Nation Topics - Covert Ops | The Nation

The article reflects on the U.S. President George W. Bush administration's handling of the prewar intelligence information about Iraq in the days before the United States invaded Iraq. It argues that Bush and his aides did not study the intelligence to ascertain if an urgent danger really existed and that the administration made the decision for war based on their own reasons.

The author comments on the U.S. President George W. Bush administration and its role collecting information. The Open Source Center, created by the Central Intelligence Agency, is designed to gather unclassified information and piece together information to give a better sense of where trouble may arise. The problem is that this is happening at a time when Bush seems to think that the process of such collection does not need to be subject to review.

Several letters to the editor in response to articles in previous issues including "Students Confront Sweatshops," by Richard Appelbaum and Peter Dreier, "Germ Boys and Yes Men," by Jeremy Scahill, and "Subject to Debate," by Katha Pollitt, in the November 28, 2005 issue, ¿Mismanaged Care," by Trudy Lieberman, in the December 12, 2005 issue, and "Beat the Devil," by Alexander Cockburn in the December 26, 2005 issue are presented.

The article focuses on the relationship between popular culture and torture. The author reviews how torture is one of film and television's favorite themes, and is used in crime dramas, spy thrillers and motion pictures such as "Rambo" and "The Passion of the Christ." It is the author's view that popular culture rationalizes torture as necessary to preserve not just the national security of the United States but law and authority in general. The article focuses on the issue of torture as it relates to the television series "24."

The article looks at how torture has been used as part of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush's global war on terrorism. The author suggests that uniformed servicemen and CIA employees have beaten, maimed, sodomized and killed prisoners held in custody. The article reviews various Defense Department reports and government memos related to the issue. It is the author's view that the Bush administration has attempted to hide facts while trying to derail investigations into various instances of tortures.

The article presents and editorial discussing "Washington Post" reporter Dana Priest's disclosure of a secret worldwide network of off-the-books CIA prison camps. The author discusses how the story motivated various investigations into Priest's source but not investigations into the prisons. A comparison of the secret prison revelation is made to the C.I.A. leak case involving Valerie Plame. According to the author, a paranoia about leaks and leakers has descended on Washington.

The article discusses the indictment of United States Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, for allegedly lying to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents or grand jurors about his role in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) leak. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not focused on which Administration official outed CIA agent Valerie Plame. It is claimed that Cheney had a role in undermining Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had challenged the Administration's reasons for the Iraq War.

The article reports that the U.S. President George W. Bush Administration has asked for an exemption for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from an amendment to a military appropriations bill that would ban tactics that are cruel, inhuman or degrading used in the war on terror. The point of the amendment is to control the actions of the CIA overseas. The Bush Administration argued after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that the 1994 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment did not apply to foreign nationals held and interrogated abroad. It is argued that the use of torture undermines U.S. national security.

The article recounts the author's experience with the controversy surrounding White House political strategist Karl Rove and the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Wilson to the media. Two years ago, after reading a Bob Novak column, I called former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and asked, half-jokingly, "Why didn't you tell me your wife was in the CIA?" In a somber voice, Wilson said, "I can't tell you that now." When I first read that Novak column outing Valerie Wilson (also known as Valerie Plame) as a CIA officer and citing "two senior administration officials," I didn't immediately comprehend the leak's seriousness. But as I spoke with Wilson, I could see the potential harm. And I realized the leak was no accident. At the time, the White House and its allies were mounting a fierce campaign against Wilson, who had revealed in a New York Times op-ed that on a 2002 CIA-sponsored trip to Niger he had gathered information undermining one of George W. Bush's justifications for the Iraq War: that Iraq had been shopping for uranium in Africa. And as we discussed the Novak leak it occurred to me that the leakers might have violated an obscure law that prohibits government officials (not journalists) from knowingly disclosing the identity of an intelligence officer. I mentioned this to Wilson; he was unfamiliar with the law. I said I might write about the leak and this law. He didn't encourage me. He was hoping that somehow this story might blow over and was not eager to draw more attention to it.

Presents the author's view on the concept of treason by government officials in light of the controversy surrounding White House political strategist Karl Rove and the identity disclosure of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Treason, no less. A leading Democrat, Henry Waxman, howls in Congress that "the intentional disclosure of a covert CIA agent's identity would be an act of treason. If Rove was part of a conspiracy and intentionally disclosed the name--then that jeopardizes national security." Liberal columnists like Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times join the Waxman chorus. But suppose one of Valerie Plame's covert CIA missions, until outed by Karl Rove, had been to liaise with Venezuelan right-wingers planning to assassinate President Hugo Chávez, possibly masquerading as a journalist and using her attractions to get close to the populist president and try to poison him, just as the agency tried to poison Fidel Castro. In an earlier incarnation Scheer would surely have been only too happy to jeopardize national security by exposing Plame's true employer. To thread one's way through coverage of the Plame affair, the jailing of Judy Miller, the contempt citations of four journalists in the Wen Ho Lee case and the AIPAC/Franklin spy case is like strolling past distorting mirrors in a fun house.