Michael Scheuer Watch #4: The Danish Affair
10.29.2007 - 11:28 AMAn entry here entitled Michael Scheuer: Innocent Until Proven Guilty seems to have rattled the former CIA official’s cage. He has posted three separate comments in reply.
Herewith some comments about his comments.
In his 2004 book, Imperial Hubris, Scheuer made a point of stressing how vital it was for CIA analysts like himself always to “check the checkables”—a phrase he used incessantly in that volume. In writing about Imperial Hubris in COMMENTARY, I noted then that he himself had a very hard time with the checkables, not least in the realm of spelling. L. Paul Bremer III was rendered in the book as Paul Bremmer, General Curtis LeMay as General Lemay, the foreign-policy analysts Edward Luttwak and Adam Garfinkle as Lutwack and Garfinckle, etc.
In his comments posted here on Connecting the Dots, Scheuer still has trouble with the same class of checkables. And, along with misspellings, he does some far more noteworthy things.
Thus, in one of his three replies, Scheuer suggests that I am disloyal to the United States: “only a small part of Mr. Scheonfeld [sic]…may be American.” He suggests that, along with me, Norman Podhoretz, Max Boot, James Woolsley [sic], someone simply identified as “Pipes” (Richard or Daniel?), and someone simply identified as “Horowitz,” have pushed the United States into wasting American “treasure” and getting our “soldier-children killed in fighting other peoples’ wars, especially other peoples’ religious wars.”
Presumably, in referring to “religious wars,” Scheuer has in mind, as so often in the past, Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors. But my post had nothing to do with Israel. Nor were the names Podhoretz, Boot, Woolsey, Pipes, or Horowitz mentioned in it. The imputation that these individuals, including a former director of the CIA, are disloyal to the United States is naked bigotry (although I cannot of course defend “Horowitz” from Scheuer’s accusation, since I do not know who he is).
I was writing not about religious wars but about Scheuer’s disclosure of information to the Danish newspaper Politiken concerning the extraordinary rendition to Egypt in 1995 of a terrorist plotter by the name of Abu Talal. Scheuer does comment on that episode, but in a way completely irrelevant to my charges. He says:
The CIA’s rendition program—which I helped author, and then managed for almost four years—continues to be the U.S. government’s single most successful, perhaps only sucessful [sic] counterterrorism program, and Americans are very much safer with the likes of Abu Talal off the street.
But the issue is not whether extraordinary renditions were successful, or whether Americans are safer because of them. I will stipulate for the sake of argument that he is right about both those things.
I was raising a different issue, concerning the U.S. laws governing leaks, and I raised five questions about whether the Politiken story indicates that these laws may have been broken:
1. Is the story accurate?
2. Assuming it is accurate, was the information about the rendition of Abu Talal classified?
3. Assuming it was classified, and that Scheuer was the primary source, did he have the CIA’s permission to talk about it?
4. Assuming he was the primary source and he did not have CIA permission, and that the two preceding questions are answered in the affirmative, was a crime committed here?
5. If the elements of a crime are in place, will be there an investigation? And is anyone at the CIA or the Department of Justice or in Congress paying attention?
It is notable that in his three responses, Scheuer does not address or answer even one of these five questions.
The CIA does things in secret for a number of very good reasons. One of them is to accomplish U.S. security objectives without creating political firestorms in friendly countries. But a firestorm has now been ignited in Denmark as a result of Scheuer’s leak.
All the opposition parties in the Danish parliament are demanding an investigation into whether the authorities cooperated with the CIA in the extradition. Amnesty International has joined the choir: “It should be clarified whether Denmark indirectly participated in the CIA’s prisoner program and therefore in the violation of human rights,” says Lars Norman Jorgensen, who heads the organization’s Danish branch.
Meanwhile, even as the Danish foreign minister, Per Stig Moller, is denying that he was ever informed that “any unlawful acts” had taken place on Danish territory, Michael Scheuer has been pouring more fuel on the fire. He has told Politiken that the Danish intelligence agency, the DSIS, must have known about the rendition program; he says, “I can’t imagine any situation where we would not have told Denmark this.”
In short, not only does Scheuer appear to be the source of a damaging leak, he appears to be intent on maximizing the damage.
Here are some more dots that I’m still trying to connect:
CIA officers have been indicted in Italy for taking part in extraordinary renditions there. Will Denmark now initiate a similar legal process?
How does Scheuer’s activity differ from the deliberate leaking of classified information by the renegade CIA agent Philip Agee, whose passport was revoked in 1979 and is now a fugitive living in Cuba?
What is the Justice Department doing about the disclosure? I predict that the incoming Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, will prove far more energetic in investigating and prosecuting leaks than was the feckless Alberto Gonzalez. I hope I’m right.
What does Scheuer have to say about any of this? I predict that, at this point, he will answer with either a telling silence or with even more telling and more irrelevant evasions.
A complete guide to other items in this Michael Scheuer Watch series can be found here.
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October 29th, 2007 at 11:56 AM
I assume by “Horowitz” Scheuer means David Horowitz, who has long spoken out against radical Islam as well as against radical trends in academia, and who runs the outfit with which Robert Spencer, the scholar and critic of Islam, is also affiliated.
Anyway, I hope Scheuer doesn’t have access to any objects sharper than a spoon. He could hurt himself.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:13 PM
The probem with government employees such as Mr Scheuer is they ignore the fact that the classified information they share is not theirs to give away any more than the government owned furniture, credit card, or government car is. Just because others may abuse government property it doesn’t give him or any of them the right to do it. As you point out, however, until the government cracks down on the abusers this is never going to change. The successes Mr Scheuer likes to point to came about because many hardworking people kept their mouths shut rather than using the media to undermine the activities Mr Scheuer was involved in.
October 30th, 2007 at 10:55 AM
Sir,
Again, I thank Mr. Schoenfeld and Commentary for drawing attention to my work. And here is what I have to say, as requested by Mr. Schoenfeld.
Regarding the subject at hand - rendition and my public comments thereon — I encourage Mr. Schoenfeld and his anti-American colleagues — that is the Neoconservatives Israel-firsters — to push every button and every friend they have to get me investigated so that I can testify under oath about the rendition program. Before either or both of the Congressional intelligence committees would be ideal, as long as the session is under oath and public. The American public needs the truth about the effectiveness of the program, the debt they owe to the men and women of CIA, and the efforts of Mr. Schoenfeld and others to damage the CIA because its officers do share their love for foreign powers. Press on, Mr. Schoenfeld, press on. Rather then rattling me, you are merely doing my bidding.
I sent this same message to Commentary’s echo, the National Review Online, but they of course did not print it.
Respectfully,
Michael F. Scheuer
Falls Church, VA
October 30th, 2007 at 12:39 PM
Sir,
Second sending of this message. I needed to add an apostrophe and the word “not,” I hate to think of the pain I cause Mr. Schoenfeld by making spelling mistakes.
Again, I thank Mr. Schoenfeld and Commentary for drawing attention to my work. And here is what I have to say, as requested by Mr. Schoenfeld.
Regarding the subject at hand - rendition and my public comments thereon — I encourage Mr. Schoenfeld and his anti-American colleagues — that is the Neoconservatives/Israel-firsters — to push every button and every friend they have to get me investigated so that I can testify under oath about the rendition program. Before either or both of the Congressional intelligence committees would be ideal, as long as the session is under oath and public. The American public needs the truth about the effectiveness of the program, the debt they owe to the men and women of CIA, and the efforts of Mr. Schoenfeld and others to damage the CIA because its officers do not share their love for foreign powers. Press on, Mr. Schoenfeld, press on. Rather then rattling me, you are merely doing my bidding.
I sent this same message to Commentary’s echo, the National Review Online, but they of course did not print it.
Respectfully,
Michael F. Scheuer
Falls Church, VA
October 31st, 2007 at 5:11 AM
Its such a effective secret program that we need to tell everyone about it!
Next up we’ll publish the designs for all of our military equipment, you know, to show the world how great those weapons are!
What could possibly go wrong!
November 1st, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Mr. Scheuer, did you or did you not release classified information to a Danish newspaper? If you did you you have prior authorization to do so? This does not seem to be a difficult question to answer.
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:48 AM
I’m just now starting to follow this little dustup between Schoenfeld and Scheuer, and it’s beginning to be very interesting.
And since Mr. Scheuer is reading these things, I am confident I can address him directly here-
Mr. Scheuer, I’ve known some high flyers in business who weren’t the best at spelling or expressing themselves. In this day and age, most of them simply use spellcheck. Back then, they used secretaries.
Spellcheck is free, and on every computer. Your dreadful efforts at spelling and writing speak volumes about you. You must be aware that your spelling is sloppy, but you don’t use spellcheck. I believe this means one or more of the following–
You are so arrogant, you believe everything you say is important enough to not bother checking whether you’ve said or written it right.
You are so tightly strung, you can’t stand to wait for spellcheck. Your righteous responses to the evil Mr. Schoenfeld demand instantaneous posting, so as not to deprive the plebes out there in webland from a moment’s enjoyment of, and learning from, your righteous pronouncements.
Mr. Scheuer, in what year were you awarded that medal for CIA service? And will you post, here or anywhere, the written explanation of why you were given that medal?
And no, I”m not anyone important, so don’t tell me I have to demand a hearing in the Senate so you can testify on record about how evil Bush is and how evil Jews are. Just post here, that’ll be fine… tell us the year you got the medal, and what the paper says its for.
Oh yes, and tell us where exactly we rubes in flyover country can find that document in national records, to check and make sure you’re not lying.
And by the way, I may have an acquaintance who may have recently retired from CIA (they never really tell you anything :-), so don’t snow me. I’ll know.
Dave in Texas
November 7th, 2007 at 10:17 PM
I am rather surprised you do not know who David Horowitz is? He goes to various college campuses to speak about the importance of free speech while at the same time is being booed and yelled at and, of course, gets the occasional something thrown at him.
Interesting info re: Mr. Scheuer. I will be watching for updates and follow-ups.
Thanks, Sue in Kansas.