Who is John Gannon?

This is a rather interesting exchange, from the Greenfield At Large program. October 22, 2001:

GREENFIELD: Mr. Thomas, speaking of risk aversion, we talked about this the last time I think you were with us. One of the issues that's come up is whether or not the tactics used to attempt to gain intelligence from people who might know something and might be willing to talk may have to be the kind of tactics that would have greatly offended us and may still.

And that is specifically, should the United States be prepared to take some of these suspects who it believes to have knowledge and perhaps turn them over to the less-than-tender mercies of other intelligence agencies, whose methods of information extraction might be considered a bit rough?

THOMAS: Well, actually right now that's prohibited by law. There's a specific case about this. The FBI arrested somebody they thought was involved with the Khobar Tower bombings in Canada. And they thought they were being very clever.

They said: We'll give you a choice here, you can cooperate with us, or we'll send you back to Saudi Arabia, where you'll get your head cut off. The guy hired himself a lawyer. And the lawyer found a statute that says the United States can't turn over people to foreign countries where they know their human rights are going to be abused.

Now, that's the law. I think as a practical matter what's going to happen on the ground is we're going to look the other way. We're going to have -- we're going to let foreign security services do our dirty work for us. We're going to let them arrest people and torture them and extract information, and we're going to want to know the take, as they say, the results, but we're not going to know about the methods. We're just going to look the other way.

GREENFIELD: Mr. Gannon, you know, the Hollywood version of the agency you worked in is filled with pictures of tactics that would be considered pretty brutal. Do you think in real life that it's going to be necessary for the United States to either by officially or by looking the other way to simply accept methods of interrogation that it might not want to in regular times?

GANNON: I think there's, Jeff, there's wide latitude for what intelligence folks can do in the field, that can be done within the rule of United States law.

I think one of the most encouraging things that our case officers would have heard in recent days is the statement from the president of the United States that he, in fact, is willing to share the risk of people in intelligence and in the field. I think that is the most important message to case officers out there who have to take the risks. It isn't a matter of paper documents that they have to fill out. It is a sense that at the political level of our government they are going to be supported in taking the risks. They're going to be supported if, in fact, there are failures. And they're going to be supported, in fact, as we hope there will be successes.

But that support at the political level has to be sustained. And I think you're going to find that the behavior of our intelligence officers, based on the leadership the president has shown, I think is going to be very positive in this regard.

GREENFIELD: Well, I think I'm going to ask you a somewhat blunter question. Apparently, the Philippine intelligence community got some pretty important information out of one of the people it was interrogating, but the methods of interrogation included, you know, physical torture. The same -- we got information about one of the original World Trade Center bombers the same way. Is that something we're going to have to accept as part of the cost of combating terrorism?

GANNON: Well, what I say to you, Jeff, is that, you know, let's look back on history, dealing with the issues like terrorism, like narcotrafficking, like proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, like international organized crime. You invariably get involved with characters who are undesirable. You get involved with intelligence systems and services that don't behave the way we do. You have to find ways to achieve our goals working within those systems, but also working in accordance with U.S. law. I don't believe that we have found that impossible to do.

GREENFIELD: Mr. Bremer, I've got about 30 seconds for you to get the last word on this particular subject. Are we going to have to either shut our eyes or open our eyes to methods of getting information that we would not have thought about six weeks ago?

BREMER: I think we probably will have to be somewhat more open to receiving information from wherever it comes and however it comes to us.

Evan Thomas, Paul Bremer, and John Gannon.

Strange to look back and hear the chorus that thought torture wasn't a problem. When Greenwald talks about talking heads being macho, I think this is what he means.

It's difficult to determine Gannon's committment to US Law. His comments stand in contrast to the others' comments. Bremer suggests we will have to be "more open." Greenfield appears extremely excited at the prospect we might emulate the barbaric tactics of other intelligence agencies. Thomas is odd - he understands that rendition is against the law, but doesn't think that matters much. While our government spends a fair amount of resources ascertaining how well human rights are respected in countries around the world, it is a bit ingenuous to think we will not know beforehand the "methods" used on detainees in X or Y country.

Gannon is actually the sanest person on the panel. He notes that the CIA must abide by US law, and suggests that the law as it stands (in October 2001 aka pre-torture memos) is sufficient.

Points to Gannon there.

And he comes off well in the Dec. 30 2007 New York Times article about the torture tape destruction:

"The investigations over the tapes frustrate some C.I.A. veterans, who say they believe that the agency is being unfairly blamed for policies of coercive interrogation approved at the top of the Bush administration and by some Congressional leaders. Intelligence officers are divided over the use of such methods as waterboarding. Some say the methods helped get information that prevented terrorist attacks. Others, like John C. Gannon, a former C.I.A. deputy director, say it was a tragic mistake for the administration to approve such methods.
Mr. Gannon said he thought the tapes became such an issue because they would have settled the legal debate over the harsh methods.

'To a spectator it would look like torture,' he said. 'And torture is wrong.'”

Too bad Shane and Mazzetti did not provide more info on this conversation with Gannon.

Gannon is against the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency:

"Finally, I would argue strongly against the creation of a new, stand-alone domestic intelligence agency. When asked why we have not had a terrorist attack on US soil since 9.11, I give three reasons. First, the President's early decision to go after the terrorists wherever they could be found in the world weakened their capabilities and served as a powerful disincentive to strike us again. Second, the preventative and protective security measures taken by our Federal, state, and local governments--coordinated and not--have made it harder for terrorists to operate here. And, third, I believe that the hard-won Constitutional freedoms enjoyed by Americans, along with our unparalleled commitment to civil liberties embedded in law, work against the development of domestic terrorist networks that could be exploited by foreigners. In this context, America stands in marked and magnificent contrast to many of the regimes I covered daily and experienced on the ground as a CIA analyst. When I think through the implications of a nation-wide domestic intelligence service under the control of the Executive Branch, I conclude that it is neither needed nor desirable in our society. At best, the proposal is premature."

Again, coming from a CIA guy, the emphasis on American civil liberties is notable. Here Gannon discusses the importance of Congressional oversight and strengthening the relationship of Congress/CIA. Gannon is also a coauthor of the Global Trends 2015 report.

He liked Haydenthough.

Hayden ...

It wasn't so long ago that Hayden staying on as CIA Director was a joke. It may still be, but it is getting a lot of play from various corners. There was the report from ABC News that Obama "felt comfortable" with Hayden. And today Paul Bedard of "Washington Whispers" writes of a CIA holiday celebration "The giving came with a broader Christmas message sent out by CIA Director Mike Hayden-said to be in line to stay on in the Obama administration." This is a bit of a departure from his report on Dec 15th that begins "We still don't know if CIA boss Michael Hayden will stay on as Barack Obama's top spy."

Is it odd that Hayden might stay, as McConnell departs? Beats me. Obviously Obama is interested in shaking up the intelligence community to some degree - I would think Hayden staying on would make that more difficult.

Melvin Goodman has written another article on the intelligence community for all to enjoy at The Public Record. He has been excellent and aggressive on intelligence issues - and I think his early op-ed in the Baltimore Sun really helped get the ball rolling against John Brennan's potential nomination to DNI/DCIA. He offers Richard Holbrooke or Thomas Pickering as promising DCIA candidates.

Lee Hamilton, apparently offered the no.2 position at the State Dept., has written an editorial as well.

The intelligence community is causing noted people to pick up their pens. Add Thomas A. Schweich to the list of op-ed writers.

The tea-leaf reading continues. But at least Barack Obama knows that the American people are extremely interested in who he chooses for DCIA and understand the importance of his choice.

A CIA at the Crossroads

As I continue my research into Obama's reported CIA and DNI candidate fields, I am finding it remarkable that among the candidates there is such dissent when it comes to what they believe is right/acceptable in interrogation policy and information collection. It's really quite amazing.

So in Dec 13's NYT, you have Reuel Marc Gerecht (admittedly not a candidate for either the DNI or CIA Director position) giving us the many advantages of extraordinary rendition and establishing a completely hypothetical "ticking time bomb" scenario:

What would Mr. Obama do? After all, if we’d gotten our hands on a senior member
of Al Qaeda before 9/11, and knew that an attack likely to kill thousands of
Americans was imminent, wouldn’t waterboarding, or taking advantage of the
skills of our Jordanian friends, have been the sensible, moral thing to do with
a holy warrior who didn’t fear death but might have feared pain?

This is the type of Bushism that gives us the "it's okay to beat it out of 'em!" mentality of John Brennan, Michael Hayden, and all other high-level CIA brass who knew the details of the implementation of the CIA's detention programs and interrogation policies. As I documented in another diary, candidate Steve Kappes no doubt had some connection to these controversial programs. Hayden, who rumor has it may maintain his position at the CIA, of course has been in charge of defending them, as digby documents here.

This is a distinct group that occupies the toilet bowl of implementation, authorization, and rationalization of some of the worst of Bush's abuses of detainees.

Let's check out the candidate list provided by the AP:

CIA DIRECTOR
John Gannon, former deputy director for intelligence at the CIA during the Clinton administration
Jami Miscik, former head of CIA's analytical operations
Steve Kappes, CIA's current No. 2
Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who now heads House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence.
John McLaughlin, former interim CIA chief

So three of these people are from the dark side era of the Bush administration. Miscik (current member of the Obama transition team), according to former CIA Melvin Goodman on Democracy Now, "went along with the phony intelligence estimate of October 2002, the phony white paper that was prepared by Paul Pillar in October 2002. She helped with the drafting of the speech that Colin Powell gave to the United Nations—[inaudible] 2003, which made the phony case for war to the international community."

McLaughlin, as the former no.2 to George Tenet from 2000-2004, is an almost improbable candidate for Obama's CIA director position.

Including those two, along with Brennan, Hayden and Kappes, you end up with 5 reported candidates for the position that were involved in intelligence wrong-doing and incompetence.

Other candidates for the CIA Director position are coming from the complete opposite perspective on torture and renditon. Take former Congressman Tim Roemer, floated various times, here at the NYT. He contributed to the Washington Monthly an article that is almost the exactly opposite of that of Gerecht's quoted above:

Those who argue in favor of torture usually do so in the scenario of a single
suspect with knowledge of a "ticking time bomb." This hypothetical never
addresses how torture would have to work in the real world, or how we would
defuse the next bomb after America is revealed as a practitioner of torture.

and

Ultimately, we cannot torture our way out of terrorism, but we certainly can
torture our way into more of it. Torture trades the illusory promise of
short-term gain for the near certainty of eventual loss. It tries to convince us
that we can defeat terrorists on the cheap by avoiding the long, hard work that
counterterrorism entails. The Army's Field Manual on counterinsurgency tells us
that this work comprises building a government's legitimacy and denying
terrorist and insurgent groups like al-Qaeda the political oxygen they need to
survive. Very few things could be more toxic to our legitimacy than the image of
the world's greatest democracy practicing one of the world's oldest evils.

Current Congresswoman Jane Harman has also been floated. Harman opposed the destruction of the CIA torture tapes Hayden defended; she officially protested the CIA's interrogation program in 2003. Though Harman (via Greenwald) supported the NSA wiretapping program...

Retiring Senator and friend of Obama's Chuck Hagel has also been floated for CIA. He has registered his opposition to torture, and his support of the government-wide use of the Army Field Manual, in the Washington Monthly like fellow candidate Roemer. John Gannon and Jack Devine, both floated for the position, can be included in this second group as well, as they have no ties to the Bush administration.

So that's 5 other potential candidates for the CIA Director position that are in varying degrees of active opposition to the other 5.

What is going on here? Could there be a more stark demonstration of an agency, and a future administration, at a crossroads?

The Obama transition team has been remarkably quiet, although Isikoff and Hosenball were able to quote a "top Obama adviser" source who said of Brennan: "He was our guy on intelligence." Other than this adviser, what Obama is actually thinking right now is pretty murky.

But make no mistake, there are many around Obama, especially those connected to the 5 Bush-era candidates, who are aggressively lobbying for their friends. The Washington Times finds Hayden's supporters actively working to protect him and help him hang onto his job:

In the meantime, Hayden supporters have tried to disassociate the CIA director from the Bush administration counterrorism detention and interrogation programs that Mr. Obama routinely railed against during his campaign.

"Waterboarding, which was used on three hardened terrorists, hasn't been used since 2003. That is more than three years before Mike Hayden became the director of CIA," said an intelligence source with knowledge of the subject.

The source added that current administration policies and U.S. laws directed the CIA's actions.

"If the president says he doesn't want something done, that's it," the source said. "These are his programs."

Funny how that is remarkably similar to the line taken up by some Obama supporters who believe his appointments are almost immaterial to policy-making during his administration. I actually don't find that vision very reassuring; it ignores the basic fact that Obama will no doubt be in consultation with the heads of all of his agencies pretty frequently. Who you choose for the head of an agency like the CIA is important; it gives you some idea of what they will advise ("extraordinary rendition is necessary!" "no we can't do that!") and what they will prevent ("torture was the result of Cheney, Addington, & Yoo! - don't look at me!" or "yes, you should investigate & charge former CIA officials"). The world will be watching to see who we put in charge of the CIA, as will the CIA interrogators and case workers who rely upon the higher levels of the CIA for legal and moral leadership.

This was all supposed to be settled weeks ago, when Brenann was the clear favorite for CIA Director. Since then, we've been in pretty confusing territory. Who will Obama choose? Why is he being guided by so many Bush-era knuckleheads? Is that an indicator of his wide-ranging mind, or an indicator of the power of the status quo intelligence community, curious as to whether they'll lose influence as members of the intelligence private-sector industry or be put under the microscope when it comes to their involvement and complicity in war crimes?

I trust that Obama will not back down from his stated intentions to close Guantanamo and to not use torture. But I would like the leaders of his intelligence agencies to be able to successfully impart that vision and demonstrate an unshakeable committment to it. Further, I think the investigation of Bush-era CIA officials who participated in and authorized the implementation of Bush law-breaking is warranted. Putting apologists for Bush at the top is not change, and it is not an occassion for necessary revitalizing leadership.

Steve Kappes

I don't know what it takes to end up on the shortlist of an AP article for top CIA post. But let's assume there's a reason I'm not on it.

Steve Kappes:

"currently Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DDCIA), having
assumed this position on July 24, 2006.

...He has held a variety of operational and managerial assignments at CIA Headquarters and overseas, serving as assistant deputy director to former Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) James Pavitt, and later as DDO after Pavitt stepped down in August 2004. At the time of the September 11 attacks, Kappes was the associate deputy director for operations for counterintelligence.

Kappes was named Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) for the CIA in June 2004 and took office in August 2004 while the appointment of Porter Goss as the next Director of Central Intelligence was still pending in the Senate. Kappes succeeded James Pavitt, who resigned in June 2004..."

Democratic Underground gives us more specific dates:

"March 2002-Abu Zubaydah is captured in Pakistan. George Bush is briefed
regularly by George Tenet on the details of Zubaydah's interrogation (see p. 22,
State of War by James Risen). Cofer Black is in charge of the CIA's
Counterterrorism Center and oversees the CIA's hunt for the terrorists. Zubaydah
is interrogated in Thailand, where the sessions were filmed. He was waterboarded
sometime in the May-June 2002 time frame. Enhanced interrogation methods were
used and approval for them came from Jim Pavitt (see p. 21 of ABC News interview
of former CIA case officer, John Kiriakou). Pavitt was the DDO (i.e., Deputy Director of Operations). Stephen Kappes, who currently serves as the Deputy Director of the CIA, was named Assistant Deputy Director of Operations in June 2002. Ron Suskind confirms Risen's report that the President and his National Security team were regularly briefed on the results of Zubaydah's
torture sessions (see The One Percent Doctrine, pp. 111-115)."

Considering KSM was captured in 2003, and waterboarded, Kappes was obviously intimately involved with that.

Ron Suskind in the "One Percent Doctrine" introduces us to Kappes thusly:

"He was, at that point, associate deputy director for operations - number two in the DO - and being groomed to take Jim Pavitt's job." [p.223]

(You will note the discrepancy in the exact description of Kappes' job - "associate" versus "assistant" deputy. Based on other sources compared to Suskind, I can say they are describing the same position over the same period - Kappes was no.2 to Pavitt from June 2002 onward.)

Now Pavitt is pretty much bottom of the barrel as far as the CIA goes. This is a guy whose job duties literally included approving every single coercive technique used against detainees, as they happened -

"Kirakou made the interrogations sound almost like a game of 'Mother, May I?' He
said, 'It was not up to the individual interrogator to decide 'I'm going to slap
him' or 'I'm going to shake him.' Each one of these, though they're minor, had
to have the approval of the Deputy Director for Operations, who during most of
this period was James Pavitt. 'Before you could lay a hand on him, you had to
send a cable saying, 'He's uncooperative. Request permission to do X.'...There
was, however, no known instance of the supervisors denying a request to use more
force." ["The Dark Side," Jane Mayer, p.167].

It is pretty astonishing that the No.2 to all this is in any way in contention for the top CIA job.

Now, these rumors are not quite as intense as those surrounding John Brennan, and Kappes does not AFAIK have any official role in the Obama transition process as he is currently at the CIA. But Kappes does earn a mention in the Dec 2 Post-Brennan NYT Article by Mazzetti & Shane:

"It is widely expected that Mr. Obama will replace Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A.
director. Among those mentioned as possible candidates for the job are Stephen
R. Kappes, a C.I.A. veteran who is the deputy director; Tim Roemer, a former
congressman from Indiana who was a member of the Sept. 11 commission; Senator
Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican who is retiring from the Senate in January;
and Jack Devine, a former head of the agency’s clandestine service who left the
C.I.A. before the Sept. 11 attacks."

Kappes appears not to have left a bloody trail of quotes like Brennan did. Good for him, but his record speaks for itself.

You can get legal clearance from somebody else...but how do you successfully implement a new torture policy? Can you do it if your brass hates it? Something about two to tango?

As Pavitt himself said:

"Pavitt, who declined to talk about specific CIA authorities or legal
memos, said the activities recently in the news were 'done in consultation with
the executive at all levels, the National Security Council and such. . . . Any
impression that we were operating high, wide and handsome, without appropriate
congressional oversight, I think would also be, incorrect.'"

I doubt this will surprise anyone, but John Yoo thinks it's all the CIA's fault:

"In early January 2002, soon after the CIA took custody of Al-Libi, a handful of
CIA officers at a high-level legal meeting in the Situation Room voiced a
problem they were facing. 'The CIA guys said, "We're going to have some
real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees" if the
Agency's interrogators were required to respect the limits for treatment
demanded by the Geneva Conventions," John Yoo told the Washington
Post. In Yoo's version of events, the impetus to break out of
Geneva's strictures thus came from the CIA." ["The Dark Side," Jane Mayer,
p.120]

I have little doubt that Yoo's account is a crock of crap. But still, what about this?

"The Pentagon and CIA needed Uzbekistan as a forward base. If that
meant joining forces with a torture regime, known on ocassion to literally boil
political prisoners alive, he [Cheney] was ready...Craig Murray, the former
British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, complained that he tried to warn the CIA
station chief in Tashkent that much of the intelligence out of Uzbekistan was
derived from torture, most of which he said was 'rubbish.'...But he said that
while the station chief did not dispute that intelligence was being obtained
under torture, the CIA did not consider this a problem. 'There was no
reason to think they were perturbed,' Murray said."
"The new way of thinking was reflected by Tenet at a closed-door meeting of
top intelligence officials of the English-speaking world, gathered on March 10,
2002, in Queenstown, New Zealand. 'Gentlemen,' Tenet had reportedly said
with a dramatic pause, 'we are at war.' What this meant, he had gone on to
explain was "As for the CIA, I can tell you this. There's nothing we won't
do, nothing we won't try, and no country we won't deal with to achieve our
goals-to stop the enemy. The shackles, my friends, have to be taken off.'
...."
"Other top American officials in attendance included Lieutenant General
Michael Hayden, then head of the NSA; Mueller, the Director of the FBI; and the
CIA's head of covert operations, James Pavitt. Pavitt evidently amplified
the tough talk, noting, 'We're going to be working with intelligence agencies
that are utterly unhesitant in what they will do to get people to talk.'"
["The Dark Side," Jane Mayer, p.131-132].

Check out the timeline at Torturing Democracy. Though this meeting is after Bush issues his first executive order authorizing denials of Geneva Convention protections, [Feb 7 2002] it is before they capture Abu Zubaydah, the first torture experiment [March 28 2002].

Who started this thing? And why didn't anyone stop it? Clearly some of the top brass in the CIA were willing to go along and to effectively lead. I have issues with any of those people working in an Obama CIA which would simultaneously mean an acceptance of ills past and the ability to haggle your way out of a serious investigation into government-wide torture related wrongdoing ("Who, me? Your CIA head? Look, it's not our fault, let's not make this embarrassing...").

And that's not even addressing the existential, if you will, question of why Kappes' name is even getting thrown around. And what is a centrist intelligence policy after Bush?

I have some questions. I hope that Obama will set up a process to answer them.

Some Intelligence News

Why do people do this?

Influential Democrat asks Obama to keep spy chiefs

Reyes said he had recommended to Obama's transition team that CIA Director Michael Hayden and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell be kept in place for at least six months.
"There's got to be some continuity, and the leadership of both the CIA and the DNI is going to be pivotal to keeping us safe and secure," Reyes said. "I made a recommendation that they stay on during the transition so that there would be a period of time that there would be overlap."

Because OMG!! whoever Obama hires would be really scary and noone would follow them and we need to stick to the status quo, I mean center!

Still time for the Shredder?

Obama Transition Team Pushing for Secret Legal Memos

A senior Justice Department official said today that "99.8 percent" of the department's work with President-elect Barack Obama's transition team has gone smoothly. The 0.2 percent snag: The department has reservations about granting the team's request to review classified legal opinions related to secret CIA and National Security Agency programs.
...

he Justice official said the department was reluctant to provide the opinions to Obama's team without permission from the two intelligence agencies whose activities they address. At the roundtable, Mukasey said OLC opinions are issued at the request of other agencies with their "own equity or interest in the information."

"And so what we try to do is determine whether, and to what extent, we can clear that information and try to do it as quickly as we can so as to get it to the transition team so that they're aware of all the things that they need when they take over on the 21st," Mukasey said, according to a transcript provided by the department.

WSJ:

The story explains that the dispute between Obama's team and the DOJ over the records has caught the attention of Williams & Connolly's Greg Craig (pictured), who has been named as the incoming White House counsel. The story cites an unnamed justice official as saying the agencies first want to sign off on any information disclosed to their new boss before turning over sensitive records.

Are they delaying the inevitable? Why would they hesitate to share this information? Is this normal? Apparently the CIA and NSA know that something isn't quite right with those memos...oh, but they don't expect to be prosecuted, oh no. I really don't understand what the point of the hesitation is. I hope I can find some kind of explanation for this behavior from someone more knowledgable on the nets.

Next up...putting together the pieces of the newest intelligence rumors. Maybe trying to figure out what it means to be "center" on intelligence policy (especially when "intelligence policy" in the media boils down to torture and terrorism).

New Links

The appointment story develops a bit with more speculation and a broader range of choices for intelligence positions:

AP:

CIA DIRECTOR
John Gannon, former deputy director for intelligence at the CIA during the Clinton administration
Jami Miscik, former head of CIA's analytical operations
Steve Kappes, CIA's current No. 2
Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who now heads House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence.
John McLaughlin, former interim CIA chief

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR
Denny Blair, retired admiral and former commander of the U.S. Pacific Command.
Don Kerr, No. 2 official in Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Jami Miscik, former head of CIA's analytical operations.
Former Rep. Tim Roemer, D-Ind.

CQ Politics:

Jeff Stein compiles a list of quotes from "intelligence sources" as to who would be good. Armitage stands out.

More on these people later.

Who Is Left?

Although the press appears to be moving on from the "Brennan as CIA director-Brennan got screwed" storyline to juicier tidbits about Hayden staying on, it still seems worthwhile to suggest a few alternatives to these two who have received the greatest amount of attention.

I have made the case for Rand Beers before. I will make it again in a little more depth here.

Beers was the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Combating Terrorism as of August 19, 2002. He was previously in International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

In March 2003 he left the Bush administration, before the invasion of Iraq. He spent a little less than 8 months in a counterrterrorism role in the National Security Council. After he left the Bush admin, he joined Kerry's team as an advisor.

His other qualifications include: working from 1988 to 1998 in the NSC as variously "Director for Counter-terrorism and Counter-narcotics, Director for Peacekeeping, and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs." Signing onto the Campaign to Ban Torture. Starting the National Security Network which has as its mission:

"We will faithfully honor the letter and the spirit of our
Constitution. We will never sanction torture, and we will never tolerate spying on law-abiding citizens."

He also wrote an article for the Washington Monthly entitled "No Torture. No Exceptions," in which he lays out the case against torture. As his critique includes the harsh treatment of Al-Libi in Egyptian and American custody, one can assume he is also against rendition. This fits with his endorsement of the Campaign to Ban Torture's declaration that:

"The Rule of Law
We will acknowledge all prisoners to our courts or the
International Red Cross. We will in no circumstance hold persons in secret
prisons or engage in disappearances. In all cases, prisoners will have the
opportunity to prove their innocence in ways that fully conform to American
principles of fairness.
Duty to Protect
We acknowledge our historical
commitment to end the use of torture and cruelty in the world. The US will
not transfer any person to countries that use torture or cruel, inhuman, or
degrading treatment."

What should encourage you is that a guy who believes that we will "never tolerate spying on law-abiding citizens" advises Obama on homeland security. What one might question is why Rand Beers is not being circulated as the go-to-go more frequently considering his breadth of knowledge on counterterrorism issues and years of service. Just not a popular guy? What is the deal?

Some people are saying that who Obama chooses for his staff positions - people to whom he is delegating the responsibility of managing entire agencies! - is not so important. But isn't it a lot easier to implement the policies you want if the person doing the actual implementation of the policies agrees with you?

Rand Beers agrees with the most liberal aspects of Obama's policy. And unlike Brennan whose stance on FISA was that telecom companies should be protected for following the Bush admin's lead on the warrantless wiretapping program, Beers has signed onto this:

"Clarity and Accountability
All US personnel—whether
soldiers or intelligence staff—deserve the certainty that they are implementing
policy that complies fully with the law. Henceforth all US officials who
authorize, implement, or fail in their duty to prevent the use of torture and
ill-treatment of prisoners will be held accountable, regardless of rank or
position."

That is an extremely promising vision of accountability in a post-Bush world. And the fact that Beers is talented at seeing through Bush - and McConnell's - BS is another admirable trait. I also think Beers may be outsider enough to not present a flagrant conflict of interest if Obama decides to investigate torture/rendition or prosecute even.

Beers is not without transgressions - and for some they may be dealbreakers. He has strong critics against his policies in Colombia. See the links here (from his Sourcewatch). Also Al Giordano probably will not be a fan.

All in all though, I think Beers is the man for this job (especially if you consider the competition). As others have pointed out, George HW Bush was appointed to the CIA by Ford, well outside of the CIA insider track (and talk about political appointments - HW had headed the flippin' Republican National Committee three years earlier). But guess what Big George received for his role in the CIA? You guessed it, high praise - "Bush was credited with helping to restore the agency's morale."

So there you go. I'm pushing the story. Let's have these whispers amount to reality. "Intelligence sources" can and ought to suck it up and accept an outsider like they did before. And I will go back to believing that most of the "intelligence sources" in the CIA are interested in covering their @sses and/or are friends of Tenet.

Brennan: "The Big Torture Opponent"

Hmm...

From CBS Evening News, Sept 18 2006:

COURIC: All right, Bob Schieffer. Bob, thanks so much. Well, all of the political back and forth may have obscured the real issue here: How far exactly can CIA interrogators go when it comes to extracting important information from suspected terrorists? We asked national security correspondent David Martin to find out. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MARTIN, CBS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): CIA Director Michael Hayden has briefed members of Congress on so-called stress-inducing techniques used to extract information from high-level terrorists -- tactics the president has called tough. Tactics former CIA official and now CBS News consultant John Brennan says would still be used.
(on camera): What are the tough tactics that the CIA wants to use?

JOHN BRENNAN, CBS NEWS TERRORISM ANALYST: Sleep deprivation, you know, long periods of standing, other types of things that will try to wear down a detainee`s resistance to questioning.

MARTIN (voice-over): Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch says that depending on how harshly the techniques are applied, they would violate the Geneva Conventions ban on cruel treatment, which now applies to prisoners held by the CIA.

TOM MALINOWSKI, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: Extended sleep deprivation, forced standing, where a prisoner is forced to stand motionless for up to 40 hours at a time, induced hypothermia, in which a prisoner is subjected to extremely cold temperatures, and also the technique of using all of these techniques at the same time.

MARTIN: The CIA has used its most aggressive techniques, including waterboarding, in which the prisoner is made to feel like he`s drowning, against a handful of terrorists like Khalid Shaik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11. But Brennan says the CIA now recognizes it went too far.

BRENNAN: I think the increasing consensus is that waterboarding and some of the more aggressive tactics like that are something that may be beyond what that line should be.

MARTIN: But human rights activists like Malinowski argue that any technique for inducing stress ends up being cruel.

MALINOWSKI: A little bit of cold, a little bit of discomfort isn`t going to cut it with a hardened prisoner like a Khalid Shaik Mohammed. If you apply these methods, you are always going to apply them beyond the point of a prisoner`s tolerance.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Brennan does not like waterboarding by most accounts, but it is unclear as to what he finds appropriate - and it is well documented that extended isolation and sleep deprivation are as tortuous and painful as other techniques.

What is also interesting is that Brennan seems unable to say the CIA has even used waterboarding from one moment to the next. Check out his CBS interview of Nov 2007:

BRENNAN: Yes, and a sort of classic water boarding, and I'm not saying the CIA has ever used water boarding, but there would be a constant stream of water
and a volume of water that is going to be continuous. Here they stop in between on
occasions.

So what makes the difference here between Brennan acknowledging or not acknowledging it? I think an investigation of the political moment would be interesting. But I do not think this is the stance of a big torture opponent. On top of everything else of course.