CIA Asks Justice to Investigate Leaks

It’s not unusual, I gather (never having worked in government), for the CIA to ask DOJ prosecutors to investigate leaks involving the agency.  However, in the circumstances surrounding the current AG Holder decision to appoint a prosecutor to investigate CIA activities, it’s perhaps worth noting that the CIA has asked for an investigation into what it apparently regards as a potentially criminal leaking of its much-discussed program from shortly after 9-11 to go after Al Qaeda with targeted killing teams.  This is what Eli Lake and Sara Carter reported in a Friday, September 4, 2009 story in the Washington Times.

Besieged by leaks of several closely held secrets, the CIA has asked the Justice Department to examine what it regards as the criminal disclosure of a secret program to kill foreign terrorist leaders abroad, The Washington Times has learned.

Two U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the case, said the leak investigation involved a program that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told Congress about in June and that surfaced in news reports just a month later.

Lake is a highly-regarded national security reporter in DC, for those who don’t know his work.  But the story has several levels.  One is the role of Blackwater:

One element of the new leak investigation involves a New York Times story last month that said the secret program employed the security contractor Xe – formerly known as Blackwater. The plan was never put into effect – and Mr. Panetta canceled it as soon as he learned of it, according to the CIA.

But the disclosure has had other consequences: Al Qaeda has placed Xe’s chief executive, Eric Prince, on its own version of a most-wanted list, said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the contractor.

That’s according to Xe, however, not the CIA.  Another claimed consequence – often heard in these contexts, of course, whether actually true or not – is the effect on cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies:

The vice chairman of the the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence declined to discuss any possible leak investigations but told the Times on Thursday that a growing number of disclosures of highly secret programs, tactics and other information had caused “irreparable damage” to the U.S. intelligence community.

“They foil our attempts to carry out classified missions,” Sen. Christopher S. Bond said in an interview. “They tell our intelligence community: We don’t have your back; we’re stabbing you in the back. Our allies ask us, ‘How can we trust you to deal in classified matters in private, when the details are leaked to the press?'”

Senator Bond is a Republican, so this is not by itself a surprising statement, though surely it matters if in fact true. But potentially the most interesting fallout, according to the account, is that members of Congress are thought to be the possible sources of leaks, following briefings that CIA chief Leon Panetta conducted with the intelligence committees.

In the setting of the concurrent investigation into CIA practices, the politics for DOJ and the White House could be delicate.  Or not.  Maybe everyone figures that since it involved a long ago program that wasn’t actually a program, but just some ideas getting floated – as the CIA’s own account has it – the disclosure of which doesn’t jeopardize anything on-going, it isn’t that important that it was leaked, even if illegal.  Or, for that matter, it might just disappears into the mists created by the fights over US domestic policy agendas such as health care; maybe the ‘national security era’ of 9-11 is over.  Heck if I know.

Because the program was briefed to Congress, it opens the prospect that the FBI could place lawmakers and congressional staffers under polygraph.

The last time the bureau conducted such a major leak investigation involving a member of Congress, it resulted in the reprimand of Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Republican from Alabama, who was accused of divulging to Fox News al Qaeda communications that were intercepted prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

At the time, Mr. Shelby was vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat from Vermont, resigned from that committee in 1986 after leaking a staff report to a reporter on the Iran-Contra affair, under which the U.S. sold weapons to Iran and used the proceeds illegally to fund anti-communist guerrillas in Central America.

It remains to be seen whether the investigation will rise to the level of those incidents or the 2003 probe that followed the disclosure by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame was a CIA officer. That investigation mired the Bush presidency in legal and political challenges and led ultimately to the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to then-Vice President Cheney. Mr. Libby was found guilty of obstructing the FBI’s original leak investigation.

The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb, writing in the magazine’s (note, highly partisan) blog, offers some speculation as to the possible Congressional leakers, if that’s who it was:

The source is almost certainly a Democratic member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, given the fact that no one knew of this program’s existence until Leon Panetta appeared before that committee and revealed details of the program in June. The top candidate there would have to be Jan Schakowsky, the Illinois Democrat whose made the persecution of Blackwater into her own pet cause. Schakowsky has been a key source for Jeremy Scahill, who wrote Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, a full-throttle hit job of the government contractor. Also in the running is Rush Holt, who recently declared “I’d like to see something on the scope of the Church committee.”

Not everyone in DC keeps running track of all these things – I certainly don’t.  Nor do I regard myself as qualified as an astute national security politics observer to say whether any of this especially matters.  Lake and Carter quote a an intelligence official who downplayed the significance of it, given that the CIA routinely makes such referrals to DOJ:

However, one intelligence official downplayed the significance of the leak and of the request for a Justice Department investigation.

“These leaks, unlike others in the past, didnt cost the country a viable collection or counterterrorism capability,” the official said. “There were different concepts considered and tested over the years, but they always ran into problems.They never proved themselves, so its not a big loss.”

The official added, “Leaks of classified information are, unfortunately, fairly common.They can do tremendous damage, and they need to be pursued.The real impact here, though, was not operational – these small efforts never took a single terrorist off the street.But it did make for some sloppy stories about hit squads and another public discussion of congressional oversight.”

Whatever the significance, big or small or none at all, I would guess that you, like me, were unaware that the CIA, according to this news story at least, has made this referral to DOJ.  So … either it turns out to be nothing at all – or else you read it first on OJ!