Correct humble Low and Ignorant Insane swamp hermit me if i am wrong, but i think that all such Investigations start at the Justice Department, and in some cases get passed to an “independent special prosecutor” like Patrick Fitzgerald if more Investigating is warranted. The Left likes Pat, and if a Leaking Law has been broken, then Pat is the person for the Justice Department to pass such to...providing he has the proper Security Clearance.

Pat was able to find that the so-called Plame 'leak' was not actually a Leak, since Aldrich Hazen Ames had probably gave it up already, and the CIA made sure that she was given up in a letter to Cuban Intel. However, since Pat spent more than enough time and money whilst learning about Leaks, he deserves a shot at this, if he has the proper Security Clearance. Pat discovered that Valerie Plame was a CIA joke...at best, and told the truth. Hey, he managed to come up with a rather weak charge against "Scooter" Libby, and now we hear that Valerie's own five-year old son leaks that she was a CIA "secret spy", so imagine what Pat could come up with if he had a real case.

Well, clearly Valerie was not a real CIA Agent, if her own son knew she was a "secret spy", huh. Valerie, tell him the truth.

Anyway, we now have real *LEAKS*, and it is time to execute the Leaker/s on TV.

Karmi

I linked from Jihadis and Wiretaps and Moonbats! Oh, My! -- Part 5

Dafydd, can we have a wager?
I bet you that none of the leakers primary billets are held by the NSA.
Are we on?

Matoko:

I actually do make online bets, but only on political events that I have more insight into. In this case, I suspect that at least some of the leakers will turn out to be NSA, for the simple reason that there are only a few members of Congress who would have access to this -- and only a couple that might have the least interest in leaking it.

I believe it's entirely possible that some politico -- if I had to guess, I would suspect Jay Rockefeller before anyone else -- first contacted the Times a year ago and broke the news of the basics of the program; but his staffer would then have put the Times in contact with an actual NSA guy who had real access to the complete classified information... because I don't believe the Times would be able to get all that information they published just from a senatorial doofus -- or even his intelligence staffer; it's too specific.

Besides, a member of Congress is too obvious a suspect (and so is his staff); they can't afford to have their staffers be the primary leakers. But the NSA employs what, 30,000-35,000 people worldwide? Maybe 15,000 just at Fort Meade alone. And probably a few dozen knew enough about this specific program to have leaked the details in the Times. Those are a lot better odds for avoiding detection.

Finally, I get your message that you work at the NSA... so maybe you can't see it; but all the big federal intelligence agencies have the basic State-Department mentality (even the DIA!) that hugely prefers the status-quo of the Great Game than actual war. They may actually believe they're doing the country a favor by blowing this program, which they -- not being constitutional lawyers -- probably assume is illegal.

And a great many are liberals who joined the federal bureaucracy for the same reason other liberals joined State or the EPA, the EEOC, or the IRS: to be an unfirable career bureaucrat with a strong union and excellent benefits. Sachi works for the federal government; and though she's not in the union, she knows people who are who are constantly using that leverage to gain undeserved rewards.

That is the same mentality as at the CIA... and we definitely know that CIA analysts leak like a nail-studded tire. The NSA, with its vastly larger employee base, will have more leakers in absolute numbers (but probably the same ratio) as the CIA.

Bear in mind, these people will not tell you that they're leaking information; they wouldn't tell any of their colleagues. Sachi heard that a Chinese guy who works in her area was likely arrested (or at least discharged) for spying for Red China; and while coworkers suspected he was goldbricking, nobody thought he was a spy.

(When Sachi worked at a bank many years ago, she was shocked when a close friend was arrested for stealing tens of thousands of dollars over the years... and although Sachi worked side by side with her, Sachi never suspected a thing.)

So honestly, if you're an honest person, you would be the very last to know about a leaker, even if he worked right next to you or was your direct boss. White-collar criminals have an innate sense of who it's safe to approach -- and who would turn 'em in in a New York second! Nobody would ever spill the beans to me about any serious crime, because they know I would turn in my best friend to the cops, unless I thought what he did was morally justified.

So if I were to bet on this sort of thing -- which I won't, because I'm not convinced we'll ever find out who did it -- I would definitely take your bet.

Dafydd

ummm...i can neither confirm or deny.
Dafydd, i guess i do have unfair knowledge.

there are hierarchial levels of clearance.
confidential, secret, top secret. these levels are cut through vertically by compartments. access to data is protected by the star property, can't read up, can't write down. can't exchange between compartments at all.

commonly, other agency employees (ie, DIA, CIA, FBI) can be briefed to an NSA compartment, depending on need to know.
a small subset of NSA employees would have been briefed to the specific program.
only those with need to know.

the biggest argument that the leakers were not NSA is that the paper didn't say so. They were open about it being an NSA program. Having NSA leakers would add credibility. but they couldn't say it, so they implied it with all their might.
change the odds?

and one more thing.
i really think we will find out the identity of the leakers, because everyone briefed to the program will have signed a briefing statement. there are a countable number of billets attached to any compartment.

just a couple more things...
oh, and none of the above is classified.
that all comes from an open access briefing given in an open area.

when did the NYT appraise the Bush administration of the story? a month ago?
have you considered that Bush already knows who the leakers are and is content to let the DoJ root them out? that stinks of congresspeople to me.

The reason i think the leakers were briefed was that Bush felt the need to go public in response. If the source was intra- or inter-agency gossip that would have been unneccessary.
And defense contractors could also be briefed, but i think the use of the term "officials" rules that out.

The NSA also has an internal organ that addresses ethics and legality concerns among its employees. That is another reason that i don't think they're NSA.

This is making more sense to me as i think about it. NSA employees would have known the program was lawful. If they had questions, they could have addressed them internally. But a congressperson or another agency employee that was briefed or "read in" (not invested in the program as someone who actually worked on it) might think there was an illegality, or at least an exploitable grey area. Because they would have superficial knowledge, not deep knowledge.

Matoko:

All of these sound like reaching, Matoko. The reason the Times didn't say where the leakers worked (Congress, the NSA, whatever) is that would have been part of the negotiation before they got the information: how exactly the leakers would be characterized. Their attorneys would almost certainly have insisted that they be characterized only as "officials."

Here is an illuminating mind game you can play (if you work at the puzzle palace, that should be right up your alley!) Investigators do this all the time.

Assume for sake of argument that the leakers were NSA officials who actually came by the information legitimately. Pretend that somehow you know this piece of information for a fact -- but nothing else about them.

Given that as an assumption... answer your own questions above. I think you will see that there are relatively easy answers for everything -- which shows that your points do not actually prove it wasn't leaked by "your guys."

(You can also go back and make an alternative assumption, such as that the leakers were congressional staffers or White House people and see how far it gets. It's a good way to eliminate certain questions as just not dispositive.)

The first question I asked myself was cui bono? The second was who would be reasonably confident he would not be identified?

That's why I think they're NSA: there would be so few involved in Congress who both had access to the information and also knew enough about technology and signals intelligence to be credible to the Times -- in fact, only four: Senate Select Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Ranking Member Rep. Jane Harman -- and their respective senior intelligence aides.

If it leaked to the Times from Congress, those are the only four who could plausibly have leaked it; the two members are not known for leaking, the way that Sen. Pat "Leaky" Leahy was; and it's too great a risk these days. But if you restrict yourself to the staffers, "one out of two" is just too great a risk for someone who would be a twenty- or thirty-year congressional staff veteran.

But over at Fort Meade, you are going to have a lot of people involved:

• Those actually engaged in processing the intercepts themselves: employees of the agency, civilian contractors working on the technology, and military personnel TDYed to the agency.
• Supervisors and managers who have to deal with various aspects of the program.
• And don't forget all the Arabic and Pashtun translators. Pashtun is an unusual enough language that the NSA probably doesn't get many applicants -- so they may have to take what they can get without quibbling too much about odd backgrounds. Recall how it turned out a translator attached to Guantanamo Bay was caught passing along classified information to al-Qaeda?
• The higher level personnel who have to liaison with the White House.
• Since we also know the NSA shared the intelligence with other agencies, all those at the NSA who were involved in those contacts.

(The leakers might theoretically have been CIA, FBI, or DIA; but none of those would likely have known the precise details of the parameters of what calls get intercepted, or that occasionally purely domestic calls have accidentally been recorded.)

Finally, here is a possibility you may have overlooked: suppose somebody involved in the program was very alienated, disgruntled, and anti-Bush. Call him George. Suppose he wanted to destroy the program by leaking about it. What would be the intelligent way of going about it?

Here's what I would do: I would assume I would be a suspect... so I wouldn't do it myself. I would give the information to a trusted friend, Fred, at the agency, one who shared my opinions about such programs and about President Bush -- but who himself had no authorized access whatsoever to details about the program. And I would get Fred to leak it to the Times.

Nobody would ever suspect him, would they? How could Fred be the leaker? He doesn't even work in that department! And you could investigate George from now until forever and find no evidence that he has ever contacted the newspaper, nor that they even knew he existed... because he didn't and they don't.

Even if investigators figure out it came from the agency, there are dozens of people who would have enough knowledge -- legitimately (George) or illegitimately (Fred) -- to spill to the newspaper. You could use a polygraph, but of course that's not admissible in court.

The odds are pretty high that we will never find out exactly who the leaker was -- unless some reporter was incautious enough to leave a paper trail that identifies him or her and we somehow get hold of it. But even so, we likely won't know with the degree of certainty needed for a successful prosecution. The worst the leaker faces is probably termination of his employment... which may not bother him or her.

And there are many reasons why an NSA employee or contractor or military guy on TDY to the NSA might have chosen to leak: everything from a personal grudge (as commenter Coldwarrior suggested to Captain Ed) to a political "statement."

Recall that someone evidently at the CIA leaked to the Washington Post about the secret prisons in Eastern Europe; unless you're trying to say that there is some measurable moral difference between an analyst, translator, or supervisor at the CIA and an analyst, translator, or supervisor at the NSA, I'd have to say that proves that members of an intelligence bureaucracy are, in fact, capable of deciding to leak to the press when they're unhappy with some policy for political reasons.

Oh, and as to your thought that "NSA employees would have known the program was lawful"... Matoko, lawyers don't agree with each other about its legality! Even Paul on Power Line isn't as convinced as is John at Power Line. And the NSA guys wouldn't have been lawyers; one or more might very well have the mistaken idea that "the law" requires all such intercepts to have FISA warrants.

And that probably wasn't the motivating factor in the first place: if it were political, it would have been the intercepting itself, not whether such intercepts were legal. That is, the leakers would have objected to the whole idea of intercepting calls where one party is an "American person" (citizen or green card) as a matter of policy, regardless of whether it was technically legal. And, as above, the motivation could also be entirely personal: someone passed over for promotion, or retaliating for some undeserved or (or deserved) punishment or slight.

I think you are reacting viscerally to the suggestion that "your guys" might be at the bottom. You need to analyze this logically: somebody committed a monumental act of betrayal -- whoever did it would have plenty of personal friends who would angrily deny even the possibility... and they would all have been betrayed.

Yes, even you can be fooled by a clever traitor!

Dafydd

Dafydd.
That is why we should bet.
;-)
--matoko-chan

unless you're trying to say that there is some measurable moral difference between an analyst, translator, or supervisor at the CIA and an analyst, translator, or supervisor at the NSA,

umm...yes! i do so say. actually, in the trade, we say NSA and CIA are from different "worlds". ;-)

Dafyyd, to honest, those a re believable scenarios.
But i just can't get "nearly a dozen officials" oout of any of them.
However, a loose coalition of congresspeople and say, CIA....
CIA and NSA are very, very different.

another thing that bothers me is the "current and former". if the program is only thirteen months old, and the NYT sat on this for 12, what actual experience could a "former official" have of the program?

Matoko Kusanagi:

No, the NSA program started in early 2002; it's been running for close to four years now, minus however many months it was suspended until it could be changed and given enough more oversight to satisfy AG John Ashcroft and DAG James Comey. Say it's been running three and a half years... plenty of time for some "former officials" to have some experience with it.

In fact, perhaps that adjective "former" is a clue to why they leaked the information to the New York Times....

Dafydd

hmmm...ok, Dafydd.
I guess i can believe that a "former" NSA employee might leak.
They would be far less invested in protecting the intel collection channel.
But they would still be violating their oath.

Matoko Kusanagi:

But they would still be violating their oath.

I still find this fascinating: why would you find it harder to believe that an NSA employee would violate his oath than a CIA, FBI, IRS, DEA, or DIA agent? Some judges violate their oaths, as do some soldiers, doctors, CEOs, and presidents. Some jihadis violate their deeply held religious convictions -- thank goodness, because if none did, we would never get any intel from interrogations! But some Christian ministers and Jewish rabbis also violate their oaths and disclose confidences that they mustn't.

In any group of people, some small portion of them will betray whatever they swore, and for a great many reasons: money, power, revenge, an exaggerated sense of personal mission, or through simple carelessness.

I assume you would agree with all of the above -- but you would then offer the exception that none of this applies to any of the 30,000 people who work at the National Security Agency.

Why? What leads you to conclude that this one agency, alone among all private and government groups, is immune to the normal human tendency towards betrayal among a small subset of any large set?

Dafydd

Why? What leads you to conclude that this one agency, alone among all private and government groups, is immune to the normal human tendency towards betrayal among a small subset of any large set?

Their selection gradient is much, much higher. ;-)

Matoko Kusanagi:

Their selection gradient is much, much higher.

That merely restates the original question in modified form. What leads you to conclude that this one agency, alone among all private and government groups, has such a higher "selection gradient" that it is immune to the normal human tendency towards betrayal among a small subset of any large group?

Dafydd

Dafydd,
not all those thirty thousand beings would have access to the specific program. Because of the way our classified data is protected, and because of need-to-know. Perhaps fifty people? Within that small subset people are vetted at a more rigorous level than, say, CIA.
Possibly, other employees would know about the program thru techno-gossip, but they must hold that information at the level of the facility where it was imparted to them. And those people would not have the detailed knowledge the NYT claims to have acquired.
Let me ask you this--have you heard of NSA leakage before? Do you know much from opensource about their charter?
NSA holds their mission pretty close. And in my experience they are not as politically motivated as much of CIA.

see, that's why the "nearly a dozen" really bothers me. that just smacks of a group with an agenda or incomplete knowledge of the program.

and Dafydd, to be honest, there is some truth about you say about my "faith". I know many techno-droids and analysts that work really hard, are dedicated to their profession, believe with all their hearts that covert operations are one thing that keeps America safe.
Some of the brightest people in the country work for NSA. I guess there is a sort of tribal unity, cohesion, or esprit de corps in operation for me. It is nearly impossible for me to believe that either analysts or technos would compromise an intel channel. I can't imagine managers doing it either, and proportionally there would be two few of them to make up the "nearly a dozen".
I apologize for my bias.

Dafydd, check this
via Trent Telenko at Winds of Change.
i know, sounds like a movie star name, or the hero of a techno-thriller, doesn't it?
;-)
matoko-chan

Matoko Kusanagi:

And in my experience they are not as politically motivated as much of CIA.

Oh, I have no doubt that some agencies are worse than others. The CIA in particular has a culture that encourages leaks whenever the Company disagrees with a presidential policy.

But there is no intel agency that is utterly leak free -- not until we go on a crash program to create the Perfect Human.

I suspect that a lot of people who work at the NSA are far less trusting than you... people whose job it is to internally investigate possible leaks. If they took the same position as you -- that such leaking is not even logically possible -- then there would be no reason for security, no reason for internal affairs officers (whatever they're called at NSA), no reason for the elaborate protocols, because everybody would be so full of that "tribal unity, cohesion, or esprit de corps" that it would be redundant.

I really think you have to understand that no human is incorruptable, no human is beyond temptation, nobody at an intelligence agency is so trustworthy he needn't even be monitored.

Dafydd

people whose job it is to internally investigate possible leaks

Dafydd, no...maybe there are some....but i don't know of any. The protocols to protect classified info are set up to circumvent those human traits. Like the two man rule. The vetting process screens out a lot of the lesser, more corruptible beings. and i think the DoJ is supposed to deal with the oath brakers. The agency does not deal with them internally. ok...will you accept that it is highly unlikely the leakers are current NSA employees?

Matoko Kusanagi:

ok...will you accept that it is highly unlikely the leakers are current NSA employees?

I cannot possibly make a probablistic estimate: insufficient data.

Dafydd

I cannot possibly make a probablistic estimate: insufficient data.

Well, then. We will just have to wait and see. ;-) --matoko chan

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