Month: January 2014

A new book has been published today that reveals for the first time the identities of a group of American activists who burgled FBI offices, stole sensitive documents, and leaked them to journalists. The fact that the burglary took place is hardly remembered by most Americans because it has been shadowed over by the revelations of the leak, which included the FBI’s unconstitutional program to crush domestic dissent, known as COINTELPRO.

“They were never caught,” writes Mark Mazetti at the New York Times, “and the stolen documents that they mailed anonymously to newspaper reporters were the first trickle of what would become a flood of revelations about extensive spying and dirty-tricks operations by the F.B.I. against dissident groups.”

Betty Medsger, of the Washington Post, was one of the journalists to whom the activists leaked. She reported “what was perhaps the most damning document from the cache, a 1970 memorandum that offered a glimpse into Hoover’s obsession with snuffing out dissent,” Mazetti explains. “The document urged agents to step up their interviews of antiwar activists and members of dissident student groups.”

“It will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an F.B.I. agent behind every mailbox,” the message from F.B.I. headquarters said. Another document, signed by Hoover himself, revealed widespread F.B.I. surveillance of black student groups on college campuses.

But the document that would have the biggest impact on reining in the F.B.I.’s domestic spying activities was an internal routing slip, dated 1968, bearing a mysterious word: Cointelpro.

Neither the Media burglars nor the reporters who received the documents understood the meaning of the term, and it was not until several years later, when the NBC News reporter Carl Stern obtained more files from the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act, that the contours of Cointelpro — shorthand for Counterintelligence Program — were revealed.

Since 1956, the F.B.I. had carried out an expansive campaign to spy on civil rights leaders, political organizers and suspected Communists, and had tried to sow distrust among protest groups. Among the grim litany of revelations was a blackmail letter F.B.I. agents had sent anonymously to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., threatening to expose his extramarital affairs if he did not commit suicide.

“It wasn’t just spying on Americans,” said Loch K. Johnson, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia who was an aide to Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho. “The intent of Cointelpro was to destroy lives and ruin reputations.”

The burglary and subsequent leaks were vociferously condemned at the time. But soon the FBI’s abuses became the bigger story, and it led to serious reform efforts throughout the mid to late 1970s.

The FBI’s behavior under J. Edgar Hoover is almost universally condemned now (even by government officials, publicly at least). The burglars were never caught, but the man hunt for them didn’t continue because the consensus became that they did something good. They acted on behalf of the American people because the U.S. government was acting to extinguish the Bill of Rights. They broke the law, but the government’s crimes were worse.

The parallels to the leaks perpetrated by whistleblower Edward Snowden are hard to miss. I would predict the course of the current controversy will echo the 1971 burglary of FBI offices. Soon enough, those condemning Snowden as a criminal and a traitor will fizzle out behind a rising consensus that his “theft” of government documents leaked to journalists exposed high crimes of the state and was done for the public good. History is undoubtedly on Snowden’s side.

In a New York Times Op-Ed, two former U.S. officials, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon warn of the potential for Egypt’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood to engender Islamic extremism.

“Egypt’s crisis threatens to add fuel to the ongoing terrorist activity across North Africa and to spawn a new wave of attacks against Western targets just as the anti-Islamist crackdown that began in the late 1970s aided the rise of Al Qaeda,” they argue.

While the awful crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood by the military coup regime in Egypt does run the risk blowing back right in their face, the risk of “a new wave of attacks against Western targets” is not a matter of course. In fact, the risk of anti-American violence by Islamic extremists is highly correlated with the level of U.S. interventionism in a place like Egypt.

Unfortunately, Washington refuses to budge from its traditional policy of supporting whatever brutal military regime that exists in Egypt so long as they abide by certain U.S. demands. And that’s where Benjamin and Simon get to the crux of the issue of U.S. policy.

America has no good options at present. There’s no upside to a confrontation with the military — only the prospect of losing more sway. An effective policy response will require close cooperation with the Egyptian security services, who caused the problem to begin with. And the need for American military access to the Suez Canal and continued Egyptian support for the peace treaty with Israel also preclude simply walking away from Egypt.

This is the customary formulation of why the U.S. needs to keep meddling in Egypt’s affairs: the Suez Canal and the 1973 peace treaty with Israel.

But as John Mearsheimer, a professor of international relations at Chicago University, recently explained, these arguments are “unpersuasive.”

“Given that Egypt…[has] little economic or military power and hardly any oil, advocates of global domination rely on a variety of other claims to make the case that [there] are core American interests,” Mearsheimer writes in The National Interest. But the peace treaty with Israel doesn’t necessarily depend on continued U.S. aid the way it did at its inception, and, to put it simply, Egypt is not about to attack Israel. “Israel is now so confident of its military superiority over its Arab neighbors that it is actually reducing its conventional forces,” Mearsheimer explains.

As for the Suez Canal…

One argument is that the United States should care greatly about Egypt because it controls the Suez Canal. Roughly 8 percent of global seaborne trade and 4.5 percent of world oil supplies travel through that passageway. Moreover, the U.S. Navy uses the canal to move ships from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. Thus, if Egypt were to close the canal, it would damage the international economy and complicate American efforts to project power into the strategically important Gulf.

This is unpersuasive. If Egypt closed the Suez Canal, it would not seriously hurt the international economy. Ships would be rerouted, mainly around the southern tip of Africa, and oil from the Middle East would be distributed to the recipient countries in different ways. Furthermore, Egypt would pay a significant economic price if it shut down the canal, which is its third-largest source of revenue and is sometimes referred to as an “economic lifeline.” Not only would Cairo lose the money generated by that passageway, but it would also risk economic and political retaliation by the countries hurt by the closing. It is worth noting that the canal was closed from 1967 to 1975 and the international economy experienced no serious damage.

So, even as these two former U.S. officials worry about the potential rise of extremism as a result of the U.S.-backed crackdown in Egypt, they refuse to let go of the groundless argument for continuing to intervene. Inconceivable, apparently, is the notion that we should just stay the hell out of it.

Historian Margaret MacMillan has published a lengthy report for the Brookings Institution exploring the “lessons of the Great War” and drawing parallels between the state of international affairs prior to WWI and today. In one section, she discusses “The Temptations of the Client State” and the problems that arise when great powers staunchly support smaller client states.

Great powers often face the dilemma that their very support for smaller ones encourages their clients to be reckless. And their clients often slip the leading strings of their patrons. The U.S. has funnelled huge amounts of money and equipment to Israel and Pakistan, for example, as China has done to North Korea, yet that has not given either the Americans or the Chinese commensurate influence over the policies of those countries. Israel, while hugely dependent on America, has sometimes tried to push Washington into taking pre-emptive military action. And Pakistan gave sanctuary to America’s global enemy number one, Osama bin Laden.

Moreover, alliances and friendships forged for defensive reasons or mutual advantage can look quite different from other perspectives. Before 1914 German statesmen assumed that the military pact between France and Russia was really designed to destroy Germany. Today Pakistan feels threatened by the links between India and Afghanistan, while the U.S. tends to see a challenge in China’s increasing influence in Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Making matters worse, patron nations are reluctant to abandon their clients, no matter how far they have run amok and no matter what dangers they themselves are being led into, because to do so incurs the risk of making the greater power appear weak and indecisive.

This is perhaps the most important reason to avoid what 18th century American revolutionaries called “entangling alliances.” As George Washington famously said in his Farewell Address:

The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest…Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests.

As any college freshman can tell you, that is one of the key lessons of WWI: Entangling alliances on all sides created a snowball effect that made a relatively insignificant event, the assassination of the Austrian archduke, an immediate global conflagration.

The soundness of George Washington’s advice continues to be borne out today. America’s “habitual fondness” and established alliance with Saudi Arabia persists despite the blowback that U.S. support for Arab tyrannies elicits in the form of anti-American terrorism and despite Riyadh’s veritable opposition to key U.S. foreign policy initiatives, like a diplomatic opening with Iran. Saudi Arabia has suspicious ties to Islamic jihadist groups and supports extremists in Syria; a policy that has come close to propelling the U.S. into another reckless military quagmire in the Middle East. Members of the U.S. Senate have said that classified materials connect Saudi Arabia in some way to the 9/11 attacks – a connection that was perhaps overlooked because the U.S.-Saudi alliance is seen as sacrosanct in Washington, DC.

Our alliance with Israel also causes Washington to subordinate its own interests for another, also generates anti-American terrorism, and, as MacMillan explains, has sometimes “push[ed] Washington into taking pre-emptive military action.” As with the U.S.-Saudi alliance, the alliance with Israel has colored America’s perception of who the great enemy bogeymen in the Middle East are. Both have encouraged unnecessary American military engagements Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and beyond.

America’s alliances in the Asia Pacific region, particularly with Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, have exacerbated tensions with China and quite obviously, as MacMillan predicts, encouraged recklessness. Where the region’s smaller states might otherwise back down to a rising regional great power like China, they have instead been bolstered by America’s security guarantees, standing up to China’s territorial and maritime claims in a way that makes conflict more likely. This system of alliances could easily turn a small clash in the Asia Pacific into a great power war, just as happened with WWI.

“America’s national-security elites act on the assumption that every nook and cranny of the globe is of great strategic significance and that there are threats to U.S. interests everywhere,” writes renowned international relations theorist John Mearsheimer in his most recent piece for The National Interest. “Not surprisingly, they live in a constant state of fear.”

The fiction that every corner of the Earth is a vital U.S. interest and the consequent state of perennial fear together make unnecessary conflict more likely. And that is the great danger of entangling alliances.

I’ve predicted failure for Secretary of State John Kerry’s push for peace negotiations and a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of the (many) reasons past efforts to “broker” a deal have failed is because Israel makes a handful of demands that are beyond the pale and obviously unacceptable to the Palestinians, thus triggering a break-up in talks.

One of the demands Israel is making this time around is that any final agreement allows for a permanent Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley, an area constituting some 20% of the West Bank. Understandably, the Palestinians reject this, since “it is impossible to say that an occupation has ended when the occupying army is still there,” writes Mitchell Plitnick.

Israel says it needs the military presence in the Jordan Valley for security reasons, to protect itself from terrorism and invasion. But Dov Weisglass, who was a top advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, writes this week that there really is no security justification for a military presence in the Jordan Valley:

What would it be intended for? Preventing terrorism? Not really. The Jordan Valley is almost unpopulated (with the exception of the Jericho area). Terrorism in the Jordan Valley has always been small in scale in comparison with other areas of Judea and Samaria; and the Israeli force would not be supposed to reach these other areas or serve in them in any case.

Would the force be intended to prevent an invasion into Israel? For many years, until 2003, Israel was greatly troubled by the size of the Iraqi ground forces, and the fear of an invasion was tangible; but not today. Once Iraq ceased to pose a military threat to Israel, there is no state or other military force east of the Jordan River that could invade Israel or pose a land-based military threat to Israel. Certainly not the kingdom of Jordan, which enjoys strong security ties with Israel.

If, heaven forbid, the kingdom of Jordan collapses and hostile forces penetrate its territory and the danger of attack by land is resumed; or if, heaven forbid, missile, rocket or shell fire starts from there, then the IDF, with its full force, will be required to carry out a serious military operation, either defensive or offensive. It will not be the garrison force, limited in its scale and capabilities, which will engage in this. In general, past experience shows that sparse military forces, deployed along a long defensive line, do not contribute to security.

So why is Israel demanding continued military occupation? You might call it a stalling tactic. The way things are now, Israel militarily occupies the whole of the West Bank and uses the backdrop of endless “peace negotiations” to do so in perpetuity until it can expand and have sovereignty over all of the land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea. So Israel seems to deliberately foil a final agreement because the charade of negotiating for peace allows it to continue the occupation and colonization of what is left of historic Palestine. If a final deal is successful, Israel can’t annex the West Bank at some point in the future.

As Yousef Munayyer has written at The Daily Beast, “Israel needs negotiations to provide cover for its continued colonization of Palestinian territory and create the impression that its presence in the West Bank is temporary and its withdrawal around the corner.”

It’s rare that I write about good news. But the editorial from yesterday’s New York Times is really good news.

Entitled “Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower,” the Times editorial board praises and defends Snowden’s decision to leak information about the NSA and argue he deserves some kind of clemency or pardon.

Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home…

…The shrill brigade of his critics say Mr. Snowden has done profound damage to intelligence operations of the United States, but none has presented the slightest proof that his disclosures really hurt the nation’s security. Many of the mass-collection programs Mr. Snowden exposed would work just as well if they were reduced in scope and brought under strict outside oversight, as the presidential panel recommended.

When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government.

To help make their point, the Times lists the following bullet points as evidence of the value of Snowden’s leaks:

• The N.S.A. broke federal privacy laws, or exceeded its authority, thousands of times per year, according to the agency’s own internal auditor.
• The agency broke into the communications links of major data centers around the world, allowing it to spy on hundreds of millions of user accounts and infuriating the Internet companies that own the centers. Many of those companies are now scrambling to install systems that the N.S.A. cannot yet penetrate.
• The N.S.A. systematically undermined the basic encryption systems of the Internet, making it impossible to know if sensitive banking or medical data is truly private, damaging businesses that depended on this trust.
• His leaks revealed that James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, lied to Congress when testifying in March that the N.S.A. was not collecting data on millions of Americans. (There has been no discussion of punishment for that lie.)
• The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rebuked the N.S.A. for repeatedly providing misleading information about its surveillance practices, according to a ruling made public because of the Snowden documents. One of the practices violated the Constitution, according to the chief judge of the court.
• A federal district judge ruled earlier this month that the phone-records-collection program probably violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. He called the program “almost Orwellian” and said there was no evidence that it stopped any imminent act of terror.

So why is this good news? I think it’s an important sign of where general attitudes in the country are when even the New York Times – usually (but not always) an outlet that upholds the government’s legitimacy and the status quo – defends a dissident whistleblower who is essentially Public Enemy Number 1. I would not necessarily have expected the Times to come down on the side of Snowden like it did and that is encouraging.

Continue reading “Views On Snowden: Are the Times A-Changin’?”