Category: News

When the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling got underway Tuesday in Northern Virginia, prospective jurors made routine references to “three-letter agencies” and alphabet-soup categories of security clearances. In an area where vast partnerships between intelligence agencies and private contractors saturate everyday life, the jury pool was bound to please the prosecution.

In a U.S. District Court that boasts a “rocket docket,” the selection of 14 jurors was swift, with the process lasting under three hours. Along the way, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema asked more than a dozen possible jurors whether their personal connections to the CIA or other intel agencies would interfere with her announced quest for an “absolutely open mind.”

From what I could tell, none of those with direct connections to intelligence agencies ended up in the jury box. But affinities with agencies like the CIA seemed implicit in the courtroom. Throughout the jury selection, there was scarcely a hint that activities of those agencies might merit disapproval.

Just how familiar was the jury pool with critiques of the CIA? Hard to say, but here’s one indicator: When Brinkema asked for a show of hands among the prospective jurors – nearly 100 in the room – to indicate how many had read James Risen’s bestselling book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, a grand total of zero hands went up.

Continue reading “Sterling Trial Opens in Security-State Matrix”

I confess to being naïve. From what I had read about “Operation Merlin,” a harebrained scheme to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, I was convinced that the CIA would be determined to avoid calling more attention to it. Or, by extension, to author James Risen’s continuing revelations – in his new book Pay Any Price – of unconscionable incompetence by our intrepid spies. “Merlin” was exposed in an earlier Risen book, State of War.

How wrong I was! The decision by the CIA and hired hands at the Justice Department to prosecute former CIA official Jeffrey Sterling reflects, rather, a clear determination to give priority to deterring potential whistleblowers privy to information extremely embarrassing to the government. I repeat, embarrassing to the government, not detrimental to the national security.

As for risk of extreme embarrassment once U.S. citizens got additional insight into the dumb schemes of amateur intelligence operators, the government presumably thinks it can depend on mainstream media to treat bungling by our sophomore spies “with discretion.”

In short, the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling seems to have little to do with exposing secrets, but everything to do with hiding the kind of gross misfeasance that – truth be told – does constitute a real and present danger to our national security.

Continue reading “Crime and CIA Embarrassments”

To understand the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week, we need only invert George W. Bush’s 2005 mantra*, thus: "They will continue to attack us over here so long as we slaughter them by the millions over there."

In a word, this is one more instance of blowback, as Ron Paul tells us in his perceptive essay, "Lessons From Paris." Among other things Paul points out: "The two Paris shooters had reportedly spent the summer in Syria fighting with the rebels seeking to overthrow Syrian President Assad. …But France and the United States have spent nearly four years training and equipping foreign fighters to infiltrate Syria and overthrow Assad! In other words, when it comes to Syria, the two Paris killers were on ‘our’ side. They may have even used French or US weapons while fighting in Syria."

To grasp the magnitude of the neocolonial savagery of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East, a catalogue of the recent offenses is a necessary beginning. A partial accounting of Western barbarism is to be found in "Destructive Western Mideast Policy Makes Radicals" by Muhammad Sahimi. Sahimi closes his essay by saying, "Indeed, so long as the abuses of the Western dominance of the Islamic world provides the fertile ground for extremist Muslim clerics and preachers to espouse their reactionary interpretations of Islam, a religion of peace and mercy, things will not get any better." The killings in Paris, horrific as they are, are but pinpricks compared to the vast devastation visited by the West on the Muslim world and indeed on most of the planet over the last centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism which has brought humiliation, genocide and grinding poverty to entire continents – and continues to do so.

Continue reading “The Cartoons Outlawed in France: L’affaire Charlie Hebdo and Western Colonialism”

It’s been over a week now since Boko Haram attacked Nigerian military forces in the city of Baga, which culminated in a Wednesday massacre that saw the entire city burned to the ground and some 2,000 civilians killed. Today, CNN finally noticed.

Having obsessed over the French terrorist attacks throughout the past week and into the weekend, what happened in Baga wasn’t even on the bottom news ticker until today, and coverage is just starting to catch up with what happened.

Bodies remain to be recovered, untold numbers drown in Lake Chad, and the ruins of the city are still considered occupied by Boko Haram, as indeed is most of the northeast of the country.

Boko Haram continues to grow in size and scope, and has been launching huge numbers of attacks big and smaller recently. Over the weekend, two more suicide bombers, reportedly pre-teen girls, carried out attacks.

To the extent that Nigeria gets covered on CNN or other cable news networks, it is with an eye toward US military intervention there. Yet it is hard to imagine how 2,000 people could be killed and an entire city destroyed and it virtually escaped their notice for a solid week.

As Josh Gerstein first reported, the government has just asked the judge in the Jeffrey Sterling trial, Leonie Brinkema, to declare James Risen unavailable as a witness. After having defended their own right to call Risen as a witness all the way to the Supreme Court, claiming all the way they need Risen to prove their case, they’re now saying Sterling should not be able to call him.

Mr. Risen’s under-oath testimony has now laid to rest any doubt concerning whether he will ever disclose his sources or sources for Chapter 9 of State of War (or, for that matter, anything else he’s written). He will not. As a result, the government does not intend to call him as a witness at trial. Doing so would simply frustrate the truth-seeking function of the trial. This is true irrespective of whether he is called by the government or the defense–he is unavailable to both parties.

The real issue, it seems, is the government’s worry that Sterling’s lawyers will ask Risen about those past claims.

[S]ince Mr. Risen is not available as a witness on the central issue in the case, the defendant should be prohibited from commenting on Mr. Risen’s failure to appear or suggesting that the government has failed to meet its burden because it did not call him as a witness.

The government has even asked Brinkema to give jurors an instruction saying,

James Risen has refused to testify concerning his source or sources for Chapter Nine of his book State of War. He is therefore unavailable as a witness in this case. As a result, you should draw no inferences as to either the government or the defense based on Mr. Risen’s absence as a witness or any testimony he might have provided.

We’ll see whether Sterling’s lawyers want to engage in a game of chicken in order to present the lengths to which the government pursued Risen, in addition to their client, in this case.

Investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler writes the “Right to Know” column for ExposeFacts. She is best known for providing in-depth analysis of legal documents related to “war on terrorism” programs and civil liberties. Wheeler blogs at emptywheel.net and publishes at outlets including the Guardian, Salon, and the Progressive. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy. Wheeler won the 2009 Hillman Award for blog.

Reprinted with permission from ExposeFacts.

The trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, set to begin in mid-January, is shaping up as a major battle in the U.S. government’s siege against whistleblowing. With its use of the Espionage Act to intimidate and prosecute people for leaks in “national security” realms, the Obama administration is determined to keep hiding important facts that the public has a vital right to know.

After fleeting coverage of Sterling’s indictment four years ago, news media have done little to illuminate his case – while occasionally reporting on the refusal of New York Times reporter James Risen to testify about whether Sterling was a source for his 2006 book State of War.

Risen’s unwavering stand for the confidentiality of sources is admirable. At the same time, Sterling – who faces 10 felony counts that include seven under the Espionage Act – is no less deserving of support.

Revelations from brave whistleblowers are essential for the informed consent of the governed. With its hostilities, President Barack Obama’s Justice Department is waging legalistic war on our democratic rights to know substantially more about government actions than official stories. That’s why the imminent courtroom clash in the case of “United States of America v. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling” is so important.

Continue reading “In Defense of a CIA Whistleblower”