ProfessorBainbridge.com: Kerry Compliments Us
My comment at this blog was: "As much as I take exception (in most cases) with the facts and opinions presented here, Prof., I quite enjoy the forum you provide.
In addition to having no identifiable evidence that I have swayed one mind with my comments here, (wait, perhaps I pushed a few people away from even considering anything I say), I will throw in my 2 cents, (trying not to make a nuisance of myself):
1) Using John Kerry as a straw man is like shooting fish in a barrel.... almost as challening as mocking Kennedy.
2) I'm not saying it's a pointless excercise (to post on Kerry), for even those of us who think (as I do) that the Bush administration has followed the Clinton Admin in firmly estabishing a Rouge State based on false flag terror, can still acknownledge that Kerry was indeed the Pres. Candidate selected by the Democratic Party machine.
3) Point #2 only brings into question the bonifides of the Democratic machine, questioning that I would encourage by all as every turn.
4) However, your bloging simply doesn't seem to allow for one consideration: namely that honest Americans who see that the current corrupt Cleptocracy (being supported by the current Republican Congress and President more now than at any time in our Nation's history), requires opposition, and that in a two-party system of today, support Democrats has been the only practicable course.
5) In summary, what I'm saying is that you are engaging in a false debate which is the traitorous technique that is the mainstay of so-called conservative, so-called right wing media of today. And so, I, without malice, would like to point out that, by using the same techniques, you seem to be allying yourself with a pack of idiots or propagandists, who are providing cover for the corrupt dishones"
Blogger Thoughts: The above is my comment: not perfect prose, by any assessment. However, I thought I raised my points well. So far, one comment follows at Bainbridge's blog, and has no revelance to my post.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Jonah Avriel Cohen
The American Thinker
Blogger Thoughts: This commentary, which is based on the mainstream understanding of our world, is so flawed and misleading that I don't have words.
Blogger Thoughts: This commentary, which is based on the mainstream understanding of our world, is so flawed and misleading that I don't have words.
UNKNOWN NEWS
UNKNOWN NEWS: "Dick Cheney played a behind-the-scenes role last week in derailing an agreement to create an independent commission to investigate the 9-11 attacks"
09/11/2001
09/11/2001
Contractor has close ties with staff of NSA - baltimoresun.com
Contractor has close ties with staff of NSA - baltimoresun.com
Contractor has close ties with staff of NSA
By Siobhan Gorman
Sun reporter
January 29, 2006
When the National Security Agency went shopping for a private contractor to help it build a state-of-the-art tool for plucking key threats to the nation from a worldwide sea of digital communication, the company it chose was Science Applications International Corp.
More than three years later, the project, code-named Trailblazer, still hasn't gotten off the ground. And intelligence experts inside and outside the agency say that the NSA and SAIC share some of the blame.
Investigations of Trailblazer's early years by Congress and the NSA inspector general criticized the agency for its "confusion" about what Trailblazer would ultimately accomplish and for "inadequate management and oversight" of the program to improve collection and analysis of mountains of digital information.
Unsolved problems
When SAIC came on board as the lead contractor in 2002, NSA had not solved those problems, said intelligence officials with extensive knowledge of the program.
But SAIC did not provide computer experts with the technical or management skills to pull off a system as complex as Trailblazer, the intelligence experts said. Moreover, they said, SAIC did not say no when NSA made unrealistic demands.
Trailblazer has cost taxpayers an estimated $1.2 billion, former intelligence officials told The Sun.
"The system in the Pentagon and defense-related agencies is notoriously susceptible to slippage and overruns," said Gordon Adams, director for security policy studies at George Washington University.
"A lot of the [information technology projects] are traffic accidents waiting to happen," said Adams, who was speaking generally. "There's a penchant, particularly in the [information technology] area, to overdesign things, promise it will deliver all kinds of things and not be able to deliver on the project."
SAIC is among the fastest-growing government contractors in the country, expanding from an annual revenue of $243,000 in 1970 to more than $7.2 billion today.
43,000 employees
The federal government accounts for two-thirds of San Diego-based SAIC's work, and the company has offices in 29 Maryland communities.
Some of SAIC's 43,000 employees worldwide could become millionaires if the company follows through on its plans to go public this year.
As SAIC has grown, it has forged close ties to several key defense and intelligence agencies, including the NSA. Among those who have served on SAIC's board of directors are former NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman; former CIA Directors John M. Deutch and Robert M. Gates; and former Defense Secretaries Melvin R. Laird and William J. Perry.
The door swings so regularly between the NSA and SAIC that the company has earned the nickname "NSA West" inside the intelligence community.
The Trailblazer project illustrates that point. William B. Black Jr. retired from his position in the elite senior cryptologic executive service at the NSA in 1997 to take a job as assistant vice president at SAIC.
Three years later, NSA Director Michael V. Hayden called Black back to the spy agency. By 2002, Black was overseeing NSA's Trailblazer project, with SAIC as its prime contractor.
Two other top NSA managers who worked on Trailblazer - Hal Smith and Sam Visner - also left the spy agency for jobs at SAIC. There, Smith worked on Trailblazer and the FBI's Virtual Case File program, according to a former senior intelligence official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity.
The FBI pulled the plug last year on the $170 million Virtual Case File program, which was supposed to bring the bureau's computer system into the 21st century, after it was criticized as unworkable by the Justice Department's inspector general and members of Congress.
The inspector general said the bulk of the program's problems were the fault of the bureau.
Black, Smith and Visner declined requests for interviews. An NSA spokesman denied repeated requests for comment.
An NSA spokeswoman told The Sun in 2003 that Black sold his SAIC stock when he returned to the agency in 2000 and recused himself for a year from "involvement in any matter affecting the financial interests" of the company.
Varied criteria
The spokeswoman said SAIC, which was selected as the prime contractor for Trailblazer in 2002, was one of three companies seeking the contract. The choice, she said, was based on a "formal source selection process" that looked at technical issues, management, cost and past performance.
SAIC officials declined requests for interviews for this article, referring questions to the NSA.
In 2003, Mark V. Hughes, then executive vice president of SAIC, told The Sun that the company hires former government officials not for influence but for their expertise. "We do a much better job for our customers if we have people in the company who really know the customers," he said then.
Hughes also said the company is scrupulous about obeying laws designed to prevent conflicts of interest. "As a government contractor," he said then, "just one or two violations could cause us to be suspended from government contracts. That would destroy our company."
Hughes has since left the company.
Jacques Gansler, a former undersecretary of defense who is now vice president for research at the University of Maryland, said the revolving door between government agencies and private government contractors has an upside.
Without former government officials in their ranks, he said, companies would have a difficult time navigating the labyrinth of the government procurement process. Before he took his Pentagon job dealing with acquisitions, Gansler was a senior executive with TASC, a major defense contractor.
siobhan.gorman@baltsun.com
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery
Contractor has close ties with staff of NSA
By Siobhan Gorman
Sun reporter
January 29, 2006
When the National Security Agency went shopping for a private contractor to help it build a state-of-the-art tool for plucking key threats to the nation from a worldwide sea of digital communication, the company it chose was Science Applications International Corp.
More than three years later, the project, code-named Trailblazer, still hasn't gotten off the ground. And intelligence experts inside and outside the agency say that the NSA and SAIC share some of the blame.
Investigations of Trailblazer's early years by Congress and the NSA inspector general criticized the agency for its "confusion" about what Trailblazer would ultimately accomplish and for "inadequate management and oversight" of the program to improve collection and analysis of mountains of digital information.
Unsolved problems
When SAIC came on board as the lead contractor in 2002, NSA had not solved those problems, said intelligence officials with extensive knowledge of the program.
But SAIC did not provide computer experts with the technical or management skills to pull off a system as complex as Trailblazer, the intelligence experts said. Moreover, they said, SAIC did not say no when NSA made unrealistic demands.
Trailblazer has cost taxpayers an estimated $1.2 billion, former intelligence officials told The Sun.
"The system in the Pentagon and defense-related agencies is notoriously susceptible to slippage and overruns," said Gordon Adams, director for security policy studies at George Washington University.
"A lot of the [information technology projects] are traffic accidents waiting to happen," said Adams, who was speaking generally. "There's a penchant, particularly in the [information technology] area, to overdesign things, promise it will deliver all kinds of things and not be able to deliver on the project."
SAIC is among the fastest-growing government contractors in the country, expanding from an annual revenue of $243,000 in 1970 to more than $7.2 billion today.
43,000 employees
The federal government accounts for two-thirds of San Diego-based SAIC's work, and the company has offices in 29 Maryland communities.
Some of SAIC's 43,000 employees worldwide could become millionaires if the company follows through on its plans to go public this year.
As SAIC has grown, it has forged close ties to several key defense and intelligence agencies, including the NSA. Among those who have served on SAIC's board of directors are former NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman; former CIA Directors John M. Deutch and Robert M. Gates; and former Defense Secretaries Melvin R. Laird and William J. Perry.
The door swings so regularly between the NSA and SAIC that the company has earned the nickname "NSA West" inside the intelligence community.
The Trailblazer project illustrates that point. William B. Black Jr. retired from his position in the elite senior cryptologic executive service at the NSA in 1997 to take a job as assistant vice president at SAIC.
Three years later, NSA Director Michael V. Hayden called Black back to the spy agency. By 2002, Black was overseeing NSA's Trailblazer project, with SAIC as its prime contractor.
Two other top NSA managers who worked on Trailblazer - Hal Smith and Sam Visner - also left the spy agency for jobs at SAIC. There, Smith worked on Trailblazer and the FBI's Virtual Case File program, according to a former senior intelligence official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity.
The FBI pulled the plug last year on the $170 million Virtual Case File program, which was supposed to bring the bureau's computer system into the 21st century, after it was criticized as unworkable by the Justice Department's inspector general and members of Congress.
The inspector general said the bulk of the program's problems were the fault of the bureau.
Black, Smith and Visner declined requests for interviews. An NSA spokesman denied repeated requests for comment.
An NSA spokeswoman told The Sun in 2003 that Black sold his SAIC stock when he returned to the agency in 2000 and recused himself for a year from "involvement in any matter affecting the financial interests" of the company.
Varied criteria
The spokeswoman said SAIC, which was selected as the prime contractor for Trailblazer in 2002, was one of three companies seeking the contract. The choice, she said, was based on a "formal source selection process" that looked at technical issues, management, cost and past performance.
SAIC officials declined requests for interviews for this article, referring questions to the NSA.
In 2003, Mark V. Hughes, then executive vice president of SAIC, told The Sun that the company hires former government officials not for influence but for their expertise. "We do a much better job for our customers if we have people in the company who really know the customers," he said then.
Hughes also said the company is scrupulous about obeying laws designed to prevent conflicts of interest. "As a government contractor," he said then, "just one or two violations could cause us to be suspended from government contracts. That would destroy our company."
Hughes has since left the company.
Jacques Gansler, a former undersecretary of defense who is now vice president for research at the University of Maryland, said the revolving door between government agencies and private government contractors has an upside.
Without former government officials in their ranks, he said, companies would have a difficult time navigating the labyrinth of the government procurement process. Before he took his Pentagon job dealing with acquisitions, Gansler was a senior executive with TASC, a major defense contractor.
siobhan.gorman@baltsun.com
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery
BELLACIAO - 9/10/01 ON THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION : THE MISSING LINKS - Son of a Bush - Collective Bellaciao
BELLACIAO - 9/10/01 ON THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION : THE MISSING LINKS - Son of a Bush - Collective Bellaciao
9/10/01 ON THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION : THE MISSING LINKS
9/10/01 ON THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION : THE MISSING LINKS
Here are some links which verify , in some and substance, the allegations proffered in " 9/10/01 : On the Eve of Destruction" 1) The brother of Ahmed Shah Massoud narrowly missed the fate of his brother http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/00,,1321580,00.html 2) ISI Chief Mahmad Ahmoud wired $ 100,000 to Mohamed Atta on 9/10/01 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow? xml=0&art_id=1454238160 3) The Brits beg for the life of their agent and faciltator of transaction to Atta , Omar Saeed Shiekh http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/07/15/britain.pearl 4) Labour MP Michael Meecher : Sheikh a british agent http://www.rense.com/general67/MPmichaelmeecher.htm 5 ) Sept. 11’s smoking gun : The many faces of Saeed Sheikh http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=essaysaeed 5 ) Sir David Manning meets Deputy Sec. of State top Blair foreign policy advisor Sir David Manning http://www.btinternet.com/ nlpwessex/Documents/manningarmitage.htm 6) Bush given invasion plan two days before 9/11 http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/ pdscott/qf9ll.html 7 ) US planned attack on Taleban http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm 8) Pentagon officials Cancel Air travel plans on Sept. 10. 2001 http://www.wanttoknow.info/010924newsweek 9) CIA running Simulation of Plane Crash into building http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm 10 ) Amid Crisis Simulation "We were under attack no kidding" NORAD and war game "Vigilant Two " http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/story1a012802.html 11 ) Internal memo sent to employees of Goldman Sachs to avoid government buildings , Counterpunch ( 9/14/01 ) 12 ) FEMA was in New York the night before 9/11 http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/fematape.html 13 ) Deutschebank "put" under scrutiny" (See Sept. 6-10 entry) http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-3290 14 ) Condi to Willie : On Sept.10 : "Don’t fly Willie fly, Willie fly, up,up, to the sky http://www.rense.com/general46/warn.html 15 ) The Dancing Israelis http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html 16 ) The Strange Saga of John O’Neil : http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0208/S00068.htm#a
Extreme Victory - Newsweek World News - MSNBC.com
Extreme Victory - Newsweek World News - MSNBC.com
'The polls had barely closed before friends of the henna-bearded Muhammad Abu Tir, 55, began talking him up to be the Palestinian Authority's next Interior minister. "I think I'd be good at it," he told NEWSWEEK at his East Jerusalem home. "I'm qualified."'
'The polls had barely closed before friends of the henna-bearded Muhammad Abu Tir, 55, began talking him up to be the Palestinian Authority's next Interior minister. "I think I'd be good at it," he told NEWSWEEK at his East Jerusalem home. "I'm qualified."'
An Exotic Tool for Espionage: Moral Compass - New York Times
An Exotic Tool for Espionage: Moral Compass - New York Times
January 28, 2006
An Exotic Tool for Espionage: Moral Compass
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 — Is there such a thing as an ethical spy?
A group of current and former intelligence officers and academic experts think there is, and they are meeting this weekend to dissect what some others in the field consider a flat-out contradiction in terms.
The organizers say recent controversies over interrogation techniques bordering on torture and the alleged skewing of prewar intelligence on Iraq make their mission urgent. At the conference on Friday and Saturday in a Springfield, Va., hotel, the 200 attendees hope to begin hammering out a code of ethics for spies and to form an international association to study the subject.
Conference materials describe intelligence ethics as "an emerging field" and call the gathering, not sponsored by any government agency, the first of its kind. The topics include "Spiritual Crises Among Intelligence Operatives," "Lessons From Abu Ghraib," "Assassination: The Dream and the Nightmare" and "The Perfidy of Espionage."
Organizers said conferees would ponder such timely issues as how many civilian deaths can be justified in a C.I.A. Predator missile strike to kill a known terrorist, or what legal assurances a National Security Agency eavesdropper should demand before singling out the phone calls of an American who was linked to Al Qaeda.
"As an intelligence officer, you are confronted with ethical dilemmas every day," said Melissa Boyle Mahle, who retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002 after 14 years as a case officer, much of it under cover in the Middle East.
Ms. Mahle, now a foreign policy consultant, was scheduled to speak Saturday on the practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are seized abroad and delivered either to trial in the United States or to imprisonment in other countries.
But in a required security review, the C.I.A. refused to clear about one-fourth of her proposed 23-page text, Ms. Mahle said Friday. She said the deletions "gutted" the paper and made it impossible to deliver. She decided to attend the conference anyway, because she believes its goal is "so important."
While she had received C.I.A. training on agency rules and the law, Ms. Mahle recalled that she got "none whatsoever" in ethics. But she found that her work demanded constant moral balancing.
Ms. Mahle said she came up with her own ad-hoc ethical checklist, including imagining what her mother would say about a proposed action or how she herself would feel if it were described on the front page of an American newspaper. But she believes any officer would benefit from more rigorous training in moral decision-making.
"You're the point of the spear, and no one's going to be there to make decisions for you," she said.
Not all agree. "It doesn't make much sense to me," said Duane R. Clarridge, who retired in 1988 after 33 years as a C.I.A. operations officer and who will not attend the conference. "Depending on where you're coming from, the whole business of espionage is unethical."
To Mr. Clarridge, "intelligence ethics" is "an oxymoron," he said. "It's not an issue. It never was and never will be, not if you want a real spy service." Spies operate under false names, lie about their jobs, and bribe or blackmail foreigners to betray their countries, he said.
"If you don't want to do that," he added, "just have a State Department."
Mr. Clarridge's view may be colored by his history; he was indicted on perjury charges in 1991, accused of lying to Congress about the Iran-contra affair. He was pardoned in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush.
But skepticism about the ethics project inside the agencies is widespread, conference participants said, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their agencies to be quoted. "A lot of current intelligence practitioners are afraid to come," said one who is attending. "They think it could be held against them."
Judith A. Emmel, a spokeswoman for the director of national intelligence, said American intelligence officers received training on "legal issues appropriate to their responsibilities," and on ethical regulations governing matters like conflicts of interest.
Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, said the agency had "a robust ethics training program" that focused on "integrity, honesty and accountability" and included the use of case studies. As for the agency's deletions from proposed speeches, by Ms. Mahle or any other former employee, he said such editing was based on the secrecy agreement employees sign and was "only to ensure that they contain no classified material," not to censor anyone's opinions.
One conference organizer, Jan Goldman, a 25-year intelligence veteran who teaches at the Joint Military Intelligence College, edited a just-published collection of articles on the subject called "Ethics of Spying" (Scarecrow Press).
The book includes 22 imaginary cases, from a female operative who must decide whether to have sex with a "repulsive" terrorism suspect in order to stay in contact, to a counternarcotics officer who must decide whether to relocate a drug lord-informant to protect him from arrest.
Less dramatic but more common ethical choices come routinely to intelligence analysts, who must decide each day what gets reported to policy makers. Melvin A. Goodman, a C.I.A. analyst from 1966 to 1990, is speaking at the conference on his experience with the politicization of intelligence during the cold war, which he believes has been echoed in the Iraq war.
"My feeling is that every problem with the intelligence in the run-up to the war was an ethical question," from the handling of the dubious defector code-named Curveball to the cherry-picking of evidence on Iraq's nuclear program, Mr. Goodman said.
"There's a lot of pandering at the C.I.A.," with the White House being given intelligence reports that suit known policy preferences, he said.
Mr. Goodman is a critic of the Bush administration's policies, but conference organizers say they have tried to avoid bias. The top intelligence officer of the National Guard, Brig. Gen. Annette L. Sobel, is a scheduled panelist. And one organizer, Fritz Allhoff, who teaches philosophy at Western Michigan University, has written an essay arguing that torture in interrogation is ethical in some circumstances.
Ms. Mahle, the former C.I.A. officer, says merely taking a tough line is not enough. If intelligence tactics are not supported by a public consensus of Americans, they can backfire, she said.
For example, the past capture of terrorists abroad who were then convicted in American courts stirred little controversy. But more recent rendition cases, like the delivery of a suspect to Egypt, where he complained of torture and provided information that turned out to be false, shifted the public focus from the would-be terrorist to the actions of the C.I.A.
"If there's not a consensus, then the public focus will be not on the bad guy you got off the street, but on what the C.I.A. was doing," Ms. Mahle said.
January 28, 2006
An Exotic Tool for Espionage: Moral Compass
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 — Is there such a thing as an ethical spy?
A group of current and former intelligence officers and academic experts think there is, and they are meeting this weekend to dissect what some others in the field consider a flat-out contradiction in terms.
The organizers say recent controversies over interrogation techniques bordering on torture and the alleged skewing of prewar intelligence on Iraq make their mission urgent. At the conference on Friday and Saturday in a Springfield, Va., hotel, the 200 attendees hope to begin hammering out a code of ethics for spies and to form an international association to study the subject.
Conference materials describe intelligence ethics as "an emerging field" and call the gathering, not sponsored by any government agency, the first of its kind. The topics include "Spiritual Crises Among Intelligence Operatives," "Lessons From Abu Ghraib," "Assassination: The Dream and the Nightmare" and "The Perfidy of Espionage."
Organizers said conferees would ponder such timely issues as how many civilian deaths can be justified in a C.I.A. Predator missile strike to kill a known terrorist, or what legal assurances a National Security Agency eavesdropper should demand before singling out the phone calls of an American who was linked to Al Qaeda.
"As an intelligence officer, you are confronted with ethical dilemmas every day," said Melissa Boyle Mahle, who retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002 after 14 years as a case officer, much of it under cover in the Middle East.
Ms. Mahle, now a foreign policy consultant, was scheduled to speak Saturday on the practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are seized abroad and delivered either to trial in the United States or to imprisonment in other countries.
But in a required security review, the C.I.A. refused to clear about one-fourth of her proposed 23-page text, Ms. Mahle said Friday. She said the deletions "gutted" the paper and made it impossible to deliver. She decided to attend the conference anyway, because she believes its goal is "so important."
While she had received C.I.A. training on agency rules and the law, Ms. Mahle recalled that she got "none whatsoever" in ethics. But she found that her work demanded constant moral balancing.
Ms. Mahle said she came up with her own ad-hoc ethical checklist, including imagining what her mother would say about a proposed action or how she herself would feel if it were described on the front page of an American newspaper. But she believes any officer would benefit from more rigorous training in moral decision-making.
"You're the point of the spear, and no one's going to be there to make decisions for you," she said.
Not all agree. "It doesn't make much sense to me," said Duane R. Clarridge, who retired in 1988 after 33 years as a C.I.A. operations officer and who will not attend the conference. "Depending on where you're coming from, the whole business of espionage is unethical."
To Mr. Clarridge, "intelligence ethics" is "an oxymoron," he said. "It's not an issue. It never was and never will be, not if you want a real spy service." Spies operate under false names, lie about their jobs, and bribe or blackmail foreigners to betray their countries, he said.
"If you don't want to do that," he added, "just have a State Department."
Mr. Clarridge's view may be colored by his history; he was indicted on perjury charges in 1991, accused of lying to Congress about the Iran-contra affair. He was pardoned in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush.
But skepticism about the ethics project inside the agencies is widespread, conference participants said, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their agencies to be quoted. "A lot of current intelligence practitioners are afraid to come," said one who is attending. "They think it could be held against them."
Judith A. Emmel, a spokeswoman for the director of national intelligence, said American intelligence officers received training on "legal issues appropriate to their responsibilities," and on ethical regulations governing matters like conflicts of interest.
Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, said the agency had "a robust ethics training program" that focused on "integrity, honesty and accountability" and included the use of case studies. As for the agency's deletions from proposed speeches, by Ms. Mahle or any other former employee, he said such editing was based on the secrecy agreement employees sign and was "only to ensure that they contain no classified material," not to censor anyone's opinions.
One conference organizer, Jan Goldman, a 25-year intelligence veteran who teaches at the Joint Military Intelligence College, edited a just-published collection of articles on the subject called "Ethics of Spying" (Scarecrow Press).
The book includes 22 imaginary cases, from a female operative who must decide whether to have sex with a "repulsive" terrorism suspect in order to stay in contact, to a counternarcotics officer who must decide whether to relocate a drug lord-informant to protect him from arrest.
Less dramatic but more common ethical choices come routinely to intelligence analysts, who must decide each day what gets reported to policy makers. Melvin A. Goodman, a C.I.A. analyst from 1966 to 1990, is speaking at the conference on his experience with the politicization of intelligence during the cold war, which he believes has been echoed in the Iraq war.
"My feeling is that every problem with the intelligence in the run-up to the war was an ethical question," from the handling of the dubious defector code-named Curveball to the cherry-picking of evidence on Iraq's nuclear program, Mr. Goodman said.
"There's a lot of pandering at the C.I.A.," with the White House being given intelligence reports that suit known policy preferences, he said.
Mr. Goodman is a critic of the Bush administration's policies, but conference organizers say they have tried to avoid bias. The top intelligence officer of the National Guard, Brig. Gen. Annette L. Sobel, is a scheduled panelist. And one organizer, Fritz Allhoff, who teaches philosophy at Western Michigan University, has written an essay arguing that torture in interrogation is ethical in some circumstances.
Ms. Mahle, the former C.I.A. officer, says merely taking a tough line is not enough. If intelligence tactics are not supported by a public consensus of Americans, they can backfire, she said.
For example, the past capture of terrorists abroad who were then convicted in American courts stirred little controversy. But more recent rendition cases, like the delivery of a suspect to Egypt, where he complained of torture and provided information that turned out to be false, shifted the public focus from the would-be terrorist to the actions of the C.I.A.
"If there's not a consensus, then the public focus will be not on the bad guy you got off the street, but on what the C.I.A. was doing," Ms. Mahle said.
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