"Counterintelligence"

A disquieting article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal claims that "President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies" and specifically references torture and surveillance as the policies Obama is not going to rock the boat on.

Of course, this is the WSJ with mostly unnamed "advisers" to the Obama transition. But there is one particular adviser on whom the article focuses: former National Counterterrorism Center chief John Brennan, the guy who is heading up Obama's intelligence transition team. You might remember Brennan for this statement supporting the Bush administration on surveillance, while he was serving as one of the advisers on intelligence and foreign policy on Obama's campaign.

There is this great debate over whether or not the telecom companies should in fact be given immunity for their agreement to provide support and cooperate with the government after 9/11. I do believe strongly that they should be granted that immunity, because they were told to do so by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context, and so I think that’s important. And I know people are concerned about that, but I do believe that’s the right thing to do. I do believe the Senate version of the FISA bill addresses the issues appropriately.

The issue, of course, was that the appropriate authorities were absolutely not operating in a legal context and more than one telco was ethical enough to say "prove it" with a warrant.

Here's how the WSJ frames the story on surveillance and torture:

As a candidate, Mr. Obama said the CIA's interrogation program should adhere to the same rules that apply to the military, which would prohibit the use of techniques such as waterboarding. He has also said the program should be investigated.

Yet he more recently voted for a White House-backed law to expand eavesdropping powers for the National Security Agency. Mr. Obama said he opposed providing legal immunity to telecommunications companies that aided warrantless surveillance, but ultimately voted for the bill, which included an immunity provision.

The new president could take a similar approach to revising the rules for CIA interrogations, said one current government official familiar with the transition. Upon review, Mr. Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight.

Given the loose sourcing, it's hard to suss out who is pushing what out of this story. But let's deal with the effort behind it. Someone has shopped a story to the leading, "credible" conservative rag saying that Obama "may decide" to go completely against his campaign promises to end torture as state policy, and then pushing John Brennan as the reasonable intelligence expert, who may fill one of the administration's key intelligence posts. None of this is to say that this is what Obama is going to do as president, but it's not an encouraging trend.

Here's Glenn on the issue:

Unlike the above-discussed report about Obama's intentions concerning executive orders, which was confirmed by Obama transition chief John Podesta, reports like this should be taken with a hefty dose of skepticism, as they are often used by people to push a President-elect in the direction they want him to go.  If this report is true, we'll know soon enough.  Still, there's no question that there will be immense pressure on Obama among his closest advisers not to follow through on the commitments he made on issues relating to executive power, and -- as the article suggests -- Obama's past support for FISA expansions and telecom immunity (after he promised he would oppose it) lends credence to these reports.  That is why Obama's election is but the first step to restoring civil liberties and our Constitutional order, but far from sufficient.

As Glenn says, this article is undoubtedly the result of people, like Brennan, hoping to push Obama in their direction. Given that Brennan is one of his closest advisers, that's not an encouraging situation. Which is why we have to push back in the other direction.

We're on the edge of a precipice right now. The Bush administration put us on the top of a very slippery slope by choosing to use illegal and previously unacceptable policy "tools" in intelligence--acts which made us no safer and have only worked to further erode our Constitution, not to mention our standing in the world. Then they politicized these tools, creating a situation in which only rabid, leftist partisans would denounce them. And it worked. Far too many Democrats bought the frame hook line and sinker and we ended up with a FISA Amendments Act that left the administration and the telcos completely off the hook for spying on Americans, the Military Commissions Act which stripped the writ of habeas corpus and turned a blind eye to torture by the CIA.

What's most frightening about it is that supposedly "reasonable" people, like Brennan, now deem the unthinkable--torture, warrantless surveillance, the erosion of the fourth amendment--as an acceptable status quo.

It's not acceptable, and now is the best opportunity we have to make it absolutely unacceptable for the nation now and going forward. We have a new president who, early on in this campaign, condemned the Bush administration for promoting

"excessive secrecy, indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping and 'enhanced interrogation techniques' like simulated drowning that qualify as torture through any careful measure of the law or appeal to human decency."

Brennan and his friends might be trying to push Obama to the "reasonable," "bipartisan" side on this one. But there can't be a "reasonable" or "bipartisan" angle to torture and lawbreaking. It's just wrong. Period. If we're ever going to erase the stain Bush has left on our country, the only we can do that is by never allowing our government to go there again.