To leak or not to leak is question at CIA hearing

Originally posted: May 18, 2006
To leak or not to leak is question at CIA hearing

Posted by Naftali Bendavid at 9:25 am CDT

From its opening moments, it is clear the confirmation hearings of Gen. Michael Hayden to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency will be only incidentally about Hayden himself. They will be more broadly about all the turbulent issues now being debated not just in the U.S. Capitol but in offices, homes and bars across America: secrecy, privacy, terrorism, civil liberties. How much secrecy is necessary--and how much should civil liberties be abridged--in the interest of fighting a deadly enemy?

It's far from the first time such issues have been addressed in American history. From the Alien and Sedition Acts soon after the nation's founding to Abraham Lincoln's suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus to the FBI's infiltration of peace groups during the Vietnam War, Americans have always argued about how a democracy balances civil liberties with the secrecy and security necessary to fight a war. The Senate hearing chamber is just the latest forum for that debate.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) got the ball rolling with a comment that could not have been a more succinct summary of the pro-security viewpoint: "You have no civil liberties if you are dead." He spent the bulk of his opening statement talking not about Hayden, the ostensible reason for the hearing, but about the need for secrecy to fight terrorists and the damage leaks are doing to that cause.

He blasted critics of two controversial programs by the National Security Agency, which Hayden has headed for six years, to keep track of phone calls. Critics of those programs are talking about a subject "about which they know little or nothing," Roberts said. He added, "Such accusations by their very nature uninformed." And further, "Unfortunately, I have found that ignorance is no impediment for some critics."

But Roberts reserved his deepest anger for those who revealed those programs and the newspaper that reported them. The New York Times reported several months ago that the NSA was eavesdropping, without a court order, on phone calls between the U.S. and overseas if one of the participants had suspected Al Qaeda ties. More recently, USA Today reported that the NSA is amassing a giant databank of phone calls made by Americans--also without a court order--though not listening to their content.

The revelation of those programs is hanging over the hearing. An often sharp line divides those who decry the programs as an unacceptable and possibly illegal and those who view them as necessary and see the real crime as the leak of the information.

Roberts clearly falls into the latter camp. "This business of continued leaks...is endangering our country and intelligence sources and methods and lives," Roberts said. "Bin Laden, Zarqawi and their followers must be rejoicing." If we unilaterally disarm ourselves in this way, Roberts added, the result will be "game, set, match al Qaeda." The chairman concluded, "Unfortunately, there is no way we can inform the public without informing our enemies."

Not surprisingly, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) doesn't see it quite the same way. Levin was filling in as top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee for Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who is undergoing surgery. After praising Hayden's credentials, Levin said, "The war on terrorism not only requires objective, independent intelligence analysis, it also requires us to strike a thoughtful balance between our liberty and our security."

Responding to defenders of the NSA programs, Levin said, "It's not hard to see how Americans could feel their privacy has been intruded upon...It's not hard to see the potential for abuse, and the need for a potential check in law on the government's use of that information."

As the question-and-answer phase begins, the debate about the limits of liberty and privacy in a time of war will doubtless become more heated.
in National Security
Comments

The article quotes Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) as saying that this issue is this: "You have no civil liberties if you are dead."

Patriot Patrick Henry once expressed the opposite view. He said "Give me liberty, or give me death!"

Or, to quite Benjamin Franklin, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

It seems that the government is asking us to give them our liberty and our privacy, and saying that we should just trust them not to misuse it. But, if we give away our liberty and our privacy for a never-ending war, will we ever get them back? Can we trust this administration, and every other administration in the future (who will use the same arguments, of course), never to misuse the powers we are giving them?
Posted by: Franklin Jefferson | May 18, 2006 10:51:32 AM

===================

CIA's Independence at Issue as Senate Weighs Hayden
all 1,013 related »