Fourth Sequel a-Bourning

Disagreeing with some critics' blah reviews, Ramin Setoodeh lists seven reasons to see Tony Gilroy's excellent "The Bourne Legacy." Here's the eighth: It conspicuously sets up a fifth Bourne film in which Matt Damon's Jason Bourne could join Jeremy Renner's new genetically enhanced super-antihero, Aaron Cross, to rescue Joan Allen from scandal and ruin.

Bourne screenwriter Gilroy got to direct "Legacy" after Paul Greenglass, who made no. 2 ("The Bourne Supremacy") and 3 ("Bourne Ultimatum"), bowed out. Damon's willing to be Bourne again if and when Greenglass directs. But other veterans of the Greenglass "Bournes" did appear in Gilory's movie, including Allen, who has a brief but intriguing scene as CIA official Pamela Landy.

At the end of 2007's "Ultimatum," she and Bourne exposed the illegal black ops program that trained Jason to be an assassin. The action of "Legacy" occurs at exactly the same time, as yet another batch of CIA boneheads work desperately to shut down and cover up the even creepier black ops program to which Renner's Aaron Cross belongs. In "Ultimatum," Landy's the triumphant whistle blower. In her scene in "Legacy," we learn that the tables have turned. The sinister forces she exposed are again in control, while she's evidently under indictment for assisting alleged traitor Jason Bourne.

I can't imagine that either the filmmakers or Allen would bother with a 45-second Landy subplot if they weren't hoping to tease Bourne out of retirement, perhaps in concert with Aaron Cross, for another two hours of tightly-wound, high-tech, cold-as-steel truth and justice rectification, the ultimate super-spy buddy movie. With a bow to Bob and Bing, they could call it "Road to Langley." Moby could record the fourth (by my count) version of "Extreme Ways," the best spy movie theme song ever. Here's his third, recorded for "Legacy" with a 110-piece orchestra.

Schools Of Watergate

Richard Nixon's operatives -- especially Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Dwight Chapin, and Don Segretti -- are the southern California angle on Watergate, having learned their dirty tricks in their pretend politics at USC and UCLA. Clancy Segal, then a left-wing editor at UCLA's Daily Bruin, writes about a primitive era of gentile and Jewish fraternities; getting beaten up by frat boys for dating the wrong women, just like in "Animal House"; his jailhouse interview with Haldeman, when the disgraced former chief of staff candidly admitted his festering resentment of "Jewish liberals" on campus; and a fascinating moment when Alexander Butterfield, another Bruin, chose for whatever reason not to deny that he was a CIA plant in the White House, ordered to protect the agency from Nixon's interferences:

Tall, handsome and bronzed, Alex gave me that old Sigma Nu smile while refusing to deny, "Write it the way you see it, Clancy. Remember, there was nothing personal." Meaning, he played the game and Bob and John simply were collateral damage to a larger scheme.

Richard & Richard

Jefferson Morley on the CIA's Watergate connection:

Thanks to the release of the “Family Jewels” report and an extraordinary collection of 11 conversations between [CIA director Richard] Helms and Nixon in 1971-73 (first published online in 2009) we can see (and hear) what Nixon and Helms had on each other: knowledge of the other guy’s record of ”dirty tricks.”

You Don't Get To Decide, Unless You Must

Some excerpts from Hugh Hewitt's radio interview with George W. Bush about his memoir, Decision Points:

On faith and leadership: I think the first thing...is to understand you’re not God, and that you don’t get to decide. Secondly, I believe a faithful person is someone who fully understands his or her own inadequacies, and therefore relies upon a loving, redemptive Savior. And so it was, in one way, it was easy not to be judgmental when I’m trying to strengthen my own faith. And in the other way, though, it was easy to be judgmental when it came time to the practicalities of protecting the country. And I was very judgmental. I said these people are evil, and we will bring them to justice, because the most important job of the president is to protect the homeland.

On faith and power: [I]f you allow power to become your god, then it is corrupting. If you allow fame to become your god, it is corrupting. If you allow money to become your god, it is corrupting. And what religion helped me was to understand that that was those truths. And so power can be used effectively to help people, or it can be intoxicating, in which case it is difficult to have a proper relationship, if you’re a Christian, with Christ....

[For] American presidents...it’s hard to become so totally intoxicated with power when you’re responsive to the people. But the people that became intoxicated by power that affected me were like those idealistic souls that convinced others that their vision for the future was the right one, whether it be the folks who led the French revolution, or those who bought into Mao, or those who corrupted the Leninist movement in Russia. These are people that became so intoxicated with power that they ended up being murderers.

On meeting with grieving families: What was interesting...because we have a volunteer army, and because many of the folks who lost their life signed up after 9/11 and knew exactly what they were getting into, the parents really wanted to tell me how much that the sacrifice, how much their child really wanted to do what they were doing. And frankly, in many instances, they were there to determine whether or not I was going to make decisions based upon my own personal standing, or whether or not I was going to make decisions so that sacrifice would not go in vain. And it’s hard for people to understand this, but often times, or most of the time I met with families of the fallen, I became the comforted one. I was supposed to comfort them, and they comforted me.

On politically motivated CIA leaks in 2004: I was convinced there were some, and very few, I’m talking about a handful versus the thousands that are dedicated patriots, but they were leaking information that kept getting into the New York Times, for example, that seemed to me, and was trying to make it difficult for me to be reelected. It’s like the same thing about the leaks on some of our security programs that emanated, perhaps, out of that agency. And to me, that’s unacceptable behavior. When people get into the CIA, they have sworn to secrecy, and that their job is to provide the president with the information necessary to make tough decisions, not to try to undermine the process.

In The Beginning, There Was Evil

Paul Pillar is a former high-ranking CIA analyst who believes "the more that religion is infused into public life, the more that mankind suffers." Newly provoked by the State of Kentucky's financial support for a Bible-based theme park and the latest trendsetting comments by Sarah Palin, Pillar, blogging at "The National Interest," writes:

Religious beliefs inherently contain the seeds of intolerance, and thus of conflict and extremism, in ways that most secular belief systems do not. If one believes one's dogma comes from divine will and providence, it can less readily be compromised in good conscience than beliefs of more mundane origin. And those on the other side of a conflict can be seen not just as in opposition but as evil.

Religious belief, because it deals with the unknown and unknowable, must quite literally be a matter of faith. And questions of faith, because they cannot be resolved through public debate, appropriately dwell in the realm of the personal and the private. Once injected into the public realm and more specifically into matters of state, then they become one more form of the tyranny over the mind of man against which the deist Thomas Jefferson swore eternal hostility upon the altar of God.

Well, except for the secular belief systems of communism and National Socialism, which mass-produced intolerance and extremism in a magnitude of which al-Qaeda and the Taliban can only dream. Closer to home, just this week, the secular left seems pretty intolerant of President Obama's idea that rich people should be allowed to keep a little more of their own money so they can goose the economy for the next two years. Their rage is palpable, and while I don't hear them saying those who disagree with them are necessarily evil, I sometimes hear them coming pretty close.

It seems to me that intolerance and extremism are inescapable expressions of human nature, the natural byproducts of pain, fear, pride, or, usually, some mixture of the three. Far from being the root cause of these inclinations, faith practice at its best helps people notice and control them. If instead religion reinforces or encourages what is worst about people, it means that religious leaders and institutions aren't doing their jobs. They've let their own pride and certitude (or fear and pain) prevent them from appreciating the awe and humility with which any sane person approaches the altar of the Almighty.

Around the world, there are all too many such religionists. That religion must do better is an axiom that many of its practitioners readily accept. But the idea that humanity is safe when it ignores the Creator's judgement perished in the death camps and gulag, in Cambodia and Rwanda. Of course that prideful idea has perished many times in the many thousands of years of human history that preceded all those modern savageries, but the idea keeps being resurrected. Even when people betray God by wreaking havoc and pretending it's for his glory instead of their own, there's a certain deviousness involved in saying that the crime was committed by God or even by religion, when the blame really belongs to the human creature acting as it has since before anyone could even mouth God's name.

There's That, Yeah.

JFK assassination conspiracy theorists wonder why the CIA won't release documents related to its covert support for a group of anti-Castro Cubans who clashed with Lee Harvey Oswald before President Kennedy's November 1963 murder. A leading expert on the assassination states the bleeding obvious:

[Gerald] Posner, the anti-conspiracy author, said that if there really were something explosive involving the C.I.A. and President Kennedy, it would not be in the files — not even in the documents the C.I.A. has fought to keep secret.

“Most conspiracy theorists don’t understand this,” Mr. Posner said. “But if there really were a C.I.A. plot, no documents would exist.”

Spies In The Skies

CIA mapmakers, at your service. This is up to the minute as of 2008. More here.

The Inconvenience Of "Rough Men"

Pat Buchanan makes the case against torture prosecutions of CIA personnel:

"Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

George Orwell's truth comes to mind as one reads that Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to go after the "rough men" who, to keep us sleeping peacefully at night, went too far in frightening Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the engineer of the September massacres....

[Obama] and Holder may not like what was done...but who does? And where is the criminal intent? These agents are not sadists. They were trying to get intel to abort plots and apprehend terrorists to prevent them from killing us. And they succeeded. Not a single terrorist attack on the United States in eight years.

Do we the people, some of whom may be alive because of what those CIA men did, want them disgraced, prosecuted and punished for not going strictly by the book in protecting us from terrorists?

"We'll Kill Your Children" (Lest You Kill Ours)

A summary of the IG's report on CIA interrogation techniques. Every American should grapple with the fact that these things were done in our name -- without ever forgetting that the interrogators loved their families and country and were convinced their actions would help protect us against implacable and fanatical enemies.

The Reason JFK Named His Brother

I'm sure the President is acutely grateful, even in the midst of the massive bipartisan health care push that will help define his term, for his attorney general's tender conscience:

Aides said Holder himself was so troubled by some of the reports [of alleged abuses by CIA interrogators] that he felt a prosecutor might be needed – even though the move is likely to be viewed as an unwelcome distraction by the White House.

Nancy Can't Pull The Football Away This Time

Congressional leaders got 40 interrogation briefings over seven years.

Your Move, Mr. President

"Politico":

Former Vice President Dick Cheney last month formally asked the Central Intelligence Agency to de-classify top secret documents he believes show harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding helped prevent terrorist attacks against U.S. targets, according to source familiar with the effort.

If The President Does It, That Mean's It's Legal

Mark Hosenball in "Newsweek":

In a closed-door appearance before the Senate intelligence committee, White House counsel Gregory Craig was asked whether the president was required by law to follow executive orders. According to people familiar with his remarks, who asked for anonymity when discussing a private meeting, Craig answered that the administration did not believe he was. The implication: in a national-security crisis, Obama could deviate from his own rules. A White House official said that Craig's remarks were being "mischaracterized."

Some Capitol Hill sources and intel officials said Craig's private remarks constituted a big loophole in new guidelines, one that would allow Obama to behave much like President Bush. "I don't think there's a really big change, sub rosa," said one veteran undercover spy. Intel sources cautioned that Craig's declaration does not mean Obama plans to issue secret orders that would contradict his public anti-torture stance. (During his confirmation hearing, Dennis Blair, Obama's new intel czar, said emphatically that there would be no torture "on my watch.") What it probably means in practice, the spy said, is that Obama could, in a dire emergency, issue a secret presidential "finding" instructing the CIA or another agency to overstep boundaries of public policy.

Baker's Half-Baked?

In its "Secrecy News" e-newsletter, the Society of American Archivists engages with Russ Baker, whose conspiracy-minded Family Of Secrets has significant content on the Nixon Administration:

The Central Intelligence Agency did provide a copy of intelligence files relating to the Bay of Pigs to President Nixon in response to his request, an official of the National Archives and Records Administration said yesterday. He said that the statement to the contrary in Secrecy News on January 5, citing the new book "Family of Secrets," was in error.

"The CIA did not refuse the Nixon administration's request for records on the Bay of Pigs and other topics," John Powers of the National Archives said. What happened, rather, is that "[Director of Central Intelligence Richard M.] Helms insisted that if the President wanted these records, he would only give them to the President himself."

"There is a fascinating Oval Office taped conversation of this meeting in October 1971 that is publicly available. You can hear Helms putting the papers down on Nixon's desk," Mr. Powers said.

He identified the conversation as tape number 587-7 dated October 8, 1971. "Helms enters during [Ehrlichman's] briefing and they quickly change the topic, then get down to the issue of the papers."

Mr. Powers added that the CIA papers provided by Mr. Helms to President Nixon are contained in Boxes 36 and 37 of the John D. Ehrlichman files at the Nixon Presidential Library.

Mr. Powers said that some of the material may have been declassified and released since he departed from the Nixon Project nearly two years ago. "But my recollection is that most of the two [Ehrlichman] boxes were still classified. They are awaiting a researcher to file a Mandatory Declassification Review request."

***

Historian Maarja Krusten writes:

The Society of American Archivists (SAA) — of which I am a member — is not the publisher of Secrecy News. Secrecy News is published by the Federation of American Scientists (Steve Aftergood puts it out). Last week, I posted the item you mentioned to the Archives & Archivists Listserv (which *is* administered by SAA). Perhaps someone forwarded the item to you from that posting, making it appear there is an SAA connection? But SAA is not involved in discussing Baker’s book, to my knowledge.

No One Notices The Shoe That's Not Thrown

The Economist:

Morale is low after the organisation [sic; they're British] has lurched from failure to scandal in the past few years. Under George Tenet, the long-time director who was beloved by his staff, the CIA failed to spot the September 11th attacks in the works. Then came intelligence mistakes over weapons of mass destruction and Iraq, followed by controversy over the use of torture and harsh interrogation techniques, such as the “waterboarding” of suspected terrorists (making the detainee believe he is suffocating or drowning).

Another possible reason for low CIA morale: The failure of most in the media and politics to give the agency any credit for helping avert a catastrophic attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11.

Another View On Panetta

Michael Ledeen:

I always liked Panetta. He served in the Army and is openly proud of it. He seems to be a good lawyer (oxymoronic though it may seem). He's a good manager. And he's going to watch Obama's back at a place that's full of stilettos and a track record for attempted presidential assassination second to none. But Italians know all about political assassination; you may remember Julius Caesar. Or Aldo Moro. The self-proclaimed cognoscenti will deride his lack of "spycraft," and he's never worked in the intel bureaucracy or, for that matter, in foreign policy or national security. But he's been chief of staff, which involved all that stuff. I think it's a smart move.

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan

Intelligence Failure

John M. Deutch flamed out as a Clinton-era CIA chief. New York Times:

Mr. Deutch, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said there would have been good reasons for Mr. Obama to select a C.I.A. veteran to lead the agency. But Mr. Deutch also cited the examples of John McCone in the Kennedy administration and George Bush in the Nixon administration as cases in which outsiders became “two of the agency’s most successful directors.”

Except that George H.W. Bush was named by President Ford.

A Torturous Choice For CIA

The PE's adorable second grader, Sasha, was amply protected today as she headed to her new school. As Mr. Obama would be the first to affirm, every child in America deserves to be just as safe. In all the years since Sept. 11, no terrorist attacks have been launched on U.S. soil. It hasn't been because al-Qaeda and others haven't tried. While we may never know about all or even most of the attacks that were thwarted, the CIA and others in the intelligence community have obviously played an indispensable role. No more than any other agency in Washington, the CIA doesn't need to be cleaned up, reined in, or reformed. It needs to be inspired and empowered. That's why Leon Panetta's appointment as CIA director borders on boneheaded.

Panetta's opposition to torture, which hometown media friends proudly trumpet, is irrelevant. Whatever you think of water boarding and other extreme interrogation measures, a Senate investigation has made clear that the Bush White House authorized them. Since Mr. Obama takes a different view, he'll issue different orders. There's no evidence he needs a reformist watchdog sitting at Langley to make sure they're followed.

Others praise Panetta's management skills. Was there no one in the country who combined management skills and intelligence experience? As a distinguished former White House chief of staff, he would certainly have advised Mr. Obama to check with intelligence policy stakeholders in Congress before making the choice. It's hard to believe that Sens. Feinstein or Rockefeller wouldn't have had better ideas.

During his recent appearance at the Nixon Library, Bill O'Reilly said his sources in the intelligence community were already dispirited by Mr. Obama's AG choice. Unless Panetta -- nothing if not a canny political pro -- acts quickly to reassure his new colleagues that his main job will be enabling them to do an ever better job than they've been doing for the last seven years, agency morale could decline further, which would be bad news for us all.