WHO DOES IT SERVE?:

The Secret History of Anonymous (Jason Vest, July 2, 2004, Boston Phoenix)

Some have speculated that "Anonymous" has been publishing with at least a measure of blessing from a CIA so angered by certain White House and Pentagon elements that it has taken the unprecedented step of allowing an active intelligence officer to inveigh against the administration – and is enjoying the fact that it can unleash a critic protected by the vagaries of national-security protocols. But the fact of the matter – as interviews with other intelligence-community officials and CIA correspondence show – is that while there might be an element of truth to that now, the agency has only reluctantly approved Scheuer's books for release because he shrewdly played by the rules. And the unique nature of CIA rules has forced him into an unhappy compromise where, even when confronted with his own name, he has to publicly deny his identity unless the agency changes its mind. (The CIA did not acknowledge a call from the Phoenix, and "declined to comment on [Imperial Hubris] or its author" to the Associated Press on Friday.)

According to several long-time intelligence officers familiar with Scheuer's situation, there's no question that the agency's conditional permission was grudging. "Think back to 2002, and imagine what would have happened if a book had come out that said ';by Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit' on the cover – it would have been a bestseller overnight, reviewed and discussed all over the place," says one veteran spook. "But because it was ';anonymous' and didn't even say what exactly he did, let alone what agency he worked for, it was destined to be what it's become: a required read among people who work this stuff, but not much else. Ironically, it seems to be selling well in the agency gift shop at Langley, and everyone from the [National Security Agency] to [the Center for Strategic and International Studies] has had him over to lecture about it. But I don't think it even got reviewed but a couple of places."

One doesn't have to read the manuscript terribly closely to see how it provides some benefit to the CIA. Critical as Anonymous is of his own organization – as well as of the Bush and Clinton administrations – he absolutely blasts the FBI on pages 185 through 192. Many progressives may not cotton to the broad notion he advances here – namely, that the US should simply dispense with any sort of legalistic, law-enforcement approach to combating Al Qaeda and leave it entirely to the covert operators. But in the context of Washington's political postmortems on 9/11-related intelligence failures, this is stuff that at least makes the FBI look worse than the CIA.

Among some in the intelligence community who have either obtained copies of the Imperial Hubris manuscript or heard about certain passages, the rough consensus is that a not-long-for-his-job George Tenet indicated to the PRB that the book's publication should be allowed, as it might blunt or contextualize some of the scathing criticism likely to assail the agency in forthcoming 9/11 Commission and Senate Select Intelligence Committee reports – and also might aid the cause of intelligence reform.

The CIA has always been useless, but now that it's verred over the line into running ops against the elected government it's time to decommission it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 2, 2004 8:44 AM