CIA and the Culture of Corruption

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Friday December 03, 2010 · 8:35 AM PST

2010/12/03 · 08:35

Last month, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a blistering report that documented a secret drug interdiction program in Peru that was responsible for the death of an American missionary and her infant daughter in 2001. The report provided a detailed study of the efforts of senior CIA leaders, including Deputy Director John McLaughlin and Deputy Executive Director John Brennan, to cover up the crime by stonewalling the White House, the Congress and the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the flaws of the interdiction program. Brennan, who was President Obama's original choice to be CIA director until the report complicated the confirmation process, is currently the deputy director of the National Security Council (NSC).

McLaughlin was the "villain" in the politicization of intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the "slam-dunk" briefing to the president in January 2003. Nevertheless, the Obama administration named McLaughlin to lead the internal investigation of the CIA's intelligence failures in the attempted bombing of a commercial airliner and the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

Mel Goodman

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Wednesday September 01, 2010 · 1:14 PM PDT

2010/09/01 · 13:14

The "double envelopment" or pincer movement is a classic military maneuver that finds the flanks of the opponent under simultaneous attack from the opposing forces. The maneuver may have been used as early as the Battle of Marathon in the fifth century BC, and there are accounts of Hannibal using the double envelopment at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Gen. Robert E. Lee used the technique successfully in the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862, when the Confederate forces threatened the lines of communication between the Union forces and the political leadership in Washington. The German Sixth Army was a victim of double envelopment at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, and Gen. George Patton used the technique successfully against German forces in World War II.

Now, President Barack Obama finds himself the victim of a political double envelopment in which the Pentagon, having ostensibly agreed to a strategy calling for discussion of withdrawal from Afghanistan, is already campaigning and planning for an extended stay. On one flank, the Pentagon is undertaking a huge base expansion program that will support a regional military strategy against Russia, China and Iran. On the other flank, the senior military leadership is walking away from any notion of even gradual withdrawal beginning in 2011.

Mel Goodman

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Friday July 09, 2010 · 6:41 PM PDT

2010/07/09 · 18:41

Editor’s Note: This is Part III of a series by former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman addressing the presidency and the Pentagon.

Part I examined what President Dwight Eisenhower knew about the military as a retired five-star general and what he tried to impart to his successors. Part II looked at President Obama's challenges. Part III focuses on how Obama has failed to meet those tests:

President Barack Obama inherited a difficult national security situation — wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; an exaggerated and counterproductive war on terror; debilitating deficits and rising debt; an obstructionist Congress; and a corporate media that has abandoned its watchdog ethos.

Unfortunately, President Obama did not have the experience to manage this daunting challenge. He had scant background in foreign policy, military policy or defense expenditures. Nor did he have much knowledge about the major players in these fields.

Mel Goodman

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Wednesday July 07, 2010 · 9:46 AM PDT

2010/07/07 · 09:46

Editor’s Note: This is Part II of a series by former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman addressing the presidency and the Pentagon.

Part I examined what President Dwight Eisenhower knew about the military as a retired five-star general and what he tried to impart to his successors. Part III will deal with President Obama’s mishandling of the military-industrial complex's power and what he should do:

Barack Obama’s crippling inheritance as President of the United States is the near-five-decade failure of the nation’s political leadership to heed President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning that “in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

Mel Goodman

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Tuesday July 06, 2010 · 3:12 PM PDT

2010/07/06 · 15:12

Editor’s Note: This is Part I of a series by former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman addressing the presidency and the Pentagon.

Part II will deal with President Obama’s difficult inheritance of two wars in addition to a war on terrorism as well as the legacy of presidents who contributed to the militarization of national security policy. Part III will deal with President Obama’s mishandling of this inheritance and what the Obama administration needs to do to reverse the situation:

Fifty years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower told his senior advisers in the Oval Office of the White House, “God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn’t know the military as well as I do.” Several months later, he issued his famous warning about the military-industrial complex.

Now the United States finds itself in a cul-de-sac, with no way out of increased military deployments and expenditures, and no evidence that President Obama has a firm hand on the national security tiller.

Mel Goodman

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Monday June 28, 2010 · 2:45 PM PDT

2010/06/28 · 14:45

The New York Times' David Brooks minimized General Stanley McChrystal's remarks in Rolling Stone magazine as "kvetching." For the Times' Maureen Dowd, McChrystal and his "smart-aleck aides" were merely engaging in "towel-snapping" jocularity. The Washington Post editorial board noted that Afghan President Hamid Karzai called McChrystal the "best commander of the war," and concluded that the general should be retained as the Afghan commander. The Post and Times' editorial boards have called for the replacement of President Obama's key civilian advisors on Afghanistan. Meanwhile, these papers and many others have downplayed the critical issue that dominates this sad affair - the fundamental importance of civilian supremacy in military policy and decision-making.

Mel Goodman

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Wednesday June 09, 2010 · 5:35 PM PDT

2010/06/09 · 17:35

President Barack Obama's appointment of retired Gen. James Clapper as the director of national intelligence (DNI) demonstrates the Pentagon's enormous influence over the president and indicates that there is little likelihood of genuine reform of the hidebound intelligence community. Once again, the president has appointed a general officer to an important strategic position that should be in the hands of an experienced civilian who understands the need for change. President Obama has given retired generals the key positions of national security adviser, ambassadors to Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and DNI (on two occasions in a 17-month period) to career military officers. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is about to name a retired general who was responsible for special operations in Afghanistan as the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism. These career military officers are not known for strategic thinking, having been trained to focus on worst-case assessments of geopolitical problems. It is no wonder that there have few diplomatic successes during the Obama administration that the State Department remains underused and without influence and that the humongous Pentagon budget remains largely untouchable.

Mel Goodman

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Tuesday April 20, 2010 · 3:53 PM PDT

2010/04/20 · 15:53

The good news is that President Barack Obama has ended the Bush administration's campaign against disarmament and has returned to traditional approaches toward arms control. The bad news is that the president's modest steps do not match his rhetorical high ground on nuclear disarmament and that he remains unwilling to take unilateral steps that would advance his strategic vision.

In a brief nine-day period, President Obama took command of the global dialogue on nuclear arms control by authorizing the release of the Nuclear Posture Review; signing a strategic arms agreement with Russia; and hosting a Nuclear Security Summit. Unfortunately, on the eve of the summit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed that the United States was "stronger than anyone, as we've always been, with more nuclear weapons than are needed many times over." With this provocative utterance, reminiscent of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's reference to the United States as the "indispensable nation," Secretary of State Clinton gave the international community good reason to be skeptical of Washington's goals and objectives.

Mel Goodman

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Thursday March 25, 2010 · 3:25 PM PDT

2010/03/25 · 15:25

Former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban once said that the Palestinians "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Well, the same can be said for the Israelis and particularly their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. For the first time, the Israelis are confronting a Palestinian leadership on the West Bank that genuinely wants to pursue a political settlement and a two-state solution. Yasir Arafat envisaged more power in blocking any agreement, but Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his boss, President Mahmoud Abbas, are dedicated to a peaceful solution. Unlike Arafat, who played to the extremists in the Middle East, Abbas and Fayyad are ignoring Iran's opposition to Israel as well as the firebrands among Hamas and Hezbollah, who favor delegitimizing Israel. Netanyahu's predecessors never had such counterparts on the West Bank.

Mel Goodman

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Friday March 19, 2010 · 7:40 AM PDT

2010/03/19 · 07:40

Joseph Goebbels, the leading propagandist of the Third Reich, believed in the power of the lie; the greater the lie, the greater the power. Goebbels would have loved Karl Rove's "Courage and Consequences: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight," a pastiche of lies, fabrications and distortions designed to rehabilitate the record of the Bush-Cheney years. There are too many lies to treat in this one column, but his greatest lie is that the Bush administration would not have invaded Iraq if it had known there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) there. Its corollary is that the administration did not lie about the presence of such weapons in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Mel Goodman

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Wednesday March 03, 2010 · 1:37 PM PST

2010/03/03 · 13:37

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave a provocative and even dangerous speech at the National Defense University (NDU) last week that revealed the cold-war thinking of a key holdover from the Bush administration. With language reminiscent of the worst days of the cold war in the 1950s, Gates argued that the "demilitarization of Europe - where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it - has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st century." He concluded that a perception of European weakness could provide a "temptation to miscalculation and aggression" by hostile powers. Gates didn't name these so-called hostile powers; indeed, it would have been ludicrous to try to do so.

Mel Goodman

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Thursday February 25, 2010 · 3:52 PM PST

2010/02/25 · 15:52

The obituaries in the mainstream media failed to capture the full extent of the controversy and confrontation that marked Gen. Alexander M. Haig's political career in the White House during the Nixon administration and the State Department during the Reagan administration. In his memoir, Henry A. Kissinger praised Haig's role in 1973-1974 in "holding the government together" in the final days of the Nixon era. Kissinger was respectful of Haig because the general allowed the national security adviser to do as he pleased in his stewardship of foreign and national security policy.

Haig's hands-off attitude allowed Kissinger to unnecessarily and dangerously raise the nuclear alert status to Defense Condition III for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in an effort to deter the Soviets from any military intervention in the last days of the October War of 1973. But there was no Soviet intention to intervene, and our European allies - let alone Moscow - were particularly upset with the nuclear alert. Several of our NATO allies, including Germany, Spain and Italy, limited US access to their bases as a result of DefCon-III. Neither Haig nor Kissinger ever explained their rationale for the heightened nuclear alert - although they promised to do so.

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CIA and the Culture of Corruption

The Pentagon's Double Envelopment of President Barack Obama

Obama's Bungled Military Strategies

The Military-Industrial Complex's Win

What Eisenhower Could Teach Obama

Petraeus Is Not the Answer: The Pentagon's Threat to the Republic

Pentagon Tightens Grip on the Obama Administration and the Intelligence Community

President Obama’s Nuclear Policy: No Sign of Audacity; Some Sign of Hope

Benjamin Netanyahu the Intransigent

The Lies of Karl Rove

Too Much Bang, Bang: The Need to Demilitarize US National Security

The Secret History of Gen. Alexander Haig