Did Cheney Reveal Classified Information About “Sources & Methods” to ABC News?

Related subjects: Afghanistan, Cuba, Embedded Video, Executive Powers, J.E. Robertson, Open Government, Rendition & Ghost Flights, Security & Surveillance, U.S. Law, U.S. Politics Comments (0)

18 June 2009 :: staff

The Bush administration made a name for itself finding ways to obscure information about its activities by claiming the right to “state secrets” under the “sources and methods” rule, protecting active intelligence operations. The entire scope of the “enhanced interrogations” regime was justified under the need to use detainee interrogations not for criminal prosecution but as sources of militarily “actionable” intelligence. The use of “national security letters” comprehensively erasing certain citizens’ First Amendment rights regarding specific government activity proliferated wildly during the Bush years, threatening criminal prosecution in secret courts should the relevant “sources and methods” be compromised.

Now, former vice president Dick Cheney, in his ongoing effort to “normalize” or explain away what amounts to the ad-hoc extralegal establishment of an unconstitutional system of torture and abuse —possibly to the grave detriment of the quality of our overall intelligence reporting, according to former agents—, has revealed information that might fall under the sensitive domain of “sources and methods” that should not be revealed.

In an interview with ABC News, Cheney said “There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, about half of everything we knew about Al Qaeda came from that one source”. Incredibly, Cheney uses that admission as an example of how “it’s been a remarkably successful effort”. That we have so little information except from a top-level commander who was tortured, likely suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation, and whose information has not been demonstrated to be accurate, is a “remarkably successful effort”?

[ad#cafsen-intext]

Or is Cheney admitting, among other things, that the entire period of obsession and adventurism with the evils of torture was in fact a monumental distraction, crippling US intelligence-gathering efforts and possibly leading agents to chase down entirely false and irrelevant leads? If we learned so much from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, would we not have located the leadership by now?

Even if they moved Bin Laden a hundred times since KSM’s capture, would he not have been able to provide information about who makes up the network of trusted insiders who might harbor him, or what methods are used to intimidate locals into hiding the world’s most wanted man? These are all useful questions that emerge from Cheney’s admission that KSM was so heavily relied on as a major intelligence resource, and that Cheney himself was involved in giving the green light to torture.

But Cheney’s admission is startling perhaps even moreso —he has long defended abusive interrogations— because Cheney revealed potentially very embarrassing information about sources and methods, which could interfere with the work of agents currently in the field. The question is: does Cheney’s revelation about half of all information on Al Qaeda coming from KSM fit within the category of information that Bush/Cheney formerly guarded as protected sources and methods, under threat of prosecution?

If so, did Cheney have specific authorization to release this information? Has it been declassified? Can it be found in any declassified, published reports on intelligence produced by the last or present administrations or the Congress? Would the release of such information directly compromise the viability of ongoing field operations, which might rely on agents’ claiming more credible and diverse sourcing for their information than the likely now outdated KSM source?

Or, can we finally say that Dick Cheney has undergone a profound transformation on the question of state secrets? Is he now in favor of releasing any and all manner of previously “classified” information, because it will help us to better understand what took place, what people’s motivations were, how they came to their decisions? Can we now say Cheney is the number one proponent for release of classified intelligence materials, executive consultations and other high-level policy briefs?