Midway through the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, one comment stands out. \u201cA criminal case,\u201d defense attorney Edward MacMahon told the jury at the outset, \u201cis not a place where the CIA goes to get its reputation back.\u201d But that\u2019s where the CIA went with this trial in its first week \u2013 sending to the witness stand a procession of officials who attested to the agency\u2019s virtues and fervently decried anyone who might provide a journalist with classified information.<\/p>\n
The CIA\u2019s reputation certainly needs a lift. It has rolled downhill at an accelerating pace in the dozen years since telling President George W. Bush what he wanted the nation to hear about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. That huge bloody blot on the agency\u2019s record has not healed since then, inflamed by such matters as drone strikes, rendition of prisoners to torture-happy regimes and resolute protection of its own torturers.<\/p>\n
CIA sensibilities about absolution and prosecution are reflected in the fact that a former head of the CIA\u2019s clandestine service, Jose Rodriguez Jr., suffered no penalty<\/a> for destroying numerous videotapes of torture interrogations by the agency \u2013 which knew<\/a> from the start that the torture was illegal.<\/p>\n But in the courtroom, day after day, with patriotic piety, CIA witnesses \u2013 most of them screened from public view to keep their identities secret \u2013 have testified to their reverence for legality.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the process, the CIA is airing soiled threads of its dirty laundry as never before in open court. The agency seems virtually obsessed with trying to refute the negative portrayal of Operation Merlin \u2013 the CIA\u2019s effort 15 years ago to provide a flawed nuclear weapon design to Iran \u2013 in James Risen\u2019s 2006 book State of War<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n To underscore the importance of blocking the information about Operation Merlin that eventually surfaced in the book, Rice testified that \u2013 in her role as national security adviser in 2003 \u2013 she consulted with President Bush and got his approval before meeting with representatives of the New York Times<\/em>. Rice succeeded in persuading the newspaper hierarchy not to publish the story. (Revealing CIA memos about the agency\u2019s maneuvers to pressure the Times<\/em> are posted<\/a> as trial exhibits.)<\/p>\n The star witness at the end of last week, identified as \u201cMr. Merlin,\u201d was the CIA-asset Russian scientist who delivered diagram material for a nuclear weapon component to an Iranian office in Vienna in 2000. Like the CIA officers who testified, he voiced pride in Operation Merlin \u2013 at one point even seeming to assert that it had prevented Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. (That was an especially bizarre claim. Mr. Merlin himself admitted that his efforts never got any response from Tehran, and there is no evidence the operation had any nonproliferation effect.)<\/p>\n Contrary to the narrative in State of War<\/em> \u2013 which portrays him as very skeptical of the operation and reluctant to participate \u2013 Mr. Merlin\u2019s testimony via video aimed to present himself as resolute about executing the plan: \u201cI knew I needed to do my job. . . . I had no doubts.\u201d<\/p>\n When the prosecutor asked whether it took a lot of persuading to get him to participate in the operation, Mr. Merlin responded with sudden vehemence: \u201cIt was not a rogue operation. It was a brilliant operation.\u201d (The chapter in Risen\u2019s book detailing Operation Merlin is titled \u201cA Rogue Operation.\u201d)<\/p>\n The prosecutor probably liked the answer \u2013 except for the obvious fact that it was not responsive to his question. So he tried again, inquiring whether it took a lot of persuasion from the CIA case officer to go through with his assigned mission to Vienna. The query was an evident prompt for a \u201cNo\u201d answer. But Mr. Merlin replied: \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n The prosecutor tried again, asking whether he had been reluctant to agree to go ahead with the task.<\/p>\n At first there was no answer, just conspicuous silence. Then: \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d Then: \u201cI didn\u2019t have any doubts. I didn\u2019t hesitate.\u201d<\/p>\n All this is potentially important to the case, since the government is asserting that Risen\u2019s book is inaccurate \u2013 that Operation Merlin was actually near flawless and that Sterling invented concerns and a narrative that unfairly characterized it.<\/p>\n Everyone agrees that Sterling went through proper channels to share his concerns and classified information with Senate Intelligence Committee staff in early March 2003. But the prosecution, armed with a 10-count felony indictment, alleges that he also went to Risen and disclosed classified information. Sterling says he\u2019s innocent on all counts.<\/p>\n The government hadn\u2019t wanted Mr. Merlin to testify, contending that he was too ill (with kidney cancer), but U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled for a video deposition. That turned out to be unfortunate for the prosecutors, since Merlin became foggy and evasive under cross-examination, with increasing frequency of replies like \u201cI can\u2019t recall\u201d and \u201cI don\u2019t remember.\u201d Dense fog of his own making eclipsed Mr. Merlin as a star witness for the government.<\/p>\n To close out the trial\u2019s first week, before a three-day weekend, the government called more CIA witnesses to the stand. They hammered at the vital need for scrupulous rectitude from CIA officers to obey the law and regulations in handling classified materials. As you might imagine, none had anything to say about disapproval of violating laws against torture or destroying evidence of torture. Nor did any allude to realities of extremely selective prosecution<\/a> for leaks, with top US government officials and the CIA press office routinely funneling classified information to favorite journalists.<\/p>\n But high-ranking officials and PR operatives are not the only CIA employees apt to elude<\/a> intense scrutiny for possibly leaking to the press. Judging from testimony at the trial, the harshest investigative spotlight shines on those seen as malcontents. The head of the CIA press office, William Harlow, indicated<\/a> that Sterling (who is African American) became a quick suspect in the Operation Merlin leak case because he\u2019d previously filed a suit charging the agency with racial bias.<\/p>\n Sterling\u2019s other transgressions against a de facto code of silence included his visit to Capitol Hill when he spilled classified beans to Senate oversight committee staffers.<\/p>\n In the courtroom, during the trial\u2019s first week, I often sat near retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who chaired the National Intelligence Estimates in the 1980s and prepared the CIA\u2019s daily briefs for presidents from John Kennedy to George H.W. Bush. I wondered what McGovern was making of the spectacle; I found out when he wrote<\/a> that \u201cthe real subtext of the Sterling case is how the politicization of the CIA\u2019s analytical division over the past several decades has contributed to multiple intelligence failures, especially efforts to \u2018prove\u2019 that targeted regimes in the Middle East were amassing weapons of mass destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s no telling whether members of the jury will grasp this \u201creal subtext.\u201d Judge Brinkema seems determined to exclude anything more than faint wisps of such context. Overall, an elastic sense of scope is prevailing from the bench, to the benefit of the government.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the Sterling case, federal prosecutors seem to want to have it both ways,\u201d McGovern observed. \u201cThey want to broaden the case to burnish the CIA\u2019s reputation regarding its covert-op skills but then to narrow the case if defense attorneys try to show the jury the broader context in which the \u2018Merlin\u2019 disclosures were made in 2006 \u2013 how President George W. Bush\u2019s administration was trying to build a case for war with Iran over its nuclear program much as it did over Iraq\u2019s nonexistent WMDs in 2002-2003.\u201d<\/p>\n Along the way, the CIA is eager to use the trial as much as possible for image damage control, trying to ascend high ground that has eroded in part due to high-quality journalistic accounts of the sort that Risen provided in his State of War <\/em>reporting on Operation Merlin.<\/p>\n And the CIA wants a very harsh prison sentence to serve as a warning to others.<\/p>\n The CIA is on a quest for more respect \u2013 from news media, from lawmakers, from potential recruits \u2013 from anyone willing to defer to its authority, no matter how legally hypocritical or morally absent. Demolishing the life of Jeffrey Sterling is just another means to that end.<\/p>\n Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include<\/i>War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n