Former Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan at a think tank conference

But today, during a conference at an Israeli think tank closely associated with the country’s security establishment, Dagan further explained his opposition to a strike. He told the audience there — in line with previous U.S., U.N. and Israeli estimates that Iran has not yet made a decision to produce a weapon — that attacking Iran would spur the Islamic Republic into accelerating its nuclear program and push for a bomb. Dagan said:

A strike could accelerate the procurement of the bomb. An attack isn’t enough to stop the project. …

We would provide them with the legitimacy to achieve nuclear capabilities for military purposes.

In a sign of a consensus emerging among former top Israeli security officials, Dagan shares the newly expressed view — that attacking Iran would give the Islamic Republic every reason to boot out U.N. nuclear inspectors, make a “dash” for a weapon, and rally its population to that goal — with other former security chiefs. Former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence head Shlomo Gazit and former internal security chief Yuval Diskin have expressed nearly identical sentiments. In addition, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Thomas Pickering has expressed such views as well.

A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and consequences of a strike — not least the one raised by Dagan today — have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis. Perhaps Dagan’s latest comments will lead to a broader discussion about the possible consequences of an attack on Iran.

Iranian Nuclear Facility

Now, three Members of Congress — Reps. John Conyers (D-MI), Keith Ellison (D-MN), and Barbara Lee (D-CA) — are introducing an amendment to an intelligence authorization bill that would demand a government report about the possible consequences of an attack. Conyers and Ellison, among others, also used the amendment process to tag the Defense authorization — another big appropriations bill likely to pass — with language stating that Congress was not authorizing war with Iran.

The first public comments by members on the amendment, which has the support of pro-peace groups, could come this afternoon when the Rules Committee meets to decide on its inclusion in the larger bill. The amendment, Section 306 of the new bill, reads in full that:

Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of National Intelligence shall submit to the congressional intelligence committees a report containing an assessment of the consequences of a military strike against Iran.

The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has already said that Iran has not made a decision to build a nuclear weapon — an estimate in line with reported U.S. assessments and also the U.N. atomic watchdog and Israeli assessments — and made clear that he thinks Iran can be dissuaded from building a bomb.

But his views on the consequences of a strike are unlikely to satisfy militaristic voices in Congress. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a prominent hawk on Iran, publicly disagreed with Clapper’s Iran assessments during a hearing this winter. Last year, Graham called on Clapper to resign.

While President Obama, like others, considers a potential Iranian nuclear weapon a threat, this Spring he lamented the “loose talk of war” and called on those who are pushing an attack on Iran to hold open discussions about the possible consequences:

If some of these folks think that it’s time to launch a war, they should say so and they should explain to the american people exactly why they would do that and what the consequences would be.

Instead of hawkish bluster, the Obama administration maintains its options while pushing a negotiated diplomatic solution, which the administration considers the “best and most permanent way” to end the crisis. That’s because Israeli and American experts have noted that attacking could push Iran into building a weapon, and potentially ignite a regional war. Those are exactly the sorts of potential consequences of an attack on Iran that the Obama administration has called for a forthright conversation on, which Conyers, Ellison and Lee are now bolstering. And its exactly the conversation the hawks don’t want to have.

Pompeo specifically addressed Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. In January, Clapper related during Hill testimony an assessment on whether Iran had made a decision to build a nuclear weapon. “We don’t believe [Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei] has made that decision yet,” Clapper said. By saying “we,” Clapper was not speaking for himself, but for the bureaucracies that he leads and coordinates between, collectively known as the U.S. intelligence community.

But that didn’t stop Pompeo from taking a wildly overwrought shot at Clapper on the floor of the House:

Our president’s intelligence chief has said that the Iranians have not yet decided to build a bomb. To me, these words are reminiscent to those of Neville Chamberlain, who doubted that the Nazi command had finalized its decision to invade all of Europe, both East and West. The threat was either ignored or considered too irrational to be possible by a timorous and distracted world bent on avoiding conflict.

Watch the video:

Pompeo’s attack on Clapper — a Vietnam veteran who made a career in intelligence — seems a thinly-veiled call to military action against Iran, albeit one based on a persistent and flimsy counter-factual about World War II history and preventative wars.

War hawks frequently make Chamberlain comparisons, it seems, to those who express any reluctance whatsoever to go to war. Those who so much as urge caution get charged with “appeasement,” as President Obama has been. Likewise, hawks laud Winston Churchill — though that historic analogy, too, is imperfect for their purposes.

A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, and the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The Obama administration vows to keep “all options on the table” to deal with the possibility, but the efficacy and consequences of a strike raise serious questions, leading the U.S. to pursue, for the meantime, a pressure track aimed at a negotiated resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis.

One wonders if Pompeo would make his shocking comparison with Chamberlain for Israeli intelligence officials, who’ve also reportedly concluded Iran hasn’t decided to build a nuclear bomb.

In excerpts from the interview reported last week, Dagan called the Iranian regime “rational” and added that “an attack on Iran before you’re exploring all other approaches is not the right way how to do it.” Last night, the full exchange revealed the thinking behind Dagan’s comments.

He expounded on the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran: that it could embolden the Islamic Republic to foment instability, and that some of Iran’s leaders “have said they want to destroy Israel.” But he added that the issue was “an international problem.” Citing President Obama’s stating “openly that the military option is on the table,” Dagan said he would “prefer that Americans will do it” — but only if it comes down to that. Dagan, whom CBS reporter Leslie Stahl said had a “44-year resume as an effective killing machine,” instead urged restraint and said there was “more time” to run the pressure and engagement tracks.

Dagan outlined the some of the costs and limited benefits of launching an attack now on Iran’s nuclear program:

DAGAN: We are going to ignite, at least from my point of view, a regional war. And wars, you know how they start. You never know how you are ending it…

It will be a devastating impact on our ability to continue with our daily life. I think that Israel will be in a very serious situation for quite a time.

[...]

STAHL: You said, “There’s no military attack that can halt the Iranian nuclear project. It could only delay it.”

DAGAN: Yes, I agree.

Watch a video of the exchange:

Dagan said that Iran is “maybe not exactly rational based on what I call Western thinking, but no doubt that they are considering all the implications of their action.” That assertion tracks with what the top U.S. military officer, top U.S. intelligence officer, and President Obama have said about the Iranian regime: that it operates on a cost-benefit analysis based on its interests, and can therefore be dissuaded from pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Top U.S. intelligence and defense officials don’t think Iran has made a decision to pursue a bomb. The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), did not conclude that Iran was building a bomb in its latest report on the program last month, despite warning about “serious concerns” that it is on a nuclear weapons track.

Last month, delivering a speech to the Israeli American Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama ruled out containment of a nuclear-armed Iran, warning that an Iranian bomb posed a threat to the U.S. and its allies, as well as the international non-proliferation regime. But his administration thinks a negotiated, diplomatic end to the crisis was the “best and most permanent way” to end the standoff.

In response to a question from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said, “[I]f the decision has been made to press on with a nuclear weapon — and there are certain things they have not done yet to eventuate that — that this would be based on a cost-benefit analysis. We don’t believe [Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei]‘s made that decision yet.”

After introducing Iran’s cost-benefit analysis, Wyden then pressed Clapper on what factors might inform it:

WYDEN: What could convince them, in your view, that their hold on power is being undermined by their nuclear effort?

CLAPPER: Well, I think a restive population because of economic extremis that the country of Iran is incurring. If you look at the plunging value of the Rial [and] the extremely high unemployment rate in Iran. This, I think, could give rise to resentment and discontent among the populace. And this is not to say there haven’t been other examples of that elsewhere in the region.

Watch the video:

Later in the hearing, Clapper added, “I think they do pay attention to international opinion and what others think of them.”

In his prepared testimony (PDF), Clapper said Iran had shifted to a more aggressive posture against the U.S. — even on U.S. soil, as a foiled alleged plot against the Saudi ambassador in D.C. shows — “in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

For the unfamiliar, John le Carre’s novel and the screen adaptations of it follow George Smiley (Gary Oldman), a dedicated spy and analyst, after his boss and mentor, Control, is disgraced and both leave the agency. In a fiendishly complicated series of events, Smiley returns to root out a mole who has penetrated MI-6—known as the Circus—and to claim Control’s chair from the people who have wrested it from him.

The men Control, and then Smiley, suspect of being the mole are played by a set of British actors so incomparable that the makers of ensemble dreck like New Year’s Eve would weep with shame if they had any upon seeing the roster. Colin Firth is the polished, charming Bill Haydon (who happens to be sleeping with Smiley’s faithless wife); Toby Jones is Percy Alleline, an ambitious climber Bill refers to at one point as “a poisonous dwarf”; David Dencik is Toby Esterhase, a refugee from the Iron Curtain; Ciaran Hands is tough Roy Bland. The team Smiley puts together to assist him includes damaged agent-runner Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch); violent and emotional scalp-hunter Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy); and intermittently disgraced Jerry Westerby (Stephen Graham) and Connie Sachs (Kathy Burke).

Even without the dispiriting quest for the mole, spycraft is, in this world, a rather grim enterprise. “All my boys. All my lovely boys,” reminisces Connie when George comes to visit her at the university where she’s nested after her expulsion from the Circus. “That was a good time.” “That was the war, Connie,” George reminds her. But even though there’s something sick about preferring a hot war to a cold one, Connie’s yearning for clarity makes a certain kind of sense. She’s tougher—and nuttier—than Rose Byrne’s oft-blown off secret agent in X-Men: First Class. “I don’t know about you, George,” she says when her guest arrives, “but I feel seriously under-fucked.” When Percy shuts down her investigation into Poliakof, the Russian cultural attache who is running the mole, it’s done less with the misunderstanding of First Class and with a more active malice. “You’re losing your sense of proportion,” he tells her. “Perhaps it’s time you moved into the real world.” It’s an expulsion from paradise with Percy as little tin God. Connie’s mourning a time when not only were the enemy and the tactics well-defined but when she was valuable and respected. (In a nice touch, we catch a glimpse of graffiti that reads “The Future Is Female” on a dingy London wall in the film’s climactic sequence.)

She’s not the only one. When Smiley recounts a meeting where he tried to turn Karla, the Soviet spymaster who’s placed the mole, it’s with a kind of grubbiness. “The Americans had had him tortured,” he recalls wearily, drunkenly. “No fingernails. It’s incredibly hot.” When he comes down to it, what he tells Karla is not that life is better in Britain, but that it’s time to recognize that both societies are irredeemably flawed. The mole, when he finally confesses, tells Smiley “It was an aesthetic choice as much as a moral one. The West has become so very ugly.” Both heroes and villains are very tired. This is the kind of movie where a middle-aged spy going in for the kill takes off his shoes to avoid making noise, unholsters his gun, and pops an antacid.

Which is not to say these characters don’t feel things, and feel them violently. In the memory of the MI-6 staff Christmas party that frames the movie, we see Control sew the seeds of Percy’s future hatred of him, mocking him over the punch: “Did you mix this? You Calvinistic, penny-pinching Scott! It’ll take us five hours to get drunk on this monkey’s piss.” And we see Smiley’s strings cut at that same party when he discovered Bill and his wife together in a dark room while the rest of the staff sing the Communist InternationaleSoviet national anthem, conducted by a Santa Claus in a Lenin mask. Ricki cries as he describes the Soviet woman he’s fallen in love with and wants brought back for him. “I want a family, thank you,” he tells Smiley. “I don’t want to end up like your lot.”

But like in First Class, it’s the tenderness between men that drives some of the movie’s most emotional sequences—and critical plot points. Control’s firing is the result of a botched operation in Budapest in which agent Jim Prideaux is shot. Most reviews of Tinker, Tailor will single out Gary Oldman’s performance as Smiley, which is indeed remarkable, but for me the career-defining moment may actually be Mark Strong’s turn as Prideaux. Thought to have died in Budapest, Jim was actually tortured and returned to the UK, after which he was exiled from MI-6 to a position as substitute teacher where he impresses his snotty, swotty pupils by killing a bird that invades the classroom and befriends Bill Roach, the terribly vulnerable new boy parked at school after his parents’ divorce. Before setting off for Budapest, Control warned him to “Trust no one, Jim. Especially not in the mainstream.” It’s a warning that seems to apply to both his spy work and his cramped private life, glimpsed in a photograph in Connie’s home of him and Bill Haydon together betraying a closeness more than friendship. When Jim befriends Bill Roach, it’s with a mix of recognition and rue. “You’re a good watcher…us loners always are,” he tells him. And later when Smiley comes to visit, Jim coaches his student in the observation of his strangely still mentor, asking “What’s the matter with him? Doesn’t he like us?”

X-Men: First Class did a beautiful job of communicating what it’s like to have someone recognize—and value—the most secret part of yourself, and the power you can recognize when you have that kind of support. Tinker, Tailor is an extended meditation on emotions that First Class addressed in its final sequence, the emotional tally when that bond is severed or that profound trust is betrayed. It’s a point not confined to the tragedy of Jim’s life: the price of working for the Circus is clear in a scene where Smiley orders one of his helpers to clean up anything in his private life that could be used against him. The man goes home and breaks up with his boyfriend, sitting stricken in his chair as his lover snaps at him “If there’s someone else, you can tell me. I’m a grownup.”

The ending of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is one of the campiest, most floridly emotional sequences I’ve seen on film all year, set to Julio Iglesias’s rendition of “La Mer,” and jumping from a long-ago Christmas party that includes an exchange of tender, desiring glances with the same power as the opening sequence of Shame; to an assassination; to a private coronation. It’s one of the most surprising, gratifyingly weird things I’ve experienced in a long time, a testament to the value of restraint so when you say you mean it the audience will know you aren’t kidding. And it’s a powerful statement about the casualties of the so-called Cold War, and the price paid by the people who kept it that way.

In one of the most detailed media accounts, the Washington Post describes leaks (some named) that Iran is working on a nuclear trigger that would be necessary for a bomb and that foreign experts helped Iran overcome key hurdles in the 1990s. And the Financial Times writes that the IAEA discovered, thanks to satellite images, a chamber made to contain explosive tests, with a Western diplomat commenting that “There is no smoking gun in the report but a gradual and telling accumulation of evidence of Iran’s intent.”

However, overlooked in much of the attention given to the Iranian nuclear program is that, while the IAEA report is likely to conclusively belie Iran’s claim of a peaceful nuclear energy program by pointing towards developments tied only to weapons, it doesn’t mean that the Iranians are on the verge of testing a nuclear bomb. Instead, it points toward a so-called “breakout capability.” The Central Intelligence Agency defines the term as:

Knowledge, infrastructure, and materiel, which usually lie beneath the threshold of suspicion, but which can be rapidly adapted or reorganized to allow for weaponization processes to be undertaken. Such capabilities require pre-disposed resources and often employ dual-use technology, equipment, or knowledge.

In other words, a “breakout capability” is not the same as an imminent Iranian nuclear weapon, leaving the U.S. and the West some — albeit less and less — room yet to maneuver to avoid what would be a disasterous military adventure to delay Iran’s nuclear program by one to three years.

That assessment still corresponds with comments made earlier this year by the Obama administration Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. He had this exchange with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI):

LEVIN: Now, relative to Iran, Director Clapper, you mentioned in your statement that you do not, we do not know, talking about the Intelligence Community, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons. I read into that that Iran has not made a decision as of this point to restart its nuclear weapons program. Is that correct?

CLAPPER: Yes, sir.

Clapper said he made his claims with “high level of confidence,” and they match up with what press reports indicate is the consensus opinion of U.S. intelligence agencies.

A 2007 U.S. intelligence assessment concluded Iran had halted its weapons program in 2003. While, in the Post today, nuclear expert David Albright said Iran’s “program never really stopped,” the Arms Control Association (ACA) said in a statement to ThinkProgress that “Clapper’s statement is not inconsistent with the notion that some weapons-related [research and development] has resumed which is not part of a determined, integrated weapons-development program of the type that Iran maintained prior to 2003.”

Former top intelligence analyst and now Georgetown professor Paul Pillar told ThinkProgress by email:

Major Iranian decisions still have to be made before Iran produces any nuclear weapon. Such decisions will depend heavily on U.S. and western policies toward Iran — especially how much those policies constitute a threat that Iran must deter, and conversely how much it appears that an improved relationship with the West is possible.

As CAP’s Matt Duss wrote last week, “Beating the diplomacy drums may not be as satisfying to some as beating the other kind, but it remains the most effective way to protect the U.S. and strengthen international resolve toward changing Iran’s behavior.”

It is unacceptable that Iran is on the brink of testing a nuclear weapon while our intelligence analysts continue to deny that an Iranian nuclear weapons program exists.

The accusations would be hilarious if they weren’t so serious. In essence, Fleitz is writing that the consensus of the U.S.’s 16 intelligence agencies — that Iran has still not made the decision to build a nuclear weapon — should be thrown out and everyone should listen to him.

But Fleitz’s own tenure in government was so plagued by scandal and deeply flawed and biased analysis that it raised hackles from experts worldwide. He espoused a worldview that considers anything insufficiently edgy or hawkish enough “wimpy.” Here are some of Fleitz’s greatest hits:

– Fleitz was a CIA officer who, in 2002, took on a position as reflexive überhawk John Bolton‘s chief of staff, where, wrangling with the intelligence community about Cuba’s (non-existent) biological weapons program, he wrote to his boss that it is a “political judgment as to how to interpret [intelligence] data.”

– Fleitz was also reportedly involved in the leaking of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name to the media in retaliation for her husband’s public questioning of the Bush administration’s assertions about Iraq’s WMDs. Fleitz worked in the same CIA office as Plame and reportedly passed her name to Bolton, who gave it to I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby‘s aides.

– By 2006, Fleitz made his way to the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee as a staffer under then-GOP Chairman Pete Hoekstra. In August of that year, Fleitz authored a report about Iran’s nuclear program that was so overblown that it elicited a letter of complaint about “erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information” from the U.N. atomic watchdog.

Given his record of sloppy analysis, bullying, and close association with some of the Bush administration’s leading hawks, there is a special irony in Fleitz’s complaint in the Journal that the intelligence community is “affected by the wave of risk aversion that has afflicted U.S. intelligence analysis since the 2003 Iraq War.” Perhaps Fleitz was the perfect man to write an op-ed for a paper that’s already more or less called for war with Iran.

Today, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) rejected these assertions. She was asked by a reporter whether the intelligence that led to the killing was the result of waterboarding and other harsh treatment of detainees. She responded:

We are in the process of a big study on the detention and interrogation of the detainees on the Intelligence Committee. The Republicans have pulled out of the study. So this has been carried out by the Democratic staff essentially. They have gone through more than 3 million emails, cables, pieces of paper looking for this.

To date, the answer to your question is no. Nothing has been found to indicate this came out of Guantanamo. And people were questioned, but there were no positive answers as to the identity of this number one courier.

Asked a few minutes later whether she considers the Bin Laden killing any kind of “vindication” of the Bush-era torture program, Feinstein said, “Absolutely not. I do not.” She continued, “I happen to know a good deal about how those interrogations were conducted, and in my view, nothing justifies the kind of procedures that were used.” Watch it:

Clapper has held a variety of military positions in his long career, including being an assistant chief of staff for intelligence at the Air Force headquarters in Washington from 1990-1991 and being director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2001-2006. Perhaps his strongest advocate is Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who told reporters that Clapper has “the temperament, experience and chemistry with leaders in the intelligence community to succeed as the nation’s top intelligence officer.” Gates even went as far as to joke that “when the president first asked me about this, I kind of winced with pain because the idea of losing Jim at the Defense Department is a real loss for us.”

However, the Wall Street Journal reports, “the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, which is responsible for confirming him, have both publicly opposed his appointment, favoring a civilian for the role.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who is the top Democrat, has concerns that Clapper may be “beholden to the Pentagon’s interests.” Meanwhile, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has complained that Clapper has been “evasive and slow to respond to questions and letters from members of the committee.”

Liberal critics are pointing out that Clapper, while serving as the head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, helped assist the Bush administration lie that Iraq possessed illegal weapons of mass destruction. Speaking to reporters in October 2003, Clapper suggested that the illicit weapons had “unquestionably” been moved to Syria:

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material “unquestionably” had been moved out of Iraq. [...]

He said he was providing a personal assessment. But he said “the obvious conclusion one draws” was that there “may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material.” A spokesman for General Clapper’s agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general’s statement.

Former Bush adviser Karl Rove cites Clapper’s theory in his book Courage and Consequence to defend claims by the Bush administration that it believed Iraq posed an imminent security threat to the United States.

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reports that the White House had asked Clapper to step down from his current Pentagon role before being nominated to ease concerns about his military background. Clapper refused because he “does not want to be out of a job if his confirmation hearing doesn’t go well.”

One person who was in the room for Tuesday’s intelligence briefing said Bond appeared to fall asleep for 10 to 15 minutes, but that he and other senators had spirited exchanges with the briefers. Among those there to answer questions were top officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Justice Department and the National Counterterrorism Center.

As secretary of state, Henry Kissinger canceled a U.S. warning against carrying out international political assassinations that was to have gone to Chile and two neighboring nations just days before a former ambassador was killed by Chilean agents on Washington’s Embassy Row in 1976, a newly released State Department cable shows. [...]

Discovered in recent weeks by the National Security Archive, a non-profit research organization, the Sept. 16, 1976 cable is among tens of thousands of declassified State Department documents recently made available to the public. [...]

In the Sept. 16, 1976 cable, the topic of one paragraph is listed as “Operation Condor,” preceded by the words “(KISSINGER, HENRY A.) SUBJECT: ACTIONS TAKEN.” The cable states that “secretary declined to approve message to Montevideo” Uruguay “and has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter.”

The fact that this stayed classified for so long is yet another data point for the principle that we have far too much formal government secrecy in the United States. Recently there’s been a lot of emphasis on “transparency” in things like fundraising, earmarks, etc. And that’s all to the good. But the most important powers of the government are the life-and-death powers wielded by the national security establishment and they remain largely shrouded in secrecy. What operational danger would revealing the truth about this cable have created for the United States? It was just a decades-long effort to help Kissinger and the Ford administration evade democratic accountability for their policies.

Sulick followed his lecture with a lengthy question-and-answer session, although he prefaced it by saying he would not comment on any issue that might influence policy. Questions were submitted by Fordham students in advance and read aloud by USG members. When asked if the Obama administration’s ban on waterboarding has had serious consequences on the war against terror, Sulick answered in general terms.

“I don’t think we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint,” he said, “but I don’t want to talk about [it from] a legal, moral or ethical standpoint.”

The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein writes that Sulick is in charge of “the CIA’s spy handlers, counterspies and covert action specialists — the so-called ‘dirty tricks’ people- — along with some elements of the FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency.” Spencer Ackerman notes that “for the record, it was the Bush administration that actually banned waterboarding after using it to horrific effect, a fact that has caused no end of cognitive dissonance in conservative torture advocates.”

Executive power issues are practically custom-built for hypocrisy and promise-breaking. Thins that look important when someone else is President, especially when that someone else is as loathesome as George W Bush, suddenly look not-so-crucial when the President is you and the executive branch is run by your friends and allies. And Sharon Theimer reports that there’ve been plenty of disappointments in the Obama Era:

Federal agencies haven’t lived up to President Barack Obama’s promise of a more open government, increasing their use of legal exemptions to keep records secret during his first year in office.

An Associated Press review of Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the use of nearly every one of the law’s nine exemptions to withhold information from the public rose in fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.

To be fair, some of FY 2009 happened before Obama was inaugurated, so to get a totally fair comparison we’ll need to wait for the FY 2010 data. Meanwhile, Obama is threatening to veto an intelligence authorization bill over two oversight-related issues. One is that they don’t like “a provision that would force the administration to widen the circle of lawmakers who are informed about covert operations and other sensitive activities.” In other words, they want to keep congressional oversight of covert ops toothless. The other issue has to do with an investigation of the investigation into the anthrax attacks. I’m not at all familiar with this issue, but Marcy Wheeler has a brief explanation of it.

This morning on ABC’s This Week, Center for American Progress Action Fund President and CEO John Podesta noted that intelligence agents have skillfully secured the cooperation of Abdulmuttalab’s family. Because his family was assured that Abdulmuttalab was not being tortured, they worked with the FBI to convince the terrorist to talk. Abdulmuttalab then provided intelligence, some of which was apparently used to capture terrorists in Malaysia.

“I think you can huff and puff as former Governor Palin likes to do, but the proof’s in the pudding — he’s talking, they’ve gotten actionable intelligence, they’re acting on it,” Podesta said. When conservative pundit Peggy Noonan complained that the administration shouldn’t have told the public that Abdulmuttalab was cooperating, Podesta suggested disclosure may not have been necessary if political leaders like McConnell weren’t criticizing intelligence agents:

PODESTA: Maybe if all those politicians stopped attacking the FBI – Mitch McConnell likened the FBI to a Larry King interview – maybe if they stopped with the politics –

RUTH MARCUS: Now that’s cruel.

PODESTA: Well, no, I think he owes the FBI an apology. But if they’d stop with the politics, maybe they wouldn’t have to respond.

Watch it:

Later, Podesta defended the FBI: “I tend to listen to the professionals, and other people tend to listen to Governor Palin.”

He also referenced Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-AL) “blanket hold” on Obama’s 70 executive nominees — two of whom include the head of the State Department intelligence official and the Homeland Security intelligence official. “What gives here?” Podesta asked. “Are these people serious or are they just playing politics?

Moreover, Mr. Obama eliminated a rule put in place by former President George W. Bush in 2003 that allowed the leader of the intelligence community to veto decisions by an interagency panel to declassify information. Instead, spy agencies who object to such a decision will have to appeal to the president.

Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, was cautiously optimistic about Obama’s move, saying that while it depended on the implementation, “there are some real innovations here” that represent “a major step forward” towards rolling back government secrecy. Obama’s establishment of new National Declassification Center at the National Archives is expected to speed the declassification of “more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents” that are currently backlogged.

The suspect reportedly had explosive powder taped to his leg and tried to light it on fire. He told investigators he was given the device by al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. “This guy claims he is tied to al Qaeda, specifically in Yemen,” the official said. “He claims he was on orders from al Qaeda in Yemen. Who knows if that’s true?”

Two passengers aboard the plane noticed the attempted attack, and “a third person jumped on the man and subdued him, an airline official told NBC News.” Flight attendants ran to get the fire extinguisher and the fire was soon doused. One passenger, Syed Jafry, remarked, “It was the time to be proud to be an American for sure.”

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), the ranking member on the House intelligence committee and current candidate for governor of Michigan, saw an opportunity to score quick political points:

“It’s not surprising,” U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Holland Republican, said of the alleged terrorist attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight in Detroit. … “People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration,” Hoekstra said. [...]

Hoekstra hadn’t yet been briefed on the incident but said he is already calling or the Obama administration to meet with Intelligence Committee members to fully inform them about the alleged terrorism attempt at the Detroit airport.

In an effort to try to prove his case for why the Obama administration is failing to “connect the dots,” Hoekstra issued this condemnatory tweet last night:

While Hoekstra hadn’t been briefed, his colleague Rep. Peter King (R-NY) was. And King — the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee — wasted no time alerting the media to much of what he was told. King rushed to Fox and CNN last night to begin issuing blame against security officials who allowed the suspect to board. “His name was in a database indicating significant terrorist connections,” King said, adding, “I’m not trying to be a Monday morning quarterback here…but let’s see what was missed.”

The Obama administration announced that “additional security measures are being taken in response to the incident, without raising the airline threat level.”

MADDOW: Why is it Pete Hoekstra who’s taking it upon himself to tell the press that this radical cleric is having his email read by U.S. intelligence agencies? The FBI had not said publicly that this cleric had been emailing Hasan. The CIA, the NSA, the White House — nobody else had reported this cleric was e-mailing Hasan. This is just Pete Hoekstra letting us know — and letting the radical cleric who is under surveillance know — that he’s under surveillance.

Maddow’s guest, The Nation’s Chris Hayes, said Hoekstra’s reputation is “of an epic grand-stander.” Watch it:

Asked if there was a concern that Hoekstra was leaking sensitive information, a Republican spokesman for the House intelligence committee told Maddow’s show, “I do not know, guessing, since [Aulaqi] was deported, he knew he was a target anyways.” Maddow noted that Aulaqi wasn’t “deported,” but rather left the country voluntarily, according to the 9-11 Commission. (Aulaqi had contacts with some of the 9-11 hijackers.)

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) said, “I am disappointed that some have rushed to the news media with unfounded information in order to gain headlines.”

Hoekstra has been trying to use the Ft. Hood shootings to engage in a political attack against Obama, claiming “administration officials delayed briefing members of Congress about the alleged gunman,” thus raising “red flags” about what the White House was hiding. “What do they know that they don’t want us to know?” Hoekstra said on Fox News.