Interrogations Shake-Up: Blair Needs a HIG
It's hard to find any clear winners in the new interrogations set-up confirmed by the White House on Monday, but it's easy to spot the losers: Leon Panetta and Dennis Blair.
Thanks to the Bush administration's armchair Torquemadas, the CIA is being stripped of its interrogation privileges.
But the top U.S. intelligence official won't be inheriting the whip.
Henceforth, interrogation policy and operations are going to be run from the White House National Security Council, or NSC, the White House said Monday, confirming the scoop by The Washington Post's Anne E. Kornblut.
Supposedly, the adults are now in charge.
As if to show how serious they are, they've even given the new unit a snappy acronym (a prerequisite in the spook world): HIG, for High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.
Gimme a HIG.
But even worse, from the CIA's point of view, the HIG will be "based at" the hated FBI -- whatever "based" means.
"What's their role going to be?" a top former FBI official wondered. "Take out the trash?"
No one there seemed to know right off.
No doubt there are even longer faces in the watering holes along Route 123 in McLean, down the road from the CIA's front gate, where the spies go to grouse.
"The director of the HIG is expected to come from the FBI, and the deputy will be selected from one of the intelligence agencies, such as the CIA," Kornblut reported.
"Such as the CIA," not necessarily from the CIA.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department may well put some of them in jail for the tough-guy tactics they used on terrorist suspects right after 9/11, the White House said.
It's no wonder Leon Panetta had a "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House last month, according to a report Monday by ABC.
The CIA director's nose had already been out of joint ever since Blair, the navy admiral who heads the uber-spook Office of National Intelligence, decided to terminate the CIA's longtime prerogative of naming station chiefs, the top U.S. intelligence official in American embassies.
When Panetta howled, Sen. Diane Feinstein, wielding the gavel at the Senate Intelligence Committee, essentially told him to shut up.
Now the HIG. What's a CIA director to do? Commit hari-kari?
But now Blair has reason to be unhappy, too: If the ODNI doesn't deserve the HIG, what's its role in this world?
It was set-up after 9/11 to put the 16 intelligence agencies into a harness.
It calls itself a "Globally Networked and Integrated Intelligence Enterprise."
Its "strategy" is to - take a breath -- "Integrate foreign, military, and domestic intelligence capabilities through policy, personnel and technology actions to provide decision advantage to policy makers, warfighters, homeland security officials and law enforcement personnel."
Sure, it doesn't have sway over Pentagon intelligence operations. It doesn't control the FBI.
But its mission statement would seem to encompass any high-level, multi-agency interrogations coordinating effort, like the HIG, would it not?
Giving it to the National Security Council, moreover, seems like the worst foreign policy idea since Oliver North was indicted for selling arms to the Iranians.
Reporters were having trouble figuring it all out.
"Does the establishment of this group within the FBI ... mean that the CIA is out of the terror interrogation business?" " one asked at the White House briefing on Monday,
"Oh, no, absolutely not," said spokesman Bill Burton.
"So the CIA will have a seat at that table?"
"Yes," Burton said.
Sure, below the salt?
Stripped of any dignity they once had, don't expect Panetta or Blair to stick around for the after-party.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department may well put some of them in jail for the tough-guy tactics they used on terrorist suspects right after 9/11, the White House said.
It's no wonder Leon Panetta had a "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House last month, according to a report Monday by ABC.
The CIA director's nose had already been out of joint ever since Blair, the navy admiral who heads the uber-spook Office of National Intelligence, decided to terminate the CIA's longtime prerogative of naming station chiefs, the top U.S. intelligence official in American embassies.
When Panetta howled, Sen. Diane Feinstein, wielding the gavel at the Senate Intelligence Committee, essentially told him to shut up.
Now the HIG. What's a CIA director to do? Commit hari-kari?
But now Blair has reason to be unhappy, too: If the ODNI doesn't deserve the HIG, what's its role in this world?
It was set-up after 9/11 to put the 16 intelligence agencies into a harness.
It calls itself a "Globally Networked and Integrated Intelligence Enterprise."
Its "strategy" is to - take a breath -- "Integrate foreign, military, and domestic intelligence capabilities through policy, personnel and technology actions to provide decision advantage to policy makers, warfighters, homeland security officials and law enforcement personnel."
Sure, it doesn't have sway over Pentagon intelligence operations. It doesn't control the FBI.
But its mission statement would seem to encompass any high-level, multi-agency interrogations coordinating effort, like the HIG, would it not?
Giving it to the National Security Council, moreover, seems like the worst foreign policy idea since Oliver North was indicted for selling arms to the Iranians.
Reporters were having trouble figuring it all out.
"Does the establishment of this group within the FBI ... mean that the CIA is out of the terror interrogation business?" " one asked at the White House briefing on Monday,
"Oh, no, absolutely not," said spokesman Bill Burton.
"So the CIA will have a seat at that table?"
"Yes," Burton said.
Sure, below the salt?
Stripped of any dignity they once had, don't expect Panetta or Blair to stick around for the after-party.
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