Washington, we have a problem
Last summer, the editorial board of the
New York Times said the Obama administration had
lost all credibility on the NSA spying scandal. Last Tuesday it called the administration's latest efforts at damage control
pathetic. American allies in Europe are
furious, and America's
neighbors to the south are
fuming. A
backlash is building against the U.S. tech industry, with world economic leaders now looking
to leave the United States
behind.
In the past week, the Obama team has claimed it did not know that the NSA was spying on leading American allies. Surveillance hawk Sen. Dianne Feinstein stopped running interference on behalf of the NSA, claiming she also was out of the loop, while calling for a total review of all intelligence programs. Anonymous current and former intel officials contradicted the White House denials, amid what seems to be a growing rift between the administration and the spies.
It's time for the administration to show who is in charge. It's time for the administration to prove that it really does find the NSA's behavior unacceptable. If big changes aren't imminent, the administration and Feinstein can't claim anger that the operations of the nation's security apparatus are being kept secret from even the nation's highest ranking elected officials. Something has to give.
This news, last Tuesday, was ominous:
The director of the National Security Agency forcefully and emotionally rejected calls to curtail his agency’s power on Tuesday, as legislation to reform the US security services was introduced in Congress against the backdrop of a growing diplomatic crisis.
General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, speaking “from the heart” before a Tuesday hearing of the House intelligence committee, said the NSA would prefer to “take the beatings” from the public and in the media “than to give up a program that would result in this nation being attacked.”
More below the fold.
Alexander's now infamous attitude on data mining is to take it all, and his fear-mongering claim that the program protects the nation from being attacked needs to be put in the context of his earlier claims that it has thwarted 54 potential terrorist events, which upon closer examination turned out to be bullshit. He was joined at the House Intelligence Committee hearing by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has a bit of a credibility problem of his own.
The pair testified they were open to greater transparency around their surveillance efforts. In a prepared joint statement, they proposed one major concession: saying their were “open to discussing” the creation of a public advocate who would appear before the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court – a reiteration of an earlier stance, and one that several reform-minded legislators have already embraced.
Open to discussing? It would seem that the two officials who run the most invasive spying operation in this nation's history misunderstand how our government works. Or how it is supposed to work. Because they don't condescendingly get to decide what is discussed with this nation's democratically elected respresentatives, they do what this nation's democratically elected represenatatives tell them to do. Alexander and Clapper lack both the credibility and the perspective to hold the extremely powerful positions they hold.
If President Obama, Sen. Feinstein, and any other elected officials want to make the case that they still believe in democracy and republic and privacy and civil liberties, they need to prove it. That means the total review of all intelligence programs, as suggested by Feinstein. Not for window dressing, for real. It means transparency and accountability and genuine reform. But if President Obama and his administration want to claim some of the credibility they have so decisively lost through the months of this continuing and increasingly shameful debacle, they need to start even before that review starts. And while it must not be about merely changing names while retaining policies, it has to begin with cutting losses and cleaning house. Beginning with Alexander and Clapper. Failure to do so will continue to call into question what the president and the White House truly intend, and of even more critical importance, who is really in charge.