One curiosity about tyrants and dictators: the attention they pay to the smallest slights and inconveniences. I suppose that makes sense to megalomaniacs, who tend to be micro-control-freaks, offended at the least sign of lèse-majesté, however oppressive such pettiness may seem to the rest of us.
This weekend in Washington, one honest man decided to call the Bush-Cheney White House on its latest cheap insult to democracy. Flynt Leverett, former CIA, State Department, and National Security Council staff member, charged that the White House had forced the CIA to censor an op-ed piece he had written for the New York Times -- a first in his long and productive career -- not because his article revealed a scintilla of information that was not already in the public domain but because he had dared to dissent openly over the administration's plans for Iran. Steve Clemons of the Washington Note published Leverett's first official statement Saturday night. It is impassioned, and it names names. Here is an excerpt:
The White House is demanding, before it will consider clearing the op-ed for publication, that I excise entire paragraphs dealing with matters that I have written about (and received clearance from the CIA to do so) in several other pieces, that have been publicly acknowledged by Secretary Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and that have been extensively covered in the media.These matters include Iran's dialogue and cooperation with the United States concerning Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and Iran's offer to negotiate a comprehensive "grand bargain" with the United States in the spring of 2003.
There is no basis for claiming that these issues are classified and not already in the public domain.
For the White House to make this claim, with regard to my op-ed and at this particular moment, is nothing more than a crass effort to politicize a prepublication review process -- a process that is supposed to be about the protection of classified information, and nothing else -- to limit the dissemination of views critical of administration policy.
Within the last two week, the CIA found the wherewithal to approve an op-ed -- published in the New York Times on December 8, 2006 -- by Kenneth Pollack, another former CIA employee. This op-ed includes the statement that "Iran provided us with extensive assistance on intelligence, logistics, diplomacy, and Afghan internal politics."
Similar statements by me have been deleted from my draft op-ed by the White House. But Kenneth Pollack is someone who presented unfounded assessments of the Iraqi WMD threat -- the same assessments expounded by the Bush White House -- to make a high-profile public case for going to war in Iraq.
Mr. Pollack also supports the administration's reluctance to engage with Iran, in contrast to my consistent and sharp criticism of that position. It would seem that, if one is expounding views congenial to the White House, it does not intervene in prepublication censorship, but, if one is a critic, White House officials will use fraudulent charges of revealing classified information to keep critical views from being heard.
My understanding is that the White House staffers who have injected themselves into this process are working for Elliott Abrams and Megan O'Sullivan, both politically appointed deputies to President Bush's National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley.
Their conduct in this matter is despicable and un-American in the profoundest sense of that term. I am also deeply disappointed that former colleagues at the Central Intelligence Agency have proven so supine in the face of tawdry political pressure. Intelligence officers are supposed to act better than that.
Clemons also links to Leverett's much longer study, already published, on which the op-ed column is based. On Sunday, Larisa Alexandrovna published a link to the full text of the op-ed and an extract.
Yesterday, Juan Cole reacted to news of Leverett's defiant public stand by zeroing in on one of the obvious culprits Leverett has named:
Back to Washington. The remaining Neoconservatives in the Bush administration, like David Wurmser in Cheney's office and Abrams at the NSC have been agitating behind the scenes for war on Syria and Iran. These people hate peace the way the devil hates holy water. They confess themselves actively disappointed when a war doesn't happen. They helped send US troops into Iraq where 24,000 have been wounded or killed, and they'd just love to expend some more lives on other pet projects.That does it. Elliot Abrams must go. Elliot Abrams is a felon. He was involved in stealing Pentagon weapons from US stockpiles, selling them to the Ayatollah Khomeini, and then stealing the Iranian funds so garnered to give to far-right Central American death squads, and then lying about all this to Congress. The Congress in the Constitution controls the budget. The Congress had cut off money to the rightwing death squads supported by Reagan and henchmen like Abrams. This elaborate criminal conspiracy inside the White House was the Right's response. They shredded the Constitution (and ever since have been calling their critics "unpatriotic.")
In 1991, Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress under oath. Without the plea deal, he was facing felony charges, since what he did was in fact a felony.
Congress pledged that Abrams would never work at a high level in government again. But by the time the Neoconservative cabal in the Bush administration got Bush to appoint him to the National Security Council, there had been so much turn-over in Congress that, one member told me, "no one remembered who Abrams was."
I'm serious about this, everyone. The bloggers are touted as influential, but their influence is hard to measure or prove. Let's make this a test case.
And the campaign seems to be underway at Kos.
To most of us, the puzzle, the absurdity, and the outrage of suppressing information that is already public seem obvious. On what grounds could Leverett's article still be considered a security threat, and by whom?
By anyone who believes that mere dissent from the president's point of view is a security threat -- that's who. A number of officials in the Bush administration have flattered their leader by making such arguments in the past, backed up powerfully by Dick Cheney, resisted by very few in a flaccid Congress.
On their own, those arguments are rationalizations of and for tyranny. That they should rise again now is a warning that Bush and Cheney still want Iran, in spite of their historic failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, in spite of all the best intelligence and informed advice they have been given, and in spite of the will of the American people and the people of the world.
As pogge asks above: Who promised you democracy would be easy? May many Americans heed Juan Cole's call.
Aren't we lucky that we don't have anyone obsessed with controlling and suppressing dissent in government in this country?
And thanks to Debra for a private tip.
Wow! Thanks skdadl (& Debra)!