Transparency in the Future

I found this unsettling paragraph in a stack of dusty material meant for this blog. It's from a May 2011 Jackson Lears review of three Sam Harris books, including his well-known (and best-selling, which is redundant, I suppose) The End of Faith: Religion, Terror & the Future of Reason (2004).

Convinced that brain science has located the biological sources of “bias”—the areas of the brain that cause us to deviate from the norms of factual and moral reasoning—[Sam] Harris predicts that this research will lead to the creation of foolproof lie detectors. He does not say how these devices will be deployed. Will they be worn on the body, implanted in the brain, concealed in public locations? What he does say is that they will be a great leap forward to a world without deception—which, we must understand, is one of the chief sources of evil. “Whether or not we ever crack the neural code, enabling us to download a person’s private thoughts, memories, and perceptions without distortion,” he declares, the detectors will “surely be able to determine, to a moral certainty, whether a person is representing his thoughts, memories, and perceptions honestly in conversation.” (As always, the question arises, who are “we”?) Technology will create a brave new world of perfect transparency, and legal scholars who might worry about the Fifth Amendment implications are being old-fashioned.

Sounds like something that could appear in a Philip K. Dick story.


Note: This is NOT in reference to the famous Sam Harris who was my high school classmate.


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Obama's Drone War

This is just a quick note to save some statistics I read recently. In the April 30 issue of The Nation, University of Michigan History Professor Juan Cole referenced some hard numbers about US use of drones:

American drone strikes on individuals and groups in the tribal belt of northwestern Pakistan, as well as in Yemen, also typify Washington’s global shadow wars. The United States has 7,000 unmanned aerial vehicles, which it has deployed in strikes in six countries. Both the CIA and the US military operate the drones. Rather than being adjuncts to conventional war, drone strikes are mostly carried out in places where no war has been declared and no Status of Forces Agreement has been signed. They operate outside the framework of the Constitution, with no due process or habeas corpus...

...the Britain-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that not only are civilians routinely killed by US drone strikes in northern Pakistan; often people rushing to the scene of a strike to help the wounded are killed by a second launch. The BIJ estimates that the United States has killed on the order of 3,000 people in 319 drone strikes, some 600 of them civilian bystanders and 174 of those, children. Some 84 percent of all such strikes were launched after Obama came to office.

Those are some disturbing stats. Even worse, as Cole notes, this is not an area of great government transparency or publicity. Quite the opposite -- secrecy prevails:

...the drone operations are classified. When asked about strikes, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refuses to confirm or deny that they have occurred. The drones cannot be openly debated in Congress or covered in any detail by the US media. Therefore, they cannot be the subject of a national political debate, except in the abstract. The Congressional intelligence committees are briefed on the program, but it is unlikely that any serious checks and balances can operate in so secret and murky a realm...

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From Hollywood: The antigenocide paparazzi

Photo credit: Australian Department of Defence.

Thanks to a busy summer travel schedule, I neglected to mention in mid-July new photographic data about ongoing violence in Sudan, acquired and released by partners affiliated with actor George Clooney's Satellite Sentinel Project.

The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative collects and analyzes images from commercial satellites, feeding them through a web platform designed by Google and the open-source software firm Trellon and comparing them with on-the-ground reports from The Enough Project, a human rights group. The group's work is especially vital in places like South Kordofan, where neither the U.N., outside aid groups nor journalists are allowed....

Yesterday, the group published a report on its latest images. As evidence of mass graves, the Satellite Sentinel Project points to the three freshly excavated areas pictured in the lead image above and to the white objects below, which it suspects are white plastic tarp body bags. A witness tells the organization that he saw 100 bodies or more put into one of the pits.

Based on these images and eyewitness reports, the organization concludes that the Sudanese military and pro-Khartoum militias "have apparently engaged in a campaign of systematic mass killing of civilians in Kadugli."

Obviously, this is potentially vital human rights work conducted by a celebrity-backed non-governmental organization.

Photo credit: ENOUGH Project.

Earlier this year, in news reports about the project, the Hollywood icon emphasized the potential deterrent effect of transparency:

"We are the antigenocide paparazzi," Clooney tells TIME. "We want them to enjoy the level of celebrity attention that I usually get. If you know your actions are going to be covered, you tend to behave much differently than when you operate in a vacuum."

If the group's July report is accurate, then Sudanese leaders have obviously not yet been deterred by the eyes in the skies.

However, anyone who has seen "Hotel Rwanda" understands the implicit threat Clooney is directing at human rights abusers. In a scene roughly two-thirds of the way into the film, the Paul Rusesabagina character played by Don Cheadle (involved with Clooney in the Satellite Sentinel Project) attempts to influence corrupt Rwandan General Bizimungu:

GENERAL BIZIMUNGU

Your white friends have abandoned you,
Paul.

PAUL
The United Nations are still here.

GENERAL BIZIMUNGU
(laughs) The United Nations. Madmen are
on the streets, Paul. But I will take
care of you. (chugs his drink) Your
cellar is well-stocked, right?

PAUL
Yes, General. I am glad you came by. I
overheard something that I think you
should know about.

GENERAL BIZIMUNGU
What did you overhear?

PAUL
A discussion between an American Embassy
official and a UN Colonel.

GENERAL BIZIMUNGU
What did they say?

PAUL
The American assured the colonel that
they would watch everything.

GENERAL BIZIMUNGU
Watch everything? How? They are gone.

Paul points surreptitiously to the sky. The General looks up.

PAUL
Satellites.

GENERAL BIZIMUNGU
Satellites?

PAUL
Yes, they can photograph the epaulets on
your shoulder.

GENERAL BIZIMUNGU
And what will they do with these
satellites?

PAUL
The American said intervention is too
costly, better to get photographic
evidence and snatch up the high command.

GENERAL BIZIMUNGU
The high command? Our high command?

PAUL
'Snatch them up and put on a war crimes
trial. Lock them all away forever. No
political risk, and big publicity.'
That's what he said. (a beat) I thought
I'd better tell you.

The General looks again to the sky then.

Given what Duck of Minerva co-blogger Alana Tiemessen has recently noted about the international reaction to events in Syria (likely tied to ongoing intervention in Libya), Clooney's data might not yield any tangible action.

Note: My film class typically views "Hotel Rwanda" near the end of the term.


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On Wikileaks and Lies

Over the past six or eight months, I've put aside a number of interesting newspaper and magazine articles about WikiLeaks and I'm writing this post in order to pull together a number of quotes and examples from those pieces just in case I need them for teaching or research purposes.

Let's begin with some analysis from former British diplomat Carne Ross in The New Statesman, December 6, 2010. He claims that WikiLeaks has changed world politics forever:

what we have witnessed is something very dramatic in the world of diplomacy - and thus in the way that the world runs its business. We may now date the history of world politics as pre- or post-WikiLeaks....The presumption that governments can conduct their business with one another in secret, away from the prying eyes of the public, died when the leaks started to emerge on 28 November. Diplomats and officials around the world are now realising that anything they say may hit the public sphere - ie, the internet....From now on, it will be ever more difficult for governments to claim one thing and do ­another.

Indeed, as readers of John Mearsheimer's book Why Leaders Lie found out, governments have historically been far more likely to lie to their own people than to other states. It was easier to get away with it.

Micah Sifry asserted in The Nation, March 21, 2011, that domestic lies about foreign policy are pervasive:

Unfortunately there is a large gap between what American officials have told the public about their actions and what they have actually done.

Some of my old blogging about the Iraq war certainly suggested a fair measure of lying.

For a more recent example of an important lie told by the US, in December 2010 journalist Jeremy Scahill found one in WikiLeaks:

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke lied to the world when he said bluntly in July 2010: "People think that the US has troops in Pakistan, well, we don't."

A US special operations veteran who worked on Pakistan issues in 2009 reviewed the Wikileaks cables for The Nation. He said he was taken aback that the cable was not classified higher than "SECRET" given that it confirms the active involvement of US soldiers from the highly-secretive, elite Joint Special Operations Command engaging in combat—not just training—in Pakistan. And offensive combat at that. JSOC operations are compartmentalized and highly classified.

Former Marine company commander Matthew Hoh told an interviewer in October 2010 that US personnel on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq have almost pathologically misled American visitors:

For the bigger picture, reporters are briefed at headquarters by people like me, civilian or military, who do dog and pony shows...PowerPoint presentations and windshield tours to areas of progress. We also show them to Congressional delegations, administration or military staff, academics, development firms and think tanks. There are multiple varieties of briefings and tours, which are updated and tailored depending on the visitor. But the briefings are almost always rosy: acknowledging some difficulties, but predicting success....If you [visitors] do speak with Afghans, they’re on our side or payroll, and tell stories we want to hear. It is extremely rare for a visitor to ever speak to Afghans with a different point of view.

If delegations go out, we take them to what you can call Potemkin villages. These are the places we want people to see, like a school or road we built. Meanwhile, what’s happening a kilometer away is totally different. The Soviets did this. We did this in Iraq and probably in Vietnam.

...The presentations are really for Washington consumption...Congress. You’re not going to tell the ones who fund the war that things aren’t going well.

The US, of course, isn't the only country that lies to its own people. This particular lie, also reported by Scahill last December, may have helped spark internal revolt in Yemen:

"We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," President Saleh told Petraeus during a meeting in early January 2010, according to one cable. Yemen's Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al-Alimi then boasted that he had just "lied" by telling Parliament "that the bombs...were American-made but deployed by" Yemen. According to US Special Operations sources, US teams also conduct targeted killing operations and raids inside Yemen.

Yemeni officials likely regret that decision

However, as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted in October 2010, WikeLeaks apparently hasn't hurt US security very much:

"...the review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by the disclosure."

Obviously, this story is to be continued.


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Climate change diplomacy

This past week, I've posted twice to the e-ir blog, Climate Politics: IR and the Environment.

Sunday, December 5, I posted "Hot times?" about the latest temperature news (2010 still has a chance to be the warmest year on record, though it will most likely finish behind 1998 and 2005) and my brief (pessimistic) assessment of the ongoing international climate conference in Cancun.

Today, December 9, I posted "Wikileaks and climate diplomacy," which looks at some of the latest leaked cables pertaining to climate change. For any IR scholar, the documents reflect fairly predictable practices. A powerful state like the US pursues its interests by using the resources at its disposal to influence other states. Not really shocking, but revealed for all to see.


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I need a new agent

Consider this a very special edition of UofL Today.

Lexington Herald-Leader, October 17, 2009:

The University of Louisville Foundation paid U of L President James R. Ramsey $1.9 million in 2007 to compensate him for state retirement benefits he forfeited, according to the foundation's most recent filing with the IRS.

Ramsey, who became president of Kentucky's second largest public university in 2002, had spent 17 years working for state government, including serving as state budget director under former Gov. Paul Patton between 1999 and 2002. While working for the state, he accrued time in the Kentucky Retirement System.

But because he left the state job without the necessary number of years of service to be fully vested, the U of L trustees inserted a provision in Ramsey's contract calling for him to be compensated for the retirement benefits he left on the table when he took the U of L job.

The foundation, which manages the university's private donations and endowment funds, paid Ramsey a $1,935,299 lump sum in 2007, the year he would have been eligible to retire with full state benefits, said Robert Gunnell, senior partner with Peritus Public Relations who serves as spokesman for the U of L Foundation.

"That was the amount that an actuarial firm calculated to make President Ramsey whole in his retirement account," Gunnell said.

Until today, most faculty and staff that I know hadn't heard about this.


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Transparent banking

In The Nation July 13, economist Joseph Stiglitz notes that greater banking transparency could help fight corruption in the developing world.

Developing nations are often criticized for corruption, but secret bank accounts wherever they may be facilitate corruption, providing safe haven for stolen funds. Developing countries want this money returned and want access to information that will allow them to detect secret accounts.

Stiglitz is critical of recent congressional legislation for failing to go far enough to solve this problem.

Paul Collier makes a similar argument in The Bottom Billion and calls explicitly for new international norms -- such as budget transparency -- to make this kind of corruption far more difficult.

Collier also calls for transparency initiatives in natural resources.

The U.S. spent much of the 1990s arguing for a "strategy of openness" -- seeking open markets, especially. However, as Andrew Bacevich outlined, the Clinton administration sweepingly sought to remove "barriers to the movement of goods, capital, people, and ideas."

Perhaps the Obama administration can devote some attention to a slightly different form of openness. The President certainly seems to understand the critique offered by Stiglitz and Collier.


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Transparency and the GWOT

The Washington Monthly torture issue includes a diverse array of writers, but their message is fairly redundant. Despite the resonance of the anti-torture argument, the US government nonetheless acted against this collective wisdom.

Unfortunately, the repetition is absolutely necessary.

Future administrations should heed Lawrence Wilkerson's warning about transparency:

The worst horrors of our war have yet to be revealed—but they will be. Secret prisons, renditions, homicides, torture, and innocents swept up in a vast network of detention—all will be revealed. It is the nature of our openness that it be so.

Given the inevitability of disclosures, politicians should think pretty carefully about their dubious secret policies.


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Cheney's power to reveal all

The man often thought to be behind the curtain gave an interview to Brit Hume of Fox on February 15:

HUME: Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a vice president has the authority to declassify information?

CHENEY: There is an executive order to that effect.

HUME: There is.

CHENEY: Yes.

HUME: Have you done it?

CHENEY: Well, I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions. The executive order —

HUME: You ever done it unilaterally?

CHENEY: I don't want to get into that. There is an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously focuses first and foremost on the president, but also includes the vice president.

It's great to know that the Veep believes in transparency.


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Filed as: Cheney and declassification

Transparency update

Opponents of government secrecy might be interested to read "SECRECY IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION," dated September 14, 2004. The report was prepared by the Special Investigations Division of the House Government Reform Committee. Need I add that it is a Minority Staff document, prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA)?

It is an interesting (and somewhat scary) compilation of data, explaining how the Bush administration has restricted access to presidential documents (including 10s of thousands of pages from the Reagan era...when his Dad was Veep), found ways to limit compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, created new standards to limit a great deal of previously available government information, and pursued secret detention, deportation hearings and trials (of "enemy combatants"). Here's the conclusion:

the Administration’s actions represent an unparalleled assault on the principle of open and accountable government.

Are you surprised?

Transparency has long been an area of professional interest to me, but I've been doing a bit of new work on transparency and found some other useful websites as well: including the Project on Government Secrecy by the Federation of American Scientists and BushSecrecy.org by Public Citizen.

Note: Waxman also previously sponsored the Iraq on the Record website, which includes a searchable database of quotes about Iraq.

Now we know

Today's Louisville Courier-Journal has this interesting story: "Foundation releases donor list."

For many years, the newspaper has been trying to find out the identities of donors to the McConnell Center for Political Leadership at the University of Louisville. As you may have guessed from the name, the Center is named for Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who is a graduate of the University's Department of Political Science.

McConnell helped raise funds for the Center, which gives scholarships to undergraduates from Kentucky, brings in speakers, funds trips (including to China), etc.

Here's the issue: The University launders donations through its Foundation, argues that the Foundation is a private (not public) entity, and then says it has no legal responsibility to disclose the Foundation's business.

A court ruled that the Foundation was a public entity and thus has to disclose its donors who do not explicitly request anonymity. In short, the Kentucky Open Records Law applies to the Foundation.

Basically, some critics of these types of Centers (many other members of Congress have them too) argue that corporations and wealthy individuals can make "back door" secret campaign contributions to members of Congress by writing these checks.

Think about it. Members of Congress often funnel pork to local projects, including to universities. Campaign contributions must be disclosed. How better to fund both pork and campaigns privately and secretly?

"Very often these companies give to these foundations or charities as a way of currying favor with a senator," said Larry Noble, executive director of the group [Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based campaign finance watchdog].

"(McConnell) has a number of loyal donors and companies that support him and they'll go wherever he directs. This is a tried and true method of supporting a member of Congress," Noble said.

The University has long argued that wealthy individuals and corporations value their privacy. Otherwise, I've heard more than one person argue, they will be asked for money by everyone.

Does that pass the laugh test? Even the donors say no:

But officials of some corporations and foundations that gave to the McConnell Center said they had no desire to keep their names private.

"Toyota's never made any secret of our contribution to the McConnell program," Barbara McDaniel, a spokeswoman for Toyota Motor Manufacturing of North America, said yesterday.

The company has given $833,333 to the McConnell Center since it was created, including a $250,000 gift pledged last month.

McDaniel said the company had told UofL it was willing to publicize the gift.

Former UofL President John Shumaker had sent Toyota officials letters saying their gifts would be kept anonymous.

The names of 62 donors are still secret, as the judge ruled that individuals who specifically request privacy may have a right to it. That part of the decision is under appeal. 40 unnamed individual donors gave donations totaling $6 million.

Who were the biggest donors? Well, this group plus Toyota gave over $8.7 million of the 11.2 million raised to date (for red entries, see correction below):

Alliant Health System (Norton Healthcare), $1,020,000
Brown-Forman Corp. $425,000
David A. Jones, $1,000,000 (this is the former Humana executive)
James Graham Brown Foundation, $650,000
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, $771,767 ??????????
Mildred V. Horn Foundation, $504,500
Papa John's, $1,008,430
Philip Morris Cos. Inc., $450,000
RJR Nabisco Foundation, $500,000
The Humana Foundation Inc., $800,000
United Defense, $500,000
United Parcel Service, $400,000

The "liberal" Brookings Institution gave $400, though that isn't the smallest figure listed.


Disclosure: since some of my scholarship is on transparency, I've sometimes been interviewed by the local papers about this issue.

Correction: The newspaper put McConnnell Center donations in boldface. Nonboldfaced listings were donations to the Foundation for other purposes. A C-J reporter pointed out to me via email that the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation should not appear on my list above.

Likewise, remove Alliant, the Mildren Horn Foundation, and Papa John's. That takes away $3.2 million and the math actually works out better now.

Sorry for my error.

Transparency the B Teams

Guest Blogger Paul Parker

My political world view was heavily affected by Nixon's resignation, 30 years ago. And then 10 years later, I learned a lot from a graduate school classmate, our host Dr. Payne. Memorably, Rodger taught me about the Richard Pipes and his influence on government decisionmaking. Following the link leads to "Right Wing Web" entry that includes this historical tidbit:

Richard Pipes, a Russian historian at Harvard University, was a key anti-Soviet crusader in the 1970s and 1980s... [who] chaired the Team B Strategic Objectives Panel, a controversial effort in the mid-1970s to reinterpret CIA intelligence on the Soviet threat

I was reminded of Pipes when reading Digby this evening, who points to a Lawrence Kolb op-ed in the LA Times, "Its Time to Bench 'Team B'". Kolb nicely talks about the inaccuracy of Pipes and company (including Paul Wolfowitz) and then toward he discusses briefly the Office of Special Plans. If you haven't read Seymour Hersh's New Yorker piece from 5/03 on the OSP, I'd recommend it. From the first paragraph:

In the past year, according to former and present Bush Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11, 2001, have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi. By last fall, the operation rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush’s main source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda. As of last week, no such weapons had been found.

As Rodger has blogged,

A great deal of [Rodger's] academic work concerns transparency, which one colleague calls simply "the opposite of secrecy." The logic of transparency resonates widely, whether applied to governments, markets, or businesses. Citizens, investors and consumers ought to be able to make informed decisions about the large and powerful institutions that have a great impact on their lives.

Advocates of Transparency welcome honest and open discussion, which challenge their assumptions and thinking -- their commitment is to good decision making, and not to a particular outcome. Before Rodger schooled me on Richard Pipes and company, I naively assumed that bureaucratic decisionmaking was done with the best available evidence, by people with the best intentions (even after a poor experience at the DMV).

The problem with the B Teams goes beyond their amazing ability to be wrong, into their amazing ability to be wrong but influential. And out of sight and not accountable.

Media matters

Check out the "Media Views Archive 2004" on the FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) website and you'll find a great deal of media criticism by assorted writers.

Many pieces are by high profile lefty blogger Atrios (of Eschaton), taken directly from his blog. His blog has included incisive media criticism of a wide variety of media reporters and outlets, including Aaron Brown, Bill Buckley, Barbara Bradley Hagerty (NPR), Rush Limbaugh, Lisa Myers, Elizabeth McCaughey, Andrea Mitchell, Cokie Roberts, the Washington Post, the World Journalism Institute, CNN, and Newsweek.

One article on FAIR's website, on Tucker Carlson, is by Duncan B. Black and was published on the Media Matters website.

Why am I telling you? Well, Atrios now includes this statement at the bottom of his blog:

Eschaton -- a weblog by d u n c a n b l a c k

In other words, Atrios has revealed himself to the world. And from the Democratic National Convention there are pictures in the blogosphere, and plenty of bloggers confirming his identity (read the comments). Dave Winer says this:

Now there officially has been news at the DNC. The uncloaking of a blogging super-hero.

Winer too has a photo.

Since Atrios has raised over $275,000 for Kerry (and thousands more for other candidates and the DNC), I suppose this was inevitable.

Also, since I believe in transparency, I suppose this is a "good thing." While Atrios usually talks about the words public figures have spoken or written, he has sometimes noted when their personal behavior is inconsistent with those words. Now, he will be vulnerable to the same, I suppose.

It's kind of interesting that Duncan Black is an academic, though I never thought he was an economist.

That said, I'm not surprised he's also an urbanist. A couple of friendly urbanists that I know occastionally read this space. Can anyone say something about Duncan Black's academic work? I see that he used to be at UC-Irvine and coauthored papers/articles with a former colleague (or mentor) at Brown...


Update: A newspaper has the story, but doesn't seem to realize it's big news in the blogosphere. Really, really big news, apparently.

Following the money

The internet is working to promote campaign finance transparency! By simply typing in a name or address, the curious web surfer can unearth the names of contributors to the 2004 presidential election campaigns -- and discover how much each individual gave.

I actually learned of this website on a baseball research list -- so some of my time spent on the sport has practical benefit. Someone on that list posted the contributions of various team owners (overwhelmingly, they gave to Bush).

The list only includes donors who gave more than $200 in the first two months of 2004. Also, donors who give directly to political parties (DNC) or organizations like MoveOn are not listed. All of my donations are under the radar, so far as this listing is concerned.

In any case, spend a few minutes at the FundRace 2004 website and you can learn -- or merely confirm -- all sorts of things about campaign finance.

For example, I was not surprised to learn that Kentucky US Senator Mitch McConnell and his spouse, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, each gave two grand to the Bush campaign. It was interesting to learn that many of their neighbors contribute to Democrats (you can search by address too).

Enter zip code 90210, and discover the candidates favored by the rich and famous. Maury Povich, for example, gave $2000 to Bush. David Cross, of Fox's "Arrested Development" gave $1000 to Howard Dean. Carl and Rob Reiner both gave two grand to Dean -- though Rob also gave $2000 to Edwards. Actress Melanie Griffith favors John Kerry, as does Normal Lear ($2000 each).

Try not to become addicted. I now know that the spouse and son of one of my colleagues gave a fair sum to Howard Dean and that an old friend from college gave a big check to Bush.

As I've noted before, Republicans tend to have a much larger number of affluent donors, as well as other huge advantages, so I encourage everyone reading to kick in a few bucks to help topple Bush in 2004.

Republicans Suddenly Embrace Transparency

Yahoo News has a new AP wire story on-line entitled, "GOP Moves to Declassify Clarke Testimony."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) claims that Richard Clarke told a very different story about Bush administration counter-terror efforts when he testified before congressional intelligence committees in July 2002 than he's telling now.

To prove this, various Republicans are seeking to declassify his testimony. Frist implied that perjury charges could lie ahead for Clarke "if it is found that he has lied to Congress."

"Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said in a speech on the Senate floor.

The Tennessee Republican said he hopes Clarke's testimony in July 2002 before the House and Senate intelligence committees can be declassified. Then, he said, it can be compared with the account the former aide provided in his nationally televised appearance Wednesday before the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Frist, without elaborating, said Clarke's testimony in 2002 was "effusive in his praise for the actions of the Bush administration."

I'm pretty skeptical that such declassification could help the Bush administration all that much. Most importantly, a huge point of departure for Clarke is his opposition to the war against Iraq and the argument that it distracted (and made more difficult) the wider war on terror.

Thus, I can't really see a "gotcha" moment if this testimony merely points to the admininstration's anti-terror achievements during the months after 9/11. Everyone knows they sent the military to Afghanistan, toppled the Taliban and destroyed al Qaida camps.

In August 2002, of course, George Herbert Walker Bush's National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft authored a critical op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal that is just as damning as Clarke's book in terms of the horrible consequences attacking Iraq would have for the war on terror. I quoted a lot of it before, but let me repeat this:

"An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken.

But the central point is that any campaign against Iraq, whatever the strategy, cost and risks, is certain to divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism....At a minimum, it would stifle any cooperation on terrorism, and could even swell the ranks of the terrorists."

Earlier this week, someone leaked to Fox News a background brief Clarke gave in early August 2002. It generally supports the administration on the war on terror -- but Iraq is never mentioned.

Ironically, the White House has repeatedly linked the war in Iraq to the war on terror, but they are focusing all their attention on Clarke's claims about early 2001 -- that the incoming Bush administration was weak on terror from the beginning.

In the long run, that stuff may all wash out and the Iraq argument will prevail. So far, the White House doesn't seem to have a response for it.

Finally!

After a very long wait, State University of New York Press has published Democratizing Global Politics; Discourse Norms, International Regimes, and Political Community, by Rodger A. Payne and Nayef H. Samhat.

Amazon has it for sale, though as a hardback, it is a bit pricey.

This is from the back cover:

Historically, international institutions have been secretive and not particularly democratic. They have typically excluded almost all interested parties except the representatives of the most powerful nations. Because of this "deficit of democracy" international organizations and regimes have found themselves the target of protest movements and lobbying campaigns. Democratizing Global Politics finds that, in response to this mounting legitimacy crisis, international organizations and regimes are beginning to embrace new norms of participation and transparency, opening the decision-making process to additional political and social actors and creating opportunities for meaningful external scrutiny. Two case studies examine the construction of such "discourse norms" in the Global Environmental Facility and the World Trade Organization. The authors conclude that these normative changes not only legitimize international institutions-they also promote the development of political community on a global scale.

I wish I knew how to include the book cover photo.

So, readers, two technical questions. First, any idea how I can include a photo on a basic blog? Second, completely unrelated to that, anyone know if google changed something that made my search box ineffective? I cannot seem to search my own archives anymore. And that's frustrating.

Update: Hey, someone actually reads this blog! Thanks, Micah, for telling me how to do this:

The White House, the Press Corps and Transparency Norms

Talkingpointsmemo has the transcript from today's White House press conference.

The Press obviously devoted a lot of time to the latest "Niger-gate" angle, peppering White House spokesperson Scott McClellan with numerous questions about what the President and his advisors were going to do about the apparent leak of a CIA agent's name to journalist Robert Novak.

One question that keeps coming up shows the different standards of transparency expected of public institutions. Indeed, McClellan tried to use these norms against the Press Corps.

In the Press Conference, McClellan fielded numerous questions from the media inquiring why President Bush didn't simply conduct his own informal investigation -- perhaps even by calling for the leaker(s) to come forward and resign. Drezner makes this argument today as well.

McClellan kept replying that the White House didn't have any evidence of wrongdoing. Thus, he implied, why should the President begin a witch hunt within the inner circle?

We do know that Condi Rice and Colin Powell denied knowing anything yesterday on the Sunday chat shows. McClellan has said he doesn't know about the leak, and he emphasized today that Karl Rove didn't divulge the information.

Meanwhile, nobody, so far as I know, is peppering Robert Novak with questions about his sources. Obviously, Novak knows who called him back in July. Moreover, if the Washington Post story from Sunday is correct, 5 other reporters also received calls and know who was trying to leak this information.

Yesterday, when I was reading a lot of blog comments on this (from the daily KOS and Calpundit), many, many people were curious about the identities of the administration officials who leaked. Very few were curious about the names of the journalists who received the calls. I did see a couple of guesses, but they were far outnumbered by those trying to discern the names of the government sources.

The reason why the press and the bloggers haven't turned on their own membership is that journalists are expected to keep such information secret in order to protect future sources. They cannot "burn" a past source for fear of gaining a poor reputation and effectively losing access to future leaked insight.

Of course, in this case, someone (or actually, two someones) in the administration apparently committed a felony.

Should journalists protect an alleged criminal's identity?

As citizens, we expect a fairly high level of transparency from government. They only way we can evaluate the state is if it is sufficiently open to allow basic scrutiny of its operations. This often depends, frankly, on a free press -- and an effective public sphere of open discussion. Like the blogosphere!

The press argues it cannot be free of government unless it can withhold the identity of sources -- including whistleblowers.

If the Justice Department starts issuing subpoenas, a lot of citizens might think to start with Novak -- rather than random people within the White House or near the top of the various Cabinet agencies.

However, I don't think many members of the White House Press corp would be enthused by that. In fact, they'd be downright hostile.

The situation is comparable to recent events in the UK involving David Kelly. Ultimately, the government whistleblower (a weapons experts who was skeptical about the way WMD data was being manipulated by the Blair government) took his own life once his name was disclosed as someone who had talked to the BBC. Helena Cobban has been writing about this on her blog.

The BBC did not confirm that Kelly had been its source until after he died.

As someone who writes on transparency in my academic life, this is a tough case. I'd like to know if there's a felon in the Bush inner circle, and I'd like to know how national security interests (the CIA agent was apparently a WMD expert) balanced against partisan politics.

On the other hand, I fear that we'd all know even less about government if the media were compelled to disclose their sources.

Still, like everyone else, I'm hoping this week for leaks that suggest real names. Who revealed the apparent CIA agent's name? How many people were involved?

For the President: What did he know, and when did he know it?

9/11, the Warren Commission and Government Transparency

A great deal of my academic work concerns transparency, which one colleague calls simply "the opposite of secrecy." The logic of transparency resonates widely, whether applied to governments, markets, or businesses. Citizens, investors and consumers ought to be able to make informed decisions about the large and powerful institutions that have a great impact on their lives.

Governmental transparency, which in the US is embedded in the Freedom of Information Act, helps promote democratic accountability.

For example, there is great demand for a more detailed and public investigation of 9/11. This is not to say that wild-eyed conspiracy theorists should be embraced. Rather, without much greater disclosure of the intelligence failings and other mistakes that helped cause the tragic events of that day, the conspiracy theorists are far better positioned to peddle their nonsense.

Interestingly, a number of widows of 9/11 are among the most ardent supporters of greater governmental transparency surrounding this issue. They are quite dissatisfied with the results that have made public to date. Of course, a bipartisan collection of US Senators and House members also supports the release of more information about 9/11. The Saudi connection, apparently, still remains largely hidden.

As readers might know, the US relatively quickly and thoroughly investigated the events leading to Pearl Harbor more than half a century ago. Leaders wanted to avoid making the same mistakes -- even if some individuals or institutions might be embarrassed by the findings.

That's the kind of real national security work that is needed in this case.

Then again, given how often government officials have lied in the recent past (and often gotten away with it), many US citizens will distrust even authoritative findings. For example, there are still fairly serious people who doubt the Warren Commission's report about the assassination of JFK.

Barr McClellan, a lawyer and father of current White House press secretary Scott McClellan and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan has written a new conspiracy-theory book about the Kennedy murder.

Barr's theory (purportedly supported by new evidence) is apparent from the title: Blood, Money and Power: How LBJ killed JFK.

Given that 9/11 is now more than 2 years behind us, it may already be too late to put this kind of wild theorizing to rest. Imagine the decades of conspiracy theories that may lie ahead surrounding 9/11. Already, the range is mind-boggling.

The same problem may well pervade the war against Iraq -- especially if WMD are never found. As readers may know, the Johnson administration clearly trumped up the Gulf of Tonkin incident that directly resulted in escalation of the war in Vietnam.

Less well known is the private and non-American intelligence evidence suggesting that Iraq was NOT, in fact, preparing to attack Saudi Arabia before the first Gulf War. Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist and former science advisor on arms control for the state Department, recently wrote about this lie in the Washington Post and linked it to more recent questions about the evidence for attacking Iraq in 2003.

I'm not sure how to conclude other than with a call for greater transparency -- and specifically, more thorough and public reporting about 9/11, Iraqi WMD and its alleged connections to international terrorism.