, much like the Meese Commission Report on Pornography that was sold by Focus on the Family (with the nastiest parts edited out). "Brice Taylor" (Susan Ford) was another mind control sex slave claimant, whose book Thanks for the Memories is similar in content to O'Brien's--she tells of being the sex slave to both Henry Kissinger and Bob Hope.

Kola Boof, a Sudanese-American raised in Washington, D.C. who has written for the soap opera "Days of Our Lives," claims that she was Osama bin Laden's mistress in Morocco in 1996. (A time when Bin Laden was in Sudan.) In addition to claiming that Osama bin Laden was interested in Whitney Houston and liked to listen to the B-52's, she says she was forced to have sex with other al Qaeda members, including two terrorists who were long dead at the time she describes.

The publisher of Boof's book has been contacting bloggers who refer to Boof as a "sex slave," stating that she was bin Laden's mistress. Wonkette has an appropriate response.

Boof may not be as crazy as Ford and O'Brien, but it sounds like her book may fall into the same genre.

Bush's imperial powers

Scott McClellan maintains that when Bush presented discredited information about mobile bioweapons laboratories in Iraq, he had no choice because the discrediting data was classified and it would be inappropriate to make use of it to modify a set of talking points to make sure that it wasn't full of falsehoods and misrepresentations to present to the American public:

I think the CIA will tell you -- and I spoke to them earlier today -- that a finished product like this, a white paper like this, takes coordination, it takes debating, it takes vetting, and it's not something that they will tell you turns on a dime. It's a complex intelligence white paper and it's ... one derived from highly classified information takes a substantial amount of time to coordinate and to run through a declassification process. And they will tell you this. And the intelligence comes in many different forms -- human intelligence, signals intelligence, open source -- and it's not a trickle, it's a constant flood, is what they told me this morning. And weighing and assessing it is something that takes a lot of time and is a technology-intensive process. So you're making an assumption that something is immediately taken and assessed by your comments.

Yet at the same time, the Bush administration takes such a cavalier view of the declassification process (or rather, such a strong view of the power of the President to act upon the whims of the moment) that he can approve leaking the identity of an undercover CIA agent in order to get revenge on a U.S. Ambassador who is criticizing the administrations falsehoods about Iraq attempting to purchase uranium in Niger.

Meanwhile, Alberto Gonzales says that the President could legally intercept domestic communications without FISA Court approval as a result of the AUMF (authorization for the use of military force in Iraq), in addition to being able to unilaterally declare U.S. citizens to be enemy combatants and hold them indefinitely without trial and engage in torture.

It is growing more and more clear that the current administration thinks the President's powers are unlimited, and Bush's December 18, 2000 comment that "if this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier--so long as I'm the dictator" and his July 30, 2001 Business Week comment that "A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it" weren't really jokes.

Libby says Bush gave him permission to out Plame

At the New York Sun:

A former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case. The court papers from the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, do not suggest that Mr. Bush violated any law or rule. However, the new disclosure could be awkward for the president because it places him, for the first time, directly in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was provided to a reporter.

Via Talking Points Memo.

CIA employee identities discoverable via web searches

The Chicago Tribune has reported that it was able to identify 2,653 employees of the CIA, including covert agents, from online data providers who charge for access to public records. The Tribune reports that it identified agents through telephone listings, real estate transactions, voting records, property tax records, and other documents, and that they were able to identify internal CIA phone numbers, covert mailing addresses, and two dozen CIA facilities. One facility, "The Farm" at Camp Peary, VA, was looked up via ordinary Internet searches, which yielded the names of 26 people who work there. (John Young's cryptome site features this May 31, 2005 New York Times story on Camp Peary.)

Controversial hacker publishes cover story in Skeptical Inquirer

The latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 2006) features an article titled "Hoaxers, Hackers, and Policymakers: How Junk Science Persuaded the FBI to Divert Terrorism Funding to Fight Hackers" by Carolyn Meinel. The descriptive text on the first page (between the article title, subtitle, and author's name) says "Hoaxers warned of an imminent and deadly electronic Pearl Harbor. Consequently, the FBI diverted resources and attention away from terrorism and toward fighting hackers. This may have contributed to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Use of critical inquiry and the scientific method could have avoided this misdirection."

While most of the article appears to me to be accurate and its conclusion about treating claims from self-proclaimed computer security experts with scrutiny is sound, the article itself contains unsubstantiated arguments (in particular the arguments of the title and subheading) and comes from a self-proclaimed hacking expert of questionable credibility.

Meinel's article is in three sections--an introductory section about the title, a section about specific claims made by two hackers, and a section on "critical analysis of e-terrorism." I find little to criticize in the latter two sections, except for its implication that Peter Neumann's testimony before Congress was unfounded (Neumann is a highly respected expert on computer risks, the editor of the RISKS Digest, and author of the book Computer-Related Risks, 1995, The ACM Press).

Meinel begins by describing Fred J. Villella bringing hackers "Dr. Mudge" (Pieter Zatko, though Meinel never mentions his name) and "Se7en" ("Christian Valor", who was indeed exposed as a chronic fabricator as Meinel claims in the second part of her article) to meetings of federal policymakers where they warned of "a looming electronic Pearl Harbor." The most notable such meeting was testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on May 19, 1998, where the above-mentioned Neumann testimony took place, and where Mudge testified that he could make the Internet unusable with less than thirty minutes of effort.

Meinel argues that this testimony "may have contributed to an entrapment scheme" by the FBI against hacker "Chameleon" (Marc Maiffret, now "Chief Hacking Officer" of eEye Digital Security) as a way to show that "hackers were actually collaborating with enemies of the U.S." But she provides no evidence of a connection between the testimony and the action.

She falsely states that "books (Penenberg 2000; Mitnick 2005) hyped the raid [on Maiffret] to say that hackers were in league with al Qaeda." Neither of these two books says that. Adam Penenberg, in his book Spooked: Espionage in Corporate America (with Marc Barry, 2001, Perseus Books), writes that "Hackers are always on red alert for the FBI. In fact, when Maiffret was contacted over the Internet by the alleged terrorist Khalid Ibrahim, a member of Harkat-ul-Ansar, a militant Indian separatist group on the State Department's list of the thirty most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world, he assumed Ibrahim worked for the feds." Kevin Mitnick, in his book The Art of Intrusion (2005, Wiley, pp. 32-34), raises the possibility that Khalid Ibrahim was part of an FBI operation, but questions it on the ground that only Maiffret received any money from him. On the other hand, he points out that Maiffret told Wired News "he had not provided any government network maps" and wonders why, despite his confession to accepting money from an terrorist-connected individual (Mitnick writes "foreign terrorist"), no charges were ever filed. Then, he writes "Perhaps the check wasn't from Khalid after all, but from the FBI." (As an aside, Mitnick's book states that few know the true identity of "Chameleon," but Penenberg's book had already published his identity in 2000.) Perhaps Maiffret avoided prosecution by agreeing to work with the FBI, as other hackers have done (such as Justin Tanner Petersen, "Agent Steal," whose story is partly told in Jonathan Littman's The Watchman: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Serial Hacker Kevin Poulsen, 1997, Little, Brown).

The specific argument of the title and subheading--that the testimony of these hackers led to a diversion of funding that may have contributed to the success of the 9/11 terrorist attacks--is stated in a single paragraph in the second column of the first page of the article (p. 32). In that paragraph, Meinel states that cyberspace czar Richard Clarke's formation of the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) diverted funding increases "earmarked against terrorism to hire FBI agents for the hacker beat." This diversion of funds led to only $4.9 million spent by NIPC on counterterrorism, and it therefore lacked the resources to follow up on Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams' warning about al Qaeda members training at U.S. flight schools.

This argument assumes that NIPC, rather than the FBI's counterterrorism unit, is the organization which should have followed up on Williams' memo. It also overlooks the role of the FBI's incredibly antiquated computer systems, which technophobe FBI Director Louis Freeh had refused to take steps to upgrade (with Congress withholding $60 million in funding for FBI's IT infrastructure between 1998 and 2000 because of its failure to produce a credible upgrade plan). Not until July 2000, when Freeh appointed Bob Dies to begin work on an overhaul, did Freeh address the issue. The result was that the FBI had 42 separate database systems that could not be searched simultaneously and many agents had computers that did not work or could not display images or connect to the Internet. Many agents used home computers in order to receive email photo images of suspects from local police departments. (See the "Missing Documents" chapter of Ronald Kessler's The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI, 2002, St. Martin's Press. Similar observations are made in the "9/11" chapter of James Bovard's The Bush Betrayal, 2004, Palgrave Macmillan. Bovard cites (p. 27) a Los Angeles Times story that reports the FBI diverting $60 million in funds earmarked for IT upgrades in the year 2000 to be used for staffing and international offices. The fact that the dollar figure is the same in Bovard and Kessler may indicate that Bovard is misdescribing the same $60 million Kessler mentions.) By contrast, NIPC's entire budget (PDF) was under $20 million per year through 2000, and Bush requested a budget of $20.4 million for NIPC in 2001. (This is not to say that NIPC was effectively using what funds it had--it wasn't. But Meinel's complaint that only $4.9 million of NIPC's budget was spent on counterterrorism should be put in context--that was a quarter or more of its annual budget.)

These IT failings and the other failures reported in the 9/11 Commission Report and elsewhere strike me as more plausible reasons for the U.S. government's failure to avert the 9/11 attacks than trying to pin it on the hackers who testified before Congress in 1998 about the dangers of cyber attacks. Ironically, in October 2001 an article arguing that the Code Red worm demonstrates that there really are significant risks of Internet-based attacks on U.S. infrastructure ("They would be far worse than not being able to make bids on eBay--potentially affecting product manufacturing and deliveries, bank transactions, telephony and more. Should it occur five years from now, the results could be a lot more severe.") appeared in Scientific American. The author of this article, "Code Red for the Web," was Carolyn Meinel.

It's more surprising to me that Skeptical Inquirer published an article by Carolyn Meinel at all. Meinel's author description printed in SI states:

Carolyn Meinel is a consultant and science writer. She has assisted the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with its Intrusion Detection Evaluation Program and its Cyberadversary Workshop, and consults for Systems Advisory Group Enterprises, Inc. (www.sage-inc.com), the Institute for Advanced Technology (www.iat.utexas.edu/), and the Santa Fe Institute (www.santafe.edu/). She may be reached at [email address omitted to prevent spam].

Not mentioned are Meinel's books, web pages, and hacker conference appearances to teach hacking skills or her two articles in Scientific American ("How Hackers Break In... and How They Are Caught" in October 1998 and "Code Red for the Web" in October 2001). The existence of the latter two publications no doubt lends her credibility (and may have helped persuade SI to publish this latest article), but the content of some of her hacker training works and parts of the October 1998 Scientific American article serve to diminish it. The October 2001 article seems pretty accurate to me, and was selected for publication in Matt Ridley's Best American Science Writing 2002 volume. That article, as already observed, does point out the possibility of an "electronic Pearl Harbor," so Meinel avoids self-criticism as being a contributor to 9/11 failures under her own argument only by the month-post-9/11 publication date.

Meinel has long been a controversial character in hacker circles, as can be seen by Googling her name on the web and Usenet (you can search the latter with Google Groups). She also has a degree of infamy from her former marriage to Scientology critic Keith Henson. Henson, who was successfully prosecuted for "interfering with a religion" (Scientology--in part due to an online joke he posted about using a "Cruise missile") and fled to Canada, started the L5 Society with Meinel in 1975. In their divorce proceedings, Meinel apparently made charges of child molestation against Henson which were published by Scientology front group "Religious Freedom Watch" as a way to "dead agent" Henson. Meinel, while supportive of Henson, didn't actually retract the charges, though I took her comments to suggest they were bogus. (UPDATE July 18, 2008: Henson's daughter Val has recently gone public and argues that the charges are true.)

Meinel had a long-running feud with hacker "jericho" (Brian Martin), who runs attrition.org. Martin, as it happens, was once the roommate of phony hacker "Christian Valor" ("Se7en"), but was also one of the people who exposed his fabrications. In addition to exposing other bogus security experts, his site contains a large collection of criticisms of Meinel, her behavior, and her work. Given the personal nature of many of the criticisms it is difficult to know what, if any, to take seriously, except for those which specifically address her accuracy and knowledge of hacking and network security, such as the critique of her 1998 Scientific American article, "How Hackers Break In...", by Fyodor (author of the widely used security port scanning tool, nmap). That article, which may be partly based on a hacker break-in at Meinel's ISP, Rt66 Internet (in which case "Dogberry" may be John Mocho of Rt66), contains a number of questionable statements. For example, the scenario describes the firewall of "refrigerus.com" responding to a port scan by launching an attack in response, as though this is a good form of security, and the description of the attack itself suggests that either the description is inaccurate or the attack itself is incredibly naive. The author description on "How Hackers Break In..." stated that Meinel has an "upcoming book, War in Cyberspace" that "examines Internet warfare." As of today, there appears to be no such book.

In 1998, a hacking group that called itself "Hacking for Girliez" or HFG defaced a number of websites, including that of the New York Times. Brian Martin believes he was on the list of suspects. A number of HFG defacements made reference to Meinel (which I interpret to mean that HFG had a grudge against her rather than that she was involved), and she was herself questioned by the FBI and asked to take a polygraph, which she wisely declined (given the lack of empirical support for the validity of the polygraph).

In 2001, Meinel's techbroker.com website was compromised and a piece of software placed on it. A message was sent to the Vuln-Dev mailing list under Meinel's name (apparently a forgery), claiming that the software was an exploit for a vulnerability in the wu-ftpd FTP server; but in actuality it was malware which would attempt to delete files.

Given the lack of support for the title claims in this article and the lack of Meinel's expertise in computer security, I don't think Skeptical Inquirer should have published it, at least in the form it appeared.

Meinel, it should be clear, is not an advocate of illegal hacking--she seems to be fairly emphatic about not breaking into machines unless you own them or have permission to do so. But at the same time, she seems to give a wink and a nod to those who are going to break into the machines of others and has been billed as a "walking script kiddie factory." She also seems to advocate offensive measures as a mode of defense (as described in her 1998 Scientific American article), which is not responsible computer security advocacy.

UPDATE (March 4, 2006): Today I obtained a copy of Gerald Posner's book Why America Slept (2004, Random House), which is cited by Meinel at the end of her paragraph claiming that NIPC budget diversion to cyber warfare was the cause of 9/11 failures. The concluding sentence of that paragraph reads: "Therefore, the FBI lacked the resources to follow up on an agent's warning of al Qaeda members at U.S. flight schools (Posner 2003)."

The relevant section of Posner's book is pp. 169-173. It in no way supports what Meinel has written--Posner makes no reference to NIPC in his entire book, and he enumerates several failures on the part of the FBI with respect to Ken Williams' memo--the lack of communication with the CIA, the failure of middle management of the FBI to recognize the significance of the memo, and lack of resources within the FBI: "The FBI considered the Phoenix idea [to check out the thousands of students at the flight schools] too costly and time consuming, and a few even expressed concerns that such a probe might be criticized in Congress as racial profiling."

The main thesis of Meinel's article is not supported by the facts, and she has misrepresented at least three of the sources she cites--Gerald Posner's book, Kevin Mitnick's book, and Adam Penenberg and Marc Barry's book. That's sloppy work that doesn't deserve publication.

UPDATE (February 19, 2007): I thought I had already added a link to the April 2006 discussion of Meinel's article by Jeff Nathan at the Arbor Networks blog, but I hadn't. This remedies that oversight. There's a good exchange between Nathan and Meinel in the comments.

Also, Skeptical Inquirer published my letter to the editor regarding Meinel in the July/August 2006 issue (p. 62) along with a response from Meinel.

UPDATE (August 8, 2010): James Bamford's most recent book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America (2008) contains more detail about intelligence screwups that, had they been prevented, might have averted all or part of the attacks of 9/11--but NIPC's budget had nothing to do with it.

Fictional autobiographies: Frey joins Warnke, "Stratford," Esses, etc.

As many people now know, James Frey's bestseller and Oprah Book Club selection A Million Little Pieces has been exposed by The Smoking Gun as a collection of fabrications--yet Oprah continues to support the book.

There's a whole genre (at least one) of phony autobiography, and those who get suckered into believing them often continue to support them even in the face of overwhelming evidence against them. Mike Warnke's book, The Satan Seller, tells of how he was inducted into a coven of Satan-worshippers and became a leader in the group, leading a debauched life before finding God and becoming a Christian standup comedian. The Christian magazine Cornerstone did a comprehensive investigation into his past, and found that none of it was true. Similarly, Cornerstone exposed "Lauren Stratford"'s claim of being raised by Satan-worshippers, forced to participate in sex orgies, and to sacrifice her own child to be the fabrications of a mentally disturbed woman who was raised in a Christian home. Michael Esses told a story of being a God-hating rabbi converted to Christianity in his 1973 book, Michael, Michael, Why Do You Hate Me? John Todd claimed to be a member of the Illuminati. "Dr. Alberto Rivera" claimed to be a Jesuit priest trained to destroy Protestant churches in a story published as a comic book by Jack Chick. Cathy O'Brien claimed in Trance-Formation of America to have been subjected to CIA mind control and made into a sex slave for presidents and celebrities.

The male versions emphasize that the individual involved was a tough guy, a bad guy, and a leader involved in these nefarious deeds; the female versions, by contrast, portray themselves as victims under the control of evil conspirators. In both cases there seems to be an element of pride in the vivid descriptions of the actions confessed--the motivations behind these are no doubt similar to the motivations of false or embellished confessions in rehab and twelve-step programs.

It's worth noting that the same people are behind a number of the Christian fakes--David Balsiger ghost-authored Warnke's book and was director of marketing for the publisher of Esses' book (and has a longstanding reputation for dishonesty), Jack Chick promoted John Todd and "Alberto."

In Frey's case, publisher Nan Talese admits having long-standing arguments with her husband, Gay Talese, about whether "nonfiction" can include fabrications--her husband defending truth in nonfiction while she defends falsehood presented as fact.

Frey, for his part, has admitted that he has taken some liberties, but asserts in the face of overwhelming evidence from The Smoking Gun exposure that his account is still basically accurate.

Why are so many people willing to support and endorse this kind of dishonesty? Some, like Nan Talese, are doing so explicitly--a position that forgives minor distortions, even when they accumulate into major ones. It allows for "bullshitting" and for "noble lies" of the sort the neo-conservatives defend.

I find it fascinating that some of the biggest defenders of this kind of falsehood are people who claim to be absolutists about morality--the only thing that can be said in their defense is that some of them truly believe it and think the exposures can be refuted. Over time, the position can become untenable for most, and the followers of people like Warnke fall away in quiet embarrassment.

U.S. collection of intelligence information via Uzbekistan torture

Blairwatch has published the text of memos from Craig Murray, UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, which complain about the U.S. giving aid to the country after accepting sham improvements in human rights, as well as collecting intelligence information obtained via torture. Some excerpts:

I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging).
[...]
We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.
[...]
I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a euphemism such as "From detainee debriefing." The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured.

[...] I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact.

[...] At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

This is a country the U.S. supplies with hundreds of millions of dollars of aid money?

Mel Gibson on evolution, women, and political conspiracy theory

This is from a Mel Gibson interview with Playboy magazine in the July 1995 issue. I haven't verified it myself, though I've found consistent excerpts (though they could all have an identical bogus source). The positions taken are quite plausibly attributed to Gibson, though I'm surprised at his foul mouth.

On evolution:

PLAYBOY: Do you believe in Darwin's theory of evolution or that God created man in his image?

GIBSON: The latter.

PLAYBOY: So you can't accept that we descended from monkeys and apes?

GIBSON: No, I think it's bullshit. If it isn't, why are they still around? How come apes aren't people yet? It's a nice theory, but I can't swallow it. There's a big credibility gap. The carbon dating thing that tells you how long something's been around, how accurate is that, really? I've got one of Darwin's books at home and some of that stuff is pretty damn funny. Some of his stuff is true, like that the giraffe has a long neck so it can reach the leaves. But I just don't think you can swallow the whole piece.

Why does anyone think his first point is a good argument against evolution? I've never heard anyone argue that Italian-Americans couldn't have come from Italy because there are still Italians there.

And I wonder what book by Darwin he has.

On assorted moral issues:

PLAYBOY: We take it that you're not particularly broad-minded when it comes to issues such as celibacy, abortion, birth control.

GIBSON: People always focus on stuff like that. Those aren't issues. Those
are unquestionable. You don't even argue those points.

PLAYBOY: You don't?

GIBSON: No.

On women:

PLAYBOY: What about allowing women to be priests?

GIBSON: No.

PLAYBOY: Why not?

GIBSON: I'll get kicked around for saying it, but men and women are just different. They're not equal. The same way that you and I are not equal.

PLAYBOY: That's true. You have more money.

GIBSON: You might be more intelligent, or you might have a bigger dick. Whatever it is, nobody's equal. And men and women are not equal. I have tremendous respect for women. I love them. I don't know why they want to step down. Women in my family are the center of things. And good things emanate from them. The guys usually mess up.

PLAYBOY: That's quite a generalization.

GIBSON: Women are just different. Their sensibilities are different.

PLAYBOY: Any examples?

GIBSON: I had a female business partner once. Didn't work.

PLAYBOY: Why not?

GIBSON: She was a cunt.

PLAYBOY: And the feminists dare to put you down!

GIBSON: Feminists don't like me, and I don't like them. I don't get their point. I don't know why feminists have it out for me, but that's their problem, not mine.

Interesting that he thinks a woman being a priest would be "a step down." From many occupations, I'd agree.

Gibson on political conspiracy theory:

PLAYBOY: How do you feel about Bill Clinton?

GIBSON: He's a low-level opportunist. Somebody's telling him what to do.

PLAYBOY: Who?

GIBSON: The guy who's in charge isn't going to be the front man, ever. If I were going to be calling the shots I wouldn't make an appearance. Would you? You'd end up losing your head. It happens all the time. All those monarchs. If he's the leader, he's getting shafted. What's keeping him in there? Why would you stay for that kind of abuse? Except that he has to stay for some reason. He was meant to be the president 30 years ago, if you ask me.

PLAYBOY: He was just 18 then.

GIBSON: Somebody knew then that he would be president now.

PLAYBOY: You really believe that?

GIBSON: I really believe that. He was a Rhodes scholar, right? Just like Bob Hawke. Do you know what a Rhodes scholar is? Cecil Rhodes established the Rhodes scholarship for those young men and women who want to strive for a new world order. Have you heard that before? George Bush? CIA? Really, it's Marxism, but it just doesn't want to call itself that. Karl had the right idea, but he was too forward about saying what it was. Get power but don't admit to it. Do it by stealth. There's a whole trend of Rhodes scholars who will be politicians around the world.

PLAYBOY: This certainly sounds like a paranoid sense of world history. You must be quite an assassination buff.

GIBSON: Oh, fuck. A lot of those guys pulled a boner. There's something to do with the Federal Reserve that Lincoln did, Kennedy did and Reagan tried. I can't remember what it was, my dad told me about it. Everyone who did this particular thing that would have fixed the economy got undone. Anyway, I'll end up dead if I keep talking shit.

(Note added 30 December: I've heard from several people who have now verified the accuracy of these quotations.)

Bush attempts to suppress stories; Doug Bandow taking money from Abramoff

Howard Kurtz writes in yesterday's Washington Post that Bush has been attempting (without success in a few notable recent instances) to suppress stories about CIA prisons and wiretapping.

In the same article, he reports that Doug Bandow accepted payments of as much as $2,000 a story for pieces favorable to lobbyist Jack Abramoff's clients. He has resigned from the Cato Institute in the wake of the story, exposed by Business Week, issuing a statement that "I am fully responsible and I won't play victim ... Obviously, I regret stupidly calling to question my record of activism and writing that extends over 20 years. . . . For that I deeply apologize."

Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation is unapologetic about accepting similar payments; Jonathan Adler of the National Review reports that he was offered similar payments when he worked at a think tank but declined them. It's more evidence that think tank output tends to be generated by starting with paid-for conclusions and generating arguments and selecting evidence to support them--similar to Feith's selection of intelligence information to support the invasion of Iraq. Think tanks supported by particular interests simply aren't a good way of getting objective information.

More examples in Kurtz's piece.

Bush administration approved warrantless wiretaps on U.S. citizens

News is now out that the Bush administration, in 2002, authorized the National Security Agency to conduct eavesdropping (on international email or phone calls) against U.S. citizens without court oversight. The NSA's domestic surveillance is supposed to be limited to foreign embassies and missions, and to require court approval. This is not a power granted to the president by the U.S. Constitution.

This abuse of power has apparently been exercised against as many as 500 people in the U.S. at any given time. The NY Times reports that some NSA officials, to their credit, refused to participate due to their concerns about the legality of the program.

Note that the standards which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court uses to approve wiretaps are already incredibly low (their decision algorithm is pretty close to "say yes to everything"), but apparently that was considered too great a barrier and it had to be bypassed.

Approval of torture, secret CIA prisons in Europe, kidnapping citizens of other countries and taking them to Afghanistan... apparently the Bush administration has no respect for the U.S. Constitution on the principles behind it.

Freedom Summit: Complete Kookery

Steven M. Greer, M.D., the creator of CSETI (Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence), brought the Freedom Summit to a low point. Greer, whose CSETI group used to go wandering in the woods to communicate with aliens by waving their high-powered flashlights (as documented by Alex Heard in Outside magazine), was promoting his Disclosure Project.

Greer gave a rambling speech filled with claims of his direct connections with senior government officials which prove that the U.S. has been in possession of alien propulsion technology since the 1950s. According to Greer, this technology obsoletes gas, oil, coal, nuclear, and all other forms of energy production in use today--that we have not needed to burn any such fuels since 1950. He claimed that billions of dollars of taxpayer money have been put into black budget projects involving this alien technology, which is being suppressed by the "kleptocracy," an "interlocking" group of government officials and private families which run the world. He did not explain the economics of why the government would be pouring billions of dollars into suppressing the use of a technology which could generate trillions of dollars in revenue.

He made much of an alleged briefing he gave to CIA Director James Woolsey on UFOs in 1993, while failing to note Woolsey's account of that meeting, which characterizes it as a "dinner party" at which Greer sat at a table with Woolsey and his wife Suzanne and with James Petersen and his wife Diane. The four of them signed the letter to Greer chiding him for publishing a "distorted" account and for portraying their "politeness as acquiescence and questions as affirmations."

It wasn't clear how many, if any, people in the audience were taking him seriously, though they did let him speak. The first question in the Q&A session was a good one: "Why haven't you been killed?" Greer answered that he took plenty of precautions by going public very loudly (appearing on Larry King) and that he had the protection of a third of the secretive (and nonexistent!) MJ-12 organization who want the truth about UFOs to come out, but that he has received many threats. The next questioner, noting that Greer kept referring to "we" with respect to his organization, asked how many people are in his organization. Greer misheard the question as being how many of his people have been killed, and said that three of them had been murdered.

Greer's talk was rambling and disjointed, and was punctuated with lots of specific accurate facts (such as that CIA Director William Colby's dead body was found floating in the Potomac; Greer attributed this to a murder designed to keep him from going public with UFO-related information). The content and manner of his talk reminded me of the works of those who claim to be targets of CIA mind control experiments, like Cathy O'Brien and "Brice Taylor" (Susan Ford)--they like to drop names of famous people and claim direct contacts with them, but they work everything into a bizarre and only semi-coherent fantasy structure with zero plausibility.

While I enjoy occasionally listening to the rantings of a kook, it was a discredit to the organizers of this conference that they gave a public forum to Dr. Greer. If they seriously thought that Greer had a meaningful and important message, it casts serious doubt on their credibility or ability to distinguish fact from fiction. Even many in the UFO community recognize that Greer is a kook (you can find many examples searching for Greer's name at virtuallystrange.net).