Senator Wyden Attacks CIA Redaction Demands As 'Unprecedented'

from the unprecedented-problems-may-need-unprecedented-solutions dept

It's well known that CIA's been stalling over the release of the officially declassified 480 page "executive summary" of the 6,300 page CIA torture report, put together by staffers of the Senate Intelligence Committee over many years at a cost of $40 million. It's known that the report is somewhat devastating to the CIA and the CIA isn't happy about it (at all). Originally, the CIA suggested redactions that made the report incomprehensible, even as James Clapper said it was "just 15%" that was redacted. Recent reports have focused on the fight over redacting pseudonyms. Apparently the CIA wants all names, including pseudonyms redacted, while the Senate Intelligence Committee thinks that pseudonyms (but not real names) should be left in so that the report accurately reflects if the actions were done by a large number of diverse individuals, or by some particular individuals again and again and again. The CIA, likely employing some sort of "mosaic theory" claim, say that they're worried that even with pseudonyms, identifying the same person in a few different situations will make it easier for some to figure out who they are.

In response, Senator Ron Wyden has attacked the CIA's position and noted that it's "unprecedented" and that plenty of other, similar, reports have made use of pseudonyms, without a problem.

The CIA’s current opposition to using pseudonyms runs contrary to decades of precedent.  U.S. government agencies have used pseudonyms to protect agents’ identities in public reports going back decades, including:

• Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq (2008) – Refers to FBI Special Agents involved in detainee interrogations using pseudonyms such as  “Thomas” and “Gibson.” 
• The 9/11 Commission Report (2004) – Refers to agents involved in hunting Osama Bin Ladin and other sensitive operations using pseudonyms such as “Mike,” “Richard,” “Jeff.” Pages 110, 112, 113, 114, 130, 131, 133, 138, 142, 204.
• The Investigation of the Abu Ghraib Detention Facility (2004) – Refers to CIA employees at the Abu Ghraib prison using pseudonyms such as “Other Agency Employee01,” “Other Agency Employee02,” etc. Pages 53, 54, 55, 76
• Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board – (1998) – Includes the names of some CIA officers, and notes that “in some cases pseudonyms are used instead of an individual’s true name.” (p. 52)  Also notes that “the Review Board would not agree to CIA’s request for blanket postponements of CIA names.” Page 48.
• Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair (1987) – refers to a CIA station chief in Central America using the pseudonym “Tomas Castillo. “ Pages pp. 139, 142, 143, 144, 146, 147, 505-510.
• Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders – (1975) – Report authored by the Church Committee notes that “We believe that the public is entitled to know what instrumentalities of their Government have done,” and that “the Committee, on occasions, resorted, on balance, to the use of an alias or a general description of the individual or his position.” Page 2.

So why does the CIA seem to think it's such a problem here? Well, mainly because the CIA is willing to do just about anything to stop this report, perhaps in an effort to run out the clock until some more "CIA friendly" Senators take over. Still, it seems that the more the CIA fights over this, the more and more likely it is that someone is just going to leak the damn report, and it may reveal a lot more than what's currently on the table.

Filed Under: cia, redactions, ron wyden, torture report

If GOP Takes Senate Next Week, Expect The CIA Torture Report To Disappear

from the bye-bye dept

We've heard some mumbling about one of the main reasons that the CIA has been dragging its feet on declassifying the executive summary of the CIA torture report that the Senate Intelligence Committee put together: it knows there's a decent chance that the Republicans will win the Senate next week, and suddenly the report may disappear from view. As you may recall, the Intelligence Committee (with support from GOP Senators) voted to declassify the 480 page executive summary of the 6,300 page report (which the Senate spent $40 million putting together). Multiple leaks concerning the report have suggested that it's devastating and details how terrible the CIA's torture program was, how it was completely ineffective and how the CIA lied about it all.

But most of the support for releasing the report is coming from the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Dianne Feinstein (who sides with the NSA on plenty of stuff, but is more willing to challenge the CIA). But if the Republicans take the Senate next week, then the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee will likely shift to Senator Richard Burr, who has made it quite clear that he's on the CIA's team and against the public interest.

"I personally don't believe that anything that goes on in the intelligence committee should ever be discussed publicly," Burr told reporters in March. "If I had my way, with the exception of nominees, there would never be a public intelligence hearing."

It's also expected that Burr will try to muzzle Ron Wyden and Mark Udall (if Udall is re-elected, which is iffy at this point):

If Burr takes over as chair, he could easily sideline the committee's vocal civil libertarian bloc led by Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and bolstered by Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), two senators who've called for Brennan's resignation.

Udall, in particular, drew blunt criticisms from Burr earlier this year for disclosing the existence of an internal CIA review of the detention and interrogation program that Democrats believe vindicates their own study.

"I think Mark did make some public releases that were committee-sensitive information, but that's for the committee internally to handle," Burr told reporters in March. "My concern is that the release of information could potentially cause the losses of life to Americans. That to me, is a threshold that should be addressed."

As for the torture report itself, Burr has already said that the report is inaccurate and he's against it being released in any form. When a group of religious leaders asked him to support releasing the report, Burr told them he didn't think the report was accurate:

Last year, Burr drew criticism from more than 190 North Carolina religious leaders, including Christians, Jews, Quakers, and Muslims, for opposing the release of the Senate's post-9/11 torture report.

"The U.S. does not condone torture, but torture has been done by our citizens and in our country's name," reads a letter the religious leaders sent Burr. "We are writing to you as fellow people of faith to support the release of the ... report."

Disappointing the religious groups, Burr responded in a letter saying he opposed making the report public due to factual inaccuracies contained within the report. "I believe the American public should be provided with reports that are based on accurate facts," he said.

Given all of this, if the GOP does win, it seems like the only way the public may ever see the details is if someone steps up and leaks the damn thing.

Filed Under: cia, congress, dianne feinstein, gop, republicans, richard burr, senate, senate intelligence committee, torture report

During Cold War, CIA And FBI Hired Over 1,000 Nazis As Spies, Limited Investigations Of Those Nazis

from the minor-war-crimes dept

A new book by Eric Lichtblau, The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men, apparently details how the FBI and CIA hired over 1,000 Nazis during the height of the cold war, forgiving them their past sins, so long as they might help spy on the Soviet Union.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet “assets,” declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich.

The agency hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of “minor war crimes.”

You can argue whether or not this moral cost-benefit analysis was reasonable, but it appears that the CIA further sought to block investigations into those Nazis for some of their war crimes -- which seems to tilt the balance pretty strongly in favor of immoral.

And in 1994, a lawyer with the C.I.A. pressured prosecutors to drop an investigation into an ex-spy outside Boston implicated in the Nazis’ massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in Lithuania, according to a government official.

Meanwhile, the FBI was carefully hiding those Nazis from the Justice Department (which the FBI is a part of), even though the DOJ had a department trying to find them:

In 1980, F.B.I. officials refused to tell even the Justice Department’s own Nazi hunters what they knew about 16 suspected Nazis living in the United States.

The bureau balked at a request from prosecutors for internal records on the Nazi suspects, memos show, because the 16 men had all worked as F.B.I. informants, providing leads on Communist “sympathizers.” Five of the men were still active informants.

Oh, and then there's the fact that Hoover not only protected the Nazis, but he went after journalists who were investigating the US's hiding of those Nazis:

In 1968, Mr. Hoover authorized the F.B.I. to wiretap a left-wing journalist who wrote critical stories about Nazis in America, internal records show. Mr. Hoover declared the journalist, Charles Allen, a potential threat to national security.

John Fox, the bureau’s chief historian, said: “In hindsight, it is clear that Hoover, and by extension the F.B.I., was shortsighted in dismissing evidence of ties between recent German and East European immigrants and Nazi war crimes. It should be remembered, though, that this was at the peak of Cold War tensions.”

Kinda thinking that we shouldn't even bother with comments on this article, because the CIA and FBI have already hit Godwin's Law.

Filed Under: allen dulles, cia, fbi, j. edgar hoover, nazis

12 Nobel Peace Prize Winners Ask Nobel Peace Prize Winning President Obama To Release CIA Torture Report

from the what-happens-when-nobel-peace-prize-winners-fight? dept

We've been writing a ton about the Senate's CIA torture report, which goes into great detail on the CIA's torture program in a way that the CIA does not like (at all). The fight over the release of the report has been going on for quite a while now, even though the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify the executive summary. Now a dozen Nobel Peace Prize winners have sent a letter to President Obama, himself a Nobel Peace Prize winner, asking him to release the report.

The open admission by the President of the United States that the country engaged in torture is a first step in the US coming to terms with a grim chapter in its history. The subsequent release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence summary report will be an opportunity for the country and the world to see, in at least some detail, the extent to which their government and its representatives authorized, ordered and inflicted torture on their fellow human beings.

We are encouraged by Senator Dianne Feinstein’s recognition that “the creation of long-term, clandestine ‘black sites’ and the use of so-called ‘enhanced-interrogation techniques’ were terrible mistakes,” as well as the Senate Committee’s insistence that the report be truthful and not unnecessarily obscure the facts. They are important reminders that the justification of the torture of another human being is not a unanimous opinion in Washington, or among Americans as a whole.

We have reason to feel strongly about torture. Many of us among the Nobel Peace Prize laureates have seen firsthand the effects of the use of torture in our own countries. Some are torture survivors ourselves. Many have also been involved in the process of recovery, of helping to walk our countries and our regions out of the shadows of their own periods of conflict and abuse.

It is with this experience that we stand firmly with those Americans who are asking the US to bring its use of torture into the light of day, and for the United States to take the necessary steps to emerge from this dark period of its history, never to return.

The letter goes on about the problems with torture and then lists out four specific policies it hopes President Obama will follow:

a. Full disclosure to the American people of the extent and use of torture and rendition by American soldiers, operatives, and contractors, as well as the authorization of torture and rendition by American officials.

b. Full verification of the closure and dismantling of ‘black sites” abroad for the use of torture and interrogation.

c. Clear planning and implementation for the closure of Guantanamo prison, putting an end to indefinite detention without due process.

d. Adoption of firm policy and oversight restating and upholding international law relating to conflict, including the Geneva Convention and the UN Convention against Torture, realigning the nation to the ideals and beliefs of their founders – the ideals that made the United States a standard to be emulated.

The signatories of the letter are Desmond Tutu, Jose Ramos-Horta, Mohammad ElBaradei, Leymah Gbowee, Muhammad Yunis, Oscar Arias Sanchez, John Hume, F.W. De Klerk, Jody Williams, Carlos X. Belo, Betty Williams and Adolfo Perez Esquivel. One hopes that this would help drive things forward on actually releasing the report, except that the CIA seems dead set against it.

Last week, Senator Ron Wyden pointed out that the CIA's focus in the declassification process has been to distort the truth:

"The intelligence leadership [is] doing everything they can to bury the facts," said Wyden.

Among the things the two sides are fighting about is whether or not to use pseudonyms for CIA agents. The CIA wants those redacted, but the Senate Intelligence Committee notes that this will hide how deeply involved certain individuals were in questionable actions -- and also that other intelligence reports have used pseudonyms without problem. In response, the CIA is blaming the Senate for "delaying" the release of the report, arguing that the Senate's demand for the report to actually reflect what happened is the real stumbling block.

It is “the Committee’s objections to the redactions” that “have delayed the process,” [CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani] said.

Technically both sides are holding it up, but that's because one side wants it to be accurate, and the other is deliberately seeking to obfuscate the details of the report. Who knows if 12 Nobel Peace Prize winners can help push the debate one way or the other, but at the very least it shows that the world is watching what the Obama Administration ends up doing.

Filed Under: barack obama, cia, desmond tutu, jose ramos-horta, nobel peace prize, president obama, ron wyden, senate, senate intelligence committee, torture report

CIA Apparently 'Impersonated' Senate Staffers To Gain Access To Documents On Shared Drives

from the because-when-you're-already-in-the-torture-business,-what's-a-little-hac dept

The CIA is still fighting for creative control of its most anticipated 21st century work: the Torture Report. Long before it got involved in the ongoing redaction battle, it was spying on those putting the report together, namely Senators and Senate staffers. Hands were wrung, apologies were made and it was medically determined that Sen. Dianne Feinstein doesn't have an ironic bone in her body.

The Torture Report's final cut now seemingly lies in the hands of White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough -- a rather strange place for it to be considering the administration has no shortage of officials willing to offer their input on national security issues. But McDonough's ill-fitting position as go-between to the Senate and the CIA isn't the most interesting part of the story, although it appears he's trying to keep the "hanging" of CIA director John Brennan from being a foregone conclusion. Neither he nor the White House have suggested a replacement scapegoat, so Brennan may end up paying the price despite having the administration's full support. You can't just drop something as damaging as the Torture Report on the American public and simply walk away from it. A symbolic sacrifice still needs to be made, even if the underlying problems continue to be ignored.

No, the most interesting part of the latest Torture Report details almost falls off the end of the page over at The Huffington Post. It's more hints of CIA spying, ones that go a bit further than previously covered.

According to sources familiar with the CIA inspector general report that details the alleged abuses by agency officials, CIA agents impersonated Senate staffers in order to gain access to Senate communications and drafts of the Intelligence Committee investigation. These sources requested anonymity because the details of the agency's inspector general report remain classified.

"If people knew the details of what they actually did to hack into the Senate computers to go search for the torture document, jaws would drop. It's straight out of a movie," said one Senate source familiar with the document.

Impersonating staff to gain access to Senate Torture Report work material would be straight-up espionage. Before we get to the response that mitigates the severity of this allegation, let's look at what we do know.

The CIA accessed the Senate's private network to (presumably) gain access to works-in-progress. This was denied (badly) by CIA director John Brennan. The CIA also claimed Senate staffers had improperly accessed classified documents and reported them to the DOJ, even though they knew the charges were false. Then, after Brennan told his agency to stop spying on the Senate, agents took it upon themselves to improperly access Senate email accounts. This is all gleaned from a few public statements and a one-page summary of an Inspector General's report -- the same unreleased report EPIC is currently suing the agency over.

Now, there's this: accusations that the CIA impersonated Senate staffers in hopes of accessing Torture Report documents. Certainly a believable accusation, considering the tactics it's deployed in the very recent past. This is being denied -- or, at least, talked around.

A person familiar with the events surrounding the dispute between the CIA and Intelligence Committee said the suggestion that the agency posed as staff to access drafts of the study is untrue.

“CIA simply attempted to determine if its side of the firewall could have been accessed through the Google search tool. CIA did not use administrator access to examine [Intelligence Committee] work product,” the source said.

So, it was a just an innocuous firewall test. And according to this explanation, it wasn't done to examine the Senate's in-progress Torture Report. But this narrative meshes with previous accusations, including those detailed in the Inspector General's report.

Logging on to the shared drives with Senate credentials would allow agents to check the firewall for holes. But it also would allow them to see other Senate documents, presumably only accessible from that "side" of the firewall. While there's been no mention of "impersonation" up to this point, the first violation highlighted by the IG's report seems to be the most likely explanation of what happened here.

Five Agency employees, two attorneys and three information technology (IT) staff members, improperly accessed or caused access to the SSCI Majority staff shared drives on the RDINet

Accessing another part of the shared network/drive by using someone else's credentials is low-level hackery, but not the first thing that springs to mind when someone says "impersonation." A supposed firewall test would be the perfect cover for sniffing around previously off-limits areas. Much of what has come to light about the agency's actions hints at low-level espionage. There's still more buried in the IG report that the agency is actively trying to keep from being made public. Just because these activities didn't specifically "target" Senate work material, it was all there and able to accessed. It doesn't really matter what the CIA says it was looking for. The fact that it was done at all, and done with such carefree audacity, is the problem. There are presumably ways to perform these checks that don't involve Inspector Generals, damning reports and multiple hacking accusations.

Filed Under: cia, senate intelligence committee, spying, torture report

FBI Wants To Know If Applicants Have Been Downloading Unauthorized Content

from the limiting-the-supply dept

Earlier this year, FBI Director James Comey suggested that the FBI might consider backing off its policy of refusing to hire anyone who has used marijuana in order to find competent computer folks who can deal with online crimes. After some backlash (and some support) for those statements, Comey quickly backed down, claiming it was all just a joke.

Now, TorrentFreak has revealed that beyond pot smoking disqualifying you, so might your history of downloading some music and movies. This came up at a Sacramento State Career Center information session held by the FBI, where the FBI made it clear that your downloading practices matter to the agency.

“If you’re doing that, stop doing it.” Dupree said.

He explained how the FBI will ask people during interviews how many songs, movies and books they have downloaded because the FBI considers it to be stealing.

During the first two phases of interviews, everything is recorded and then turned into a report. This report is then passed along to a polygraph technician to be used during the applicant's exam, which consists of a 55-page questionnaire. If an applicant is caught lying, they can no longer apply for an FBI agent position.

“If you are accepted to intern at FBI and fail the polygraph you can no longer apply to FBI again.” Dupre said.

From the sound of that, your history might not fully disqualify you, but it may come up again later in the process. TorrentFreak, though, found a post from a few years ago on a job board, where someone says that his downloading past kept him from being hired by the FBI.

It's interesting to note that TorrentFreak also turned up an article saying that downloading unauthorized content does not disqualify you from the CIA. The difference here actually makes some sense -- since the FBI actually does handle some cases involving copyright (though, that still seems ridiculous). Either way, if the FBI is barring people who use pot and who have infringed on copyrights, they're going to find themselves with an increasingly limited supply of computer experts for its computer crimes division.

Filed Under: cia, copyright, downloads, fbi, lie detector

EPIC Sues CIA For Release Of Senate Spying Report

from the FREEDOM-THROUGH-LITIGATION dept

The CIA's spying on Senate staff members during the compilation of the "Torture Report" (last seen delayed until late October) provoked some righteous (but hypocritical) indignation from political figures who were otherwise fans of government surveillance of American citizens. Dianne Feinstein's dismay may have been genuine, but it was also completely tone-deaf.

CIA director John Brennan said no spying occurred while also admitting some spying had occurred. Further details revealed by an Inspector General's investigation noted that spying continued after Brennan finally told everyone to knock it off, using a classified "hacking tool" to peer into Senate staffers' email accounts.

Nothing further has been forthcoming about the subject. The DOJ said it wouldn't investigate the issue and calls for Brennan's resignation have been ignored. The Office of the Inspector General obviously has a deeper read on the tactics used and who was involved, but all the CIA's been willing to part with is a one-page summary. The one-page document points at impropriety but doesn't fill in the blanks.

“That doesn’t give you any information about what actually happened, how purposeful this was, how high-level these people were,” EPIC associate director Ginger McCall told The Hill. “Were these high-level agency officials versus just minions down at the bottom?”

“There’s not a lot of information in this and it certainly doesn’t say anything about what they’re doing to remedy the problem or how these people are being dealt with,” she added. “That’s what we’re interested in finding out.”

EPIC is now suing the CIA over its refusal to respond to a FOIA request for the full report. The lawsuit [pdf link] notes that the group has "exhausted all remedies," which is certainly true if the "responding agency" doesn't bother to respond. EPIC is also asking for several more stipulations to be granted along with the release of the requested document.

WHEREFORE, Plaintiff prays that this Court:

A. Order Defendant to conduct a reasonable search for all responsive records;
B. Order Defendant to promptly disclose to EPIC responsive records;
C. Order Defendant to produce a Vaughn Index identifying any document or portion of a document withheld, stating the statutory exemption claimed, and explaining how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption;
D. Order Defendant to grant EPIC news media status;
E. Order Defendant to grant EPIC a fee waiver;
F. Order Defendant to grant EPIC expedited processing;
G. Award Plaintiff its costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees incurred in this action pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(E) (2013); and
H. Grant such other relief as the Court may deem just and proper.

It may seem like EPIC is jumping the gun by pulling the trigger* on an FOIA lawsuit a mere two months after requesting the documents. But look at it this way: it could have waited for six months… or a year… and still have been ignored or denied. Leading with a lawsuit is nothing more than playing the FOIA game efficiently. If the responding agency doesn't bother to respond within the statutory deadlines, you may as fire off a lawsuit to get the process moving.

*Shoutout to Thomas Friedman, yo!

Filed Under: cia, foia, senate, spying
Companies: epic

CIA Inspector General Can't Find A Single Example Of CIA Overclassification

from the oh-really? dept

A few days ago, we wrote about the CIA redacting information regarding the price it paid for a single Amiga computer back in 1987. After such news reports came out, the CIA admitted that this was an error and shouldn't have been redacted. Of course, the only reason the documents with that information came out in the first place was because of the efforts of former CIA agent Jeffrey Scudder, who had come across a bunch of classified documents internally that he realized should no longer be classified. Based on that, he filed a FOIA request for those documents -- leading the FBI to come after him and end his CIA career (despite his actions being entirely legal).

It's hard not to see all of that as evidence that the CIA has a pretty serious overclassification problem. But don't tell that to the CIA. A newly (yes) declassified report from the CIA's Inspector General reveals that they could not find a single example of overclassification by the CIA. None. Nada. The CIA has a perfect score, apparently. They do admit to finding errors in how some information was recorded, but not a single case of overclassification: If you can't see the image, the key part is:

We found no instance of over-classification in the sample of [REDACTED] finished intelligence reports that we reviewed

Admittedly, the number of reports reviewed is classified here, so perhaps the Inspector General just reviewed one. Or zero. But, uh, wait a second... why is the number of reports reviewed classified in the first place? The number is listed as (b)(3) exemption, which tells you basically nothing. It just incorporates things exempted by other statutes. Basically, it's saying there's some law out there that forbids us from revealing this. Of course, one could argue that this seems like a case of overclassification... in the report that insists that the Inspector General couldn't find any examples of overclassification.

Still, it seems like it should raise some alarm bells when they can't find a single example. It's like cheating students, with poor test-taking history, who suddenly get all the answers correct. It should make the teacher more skeptical. Cheating students often know to at least get one or two answers wrong on purpose, and it's fairly amazing that the CIA couldn't find any examples of overclassification just to keep the red flags from being raised. But, then again, who are we kidding? This is the CIA and it's never been concerned with red flags. It throws them up left and right and no one seems to care.

Filed Under: cia, overclassification

CIA Can't Let You Know How Much It Paid For A Single Amiga Computer In 1987 [Updated]

from the and-the-closest-without-going-over... dept

Update: After all that, the CIA says this was just "an error" and a new version will be released tomorrow without the redactions. Of course, that raises other questions about how the error happened and how often such errors don't get caught. Original story below.

Steven Aftergood at the FAS (Federation of American Scientists) Secrecy Blog came across this interesting redaction of mundane information while perusing the "Studies in Intelligence" journals recently released by the CIA. In an article [pdf link] touting the purchase of a product that would forever change the world of the CIA's in-house video production department, the actual purchase price has been redacted.

If you can't read/see the picture, it says:

We bought our first Commodore Amiga in 1987, for less than [REDACTED] including software.

Twenty-seven years later, this dollar amount still can only be speculated on. (Aftergood prices it out with Wikipedia's help.) It couldn't have been much, though. The preceding paragraph states:

We did not have a big budget, so we were tempted to buy the system with petty cash.

Does the CIA actually believe some sort of irreparable rift in the National Security Complex might occur if this dollar amount from three decades ago (unadjusted for inflation) was made public? Probably not. Aftergood theorizes that it's a blanket exemption used to redact more sensitive dollar amounts and this innocent cost just became collateral damage during the rush to declassify several dozen documents in response to an FOIA lawsuit court order.

CIA seems to have adopted a declassification rule dictating that all of its expenditures, no matter how trivial, shall be withheld from disclosure, except in extraordinary cases (or the occasional mistake). The Agency might go on to argue that such a rule actually facilitates disclosure by expediting the declassification review process. That’s because instead of needing to pause to consider the potential ramifications of any individual spending disclosure, the Agency can proceed more quickly by simply withholding all such figures.

So, there's the excuse for over-redaction, even if it isn't much of one. Aftergood points out that efforts have been made to scale back overbroad classification and redactions since 1997, but little if anything has come of those attempts -- part of the reason why so many FOIA requests end in lawsuits.

Also of note: the author's adoration of the new technology leads to the innocent Amiga being used for evil.

We are experimenting with photo enhancement and colorization of black-and-white photography. Future Executive Summaries will include "Turnerized" ground photos.

While this CIA doc is good for a few laughs at the agency's overprotective tendencies, it must be noted that these documents stem from former CIA agent Jeffrey Scudder's FOIA request -- a request that ended his career and saw his house raided by the FBI, which seized every electronic device it came across. The CIA destroyed the life of a 19-year employee who had served the agency in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq in order to withhold things like a three-decade-old computer purchase.

Filed Under: cia, computers, foia, secrecy

Why Won't The Press Admit That CIA Director John Brennan Lied?

from the questions-questions dept

We've been writing a bit about CIA director John Brennan and his continuing to misrepresent the truth and outright lie. As you probably know, back in March, Senator Dianne Feinstein revealed that the CIA had spied on the computer network being used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate the CIA's torture program. As Feinstein revealed, while the computers had been set up by the CIA (for security reasons), there was a written agreement that everything on them would be considered the Senate's, and that the CIA was not to look at them. The CIA violated this agreement, after realizing (upon being questioned in a Senate hearing) that the Senate had in its hands a draft of the so-called "Panetta Report" -- an internal review of all the documents the CIA had given to the Senate staffers, which more or less confirmed all their findings about the CIA torture program. Apparently, the CIA never intended to turn over that report to the Senate staffers, but did. Rather than realize its mistake, the CIA then snooped on the network and more, including Senate staff emails.

When Feinstein first revealed this, Brennan insisted:

"Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the committee] or the Senate."

That was a lie. Soon after, Brennan tried to release his side of the story, which we noted actually appeared to confirm nearly all of the details of Feinstein's story. And yet, the mainstream press dutifully reported that Brennan had "denied" Feinstein's claims. He did not. He denied claims she did not make in a such manner as to look like he was denying her actual charges.

After the CIA's Inspector General Report came out, confirming all of Feinstein's claims (and much more, including that Brennan's CIA had further misrepresented the truth in trying to claim that it was the Senate staffers themselves who had broken the law), Brennan sent an apology letter. And yet, he's spent the last few weeks denying he lied, claims that are completely undermined by the CIA itself.

So here's the thing: why won't the press say that Brennan lied?

Dan Froomkin, over at the Intercept, recounts most of this history in what he calls an "anatomy of a non-denial denial," and then raises the point of why won't the press actually call out Brennan for lying:

The reason you so infrequently see the word “lie” in elite media news stories is that the editors generally take the position that even when someone has said something clearly not true, a reporter’s use of the word “lie” — rather than, say, “misspoke” or “was incorrect” — requires knowledge of the subject’s intent to deceive. And a fair-minded journalist, they argue, can’t be sure what’s going on in someone else’s head.

But when someone who has so clearly uttered a non-denial denial has to go back and explain how he intentionally responded to an accusation in a very circumscribed or elliptical way, and how that answer was mischaracterized as a denial — and how he made no attempt to correct the record – isn’t that prima facie evidence of intent to deceive?

Even though the non-denial denial isn’t in itself strictly speaking a lie, when examined in context, isn’t that exactly what it is?

Froomkin notes, (as we did at the time in part, thanks to his own research) that most of the press just ate up Brennan's initial denial (which, as we stated, actually confirmed the details, while denying stuff Feinstein did not accuse the CIA of doing). Only a few put in some caveats:

Politico, the New York Times, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal all pretty much cast Brennan’s statements as a blanket denial.

But I was pleasantly surprised by the AP (“He denied that the CIA ‘hacked’ into the computer network in remarks on Tuesday but did not address the question of a search”) and the Los Angeles Times (he offered carefully worded remarks that did not dispute the actions Feinstein said had taken place, but did deny that they constituted ‘spying’ on the Senate.”)

But, as he notes, it didn't matter. Brennan got what he wanted. People thought he denied it, and now he can deny denying it, and pretend he's been telling the truth all along, when he's been doing nothing but deceiving pretty much everyone to avoid admitting the truth. That's called lying. And the press should call it that.

Froomkin dreams of a day when the non-denial denial is no longer an effective tool -- and for that to happen, the press will need to actually not fall for tricks like this. And they could start by calling a lie a lie.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, hacking, john brennan, journalism, lies, non-denial denial, senate, senate intelligence committee, spying