CNN: The book behind the bombshell

[ProSense]

The book behind the bombshell

By ROMESH RATNESAR


Tuesday, January 3, 2006; Posted: 4:11 p.m. EST (21:11 GMT)

In the abstruse world of espionage, it's not always easy to know when you are in on a secret. So when intelligence sources approached New York Times reporter James Risen in late 2004 with evidence that the Bush Administration was running a covert domestic-spying program, Risen says he "wasn't sure what to believe." As Risen and Times colleague Eric Lichtblau looked into the story, more whistle-blowers came forward, convincing the reporters that the eavesdropping claims were credible. At that point Risen asked a few "very senior" government officials what they knew about the spying program. "They would look at me with these blank expressions, and say, 'No--that can't be going on,'" Risen told TIME. That's when Risen knew he was sitting on a major scoop.

But it took Risen more than a year to get the story into print--and not before President Bush personally implored Times editors not to publish Risen and Lichtblau's account of how Bush authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap telephone and e-mail communications inside the U.S. without court-sanctioned warrants. The Times ran the article on December 16, touching off a blogospheric scrum: conservatives accuse the Times of aiding terrorists by revealing secrets of U.S. spycraft while liberals say the paper caved to White House pressure by not dropping the bombshell sooner. At the center of the article's backstory is Risen, who unsuccessfully pushed to publish the wiretap report last year, then took a leave to write a book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. It now appears he may pay a price for the disclosure: last Friday the Justice Department opened an investigation into who leaked the existence of the NSA program to the Times, raising the prospect of Risen's being compelled to reveal the identities of the "nearly dozen" current and former officials who spoke to him about the program or face jail time for contempt of court.

In an interview, Risen said the Times' choice to run the wiretap story when it did was "not my decision and had nothing to do with me." But he said the paper "has performed a great public service by printing it, because this policy is something the nation should debate." State of War provides an account of the origins and scope of the wiretap program that basically repeats the revelations contained in Risen and Lichtblau's stories in the Times. But the book also argues that the NSA's eavesdropping policy shows the extent to which the war on terrorism has spurred the intelligence community to flout legal conventions at home and abroad. Risen's chief target is the CIA, where, he argues, institutional dysfunction and feckless leadership after 9/11 led to intelligence breakdowns that continue to haunt the U.S. Though much of State of War covers ground that is broadly familiar, the book is punctuated with a wealth of previously unreported tidbits about covert meetings, aborted CIA operations and Oval Office outbursts. The result is a brisk, if dispiriting, chronicle of how, since 9/11, the "most covert tools of national-security policy have been misused."

State of War doesn't follow a clear narrative arc. The action kick-starts midway through the first chapter, in March 2002: days after the arrest of Abu Zubaydah, at the time the highest-ranking al Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, Bush summoned CIA director George Tenet to the White House to ask what intelligence Abu Zubaydah had provided his captors. According to Risen's source, Tenet told Bush that Abu Zubaydah, badly wounded during his capture, was too groggy from painkillers to talk coherently. In response, Bush asked, "Who authorized putting him on pain medication?" Risen makes the leap that the Bush episode may represent the "most direct link yet between Bush and the harsh treatment of prisoners by both the CIA and the U.S. military" -- but deflates that claim by acknowledging that some former senior Tenet lieutenants don't believe the story is true.

more...

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/01/03/bombshell.book.tm/

[radio4progressives]

1. K&R

The TIME critique and review of State of War, deserves a bit of critique itself, imo. There are a few obvious points, but i'll just address two that jumped out at me straight away.

One is that the author cautions readers to be mindful of the lack of verifiability of some of Risen's assertions vis a vis anonymous 'Lone Source'.

Fair enough, but it is also critical of Risen for his failure to offer readers a "where do we go from here" solution to the problems the book chiefly focuses on, which i thought was unfair considering the point of this publication was to simply report the story that the 'Paper of Record' would not.

There is also a not-so-subtle swipe at the veracity of Risen's credibility with regard to (apparently)disputed articles on the Wen Ho Lee case. - I haven't followed the details in this case at all and i personally have no opinion as to the fairness of that critique. However I would be interested in what others, who have been following the Wen Ho Lee case, might think of Ratnesar's remarks on this point.

Certainly we should expect a highly orchestrated campaign to discredit Risen launched by the White House Ministry of Propaganda and Misinformation Dept, but we should still read with considerable care just the same... n'cest pas?

[Supersedeas]

2. kick the messenger - not way the Corporate Media would do that

[Dr.Phool]

3. Risen totally blew it on Wen Ho Lee

An apparently innocent man spent over a year in solitary confinement, on what was apparently a vendetta from Dept. of Energy security agents vendetta.

The judge was outraged when he saw the skimpy evidence they had on Lee, that they claimed originally was too classified for him to see. All charges against Lee were dropped, except for a very minor misdemeanor so he could get out of jail.

Risen could be credible, but I'll keep my skepticism, until it's all proven. But, with all the furor, and National Security experts coming forward, I'd say that lends a lot to his credibility on this one.

[radio4progressives]

4. That's kind of what I've been hearing.. So Risen was the primary

reporter "on the beat" ?

[ProSense]

5. CNN shell game

According to the title this leak that Bush was illegally spying on Americans is a bombshell

But it took Risen more than a year to get the story into print--and not before President Bush personally implored Times editors not to publish Risen and Lichtblau's account of how Bush authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap telephone and e-mail communications inside the U.S. without court-sanctioned warrants.

Wow, Bush sure didn't want this bombshell to get out.

Meanwhile, Tenet's desire to earn the favor of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld led him to abandon the agency's traditional role as a nonpartisan arbiter of intelligence. That fostered a climate in which officials were discouraged from sending Bush inconvenient information--such as doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq's program for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Tenet is no stranger to opprobrium (his reputation will never recover from his telling Bush that the evidence on WMD was a "slam dunk"), but the verdict of his subordinates in State of War is particularly withering. "George Tenet liked to talk about how he was a tough Greek from Queens," a former Tenet aide tells Risen before going on to use a vulgar word for wimp to describe him instead. "He just wanted people to like him."

So what does Bush do, award him the Medal of Freedom.

Risen, all of them reported that Iraq had abandoned its WMD program--but the CIA never informed the White House. Among the other intelligence foibles described in the book: the U.S. discovered Western-style ATM cards on Abu Zubaydah after his capture, but "there is little evidence that an aggressive investigation" into the bank accounts was ever made, and a gaffe by a CIA officer in Washington last year blew the cover of spies in Iran and enabled Tehran to "roll up" the CIA's network of agents there. (A CIA representative denies both stories.)

The WH knew.