Obama tries to undo the CIA damage


President Obama visited the CIA yesterday and gave a pep talk to the employees demoralized by Obama’s  decision to release formerly classified legal memoranda detailing the legal limits of interrogation techniques.

Obama’s pep talk was too little too late.

Obama was given a bipartisan warning not to release these documents. Four former heads of the CIA, two Appointed by President Clinton and two appointed by President Bush, all said that Obama’s release would risk national security. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden says even Leon Panetta, Obama’s head of the CIA, agreed with the bipartisan group.

Hayden talked about the Obama release on Fox News Sunday:

Hayden made many important points during the interview. The two points I found most poignant were what we have provided the enemy and the effect on our CIA officers:

  • What we have described for our enemies, in the midst of war, are the outer limits that any American would ever go to in terms of interrogating an al-Qaeda terrorist. That’s very valuable information. Now it doesn’t mean we would always go to those outer limits, but it describes the box within which Americans will not go beyond. To me that’s that’s very useful for our enemies.
  • Officers are saying, the things I’m doing now, will this happen to me in five years because of the things I am doing now? And the answer they’ve been given by senior leadership is the only answer possible, which is I can’t guarantee you that won’t happen, but I do know it won’t happen under this president. Now think what that means. The basic foundation of the legitimacy of the agency’s action has shifted from some durability of law to a product of the American political process. That puts agency officers and a horrible position. So I think the really dangerous effect of this Chris, is that you have agency officers stepping back from the kinds of things that the nation expects them to do. I mean if you were to go to an agency officer today and say go do this. Why am I authorized to do this? It’s authorized by the president, the attorney general says it’s lawful and it’s been briefed to congress. That agency officer is going to say, yeah I know, but I see what’s going on here now. Have you run it by the ACLU. What’s the New York Times editorial board think? Have you discussed this with any potential presidential candidates. You’re going to have this agency, on the front line of defending you in this current war, playing back from the line.

Video of the entire Hayden interview is available at Fox News.

The U.S. press has been supportive of the Obama release. But the British Press is more critical.

The Sunday Times reports that CIA officers still fear prosecution, even though Obama says they will not face criminal prosecution. According to the Times the documents Obama released represent just the tip of the iceberg.

Con Coughlin, in the Telegraph, writes that “Mr. Obama has traveled far afield to imbue both allies and enemies with a new sense of well-being, the feeling that the world is a better and safer place now that the abhorrent Bush administration is no longer in office.” Coughlin warns Obama that the effect of his unnecessary release of previously classified legal opinions on interrogation techniques will be to weaken the CIA.

This is starting to remind me of the mindset we put the CIA and FBI in before the 9/11 terror attacks. The agencies were too engaged in CYA to effectively connect the dots. I hope we don’t regress to that as Obama swings the pendulum more and more left.


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20 Comments Leave a comment

What is really confusing

izoneguy (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 11:57AM EST (link)

Why doesn’t Obama just release everything that is classified? It seems like he just does not get it? Why not just tell the world all of our contingency plans and what we would (or would not do in Obama’s case) in case we were attacked again? I don’t see Barry as the president who would stand on a pile of rubble with a bullhorn rallying the country around freedom. That is Barry worst nightmare. To actually stand up & defend America!! So far all he has done is bow and play patty cake, patty cake terrorist friend lick the rear end as fast as you can.

The point cannot be made often enough: Modern liberalism, as embodied in the Obama presidency, is the defender of the status quo. And the status quo is a road to economic ruin. Political forces cannot redistribute the wealth that the economic system does not produce.

Inconvenient facts, rough interrogation worked.

Old_Crow (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 12:20PM EST (link)

He does not want that fact to get out to the public, so he won’t release that information.
As the media sleeeeeeeeps.

BTW, there will be prosecutions IRT the interrogations. ‘Bama just doesn’t want it to stick to him. He’ll play it off as not wanting to interfere with the legal process or some such garbage.

“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” — James Madison

I told you there will be prosecutions.

Old_Crow (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 2:44PM EST (link)

Word in the field is they are looking to get everyone who was even remotely involved. Hundreds of lawsuits. This is much more serious than is being portrayed in the press, even the conservative press. Blood in the water now.

I don’t rarely get fired up on initial perceptions, but this is getting very big, very fast.

“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” — James Madison

 
 
 

A sop to the left

texas214 (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 12:01PM EST (link)

It was a give away to the looney left so he could say he was “feeling their pain” on this issue. We know because it served no purpose other than to satisfy the critics that he was continuing the Bush policies.

What did it accomplish on a national security issue?

 

The 'field' guys have already written off this adminstration.

Old_Crow (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 12:26PM EST (link)

No one trusts the Obama crew due to fickleness and weakness.
Hard to take risks when no one has got your back.
There is a massive, massive, CYA movement underfoot.
This will hurt us for a decade or more.

“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” — James Madison

 

Obama can fix it by

Paul_In_Houston Tuesday, April 21st at 12:34PM EST (link)

refusing Cheney’s request for the release of the RESULTS of the interrogations.

Ain’t THAT exactly the kind of solution one would expect from him?

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And, by doing as you suggest he might, Obama will

janis (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 12:50PM EST (link)

confirm that the interrogation techniques worked. And if they worked, then he has royally screwed the pooch by releasing the info on the techniques.

Once again, Dick Cheney has outmanuvered the Zero.

Janis: I didn't put a smiley on it because

Paul_In_Houston Tuesday, April 21st at 12:57PM EST (link)

I thought my sarcasm was obvious.

I totally agree with you.

I voted for McCain, but I swear that he didn’t even run.
GOD! How I wish that Cheney had run in 2008.

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From your mouth to Cheney's ear--Cheney/Bolton 2012!

janis (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 1:04PM EST (link)

A woman can dream, can’t she? My God, what a ticket that would be! Terrorists and dictators from far and near would be needing hourly changes of underwear.

And we could finally take a deep breath again and be assured that America as we’ve known it would continue.

Cheney/Bolton - Now THAT would be

Paul_In_Houston Tuesday, April 21st at 2:05PM EST (link)

AWESOME. And, we’d have grownups at the helm again.

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I noticed he's trying to cover for himself on the Vets are terrorists front too

The_Gadfly (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 12:48PM EST (link)

by putting a PETA friendly terrorist on the FBI most wanted list. He just doesn’t get it: No matter how many muuligans he and his buddy Bill Clinton take on the golf course, there are no mulligans on national security.

Focusing on imaginary terrorists at home will get people killed.

Declassifying sensitive national security information will get people killed even more quickly abroad.

Killing a small group of pirates and then backing off on backing up that stance the next day will get people killed.

None of this is speculation. Look through history and every time free people won’t stand up against tyranny, the tyrants rule. But I suppose I shouldn’t expect anyone raised on Marx, Lennon, Stalin, and Mao to have any empathy for a free people.

 

It's duck and cover time if you're in any sort of enforcement

Achance (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 1:00PM EST (link)

or ministerial job, even for career employees. If you’re an auditor, investigator, or contract or grant manager and you got crossthreaded with a Democrat constituency during the Bush Administration, the “just following orders” defense is no defense. As soon as BHO set up a transition team every union and non-profit in the Country handed the transition team their hit list. If they hate you enough, they’ll try to fire you or move you to some miserable place. If you’re not that important, you just come in one day and find you don’t have phone or email, your office doesn’t have any windows, and your seat flushes. The latter is what really works on a conscientious employee’s head; you just become a non-person with nothing to do.

I know if I worked for DHS/ICE, the FBI, CIA, or any other law enforcement entity, I’d be demanding a lot of direct orders in front of witnesses and preferably in writing. It has to be just a misery in DHS. You know La Raza et al. handed in a hit list including every supervisor on the Mexican Border and everyone who had been involved in a raid. That Agency simply will assume a comatose state; nobody will dare enforce the law. The FBI will go back to being envirocops like they were under WJC. Everybody who survives in CIA will for all intents and purposes be the sort of non-person I described above with nothing to do.

In Vino Veritas

And then we will die in numbers not previously imagined.

janis (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 1:10PM EST (link)

With luck, maybe the west coast nutcases will get their fair share of terrorist hits if we HAVE to get hit. Let’s see how long they remain arch-liberals when confronted with the fruits of their beliefs. Somehow I don’t think that worrying about some owl’s habitat is going to be as important when your town lies smoldering in ruins or your family just died from chem/bio exposure from foreign sources.

NOT expressing a desire for this to happen, to be clear, just saying it’s the logical outcome of this kind of behavior by this president.

Won't make a bit of difference

Lammo (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 1:26PM EST (link)

it will still be all Bush’s fault.

Don’t be so open minded that your brains fall out. (John Corapi, The Black Sheep Dog)

Not necessarily, Lammo. The terrorists have a way

janis (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 1:41PM EST (link)

of speaking the truth as they see it better than the MSM, i.e. “We saw that in Somalia the US was only a paper tiger.” Courtesy of Osama Bin Laden. If Clinton was a paper tiger, then the Zero is tissue paper and the bad guys know it.

I meant the arch-liberals will remain so

Lammo (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 5:50PM EST (link)

and the fact that we got hit again will be the fault of former President Bush, not the fault of the former junior senator from illinois. I fear that most of these folks are so far gone in their BDS that not even getting “mugged” will be able to save them.

Don’t be so open minded that your brains fall out. (John Corapi, The Black Sheep Dog)

 
 
 
 

Less to the topic but more to comment made

kcdude (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 2:59PM EST (link)

in Dan Spencer’s last paragragh. I strongly disagree with the conclusion that Obama’s wrongheaded release will lead to some political cya focus for threat investigations. My take is that the pre 9/11 problems at CIA and the FBI were institutional rather than political. In saying this, to reiterate,I do not give Obama a pass for releasing documents that should have remained classified. My point is that it was the institutional group think that the folks at Hq (inside the Beltway) know better than the agents in the field. Reread Collen Rowley’s memo to Mueller and you should get my point. It wasn’t politics – in the GOP /Democrat form – that led to 9/11. It was short sighted bureaucrats.

Regarding ICE investigations – Every operation has a plan associated with it. Nothing is done in a vacuum. Napolitano recently squawked about not being briefed prior to an enforcement action in Washington. Read Leigh Winchell’s memo to the ICE agents under his supervision. – the op plan may not have made it to Napolitano but I guarantee it was at ICE Hq. Napolitano does not like getting yelled at by O’s folks and she tried to make crap roll down hill. Not on this one. My guess is that worksite investigations will now go the way of the dinosaur but don’t cry too much for ICE. There are still plenty of areas of investigative focus that will not incur the wrath of the administration or either political party.

 
 

But Obama just said today that Bush lawyers may be prosecuted.....

Cheetah772 (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 1:01PM EST (link)

But I think Obama is doing a terrible job of reassuring CIA that agents won’t be prosecuted by leaving open the possibility of Bush lawyers being prosecuted because some of them wrote these type of memos. Nevertheless, it’s a sad day for CIA, pretty soon, both lawyers and agents will live in fear of what Obama administration may do to them.

Daniel 2:20 And he [God] changeth the times and seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding.

He's playing to the gallery with that. Everyone at CIA

Achance (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 1:24PM EST (link)

has been made fully aware that there is a laser dot on their forehead and in one fashion or another they’ll pay for being collaborators with the eeeevul Bush Regime.

Last time I went through a Democrat transition our new union-vetted commissioner came into our office and told us he’d promised the unions he would fire us all and he intended to keep that promise. He made that visit in the context of a highly touted “get out with the people at the sharp end” initiative in contrast to the “haughty and aloof” Republicans they were replacing. Then he does a press release about how pleased and proud he was to have people with our skills and dedication working for him. You watch what they do, not what they say. Most of them are the kind of people that you really can’t call liars. One of us might lie in the sense of knowing one thing and saying something else. For the typical Democrat officeholder or operative, truth as we understand it simply doesn’t exist. Whatever falls out of their mouth is true to them and that’s all that matters.

In Vino Veritas

 
 

And now complicated by Obama moments ago not ruling our prosecution of Bush officials

Marcus_Traianus (Diary) Tuesday, April 21st at 1:34PM EST (link)

How far will the dismantling of our security structure and intelligence gathering proceed before people realize this puts us in grave danger?

I am just curious what they tell the relatives of our soldiers killed in action when intelligence that otherwise would have prevented their deaths is ignored, dismissed or not gathered all so Obama and his liege can score political points?

How about after the next attack on our soil or even abroad against American interests? Will their time be spent makiing excuses and performing political acrobatics with their fawning MSM fleet in tow? What will they tell those citizens as to the reasons there loved ones are no longer amongst the living- they wanted to make better friends in the world?

For our nation’s sake, I hope people start to wake up and separate politics from the destructive, dangerous actions being foisted upon us.

“Both of our political parties, at least the honest portion of them, agree conscientiously in the same object—the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers; the other, by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other, the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove.”.Thomas Jefferson