November 2006 Archives

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Secrets and the Single Rogue

November 29, 2006 02:01 PM

There was no way Alcee Hastings would be permitted to chair the intelligence committee. Nevertheless, I always found him to be a superb gentleman - a tad grandiose - despite his unsavory past. If some have the impression that Hastings is a cynical and pernicious personality, it is a mistaken impression.

The Hastings affair calls up a larger issue, which is that Congress is entitled to whichever Members and staff it wishes to have on the intel committee. Because of the separation of powers principle, Congress - not the FBI - does the vetting. And as the Hastings matter demonstrates, this is not a fail-safe process. Although Hastings would surely be denied clearance to review intelligence in the executive branch, his election to Congress suffices to qualify him in the legislature. Even if he were not seated on intel, Hastings - as well as any other Member of the House or Senate* - is entitled to receive classified briefings and to review material that is withheld from the public. Now, having known Hastings, I have no doubt he can be trusted, in spite of his history. But that conclusion is separate and apart from the question of whether he - or perhaps others in Congress - should be permitted access to this information. To choose an extreme example, let's imagine that former KKK wizard and implacable Jew-hater David Duke is somehow elected to Congress (he didn't miss the governor's mansion by much). Is that really enough to justify his access to the nation's secrets? Maybe. But one can also see how this arrangement might conceivably place the country's security in the hands of a deluded voting majority in one Congressional district.

*Some Members in the House, including Dennis Kucinich, Jim McDermott and Pete Stark have refused over the years to sign the official secrecy pledge, and are thus excluded from reviewing classified material or receiving classified briefings.

Link · American Politics | Congress | War on Terror

The Nancy I Knew

November 29, 2006 04:59 AM

I spent more than four years covering Nancy Pelosi as she advanced through the leadership ranks. The impressions I took away from that experience can be found here.

Link · American Politics

The Devil's Advocate

November 27, 2006 02:44 AM

Always available to vouchsafe a tyrant, Pat Buchanan acquits Vladimir Putin in the murder of Sasha Litvinenko in London last week.

What benefit could Putin conceivably realize from the London killing of an enemy of his regime, who had just become a British citizen? Why would the Russian president, at the peak of his popularity, with his regime awash in oil revenue and himself playing a strong hand in world politics, risk a breach with every Western nation by ordering the public murder of a man who was more of a nuisance than a threat to his regime?

How quaint. Putin jails his critics, silences the free press, bullies his Western-leaning neighbors, supplies Iran with missiles, prevents sanctions against North Korea and blocks efforts to stop the genocide in Darfur - and Pat wonders why he would now risk a "breach" with the West! And just when things were going so smoothly....

Well, I would never presume to challenge Pat's expertise on the authoritarian mindset, but it seems to me that he's over-estimated Putin's desire to ingratiate himself with Europe. He's also overlooked the obvious Kremlin windfall from the murder: Even if Putin's goons weren't responsible, Putin's critics will get the message. How better to intimidate opponents than to demonstrate that there is no safe haven safe for them? The inscrutability of the act only enhances the effect.

Yet Pat considers it more plausible that the Kremlin's enemies - Litvinenko's friends - cooked up this entire scheme in an effort to "embarrass" Putin, the former KGB man, who comes across here as a Chaplinesque figure, charmingly oblivious as his opponents are murdered around him. Uh huh.

It is fitting here to mention a book review posted recently on the CIA's Web site. The volume explores the KGB files (translated memos, actually - the files were destroyed) on Andrei Sakharov, the late dissident. It sheds light on the absurdity and paranoia that once governed the KGB [Hat tip: aldaily.com].

At the time of Sakharov’s first public expression of dissent—the publication in the West in 1968 of his essay “Reflections on Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom”—the KGB did not know what to make of him. Sakharov was, after all, one of the Soviet Union’s leading physicists, and he had been showered with honors. The KGB, not realizing that Sakharov’s essay was the result of a gradual disillusionment with Soviet society rather than an impulsive act, at first hoped to bring him back to orthodoxy. “To prevent him from committing politically harmful acts, we believe it would make sense of one of the secretaries of the Central Committee to receive Sakharov and conduct an appropriate conversation with him,” recommended KGB Chairman Yuriy Andropov in June 1968. (90)

The reluctance to condemn Sakharov, however, brought problems of its own, as the KGB noted that “government circles in the USA” might misread the Kremlin’s silence as an endorsement of his views and wrongly assume that Soviet foreign policy was shifting. (94) In 1970, with Sakharov becoming more radical and building contacts with other dissidents, Andropov recommended the installation of listening devices in his apartment to “discover the contacts inciting him to commit hostile acts” and prevent “individuals hostile to the Soviet state” from exploiting his name. The monitoring, which eventually included physical surveillance, break-ins and thefts, and reporting by informers, continued until Sakharov’s death in 1999. (99)[3]

The KGB, continually unable to comprehend Sakharov’s dissent, could only view his actions through the prism of its Bolshevik and Chekist past. As a result, KGB officials not only saw him as the tool of foreign conspiracies but often managed to detect multiple plots working together. In December 1975, Andropov reported that “bourgeois propaganda is actively exploiting [Sakharov’s statements] for purposes of subversive activities against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.” (207) Soviet anti-Semitism reinforced these themes, as when Andropov declared in 1973 that Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were “offering their services to reactionary imperialist and especially Zionist circles.” (166) Shortly after President Jimmy Carter sent a letter of support to Sakharov, Andropov claimed that “ideological centers and Zionist organizations have involved the new Carter administration” in Sakharov’s subversion. (223) The KGB also often ascribed Sakharov’s dissent to the malign influence of Elena Bonner. Her views, wrote Andropov in 1980, “not only are based on her hostile attitude toward the Soviet system but also conform to the recommendation of intelligence services in the USA.”

This is the universe Putin emerged from.

Link · Diplomacy | Europe | Putin | Putin | Russia

Another One Bites the Dust

November 24, 2006 01:58 PM

KGB defector Sasha Litvinenko is dead, just days after being poisoned in a London restaurant.

“The bastards got me,” he whispered. “But they won’t get everybody.”

Mr Litvinenko, 43, uttered his last defiant words to Andrei Nekrasov, a friend and film-maker, who had visited him in University College Hospital in London every day this week. Last night Mr Nekrasov described the extraordinary scenes in hospital, where one ward looks like a scene from The Godfather.

“Sasha was a good-looking, physically strong and courageous man,” Mr Nekrasov told The Times. “But the figure who greeted me looked like a survivor from the Nazi concentration camps.”

Moments after he saw his friend pass away, Mr Nekrasov said: “I have been through a few things in Russia and Chechnya, but this is one of the most horrible crimes I have witnessed in my my life.”

“It was sadistic, slow murder. It was perpetrated by somebody incredibly cruel, incredibly heartless. It had no meaning whatsover.” ...

Doctors remained baffled about what Mr Litvinenko ingested on November 1, at one of two meetings with Russian contacts. Geoff Bellingan, director of critical care at University College Hospital, said that doctors were now convinced that the cause was not a heavy metal such as thallium, as originally suspected. Nor had he swallowed any mystery objects. “Radiation poisoning is also unlikely,” he said.

Andrea Sella, a chemistry expert at University College, said that it had become increasingly difficult to identify the poison. “They have to find some unspecified poison. They don’t know whether it is a single substance or a mixture.”

Mr Nekrasov revealed that Mr Litvinenko’s British citizenship had come through on the day of a service at Westminster Abbey for Anna Politkovskaya, a friend and critic of the Kremlin murdered in Moscow.

“We discussed the likelihood of another killing. Sasha warned me not to go back to Russia because it was too dangerous,” Mr Nekrasov said. “Very sadly he turned out to be the next victim, attacked in the perceived safety of Central London.” ...

And let's not leave out the non-denial denial from the Kremlin:

An aide to Mr Putin said: “Of course it’s a human tragedy. A person was poisoned. But the accusations against the Kremiln are so incredible, so silly, that the President cannot comment.”

Yes, too silly even to disavow. I hope this guy has protection.

Link · Russia

Made to Measure

November 6, 2006 07:31 AM

Love this post from the comments section at pollster.com (scroll down):

I've also been called repeately, by Zogby and many others. I'm in Loretta Sanchez's district (Orange County, CA) and it's not bad this election - we're only getting called a couple of times a week. During the primary this year we were getting poll calls 2-3 time PER DAY. A lot of them were message testing, but a healthy percent were straight preference polls. Once I was talking to one pollster, another beeped in on call waiting, I confrenced them together and we had a 3 way. THAT was fun.

I also make them tell me about themselves before I'll talk with them - where they're calling from, if they're paid by the response and how much, how long they've been doing this, that kind of thing.

Posted by: Richard R | November 5, 2006 6:04 PM

Link · American Politics