John Yoo: Obama Risks National Security Disasters of '70s
[John Yoo is a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer and a former Bush administration Justice Department official; he teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley.]
Ayoung, fresh face campaigns for the presidency by attacking the CIA: ''Our government should justify the character and moral principles of the American people, and our foreign policy should not short-circuit that for temporary advantage,'' he says. He promises to never ''do anything as president that would be a contravention of the moral and ethical standards that I would exemplify in my own life as an individual.''
He wins the election and begins to decimate the intelligence agencies. Barack Obama? No. Jimmy Carter.
The Carter administration's national-security record should not serve as a model for any president. But unless Obama changes course, he risks duplicating the intelligence disasters of the '70s, and endangering the nation.
Last month, the president and Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. launched a destructive investigation into the CIA's detention and interrogation of al Qaeda leaders. Several detainees were directly involved with the planning and execution of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. They were captured at a time when our government feared a second wave of attacks.
Our nation's leaders made the difficult decision to use coercive interrogation methods to learn as quickly as possible what these hardened al Qaeda operatives knew. As one of many government lawyers who worked on these counterterrorism programs, I know the terrible pressure of time and events in the months after 9/11.
Knowledgeable officials expected that al Qaeda would try again -- soon -- and in a more devastating fashion. But fair-minded people should take heart that there has been no follow-up attack in the United States. Several plots have been foiled, and the terrorists are on the run. This was not the result of luck -- it is because of the hard work of members of the military and our intelligence agencies.
Their reward is an open-ended investigation, and in some instances the disturbing reopening of cases closed by career prosecutors. Others have written about the financial ruin in store for agents and analysts whose focus will shift from the enemy to their legal bills. What has gone less well understood is what the investigation will do to the CIA as an institution at a time when it serves as the nation's eyes and ears and, sometimes, the sword and shield, during war against a shadowy, covert enemy.
The Carter presidency serves as a warning. Carter came to office determined to clean house. He and his CIA director, Adm. Stansfield Turner, fell in love with technical means of intelligence-gathering, such as the real-time photos sent by reconnaissance satellites. They saw little need for information gathered by spies and informants. Turner promptly took a buzz saw to the division in charge of covert operations, eliminating 820 positions out of 4,730.
The message was clear, and as a result CIA agents became risk-averse. America's ability to gather human intelligence and conduct covert operations swiftly fell apart. The CIA failed to predict the fall of the shah. Iranian students -- one of them now the president of Iran -- took U.S. Embassy officials hostage. A covert operation to rescue them failed miserably, killing eight Americans.
The effects of this decimation of our intelligence capabilities continue...
Read entire article at Miami Herald
Ayoung, fresh face campaigns for the presidency by attacking the CIA: ''Our government should justify the character and moral principles of the American people, and our foreign policy should not short-circuit that for temporary advantage,'' he says. He promises to never ''do anything as president that would be a contravention of the moral and ethical standards that I would exemplify in my own life as an individual.''
He wins the election and begins to decimate the intelligence agencies. Barack Obama? No. Jimmy Carter.
The Carter administration's national-security record should not serve as a model for any president. But unless Obama changes course, he risks duplicating the intelligence disasters of the '70s, and endangering the nation.
Last month, the president and Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. launched a destructive investigation into the CIA's detention and interrogation of al Qaeda leaders. Several detainees were directly involved with the planning and execution of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. They were captured at a time when our government feared a second wave of attacks.
Our nation's leaders made the difficult decision to use coercive interrogation methods to learn as quickly as possible what these hardened al Qaeda operatives knew. As one of many government lawyers who worked on these counterterrorism programs, I know the terrible pressure of time and events in the months after 9/11.
Knowledgeable officials expected that al Qaeda would try again -- soon -- and in a more devastating fashion. But fair-minded people should take heart that there has been no follow-up attack in the United States. Several plots have been foiled, and the terrorists are on the run. This was not the result of luck -- it is because of the hard work of members of the military and our intelligence agencies.
Their reward is an open-ended investigation, and in some instances the disturbing reopening of cases closed by career prosecutors. Others have written about the financial ruin in store for agents and analysts whose focus will shift from the enemy to their legal bills. What has gone less well understood is what the investigation will do to the CIA as an institution at a time when it serves as the nation's eyes and ears and, sometimes, the sword and shield, during war against a shadowy, covert enemy.
The Carter presidency serves as a warning. Carter came to office determined to clean house. He and his CIA director, Adm. Stansfield Turner, fell in love with technical means of intelligence-gathering, such as the real-time photos sent by reconnaissance satellites. They saw little need for information gathered by spies and informants. Turner promptly took a buzz saw to the division in charge of covert operations, eliminating 820 positions out of 4,730.
The message was clear, and as a result CIA agents became risk-averse. America's ability to gather human intelligence and conduct covert operations swiftly fell apart. The CIA failed to predict the fall of the shah. Iranian students -- one of them now the president of Iran -- took U.S. Embassy officials hostage. A covert operation to rescue them failed miserably, killing eight Americans.
The effects of this decimation of our intelligence capabilities continue...