The Light: Hillary

CIA officers, particularly on the operations side of the house, are accustomed to being the whipping boys or scapegoats for craven politicians. They have seen it from Republicans (think Valerie Plame) and they are now seeing it from Democrats in the person of Barack Obama. Obama has not spent enough time in Washington but his inexperience in this matter is showing. He has allowed Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod and lower level snuffies like NSC toady Denis McDonough to circulate the bogus claim that the failed terrorist attack on Christmas Day was the fault of the CIA. These clowns are setting their boss up for an ass whupping.

Obama’s blame the CIA is eliciting some strong pushback among my former colleagues. The following from a good friend who served in several high threat posts over a distinguished career is representative:

Oops! Better pull back from blaming the CIA. More news is coming out on the seven CIA officers killed at Khost base, right on the pointy end of the spear of countertarrorism. AP is reporting that one of those killed was Chief of Base at Khost, a mother of three. Note to Rhambo: it isn’t going to look good trying to shift the blame to CIA for the underwear bomber when a mother of three in command of a CIA operation nose to nose with Al Quaeda was just killed. Better find another fall guy.

Sorry if the above offends some NQ readers, but I seek to draw a contrast between those who are willing to go out and fight for us at the pointy end of the spear, and it doesn’t get any more pointy than at Khost, and a White House that looks at everything through the prism of how it effects their domestic political fortunes. I still haven’t heard anything from the White House on this yet, but perhaps after he finishes up the last hole, the President may take some time off from vacation to comment one way or the other.

My friend is not an isolated voice. Other close friends are preparing to deploy to high threat areas and share similar sentiments. Keep trying to make the CIA a punching bag and it will punch back. It is time for Barack Obama to act like a fucking leader and take responsibility for the troops he commands. Instead he is acting like a child. Blaming others and blaming others. That may work well in the world of Chicago politics but that is not the way a leader behaves.

UPDATE: Tricia posted a comment below that says it all: “This whole so-called health care reform has little to do with health. That is why it is so evil. We are watching politics at its worst.” SEE ALSO BELOW, in Update #2: My personal reply to a Senate staffer.

Nebraska voters are overwhelmingly expressing intense disapproval of Sen. Ben Nelson’s vote for Obamacare, despite Nelson’s garnering a major (make that obscene) gift for the state, in perpetuity, of Medicaid to be paid for by the feds. [That gift is so obscene that several state attorneys general are challenging the favoritism to Nebraska as unconstitutional, reports Reverend Amy.] In other words, these Nebraskans ARE mad enough to look that ol’ gift horse in the mouth, and hoist him on his own petard. As Michelle Malkin said, “Corruption stinks — and sticks.”

The political damage Nelson may have incurred in providing the critical 60th vote that cleared the way for Senate passage of the health care reform bill showed up Tuesday in a poll released by Rasmussen Reports.

The telephone survey of 500 Nebraskans, conducted Monday, suggested Republican Gov. Dave Heineman would defeat Nelson in a potential 2012 Senate race by a 61-30 margin.

The poll showed Nelson with a 55 percent unfavorable rating and 64 percent disapproval for Democratic health care reform legislation.

This polling fits in exactly with polling that LisaB shared with me: Rasmussen reports 58% of Americans are opposed to the health care plan in Congress.

I always thought that Nelson would face an uphill battle in proving to his state’s voters that he got them a great pork deal when it was more important to the voters, in the immediate term, that he oppose Obamacare. Now he’s running an ad during a football game — “Beleaguered Nelson to air TV ad tonight — in a desperate gambit to improve his standing among Nebraska voters. Sorry, Ben. You’re toast. Well, as long as the voters remember all of this in 2012 when you’re up for reelection.

This bill is so unpopular across the nation, that one wonders what on earth possessed any of these senators to vote for it.

In fact, I wonder who in the heck IS enthused about Obamacare except for the Senate and the White House and a few deluded columnists like Paul Krugman, who I used to respect until he became an apologist for this plan that does nothing but reward insurance companies and punish the middle class — all of which Paul used to fight against.

This is legislation that hardly any of us wants. Even those among us who most want health reform. We know that a system that primarily rewards insurance companies and imposes onerous taxes on the middle class is NO solution.

What’s even more astonishing to me is that Senate Democrats are using the health care bill to convince Democrats to donate to their campaigns. The Democratic base, they seem to forget, is also widely opposed to this bill.

Look at this e-mail I got, probably because I am on my senator’s mailing list, which she passed along — without my permission — to the Senate fundraisers:

Dear ______

We know how their Karl Rove politics work.

On Christmas Eve, the Senate passed sweeping health care reform. Not one Republican voted in favor. Trying to deny Democrats a legislative victory was more important than expanding health care to millions of Americans who need it.

They will spend the next 11 months spinning our health care victory into a weapon and hitting us with it.

We might have the momentum now, but we must show the GOP and the pundits that we can sustain it until the 2010 elections. A strong fundraising report will do just that, but we need your help.

There are only hours left until the DSCC’s end-of-quarter deadline at midnight Thursday. We need you to contribute $5 or more right now. Every dollar will make a difference!

It’s hard to believe that Republicans could be so united against legislation that will expand health care coverage to 31 million uninsured Americans, add choices and competition, force insurance companies to abide by strong new regulations and cut costs for families. The bill also reduces our national debt and ensures that Medicare will remain solvent. Republicans are on the wrong side of history on this one.

Now that they lost this battle, they will be focusing their fight — and their millions and millions of dollars – on defeating us. That’s why it’s imperative that we match them now and at every fundraising goal from here on out.

There are only hours left until the DSCC’s end-of-quarter deadline at midnight Thursday. We need you to contribute $5 or more right now. Every dollar will make a difference!

I truly believe that history will not look favorably upon the Republican Party. In the meantime, it’s up to us to keep them out of the Senate.

Sincerely,
Bob Menendez

Hell, Bob. I don’t know about that. History isn’t going to look favorably on you and your Democratic senate colleagues either for propping up the insurance companies because their lobbyists line the pockets of every one of you senators. Then there’s that you are completely blowing off the American people who want nothing to do with your pathetic health care bill, a clear fact that all of you ignore at your peril.

UPDATE #2: I just checked my e-mail and discovered a follow-up e-mail from J.B. Poersch, who is Executive Director of the DSCC (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee):

I wanted to make sure you saw this email from Senator Menendez. He’s right: Karl Rove politics are alive and well in the Republican Party, and we need your immediate help by midnight tonight to fight back against their insidious attacks. We only have $23,341 left to raise to reach our crucial end-of-quarter goal. Please contribute $5 or more now to propel Democrats to victory in 2010.

Thanks for your help,

J.B. Poersch

I replied to Mr. Poersch:

Oh you bet I saw it. In fact, I blogged about it. That health plan is a poorly written disaster, a boon for insurance companies, and a tax burden for the middle class.

Furthermore, in poll after poll, the American people are telling you that we don’t want this bill, and we are dumbfounded that Congress is concentrating so much time and energy on a health care plan when what we need are jobs programs that really create jobs and critically important regulations on banking and investment firms. I have always voted for my Democratic senators and my terrific representative, but I’ve begun to wonder why they are not listening to us who don’t want this plan and instead want you to concentrate your efforts on the economy.

You fail to listen to us at your own peril.

My e-mail to Mr. Poersch will likely never be read. Or, if it is read, it will not be heeded. If only Mr. Poersch, the DSCC, and the senators realized how many people I speak for.

* Bumped Up *

The White House is having some success in pushing the nonsense that the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing by Umar Abdulmuttalab was a CIA intelligence failure. This is absurd on so many levels and is believable only to people who know nothing of the intelligence process.

Let’s start with the assumption that there was a piece of disseminated intelligence–i.e., an official report by the CIA or NSA–that “a Nigerian was meeting with Al Qaeda elements in Yemen.” If that report had been generated in Nigeria by the CIA station then it would be appropriate to excoriate the CIA for “failing” to connect the dots with Abdulmuttalab’s father showed up at the Embassy to warn about his son’s drift into extremist behavior. But that did not happen.

It is not the job or mission of a CIA field office to comb through intelligence reports and do analysis or piece together puzzles. They are first and foremost information gatherers. The Bush Administration and the Congress removed the CIA from the job of “piecing” together disparate pieces of information. That job was passed to NCTC, which is under the control of the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair.

But I don’t think even NCTC merits criticism for a “failure.” From what I have seen there was not enough information on Umar Abdulmuttalab to galvanize the intelligence community to act or to issue a warning to the airlines. The information flow is complicated and cumbersome. Not an excuse, just the fact.

My point in all of this is quite simple–instead of worrying about information flow we should concentrate on putting in place first class security procedures. Umar should have been stopped before boarding the plane with simple profiling. I am not talking about racial profiling. Instead by paying cash for a one-way ticket on an airline he had not previously flow Abdulmuttalab created an immediate profile of someone who should have been pulled aside and grilled. This did not happen.

Blaming the CIA is diverting attention from the real problem–the failure by the Bush Administration and now the Obama Administration to require the use of explosive detection technology and passenger profiling at passenger screening checkpoints.

Here is the video of the segment of CNN’s Larry King Live featuring Larry Johnson and longtime friend Tyler Drumheller:

Special thanks to C.S. for diligently taping and uploading these videos of Larry Johnson’s many media appearances in the past four days. And here’s the transcript of that segment:

LARRY KING: Joining us now is Tyler Drumheller, former CIA official, served the agency for more than 25 years. He was the division chief for the director of operations in Europe, author of the book “On the Brink: An Insiders Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence.”

Also with us is Larry Johnson, he served as deputy director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism. He’s a former CIA analyst and co-founder and CEO of Berg Associates. First, our condolences, Tyler and Larry, eight Americans killed in Afghanistan’s suicide bombings, all believed to be CIA employees. Do you have a comment on that, Tyler?

TYLER DRUMHELLER, FORMER CIA OFFICIAL: Yes, I just heard that just now and it just underlines the world we live in and the sacrifices that the officers of the CIA along with the military of the CIA make in these peoples really is heart breaking. My thoughts go that to their family, obviously.

KING: Larry?

LARRY JOHNSON, FORMER CIA ANALYST: It’s a no-win situation, you know, the CIA gets kicked around for not connecting dots and then you’ve got men and women out there on the front lines getting killed. The eight that lost their lives, this is one of the largest losses of lives of CIA employees in the last 30 years.

KING: The CIA is rejecting accusations that it failed to properly share vital intelligence on the Christmas day terror suspect. Do you buy that? They’re denying it, Tyler.

DRUMHELLER: Yes, I think they did share. The problem here is that the system that was set up by the Reform Act in 2004, Intelligence Reform Act in 2004 set this up. This was almost an inevitable with the expansion of the intelligence community, the bureaucracy here in Washington that it was almost inevitable that something like this was going to happen.

The CIA station in Lagos collected this, they sent it in. The information comes from the field, it goes to all — it goes automatically to the National Counterterrorism Center, to the CIA, to the White House, all these people get it.

The problem is they have broken the link between the analytical process and the operators in the field. So the people who are analyzing here, many of them are young contractors working at the counterterrorism center don’t have the experience and don’t have the grasp of this to go back to the station and ask the second question. The station doesn’t have the contact to specific analysts to go, to follow up on it and see if what they have sent it in has been followed up on. So they’ve got — the real question here is the bill for the future, to make it smaller, better staffed and more efficient.

KING: We keep hearing, Larry, about a failure to connect the dots. Based on what you know, are we connecting the dots?

JOHNSON: Yes, we are. And I think that is an outrageous charge and really it’s not correct. I’ve worked in intelligence now for 25 years. I still hold clearances. I still work both with intelligence analysts and military operators.

And this information was getting its way through the system. The reality Larry is the failure wasn’t on the intelligence side. The failure was at the airport. Ten years ago, you would profiled this individual. And by profiling, I don’t mean you look at the race, ethnicity, size of his body. You look at the fact that he bought a ticket going one way with cash with no luggage and you’re going to Detroit in December without a winter coat? That immediately 10 years ago would have forced the airline to pull him aside and say, OK, what’s up and start looking at him and maybe suggest him to some very specific training with some trace detectors. That could have been done. It wasn’t.

So yes, it’s unfortunate that the information hadn’t become instantaneous. But what’s going to happen out of this — if we go this route, the critics will say, oh, you didn’t connect the dots, it is going to create from the analysts standpoint a reaction where everything is going to come to the top. You are going to have such a blizzard of information that nobody will be able to actually see the real threats from — there are hundreds of bogus threats that come through every day.

And it’s sometimes only after the fact — when this guy was identified firmly as having said, you know, I’m going to blow up a plane, then everyone started going through the files. If his father had gone to the embassy and said look, my son has got exploding underwear, he’s going to fly and try to blow up a brain at Detroit, if the CIA had that information yes, they should be excoriated. But I guarantee you, they did not have that kind of information.

KING: We are going to have you both back very soon. Thank you Tyler and Larry, happy New Year.

DRUMHELLER: Thank you, Larry.

JOHNSON: Thank you, Larry.

* Bumped Up * Note: Larry Johnson and Tyler Drumheller, both CIA veterans, were just asked about these terrible deaths on Larry King Live. Tyler, a friend of Larry’s, is author of “On the Brink: An Insider’s Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence.” Soon, we will have video of Larry’s and Tyler’s reactions to the deaths.

UPDATE: CNN reports the eight casualties were CIA employees.

A senior U.S. official tells CNN that the attack at a military base in eastern Afghanistan by a suicide bomber Wednesday killed eight Americans believed to be CIA employees.
———-

Meanwhile, four Canadian soldiers and a reporter were killed when a roadside bomb hit their armored vehicle in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, Canada’s defense ministry announced.

EARLIER POST:

The WSJ reports eight Americans were killed today at a US compound in Afghanistan. Supposedly the compoud was “associated with the U.S. Embassy.”

A U.S. official in Afghanistan would not confirm the report of a suicide bombing, saying an investigation is under way. The official said the attack occurred at a U.S. military base in southeastern Afghanistan’s Khost province and that all of those killed were Americans.

A spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan said none of the dead were soldiers and that the attack was not on a U.S. military base, but at a facility associated with the U.S. Embassy.

The U.S. Embassy declined to comment.

Hopefully there will be more to the story later. But Obama needs to get off the links.

CNN finally has the story on the front.

A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest attacked Forward Operating Base Chapman near the district of Khost in Khost province, said a third official, who asked not to be named.

—-

There were conflicting reports as to whether the bomber walked into the dining facility or the gym at the base.

UPDATE: Larry King Live reairs at midnight and 3 a.m. ET. Also: In short order, we will have video of Larry Johnson and Tyler Drumheller on Larry King Live.

Earlier: Larry has been invited to return to CNN’s Larry King Live tonight at 9 p.m. ET.

I will try to get video again, and of course the transcript will be available a few hours after the show.

That’s not news to many of us – I think that’s EXACTLY what many of us think of the Nebraska deal struck by the Senate. But most of us are not in positions of power. South Carolina Attorney General Henry Mcmaster, however, is. And that was his word: corruption.

And how. Here is the SC AG this morning explaining why this giveaway to Nebraska is likely unConstitutional:

Did you catch that? There are already TEN state Attorneys General looking into the Constitutionality of the Medicaid giveaway. That is significant, if you ask me.

Oh – I suppose I should give you the written version, too, in case you can’t understand Attorney General Henry McMaster’s melodious Southern accent (ahem). This one comes from The Hill, and the headline says it all:

S.C. aAtorney General: Medicaid Deal Could ‘Represent Corruption’, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster on Monday stressed that Senate Democrats’ move to cover Nebraska’s new Medicaid patients in full could represent “corruption.”

In an interview with Fox News this morning, McMaster said Democrats in
cluded the provision in the chamber’s healthcare bill purely to buy Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-Neb.) much-needed vote. It is ultimately unconstitutional, McMaster added, as it places a disproportionate burden on the 49 other states to cover Nebraska’s Medicaid costs.

“As far as we know, the only distinction made for Nebraska with Sen. Nelson was to buy his vote,” said McMaster, who announced he would probe the constitutionality of that deal last week.

“We think that represents corruption, a culture of corruption, [and] we’re very concerned about it,” he said. “It’s going to cost 49 states money to have to pay Nebraska’s share, and we think that is unconstitutional.”

McMaster is one of 10 Republican attorneys general who have banded together in opposition to Nebraska’s Medicaid deal, at the beckoning of South Carolina Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint.

Hell, I don’t care if one of the 10 is a Whig or a Tory, as long as SOMEONE is actually looking out for the Constitution in this process, because it sure as hell does not appear to be the Congressional Democrats:

Together, they argue the provision — referred to in some GOP circles as the “Cornhusker Kickback” — defies longstanding constitutional precedents on taxes and fees. According to them, the government must levy those excises uniformly to prevent lawmakers from “ganging up” on one state, which means Congress should avoid distributing the fees of a program — in this case, Medicaid — to every state but one.

But there’s also an implicit economic argument motivating states’ legal action against Democrats’ healthcare reforms. All told, states faced billions in budget gaps they had to close before the beginning of the 2010 fiscal year, and many resorted to spending cuts and tax increases in order to stay out of the red. Many governors thus argued that a Medicaid expansion during a national budget crisis could further hamstring their finances, but only one state — Nebraska — was able to avoid the mandate.

McMaster hinted at that objection during his interview on Monday, dismissing suggestions that his investigation was a political stunt. He then chided Democrats for failing to even rationalize the Medicaid deal in the days leading up to their passage of healthcare legislation.

“This is the first time we’ve had a situation where no one has even attempted to give a reason other than it is to buy a particular senator’s vote in order to move the bill forward,” McMaster said. “That’s not the kind of reason the Constitution allows.”

“The political stunts are going on in Washington; this is a matter of law for the states’ attorneys general,” McMasster added.

I hope, while they are at it, that they look into some of the kickbacks provided to other states like, say Louisiana, and the New Louisiana Purchase to buy Landrieu’s vote.

AG McMaster hit the nail on the head right here:

“This is the first time we’ve had a situation where no one has even attempted to give a reason other than it is to buy a particular senator’s vote in order to move the bill forward,” McMaster said. “That’s not the kind of reason the Constitution allows.”

I would certainly hope not. Hard to believe they even tried these buyoffs, this more “transparent” Congress. Ha. More like this Congress that refuses to heed the will of the people. I guess it isn’t so hard to believe after all, but I sure hope SOMEONE puts a stop to it, and soon. I hope more States Attorneys General band together to stand up against this unConstituional vote buying that places an undue burden on all the other states.

And I really hope that we will, some day soon, have representatives in Washington who actually represent US, not their own self-interests.

HERE IS THE VIDEO of Larry Johnson on CNN this afternoon:

Earlier: Shortly, we will have both video and a transcript of Larry Johnson’s afternoon interview on CNN, during the 2:00 p.m. hour. Larry was also on CNN’s American Morning at 7:00 a.m. ET today. We won’t have video of that appearance, but we did get the CNN transcript:

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: It’s disturbing news to say the least, the father of the alleged Christmas bomber warned the CIA about his son, but that vital information was never acted upon. Why eight years after 9/11 was U.S. intelligence unable to connect the dots? Joining us from Delaware is former homeland security inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin; and in Florida, former counterterrorism official for the State Department, Larry Johnson.

We’ll get to the issue of connecting the dots in just a second.

But, Larry, let me ask you for your reaction for the news moments ago from Amsterdam, that Dutch officials are going to put into use the so-called backscatter or millimeter wave imaging machines for all passengers destined for the United States?

LARRY JOHNSON, FORMER COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL: That’s good news. It should have been done a long time ago. As I said before, we’ve known about the threat of these al Qaeda operatives, being able to bring bombs on planes for 15 years. We’ve had the ability it to do the technology, at least some of it. It’s not fool-proof.

But to put both trace and bulk detectors on board at passenger screening checkpoints, it wasn’t done. It wasn’t done after 9/11. And there’s no excuse for not doing it.

I think that the question of an intelligence failure really is irrelevant, because you know what, if you have the right security procedures in place, it doesn’t matter whether you have an intelligence failure, that those systems will prevent the threat. That’s the — that’s the key point here, John.

ROBERTS: All right. And in talking about those intelligence systems, Clark Kent Ervin, let’s go to you here, many people cannot believe that eight years after 9/11, when all the talk post-9/11 and the 9/11 Commission was all about a failure to connect the dots, they’re still not connecting the dots.

Are people right to say, what the heck is going on here?

CLARK KENT ERVIN, FMR. HOMELAND SECURITY INSPECTOR GENERAL: That’s exactly right, John. I’m one of those people who can’t believe it.

In this instance, the suspect’s own father, and not just some guy off the street, but a respected Nigerian banker, we now know at least a couple times to our embassy, talked to at least two agencies, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, followed that up with written communications, with telephone calls, and still, that wasn’t enough in the government’s judgment to get the suspect on the selectee list at a minimum. That list, about 14,000 people work have at least subjected him to additional scrutiny at the airport and presumably the device attached to his leg would have been discovered at that time.

I’d go further, though, and to say, if we know this much information about someone, his name ought to have been on the no-fly list. The government has to get away from this notion that a person has to specifically threaten the aviation system when we know al Qaeda remains fixated on the aviation system.

ROBERTS: Yes, Larry, post-9/11, and you, of course, know this as well, that, you know, the whole talk was about synthesizing information, about sharing, about talking to people. So, you had so many different pieces of information. You had the CIA knew that al Qaeda was trying to train some, quote, “Nigerian operative” to go to the United States, you had the warnings from this fellow’s father at the embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, and then you had the fact that he had a two-year visa to enter the United States.

If you had synthesized that information, do you suddenly go — ding, we got a problem here?

JOHNSON: Perhaps. But, John, it’s not the CIA’s fault. Let’s be clear about that, number one. It’s not even clear that the CIA had the information about the al Qaeda efforts to use somebody from Nigeria. That may have been a signal intercepted at NSA.

The organization that was put together after 9/11 to fuse all this information is the National Counterterrorism Center, NCTC. CIA, that responsibility was taken away from CIA.

So, if you’re a case officer out in Abuja, Nigeria, and you get this father that comes in and says, “Hey, my son is a radical,” CIA should be blamed if his father walked in and said, “Hey, my son is wearing a t-shirt that says “Proud graduate of the Obama bin Laden terrorist training camp” and he’s got exploding underwear and he’s getting ready to fly to Detroit.” If that kind of information the CIA had and didn’t pass it on — fine, hang him.

But what’s being done right now, this effort to claim that it’s an intelligence failure is nonsense, because the reality is, when a guy shows up at the ticket counter, pays cash, one-way, no luggage — 40 years ago that was a sign that the person needed to be pulled aside and interrogated, regardless of whether there were dots to be connected.

But somebody needs to brief the Obama administration that that’s no longer the CIA’s job. It’s an NCTC, that’s under the control of Admiral Denny Blair, director of national intelligence. That’s supposed to be the fusion center. They’re the ones — at least his name was in the TIDE database.

ROBERTS: Right.

JOHNSON: It didn’t get passed over to the FBI. So, I think — I think the finger-pointing at the CIA right now is a red herring and a diversion.

ROBERTS: I take it too, that, Larry, you meant to say, Osama bin Laden, not Obama bin Laden.

JOHNSON: Yes. I’m sorry. ROBERTS: Finish this up here, Clark, you know, we talked about all the reforms put in place post-9/11, what needs to happen now? Do we need another top down review, need to go back to the drawing board — what?

ERVIN: Well, you know, I disagree with Larry to this extent. As the president said yesterday, this was a systemic failure and a systemic failure on two fronts. Not just the screening front but also on the watch list procedures. We need to change the watch list procedure. We need to make sure that agencies, including the CIA, and the State Department, and the NCTC, widely share this information and we need to deploy immediately, not just abroad, but also in this country, these whole body imagers.

ROBERTS: Right.

ERVIN: It’s the closest thing we can get to a silver bullet.

ROBERTS: OK. Clark Kent Ervin and Larry Johnson, great to talk to you this morning. Thanks for being in.

JOHNSON: Thanks, John.

CHETRY: We’re also getting a better picture right now of the alleged bomber’s state of mind. Our Randi Kaye has a look at some of the online writings — still ahead.