Intelligence Community's Top Whistleblower Protector In Need Of Some Whistleblower Protection

from the whistleblowers-have-a-man-on-the-inside dept

Daniel Meyer is the Executive Director of Intelligence Community's Whistleblowing and Source Protection. He's in the best position to fight for the protection of intelligence whistleblowers against retaliation for taking their complaints through the proper channels. Let's hope it works out better for those under him than it has for Meyer himself.

The Obama administration’s top official overseeing how intelligence agencies handle whistleblower retaliation claims has lodged his own complaint, alleging he was punished for disclosing “public corruption.”

Daniel Meyer, who previously oversaw the Defense Department’s decisions on whistleblowing cases, also says he was targeted for being gay, according to records obtained by McClatchy.

Meyer has multiple beefs with multiple powerful people, all lodged through the proper channels -- which has apparently done very little to protect him from retaliation. Meyer has accused top Pentagon officials of altering a report that originally found Leon Panetta had engaged in wrongdoing when he leaked classified information to the producers of "Zero Dark Thirty." This conclusion was nowhere to be found when the report was officially released.

That claim put him in the same boat as an assistant Inspector General, who also noted some impropriety surrounding the CIA's close relationship with the "Zero Dark Thirty" team.

In support of his retaliation claims, Meyer filed a sworn affidavit by his former boss, John Crane, a onetime assistant Defense Department inspector general. Crane was fired in 2013 and now alleges he, too, was retaliated against because of his involvement in the “Zero Dark Thirty” case and other controversial whistleblower claims, including one filed by former high-ranking National Security Agency official Thomas Drake.

Proper channels don't seem to be doing much for Meyer, but he still advocates for them. It's somewhat surprising this administration has placed him in the whistleblower protection position for the intelligence community. Because Meyer is good at what he does.

While at the Pentagon, Meyer was known for aggressively investigating whistleblowers’ allegations of retaliation. His current office reviews and investigates not only whistleblower retaliation claims but also high-profile security matters within the intelligence community. His office, for instance, notified the FBI that classified emails had been found on Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The referral led to an FBI investigation.

On top of that, he apparently pushed for better whistleblower protections in the wake of the Snowden leaks, unlike much of the rest of the intelligence community, which abruptly redoubled efforts to weed out "insider threats."

At the very least, Meyer has had personal experience with the official processes and knows the limits of the protections afforded to whistleblowers. This should, hopefully, encourage more intelligence whistleblowers to take advantage of these procedures. At least they'll have someone on their side -- someone who knows how vindictive officials can be when their actions are questioned. That's certainly more than can be said for dozens of other government agencies, who still treat those who question officials and/or programs as enemies of the state.

Filed Under: daniel meyer, defense department, intelligence community, leon panetta, odni, source protection, whistleblowers

Ex-CIA Officials To New York Times: Don't Try To Hold The CIA Accountable. The CIA Will Hold The CIA Accountable.

from the w/special-guest-Michael-D'Andrea,-drone-strike-architect dept

Prominent alumni of the intelligence community have a problem with the New York Times publishing the name of the CIA's drone strike "architect." Although Michael D'Andrea's connection to the program had been sussed out nearly two years earlier and was apparently common knowledge to the governments of countries CIA drones launched from, the CIA still didn't want his name publicly disclosed. Their officials pushed New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet. He pushed back.

Now, a letter to the editor signed by 20 ex-CIA officials is arguing that Baquet was wrong to do so. The attendant irony of known "leakers" Leon Panetta and David Petraeus signing this indignant ode to CIA secrecy can't be allowed to pass without noting. Panetta handed off plenty of classified information, including names of personnel operating under "cover," to the makers of Zero Dark Thirty. Petraeus handed over eight notebooks full of sensitive info to his mistress/biographer. Both have escaped any serious repercussions for their actions. But they're righteously pissed that Baquet published the name of the person overseeing the CIA's drone strike program.

The letter is a mess. If it's meant to make a solid argument for members of media acquiescing to every government request to withhold information, it fails spectacularly. If anything, it helps demonstrate why those whose powers are shrouded by layers of opacity should be exposed more often.

When your lead-off acknowledges that you're more angry than informed, you're going to fail to land solid blows. Pointing to Dean Baquet's interview with the Lawfare blog in which he defended his actions, the 20 ex-CIA officials all agree they really haven't done their homework.

We profoundly disagree — not because we have analyzed this particular case (we have not), but because in our view he misstates the purpose of cover generally.

But rather than moving on to correcting this perceived error, the letter instead shifts to arguing that the law Baquet didn't violate should actually have been violated, if only Congress hadn't have screwed up more than three decades ago.

Congress overwhelmingly enacted the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 precisely to protect the dedicated men and women whose lives would be at risk if their names became widely publicized.

What Congress could not have anticipated at the time, of course, is that any name published in The Times would reside forever on the Internet, searchable by any terrorist with a laptop. It is true that certain foreign governments may know their names, but that is altogether different from making the name accessible to ISIS, Al Qaeda and every other murderer on the planet.

The law contains loopholes that apply to Baquet's actions, as Lawfare's Jack Goldsmith points out. These ex-officials are now stating these loopholes shouldn't apply. Because the Internet. And this assertion is backed up by the portrayal of said internet as infested with "every other murderer on the planet." This hyperbole is expected, as is the intelligence community's confidence that it -- and only it -- knows what Congress did or didn't foresee when passing laws related to surveillance and spycraft.

In this particular case, Congress couldn't have foreseen an easily-searchable internet when passing a 1982 law. Fair enough, I suppose, but governing entities like Congress and the judicial system are immediately granted Nostradamus-esque powers of foresight whenever it works to the advantage of the entities performing long-delayed interpretations of Congressional intent. This same "power" is revoked the moment it becomes inconvenient to those seeking expanded powers with a minimum of accountability.

The letter then goes on to claim the press has no business attempting to increase government accountability. It's doing a fine job of policing itself, thank you very much.

Officials who work on covert operations do not escape accountability. Their actions are carefully reviewed by the C.I.A.’s general counsel, the inspector general, White House officials, congressional overseers and Justice Department attorneys.

Would this be the same CIA general counsel that cleared the CIA of all wrongdoing in the Senate spying debacle? Are these the same DOJ attorneys who couldn't be bothered to examine the Senate's claims of CIA spying during the creation of the Torture Report? Is this the same government that finally admitted it was wrong to torture people but refused to hold anyone accountable for the CIA's abuse of detainees? Is this the same vaunted oversight that seemed constantly surprised by the programs detailed in Snowden's leaks?

"Oversight" is a word covert agencies use when they don't want anyone taking a closer look at their programs or operations. When these officials point to "oversight," all they're really pointing to is the skeletal framework that remains after years and years of deliberately weakening oversight standards and processes. No one believes the government has the capability -- much less the desire -- to hold these agencies accountable for their actions. And the agencies know this.

The New York Time's refusal to grant continued secrecy to the man behind the agency's transformation into an efficient, impersonal killing machine may not result in direct responses from the oversight these officials claim works oh so well, but at least it prevents them from pretending they have no idea who was behind the program.

Filed Under: cia, classified, david petreaus, drones, journalism, leaks, leon panetta, michael d'andrea, reporting, under cover
Companies: ny times

Whistleblower John Kiriakou Questions Why He's In Jail While Former CIA Boss Leon Panetta Is Free

from the who-did-worse? dept

We've written a few times about the ridiculous case against CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou. Kiriakou's main "crime" was revealing the CIA's waterboarding/torture program. It's difficult to argue against the idea that this was true whistleblowing. Both President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have admitted that waterboarding was torture and that it was wrong for the US to do. On top of that, as we've been discussing a lot lately, the Senate Intelligence Committee is sitting on a devastating 6,300 page report that supposedly condemns the CIA's torture program as being far worse than previously revealed and which obtained no useful intelligence. It seems like those are the kinds of things we'd want people to blow the whistle on.

Of course, despite trying to find a way to claim that Kiriakou's whistleblowing was illegal, the DOJ couldn't find any charges related to that which would stick, so it did what it's done to plenty of other whistleblowers: go in search of something else, really anything else to charge him with, and it finally came up with something. A reporter who was working on a book about the torture program asked Kiriakou if he could recommend former colleagues that he could interview. Kiriakou said no, but the reporter mentioned a former colleague's first name -- a former CIA operative who was well known to multiple journalists at the time, and Kiriakou confirmed that former colleague's last name, saying he believed he was retired. The DOJ spun this as Kiriakou revealing the name of a CIA agent, even though nothing Kiriakou did made that agent's name public (it was later revealed by others). For all of this, Kiriakou ended up taking a 30 month prison sentence as a plea deal, realizing it was better than fighting through a full trial, in which he could get many, many more years in jail.

Kiriakou hasn't been silent from jail, and he's even been punished for speaking to the press. However, it appears that this won't stop him from exercising his free speech rights. He recently penned a powerful op-ed for the LA Times asking why he's in jail, while former CIA boss and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta isn't even being investigated.

If you don't recall, a few months ago, we noted that Panetta was likely to get off scott free, despite revealing a ton of classified info, including the names of the Navy SEAL officers who shot Osama bin Laden to film maker Mark Boal, who wrote the screenplay for Zero Dark Thirty. Of course, in an effort to protect "important people" we wouldn't have even known about Panetta's revealing classified information if a report by the Pentagon's Inspector General hadn't leaked. Of course, after the leak, federal officials focused on tracking down those who leaked the report but have done absolutely nothing about Panetta who clearly leaked very sensitive information. It's a "high court" / "low court" situation where powerful people break the law in much worse ways and are left alone, while people without power are bulldozed by the system.

From under the bulldozer, Kiriakou questions how that's reasonable. He points out that part of the reason he took his plea deal was because, under the Espionage Act (as we've discussed before) all evidence of intent and purpose are inadmissible, allowing the government to paint perfectly innocent actions as nefarious. And that's clearly what they were going to do to him. And yet, these same officials say that Panetta's (much bigger) revelation of classified info was okay because it was an accident, and he didn't intend to reveal that info to a filmmaker. Kiriakou notes the double standard that now has him behind bars:

If an intent to undermine U.S. national security or if identifiable harm to U.S. interests are indeed not relevant to Espionage Act enforcement, then the White House and the Justice Department should be in full froth. Panetta should be having his private life dug in to, sifted and seized as evidence, as happened to me and six others under the Obama administration.

When the transcript of Panetta's speech and his inadvertent leak came to light in January, a CIA spokesman told the Associated Press that the agency had subsequently "overhauled its procedures for interaction with the entertainment industry." Such internal reviews are fine and good, but equality before the law is the rule in America. Your job title, your Rolodex and your political friendships are not supposed to trump accountability. Except when they do.

Stories like this aren't just distressing when you consider basic concepts like fairness, proportionality and common sense. They also undermine faith in our government, and -- more importantly -- its credibility.

Filed Under: cia, classified information, high court, john kiriakou, leon panetta, low court, retaliation, whistleblowers

Feds Focus Investigation On Who Leaked Report Implicating Ex-CIA Boss For Intelligence Leak... Rather Than On Initial Leak

from the high-court-low-court dept

We've discussed the whole "high court/low court" concept here a few times before -- in that those who are powerful play by one set of rules, while the rest of us have to play by a very different set of rules. Keep that in mind as you read the following.

A couple of years ago, then CIA boss Leon Panetta apparently revealed a bunch of classified information concerning the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound to filmmaker Mark Boal, who went on to write the screenplay for the film "Zero Dark Thirty." Boal was the lone guest without security clearance at a speech Panetta gave revealing a bunch of details, including the identity of the ground commander of the Navy SEAL unit that executed the raid. And others in the raiding party were at the event, sitting in the front row with name tags. Panetta's revealing of this info to Boal was revealed in a draft report by the Pentagon Inspector Generals' office. Also in that report was the information that the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Michael Vickers, had disclosed classified names to both Boal and Kathryn Bigelow, who directed the film.

When the "official" Inspector General report came out, the initial findings that both Panetta and Vickers had revealed classified information had been scrubbed. It doesn't blame either of them, even though the internal findings said they had, in fact, revealed that info. However, the draft report that implicated Panetta and Vickers was then leaked to reporters for newspaper giant McClatchy, as well as a non-profit, leading to Panetta and Vickers' actions being publicly reported.

So... guess what the government is angry about? Is it those top officials revealing classified information to filmmakers? Or... is it government insiders revealing to the press that those top officials revealed classified information? Yes, you already know the answer. No one seems interested in doing anything about Panetta or Vickers. Rather, the government is "aggressively" trying to go after whoever released the draft report -- even though the details in that report weren't classified.

More than two years after sensitive information about the Osama bin Laden raid was disclosed to Hollywood filmmakers, Pentagon and CIA investigations haven’t publicly held anyone accountable despite internal findings that the leakers were former CIA Director Leon Panetta and the Defense Department’s top intelligence official.

Instead, the Pentagon Inspector General’s Office is working to root out who might have disclosed the findings on Panetta and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers to a nonprofit watchdog group and to McClatchy.

The report notes that the Inspector General's office has been "grilling" a bunch of people, trying to dig out who revealed the draft report that named Panetta and Vickers.

The end result seems clear. If you're super high up in the political chain, you get the high court. Reveal classified info to filmmakers? No worries. Not only will you not be prosecuted or even lose your job, the inspectors will scrub your name from the report and, according to the article, the person in charge of the investigation will "slow roll" the eventual release of the report until you switch jobs.

But if you're just a worker bee and you leaked the unclassified draft report that names Panetta and Vickers? Well, you get the low court. A new investigation, including aggressive pursuit by the government, and interrogations of staffers to try to find out who leaked the report.

Filed Under: cia, defense department, leaks, leon panetta, michael vickers

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta Recycles His 'Cyber-Pearl Harbor' FUD... Third Time's The Charm?

from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed,-beat-that-dead-horse dept

A recent (failed) push to enact cybersecurity legislation has resulted in some interesting maneuvering in Washington, DC. Rep. Mike Rogers, who introduced CISPA, is trying to revive his lousy legislation by telling scary stories that are short on detail, but long on FUD. Other interested parties are hoping to bypass the legislative process altogether and get an executive order pushed through. The "process" has become so chaotic that politicians are finding themselves hurriedly agreeing to stuff that contradicts the other stuff.

Of all the people that believe Something Must Be Done, cybersecurity-wise, one of the pithiest has been Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who issued a memorable pull-quote on October 11th in a speech at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, warning that the United States was facing the possibility of a "cyber-Pearl Harbor."

A dire situation indeed, if true. Panetta is worried about critical infrastructure being sabotaged by cyberterrorists and is totally not just pushing his own agenda.* According to defense officials, "Mr. Panetta's words were not hyperbole."

(*Panetta is totally pushing his own agenda... those same defense officials "acknowledged that Mr. Panetta was also pushing for legislation on Capitol Hill.")

Yes. Panetta is non-hyperbolically pushing his own agenda. The problem is that, while the CISPA/executive order debacle is fairly recent, Panetta's "cyber-Pearl Harbor" has the ring of a worn-out catchphrase, severely limiting the impact of those somewhat stirring words.

Let's go back to June 2011, when Panetta was holding forth during his confirmation hearing for the post of Secretary of Defense.

The next great battle America faces is likely to involve cyberwarfare, Leon Panetta, the Central Intelligence Agency director, warned senators Thursday, predicting that "the next Pearl Harbor that we confront could very well be a cyberattack that cripples" America’s electrical grid and its security and financial systems.

Tough words from an old warrior (and now former CIA Director). Perhaps the warrior might be a bit too old, as he also offered this quote-worthy bit of scaremongering back in February 2011:

"The potential for the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyber-attack," he testified on Capitol Hill Thursday before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The more things change, the more they are the same old shit. Unchanged: using "Pearl Harbor" as shorthand for "unforeseeable bad thing," while simultaneously plucking at patriotic heartstrings by conjuring up the last war the US didn't play to a tie. Savvy. But repetitive.

The most current edition of "cyber-Pearl Harbor" finds Panetta concentrating mostly on infrastructure, thus equating a military surprise attack with some Russian Chinese Iranian hacker flipping the "OFF" switch on the power grid.

“An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cyber tools to gain control of critical switches,” Mr. Panetta said. “They could derail passenger trains, or even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.”

Past editions of "Clue: Panetta Edition" haven't been so concentrated on the still-mythic "Cyberterrorists in the Water Main with the Malicious Code." In February 2011, it was "Chinese 'Entities' in the Internet with the Hacking," and a bit of "Anonymous in the EVERYTHING with the LOIC." There was some talk of putting together a joint task force composed of NSA and DHS members. Additional hyperbole was added by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper:

"This threat is increasing in scope and scale, and its impact is difficult to overstate."

Sure is. Especially when you lead in with "cyber-Pearl Harbor." Setting the "overstatement" bar this high does kind of throw off the curve.

June 2011 didn't change much for Panetta's ongoing game of cyber-Clue. Most of the "grilling" during his confirmation hearing revolved around ongoing actual wars, like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Concern was also expressed about "indiscriminate Pentagon budget cuts."

Back to last week, and it's all about the infrastructure. It's as if no one had bothered debunking a recent DHS report about Russian hackers burning out a water pump at an Illinois water facility. Not that it matters, as the DHS was proud to have been involved in a successful FUD operation. Any publicity is good publicity, right? Boring old truth and measured phrases rarely inspire the sort of support needed to shove through questionable legislation and keep the money flowing to the cottage industries that have sprung up like kudzu around the leaky water main that is Washington, DC.

This repeated catchphrase of Panetta's has stuck with him, even as he's shifted loyalties. Back in February 2011, there was talk of DHS/NSA cooperation. Fast-forward to the latest iteration of "cyber-Pearl Harbor" and Panetta's batting for his new home team: the Defense Department, pulling the control (and money) back into the hands of the NSA, the greater of two evils.

Repeat after Panetta:

If you're against cybersecurity legislation, you're for bombing Americans on early December mornings. Can you live with that?

Filed Under: cyber pearl harbor, cybersecurity, fud, leon panetta