Pillar on the relevance of "safe havens"

Paul Pillar's op-ed in the Washington Post last week was one of the more interesting pieces I've read about Obama's Afghanistan dilemma. Pillar questions one of the major underlying rationales for maintaining a military presence in the country: if the US leaves, it will return to being a terrorist "safe haven," which will inevitably lead to more 9/11-style attacks.

Pillar isn't attacking the argument that Afghanistan could return to being a safe haven if the US leaves - instead, he's questioning how important physical safe havens are to terrorism, considering that, as he puts it: "The preparations most important to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks took place not in training camps in Afghanistan but, rather, in apartments in Germany, hotel rooms in Spain and flight schools in the United States." Steve Clemons has a good recap and discussion of the op-ed at The Washington Note.

Don't Ask Don't Tell Madness

I've always thought Don't Ask Don't Tell was silly, but hearing the personal stories on Maddow, and from a friend whose dream is to be a JAG officer but knows she can't, has moved me into the category of being really pissed off about it. Victor Fehrenbach's story is one of the craziest, especially given the amount of expensive training a pilot receives. We're in TWO WARS right now, and this guy's getting fired?!

I had no idea "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" included mandatory investigations once anyone has accused a servicemember of being gay, and almost no one I've talked to about this case knew it was that harsh, either. I guess it's an example of how a policy's name can play a huge role in shaping public opinion about it. I'm confident that if the public understood how draconian DADT really is, legislation ending the practice would have 70-80% of the country's support. We can't afford to have a law this stupid any longer.

"AF Boots Decorated Pilot For Being Gay" [Military.com]

Anonymous "Student in Tehran" has op-ed in tomorrow's NYT

From The Washington Note:

"For about a day, I have been quite worried about the 'Anonymous Student in Tehran' who was sending important dispatches to us of what he was seeing convulsively unfold in Iran. He had been quiet all day.

But we've just had a set of exchanges, and he's OK. I just learned that he will have an op-ed in tomorrow's New York Times under the pseudonym 'Shane M.'

It's exciting to see bloggers/twitterers living under repressive regimes demonstrating the ability of blogging/social media to make the world a more democratic place. And it's also good to see the Times embracing one of these voices, instead of keeping them separate from the "official" news.

UPDATED 6/19/2009:Our anonymous student's op-ed, A Different Iranian Revolution, is up on the NYT website.

The "long war" against FOIA via congressional exemptions

Not long after announcing that his administration would release more torture photos sought in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by ACLU, President Obama suddenly reversed his decision last month, and it appears that the flip-flop can be attributed to the Iraqi Prime Minister's warning that "Baghdad will burn" if they are released.

Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have been trying to pass an amendment which would exempt the controversial remaining photos of detainees from release under the Freedom of Information Act, with Graham saying that "This is the first shot in a long war . . . There are other lawsuits pending out there that want to compromise our national security in the name of freedom of information and transparency." (I hope my FOIA suit against the State Department, which is on hold until late July, doesn't fit into this category! I'm pretty sure it isn't one of the ones he is referring to.)

I understand Graham's argument that the pictures may provoke additional anger in Afghanistan and/or Iraq - after all, torture is inhumane, which is why it is banned under the Geneva Conventions, and why a majority of Americans were outraged when the first Abu Ghraib pictures surfaced several years ago. That said, it seems like most Iraqis would know about Abu Ghraib by now, and given what the country has gone through since 2003, it seems like a bit of a stretch to claim that the release of more photographs of detainee abuse would have such a dramatic impact, unless the photographs are particularly extreme or vile (and it should be noted that the Daily Telegraph report that the photos in question include images of rape has been debunked).

And if Congress starts exempting specific documents from the Freedom of Information Act - even in cases like this one, where two federal courts have ruled that the documents do not meet any of FOIA's statutory exemptions - it will set a dangerous precedent which would seriously undermine government transparency. Moreover, when Graham says that this is the "first shot in a long war" against FOIA and transparency in the national security context, it is clear that he envisions these congressional exemptions to FOIA being used on a regular basis, rather than being reserved for once-in-a-decade type situations. In other words, Lindsey Graham's own statements provide a strong "slippery slope" argument against his proposal.

The other major problem with Graham and Lieberman's proposal (and with the Obama administration's opposition to the release of the pictures) is the basic hypocrisy of demonizing the release of photographs depicting torture, yet simultaneously refusing to investigate the people behind the acts of torture themselves. If the mere release of more photographs depicting torture would be a "death sentence" to Americans serving overseas, as Graham claims, doesn't it follow that ordering American troops to torture detainees, and ordering them to photograph that torture for blackmail purposes (see this post) have put our troops at considerable risk? And if the neocons' decision to order our troops to torture detainees has put those troops at risk, doesn't it follow that we should have an investigation of some sort?

For more information on this issue, Glenn Greenwald has an exhaustive recap of the controversy, and makes a strong case against congressional exemptions to FOIA.

NC bans smoking in restaurants and bars

The NC legislature passed a bill yesterday which will ban smoking in restaurants and bars. It's a huge step forward, and it's pretty remarkable when you take a step back and think about it, given tobacco's role in the history of the state.

Pictured at the right: a 1949 Lucky Strike ad featuring a tobacco warehouse operator in my dad's hometown, Oxford, NC (which is between Durham and the Virginia border, in the heart of brightleaf tobacco country).

Iraq and the state of the newspaper industry

Recently, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus penned an essay for the Columbia Journalism Review on what led to the current state of the newspaper industry. Instead of just blaming the usual suspects - the loss of classified advertising to the internet, and the increasingly competitive media landscape - Pincus focuses on the "move away from expertise" in reporting and "the growth of public relations in government."

Most newspapers and the broadcast media have cut the number of reporters on beats. Meanwhile, young reporters are increasingly shifted from beat to beat, never having enough time to master complex subjects such as health care, public education, or environmental policies. As a result, more of their stories are based not on reportorial expertise, but on pronouncements by government sources or their critics.

Reporters are shifted around in part because of decreasing resources, and in part because within the profession, reporters are encouraged to become editors, editors to become publishers, and publishers of small papers pushed to manage bigger ones. This results in less expertise at the most important level—where reporters gather information.

Meanwhile, we have turned into a public-relations society. Much of the news Americans get each day was created to serve just that purpose—to be the news of the day. Many of our headlines come from events created by public relations—press conferences, speeches, press releases, canned reports, and, worst of all, snappy comments by “spokesmen” or “experts.” To serve as a counterpoint, we need reporters with expertise.

Consider the worst of recent examples. I believe the Bush administration sold the March 2003 invasion of Iraq to the American people beginning with a public-relations campaign that started in August 2002. Vice President Dick Cheney kicked it off with a series of speeches on the growing threat from Saddam Hussein, and it continued almost daily, with key members of the administration giving speeches, statements, or press conferences. The result was that the threat from Saddam Hussein—his alleged nuclear weapons, the idea that he would give chemical or biological weapons to terrorists—dominated news coverage right up to the time the first missiles hit Baghdad on March 19, 2003. [Columbia Journalism Review]

I'm glad to hear a top reporter put some of the blame for the current state of the industry at the hands of publications themselves. Personally, the media's failure to provide quality coverage during the lead-up to the Iraq War was what inspired me to start this blog (not that I have any delusions that it could fill the shoes of a major newspaper). When I hear about a newspaper closing its doors, the first thing I do is worry about how it will impact the news landscape, and feel sorry for the reporters who have lost their jobs. But then a part of me thinks back to 2003 and says: "Wait, I'm supposed to be sad that another company that was involved with that is going under?"

I know it's a little irrational to hold the entire industry responsible for the selling of a war. But the American newspapers' Iraq debacle came at the exact wrong time: the moment that internet news sites and blogs were first gaining widespread legitimacy. The mainstream media's woeful coverage of the lead-up to Iraq probably did more to level the playing field for alternative media outlets than any other single factor.

"Newspaper Narcissism" [Columbia Journalism Review]

The very complicated issue of political independence at the DOJ

After the release of more DOJ torture memos last week, President Obama said that he would not prosecute the CIA interrogators who carried out the Bush administration's orders. Keith Olbermann and other commentators interpreted Obama's statement broadly, taking it to mean that there would be no prosecutions related to the torture issue whatsoever. My initial take on it was that this interpretation of the President's comments was a little too broad, although I understood the point Olbermann et. al. were making - that prosecutions of the federal employees who actually committed the torture would probably be the most straightforward way to bring their superiors (who created/approved the interrogation policies) into court.

Today, Obama provided a clarification on this issue:

"For those who carried out some of these operations within the four corners of legal opinions or guidance that had been provided from the White House, I do not think it's appropriate for them to be prosecuted.

With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there." [Marc Ambinder]

So he wasn't saying that prosecutions are off the table. That said, there are problems with the AG being "the decider" (to use a Bushism). One of the main reasons Obama has been hesitant about investigations or prosecutions of Bush officials is that he wants to avoid the appearance of partisanship. And while Attorney General Holder is serious about restoring the DOJ's political independence, he remains one of Obama's most visible appointments, and one of the most visible examples of the "Change" Obama promised. If Holder calls for prosecutions of members of the administration whose record Obama won by running against, it could create the (wholly unfair) perception that he is Obama's Alberto Gonzales.

What's especially frustrating about the situation is that the Bush DOJ's lack of political independence probably makes it even harder for the Obama DOJ to undertake controversial prosecutions without appearing unduly politicized. After eight years of the DOJ being run by yes men, some Americans might just assume that the attorney general is supposed to base prosecutorial decisions on the President's political agenda - and would not draw any distinction between Holder and Obama.

That's at least one of the "very complicated issues" Obama faces when it comes to torture prosecutions. Another issue may be the fear that prosecuting members of a previous administration over their policies could set a dangerous precedent, inviting payback in the form of prosecutions by a subsequent Republican administration. It isn't hard to imagine that line of argument: "they weren't satisfied with beating us in the 2008 election, they had to rub it in by prosecuting us over the policies they didn't agree with. If they can, why can't we?" I'm not suggesting that the Obama administration will do anything as controversial or illegal as the Bush administration's torture program, but I have a feeling that wouldn't stop the GOP from trying (see Clinton impeachment).

Increasingly, some kind of congressional investigation or 9/11 Commission-style blue-ribbon panel investigation looks like a better option for the Obama administration, and the President sounded more open to the idea today than he has before, saying that any congressional investigation would need to be carried out in a "bipartisan fashion." [Bloomberg] The only problem with that is that the GOP leadership hasn't shown much interest in throwing the Bush administration under the bus, aside from saying that Bush strayed from the party's fiscal conservatism.

Which surprises me, to be honest. As it stands now, everyone my age (31) and younger will permanently associate the GOP with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al. And the GOP's core strategy - repeating the same old platitudes about Reagan - is not going to make the association between their party and the Bush administration go away. Reagan was out of office by the time I was twelve, and moreover, most of his big ideas have been proven wrong in the twenty years since then.

If the Republican leadership has any interest in competing nationally again, the smartest thing they could do right now would be to take an active role in a bipartisan investigation of pre-Iraq intelligence and torture - making it clear that those were the Bush administration's policies, not theirs, and that we are wrong for lumping them in with people who would lie about something as serious as the rationales for starting a war our friends and classmates would fight, or would put the United States on the "countries that torture" list alongside serial human rights violators like China and Syria. Until the GOP throws the Bush administration under the bus, Bush will still be in the driver's seat, with Cheney riding shotgun.

UNC Chancellor issues statement on Tancredo protest

On Monday night, former Congressman and anti-immigration activist Tom Tancredo spoke at an event at UNC-Chapel Hill, sponsored by a student group called Youth for Western Civilization. Tancredo was brought in to give a speech against illegal immigrants receiving in-state tuition at state schools.

Protesters interrupted his speech almost as soon as he started talking, and things got completely out of hand: some students blocked Tancredo from sight with a 12-foot banner, and someone even broke a window. Police used pepper spray in response, and threatened to use Tasers.

As a UNC graduate who disagrees with most of Tancredo's political views, including his perspective on immigration policy, I find it very troubling that he was not even allowed to speak. Don't get me wrong - I am not criticizing anyone for protesting, marching, or even holding up contrarian signs during a speech (as long as the signs don't block anyone's view of the speaker). But there's a big difference between protesting and physically blocking someone from view, shouting him down while he's trying to speak, and pounding on a window until it shatters.

If I had to pick the one overriding reason I consider myself a moderate or a moderate liberal, it would be that I can't stand the tendency among the far left to demonize everyone who disagrees with you. In that mindset, there's an exemption to the free speech rights the rest of us enjoy: all you have to do is label someone else's point-of-view as "hate" and your disruption of free speech is not only exempted, it's sanctified. I wish a widely-respected liberal constitutional rights expert like Glenn Greenwald would weigh in on this one.

Earlier this evening, UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp issued a statement on the Tancredo incident to members of the General Alumni Association, and I think he said exactly what needs to be said:


*************************************************************************************


Dear Carolina alumni and friends,

Many of you have heard or read about a protest on campus Monday night, and I'm writing to share with you the message I sent yesterday to our campus community. I think you will find that the message speaks for itself. But if you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Holden Thorp, Chancellor


=================================

Message from the Chancellor: Free Speech at Carolina (April 15, 2009)

Dear Students, Faculty and Staff:

I want to express how disappointed I am in what happened last night when former Congressman Tom Tancredo wasn't able to speak when a protest got out of hand, and our Department of Public Safety had to take action. Congressman Tancredo felt threatened and left without making his remarks.

Mr. Tancredo was scheduled to speak about immigration. We expect protests about controversial subjects at Carolina. That's part of our culture. But we also pride ourselves on being a place where all points of view can be expressed and heard. There's a way to protest that respects free speech and allows people with opposing views to be heard. Here that's often meant that groups protesting a speaker have displayed signs or banners, silently expressing their opinions while the speaker had his or her say. That didn't happen last night.

On behalf of our University community, I called Mr. Tancredo today to apologize for how he was treated. In addition, our Department of Public Safety is investigating this incident. They will pursue criminal charges if any are warranted. Our Division of Student Affairs is also investigating student involvement in the protest. If that investigation determines sufficient evidence, participating students could face Honor Court proceedings.

Carolina's tradition of free speech is a fundamental part of what has made this place special for more than 200 years. Let's recommit ourselves to that ideal.

Sincerely,

Holden Thorp

FOIA lawsuit vs. the State Department

On March 26, 2009, I filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department in federal court, to try to force the agency to disclose some pre-Iraq War planning documents. Specifically, the main document I'm after is the "chinese menu" of possible rationales for invading Iraq which was created by the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and was presented by Scooter Libby to Colin Powell and other administration officials on January 25, 2003. Page 297 of Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack says that "Libby provided a 60-page version of the case - some 50 percent more than the CIA paper - which he viewed as a kind of Chinese menu fom which Powell could select."

I have been trying to get this document released since 2006, mostly through FOIA requests submitted to the Defense Department. In February, I renewed my efforts with new requests to the Defense and State Departments (while Pentagon employees created it, Powell and other former State Department officials were the recipients of the document, so it should be in their files). The DOD responded within the 20-day statutory period, but the State Department failed to respond, which triggered a cause of action in district court under FOIA (5 U.S.C. 552(a)(4)(B), to be specific).

In addition to asking the court to compel the State Department to release the document and other related documents, the lawsuit also asks the court to grant me FOIA's "representative of the news media" fee waiver, which means that processing fees related to this request would be waived. Under FOIA, media outlets do not have to pay these fees, and the Open Government Act of 2007 amended FOIA to clarify that the "representative of the news media" fee waiver is intended to include citizen journalists and/or bloggers who can show that they gather information, create a distinct work, and distribute that work to an audience (Congress didn't use the "b"-word in the law itself, but Senator Leahy, who introduced it, specially talked about bloggers in his floor statement just prior to the passage of the bill). Based on my research, I have not been able to find any instances of a blogger getting the news media waiver, and one goal of mine is to provide an example of how other bloggers can successfully request the waiver.

Anyway, now the ball is in the State Department's court to provide an answer to my complaint, and that should be forthcoming in the next week or two. I will be providing updates once things get moving.

Sunshine Week and bloggers' role in FOIA research

This week is Sunshine Week, an annual event created to draw attention to government transparency issues. In today's Washington Post, ombudsman Andrew Alexander criticizes his paper for not participating in Sunshine Week, and also for failing to take a more prominent role in the transparency debate:

"Post reporters routinely file Freedom of Information Act requests to dislodge public records. Editorials warn about the dangers of government secrecy. And the newspaper is willing to sue government agencies to force disclosure of documents. It cares about the public's right to know.

So you would think that with its stature, here in the nation's capital, The Post would be the leader in fighting for transparency. It isn't.

Other newspapers are more assertive on their news pages in championing the cause. Pioneering Web sites are much better at giving readers access to government data. And some open-government advocates feel The Post hasn't done enough to curb Washington's corrosive culture of anonymity."

I agree with Alexander that our top newspapers should do more in the transparency/FOIA department. But even if they don't, transparency groups and blogs can help fill the void - and they already have been. Whereas much of the debate over the rise of blogs centers around whether they can or will replace newspapers, I have always envisioned blogs playing a complimentary role: allowing more voices into the debate, providing citizens with a check on the mainstream media, and perhaps most importantly, filling gaps in niche areas the media fails to cover (for political reasons, or just for economic and profit-motive reasons).

FOIA is a great example of an area where blogs can excel in this gap-filling role. Getting controversial documents released under FOIA can be a very involved, complicated process, often requiring extensive research on very a narrow facet of some policy issue. In contrast, good newspaper articles usually provide a broader picture of a given policy issue, because the goal is to give readers a better general understanding of the issue, and not the specific details of a single memo or document.

Since I got the Rumsfeld memo in 2006, I've been working on getting a major pre-Iraq war planning document released under FOIA from the Defense and State departments - the presentation of arguments for invading Iraq that the neocons gave to Colin Powell prior to his UN presentation, telling him to choose from the various rationales "like a Chinese menu" - and I have reason to believe it may be released in the near future. I've also been applying for FOIA's "representative of the news media" fee waiver, which lets media outlets like the Post get FOIA documents without paying the processing fees bloggers currently have to pay. In 2007, Congress amended FOIA to make it easier for bloggers and citizen journalists to apply for the waiver, but to my knowledge, no one has gotten it yet.

In the last few years, a lot of bloggers and other citizen journalists have obtained important documents under FOIA (most recently, TPM got an index of reports prepared by the DoD's think tank). In addition to the obvious goal of saving money in FOIA processing fees, my motivation for fighting for the fee waiver is to bring attention to the work bloggers and other citizen journalists have done in this area. If you know of a good example I may not have heard about (no need to tell me about the category leader, The Memory Hole), please email me with a link at outragedmoderates [at] gmail [dot] com.