Month: June 2013

Chris Hayes: “It’s not some Orwellian abstraction. It’s America’s history”


by digby

Last night Chris Hayes tried to give his audience some perspective on the fears and concerns of civil libertarians who are mistrustful of the government when they assure us they will not abuse their power. He used the famous example of Martin Luther King.

I’m sure that for some of you that is ancient history (and I have heard a lot from supporters of the program that my mistrust is a function of my addled old age and nostalgia for my youth rather than anything savvy modern people should take seriously.) But Chris Hayes is hardly a senile old woman and yet he makes some excellent points that this ancient observer thinks are worthy of consideration:

Transcript:

We begin tonight with this man, former Alabama governor George Wallace who 50 years ago today made his infamous stand in the schoolhouse door. a principled stand on behalf of evil. in defiance of the united states justice department , governor George Wallace stood outside the University of Alabama personally blocking two black students from enrolling there.

(VIDEO) I stand here today as Governor of this sovereign state and refuse to submit to the illegal use of power by the central government.

Today, 50 years later when we look back on that moment on June 11th, 1963, we can tell very clearly the heroes and the villains. George Wallace was obviously the villain in this story, and Vivian Malone and James Hood, the two students blocked by George Wallace from registering that day, were heroes, along with the rest of the civil rights movement, folks like Martin Luther King Jr., the people who are fighting for integration, they’re the heroes. They’re the good guys, but the United States government at the time, it was not at all clear. In 1963, President Kennedy, himself, said this of Dr. King.

(AUDIO) The trouble with king is everybody thinks he’s our boy. King is so hot these days it’s like Marx coming to the white house.

He admitted later he asked the FBI to make an intensive investigation of Martin Luther King. And that on October 10th, 1963, he personally authorized the FBI to begin wiretapping King’s phones. The Kennedys were most certainly not alone in these attitudes toward Dr. King in the 1960s, much of the security apparatus of the cold war American state was obsessed with the idea that the civil rights movement was infiltrated by communists, and working to tear down U.S. society from the inside. And no single person captured the fear and paranoia of the security apparatus more than Dr. Martin Luther King. 

So faced with what they perceived as a threat, the security state did what all security states do when faced with a perceived threat. They surveilled Dr. King around the clock. They stalked his every move, broke into and bugged his office. They bugged his hotel rooms and they tapped into his phones. The FBI and Jay Edgar Hoover were obsessed with ruining Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

In 1964, after Hoover called King the most “notorious liar in the country” in a press conference, a package was sent to King in the mail, a package the House select committee ultimately traced back to the FBI. Inside this package, one of the most remarkable artifacts in American history was an anonymous letter addressed to Martin Luther King and a copy of an electronic surveillance tape apparently to lend credence to threats of exposure of derogatory personal information made in the letter. We don’t know to this day for sure what was on that tape. The heavy speculation throughout the years it was of personal and sexual nature recorded by a device planted in Dr. King’s hotel room. 

The letter that came with the tape read in part, “you know you are complete fraud and a great liability to all of us negroes. The American public will know you for what you are, an evil abnormal beast. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.” The committee considered it highly likely that Director Hoover had before the fact knowledge of the action. 

So that’s a letter encouraging Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to kill himself, sent to King from the FBI. This happened in American history. It’s just one example out of many of how the full weight of the surveillance state constructed to fight the cold war was used against the people working for racial equality. It may have been constructed to defeat the Russians and the genuine threat of global communism, but it was deployed on people like Carmichael and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

This is all particularly relevant today. Not just because it’s generally good to take heed of the lessons from history, but because of the spy novel-esque mystery that is unfolding in the news right now which involves the uncovering of a massive and sophisticated surveillance apparatus being operated by the United States government. The whereabouts of the 29-year-old at the center of the intrigue, intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, has been unknown since he checked out of a Hong Kong hotel after filming a jaw-dropping interview in which he took credit for leaking classified documents exposing government phone and internet spying tactics and programs. 

Since his video confession, he has officially been fired. The consulting firm Booz Allen announcing the firing today saying he worked there for less than three months and earned a salary of $122,000 a year. (Notably is quite a bit less than the 200 grand he claimed to have been making.) The Justice department is reportedly already working on pursuing criminal charges against Snowden which is said to be the first step necessary to force him to return to the U.S. And the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration today charging that the newly released phone record collection being done by the government is illegal. The ACLU is asking the judge to bar the mass collection of domestic phone logs and to order existing records to be purged. Arguing the program, quote, “gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious and intimate associations.” 

But all of that said, when you look at public opinion, Americans appear at the moment, at least, you may be watching this feel this way, to be fairly tolerant of this kind of surveillance. when you ask as pollsters from the “Washington Post” and Pew did this week if it’s more important for the government to investigate terror threats or preserve Americans’ privacy. An overwhelming majority, 62% say investigate threats even if it violates our privacy. Those numbers are, well, I think totally understandable because everybody wants the government to catch terrorists, and the lack of privacy seems fairly abstract. 

Most Americans probably feel pretty far removed from the days of Jay Edgar Hoover spying on Dr. Martin Luther King and with some good reason. If you ask me, in the abstract, do you think it’s okay for the government to be able to access millions of Americans’ phone records and internet activity as long as those tools are just for catching terrorists and they’re never, ever abused, I would be tempted to say, yes, that’s totally okay. 

But there’s a pretty major sticking point, and that is the as long as it’s not abused part. Because history tells us that is not actually a thing — a nonabused massive government surveillance apparatus. That is not what Dr. Martin Luther King tells us. Frankly, you don’t even have to look at history. Just look at the news from the fall of 2008 when a pair of NSA whistleblowers came forward to talk about what was being done with the agency’s surveillance tools way back then.

(VIDEO) I would say that after 9/11, particularly with the fact we were listening to satellite phone communications, rather than targeting military entities in the middle east, we were actually listening to a lot of everyday ordinary people who really in many ways had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. … 

The times when I was told, hey, check this out, there’s something really some good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny. Go check it out and it would be some colonel making pillow talk . 

And you would listen? 

It was there, stored the way you look at songs on your Ipod.

That was our post-9/11 anti- terrorist surveillance state at work just a few years ago. examples of big sweeping surveillance programs misfiring are all over the place. just last month, NBC’s Michael Isikoff flagged reports that a special home run security unit was closely monitoring anti-wall street demonstrations including tracking the Facebook pages and websites of the protesters and writing reports on the “potential impact on commercial and financial sector assets in downtown areas” right around the time the U.S. government received the second warning about the radical Islamic ties of alleged Boston marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. 

When you construct a massive surveillance apparatus, history tells us that it will be brought to bear not just on, quote, “the enemy” but on the people who threaten society’s power structure. On whoever exists at the political margins, whether it’s Martin Luther King Jr. or some Occupy Boston protesters. It’s not some Orwellian abstraction. It’s America’s history — and America’s recent history —and left unchecked I fear for America ‘s future.

I do too.

*Taken from a rough transcript.

Oversight

by digby

If I thought censoring the mail was necessary, I would suggest it, but I don’t think it is, – Lindsay Graham

Well that’s good.

He points out that there is precedent because the government looked at mail during WWII to make sure nobody was giving away secrets to the enemy. And we need to know what the enemy “is up to.” Still the 1st Amendment is “sacrosanct” but “has limits.”

Thank goodness we have the government and private sector professionals and their overseers in the congress like Huckleberry Graham to decide for us what those limits are. I feel safer already.

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New poll of crime victims shows most favor rehabilitation over punishment

by David Atkins

Timm Herdt at the Ventura County Star highlights a new study by David Binder Research showing that despite the plethora of hard-right pro-punishment groups claiming to be “victims’ rights” organizations, it seems that most crime victims in California care more about rehabilitation than punishment:

The polling firm David Binder Research randomly called 2,600 Californians to find 500 who said they had been victims of crime in the last five years. They, too, are deserving of empathy.

Two out of three said they had been the victims of multiple crimes, and the same percentage said they experienced significant stress and anxiety that affected their work and social relationships.

But their views on criminal justice, Binder says, are “at odds with preconceived notions.”

When asked whether California should “focus more on sending people to jail and prison or more on providing supervised probation and rehabilitation programs,” they chose rehabilitation by a ratio of more than 2-to-1.

A majority of these crime victims said they believe California “sends too many people to prison” and that time spent in prison often results in criminals learning how to become better criminals.

Based on his polling, Binder came to this conclusion: “Victims want to focus on rehabilitation.”

The findings of the poll are noteworthy as policymakers evaluate the effects of the 2011 public safety realignment program that shifted about 30,000 low-level offenders from state prisons to county jails.

The United States has preposterously high rate of incarceration–higher than anywhere else in the world where records exist. That serves no one well: not society, not the taxpayer, not public safety, and not even the victims of crime themselves.

Enough is enough.

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The insurrectionists vs the institutionalists

by digby

Chris Hayes appeared on Now with Alex Wagner earlier today and they had a fascinating discussion about American opinion relating to the NSA revelations:

In his book, “The Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy,” Hayes divides American thought leaders into two camps, arguing that figures like The New York Times’ Paul Krugman and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are classic insurrectionists, distrustful of institutional hierarchies, while Krugman’s colleague at The Times, David Brooks, serves as the model institutionalist.

That prompted Alex to ask Hayes whether 29-year-old Edward Snowden was an insurrectionist bent on tearing down the system or an institutionalist looking to fix it.

“I think the most dangerous thing for authority are people who were once institutionalists who later became radicalized, and I think a lot of whistle-blowers are that,” Hayes said.
“The entire national security state constructed post -9/11 has been shrouded behind secrecy, and because it’s shrouded behind secrecy, people’s opinions about how it functions and whether it’s justifiable tend to fall along these polarized lines of how much you, by default, trust authority.”

The panel also batted around Jeffrey Toobin’s recent column in the New Yorker–an example of the institutionalist position–in which he argues that Snowden was neither a hero nor a whistle-blower.

Finally, Alex and Chris Hayes discussed the public’s confusion over the surveillance issue as evidenced by a new Pew Research poll that shows Democrats and Republicans have essentially switched positions on the issue since Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush in the White House. In essence, members of the public appear more inclined to believe government surveillance was okay if it took place under the party to which they felt most closely aligned.

“People don’t really have a lot of information to operate on,” Hayes said. “And so what they do is they take cues from people they trust.” It was easier for Democrats to be more skeptical of the national security state when they were not running it.”

There’s more to the thesis, and you can watch it on the video.

I think he’s on to something. This argument does seem to break on some very odd lines and it’s more than just plain old partisanship. (And I agree completely with what he’s saying about the partisanship that does exist — it’s an understandable way for busy people to shorthand these decisions.)

I’ve been skeptical of government power for decades. But that’s a function of my age as much as anything — I came of age during Watergate and I’m not sure I ever fully developed trust in any institution except the press and even that has been eroded over the past couple of decades. But as Hayes outlined in his book — and has been proven over and over again in my opinion — our institutions are failing more than ever, even to the extent that the people running them aren’t capable of protecting the system that benefits them. (See: Wall Street.) So I’m obviously an insurrectionist.

I don’t have the answer to how to fix institutions — I think they are so corrupted at the moment that it’s going to more than a few new rules — but I do believe that we are probably better off relying on our messy, imperfect system of competing interests, at least until we figure this out. The press and the government should be antagonistic. The congress and the executive need to guard their prerogatives. The people need to be suspicious and push back on encroaching religious power and moneyed interests. It’s important not to let any of these failing institutions, least of all the massive police power of the state, completely have the upper hand. That way rarely works out well for the folks.

The system is chaotic and doesn’t lend itself to orderly progress. But that’s how its designed and lately I’ve had a fuller appreciation for the enlightenment principles that informed it: self-determinism, consent of the governed, that the government’s role is to protect the rights of its citizens as much as provide physical security. Also too, the social contract and all that jazz. There’s just no way to have all that if the country is keeping massive amounts of secrets from its citizens while at the same time abandoning its commitment to provide for the common good. It is the worst of all possible worlds.

The secret government been eating away at this society since before Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex over 50 years ago. And it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger with no accountability and only the vaguest rationale for its ongoing existence. I can’t support it.

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Dubya getting the reprieve of short memories

by David Atkins

Americans have short memories, it seems:

For the first time since 2005, more Americans now view former President George W. Bush favorably than unfavorably, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday.

Forty-nine percent have a favorable view of Bush, while 46 percent view him unfavorably, the poll found. His ratings have risen by more than 10 points among both parties since he left office, with 84 percent of Republicans and 24 percent of Democrats now rating him favorably.

At Bush’s lowest point, in 2008, just 32 percent of Americans rated him positively, according to Gallup. Like most recent presidents, however, he saw his numbers rise after leaving the White House.

Bush has largely stayed off the radar since he was president. When he made a public appearance for the dedication of his presidential library in April, several pollsters recorded the highest ratings for Bush in years, although most ratings were still net negatives.

“The recovery in Bush’s image is not unexpected, given that Americans generally view former presidents positively,” Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones notes in the poll’s release. “Gallup’s favorable ratings for Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton all exceeded 60% when last measured.”

“But Bush’s image improved more from 2009 to 2010 than it has in the past three years,” he wrote, “even with a recent round of positive publicity from the opening of his presidential library, so that is not a guarantee he will see the 60%+ favorable ratings enjoyed by other former presidents anytime soon.”

It would be a mistake to see these numbers as indicative of growing conservatism in the country. Most Americans still blame Bush for the economic crisis (even though it was actually a quite bipartisan push to deregulate the financial industry that caused it), and President Obama still has a 51% approval rating.

They are indicative, however, of the dynamic that makes politicians so eager to “look forward not backward” and refuse to hold individuals in power accountable for wrongdoing. Americans are an optimistic lot, and we don’t like to dwell on history. Unfortunately, that also makes us easy targets to relive the horrors of the past again and again while learning almost nothing from them.

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So you’re not worried about the government spying on dissidents?  What if it’s outsourced?


by digby

Lee Fang reminds us of a story from a couple of years ago which, in light of recent revelations, should make anyone who is feeling cavalier about these NSA revelations get just a little bit queasy:

“I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.” -Edward Snowden, Booz Allen Hamilton whistleblower, during his interview with The Guardian.

Could the sprawling surveillance state enable government or its legion of private contractors to abuse their technology and spy upon domestic political targets or judges?

This is not a far off possibility. Two years ago, a batch of stolen e-mails revealed a plot by a set of three defense contractors (Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal) to target activists, reporters, labor unions, and political organizations. The plans — one concocted in concert with lawyers for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to sabotage left-leaning critics, like the Center for American Progress and the SEIU, and a separate proposal to “combat” WikiLeaks and its supporters, including Glenn Greenwald, on behalf of Bank of America — fell apart after reports of their existence were published online. But the episode serves as a reminder that the expanding spy industry could use its government-backed cyber tools to harm ordinary Americans and political dissident groups.

The episode also shows that Greenwald, who helped Snowden expose massive spying efforts in the U.S., had been targetted by spy agency contractors in the past for supporting whistleblowers and WikiLeaks.

Firms like Palantir — a Palo Alto-based business that helps intelligence agencies analyze large sets of data — exist because of the government’s post-9/11 rush to develop a “terror-detection leviathan” of high-tech companies. Named after a stone in the Lord of the Rings that helps both villains and do-gooders see over great distances, the company is well-known within Silicon Valley for attracting support from a venture capital group led by libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel and Facebook’s Sean Parker. But Palantir’s rise to prominence, now reportedly valued at $8 billion, came from initial investment from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA, and close consultation with officials from the intelligence-gathering community, including disgraced retired admiral John Poindexter and Bryan Cunningham, a former advisor to Condoleezza Rice.

Please read the whole thing. Suppose you trust the government implicitly.  It is run by patriots who would never do anything to hurt the American people. Does that apply to these guys too?  Defense contractors who have already been caught using their technology to target activists, reporters, labor unions, and political organizations.

These days, with this system, government doesn’t have to actually do this sort of thing, you see. They just outsource it — with your tax dollars. Or perhaps even worse, certain factions within the government can do it.

Trust ’em?

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Tom Walmart and Sams Club Jackman

by digby

I assume they are true believers in the Walmart exploitation ethos because neither of them could possible need the money:

I have got to stop drinking.

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The Great Grand Bargain Divergence

by digby

This is a fascinating account of how the Grand Bargain came to be the tired conventional wisdom among the Village wonk crowd. (I’m characterizing it that way, not the author, the esteemed Larry Mishel. ) It’s required reading for anyone who has been following this story for the past few years:

The Center for American Progress (CAP) has issued an important new report saying that “new realities” dictate that we “reset button on the entire fiscal debate,” end the pursuit of a fiscal “grand bargain” with Republicans in Congress on deficit reduction, and replace the sequester (through 2016). One can only hope this signals a change in direction for the administration and others on the center-left who embarked on the grand bargain deficit reduction journey in late 2009 and early 2010 when their focus should have remained on job creation. That turn of events was one of the most consequential economic policymaking decisions in decades, because it derailed job creation (i.e., further stimulus) efforts thus ensuring that recovery from the Great Recession would be agonizingly slow. That, of course, has had a hugely adverse impact on the wages, benefits and employment of the vast majority of Americans, but has also had tremendous political fallout (i.e. 2010) and weakened the public’s faith in government’s ability to spur job growth. It was a clear unforced error by CAP and the administration to suggest the need for a grand bargain on deficit reduction, embodied in the appointment of the Simpson-Bowles commission. For these reasons it’s worth examining the argument CAP has made and compare it to the situation in late 2009 and early 2010 when CAP pushed for a grand bargain, praised the Simpson-Bowles effort and recommended a deficit plan that, if adopted, would have started to cut spending in October 2010 (when, it turns out, unemployment was still 9.5 percent). This is not an across-the-board indictment of CAP—they do lots of excellent work, including Michael Linden’s budget analyses. But it is important to highlight that there were two paths available to liberal and center-left policymakers over the course of this crisis, and many of today’s difficulties are with us because the wrong path was chosen. EPI, I am proud to say, was and remains resolutely focused on the ongoing jobs crisis.  Read on

He discusses how the paths between EPI and CAP diverged at a very specific time and concludes that CAP was listening “to the Wall Streeters who were telling them, as they told the administration, that interest rates can “turn on a dime” so we need to undertake a deficit reduction plan.”

I’m glad he mentioned the administration because I think this is a chicken or the egg story. Anyone who reads this blog knows that President-elect Obama was telling everyone who would listen that he wanted that Grand Bargain leading up to the first inauguration. And he very explicitly said that he needed to pass a stimulus first and then he planned to pivot to the tax reform, “entitlement” reform and health care. And that is what he did.

Mishel is right that CAP could have taken another path and they might have been influential.
But they would have been going up against the president’s agenda if they did so. And there is little evidence that were inclined to do that on much of anything.

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A new leak. Will it be investigated too?

by digby

I assume we’re going to see a full-fledged hissy fit over this leak, right?

U.S. intelligence operatives covertly sabotaged a prominent al-Qaeda online magazine last month in an apparent attempt to sow confusion among the group’s followers, according to officials.

The operation succeeded, at least temporarily, in thwarting publication of the latest issue of Inspire, the English-language magazine distributed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. When it appeared online, the text on the second page was garbled and the following 20 pages were blank. The sabotaged version was quickly removed from the online forum that hosted it, according to independent analysts who track jihadi Web sites.

It’s unclear how the hacking occurred, although U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency and the CIA, have invested heavily in cyber-capabilities in recent years. Security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the recent operation was only the latest U.S. attempt to disrupt al-Qaeda’s online propaganda.

“You can make it hard for them to distribute it, or you can mess with the content. And you can mess with the content in a way that is obvious or in ways that are not obvious,” said one intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal debates.

Officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the government’s 16 intelligence agencies, declined to comment, as did the White House and the Pentagon.

“Sensitive internal debates.” Lulz.

Seriously, now the jihadis will know that it was the US that disrupted their web-site and will be alert to such behavior. And then they will institute new procedures to evade it in the future. Because they never would have thought of it before now.

I think we need an investigation, don’t you?

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Some lies to congress are more important than others

by digby

Emptywheel has been documenting the story of James Clapper and his blatant lying to congress.

As I noted yesterday, when Andrea Mitchell asked James Clapper about his lie to Ron Wyden earlier this year, Clapper offered a baloney answer, admitting both that he gave the “least untruthful” answer and that he had been “too cute by half.”

First– as I said, I have great respect for Senator Wyden. I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked– “When are you going to start– stop beating your wife” kind of question, which is meaning not– answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no.
[snip]
And this has to do with of course somewhat of a semantic, perhaps some would say too– too cute by half. But it is– there are honest differences on the semantics of what– when someone says “collection” to me, that has a specific meaning, which may have a different meaning to him. [my emphasis]

It was such a terrible response to Mitchell’s question, for ten whole minutes I wished Rahm Emanuel were back in the White House to rip Clapper to shreds for such a media fail.

But what makes Clapper’s answer — and his retroactive explanations for it — far, far worse is that Ron Wyden gave him a day to figure out how to answer.

One of the most important responsibilities a Senator has is oversight of the intelligence community. This job cannot be done responsibly if Senators aren’t getting straight answers to direct questions. When NSA Director Alexander failed to clarify previous public statements about domestic surveillance, it was necessary to put the question to the Director of National Intelligence. So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question to Director Clapper’s office a day in advance. [my emphasis]

And after Clapper lied to Wyden’s face, Wyden gave him a chance to amend it, which he did not take.

After the hearing was over my staff and I gave his office a chance to amend his answer. Now public hearings are needed to address the recent disclosures and the American people have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives. [my emphasis]

Wyden is making it clear: this was a deliberate, knowing lie to Congress. And no one wants to talk about it.

Well, who cares about lying to congress anyway, right? Except for the oversight and all, it’s no big deal.

Most of them may not care about being blatantly lied to about millions of Americans’ having their 4th Amendment rights trampled on by the government, but they must be pleased to see the DOJ draw a big red line on other important matters:

A jury acquitted baseball great Roger Clemens on Monday of all charges that he lied to Congress about using steroids—the second time in a month the Justice Department has suffered a high-profile defeat.

Mr. Clemens, 49 years old, fought back tears as he thanked supporters after a legal saga that dates to 2007, when a congressionally ordered inquiry into steroids in pro baseball had concluded the pitcher was among those who had used steroids.

Hey, lying to congress about your own steroid use in professional sports is beyond the pale. Anyone can see that.

Meanwhile, I’m having a really hard time understand why James Clapper is such a respected and popular figure in this administration (according to Chuck Todd on twitter yesterday, anyway.)

I mentioned this over the week-end but I’m still so gobsmacked by it that I have to bring it up again:

THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: WEAPONS SEARCH; Iraqis Removed Arms Material, U.S. Aide Says
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: October 29, 2003

The director of a top American spy agency said Tuesday that he believed that material from Iraq’s illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material ”unquestionably” had been moved out of Iraq.

”I think people below the Saddam Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse,” General Clapper, who leads the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said at a breakfast with reporters.

He said he was providing a personal assessment. But he said ”the obvious conclusion one draws” was that there ”may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material.” A spokesman for General Clapper’s agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general’s statement.

This is the guy in charge of all this secrecy. Seriously.

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