The Nation

Who's on Piffiab? It's a question anyone concerned with spying, clandestine actions, and the war on terrorism should be asking. But the Bush Administration, in a break with the past, is keeping this important information secret.

The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board--usually referred to by its acronym--is a group of prominent citizens who offer advice to the President on sensitive intelligence matters. It was established in 1956 by President Eisenhower, and past chairmen have included former Senator Warren Rudman, former House Speaker Thomas Foley, and former Defense Secretary Les Aspin. In recent years, PFIAB has conducted investigations (often through its Intelligence Oversight Board) of spy-community controversies. It examined lax security at Department of Energy nuclear weapons facilities, CIA involvement with Guatemalan military officials who committed human rights abuses, US intelligence failures in Somalia, and the CIA's cover-its-ass investigation of CIA director John Deutch, who compromised classified information. PFIAB challenged the charge--popular in rightwing circles--that China had stolen nuclear weapons secrets from the United States. ("Possible damage has been minted as probable disaster; workaday delay and bureaucratic confusion has been cast as diabolical conspiracies," a PFIAB report concluded. "Enough is enough.")

Last year--prior to September 11--President George W. Bush selected Brent Scowcroft to lead PFIAB. Scowcroft, who was national security adviser to President Bush I, possessed appropriate credentials for the post. But the choice posed problems. Scowcroft, a onetime consultant for the oil industry, a board member of Qualcomm, and a past director of Global and Power Pipelines (an Enron subsidiary involved in projects in China, Guatemala, the Philippines, Argentina and Colombia), runs his own business, the Scowcroft Group, which sells intelligence and other services to globe-trotting corporations in the telecom, aerospace, insurance, energy, financial, electronics and food industries. As head of PFIAB, Scowcroft has access to secret information that could be useful to his clients and his own business endeavors. Can the public be certain that Scowcroft's business links do not unduly influence his actions as PFIAB chairman or that he does not exploit his PFIAB position to help his clients and his own company? And his close personal relationship to the Bush family could undermine his ability to appear as an independent reviewer of intelligence activities mounted by the Bush administration. Scowcroft, though, recently proved he could take issue with the President by questioning the need to go to war against Iraq.

But Scowcroft does share a dominant trait of the Bush crowd: secrecy. On August 13, I called the PFIAB office and asked for a list of current board members. "That information is provided only on a need-to-know basis," said Roosevelt Roy, PFIAB's administrative assistant.

I was surprised. As far as I could recall, PFIAB membership has always been public information. In fact, the Clinton Administration posted the names of the members on a PFIAB web page. (Clinton board members included Zoe Baird, the failed attorney general nominee; Sidney Drell, a renowned scientist; Ann Caracristis, former deputy director of the National Security Agency; Robert J. Hermann, a United Technologies executive; and Maurice Sonnenberg, an international businessman.) The Bush White House web page for PFIAB notes the board now has sixteen members and reveals nothing about the identities of any except Scowcroft.

Who determined this information should be secret? I asked Roy. "The chairman has made this a need-to-know," he replied. "But it won't be permanent." When should I call back? Within six months, he said.

"This is utterly preposterous and insulting to the American public," says Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "There is no national security justification. It's bureaucratic pettiness. This is not an intelligence agency. These people do not collect intelligence. They are not under cover. To my knowledge, the members have never been secret."

Loch Johnson, a former congressional staffer who investigated the intelligence community and now a professor at University of Georgia's School of Public and International Affairs, remarks, "I've never heard of the names of PFIAB members being secret. How absurd! A perfect illustration of how this administration has gone secrecy mad."

Does Scowcroft believe PFIAB members, who serve without pay, might be targeted by terrorists? Or reporters? Is he trying to prevent public scrutiny of the board's composition? Scowcroft's office said he was unavailable for comment. But if the PFIAB roster is indeed sensitive, the White House has left at least one of the members out in the cold. Last October, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported routinely that Bush had named former California Governor Pete Wilson to the board.

PFIAB is little-known but important. After 9/11, the performance and the practices of US intelligence agencies have drawn more attention. The question for Scowcroft: does the public have a need to know who is watching the intelligence community?

On August 14, I again contacted the PFIAB office at the White House, and Roy said that, in response to my original request for information, PFIAB might consider releasing the identities of the board members. But, he said, "I can't make that final call." Was he spinning or did he have an indication that Scowcroft is going to yield? If Scowcroft's PFIAB does spill the names, I'll post them here.

Will the Pentagon wire up Henry Kissinger, Dan Quayle and Newt Gingrich--that is, submit them to lie detector tests? And do the same with all other members of the Defense Policy Board? It seems that someone connected with this advisory panel--a neocon-tilting group of prominent ex-government officials chaired by former Reagan Pentagon official Richard Perle--leaked word to The Washington Post of a private briefing. In that session, RAND analyst Laurent Murawiec maintained that Saudi Arabia, due to its support of Islamic terrorists, ought to be considered an adversary of the United States and that Washington should demand that Riyadh cease funding Islamic fundamentalist outlets. If the Saudis do not comply, he argued, its oil fields and overseas financial assets should be "targeted."

After news of this briefing hit the front page, administration officials rushed to put out the firestorm. This was not the message the White House wanted to send to Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations, as the administration was trying to win support for a military move against Saddam Hussein. And with the White House in the process of establishing an Office of Global Communications to improve the image of the United States overseas, now was not a good time for stories reporting that senior advisers to the Pentagon--former defense secretaries James Schlesinger and Harold Brown, former CIA director R. James Woolsey, and ex-House Speaker Thomas Foley sit on this board--were discussing strikes against Arab oil wells. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell quickly explained that Murawiec's views did not reflect official US policy.

At a Q&A session with Pentagon employees, Rumsfeld criticized the leak. "I just think it's a terribly unprofessional thing to do and clearly harmful," he said. "It's harmful in this case, for example, because it creates a misimpression that someone then has to figure out a way to correct." Rumsfeld did later say the briefing was not classified, but he was adamant that the leak harmed US interests. So what is he going to do about it?

Recently, classified information spilled from the 9/11 investigation being conducted by the House and Senate intelligence committees. In response, the chairmen of the committees called in the FBI to find the leaker. But when the FBI asked the 37 members of the committees to undergo lie detector tests, nearly all of the legislators refused, citing the inaccuracy of polygraphs and the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government. Conservative pundits--and a few members of Congress--derided the committee members for this. The argument was, in time of war, any patriotic citizen should do what he or she can to plug leaks. Will the Defense Policy Board members accept such reasoning?

The leak about the briefing not only demonstrated that slips-of-the-lips come from all directions. It showed how reckless this board could be under the leadership of Richard Perle, a hawk who earned the sobriquet "Prince of Darkness" when he served in the Reagan Pentagon. Not that geopolitical correctness ought to prevent the group from considering any and all theoretical possibilities. But Perle should have stopped to wonder what might happen if word got out Pentagon advisers were pondering a move against Saudi Arabia. The Defense Policy Board is a prestigious outfit, and Rumsfeld has paid attention to its membership--a sign that it is important to him.

The briefing reflected growing sentiment within neocon circles that a US-Saudi showdown is inevitable--and, moreover, somewhat desirable. (Both The Weekly Standard and Commentary have published pieces to this effect recently.) From a historical perspective, this is peculiar, for it was the hawks who have pushed policies in the past that enabled the odd-couple relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia. In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration encouraged the Saudi government to finance the Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. (A Saudi named Osama bin Laden earned his stripes in that war.) In the early 1990s, the first Bush Administration partnered up with Saudi Arabia to wage Saddam War One and ignored the regime's human rights record (including its institutionalized misogyny). Oil mattered more, as Washington fought a war to protect the interests of the kleptocratic regime of the Saudi princes.

Well, things do change. And now the neocons are promoting Saudi Arabia as a looming adversary in the region. (Kissinger, though, calls this "reckless.") The unfinished war in Afghanistan, the war to come in Iraq, the other two-thirds of the "axis of evil" (Iran and North Korea)--you'd think that would be enough to keep the neocons busy for the time being. Instead, they're committed to expanding the enemies list. And they even maintain that once Washington takes care of Saddam and installs a democratic government in Iraq (it will be a snap!), the United States will be better positioned to confront the Saudis.

Ultimately, the leak is less important than the briefing itself. But why does Rumsfeld--the decrier of all leaks--not vigorously pursue the leaker in this instance? Doing so would be a signal to all government employees. Imagine Perle, Gingrich and Quayle on the box. (Could they also ask Kissinger about his role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected government in Chile in the 1970s?) The war on terrorism deserves nothing less.

George W. Bush is crass.

Before heading to Texas for a month of vacation--longer than the average worker's--the President stopped at the local fire station in Green Tree, Pennsylvania, to (very publicly) visit with the nine miners recently rescued from a flooded coal mine. As could be expected, Bush hailed the episode as evidence of "the spirit of America, the great strength of our nation." He praised the people "who heard the call that one of my neighbors is in trouble," and he thanked the rescuers for "showing our fellow citizens that by serving something greater than yourself is an important part of being an American." As for the miners, Bush observed, "It was their determination to stick together and to comfort each other that really defines kind of a new spirit that's prevalent in our country, that when one of us suffer, all of us suffers." (Syntax in the original.)

That spirit, though, was not present earlier this year when the Bush administration proposed cutting the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) by $7 million. The administration defended the 6-percent reduction by noting the number of coal mines has been decreasing. Yet coal mining fatalities have gone up for three years in a row. There were 42 mining fatalities in 2001, 29 in 1998. In March, Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, maintained the funding cut would cause a 25 percent reduction in the government's mine-safety inspection workforce. As of March, 612 federal mine inspectors were responsible for enforcing safety regulations in 25 states, and there were signs the system has not been functioning well.

Last September, thirteen workers died in a coal mine 2,140 feet below Brookwood, Alabama. A spark caused by a rock hitting a piece of machinery ignited a methane-fueled inferno. The disaster, coming 12 days after September 11, did not draw much media notice. But it did prompt serious criticism of the MSHA. In March, the United Mine Workers of America accused the MSHA of treating "serious violations such as thousands of feet of combustible materials...and disruptions in the mine's ventilation system (which can lead to mine explosions)" at the Brookwood site as "minor infractions." The union claimed that federal inspectors failed to return to check on violations at this mine, which is owned by Walter Industries, that the MSHA did not respond to "requests by the miners for increased inspections when serious hazards existed," that the MSHA provided the company advance notice of inspection locations, and that a "MSHA supervisor divert[ed] an inspector away from an area of the mine that had known ventilation problems just prior to the explosion." At the time of the explosion, the mine had 31 outstanding violations and federal inspectors had not bothered to determine whether they had been corrected. As of mid-July, the MSHA had not responded to these accusations.

The Bush administration's less-than-ardent concern for mine safety is in step with its general attitude toward occupational safety. Fretting about regulatory burdens and calling for flexible standards, the Bush crowd has demonstrated more empathy with business owners than with workers. Twice, Bush has proposed decreasing the budget for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In its most recent budget, it called for reducing 64 slots in OSHA's enforcement division. The White House has also decreased funding for the National Institute for Occupational Safety. And it deep-sixed workplace safety rules for ergonomics, replacing them with voluntary guidelines for certain industries.

Yet there was Bush--with Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and MSHA administrator David Lauriski in tow--basking in the glow of the mine workers, while saying nothing about mine safety issues. He was exploiting a near-tragedy of the kind his administration has done little to prevent. "I want to thank you for the example you set," Bush told the nine. Too bad, the miners could not return the compliment.

September 11-Plus-One approaches. And so does remembrance and commemoration. Media envoys will visit with survivors and relatives of those murdered that awful day. Video footage will air, and towers and bodies will fall once more. President George W. Bush will, according to the White House, "talk to the country in a way that is serious" (and do so exclusively on 60 Minutes II with correspondent Scott Pelley). Firefighters, police officers, rescue workers will retell harrowing tales. Rudy Giuliani will shine once more. The traditional start of the off-year congressional campaigns will be overshadowed; politicians will steal what they can of this God-bless-America moment. Some might wonder--but not too many people will do so aloud--what happened to US efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Commentators will share their thoughts--wise and foolish, meaningful and Hallmarkian--on what the attack wrought, how the country has been altered, how the war on terrorism has fared and what lies ahead.

In the shock-ridden and depressing days following 9/11, there was talk that the horrific event would transform the country. That Americans might embrace a stronger sense of community. (Drivers did seem less aggressive for weeks.) That Americans might gain a newfound appreciation for union workers and public servants, after watching firefighters and police officers lose their lives in gallant service to others. Some left-of-center, politically-minded people hoped that out of the ashes and rubble would rise an environment friendly to progressive and populist politicians who pitch for-the-common-good government activism.

Evidence of such change, though, is not abundant. In fact, it is damn hard to find proof that American life--whatever that may be--is much different. Sure, Bush was reborn in the polls, and the political equation shifted. The military budget has become even more untouchable and bloated. In Washington, there are more concrete flowerpots, and the nervous jokes about living in a bull's-eye city remain. But are people in Cincinnati still on-edge? There are indeed new laws, new regulations, new precautions. Several hundred non-citizens apprehended in post-attacks sweeps by federal officers saw their lives dramatically altered. As did Afghan civilians struck by errant US weapons; as did the relatives of US military and intelligence personnel killed overseas. But has 9/11 changed us? Snatched children, corporate scandals, Wall Street's wild ride, rescued miners, Ted Williams' frozen head--American life is, in most ways, what it would be without 9/11.

Which brings us to Bruce Springsteen. Six weeks before the first anniversary, Springsteen and his E Street Band have issued a new album, The Rising, an explicit response to 9/11. With this effort--launched with a multimedia blitz including a Time cover story and appearances on the Today Show, Nightline, and Letterman--Springsteen is getting a jump on the 9/11 recallathon to come. And he has chosen a quotidian route to challenge an impermeability that, with time, can conquer even an event such as 9/11. Song after song details the loss of that day. Springsteen focuses upon individuals who woke up on September 12--assuming they were able to sleep the previous night--and realized their love-partner was gone forever. Across most of the tracks, his protagonists crave one more kiss, one more touch, one more taste. And the dead wish for the same. With this series of songs--some gritty and gripping, a few sappy and sentimental--he has produced an epistle of yearning. In doing so, he reminds his listeners that 9/11 did spark desires among those not directly hit by the assaults--yearnings for family, for community, for safety, for connection, for time. As Bob Dylan once wrote, "Either I'm too sensitive, or else I'm gettin' soft," but for a while after the assaults, it was my belief (or was it a wish?) that a collective yearning of this sort did arise.

And Springsteen knows yearning. It has been the essence of his music--from his early, breakout days as a let's-blow-this-town loner/greaser-with-a-Telecaster to his middle period as a rock-star chronicler of working-class challenges to his later gig as an overtly socially conscious musician penning anti-Gingrich tunes about immigrants and their travails. At the start, it was a first-person yearning for a way out of his own deathtrap town. Once that was accomplished--thank you, rock and roll--he sang about the yearning of others (hard-pressed workers, the out-of-luck unemployed, AIDS sufferers, stressed-out Vietnam vets, undocumented immigrants) who longed for escapes from their troubles and for havens of safety, joy, love, community, or dreams--ideally, all of the above.

Is there any spot where that collective post-9/11 yearning actually took root? Write me, if you can point to such a place and please send directions. In any event, that communal yearning is not on Springsteen's map. He's exploring the bedroom of the bereaved. A widow or widower sings about making it through a "lonesome day." The spouse of a fallen firefighter says to the departed, "May your strength give us strength." Another of his nameless characters notes, "I woke up this morning to an empty sky." One fellow complains he is now but "half a party in a one dog town." On the gospel-flavored title track, a dead-and-gone firefighter pines for his wife and asks her to "come on up for the rising." The songs are as heartfelt as it gets--even if, on occasion, less-than-inspired melodies support the sad vignettes. Two of the more intriguing cuts look--poetically, not politically--at the clash of cultures marked by 9/11. On "Worlds Apart"--as Pakistani singer Asif Ali Khan wails--lovers from different backgrounds meet "in this dry and troubled country" (Afghanistan?) and try to surmount the external circumstances of their lives. ("Sometimes the truth just ain't enough/ Or it's too much in times like this/ Let's throw the truth away.") "Paradise," a moody and somber track, juxtaposes a suicide bomber ("in the crowded marketplace/I drift from face to face") with an individual who lost his or her partner at the Pentagon. Both are waiting for paradise--one to find Allah, one to regain love--and paradise, Springsteen notes, may well be empty.

Having assumed a large and possibly risky task--responding to 9/11 with pop music--Springsteen works small. He keeps his eye on the coffee cup on the counter left behind from a last breakfast. He offers no hope for the grieving--some death traps cannot be escaped--but he nobly recognizes the search for hope. The last song, "My City of Ruins," ends with one of his lonely survivors asking, "Tell me, how do I begin again?" and praying for strength and faith.

No questions, no answers. No calls for understanding this or that. No politics. No jingoism. (This is the opposite of country singer Toby Keith singing, "And you'll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A./ 'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass/ It's the American way.") Springsteen obsesses over the painful and passionate mourning that followed the attacks. It's the latest--and deepest--yearning he has explored. Not every song succeeds--which won't matter to the survivors. But if he does prompt others to recall the enhanced yearnings for love, family and community they experienced last year, he will have provided a public service, as preparations for September 11, 2002, proceed.