George W. Bush may have been a bit of an idiot to allow liberal elements of the Intelligence Community to damage his administration with leaks of high-level national security information and the Plamegame disinformation operation, but one does have to admire the fact that Bush scrupulously followed what he (I think erroneously) believed to be the rules and never whined about what his opponents were doing to him.

The CIA had a lot better reason to do some leaking this time: to correct the historical record after Barack Obama and congressional democrats chose to use counter-terrorism interrogations as an alleged atrocity useful for indicting their Republican predecessors.

But the spooks are not playing with gentlemanly George W. Bush this time. Demonstrate that Nancy Pelosi was lying her head off, and out come the democrat senatorial thugs to cry foul.

The Politico has the story.

Democrats charged Tuesday that the CIA has released documents about congressional briefings on harsh interrogation techniques in order to deflect attention and blame away from itself.

“I think there is so much embarrassment in some quarters [of the CIA] that people are going to try to shift some of the responsibility to others — that’s what I think,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and was briefed on interrogation techniques five times between 2006 and 2007.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said he finds it “interesting” that a document detailing congressional briefings was released just as “some of the groups that have been responsible for these interrogation techniques were taking the most criticism.”

Asked whether the CIA was seeking political cover by releasing the documents, Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said: “Sure it is.”

Apparently, those poor jihadis in Algeria who recently fell terribly, terribly ill had been playing around with something very naughty.

All this must sound very familiar to the President Elect’s buddy William Ayers. The very same thing that happened to Bill Ayers’ Weathermen associates way back in 1970 happened to these Worthy Oriental Gentlemen. They were tripped up by their own incompetence and their infernal devices being developed to harm others backfired on themselves.

Washington Times:

An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.

The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.

He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.

“We don’t know if this is biological or chemical,” the official said.

The story was first reported by the British tabloid the Sun, which said the al Qaeda operatives died after being infected with a strain of bubonic plague, the disease that killed a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. But the intelligence official dismissed that claim.

So perish all our enemies!

Larrey Anderson, at American Thinker, makes an argument that I basically agree with.

George W. Bush’s presidency has been a disaster for the Republican Party, and for Conservatism, and ironically the unhappy result has much more to do with what George W. Bush failed to do than with anything he did. The Bush presidency was discredited not by defeat abroad or the results of his own policies at home. George W. Bush’s reputation and capacity to govern was destroyed by the ceaseless attacks of his political enemies which succeeded because he failed in any way effectively to respond.

Bush never satisfactorily explained why Iraq and not Syria (or Saudi Arabia, for that matter). He accepted the theory that no Iraqi WMD ever existed, refusing to discuss the truck convoys departing over the Syrian border. He allowed opponents within the Intelligence Community to leak National Security information without response, and he even allowed the same group to turn identification of one of their number by a third party into a national scandal resulting in the indictment and conviction on a preposterous basis of the Vice Presidential Chief of Staff. He tamely bowed his head and accepted all the blame for the disaster in New Orleans, refusing to identify the impact of state and local incompetence and corruption in a situation in which both played the key role.

Perhaps, on the day Machiavelli’s The Prince came up for discussion in Political Theory 101 at Yale, good old George was partying at Deke. Or, perhaps, even more likely, George W. Bush is ethically inhibited from implementing the wisdom of the Florentine cynic by his authentic commitment to Christianity and his resolute determination to keep turning the other cheek.

Conservatism needs a fresh start. It is losing arguments … and it is losing elections. One person, more than any other (even more than John McCain), has caused this: President George W. Bush.

Conservatives have not been winning arguments — or elections — by defending President Bush and his record. We have been, repeatedly, thumped rhetorically and electorally in our efforts to support his policies. It is time for conservatives to move on.

George W. Bush is undoubtedly a sincere man. He is, in all probability, a good man. His dramatic conversion to Christianity indicates that he, at least at this point in his life, is a man of high moral principles. He is compassionate. And therein lies the problem: President Bush was too compassionate to be a good president.

Eli Lake in New Republic reports a major change in Bush Administration policy toward terrorist safe havens in countries outside Iraq and Afghanistan.

We have entered a new phase in the war on terror. In July, according to three administration sources, the Bush administration formally gave the military new power to strike terrorist safe havens outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then, a military strike in a country like Syria or Pakistan would have required President Bush’s personal approval. Now, those kinds of strikes in the region can occur at the discretion of the incoming commander of Central Command (Centcomm), General David Petraeus. One intelligence source described the order as institutionalizing the “Chicago Way,” an allusion to Sean Connery’s famous soliloquy about bringing a gun to a knife fight.

The new order could pave the way for direct action in Kenya, Mali, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen–all places where the American intelligence believe al Qaeda has a significant presence, but can no longer count on the indigenous security services to act. In the parlance of the Cold War, Petraeus will now have the authority to fight a regional “dirty war.” When queried about the order from July, deputy spokesman for the National Security Council Ben Chang offered no comment.

Strikes within Iran could be justified by the order, since senior al Qaeda leaders such as Saif al Adel are believed to have used that country as a base for aiding the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda affiliates in Iraqi Kurdistan. For now, however, any action inside Iranian territory will require at least sign off from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff because of Iran’s capacity to retaliate inside the western hemisphere.

Why has the administration changed policy at this late date? For starters, the administration is genuinely worried about al Qaeda’s resurgence, not just in Pakistan, but across Asia and Africa. Within the administration, there is growing frustration with security services that are either unable or unwilling to root out al Qaeda within their borders. Pakistan is perhaps the best example of this. And even friendly services, like the one in Kenya, have made maddeningly little progress in their fight against terrorism.

When the administration first proposed this approach, it met with internal resistance. The National Intelligence Council produced a paper outlining the risk associated with this change in policy such as scuttling the prospect for better security cooperation in the future. And Admiral William Fallon, who preceded Petraeus at Centcomm, opposed taking direct action against al Qaeda and affiliated targets in Syria. But with the clock winding down on the administration, it has a greater appetite for racking up victories against al Qaeda–and less worries about any residual political consequences from striking. Roger Cressey, a former deputy to Richard Clarke in the Clinton and Bush administrations, says, “[W]ith the administration in the final weeks, the bar for military operations will be lowered because the downsides for the president are minimal.”

The Telegraph reports that al-Qaeda’s American-born propaganda chief has been silent for so long that Western intelligence sources are concluding he’s gone to ask Allah for his virgins.

Months of attacks by unmanned US predator aircraft have caused carnage among the middle ranks of terrorist leaders in the lawless lands along the border with Afghanistan, where al-Qa’eda remains dangerous despite suffering a serious defeat in Iraq.

Their victims have included experienced Arab leaders and, it is now thought, Adam Gadahn, a former heavy-metal fan and so-called “killer computer nerd” originally from California. Nothing has been heard from him for months, leading intelligence experts to conclude that he may be dead.

Mr Gadahn has been credited with helping transform al-Qa’eda’s al-Sahab propaganda wing into a slick operation which communicates in fluent English and produces professional quality DVDs, including one for Osama bin Laden last year.

But he may have fallen victim to an expanded programme of predator assassinations which in the last year has targeted and killed many of al-Qa’eda’s military commanders, terrorist trainers and facilitators.

Jihadists around the world will be watching as closely as intelligence officials this week to see whether Mr Gadahn – also known as Azzam al-Ameriki – produces a new video message to mark September 11, as he has done every year since 2003.

If there is no message it will be taken as near certain confirmation that he is dead – killed either in a strike by Hellfire missiles, or perhaps by jihadi colleagues who have grown jealous of his success.

Mr Gadahn is now thought to have been killed in an attack launched from a remotely piloted aircraft in January which killed al-Qaeda’s then military commander, Abu Laith al-Libi, in Mir Ali, Waziristan. …

Gadahn has taken on real importance as al-Qa’eda’s best known Westerner. He also became the poster boy of would-be jihadis around the world who are radicalised on the internet – and identify with a former Orange County teenager who once reviewed heavy metal bands before finding radical Islam and travelling to Pakistan in 1998.

The Washington Post has a new club to beat the Bush Administration. with today.

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company’s Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group’s communications network. …

(Rita) Katz (the firm’s founder) said she decided to offer an advance copy of the bin Laden video to the White House without charge so officials there could prepare for its eventual release.

She spoke first with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, whom she had previously met, and then with Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security. Both expressed interest in obtaining a copy, and Bagnal suggested that she send a copy to Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2 job at the National Counterterrorism Center.

Around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, Katz sent both Leiter and Fielding an e-mail with a link to a private SITE Web page containing the video and an English transcript. “Please understand the necessity for secrecy,” Katz wrote in her e-mail. “We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could harm our investigations.”

Fielding replied with an e-mail expressing gratitude to Katz. “It is you who deserves the thanks,” he wrote, according to a copy of the message. There was no record of a response from Leiter or the national intelligence director’s office.

Exactly what happened next is unclear. But within minutes of Katz’s e-mail to the White House, government-registered computers began downloading the video from SITE’s server, according to a log of file transfers. The records show dozens of downloads over the next three hours from computers with addresses registered to defense and intelligence agencies.

By midafternoon, several television news networks reported obtaining copies of the transcript. A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News’s Web site referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the group. “This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak of this document,” Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.

Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network, put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it had obtained in the past, according to Katz.

So Ms. Katz called up the White House, and passed along to three officials, two of whom she’d never even met, a web-link to the video in question. Having thus shared a piece of information obviously picked up via the Internet to strangers, Mirabile dictu! one or another of those strangers shared it some more.

How difficult it is for anyone possessing the appropriate linguistic skills to penetrate Islamic extremist sites seems uncertain. Obviously those sites exist with the intention of reaching audiences of persons not intimately connected in a single terrorist cell. Their proprietors are likely also to feel that the language barrier alone is adequate to provide protection against ordinary outsider readers. At most, one would expect some very modest sort of password protection, probably using a trivial and obvious Islamist expression like Allah Akhbar.

Access via that kind of password to some semi-public web-site is not exactly the same thing as possession of atomic secrets.

Someone like Ms. Katz, working in the Intelligence business, ought to be familiar with the old maxim: “A secret that is known by three full soon will not a secret be.”

NBC News:

For three days and nights — between Aug. 14 and 16 — U.S. and Afghanistan forces pounded the mountain caves in Tora Bora, the same caves where Osama Bin Laden had hidden out and then fled in late 2001 after U.S. forces drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan cities. Ultimately, however, U.S. forces failed to find Bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, even though their attacks left dozens of al Qaeda and Taliban dead.

One of the officials interviewed by NBC News, a general officer, admitted Tuesday that it was “possible” Bin Laden was at Tora Bora, saying, in fact, “I still don’t know if he was there.”

Still, some in the special operations and intelligence community are telling NBC News that there was a lack of coordination particularly in the choice of support troops. But with intelligence limited on who was there, no one is willing to say that the lack of key units permitted Bin Laden or Zawahiri to escape.

When the operation began in early August there was no expectation that Bin Laden or Zawahiri would be there, say U.S. military and intelligence officials. Instead, there was intelligence of a pre-Ramadan gathering of al Qaeda including “leadership” in Tora Bora. Senior officials in the U.S. and Pakistan tell NBC News that planning for the attacks intensified around Aug. 10 once analysts suggested that either Bin Laden or Zawahiri may have be drawn to the conference at Tora Bora. (When U.S. forces attacked al Qaeda camps in August 1998, following the East Africa embassy bombings, Bin Laden was attending a pre-Ramadan conference of al Qaeda in the same general area of eastern Afghanistan).

While the intelligence did not provide “positively identification” that Bin Laden or Zawahiri were at the scene, there was enough other intelligence to suggest that one of the two men was there. Bin Laden and Zawahiri are not believed to have traveled together since mid-2003 for security reasons.

Another official said that intelligence analysts believed strongly that there was a high probability that “either HVT-1 or HVT-2 was there,” using U.S. intelligence descriptions — high value targets — for Bin Laden and Zawahiri. He added that while opinion inside the agency was divided, many believed it was Bin Laden rather than Zawahiri who was present. The reason: “They thought they spotted his security detail,” said the official, a large al Qaeda security detail — the kind of protection that would normally surround only Bin Laden, or Zawahiri.

When members of the Intelligence Community leak highly classified information to the press concerning counter-terrorism surveillance and terrorist prisoners held in custody overseas, warning the enemy to enhance the security of his communications and damaging the reputation of the United States, the reporters they leak to all get Pulitzer Prizes.

But when conservative Republican congressmen reveal dangerous reductions in US intelligence capabilities, in order to expose what democrats are doing, there is push-back in the media, with articles like this one by ABC’s Justin Rood:

For the second time in as many weeks, a senior House Republican may have divulged classified information in the media.

In an opinion article published in the New York Post Thursday, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., reported the top-secret budget for human spying had decreased — the type of detail normally kept under wraps for national security reasons.

“The 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill cut human-intelligence programs,” Hoekstra wrote in the piece, in which he also criticized “leaks to the news media.” …

Secrets are apparently hard to keep these days. On July 31, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, allegedly disclosed a secret court ruling during a television interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. …

Government officials have since confirmed to reporters that Boehner was discussing classified information, although the GOP leader denies it.

So in the topsy-turvy world of left think, leaking to damage US security is praiseworthy, but leaking information about intelligence handicaps in order to enhance US security deserves to be viewed as scandalous.

CNN reports an intriguing Intel leak:

U.S. military intelligence officials are urgently assessing how secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. Pervez Musharraf were replaced as the nation’s leader, CNN has learned.

Analysts wonder how secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be if President Pervez Musharraf were replaced.

Key questions in the assessment include who would control Pakistan’s nuclear weapons after a shift in power. The United States is pressuring Musharraf, who took control in a 1999 coup, not to declare a state of emergency as he faces growing political opposition.

Three U.S. sources have independently confirmed details of the intelligence review to CNN but would not allow their names to be used because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The sources include military officers and intelligence community analysts.

This story presumably represents a message to the Pakistani government indicating US desire for a mutual understanding on the custody, security, and disposition in case of regime change, of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

James Risen, one of the two New York Times journalists who published the leaked story on Counter-Terrorism communications datamining in December of 2005, is in the interesting position this morning of reporting on democrats reversing course and hastening not only to authorize but even to expand the program democrats have been using as a political target since the time of Mr. Risen’s original article. A deliciously ironic development.

Under pressure from President Bush, Democratic leaders in Congress are scrambling to pass legislation this week to expand the government’s electronic wiretapping powers.

Democratic leaders have expressed a new willingness to work with the White House to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it easier for the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on some purely foreign telephone calls and e-mail. Such a step now requires court approval.

It would be the first change in the law since the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants became public in December 2005.

In the past few days, Mr. Bush and Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, have publicly called on Congress to make the change before its August recess, which could begin this weekend. Democrats appear to be worried that if they block such legislation, the White House will depict them as being weak on terrorism.

Six leading liberal international do-gooder organizations, including Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and NYU School of Law, Human Rights Watch and Reprieve, have issued a report titled Off the Record, which allegedly identifies 39 individuals secretly detained in the War Against Terror.

The list, compiled on the basis of public sources, government officials (i.e., Pouting and Leaking Spooks), and witness interviews, includes: “off the Record”

Individuals whose detention by the United States has been officially acknowledged and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown:

1. Hassan Ghul

2. Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi (Abu Bakr al Azdi)

3. Ali Abdul-Hamid al-Fakhiri (Ali Abd-al-Hamid al-Fakhiri, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi)

Individuals about whom there is strong evidence, including witness testimony, of secret detention by the United States and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown:

4. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar (Abu Musab al-Suri, Umar Abd al-Hakim)

5.& 6. Two, possibly three, Somalis [Names Unknown] (one of whom is either Shoeab as-Somali or Rethwan as-Somali)

7. Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan (Abu Talha, Talaha)

8. Abdul Basit

9. Adnan [Last Name Unknown]

10. Hudaifa

11. Mohammed [Last Name Unknown] (Mohammed al-Afghani)

12. Khalid al-Zawahiri

13. Ayoubal-Libi

14. Abu Naseem

15. Suleiman Abdalla Salim (Suleiman Abdalla, Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed, Suleiman Ahmed Hemed Salim, Issa Tanzania)

16. Yassir al-Jazeeri (Yasser al-Jaziri, Abu Yasir al-Jaziri, Abu Yassir Al Jazeeri, Yasser al-Jazeeri)

17. Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman (Asadallah)

18. Majid [Last Name Unknown] (Adnan al-Libi, Abu Yasser)

19. Hassan [Last Name Unknown] (Raba’i)

20. [First Name Unknown] al-Mahdi-Jawdeh (Abu Ayoub, Ayoub al-Libi)

21. Khaled al-Sharif (Abu Hazem)*

Individuals about whom there is some evidence of secret detention by the United States and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown:

22. Osama bin Yousaf (Usama Bin Yussaf, Usama bin Yusuf, Usamah bin-Yusuf)

23. Osama Nazir

24. Sharif al-Masri (Abd-al-Sattar Sharif al-Masri)

25. Qari Saifullah Akhtar (Amir Harkat-ul-Ansar Qari Saifullah)

26. Mustafa Mohammed Fadhil (Moustafa Ali Elbishy, Hussein, Hassan AH, Khalid, Abu Jihad)

27. Musaab Aruchi (Mosabir Aroochi, Masoob Aroochi, Abu Mosa’ab al-Balochi, Abu Mosa’ab Aroochi, Musaad Aruchi, al-Baluchi)

28. Ibad Al Yaquti al Sheikh al Sufiyan

29. Walid bin Azmi

30. Amir Hussein Abdullah al-Misri (Fazal Mohammad Abdullah al-Misri)

31. Safwan al-Hasham (Haffan al-Hasham)

32. Jawad al-Bashar

33. Aafia Siddiqui

34. Saif al Islam el Masry

35. Sheikh Ahmed Salim

36. Retha al-Tunisi

37. Anas al-Libi (Anas al-Sabai, Nazih al-Raghie, Nazih Abdul Hamed al-Raghie)

38. [First Name Unknown] al-Rubaia

39. Speen Ghul

Flushed with self-importance, these enlightened organizations proceed to issue a series of “recommendations,” which are really demands.

The United States must cease use of secret or unacknowledged detention.

For those individuals currently detained by or at the direction of the United States, the United States and relevant foreign governments must:

Make known the names and whereabouts of detainees;

Provide immediate access by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to all detainees the organization seeks to visit;

Charge detainees with a recognizable criminal offense and promptly bring them to trial before a court that meets international fair trial standards or release them;

and Allow detainees access to lawyers and to communicate with family members.

The United States must not detain family members of terrorism suspects based on their family relationships.

The United States must make known the names, fate, and whereabouts of all individuals it has detained in the “War on Terror,” even if they have been released, transferred to the custody of another state, or are dead.

The United States must provide reparations, including compensation, to individuals it has secretly detained.

Other governments must not facilitate secret detention: they should not assist or cooperate in secret detention operations, and should disclose information about such operations that comes into their possession.

Scrappleface leaks the real Pentagon document:

(2006-11-20) — According to a newly pre-released secret Pentagon document, the U.S. military is considering three options for dealing with the situation in Iraq, dubbed ‘Go Public, Go Home and Go Mecca.’

The unnamed Pentagon official in charge of leaking national security secrets to the Washington Post said it’s possible that the U.S. could adopt some combination of the three.

He summarized the strategy options as follows:

1. Go Public: Consistently leak top-secret Pentagon strategy deliberations to the news media as a way of neutralizing the unfair “element of surprise”, and of building trust by being more transparent with the enemy.

2. Go Home: Remove the only reason for terrorism by bringing all U.S. troops back home, and also allowing all U.S.-trained Iraqi troops to emigrate to the U.S.

3. Go Mecca: Deal “head on” with the heart of the conflict, by amending the U.S. Constitution to bring it into compliance with Islamic Sharia law.