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Security Before Politics
By Porter J. Goss
WashingtonPost.com
Since leaving my post as CIA director almost three years ago, I have remained
largely silent on the public stage. I am speaking out now because I feel our
government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national
security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can't have a secret
intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets. Americans have to
decide now.
A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on
Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees
charged with overseeing our nation's intelligence services had no higher
priority than stopping al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of
the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the
CIA's "High
Value Terrorist Program,"
including the development of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and what those
techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with
lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers.
Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that
the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that
specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned. It must be
hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can
forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik
Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political
expedience.
Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:
-- The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate
intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA
was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.
-- We understood what the CIA was doing.
-- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.
-- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.
-- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress
to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.
I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop
authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed "memorandums for the
record" suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately
-- to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader,
the CIA director or the president's national security adviser -- and not quietly
filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted
they have.
Circuses are not new in Washington , and I can see preparations being made for
tents from the Capitol straight down Pennsylvania Avenue . The CIA has been
pulled into the center ring before. The result this time will be the same: a
hollowed-out service of diminished capabilities. After Sept. 11, the general
outcry was, "Why don't we have better overseas capabilities?" I fear that in the
years to come this refrain will be heard again: once a threat -- or God forbid,
another successful attack -- captures our attention and sends the pendulum
swinging back.
There is only one person who can shut down this dangerous show: President Obama.
Unfortunately, much of the damage to our capabilities has already been done. It
is certainly not trust that is fostered when intelligence officers are told one
day "I have your back" only to learn a day later that a knife is being held to
it. After the events of this week, morale at the CIA has been shaken to its
foundation.
We must not forget: Our intelligence allies overseas view our inability to
maintain secrecy as a reason to question our worthiness as a partner. These
allies have been vital in almost every capture of a terrorist.
The suggestion that we are safer now because information about interrogation
techniques is in the public domain conjures up images of unicorns and fairy
dust. We have given our enemy invaluable information about the rules by which we
operate.
The terrorists captured by the CIA perfected the act of beheading innocents
using dull knives. Khalid Sheik Mohammed boasted of the tactic of placing
explosives high enough in a building to ensure that innocents trapped above
would die if they tried to escape through windows. There is simply no comparison
between our professionalism and their brutality.
Our enemies do not subscribe to the rules of the Marquis of Queensbury. "Name,
rank and serial number" does not apply to non-state actors but is, regrettably,
the only question this administration wants us to ask. Instead of taking risks,
our intelligence officers will soon resort to word smithing cables to
headquarters while opportunities to neutralize brutal radicals are lost.
The days of fortress America are gone. We are the world's superpower. We can sit
on our hands or we can become engaged to improve global human conditions. The
bottom line is that we cannot succeed unless we have good intelligence. Trading
security for partisan political popularity will ensure that our secrets are not
secret and that our intelligence is destined to fail us.
The writer was director of the CIA from September 2004 to May 2006 and was
chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 1997 to
2004.