The flood of classified information coming out of the Obama
White House has grown so large — and the leaks so important —
that last week there was a bipartisan call for an investigation
into the White House’s apparent involvement. If it leads to the
right kind of investigation, it may be enough to reverse the leaks’
intended political effect of boosting the president’s chances of
reelection.
Last Thursday’s call for an investigation into the leaks, made
by both chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House
Permanent Select Committees on Intelligence, was unprecedented. It
must have resulted from the four members’ judgment that the leaks
have seriously damaged our national security and the ability of our
intelligence community to do its job.
The Intelligence Committee leaders’ action raised the political
heat on the president to such a degree that Attorney General Eric
Holder appointed two U.S. attorneys, one from Maryland and one from
Washington , D.C., to oversee special investigations by the FBI
that were already under way.
But these investigations will drag on and their results won’t be
known for years. Calls for congressional hearings at which possible
leakers and senior White House figures would be called to account
continue, but any open hearings would fail over claims that
classified information couldn’t be disclosed. Questions that
demanded details of the administration’s internal debates would be
blocked by claims of executive privilege. Some pundits, undeterred
by history, have called for a revival of the “independent counsel”
process of unfond memory.
There is a better process that would produce results sooner than
November, and could — if seized upon by Gov. Romney as leader of
the Republican Party — have the right kind of political effect
before the election.
The focus of the leak problem should not only be the questions
of who leaked the information and what role the president played in
the disclosures. The focus has to be the assessment of how much
damage — and what kinds of damage —the leaks did to our national
security.
Every leaker has an agenda. More often than not, and quite
evidently in these cases, the agenda is a political one. But for
the Republicans to have any impact on the campaign — and the
desired effect of ending the leak campaign — they have to begin
with substance, not politics.
A CNN story attempted to frame the debate on the leaks
politically to the exclusion of substance. It quoted Rice
University historian Douglas Brinkley, who said, “There’s a
difference between a clean, meaningful leak and a sloppy one that
has unintended consequences.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Brinkley’s distinction is drawn solely
around the political effects and ignores the real issue. The only
difference with which we should be concerned is between a leak that
causes no damage to national security and one that does.
That difference is illustrated by the difference between the
leak of the CIA employment of Valerie Plame and the string of leaks
by the Obama administration — evidently done with presidential
approval — of the president’s “kill list” program and our
now-disclosed cyberattack on Iran using the Stuxnet computer
worm.
When a significant secret is leaked, the CIA or the Defense
Department — or both — do what’s called a damage assessment to
measure the impact of the leak on national security. The damage
assessment measures what intelligence operations — including
methods, sources and national security assets such as spy
satellites — were compromised by the leak. Sources — including
spies in other nations — can be captured and killed or turned into
double agents by their exposure. The methods by which we gather and
analyze intelligence can be revealed, reducing or even mooting
their future value. For example, the capabilities of spy
satellites, most of which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, can
be negated by being revealed to the people, groups, or nations that
they are used against.
Some leaks are politically important but have no effect whatever
on the nation’s security. The best example of that kind of leak is
the Plame Name Blame Game.
The leak by then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to
columnist Robert Novak was published in a now-famous column that
revealed Valerie Plame’s CIA employment and kicked off the media
game. It ended up costing millions of tax dollars and cost I. Lewis
“Scooter” Libby his job and personal fortune. But the leak was
substantively meaningless. Plame was a CIA desk jockey, not a
protected intelligence identity involved in covert operations.
According to my intelligence community sources, the CIA damage
assessment of the Plame name leak judged that it caused no damage
whatever to our intelligence community’s ability to gather
intelligence.
The long investigation — in which Special Counsel Patrick
Fitzgerald knew early of Armitage’s role but never pursued for
criminal charges — was a huge political story that hamstrung the
Bush administration for about two years.
The lack of damage was entirely ignored in the media-propelled
political firestorm around the leak.
The Obama leak campaign should be judged and acted upon in
precisely the opposite way. There will soon be — if there aren’t
already — assessments of the damage done by the leaks of the cyber
attack on Iran, the Obama “kill list” program of drone attacks, and
the other leaks being managed out of the White House. It is these
assessments on which the House and Senate Intelligence Committees
and the Romney campaign must focus.
Showy public hearings will not, as I pointed out above,
accomplish anything because the White House officials called to
testify won’t say anything important. They will claim that they
cannot answer the important questions either because classified
information would be publicly divulged or executive privilege
prevents the disclosure of White House internal deliberations. Such
hearings would fizzle. Republicans will be left empty-handed and
look foolish for their trouble.
Instead, CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus and Defense Secretary
Leon Panetta should be called before a joint closed hearing of both
intelligence committees to explain their preliminary damage
assessments. Waiting for final assessments could take years that
the White House shouldn’t be allowed.
In those hearings, the committees can learn which sources and
methods were compromised. They can learn — to the extent our
intelligence community knows — how Iran is responding to the
disclosures, and how the Pakistani and Afghan governments are
changing their behavior toward us as a result of the leaks.
When they learn these things, the committees can disclose their
own judgments of how severe the damage is. They can’t disclose the
details, but they can say that there was damage and characterize
whether they believe it was significant.
But that is the limit of what Congress can do. It is up to Mitt
Romney, as the leader of the Republican Party, to choose to make
the Obama leaks a campaign issue.
So far, Romney has been silent on this and too many other
issues. If he chooses to remain silent on the Obama leaks, he will
surrender the issue leaving Obama to continue the leaking and gain
whatever political advantage within reach. Instead, Romney could
and should seize upon the issue. Romney should speak out quickly,
joining in the bipartisan call for an investigation and asking the
intelligence committees to hold the closed hearings to obtain the
assessments of damage.
When — and if — the committees hold those hearings, Romney
should use whatever they may disclose to make a major speech on the
issue, calling the Obama administration to account for its actions
against our nation’s security. It’s all up to Romney: he can be the
leader of the Republican Party or sit silent, absorbing the damage
to his campaign and ignoring the damage to our national
security.
