Why Did Comstock Blackball Eric Lichtblau?

by emptywheel

We've been turning our attention to Barbara Comstock of late, trying to better understand how her role in the Conservative Movement relates to her leadership of Scooter Libby's Defense Team Fundraising. And CityGirl at FDL found this report on the increased politicization of the Justice Department's Public Affairs under Comstock. Among other details, the report describes that Comstock effectively blackballed Eric Lichtblau and tried to discourage Justice Department officials from speaking with him.

Disagreement was spilling over into retribution. Long before the press credentials episode [discussed below], Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times had become a minor obsession in the Public Affairs Office. “They would complain about him bitterly,” one reporter remembers. (One staffer recalls a dozen or more edicts instructing staff not to talk to him. Sometimes special meetings were called to announce that Lichtblau was being “cut out” or “frozen.”) I asked Mark Corallo about this charge. “They were told they should give him the same professional courtesy as any other reporter, but that they should not feel that they have to give him anything more than any other reporter,” he told me.

Now, the report portrays Comstock as attacking a number of reporters, but the attention to Lichtblau seems--as this passage explains--an obsession. So, I thought, by examining Lichtblau's reporting, we might be able to better understand why the GOP thought they needed a partisan hack in charge of their Public Affairs at Justice during the period of Comstock's reign.

Lichtblau reported on a wide range of stories during Comstock's tenure at DOJ. He reported on the investigation into Islamic charities (which brought Fitzgerald and Comstock together at an early time), the changing attitudes toward gay employees in DOJ, the increasing power and acceptance of the Federalist Society at the Federal level, questionable terrorist alerts, the negotiations surrounding expanding the Patriot Act, and, in Comstock's last days at Justice, the Plame inquiry. But there are two Lichtblau stories that, I suspect, really pissed off Comstock: the Katrina Leung story, and the story of domestic surveillance.

Katrina Leung

Katrina Leung, recall, was a double agent busted in 2003 for passing secrets to the Chinese. US intelligence had long used Leung to learn details of Chinese power structure and pass disinformation to the Chinese. But at the same time, Leung carried on at least two affairs with FBI agents, one with her FBI handler and another with the chief of security at Lawrence Livermore Lab; using those relationships, Leung collected information to send to the Chinese. And the most embarrassing part, for someone like Barbara Comstock? Leung was not only a double agent, she was a GOP fundraiser.

Lichtblau not only reported on the basic scandal, but probed further to reveal more embarrassing details. In one article (co-bylined with James Risen), he described that all Presidents since Reagan had relied on Leung's intelligence.

Secret intelligence on the Chinese leadership provided by a longtime F.B.I. informer was sent to top policy makers at the White House, including several presidents, even after it was suspected that she might be a double agent for Beijing, United States officials have said.

[snip]

But senior intelligence and law enforcement officials say the most urgent questions in the case relate to the intelligence reports she provided the United States, rather than the secrets she is said to have stolen from the bureau. If she was a Chinese double agent, then the credibility of the intelligence that was sent to the White House based on her reporting must now be called into question, officials said. The intelligence from Ms. Leung was considered so significant that the F.B.I. frequently circulated reports that included it throughout the American intelligence community and to senior policy makers, sometimes in the form of a ''letterhead memorandum'' that was considered top priority.

And perhaps more damaging, (again writing with Risen) Lichtblau reported that Leung may have told the Chinese that the NSA had bugged the Chinese presidential plane.

Intelligence officials say they are trying to determine whether the Chinese found out about the operation as a result of an F.B.I. security breach that was disclosed last week with the arrest of Katrina Leung, who officials described as a Chinese double agent, and James J. Smith, a former F.B.I. agent in Los Angeles who was her contact at the bureau. The two had a long-term sexual relationship, court documents said.

Officials familiar with the investigation said that if the bugging operation was compromised as a result of the F.B.I. case, it would be one of the most damaging losses associated with it.

Finally, Lichtblau reported that the FBI had had indications as early as 1991--and Robert Mueller was aware starting in 2001--that Leung was a double agent.

Senior F.B.I. officials were told in the early 1990's that a Los Angeles woman accused this week of being a double-agent appeared to be spying for the Chinese, but they continued using her as an informer nonetheless, current and former officials said today.

[snip]

Officials said Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I. became aware of the case through back channels in late 2001 and dispatched senior counterintelligence people to do a full investigation.

In short, Lichtblau (sometimes working with James Risen) demonstrated that this was not a limited case of counter-espionage. Rather, it was a systematic failure which discredited much of the intelligence on China the country had relied on. And the FBI of both Bush Presidencies had failed to pursue the exposure.

There are two further connections between Leung and Scooter Libby that bear note. First, John Cline (Libby's Iran-Contra lawyer) used his well-honed greymail skills to defend James Smith, the FBI agent and lover through whom Leung accessed many classified documents. And it was the plea agreement Smith signed that eventually led to all charges against Leung being dropped. Cline, at least indirectly, was involved in getting a damaging double agent and GOP fundraiser off with no punishment.

And Libby has an even closer involvement in the Leung case--or rather, the larger issue of counterintelligence against the Chinese. He was the legal adviser to the Cox Committee of the late 1990s, which examined how China accessed some of our most sensitive military information. The report blamed Democrats for leaks to the Chinese, while obscuring past Republican dealings with China as part of the Iran-Contra scandal:

The American public was led to believe that $30,000 in illegal “soft-money” donations from Chinese operatives to Democrats in 1996 were somehow linked to China’s access to U.S. nuclear secrets. Millions of Americans may have been influenced to vote against Gore and for Bush because they wanted to rid the U.S. government of people who had failed to protect national security secrets.

But the reality was that the principal exposure of U.S. nuclear secrets to China appears to have occurred when Beijing obtained U.S. blueprints for the W-88 miniaturized hydrogen bomb, a Chinese intelligence coup in the mid-1980s on the watch of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The intelligence loss came at a time when the Reagan-Bush administration was secretly collaborating with communist China on arms shipments to the Nicaraguan contra rebels, an operation so sensitive that Congress and the American people were kept in the dark, even as White House aide Oliver North colluded with Chinese agents.

Libby's involvement likely has no direct connection to Comstock's blackballing of Lichtblau, but it points to the continued involvement of a small group of Republican operatives on the same issues.

Domestic Surveillance

The Katrina Leung story is one that threatened to reveal Justice and GOP negligence in pursuing a double agent. But all the co-bylines with James Risen points to an even bigger reason behind Comstock's blackballing of Lichtblau. Even in 2002, he was beginning to work on the story that would become last December's NSA domestic spying story.

As part of his coverage of the Patriot Act, for example, Lichtblau reported in November 2002 on a FISA Court decision that allowed the Justice Department greater leeway on sharing intelligence between the FBI and intelligence.

The Justice Department, moving quickly to use its expanded powers for spying on possible terrorists, plans to assign federal lawyers in counterintelligence to terrorism task forces in New York and Washington to help secure secret warrants against suspects, officials say.

The deployments, along with other changes under discussion by top Justice Department officials, are seen as a crucial first step in breaking down the wall between intelligence gathering and law enforcement, officials said.

The moves grow from a decision last week by a special appellate panel of the Foreign Intelligence Court of Review in Washington that validated the Justice Department's broad surveillance powers under an antiterrorism law passed last year. The appeals court found that prosecutors were permitted to use wiretaps obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in prosecuting people accused of being terrorists. For more than 20 years restrictions had deterred criminal investigators and intelligence agents from sharing information.

Although this decision does not relate directly to the program revealed in December by Risen and Lichtblau (the surveillance allowed by this decision still worked within FISA guidelines), it does point to rising concerns that the standards for surveillance were being lowered.

Some civil libertarians charge that the policy will make it much easier for the authorities to justify secret wiretaps and surveillance, using lower thresholds of evidence than traditional criminal warrants require. Critics worry that it could mean a return to the days of J. Edgar Hoover's F.B.I. in the 1960's, when agents routinely spied on people and groups for political reasons.

But Justice Department officials insist that the appellate decision does not make it any easier for them to single out someone for surveillance.

Despite concerns about the accuracy of some of the information that the F.B.I. has provided, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, which considers surveillance applications, approved all 932 requests for intelligence warrants from the Justice Department last year. Department officials said they did not expect a large increase in wiretaps and surveillance, even with the expanded authority. [my emphasis]

Note, Lichtblau doesn't describe the questions raised about the accuracy of FBI information. But it seems to be the germ of questions we're now discussing explicitly with regards to the NSA program.

Then, in May 2003, Lichtblau and Risen teamed up to report on an attempt by the Republicans to pry into citizens' records.

The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations, officials said.

The proposal, which was beaten back, would have given the C.I.A. and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas -- known as ''national security letters'' -- requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the subpoenas do not require court approval.

The surprise proposal was tucked into a broader intelligence authorization bill now pending before Congress. It set off fierce debate today in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said. Democrats on the panel said they were stunned by the proposal because it appeared to expand significantly the role of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon in conducting domestic operations, despite a long history of tight restrictions, officials said.

Once again, this is not the NSA program Risen and Lichtblau broke the news of last December. But it suggests Lichtblau, working with Risen, was already uncovering the evidence of increased surveillance of American citizens. I can well imagine how, as Comstock recognized Lichtblau was on the trail of increased domestic surveillance, she attempted to refuse him access to DOJ to prevent his discovery of the full outlines of some of the programs we have since learned about.

Now, Comstock was not at DOJ solely to protect the implementation of these programs. If she were, BushCo would have kept her in the position. After she left, after all, Lichtblau broke at least two more stories in the same vein that Comstock's interference might have prevented.

First, in November 2003, Lichtblau revealed that the FBI had been tracking antiwar protesters.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum.

The memorandum, which the bureau sent to local law enforcement agencies last month in advance of antiwar demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco, detailed how protesters have sometimes used ''training camps'' to rehearse for demonstrations, the Internet to raise money and gas masks to defend against tear gas. The memorandum analyzed lawful activities like recruiting demonstrators, as well as illegal activities like using fake documentation to get into a secured site.

In response to this story, DOJ wrote a stinging rebuke, again called on DOJ officials to refuse Lichtblau interviews, and revoked Lichtblau's press credentials for DOJ.

Then, almost certainly, Lichtblau worked with some of the DOJ sources who revealed aspects of the NSA domestic surveillance program. He covered James Comey thoughout this period, including the time when Ashcroft was in the hospital and, we now know, Comey objected to aspects of the NSA surveillance program. The report from this year of Justice Department officials (including Comey) objecting to the NSA program almost certainly relies on Lichtblau's sources at DOJ. Indeed, the report may well have rely on reporting Lichtblau was beginning to do while Comstock was still at DOJ.

In other words, Comstock may have been brought in to offer DOJ cover while it ramped up a number of domestic surveillance programs. That still raises the question of why she left in October 2003. George Bush and Dick Cheney are likely regretting the loss of the kind of press badgering that Comstock did while at DOJ. Why did they feel they could pass it up, and what is so important about her role now that made the loss of her at DOJ worthwhile?

Comments

[lemondloulou54]

Very interesting. I've noticed the Repubs love to put female faces on their worst deeds, to cushion the blow, as it were. Cases in point: Condi, Matalin, Comstock, Tori Clark, and the latest, Armstrong. The thinking is that the press won't ask the women the hard questions. For the most part it works because the press is still predominantly a male bastion. None of these women have real authority, which is always preserved by Cheney and Rummy. The Repubs have to periodically move these women into different positions. Notice that Matalin was used by Cheney for the hunting fiasco. They only bring her in when therer is a real disaster. Tori Clark is resurfacing again with a new book. . . Of course Karen Hughes is back with a real no-power position at State, a permanent "listening tour" of the world. Condi's been reduced to reorganizing the State dept., moving offices hither and yon. She sure hasn't focused like a laser on problems in the middle East or anywhere else, has she? She's made Madeleine Albright look pretty good though, hasn't she?

[kaleidescope]

This is just rampant speculation on my part: As we know, Comstock helped direct Republican opposition research. She was highly valued for her skill at directing teams of lawyers to investigate people and then use the information to smear them. Could part of Comstock's role at DOJ have been to generate info/spy requests to obtain sensitive information about the administration's political opponents or other people the administration might want to "motivate" into cooperating?

[zanzibar]

I am glad TNH and FDL are beginning to shine the spotlight on Comstock. Please keep it up. I am very certain as you dig that more will be uncovered. Its time to seriously unmask the structure and players of the abuse and corruption of the regime.

[John Casper]

I agree zanzibar and it also illuminates how the WH and Rethugs treat real journalists who take their responsibilities seriously.

[I Claudius]

I think Comstock is a rosetta stone to this tight little group of Rethuglican operatives and should be dissected very throughly indeed.She likes to dish it out, let's see how she takes it. Like most cowards and bullies, a solid blow to the jaw and she will cry like a little girl. She has probably never experienced having her record and life 'flayed and displayed' for all the world to see.

The Rethuglicans have much to fear from the Blogasphere because it is an instantly accessable, permanent record of their sins and crimes. A chronicle and log which they can never be sure of who downloaded the articles and posts against them and hence they can't be sure that these records have been erased from the public record, they could reappear at any time. They have lost control of the dialog.

Great stuff emptywheel, you have a six-sense on all things Gooper.

[janinsanfran]

Lichtblau is a reporter who threatened them because he can conceptualize his questions from a perspective that throws light on what the DOJ is actually doing. That is, he thinks, broadly.

Very early on in our no fly list case, before there was really any conventional media narrative about the list, Lichtblau interviewed me about it. Several other reporters had done some good digging. But he was by far the best at knowing that whatever this thing was about, it was not about whether two individual peace activists could fly (we could, sometimes with hassle) but instead about what kind of lists of people various federal agencies were compiling on the basis of what criteria. Many reporters had trouble getting from the particular to the general implications; Lichtblau started there.

[orionATL]

thanks for a very interesting and informative column.

i wonder what a sociogram (network map) would show of these operatives.

might there be only a couple dozen or so key individuals like cheney, addington, libby, comstock, rove, abrahmoff accoustomed to working with each other on whatever dirty deed needed doing at the moment?

or echelons of operatives?

[emptywheel]

Thanks for that perspective, janinsanfran. And for Lichtblau's troubles, he lost his press pass (temporarily).

I spend a lot of time badmouthing the shitty work of a lot of the MSM reporters. But when you read someone's work from an entire 3-year period, you can really tell whether they're worth the ad revenue that pays their salary.

Lichtblau is.

[Steve J.]

EMPTY -

Great post, thanks for doing the work.

[Ron Brynaert]

oh my...this is absolutely amazing work...great job as usual

i guess we're lucky Comstock quit...otherwise forget about a year's delay we may never heard of the NSA spying

[Carl Kolchak]

orionATL: " wonder what a sociogram (network map) would show of these operatives.

might there be only a couple dozen or so key individuals like cheney, addington, libby, comstock, rove, abrahmoff accoustomed to working with each other on whatever dirty deed needed doing at the moment?"

Whatever else it might show, it shows the need to jail the underlings as well as the ringleaders when there's malfeasance and/or corruption. Many of the same people involved in Bush43 bad behavior also were involved in Iran-Contra but skated.

[radish]

Ooooooh, interesting... Go emptywheel...

This sure as hell works for me (Comstock's attempt to cut Lichtblau off from his DoJ sources having to do with Lichtblau getting a peek at the internal dissent at DoJ associated with the domestic spying program). Evidence of that dissent has certainly surfaced in various other bits of the storyline (Comey's doubts, Ashcroft being consulted in the hospital, the irritation that some of the FISC judges had with the WH and DoJ, etc etc) so we know it existed and that it wasn't just a few easily identified malcontents.

So Comstock would have been trying to prevent Lichtblau from getting at the deeper story (the surveillance program itself) and if possible to identify his sources. "Don't talk to Lichtblau" edicts are just what you'd expect to see as one arm of a pincer movement, with career threats as the other. Ordinarily I'd view kaleidoscope's speculation as implausible (public affairs department requesting surveillance data? ridiculous!). But with the Bushies, well geez, every time you think they can sink no lower...

More to the point though we're really getting a better sense of Comstock's MO in general, and what we might expect to see her do with the Libby case. Things like "discovery" are clearly very much her specialty. She's not really a PR person at all -- she's an enforcer of sorts, but her forte as an enforcer is detective work and blackmail, not leg-breaking. Think Wilford Brimley in "The Firm" if you've seen that movie. That's her to a tee.

[Jeff]

Just the reference to Libby's "Iran-Contra counsel" says it all, doesn't it? These bastards have been screwing the United States and thumbing their noses at the rule of law forever. And they keep turning up like bad pennies.