By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

As those of us who still follow the news know, President Trump revoked former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance. (For those who came in late, Brennan organized torture and “extraordinary rendition”[1], and was a “vocal advocate” of giving the telcos immunity for Bush’s enormous program of warrrantless surveillance[2], under President George W Bush. Under President Barack Obama, Brennan organized the “kill list,” later rebranded as a “disposition matrix,” which Obama used in at least one case to kill a U.S. citizen with a drone strike, while avoiding any form of due process.) In response to Trump’s action, twelve “top” intelligence officials wrote and published a statement denouncing it (here). This is the key paragraph:

We know John to be an enormously talented, capable, and patriotic individual who devoted his adult life to the service of this nation. Insinuations and allegations of wrongdoing on the part of Brennan while in office are baseless.

(Scores of “ex-spies” later joined the original twelve.) In this post, I’m not going to discuss motive, whether Trump’s for revoking Brennan’s clearance, or the intelligence community’s outrage that he did so, or the media’s. Rather, I’m going to focus on the question of whether “the twelve” should have any standing to issue such a statement in the first place. After all, if torture, extraordinary rendition, warrantless surveillance, and whacking US citizens without due process are not “wrongdoing,” then what on earth can be?[3] To this end, I will first present a table sketching the careers and personal networks of “the twelve.” Next, I’ll look at those who did not sign the statement. After that, I’ll make a few brief comments about “the twelve” as a class. I’ll conclude by raising the issue of standing again. I hope this post will be especially useful to those who haven’t been following politics since 9/11, who may take our current institutional structures for granted (see especially footnotes [1] and [2]).

First, let’s look at Directors of Central Intelligence who did not sign, although they were directors during the timespan from Webster until today, presumably because they were not asked to. We can throw them into buckets by administration:

George H. W. Bush Richard J. Kerr (September 1, 1991-November 6, 1991) Robert M. Gates (November 6, 1991-January 20, 1993) Bill Clinton Admiral William O. Studeman (January 21, 1993-February 5, 1993) R. James Woolsey (February 5, 1993-January 10, 1995) Admiral William O. Studeman (January 11, 1995-May 9, 1995) John M. Deutch (May 10, 1995-December 15, 1996) George J. Tenet (December 16, 1996-July 11, 1997) George W. Bush George J. Tenet (July 11, 1997-July 11, 2004)

Why the gaps? As it turns out, the list of “the twelve” omits the entire Clinton administration! It would be irresponsible not to speculate. We can throw out Directors with very short tenures (Kerr, Studeman). Of the remainder, each has a scandal or debacle associated with them. Gates, Iran-Contra, albeit unindicted; Woolsey, Aldich Ames; Deutch, mishandling of classified information; Tenet, telling George W. Bush that Iraq WMD intelligence was a “slam dunk.” If indeed scandals and debacles account for these Directors not being asked to sign, then we remind ourselves that torture, extraordinary rendition, warrantless surveillance, whacking US citizens without due process, and impunity for crimes are not scandals or debacles.

Second, let’s look at “the twelve” as a class, a collectivity. (This research took more time than I thought it would, partly because Google is useless; I ended up aggregating information from WikiPedia, LittleSis, History Commons, and SourceWatch; Bloomberg results turned out to be too patchy. I’m sure that this table is not exhaustive.) I added the Degree column to see if, like the galaxy brains Obama hired to handle the post-Crash economy, they all came from Harvard and Yale (or, in a pinch Princeton, etc.). In fact they do not, although Morell, Petraeus, and Haines have top-rank degrees, if you consider Georgetown top-rank; the intelligence community is or at least was a career open to talents. Skipping over the Malefactions column for a moment, we come to Media Venues, where we see that four of the twelve are employed as media commentators, and two of the twelve (Hayden and Clapper) are ubiquitous. If we think of a security clearance as a credential, and we think of a credential as an option on (a property interest in[4]) a future income stream, we can see that the financial impact of security clearance revocation is considerable (cue sound of smashing rice bowls). The rice bowls become even more clear when we turn to the Corporate Boards column. Finally, it’s clear that “the twelve” are densely networked together through shared think tank membership, especially via The Atlantic Council and The Committee to Investigate Russia. In short, we should give consideration to the idea that “the twelve” are at least partially driven by shared class interests, in addition to favoring torture, extraordinary rendition, warrantless surveillance, and whacking US citizens without due process as instruments of national policy.

Finally, let’s return to the issue of standing. You know Leo Rosten’s definition of chutzpath: “That quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.” The chutzpanik[5], in other words, does not have standing, and “the twelve” are all chutzpaniks. Here, I confess that age may be working against me; I grew up when Civics 101 was still a thing, in the long ago world where security theatre had not yet taken over the airports and the schools. But if you were born in 2001, and are now 17, possibly getting ready for college, my world is not yours. Your world includes the destruction of the Fourth Amendment by mass surveillance, torture as a routine instrument of statecraft, a State that whacks people (U.S. citizens or no) with no due process through sudden violence from the sky, where made-up fantasies (like WMDs) are used to drive the country into war, and where elite impunity for “wrongdoing” and crimes is the norm. Scan the Malefactions column, and you will see how hard “the twelve” worked to birth that our dystopian hellhole of a surveillance state. That is what “the twelve” — in a sublime act of chutzpah — deem “service of this nation.” They should have no standing to make such a judgment, either for their “service” or for their depraved idea of what a nation should be.[6]

NOTES

[1] In essence, “extraordinary rendition” means that the United States would kidnap an individual, then fly them to a country — 54 in all participated — where, unlike the US, torture is legal, and torture them. Well and good, unless they kidnap and torture the wrong guy. Gina Haspel, unprosecuted by Barack “We tortured some folks” Obama, and made head of the CIA by Trump, made her bones by torturing rendered individuals. So you see why Assange might have trust issues about leaving the Ecuadorian embassy. Ronald Reagan’s Department of Justice gave extraordinary rendition the OK in 1988, back in the days of William Webster.

[2] The “warrantless surveillance” story blew up in December 2005 with this story in the Times by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau: “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts“; although Risen had the story while Bush was running for his second term in 2004, Times editors suppressed it. “Obama voted for the “FISA Reform” bill to give retroactive immunity to the telcos for their part in Bush’s program in July 2008, immediately after he was nominated as the Democrat candidate for President, after promising to filibuster such a bill in January.

[3] Cf. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong” (Abraham Lincoln).

[4] Here we recall Madison’s view that factions are founded on shared property interests.

[5] This, also from Rosen, is useful, too: “Chutzpanik: The man who shouts ‘Help! Help!” while beating you up.'”

[6] Yes, some of the signatories are “better” than others. But they all signed the letter, so “All for one, one for all.” And have any of them resigned? Of course not. “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”