(David Sanger and his new book. Photo New York Times.)
David Sanger has a new book out. He is a thirty-year veteran reporter with the sadly diminished New York Times, and his street creds are impressive on the Washington beat. He has seven years as the Gray Lady’s White House correspondent, during which of course he covered two wars, Iran, North Korea and other rogue state issues, and America’s efforts to deal with the rise of China.
He did Bush and Obama. His new book is called “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power:”
You can imagine it got me going pretty well, since in my professional life I have never seen such sustained cavalier disregard for the preservation of the nuts and bolts of our business: Sources and Methods.
I have been troubled by the rush of the media to disclose intelligence and operational details of operations that cost blood and treasure to create, and secrets being as ephemeral as they are, with disclosure they pop like soap-bubbles.
There is a lot of discussion about the aftermath of the bin-Laden raid, which was a real eyebrow lifter. Think for a moment about what it is we get when an operation scoops up dozens of computer hard drives, pocket trash, and all sorts of leads and contact information.
Even better is the exploitation of human intelligence through interrogation, though the opportunity to do so in the case of scum-bag Osama was lost. I will go ahead and buy Sanger’s book, though of course someone has already run their mouths about some really amazing stuff.
I would include in that the discussion of the killing of al-Qaeda’s second-in-command this week, noted operational mastermind and scumbag Abu Yahya al-Libi , who was killed in a US drone strike.
(National Security Affairs Advisor and former Fannie Mae lobbyist Thomas Donilon. White House Photo.)
A “top aide of US President Barack Obama” termed al-Libi’s death a major blow to the terrorist outfit. I assume that is Tom Donilon, the National Security Advisor, but Jay Carney the Press Secretary piled on with details from the podium as well.
In the cyber regime, that includes the STUXNet virus- really a cool netbomb that harnessed human engineering techniques to leap hard firewalls around the stand-alone Siemens software that drove the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran’s not-so-covert atom program.
Or the recent disclosures about the FLAME virus, apparently also targeted at our buddies in Iran. I am not sure exactly what this one is intended to do- it is unclear if this variant of malware is a tool of collection or destruction. Or both.
And this is about basic SCADA systems, too, the dumber older brother of the usual suspects in disc operating systems- DoS, Windows, Mac OS, et. al. SCADA is the stuff that turns on lawn sprinklers, manages pipelines, and maybe turns off the power grid. All this stuff used to be stand-alone and hard to tamper with.
Not so much, any more.
There is a lot of dual-use bad stuff out there, and for all I know it is lurking on both of our hard-drives, too. I don’t have a good feeling for what could be happening. If you do, I suspect what you have been reading does not fully appreciate what is being released into the wild of the World Wide Web.
You can go chapter and verse on disclosures about every military or covert action conducted lately. Beyond the bin-Laden raid, the details of the drone strikes conducted in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan and in the depths of the Yemeni Empty Quarter are announced from the podium in the Press Room of the White House, right over the remains of FDR’s swimming pool.
It is pretty close to having Mr. Roosevelt come out and talk about exactly what he was going to do once Ike and the boys broke out of the hedgerows and headed for the Rhine.
The bin-Laden thing was spectacular, you have to admit, and maybe it is because neither the media nor the Administration have any particular experience in what happens when things don’t work out quite the way you want. In the excitement about the Abbottadbad raid, the rush to disclose everything about it was breathtaking.
Could we do something like that again, if the chance popped up to get the current undisputed al-Qaeda #1, the whacky former Egyptian physician, Ayman al-Zawahiri? Just askin’.
Life must be stimulating for the good Doctor these days, since between Bush and Obama, they have killed more than thirty top al-Qaeda commanders. Good on ‘em, I say, but I have my doubts that success against one is success against all, particularly when we are so excited about trumpeting the details of our successes.
Al-Qaeda may be on the ropes, but their franchise operations are still chugging along. I would like to see them dead, too, and keeping a modicum of operational security about how we are going to do it seems only prudent.
I mean, Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) continues to roll out innovative ways to slaughter us. They were responsible for the attack on Northwest 253 over Detroit, after all, and the even newer and recent disclosure of a new generation of allegedly undetectable underwear bombs.
Oh, wait, I only know about that because we found out all about the CIA operation immediately. Which disclosed that it was NOT CIA, but rather a British MI-6 partnership with Saudi Intelligence that actually did it, and the disclosures happened so fast that the dedicated (and heroic) agent who penetrated AQAP had to run screaming ahead of the people he had pissed off.
I mean, really. Only people with no clue about what happens when you go one time too many to the well and someone gets their face blown off. Who would treat this stuff as fodder for the 24-hour news cycle? If you think I am talking about National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, you would be warm. He is the guy who took retired Marine General James Jone’s place after he succeeded in undermining him.
Donilon, BTW, is a lawyer and Fannie Mae lobbyist by experience, and has no known expertise in military or intelligence affairs. Maybe it is one of those OJT things- his previous government time was as a Public Affairs Spokesman at State, which is to say, his background is talking about things.
I think it is long past time to try not to do that. I mean, of course there is an election on, but jeeze Louise.
So long as AQAP is still out there trying to ruin our vacations, maybe the silent treatment might be right for covert operations? I am thinking the time might come when we head to the magic tricks locker to save our bacon and discover that the cupboard is bare.
Bob Gates is one of my personal favs as Secretary of Defense. David Sanger’s book describes a cool meeting between SECDEF and the blabby National Security Advisor. In the week that followed the killing of scumbag Obama, I was bewildered by the profusion of technical details that were in the press; everything from the composition of the team, the canine members, the stealth characteristics of the SPECOPS helos, details on Team SIX and tactics.
The latter might- I can’t say conclusively- have played into the devastating attack that killed dozens of SEALS and allied special operators in Afghanistan a couple weeks later. Anyway, in the flurry of once-classified information, Sanger says the Mr. Gates went over to the White house the week after the bin-Laden raid. He told Mr. Donilon that he had “a new strategic messaging theme.”
“What is that?” asked Donilon.
“Shut the f@*k up,” said Mr. Gates.
I really miss Bob, you know?
(Robert Gates as SECDEF. Photo DoD.)
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com