Politics and Intelligence

Empires usually fail because of two reasons: 1) distrust between entities acting as checks and balances on the executive branch, which inspires secrecy and eventually an inability to identify problems; and 2) overextension at any cost, both numerical and qualitative, in order to prevent competitors from achieving progress. The second reason is why mainstream media degenerates or remains staid during a superpower's decline. 

Most of us understand media is intertwined with public opinion and therefore elections. In turn, media influence is connected with established political and private entities, usually law enforcement and multinational corporations (e.g., Dutch East India Company or ExxonMobil), because such entities, unlike individual government employees, have no theoretical shelf life and can use their longevity to incur debt, roll over debt, and use funding to gain long-term, reliable sources and conduits of information. In this way, entities are better able to sustain themselves because they can buy loyalty, whereas non-billionaire individuals cannot buy equal influence even if armed with facts and logic. 

James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, Volume 1

As media and advertising have become inescapable, an escalating amount of content is necessary to fill in the time occupied by new technologies. (Facebook's and Google's revenues indicate how much direct and indirect advertising targets our eyeballs and consumer preferences.) If established players do not occupy the content channels accessible to their residents and supporters, they leave open spaces for competitors--some benign, some domestic, some foreign, some hostile. (Military strategists are familiar with these tactics in the physical realm, though none seem able to push back credibly when overextension appears on the horizon.) 

By now, we all know the gist of Edward Snowden's allegations, but Snowden--as intelligent as he obviously is--was a low-level NSA worker. His aim to avoid the surveillance state is no longer possible for an ordinary person without extreme measures. Experienced intelligence assets and agents determined decades ago that influence must be assisted and co-opted to prevent a devolution of content--i.e., fake news, or what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1978 presciently called the "abyss of human decadence." 

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people... It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1978)

While intellectuals have been keen to recognize the symptoms of a society in decline, they have not understood the causes equally well. Put simply, as entities seek to control an increasing number of content channels, they are forced to hide truths unfavorable to their paymasters. Censorship being disfavored due to its ability to backfire, most leaders choose to ruin their opponent's credibility, their opponent's finances (the LKY method), or, as a last resort, assassinations (e.g., MLK's murder on the one-year anniversary of his Vietnam speech and 1973's Lillehammer affair). To mitigate blowback from the use of such underhanded tactics, the same entities boost persons favorable to their country's image, especially athletes and minorities, so as to avoid situations like USA's 1968 Olympics Black Power salute. Boosting, co-opting, and "soft censorship" require vast amounts of money, thus entrenching entities and billionaires while disfavoring individuals, even if the former lack facts, truth, or logic. 

This financial requirement, if not managed carefully, eventually renders countries and their residents debt facilitators or obligators foremost, bankers and politicians competing for the title of "Most Creative Cash Flow Consultant." (Witness current negative interest rates.) Such propaganda tactics obfuscate decline because the more such entities succeed, the harder it becomes to identify legitimate complaints and issues. Furthermore, most governments able to access debt/funding overshoot in their attempts to maintain social cohesion, whether co-opting too late (e.g., U.K.'s experience against the IRA and Sinn Fein, Russia's relationship with Chechnya) or boosting individuals and outliers in ways inimical to structural solutions (e.g., affirmative action and racial quotas over tearing down institutional factors supporting segregation). 

As financial burdens--as well as concomitant superficiality, budgetary mismanagement, and economic inequality--increase, the first reason mentioned in the opening sentence gathers strength. Regardless of where blame is directed for declining social cohesion, law enforcement tacitly or overtly gains more discretion to maintain law and order, weakening mechanisms designed to stop extremism. As lawyers and academics realize their participation (and therefore influence) has waned, their attempts to counter executive force are noble; however, at this juncture, the executive branch has already created separate modes of operation in a good faith effort to resolve problems in an efficient manner. To the extent such illegal maneuvers can be traced, it is not difficult to destroy evidence and silence witnesses through the same methods discussed earlier. Yet, the moment disrespect for legal norms protecting individual rights becomes fashionable, a country's power structure has already shifted from the long-term to the short-term, from the credible and sustainable to the out-of-touch and unbelievable. In such a realm, criticism is a threat to operations, weakening a country's desired image and investor confidence. After all, the more all parties believe outstanding debts will be repaid, the more existing parties gain power and are welcomed by all--except those who have studied history properly. 

© Matthew Rafat (February 2020) 

Update: I wanted to follow up on the difference between a Snowden acolyte and higher-level intelligence analyst. Let's say you have evidence a particular app or website is involved in human trafficking. You can try to go to court and ask for a take-down order, but the company would justifiably argue its website has legitimate users, and as a mere facilitator, it is not responsible for illegal activity between its end users. If you follow Snowden, you would also argue such tactics amount to government censorship and government picking and choosing winners.

But Snowden would have no answer to what might happen next: the government, a mega-church, or a billionaire's employees could, even without a backdoor, create fake profiles on the website and tilt the ratio between real users and sock-puppets however it liked. The company, at first, would be delighted because it could show advertising companies its growth. Over time, however, as real users left the website, it would become difficult for anyone involved to maintain credibility.

A more complicated situation would involve a leak of classified information. In such a case, though censorship could occur, the government could also direct all public (aka mainstream) website searches to websites it had created itself or through its subsidiaries' uploads. Many subsidiaries, such as nonprofits, would not have the technological expertise to determine whether they were reviewing altered or real material, or even whether they were being funded by the very government under investigation.

I often say the 21st century's hallmark is the "bad guys" have become the "good guys," and vice-versa. One reason is that unaltered, legitimate data--the underlying basis for truth--is sometimes only available in the dark web or through secret channels. 

On Patriotism

I love the smell of false patriots in the morning: 

So it goes. 

A Short Manual to Nonviolent Undermining of Nations

You are about to read an 11-step manual on how to dissolve social cohesion. It may seem malicious to promulgate such methods, but once you realize any nation or people can become evil and callous, the need for defensive tactics becomes obvious. You don't have to follow all the steps below, but a combination applied consistently and over enough time will be lethal. 

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. -- Arnold Toynbee 

1. Promote Extremism, especially in Politics 

Most people believe evil and decay enter with belligerence. In reality, too much of anything can lead to destruction. If you cannot defeat your enemy by violent means, then promote the most shallow, superficial, and/or extreme people within their societies--regardless of ideology. 

Obviously, national politics is the most ideal arena, but you can start small. Look at public schools (ignore nepotism, whether formal or informal), police departments, and local governmental bodies. Even a city planning commission, if staffed by zealous nitpickers or inexperienced lawyers, can help disintegrate faith in one's fellow citizens. 

Above all, review anything related to debt or inflation. A public or private bank that loans too much money to the wrong people or too little money to the right people will create problems. In peacetime, only the banking and natural resource exploration sectors have specialized instruments capable of causing as much damage as a ten-tonne bomb (see, for example, America's 2008-2009 crisis). 

2. Trust, Nuance, and Context are Conjoined

Some people genuinely believe others "don't want to know how the sausage is made." Agree with them by eliminating nuance and reducing transparency as much as possible. The human mind wants to focus on single or binary data points to understand complex issues. Feed that bias using true but incomplete information. With the media becoming fully digitized and therefore subject to SEO manipulation and the highest bidder, social targeting is easier than ever before. Aim to create a lack of trust through selective reporting and/or the elevation of simplistic viewpoints. 

We are pragmatists. We don't stick to any ideology. Does it work? Let's try it, and if it does work, fine, let's continue it. If it doesn't work, toss it out, try another one. We are not enamored with any ideology. -- Singapore's founder Lee Kuan Yew 

3. Ignore Potential 

Not actively promoting and nurturing exceptional persons is a surefire way to lose them, whether through physical departure to other nations or a loyalty shift. 

Remember: immigration is a zero-sum game. If you can attract the best and brightest into your nation or group from a competitor, with each person, you create an almost insurmountable 200% gap in your favor. We universally acknowledge stealing ideas is easier than inventing them, or that not all new ideas will succeed; yet, voters seem unable to understand immigration is the exact same process, but applied to people. 

You will know you have succeeded if any prominent politician mentions building a wall. 

4. Use Idealists and Conformists within Minority Groups 

History tells us empires fail when they openly discriminate against minorities. A wise leadership prefers instead to set extremely high or impossible standards anyone can allegedly reach, then manipulate the budgeting, promotion, and/or selection process to assist his or her friends and allies.

Prices are the new discrimination. -- Chris Rock (2017)

If journalists or others expose inconsistencies or discrimination, it is not difficult to find conformists, idealists, or egotists within the allegedly harmed group and then elevate a single person from that group while maintaining the status quo (e.g., America's President Obama). 

5. Inane Distractions Thwart Substance 

Promote voyeurism and gossip. Louis Brandeis said it best: 

"Triviality destroys at once robustness of thought and delicacy of feeling. No enthusiasm can flourish, no generous impulse can survive under its blighting influence."  

Divert the target's attention from the long-term to the trivial and short-term. 

6. Attack the Artists 

The smartest people in any country are usually comedians. If you can goad leaders into condemning or banning a comedian, you will cause an immediate and permanent loss of credibility.  Hypocrisy is everyone's hemlock, whether governments, individuals, or corporations. 

The same logic applies to authors and musicians. Stalin murdered Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940; the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. Detroit's police department shut down an NWA concert in 1989; the city filed for bankruptcy in 2013. The time frames may differ, but once top level officials try to control art, enough mistakes have been made that the end is inevitable. 

Interestingly, Governor Ronald Reagan assailed UCLA professor and writer Angela Davis in 1969, and California in 2019 is America's most unequal and indebted state. Also in 1969, the NYPD raided Greenwich Village's Stonewall Inn, a bar in a well-known counterculture district. According to the New York Times, six years later, New York City was so close to bankruptcy, "the city's lawyers were in State Supreme Court filing a bankruptcy petition." By the time the Establishment's list of scapegoats includes bohemians, everyone with means has packed their bags or already departed with them. (Americans will be pleased to know as of April 15, 2019, President Donald Trump has not called for the jailing, deportation, or murder of any artists.) 

[Bonus, from professor Danielle Morgan, Spring 2021: "It demonstrates to me the power of comedy that former-President Trump would get so angry that he'd not come to the White House Correspondents' Dinner. He would take to Twitter and yell about Saturday Night Live. Trump spent so much of his time attacking entertainers and, in particular, comedians because he knows that comedy reaches the masses very quickly and very convincingly.]

7. Inefficient Governments Cause Problems 

As religious entities moved into the government's traditional role of providing social welfare, most governments welcomed them, assuming they could provide services more cost-effectively. Yet, how many people realize religious entities have gained credibility through community services because their governments are inept or misusing their tax dollars? Or that the more influence the government allows religious entities in social services, the less one can argue in favor of separation of religion and state? 

The more you can promote religion in everyday public life, the more you can fragment society. Wise governments neither promote nor denigrate religious entities in exchange for noninterference. 

The 1st Amendment leaves the Government in a position not of hostility to religion, but of neutrality. The philosophy is that the atheist or agnostic... is entitled to go his own way. -- Justice William Douglas in Engel v. Vitale (1962)

8. Promote Segregation and Informational Fragmentation 

Segregate different groups of people as much as you can. Most people associate segregation with racial characteristics, but separation based on wealth, education, information, or some other trait eventually leads to intractable inequality and hubris. 

Heed the following Martin Luther King Jr. proclamation and do everything you can to render it untrue: "Anyone who lives inside [our country] can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds." 

9. Fear is Your Friend, Curiosity is Not 

Of her profession, journalist Amanda Ripley once wrote, "we know how to grab the brain’s attention and stimulate fear, sadness or anger. We can summon outrage in five words or less." Notably, she states that it is "impossible to feel curious... while also feeling threatened." 

Almost everyone knows the U.S. government deliberately lied to the American people and American judges in multiple egregious instances, including but not limited to the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944). Yet, almost no one believes psy-ops (aka propaganda) to shape public opinion and legislative action exist as regular, ongoing events. Maintain this naïveté. 

Indigo Girls, 2002

10. If You Can Collapse a Building by Taking Down One Pillar, Don't Try to Destroy Three

The more open a society, the more fragile it is. If your paradigm assumes the executive, legislative, and judicial branches--all of them--are required for society to function smoothly, remember that only one of these branches need be corrupted or disdained to cause decline. 

11. Overextend the Enemy 

If you succeed using the above methods, governments and societies will be unable to ignore their problems and may defend themselves using censorship, jails, torture, and other blunt instruments. Once you are in this stage, the goal is to cause the target to overextend itself as much as possible and to abuse its power. 

For example, after 9/11, America knew it could not legally torture detainees but did so anyway, in no small part because its political and military leadership specifically drafted exceptions to time-honored procedures. "Black sites" for interrogation or "extraordinary renditions," often in cooperation with other nations, eventually led to a total breakdown in decency, causing the United States to lose credibility worldwide, despite being the victim of a vicious, cowardly attack. 

Abu Ghraib, the most prominent example of America's decline, occurred outside the nation's official borders as a way to escape oversight from the media and courts. The American government even argued its knowing creation of a loophole to evade judicial oversight meant it deserved the power to destroy not just the enemy, but its own checks and balances. (See also President Bush's Executive Order 13224, which "prohibited transactions not just with any suspected foreign terrorists, but with any foreigner or any U.S. citizen suspected of providing them support.") 

Overextension renders a society imbalanced, leading to extreme actions becoming accepted as new norms. Shift the norm as far as you can in any direction. 

12. It's Always Been the Same Old Story

All governments have the same general issues: overpopulation or underpopulation and immigration; employee unaccountability and selection; foreign capital and influence, especially in the media; debt repayments; access to resources, including sustainable food production; effective regulation of competitors, whether criminals or corporate, without endangering innovation; and security without overextension, which includes infiltrating influential groups and gaining intelligence. 

If you ever find yourself thinking you've discovered something new rather than being put in a position to communicate existing and older ideas more effectively using ever-changing mediums, remember my grandmother's advice: "Don't worry so much. In the end, life is mostly eating, f*cking, and sleeping." 

Good luck. 

Isolationism Has Consequences

Propaganda, Brought by Your Own Tax Dollars

Former President Obama (2018): "Special interests, foreign governments, etc. can, in fact, manipulate and propagandize." What if at least one of those special interests is your own government? In Peter Richardson's A Bomb in Every Issue (2009), we learn the CIA directly or indirectly funded numerous liberal and conservative organizations, including ones with Gloria Steinem, the AFL-CIO, and William F. Buckley, Jr. 

Problematically, we don't know which cultural change organizations weren't funded by the CIA. In other words, government interference may have cost Americans leaders who could have delivered more honest or less divisive commentary but who didn't have the numbers or influence at the exact time of the CIA's involvement. Funding x rather than y meant anything independent--anything related to y and not x--was at a disadvantage, tilting the media towards CIA-picked cultural leaders. As a result, almost everything you see and read might have been curated for you by a secretive, non-transparent government agency. If that's not propaganda, what is? And why isn't the president of the United States talking about it? 

Bonus: "The agency's goals were to counter similar groups under Soviet control abroad and to recruit foreign students." The only reason we know any of this is because an insider--we'd call him a whistleblower today--hadn't signed an NDA and provided documents to a journalist at an independent publication. The independent publication, The Ramparts, had a distinctive strategy: raise hell and keep on raising it until national media, always late to the game, finally picked up the story. 

Bonus: a world where secretive organizations can manipulate winners requires not just irresponsible funding but online manipulation (SEO, etc.). If the top 25 hits on Google's search engine can be curated for you by one or more intelligence organizations, can you believe anything you see and hear? 

Leon Panetta Speaks at SCU

Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA, spoke at Santa Clara University last week (October 8, 2010). He was entertaining and clearly proud of his Italian heritage. In one of his best moments of the night, he told a story about the necessity of fighting for your beliefs:

A priest and a rabbi want to learn more about each other's beliefs, so they attend a boxing match. One of the boxers goes to the corner and makes the sign of the cross. The rabbi sees this and asks the priest, “What does that mean?” The priest responds, “Not a damn thing, if he can’t fight.” (It’s much funnier when spoken.)

Overall, Panetta said all the right things. He is against “enhanced interrogation techniques” aka torture (he said the CIA uses the Army Field Manual on interrogations). He thinks the media is doing Americans a disservice through its soundbite-style reporting (and even took a jab at Fox news, saying that the media panders to the lowest common denominator because they don’t want to be “outfoxed.”) In any case, here are the highlights of Panetta's speech as I saw them:

In D.C., “gridlock is the order of the day.”

Panetta singled out Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan as hotbeds of terrorism. He said that Pakistan had nuclear weapons and Al-Qaeda leaders.

He said India was an emerging power but will have to deal with its poverty problem [which may limit its ascendancy].

He said, “My job is to tell the truth,” whether they [the White House and Congress] like to hear it or not.

The CIA has four basic missions: counter-terrorism (CT); counter-proliferation; cyber-security; and minimizing the risk of surprise.

One interesting quote: “We are conducting a war within Pakistan.”

“Security and stability are our top priorities.”

On nuclear proliferation, “all we need is a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” he said with an exasperated tone.

He singled out North Korea as an active proliferator that shares nuclear technology with other countries. He also mentioned Iran's nuclear program, but didn't provide much detail other than mentioning it as a potential catalyst for a nuclear arms race.

On cyber-security, Panetta singled out China and Russia as potential threats. He said the “next Pearl Harbor could be a cyberattack” that shuts down our power grid or financial system. He said we experience hundreds of thousands of cyberattacks each year.

Panetta also went on several tangents, mentioning the Mexican drug cartels, which have killed 15,000 people, and the rising power of Brazil and India.

He told us that “we do not have to choose between law and security,” but “at the same time, we cannot be free unless we are secure.”

Panetta said the CIA’s budget has “tripled” since 9/11, which was cause for concern. He said such growth and unchecked expenditures “frankly scared the hell out of” him. (Prior to becoming Director, Panetta spent years on the House Budget Committee trying to balance the federal budget.)

Panetta has reduced the CIA’s reliance on outside contractors (I believe he said the CIA has reduced its reliance on contractors by around "20%," but I couldn't quite make out the specific context, and I'm sure there are many different kinds of contractors, so the 20% number may not be very helpful to anyone).

Panetta has made knowledge of a foreign language a requirement to advance within the CIA. His goal is to “be diverse,” and he wants to increase the CIA’s overall diversity from 23% overall to 30%.

Panetta said the CIA’s basic goal is “convincing people to risk their lives to give us information–that is what it is all about.” If we can’t protect them [the assets], he said, no one will want to work with us (later, he criticized WikiLeaks because some of the documents released contained names).

Panetta also said the President of the United States signs off on all covert operations, and the CIA's decisions are also reviewed by the Attorney General as well as overseen by Congress [see Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]. He went out of his way to say that the CIA keeps the President and Congress apprised of all operations.

He said that over half of the CIA’s workforce was hired post-9/11.

During the short Q&A session, Panetta criticized the media, saying its quality has declined because of soundbites and increased competition (this is where he made the comment about the general media not wanting to be “outfoxed”).

Panetta said the CIA had no excuse for not having oversight over [outside] contractors. He also said that certain security details were outsourced because certain agencies don't have designated security personnel. (I think he mentioned protection for certain Afghan politicians and State Department personnel, but don't quote me on this.)

Panetta lamented the state of modern politics, indicating that the goal ought to be consensus, but now politicians care more about surviving in office. Panetta said we can “govern by leadership or [by] crisis,” and right now, we are governing by crisis.

As I left the speech, I realized I had listened to a series of bromides. For example, Panetta left out the CIA’s role in extraordinary renditions. While Panetta said we should not look backwards to the Bush administration’s mistakes, he also didn’t say anything about how the CIA sought to avoid similar debacles. My own personal experience regarding FOIA requests was markedly different with the CIA than it was with the FBI–even though both were providing me information pursuant to the exact same federal law.

At the end of the day, Mr. Panetta is just one individual, just like President Obama is just one individual. My feeling is that Americans keep looking for one person to change things, but our form of government is anti-royalty and therefore one person’s power–though vast–is still limited. We need to move away from a "single individual" mentality and try to elect people who are comfortable delegating power and who will create changes from the bottom up. If this decade is any indication, it appears that one person can make a difference on the negative side, but not so much on the positive side.

Bonus: Audio of Speech.

Bonus: from Robert Scheer's They Know Everything about You (2015):

Governments and Secret Evidence: an Unholy, Unconstitutional Alliance?

This well-researched story in this month's Washington Lawyer magazine stunned me:

http://www.dcbar.org/for_lawyers/resources/publications/washington_lawyer/november_2009/privilege.cfm

[Khaled] El-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was on vacation on New Year’s Eve 2003 in Macedonia when he was seized at a border crossing, tortured, and then flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan. He remained in a squalid cell for five months before his captors, realizing they had the wrong man, flew him to Albania and dumped him on a roadside, convinced no one would believe the story El-Masri would tell.

Want to guess who did this? It's the CIA. Under Dick Cheney, the CIA seems to have had no limits.

Mr. El-Masri sued, but the George W. Bush administration invoked the state secrets privilege--a presidential power intended to prevent public disclosure of classified information--to dismiss the lawsuit.

One judge has pushed back. See Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc:

Judge Michael D. Hawkins said dismissing cases because the government alleges secrets are involved would “cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the CIA and its partners from demands and limits to the law.” The government’s argument has “no logical limit,” Hawkins wrote.

God bless judges that understand the judicial branch should check and limit unconstitutional use of executive power. The executive branch was never intended to be a dictatorship shielded from scrutiny. Whenever any government agency tries to hide information, my alarm bells go off. Right now, there's a five-alarm fire somewhere, and my taxpayer dollars are funding it.

CIA and FBI: Results of My FOIA/FOIPA Request

Lately, the FOIA is getting good press. The FOIA and FOIPA allow Americans to gain access to information government agencies have about them. Previously, USAG Ashcroft instructed lawyers to do whatever they could to deny requests for information, such as charging high fees for file searches or copies. President Obama, on the other hand, has promised change, and part of this change is more transparency. I wanted to see whether government agencies were complying with President Obama's message, so I recently sent FOIA and FOIPA requests to both the FBI and CIA. Their handling of my requests was starkly different, even though I sent the same letter to both agencies.

All government agencies should have similar responses to FOIA and FOIPA requests for personal information. The two laws are not overly complicated, so they shouldn't be interpreted differently depending on whichever agency is handling the request. Therefore, a valid request for personal information should result in a similar response from all federal agencies--i.e., the agency must produce relevant documents to you if such documents exist.

The procedure is simple: agencies must respond within 20 days and acknowledge they have received your request. Then, the agency must do a search for your documents and if it finds relevant documents, it must provide you with those documents. In some cases, an agency may redact sensitive information on documents. (Note: under Bush II/Ashcroft, the DOJ improperly and excessively redacted information, which effectively gutted the FOIA and forced multiple appeals).

In my case, in terms of responsiveness, the FBI passed with flying colors. Not only did the FBI acknowledge my request in less than a week, it even waived the normal fees and included an FBI Fact File Sheet (one sample fact: "The FBI does not keep a file on every citizen of the United States."). Then, it did the search for relevant documents the very next day and mailed me a written update. Someone at the FBI even personally initialed both letters.

The FBI's substantive response was interesting. No documents existed on me, but "Records which may be responsive to your Freedom of Information-Privacy Acts (FOIPA) request were destroyed on February 14, 2005." I believe I applied for the FBI's Special Agent trainee position around 1999. Thus, it appears the FBI destroys applicant/personnel files after six years. The FBI letter even told me exactly how to appeal the decision; where to send the appeal; and the exact statute of limitations (60 days from the date of the letter). In terms of professionalism and responsiveness, the FBI seems to be complying with President Obama's transparency directive.

In contrast, the CIA appears to be following Dick Cheney's philosophy of concealing information. Although it did respond to my request, I received their response on the twentieth day. Also, although the CIA's letter is dated August 20, 2009, the envelope shows that the letter was not mailed until August 24, 2009--four days after it was written. As of today, the CIA has refused to provide me with any information.

The CIA cited 32 CFR 1901.13, which states, "In the case of an individual who is an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence, said individual shall provide his or her alien registration number and the date that status was required." I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, not an alien or permanent resident. The plain language of the code section uses the present tense, not the past tense to refer to a person "who is an alien." Somehow, the CIA is claiming I need to comply with legal language that applies to non-citizens, even though I am an American citizen.

I used the same written content for both FOIA/FOIPA requests. Only the CIA denied my request and demanded more information. In denying my request, the CIA also referred to legal code that doesn't apply to American citizens. The FBI's fulfillment of my request supports my belief that the CIA is incorrectly throwing up a hurdle to deny me information. In addition, the CIA failed to respond to my fee waiver request.

Two different agencies, the same laws, and two entirely different responses. I am debating whether I should give the CIA the information they want, or whether I should tell the CIA I will take them to court if they don't grant my request. My gut tells me to provide them with the information, but I may change my mind. [Update: go to the bottom of this post to see what eventually happened.]

My letter to the FBI is below:

ORIGINAL SENT BY MAIL

Attn: FOIA Request
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Record Information/Dissemination Section
170 Marcel Drive
Winchester, VA 22602-4843

Dear FBI:

Under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. subsection 552 and the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. section 552a, please furnish me with copies of all records about me indexed to my name. To help identify information about me in your record systems, I am providing the following required information:

Full name: X
Current address: X
Date and Place of Birth: X
Citizenship status: X

If you deny all or any part of this request, cite each specific exemption forming the basis of your refusal to release the information, and notify me of appeal procedures available under the law.

I believe I am a representative of the news media and this request is made part of news gathering and not for commercial use. I publish a blog at willworkforjustice.blogspot.com that posts, among other items, articles about the government. I will be writing about my experience requesting information from your agency on this blog. This matter affects a public interest because it will show Americans how to access their information from government agencies. It will also test President Obama’s statements about whether the federal government is more open to granting FOIA requests.

If you do not deem me to be eligible for a fee waiver, then I agree to pay reasonable fees/costs incurred in the copying of these documents up to the amount of $30. If the estimated fees will be greater than $30, please contact me by telephone (xxx-xxx-xxxx) before such expenses are incurred. If you have any questions regarding this request, please contact me by telephone. Thank you for your assistance.

Under penalty of perjury, I hereby declare that I am the person named above and I understand that any falsification of this statement is punishable under the provisions of Title 18, United States Code (U.S.C.), Section 1001 by a fine of not more than $10,000 or by imprisonment of not more than five years, or both; and that requesting or obtaining any record(s) under false pretenses is punishable under the provisions of Title 5, U.S.C., Section 552a(i)(3) as a misdemeanor and by a fine of not more than $5,000.

Date: ________________________________

Signature _____________________________

FYI: CIA's address and fax number are as follows:

Information and Privacy Coordinator
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C. 20505
fax: (703) 613-3007

Update on September 15, 2009: on September 7, 2009, I decided to give the CIA the information they wanted. I told them if I did not hear back from them by September 15, 2009, I would assume that they had a policy of treating naturalized citizens differently (read: more harshly) than native-born citizens. I have not heard back from the CIA yet.

Update on September 27, 2009: on a letter post-marked on September 21, 2009 and written on September 17, 2009, the CIA finally responded to my request: "We were unable to identify any information or records filed under your name. Regarding your request for a fee waiver, it is the policy of this agency to not charge fees for Privacy Act searches."

Bonus I: more "loveliness" from the CIA here.

Bonus II: see comments section for ODNI request and result.

Bonus III: see HERE for a summary of CIA Director Leon Panetta's speech at SCU (2010).

Bonus IV: see below for the most recent update. Everyone knows what "Neither confirm nor deny" means, especially with several watchlists not subject to truly independent oversight. See, for example, FISA court resignations.

Bonus V: after cleaning my room, I found this old envelope. An intelligence agency, ODNI, misspelled my middle name. I realize a secretary may have made the mistake rather than an analyst or officer, but I also suspect secretaries or similar level employees/contractors were the ones inputting data--including names on security lists--into computers and databases before artificial intelligence. 

CIA Engaged in Torture

The Economist has an interesting article on the CIA's role in torture. See here. The CIA used pistols and power-drills to threaten detainees. One detainee was told that "interrogators would sexually abuse his female relatives in front of him."

Leave it to a British magazine to report on American war crimes. Where are the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on the topic of CIA-sponsored torture?

CIA to Congress: We Misled You, but That's Not Our Policy

Some strange things are going on between Congress and the CIA:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/08/cia.congress/index.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-us-congress-secret-briefings,1,2711337.story

Letters by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and other members of the panel say CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress last month that senior CIA officials have concealed significant actions and misled lawmakers repeatedly since 2001.

I am upset that rather than focusing on stopping the CIA from misleading Congress in the future, the media and House Republicans are making this an issue about Pelosi. I think Senator Pelosi knew about harsh interrogation methods, but not all the details. I do wonder if she knew about waterboarding, but it doesn't matter now--she had her chance to speak out against harsh interrogation methods and failed to do so. The real issue now is reforming the CIA, not Pelosi.

Update on July 20, 2009: Judge rules CIA lied to the court:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090720/ap_on_go_ot/us_cia_fraud

According to court documents unsealed Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth referred a CIA attorney, Jeffrey Yeates, for disciplinary action. Lamberth also denied the CIA's renewed efforts under the Obama administration to keep the case secret because of what he calls the agency's "diminished credibility" in the case.