Googly Sanctions

by emptywheel

A lot of folks are aghast about the news that the CIA refused to work with the State Department to generate a list of Iranians to be sanctioned--so State was stuck using Google to come up with its own list. As Dafna Linzer describes,

When the State Department recently asked the CIA for names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their involvement in a clandestine nuclear weapons program, the agency refused, citing a large workload and a desire to protect its sources and tradecraft.

Frustrated, the State Department assigned a junior Foreign Service officer to find the names another way -- by using Google. Those with the most hits under search terms such as "Iran and nuclear," three officials said, became targets for international rebuke Friday when a sanctions resolution circulated at the United Nations.

Note that Linzer never once describes who in State is trying to develop this list. She only describes an SAO bitching about working with CIA.

A senior administration official acknowledged that the back-and-forth with the CIA had been difficult, especially given the administration's desire to isolate Iran and avoid a repeat of flawed intelligence that preceded the war.

"In this instance, we were the requesters and the CIA was the clearer," the official said. "It's the process we go through on a lot of these things. Both sides don't know a lot of reasons for why either side is requesting or denying things. Sources and methods became their stated rationale and that is what they do. But for policymaking, it can be quite frustrating."

And she discreetly describes what department the Googler works in:

That may be why the junior State Department officer, who has been with the nonproliferation bureau for only a few months, was put in front of a computer.

But that's the tell, IMO. Linzer is describing a bureaucratic struggle between Non-Proliferation--or more generally, the department of Arms Control and International Security--and the CIA. This is the department formerly headed by John Bolton, now headed by the hawk Robert Joseph (the guy who put the "16 Words" in the State of the Union), which also used to have Fred Fleitz around to serve as its enforcer with CIA. Fleitz has since moved on to create really bad propaganda for Peter Hoekstra on the House Intelligence Committee (though I have no idea whether he'll be retained when Reyes takes over), and I have no idea whether Joseph has found a similar enforcer to take Fleitz' place. It doesn't look like it. (There's a good chance the SAO is Joseph, since Condi doesn't have very many SAOs left at State; though of course Bolton himself is still a State-employed SAO for another 20 days.)

But Linzer's description of the issue--revolving around the effort to sanction Iran--suggests there's something else going on. Like perhaps CIA just thinks State is being stupid with its adoption of sanctions.

In his testimony on the Bolton nomination, Larry Wilkerson described Bolton's fondness for sanctions, often at the expense of effective policy.

It was the same thing with nonproliferation. The statistic I mentioned before, which I think Under Secretary Bolton mentioned in his speech in Tokyo on February the 7th, if I remember right -- I still keep up with this stuff, Northeast Asia -- and he said the Clinton Administration, in eight years, had sanctioned China eight times, and the Bush Administration, in four years, had sanctioned China 62 times. Okay. As I used to say, what's the measure of effectiveness here? What's it done? Is the sanctioning of 62 times an indication that China is proliferating more? Or is it an indication that we're cracking down? I'd love to see the statistic for the next four years, if Bolton were to remain Under Secretary. It would be 120 or 140. And what is the effectiveness of this? Are we actually stopping proliferation that was dangerous to our interest? Or are we doing it, and ignoring other problems that cry out for cures, diplomatic?

Wilkerson's summary of Bolton's actions at State describe him as a kind of bean counter, measuring progress in the numbers of sanctions or ICC exceptions, rather than achieving real underlying progress.

I differ from a lot of people in Washington, both friend and foe of Under Secretary Bolton, as to his, quote, "brilliance," unquote. I didn't see it. I saw a man who counted beans, who said, "98 today, 99 tomorrow, 100 the next day," and had no willingness -- and, in many cases, no capacity -- to understand the other things that were happening around those beans. And that is just a recipe for problems at the United Nations.

No, I'm not saying Joseph is doing exactly the same thing as Bolton did. Though "recipe for problems at the UN" sure sounds like a good description of what may happen with this list of Iranians to sanction. You see, the US and its partners are unwilling to share real intelligence with the UNSC--they don't want to be proven colossally wrong again, as they were with Iraq. By the CIA's own admission, the list of proposed sanction targets doesn't include the people they believe are involved in Iran's nuclear program. But that means the entire project of sanctions may well fail, not least because these Googled names are ones the Russians and Chinese aren't about to agree to.

Many Security Council members are uneasy about the sanctions. The Russians and the Chinese -- whose support is essential for the resolution to be approved -- have told the United States, Britain and France they will not support the travel-ban element of the resolution, according to three officials involved in the negotiations. Russia is building a light-water nuclear reactor in Iran and some  people on the sanctions list are connected to the project.

Which seems to point to what Linzer's reporting really reveals: First, a bureaucratic squabble between CIA and State, in which CIA refuses to go along with a project that, for whatever reason, they deem unwise (note, most of the details why CIA wouldn't provide names to State seem to come from State, not CIA--the CIA says only, "'There were several factors that made it a complicated and time-consuming request, not the least of which were well-founded concerns' about revealing the way the CIA gathers intelligence on Iran."). On top of that, the probable reality that CIA just may not have intelligence sound enough to justify sactions--it is unwilling to share its intelligence, because it doesn't want to have Russia and China rip its thin intelligence to shreds. And finally, State is scapegoating CIA pre-emptively, so that if sanctions fail, it won't be State's fault.

Frankly, I have no idea who is in the right here. But the Googled list of names to sanction, solely to have someone to sanction, seems to be just the beginning of the problem.

Comments

[emptypockets]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is this kind of request akin to the stovepiping methods we saw used with Iraq? I appreciate that stovepiping involves raw data and here State was in fact asking for CIA's expert opinion, which is proper, but both cases show a desire to ignore the subtleties and weighted uncertainties of intelligence research and just make a yes-no list.

This reminds me very much of how research generally has been treated under Bush -- forget the "sometimes," forget the "yes buts," forget "under certain circumstances" and just make a list we can use in a speech to promote our ideology.

That is basically where our current stem cell policy came from -- a list of 60+ cell lines with the "yes buts" removed, compiled not to guide policy but to sell it. Same with WMDs, same attempt here. CIA stopped wasting their time -- and their intel -- on it.

[oldtree]

doesn't this SAO statement fly in the face of our existing knowledge that cheney outed plame not only for her and wilson's knowledge about iraq, but also clearly about iran. there is little doubt that they attempted muzzle all information coming from both by crippling two people that had and worked with the most information. how could you silence intel from that region any better, and silence any other whistleblowers at the same time?

sorry, but everything was planned in this, it is now more and more clear. to continue to talk about iraqi freedom and such is ridiculous. our country has not promoted a democracy since ww2. was it because we were smart enough (then) to realize then that the people of the country had to fix their own issues? give me a list of countries that have US promoted democracy. and then the ones that have had dictators installed by the US.
sorry, our politicians play off of our desire for peace and sanity. feed off it is more appropriate. As you can see, our new congress has problems with truth all ready. they have no use for peace, as it is counterproductive to their job of representing us. their job is being elected, plain and simple.

and we the people? we sent scores of known criminals back to congress to represent us.

[emptywheel]

~pockets

It is actually somewhat different. Here, I think it's a case of pushing a strategy at the UN that CIA will not support, for whatever reason. Maybe they don't have the intell, maybe they're really trying to protect sources and methods, maybe they really do think they've got a better way. But it seems like the fault here lies in the strategy. And, of course, a lot of the intell on Iran is shoddy in the first place.

Also, I should have said, there's one other likely candidate to be the SAO here--Condi.

[Katie Jensen]

This administration has forgotten the lessons of the cold war. As an old professor of mine who worked as a communications specialist during the Truman administration used to say:

"The map is not the territory".

[William Ockham]

Maybe the problem is that the CIA knows the answer is an empty list and State didn't like that answer.

[emptywheel]

Yeah, WO, I think that's a distinct possibility. Or that all the names on the list they DO have come from the MEK.

[James]

OK, so Joseph demands a list of Iranians guilty of developing nuclear arms (denied by Iran) from the CIA and the CIA says "we have no such list and no evidence to make one, so leave us alone."

What part of that is so difficult fo these guys to understand?

[kvenlander]

James, the absence of evidence is evidence that the bad guys are deeply committed to their nefarious plans. Why else would they hide the evidence so well?

[section9]

No, there's another, more basic reason why CIA doesn't want to give up the information.

Their entire, I mean, their ENTIRE Iranian network got rolled up by the very, very excellent Iranian counterintelligence service back in the 1990's. CIA doesn't want to admit that it doesn't know jack guano about what is going on in the country. The Israelis have a very good network, as do others, but we have to pay top dollar and mucho crown jewels for their crown jewels. The Izzies don't like to talk to CIA anyway, as the CIA leaks like a sieve.

It's not political at all. CIA is simply incompetent. The Revolutionary Guards ran them out of town on a rail. Period. I know you want to blame it on Condi or Bush, but it's much simpler than that. The Iranians did a good job at COIN, that's all.

They actually have something to hide. A very, very resourceful people, the Persians. Beat the socks off Marcus Crassus. Too bad they are so poorly governed.