What Happened

President Bush has said he will try to “forgive” his former Press Secretary Scott McClellan for writing What Happened. A better course of action would be for the president to read it.

According to McClellan, the Bush administration, instead of getting down to the business of governing, got caught up in playing the Washington game of the “permanent campaign.” Every major policy — including war — became a product that needed to be sold to the American people. Instead of candor, the secrecy-obsessed White House marshaled facts to suit its goals.

It was the campaign to sell Iraq war that destroyed McClellan’s credibilty as press secretary. He made the mistake of relaying assurances from Scooter Libby and Karl Rove that they nothing to do with the illegal leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity. In the case of Libby, McClellan was asked to lie by none other than Vice President Cheney.

Bitter though he may be, McClellan still likes and admires President Bush. The same can’t be said for Secretary of State Condi Rice, who emerges in the pages of What Happened as Bush’s toady. In McClellan’s view, Rice avoids accountability for her ruinous stint as national security adviser through her servility to the president and talent for public relations. Having the ear of the king is the path to power in the Bush White House.

The overall tone the book strikes, however, is one not of partisan rancor, but of sadness. The Bush White House is an opportunity lost, a time of short-sighted leadership where the best intentions are sacrified for short-term gains. It may be an old Washington story but through the eyes of this 30-year-old ex-press secretary, it’s a revealing one.

What Happened suffers from a fatal flaw, however. McClellan’s perspective was extremely limited. He was simply the mouthpiece. If this is the press secretary’s experience. I can’t wait to hear what the strategists really said and did.

Was CIFA a Complete Waste of Money?

Thanks to former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the Counterintelligence Field Activity or CIFA has become synonymous with waste and graft in the intelligence community. The agency was created after the Sept. 11 attacks to bring order to the confused world of military counterintelligence. One of its contractors happened to be bribing the greedy and insecure Congressman Cunningham to the tune of more than $1 million.

That was bad enough but CIFA also blundered badly at the outset by gathering information on U.S. citizens in its Talon database, a big no-no. Bloggers like R.J. Hillhouse Ph.D cheered when The New York Times reported in April of this year that the Pentagon would be shutting it down. I’m sure all the little petty bureaucratic rivals CIFA had in the intelligence world were pleased as well. But R.J. Hillhouse Ph.D, like me, really had no idea what CIFA was up to.

Last week’s report by the Senate Intelligence Committee shows that CIFA actually was doing important work, but was prevented from its mission by senior civilian leaders at the Defense Department.

According to the report, CIFA was given the job of investigating a mysterious meeting in Rome between Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar (right) and U.S. Defense Department officials in Rome and Paris. One of the DoD officials at the meeting was Larry Franklin, an Iran analyst who is in prison for passing classified information relating to Iran to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The meetings were arranged by a civilian named Michael Ledeen, a conservative analyst with the American Enterprise Institute who had close ties to the Bush administration. Ledeen had help, reportedly, from the Italian government and its intelligence service. Italian government officials attended the meeting in Rome.

CIFA concluded that Ghorbanifar may have been used by “agents of a foreign intelligence service” to reach and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government. During the Rome meeting in December 2001, Ghorbanifar passed word that he could sow the seeds of discontent in Iran for $5 million by causing traffic jams at key intersections in Teheran. The report also mentions a $25 million price tag for other operations.

After the press found about the Rome meeting, Stephen Cambone (left), the Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence, gave CIFA the job of conducting a “thorough complete and expeditious” inquiry into the Rome meeting. Cambone said the tasking was requested by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith.

CIFA took the job seriously and conducted 19 interviews that are cited in the Senate report. About a month later, on October 21, 2003, CIFA, acting on Cambone’s orders, halted its investigation.

In its final report, CIFA noted that it had blocked from conducting interviews of key DoD personnel involved in the Rome meeting, including Larry Franklin. Cambone and the DoD General Counsel, William Haynes prevented CIFA from interviewing CIA personnel.

Even so, CIFA was able to get to the heart of the matter:

The most significant matter raised in the Counterintelligence Field Activity’s report was the possibility that Mr. “Ghorbanifar or his associates are being used as agents of a foreign intelligence service to leverage his continuing contact with Michael Ledeen and others to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government.” The report noted that there were multiple occasions where information from Mr. Ghorbanifar entered U.S. government channels via Mr. Ledeen. These channels included personnel from the FBI, CIA, DoD, the White and Congress

From the Senate report:

  • Conclusion #6: The actions of Cambone and Haynes “prevented a full understanding of the contacts between Mr. Ghorbanifar and U.S. Government officials and a thorough assessment of the counterintelligence issues related to these contacts.
  • Conclusion #7: Cambone’s decision to halt the CIFA inquiry was “premature.”
  • Conclusion #8: The DoD leadership failed to implement CIFA’s recommendation to conduct an inter-agency analysis of the counterintelligence implications of Mr. Ghorbanifar and his ability to directly or indirectly influence U.S. Government officials.

    • No doubt there was waste and abuse at CIFA, but there were also some people there who stirred up a hornet’s nest of trouble by simply doing their jobs.

    The Salk Institute

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    I got a chance to pay a visit to The Salk Institute last night. It was established 40 years ago on land overlooking the Pacific by Jonas Salk, who invented the Polio vaccine.

    The site was designed by architect Louis I. Kahn. The impact of the site’s centerpiece, the concrete courtyard seen above, is almost beyond words. The image that popped into my mind was the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It seems timeless, like it has always been there.

    Prouder than ever? "Let's get naked!"

    So what do you do when your university is the subject of one of, if not the biggest campus drug raid ever. Tell everyone how proud you are?

    That’s the response of San Diego State University, after an undercover drug sting on frat row led to last month’s arrest of dozens of students.

    It’s clear the university has a drug problem. I spent the past few months teaching journalism at SDSU. Before the raids, several students wrote stories about drugs on campus — the ever-present smell of pot in the dorms, cocaine use in sororities, and a touching story about a young SDSU student who overdosed. (Interestingly, after the raids, my students were surprised at the frats that were busted. The ones they said had the real reputation for drugs weren’t caught.)

    SDSU’s response has been, well, to pat itself on the back. The school is running public service announcements on its public radio station, KPBS, that feature well-known coaches, alumni and staff talking about how proud they are of SDSU. Here’s a taste. Of course, Tony Gwynn, Steve Fisher and the others don’t explain why they’re prouder than ever of SDSU right now.

    No wonder the school has a drug problem. The administration is behaving like a bad parent, putting a happy face on an ugly problem.

    The school has condoned the wild parties that SDSU has long been famous for. Playboy, consistently ranks SDSU on its annual lists of top party schools.

    Here are SDSU students doing what they do best at a Playboy-hosted party:

    This video, by the way, which features lesbian kissing and a woman shouting “Let’s get naked!” was uploaded to YouTube May 25, 2008 — several weeks AFTER the raid.

    Playboy has no problem convincing young SDSU students to shed their clothes for the camera. Miss May 2006 was an SDSU grad student. Each year, the magazine also attracts throngs of young women when it comes to campus scouting for new, young nubile bodies to feature in the magazine. Jenae Nicole, the blond SDSU Playmate at left in the photo, told The Daily Aztec that she got to represent the school she sees as top-10 party school material:

    “I think it’s just a great place to get an education and balance a great social life at the same time,” Nicole said. “It’s the best of both worlds; that’s why it’s such an awesome school.”

    She must be prouder than ever.

    Viva la revolucion!

    Eric Bidwell is a T-shirt salesman who’s running for mayor of San Diego. On his MySpace page he says he lives in a van, smokes pot frequently, doesn’t believe in monogamous relationships, and doesn’t bathe everyday.

    What he doesn’t say is he has more ethics and integrity than the two leading candidates. During Thursday’s mayoral debate, Bidwell revealed that Michael McSweeney, campaign manager for Mayor Jerry Sanders, had written a statement for him.  

    The statement blasted fellow candidate Steve Francis, who is spending millions of dollars of his own money to unseat Sanders, as a “hypocrite.” (The fact that McSweeney actually believed someone as independent as Bidwell would do his bidding is mind-boggling.)

    Here’s the video of Eric spilling the beans. He also had some choice words for Francis, a Republican who’s attacking Sanders for being Republican:

    The upshot: On Friday, Sanders campaign manager Michael McSweeney resigned.  Tom Shepard, Sanders’ campaign “consultant,” calls it an isolated incident. Shepard’s client list includes two councilmembers, all five county supervisors, the county sheriff and on and on. How deep down the rabbit hole will we go?Mit anderen Worten , die meisten von uns, wenn Sie Poker online poker turniere wollen, die abends oder am Wochenende ein Spielchen tippen.