Intelligence

Lawmakers are actively but secretively trying to get to the bottom of the CIA's relationship with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in light of the stunning New York Times article which cited unnamed sources stating he has been on the CIA's payroll for years while simultaneously facilitating massive drug trade in his region.

CIA Director Leon Panetta met with several Senators on both sides of the aisle Thursday behind closed doors and Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, D-MA, has submitted a formal request for information detailing the Agency's relationship with Karzai the brother.

Following his meeting with Panetta, Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-MI, said that he would not disclose what Panetta told him but that on the question of Ahmed Wali Karzai's relationship with the CIA, he had gotten some clarity.

"I think we know [about his relationship with the CIA] but I can't share that with you," Levin said, adding mysteriously, "I don't know that Karzai's brother is on the CIA payroll."

On the issue of whether or not the President's brother is facilitating the drug trade near Kandahar, lawmakers who are in the loop seem more confident and willing to publicly express their concerns.

"According to credible people, the President's brother is involved in various illicit activities," said Armed Services ranking Republican John McCain, R-AZ, "We can't have that."

McCain reiterated his call that Ahmed Wali Karzai should leave the country immediately.

Kerry was the only senior lawmaker to issue a statement expressing his frustration about not being aware of the relationship.

In an interview with The Cable, Kerry said although the CIA relationship with Karzai might not necessarily be nefarious, Congress had a right to know the details.

"If the CIA has a deal, I want to know what the realities are," he said, "I want to examine the relationships and know what the terms are and understand what's the impacts of that might or might not be."

"It may not be something you want to deal with publicly, but we have to be absolutely certain that nothing we are trying to do is being compromised," said Kerry.

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee have been notably mum on the subject, presumably working behind the scenes.

Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, refused to comment and a spokesperson for ranking Republican Kit Bond, R-MO, said that Bond would only say the news shouldn't result in any delay in President Obama's decision on how to move forward in Afghanistan.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, the immediate past chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said that he was not aware of the CIA's relationship with Karzai during his tenure but should have been.

"You know what the problem is? We on the committee own no intelligence," he said, "We only get what they choose to give us. That's why we are always fighting."

Yesterday, just hours after he defended his pick of former Amb. Chas Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and just shy of two weeks after he had notified Congress of his intention to make the appointment, Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair (ret.) sent out a terse, two-line statement saying he'd accepted Freeman's decision to withdraw from the position "with regret."

What happened?

In short, Freeman came to believe that he couldn't do the job that he had agreed to do for Blair, given the controversy. Instead of helping the NIC, he came to believe, his presence would hurt it. And so he withdrew.

Freeman's purpose in accepting, a source familiar with his thinking said, "was to raise the quality and the credibility of the intelligence community's output." But by the time Freeman spoke with Blair Tuesday, it had become clear to both men that Freeman's presence at the NIC would engender sharp attacks on anything the intelligence community said, and that the credibility of the intelligence product would suffer, not be enhanced. Under the circumstances, Freeman felt that the best thing for the NIC and the country was to withdraw.

Freeman "only accepted the job because he was schooled to put his country's interests ahead of his own," the source familiar with his thinking said. He "withdrew for the same reason."

(He expressed his decision more fully in a statement to colleagues Tuesday.)

After the reports of Freeman's withdrawal of his candidacy, several legislators suggested that expressing their opposition to it to the White House had played a role -- among them House Majority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who was said to be incensed on behalf of Chinese human rights issues, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Rep. Steven Israel (D-NY). Freeman told Foreign Policy it was between him and Blair.

For its part, the White House said it would have no comment on the matter. "I don't have anything to add from what Admiral Blair discussed yesterday in accepting Mr. Freeman's decision that his nomination not proceed and that he regretted it," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said at Wednesday's press briefing. 

A U.S. official who asked for anonymity said that the White House had not pulled the plug. Freeman, the source said, decided that the criticism was never going to go away, and that therefore he couldn't do the job.

As for Blair? His office said he wouldn't have more on the matter than was in his statement.

A former Hill foreign-policy hand speculated that career military officials such as Blair, however brilliant, may not be fully attuned to Beltway political realities -- such as how Freeman's writings on the Middle East might have made him a lightning rod for a "no-drama Obama" administration that has become anxious to avoid more troubles over its political appointments. "They don't know how the game is played," he said, referring to military officials.

A former colleague of Blair's, who asked to speak on background, said the former Pacific commander and former Rhodes Scholar is "intellectually brilliant" but "not a Leon Panetta." The CIA director and former Clinton chief of staff, he said, "is a creature of the Washington establishment -- a former member of Congress who understands the political nuances of the Beltway."

"Blair," he continued, "is what we in the military call an operator. Meaning that he has a bias for action. He believes in doing things... His strong suit is he is intellectually brilliant. He was a classmate of Bill Clinton at Oxford; they were Rhodes scholars; he was way up in his class at the Naval Academy. He can think -- faster than anybody in town -- he can absorb and process information" like a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama, an attribute also ascribed by many of his former diplomatic colleagues to Freeman.

Blair's former colleague also said that like all new administrations, and many high-level figures on the Obama team, Blair is "clearly handicapped now by lack of staff."

But on Wednesday afternoon, Blair's staff sent three press e-mails, announcing three new staff members: Arthur House, a former White House fellow and Fletcher School Ph.D. and dean as the DNI's first director of communications, Wendy Morigi, former spokesperson for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, as the DNI's director of public affairs, and Lt. Gen. John F. "Jeff" Kimmons, a deputy chief of staff and top intelligence officer at the Pentagon, as the new director of the ODNI intelligence staff. (An ODNI official notes that Morigi had been on the job since mid-February, House since the beginning of February, and Kimmons since the beginning of this month.)

"I told you," his former colleague said in response to the moves. "He moves fast."

Photo: TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

In a letter today responding to 10 congressmen led by Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) who have raised concerns about the appointment of Chas Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, Edward Maguire, the inspector
general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, has written
that he is reviewing the matters they have raised.

"We are examining the matters you have raised and will respond upon
completion," Maguire wrote (pdf).
 
In response, Kirk and Rep. Steven Israel (D-NY) wrote another letter to Maguire, asking him to examine Freeman's role on the board of directors of the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company, which is owned by the People's Republic of China. "Ambassador Freeman's service on the Board of Directors of a company owned by a foreign government seems to constitute an obvious conflict of interest -- especially given his service to a company owned by the People's Republic of China with significant investment in the Islamic Republic of Iran," congressmen Kirk and Israel wrote. "Your attention to whether Ambassador Freeman is an inappropriate candidate to participate in this independent review would be appreciated."
 
"The DNI welcomes the IG's review," said Wendy Morigi, director of public affairs for the ODNI. "In addition to the security clearance process and public financial disclosures, Director Blair believes that the IG report will put to rest any questions about Ambassador Freeman's suitability, character and financial history. He looks forward to Ambassador Freeman assuming his new role."

The Cable reported last week that former U.S. diplomat Chas Freeman was up for the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council. Since confirmed, the story has set off something of a media firestorm.

Reports from Politico and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, along with commentary and blog posts from The New Republic's Marty Peretz, the Witherspoon Institute's Gabriel Schoenfeld (in the Wall Street Journal), and former AIPAC official Steve Rosen have conveyed the charge that, in the judgment of some pro-Israel activists in the United States, Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, is too sympathetic to Riyadh's worldview and has frequently spoken outside the traditional Washington discourse on Israel.

In conversations with The Cable, some Washington foreign-policy types have argued that the controversy may be more about the president than about Freeman himself.

A source close to Freeman said that among the critics taking shots at the would-be appointee, several "opposed Obama on the spurious ground that he wanted to do in Israel. He doesn't." The source noted that some critics of Obama's appointments had also targeted national security advisor James L. Jones, who previously served as a U.S. envoy charged with strengthening the Palestinian Authority and its security forces, as being too even-handed. "It seems to be the president these guys are after," the source said.

Freeman, like many up for administration jobs, is not in a position to publicly defend himself until an appointment, should it happen, is announced. Even then, he would have to operate under the restrictions that handcuff government officials. The Cable has confirmed that he is indeed Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair's hand-picked choice to get the job.

Some reports noted comments by Freeman seeming to indicate that the think tank of which he was until recently president, the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), has accepted funding from the Saudi government, among other sources. MEPC receives funding from a number of sources, some of it Saudi, a person familiar with the group said, adding that it was "a fact ... true before Ambassador Freeman became president of MEPC, even before he was appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia."

A report by the Jewish Telegraph Agency said that the MEPC contributed to the financing of the publication of a textbook for U.S. classrooms on the Arab world that, according to the agency, contained text critical of the pro-Israel lobby and claimed Jerusalem was an Arab capital. An official familiar with the book told The Cable the offending quote was from the wrong answer of a multiple choice question taken out of context from the textbook.

Other writers and commentators -- including the Israel Policy Forum's M.J. Rosenberg, Nieman Watchdog's Dan Froomkin, IPS's Jim Lobe, The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss, Washington insider Chris Nelson, FP contributor David Rothkopf, the Center for American Progress's blog ThinkProgress, and the New America Foundation's Steve Clemons -- have leapt to Freeman's defense. "Few people would be better for these tasks than Chas Freeman," Rothkopf wrote on ForeignPolicy.com. "Part of the reason he is so controversial is that he has zero fear of speaking what he perceives to be truth to power. You can't cow him and you can't find someone with a more relentlessly questioning worldview."

Some sources noted that among Freeman's most outspoken critics, are those who have accused many other administration officials of being insufficiently pro-Israel or too even-handed, such as NSC senior director for multilateral affairs Samantha Power, U.S. Middle East peace special envoy Sen. George Mitchell, and indeed, during the election campaign, Obama himself.

Several former senior U.S. government officials familiar with Freeman's work as a diplomat (he was from 1986-1989 principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs under Chet Crocker, and, previous to that, in 1972, a fluent Chinese speaker who translated for Nixon) and public intellectual spoke about his professionalism and high intellectual capacities. "I do think really, really highly of him," said one former senior State Department official. "The guy is incredibly smart and incredibly articulate on an amazingly deep and broad range of issues, not just the Middle East, but Africa and East Asia." When Freeman was working for the State Department on Africa in the 1980s, the former senior State Department official said, he was struck that "this is guy who is an extraordinarily impressive thinker and analyst. When I saw your article I thought, 'My God, they made a great appointment.'"

"Chas is a highly experienced, perceptive, and well-regarded U.S. diplomat," said former senior NIC official Paul Pillar, now a professor at Georgetown. "I think he brings excellent understanding on a wealth of topics in world affairs to the job of the chairman of the council.

"I would trust that Mr. Freeman would exhibit integrity in addressing issues on the Middle East as they may pertain to Israel or any other Middle Eastern country," Pillar continued. "The kind of 'anti-Israeli' perspective getting criticized is of course not new criticism or by no means unique to this particular target."

"I think what is being missed" by the commentariat, Pillar added, "Is the whole concept that a public servant ... and foreign affairs professional with a long career under different administrations ... can do his job in the best and most objective way he thinks is possible and isn't necessarily going to be working one policy slant vs. another policy slant."

The source close to Freeman said that the former ambassador was recruited for the post by Admiral Blair and had not been seeking a return to government service, which Freeman had retired from in 1994. In this person's view, Freeman would be brought in "not to reverse the polarity of U.S. intelligence analysis but to de-gauss it." (The term apparently refers to removing magnetic interference in order to enhance clarity). He also disputed that Freeman's views were anti-Israel, noting a 2000 New York Times op-ed by Freeman entitled, "A U.S. Role is Crucial for Peace."

But two former AIPAC officials said that Freeman's views were at least perceived to fall outside of what has become the traditional pro-Israel tilt in Washington. "The term 'even-handed' has become a pejorative," said one former AIPAC official, on condition of anonymity. "It does not mean fair-minded in all things, but that the U.S. should take a neutral view towards the Israeli-Arab conflict, which is not going to happen."

Another former AIPAC official said that the mere fact that Freeman had been U.S. ambassador to Riyadh implies a too-close relationship with Saudi Arabia. "The Saudis want someone politically connected who will do their bidding."

What the United States and Saudi Arabia have in common, the second former AIPAC official added, "is [that] we don't like the communists or the Iranians. What we don't have in common is everything we have in common with the British, French, Germans and Israelis. If one is a tool of the French, British or Israelis, one is a tool of democracy, pluralism ... liberal enlightenment."  

Previous criticism from right-leaning pro-Israel activists of former Obama Middle East advisors such as Rob Malley, who quit the campaign after it was reported he had attended a meeting with Hamas officials, and former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt Daniel Kurtzer "is all within the realm of people on the extreme right having a hard time with anybody who deviates only slightly," the second former AIPAC official said. "I would draw a line between people who don't agree with the mainstream [like Malley] and someone like Freeman who worked as the head of an organization" that received funding from the Saudi government.

Former Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller said he doesn't know Freeman and didn't have an opinion about Freeman's views. But he said the idea that Washington Middle East policymakers are divided into pro-Israel or pro-Saudi axes is an outdated way of looking at the issue, one he said had become largely irrelevant since the 1970s.

Others noted the close relationship between the Saudis and both Bush administrations, the second of which was nonetheless judged by Israel and some of its U.S. supporters to be extremely sympathetic to Israel's interests.

A former Hill source said that there is some congressional opposition to the Freeman appointment. But because the NIC chairmanship is not a congressionally confirmable post, it was not clear whether it would be enough to sway the administration against the appointment.

A White House official declined to comment, directing questions to the office of the DNI, which said it wouldn't comment on possible appointments.

Sources tell The Cable that Chas W. Freeman, Jr., the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will become chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community's primary big-think shop and the lead body in producing national intelligence estimates.

Freeman (shown above shaking hands with Chinese President Hu Jintao) has told associates that in the job, he will occasionally accompany Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair to give the president his daily intelligence briefing. His predecessor, Thomas Fingar, wore a second hat as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis (a job held since December by Peter Lavoy); sources thought it unclear whether Freeman would have that title as well.

Associates say that at a recent board meeting of the Middle East Policy Council, of which he has been president, Freeman said that he was resigning to take a job in the administration. He said his post was not in the State Department and did not require confirmation, but did not specify what the job was.

Former NIC official Paul Pillar said the council has occasionally had chairmen who came from outside of the intelligence community -- mostly from academia, such as Harvard Kennedy School dean emeritus Joseph S. Nye.

Freeman, who was Richard Nixon's principal translator in Beijing in 1972, has been traveling in China and could not be reached. A spokesman for ODNI said the office would not comment on possible appointments.

Photo: JONATHAN ERNST/AFP/Getty Images

The CIA played a back-channel role in serving as an arbiter and vehicle for intelligence sharing in order to ease tensions between India and Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks, the Washington Post reports today. "In the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the CIA orchestrated back-channel intelligence exchanges between India and Pakistan, allowing the two former enemies to quietly share highly sensitive evidence while the Americans served as neutral arbiters, according to U.S. and foreign government sources familiar with the arrangement," the paper writes.

Former U.S. intelligence sources concerned about the potential for the situation to escalate had brought the channel to the attention of The Cable a few weeks ago. A few days before Christmas, they said, the United States sent then Director of National  Intelligence Michael McConnell and veteran CIA analyst Charlie Allen, who at the time was a top DHS intelligence official, to India. Allen and McConnell were there to talk about Mumbai. Both have since retired and could not be immediately reached.

Also on the trip to India, another U.S. government official said on condition of anonymity, was Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. "It was a quick in and out trip," the US official said, of the previously undisclosed visit of the three intelligence officials to India. "They got in on a Sunday [Dec. 21], and were out on Tuesday morning," Dec. 23. McConnell had previously visited India last June, the official said.

But the former intelligence officers said the person the United States should be sending to defuse a potential India-Pakistani conflict is Defense Secretary Robert Gates. "The only guy in this administration they are likely to listen to is Gates," one former U.S. intelligence official said. "He's done this twice before." Gates, who was then deputy national security advisor for the first President Bush, was sent to "talk the Indians and Pakistanis out of war" in both 1988 and 1990, the former official, who had been among those involved in briefing Gates at the time, said.

The former official said the message Gates told India is, "If you go to war with Pakistan, you'll win. But your industrial infrastructure will be destroyed." And the message Gates told Pakistan is, "If you go to war with India, you'll lose. And at the end, you will not have a country."

"Bob Gates was the cool hand in keeping the Indians and the Pakistanis from going to war during Brass Tacks (Indian military exercise) in 1987," another former U.S. intelligence officer said, referring to when Gates was then serving as acting Director of Central Intelligence. "It was very tense."

"They are constantly shooting at one another along the line of control," the first former intelligence official said. "These little skirmishes risk getting out of hand. Both [India and Pakistan] feel they are great players at brinkmanship. But in fact they are terrible at it. They lose control very quickly. They don't know where their people are and what they are doing."

The former intelligence official strongly supported the regional approach to Afghanistan suggested by US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke. "Afghanistan is a classic power vacuum," the former official said. "Neighbors see it as point of instability to guarantee their own stability or an opportunity to score points."

While the U.S. media has frequently reported on Pakistani ties to jihadi elements launching attacks in Afghanistan, it has less often mentioned that India supports insurgent forces attacking Pakistan, the former intelligence official said. "The Indians are up to their necks in supporting the Taliban against the Pakistani government in Afghanistan and Pakistan," the former intelligence official who served in both countries said. "The same anti-Pakistani forces in Afghanistan also shooting at American soldiers are getting support from India. India should close its diplomatic establishments in Afghanistan and get the Christ out of there."

"None of this is ever one-sided," he added. "That is why it was so devastating and we were so let down" when India got taken out of Holbrooke's official brief.

Holbrooke flew to India Sunday night after visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan. "Mr. Holbrooke ... said he was shocked by the problems he saw in the country [Pakistan], which he last visited a year ago," the New York Times reports. "He said he was especially concerned that the Swat Valley, a onetime ski resort about 100 miles from Islamabad, had been seized by Taliban guerrillas, who blow up schools, assassinate police officers and beat -- or behead -- those who do not adhere to their strict version of Islam." On Sunday, the paper also reports, the Taliban declared a 10 day cease-fire with Pakistani forces in Swat valley.

The Post report, sourced initially to unnamed Pakistani officials, could be interpreted as an effort by Pakistan to prevent Indian actions against the country that some U.S. military analysts predict are likely before Indian elections this spring.

"The Indians are almost certainly going to do something before [their] elections," said AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly. "They will strike camps in Pakistan. They are really pissed about the incompetence of the response to the [Mumbai] attacks.  .... It doesn't look like the Pakistanis are willing to or even can do anything that will satisfy the Indians. I would really be surprised if something doesn't happen, unless that changes. They got an election coming up in March or April. It will be an interesting test for the United States."

A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it would have no comment on travel taken by the DNI.

UPDATE: A Washington South Asia expert, among others, wrote to dispute the allegation made by a former U.S. intelligence official cited in the piece that India is aiding the Taliban, although he said such support may be going to other anti-Pakistan insurgent groups.  "It doesn't square with my observations/sources, even though lots of Pakistanis will say it is true," one said. "The Indians have - by many accounts - had a longstanding connection with Baluch nationalists/separatists in Pakistan, but these are not Taliban and they aren't active in Afghanistan fighting against US/NATO forces. So yes, India gives Pakistan grief (as Pakistan has in India), but I've seen no evidence that it comes from Pakistani or Afghan Taliban.

"As for the consulates, that's a regular refrain from Pakistani government and military," the expert added, "but there's very little US evidence to support the claims of major Indian activity in these locations, which appear to be minor operations with rather few personnel." The former U.S. intelligence officer who made the allegation said that U.S. policymakers do not require the U.S. government to collect intelligence on the issue.

Early reaction to the news today that President-Elect Obama plans to name former congressman and Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to be his CIA director was greeted by intelligence watchers in town with something approaching mystification. "Panetta???" came one e-mail.

Panetta doesn't have an intelligence background. The latest word from some who had been informally advising the Obama campaign on intelligence matters the past few days was that the Obama people were going to let expected Director of National Intelligence nominee retired Adm. Dennis Blair have a big hand in picking the CIA director (and take responsibility for the decision). The Obama people, it was said, were inclined to pick someone "not political" in order to avoid some of the unhappiness of, say, the Porter Goss period. And given how the Obama team was hammered by the left for considering former senior intelligence official John Brennan to be CIA director, Obama would be disinclined to pick someone closely associated with the intelligence controversies of the recent Bush-Tenet era. In the end, only that latter hunch proved correct.

"My initial reaction is, I am sorry that there was felt a need to replace the current director," former senior CIA official Paul Pillar, now with Georgetown University told me. "Gen. [Michael] Hayden is a military and intelligence but primarily intelligence professional who has performed his duties in each job he has held in an honorable fashion, so far as I have knowledge of them."

Asked if the Obama team was making a politically safe choice over someone with known deeper experience on intelligence matters, Pillar demurred. "There has been enough controversy over enough of these issues involving the intelligence community. And there has been enough expectation and demand for change, that I expect it was felt amongst the president elect's advisors, whatever their personal view of what is right, that the political context and environment was such that a change was required."

A former senior CIA manager said the message of the Panetta appointment was clear: "The message is, 'I don't want to hear anything out of the CIA. Make it go away. No scandals. Keep it quiet,'" the former officer told me. "They put over there a guy who is a political loyalist, who will keep everything nice and quiet, but who won't know a good piece of intelligence from a shitty piece of intelligence, and wouldn't know a good intelligence officer" from a bad one.

But former intelligence analyst Greg Treverton, now with the Rand Corporation, said Panetta's experience as a former White House chief of staff might give him a unique understanding of the presidency and its needs for intelligence. "One of my experiences with people like Panetta who have been chief of staff is that they have a clear sense of what is helpful to the president that most senior officials don't," Treverton told me. "They get it. What he could do and couldn't do. And that's an interesting advantage Panetta brings. Knowledge of what the presidential stakes are like, how issues arise, and what they need to be protected from, for better or worse."

Retired CIA deputy director for the East Europe division Milt Bearden said Panetta is a "brilliant" choice. "It is not problematic that Panetta lacks experience in intelligence," Bearden e-mailed. "Intel experience is overrated. Good judgement, common sense, and an understanding of Washington is a far better mix to take to Langley than the presumption of experience in intelligence matters. Having a civilian in the intelligence community mix is, likewise, a useful balance. Why not DNI?"

The Panetta choice also makes sense to him, said Philip Zelikow, a former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (and Foreign Policy writer). "The issues of presidential trust and clean hands are, at this moment in history, most important," Zelikow said by e-mail. "And even an 'intelligence professional' would have to rely on others in many ways. ... So Obama and his team have made a certain kind of tradeoff." 

Initial Hill reaction was one of puzzlement, and consternation by at least one key senator that she had not been consulted on the choice. "I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director," incoming chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was cited by the Los Angeles Times. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time." Confirmation prep teams, take note.