MB Civic

By Michael Kinsley | Friday, June 16, 2006; A25 | The Washington Post
“So put aside your Captain Crunch decoder ring,” recommends the Central Intelligence Agency, “for the moment.” This is on the Internet site of the CIA’s legal department. It’s part of a pitch for recruits so startlingly moronic — even as an attempt at adorable self-mockery — that you think it must be some subtle comment on the double meaning of the word “intelligence.” In good hall-of-mirrors fashion, it’s lifted from some book, but the book quotes supposedly real CIA employees. Whatever, this is the agency’s self-presentation on its own Web site.

“If the theme music from Mission Impossible runs through your head,” it says, “or you get the urge to order a martini ‘shaken, not stirred,’ at the mention of the letters ‘CIA,’ ” — why, then, you’re just the kind of lawyer we want!

“We’ve been a major player in developing the law of national security vs. the First Amendment,” the agency deadpans. “Or the Fourth Amendment. . . .” When “Americans [abroad] come across on our screen, they’ve got constitutional rights we’ve got to think about . . . . Or electronic surveillance . . . . In areas like that, we’re helping to create the law, and that’s a real rush.”

And it’s all true. The CIA is in the forefront of efforts to make sure that democracy, individual rights and stuff like that don’t get in the way of our crusade for the spread of democracy, individual rights and stuff like that.

For years, all the intelligence agencies have been tussling with the American Civil Liberties Union over documents about the innovative Bush administration policy of locking people up in foreign countries where they can be tortured without the inconvenience of anyone knowing about it or bringing up, you know, like, the Constitution. It is not yet clear — though there is little reason for optimism — whether the courts will let them get away with it, but the official position of the executive branch under President Bush is that the U.S. government can lock you up anywhere in the world, torture you and tell no one about it. And if someone does find out and starts talking trash like “habeas corpus” or “Fourth Amendment,” too bad: It’s all okay under the president’s inherent powers as commander in chief. Congress — unbeknownst to Congress — approved it all in its resolution shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, urging the president to fight terrorism. And the president deputized the CIA and other agencies to go forth and use this authority, in documents that you can’t have and that may or may not exist.

In a twist fully worthy of Kafka, or at least Joseph Heller (“Catch-22”), the very suspicion that bad things are going on is a reason you can’t find out. As a CIA legal document explains: “CIA confirmation of the existence of [evidence] would confirm a CIA interest in or use of specific intelligence methods and activities.” After all, the agency gaily reasons, the “CIA would not request . . . authorization from the president for intelligence activities in which it had no interest.”

Meanwhile, in another federal court, the ACLU has been arguing with the National Security Agency about the wiretapping of international phone calls to and from the United States. The 1978 intelligence reform law made clear as cellophane that these agencies had no authority to wiretap citizens of this country and in this country without permission from a judge. So clear, in fact, that the president doesn’t deny that his wiretapping program violates the 1978 law. Instead, he says that Congress overruled that law in its 2001 resolution to oppose terrorism. That, plus the usual inherent powers of the presidency.

What’s more, government lawyers say, they can prove all this. Or at least they could, but they can’t, because the evidence must remain secret for national security reasons. And what are those reasons? Well, the reasons why the reasons why the program is okay are also secret. And without this evidence, there cannot be a trial. Sorry.

It’s true that you and I are not being grabbed on the streets and sent to a former secret police torture-training camp in Godforsakistan. Nor is the government eavesdropping on your international phone calls or mine. Probably. Because I like you, I’ll forgo the usual ominous warning about how they came after him and then they came after her and then they came after you. I’ll even skip the liberal sermonette about how even bad guys have rights.

But your rights and mine are not supposed to be at the whim of the government, let alone the president. They are based in the Constitution and the willingness of those we put in power to obey it — even as interpreted by judges they may disagree with. The most distressing aspect of this story is the apparent attitude of our current rulers that the Constitution is an obstacle to be overcome — by conducting dirty business abroad or by wildly disingenuous interpretations of laws and the Constitution.

Just look at what these supposed worshipers at the shrine of “strict constructionism” and “original meaning” have done to the 2001 anti-terrorism resolution. Did any senator who voted for this resolution have any idea that he or she was, in essence, voting to repeal all the protections for individuals against government agency abuse that Congress enacted in 1978?

The fact that there are countries in this world where the government can torture people in secret and without fear of courts is supposed to be a tragedy — not a convenience.