Intelligence agencies tout transparency by Josh Gerstein.
From:
A year and a half after Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations changed intelligence work forever, the U.S. intelligence community is formally embracing the value of transparency. Whether America’s spies and snoopers are ready to take that idea to heart remains an open question.
On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a set of principles that amounts to a formal acknowledgement that intelligence agencies had tilted so far in the direction of secrecy that it actually undermined their work by harming public trust.
“The thought here was we needed to strategically get on the same page in terms of what we were trying to do with transparency,” DNI Civil Liberties Protection Officer Alex Joel told POLITICO Monday. “The intelligence community is by design focused on keeping secrets rather than disclosing them. We have to figure out how we can work with our very dedicated work force to be transparent while they’re keeping secrets.”
The principles (posted here) are highly general and include a call to “provide appropriate transparency to enhance public understanding about the IC’s mission and what the IC does to accomplish it (including its structure and effectiveness).” The new statement is vague on whether specific programs or capabilities should be made public. In addition, the principle on handling of classified information appears largely to restate the terms of an executive order President Barack Obama issued on the subject in 2009.
If I understand the gist of this story correctly, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, the same James Clapper that lied to Congress about the NSA, wants regain the public’s trust. Really?
Hmmm, how about James Clapper and every appointed official in the security services resigning as a start. The second step would be congressional appointment of oversight personnel who can go anywhere, see any information, question anyone, throughout the security apparatus and report back to Congress. Those reports back to Congress can elide details where necessary but by rotating the oversight personnel, they won’t become captives of the agencies where they work.
BTW, the intelligence community is considering how it can release more information to avoid “program shock” from Snowden like disclosures. Not that they have released any such information but they are thinking about it. OK, I’m thinking about winning $1 million in the next lottery drawing. Doesn’t mean that it is going to happen.
Let’s get off the falsehood merry-go-round that Clapper and others want to keep spinning. Unless and until all the known liars are out of government and kept out of government, including jobs with security contractors, there is no more reason to trust our intelligence community any more than we would trust the North Korean intelligence community.
Perhaps more of a reason to trust the North Korean intelligence community because at least we know whose side they are on. As far as the DNI and the rest of the U.S. security community, hard to say whose side they are on. Booz Allen’s? NSA’s? CIA’s? Some other contractors? Certainly not on the side of Congress and not on the side of the American people, despite their delusional pretensions to the contrary.
No doubt there is a role for a well-functioning and accountable intelligence community for the United States. That in no way could be applied to our current intelligence community, which is is a collection of parochial silos more concerned with guarding their turf and benefiting their contractors than any semblance of service to the American people.
Congress needs to end the intelligence community as we know it and soon. In the not distant future, the DNI and not the President will be the decision maker in Washington.