One of the greatest absolutes in the world of government secrecy is the need to protect intelligence sources, especially human sources. The challenges to recruiting such sources are immense; especially when one recognizes that in essence we are asking individuals to betray confidences, perhaps even betray their country or other recipients of their loyalty, in order to assist our nation. Oftentimes, such acts by human intelligence sources not only place the source in physical jeopardy, but the source’s family and associates as well. As difficult as it is to recruit individuals to provide such assistance to our country, our intelligence agencies fear that it would be near impossible if we could not assure such sources complete and total confidentiality, not only now, but also for decades if not generations to come. Human sources are the lifeblood of an intelligence service and they believe that we are under an almost sacred obligation to go to great lengths to protect their identities. As any reporter knows, if we fail to protect today’s human sources, it becomes increasingly difficult to recruit the human sources for tomorrow.
However, as we increasingly see in the media, granting confidentiality to sources oftentimes results in the media being manipulated by the source to the detriment of the media’s credibility. In order to avoid manipulation and to preserve their credibility, most professional media outlets will insist that anonymity be granted to sources only as the exception. For example, more honored in the breach than in practice, the New York Times policy says anonymous sources should be used only as “a last resort when the story is of compelling public interest and the information is not available any other way.”
In the world of intelligence, the reflexive rule is to protect the identity of sources regardless. Strangely, many policy-makers, members of the media, and the general public automatically believe that if information comes from a “highly classified source,” it must be true. This often leads to disastrous consequences as evidenced by the lead up to the Iraq War. It is well known now that when Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 just before the war, the most impressive part of his presentation which talked about eyewitness accounts of mobile biological labs and an accident that killed a dozen people was a fraud, based upon debriefings by German intelligence officials of a human source aptly codenamed “CURVEBALL.” What is truly noteworthy, however, is that at the time there was ample, yet classified, information which pointed to the existence of doubts about CURVEBALL’S authenticity before his charges were featured in the Bush administration’s public claims about Iraq. As such, exceptionally grave damage to our national security was actually caused, not prevented, by classification.
Unfortunately, the routine classification of intelligence sources continues to result in exceptionally grave damage to our national security. For example, the Senate is so concerned that anti-American sentiment would be inflamed by disclosing pictures of Americans torturing detainees that they passed a bill to retroactively change the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in order to prevent a legal ruling by the courts to compel the release of the photos. Yet, at the same time they have proven themselves totally incapable of diffusing one of the most potent sources of anti-American sentiment throughout the world, specifically the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by the end of the year. This inaction is in large part driven by assertions of both the past and current administrations that Guantanamo houses “the worst of the worst,” individuals who, while not convicted of any crimes, are nonetheless "terrorists" that cannot even be incarcerated in this country in maximum security prisons, let alone set free. And the basis for these repeated assertions are, of course, classified, often times based solely upon a single human intelligence source.
That’s not too say that withheld information cannot be selectively leaked in order to back up these assertions. For example, former Vice President Cheney has repeatedly pointed to a New York Times article which, as it turns out, falsely stated that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantanamo, are engaged in terrorism or militant activity.
Thus, lies are introduced into the public discourse; lies which soon become the conventional wisdom; lies which paralyze our leaders in taking real action to close Guantanamo and thus accomplish the single greatest step to reduce anti-American sentiment in the world; lies, which it turns out, that are ultimately based upon highly classified intelligence sources.
This week, McClatchy Newspapers published an excellent piece by Nancy Youssef which highlights in very human terms the consequences of the reflexive classification and resulting deference to classified intelligence sources. She writes of Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil, one of the 74 former Guantanamo Bay detainees who the Pentagon asserts have returned to or are suspected of returning to terrorism after their release from the island prison camp. She highlights how Wakil “spends his days going from one high-level official meeting to another with the swagger of a tribal elder, advocating for the needs of Kunar province, his home region. Each encounter — with President Hamid Karzai, with Karzai's chief of staff or with one of Afghanistan's other presidential candidates — begins the same: They thank him for his honorable service to the people of Kunar”.
McClathcy Newspapers was able to discover that Wakil, far from being in hiding, operates openly among officials of Afghanistan's U.S.-allied government. As the article points out, Wakil's case adds more questions about just what's meant by "returning to terrorism." It goes on to state that:
Wakil, who's now 49, represented Kunar province in the grand assembly that helped name Karzai president in June 2002. Wakil met with American officials several times after they descended on Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
At the time he was well-known as an anti-Taliban commander and was considered a potential candidate to serve as Kunar's governor.
Wakil traces his detention to an August 2002 meeting he had with an American commander after U.S. troops shot a resident at a bazaar. Wakil said he went to the U.S. base in hopes of defusing tensions.
"'Don't take any direct action here. Coordinate your actions with the local forces. You don't understand the local security.' This is what I advised him," Wakil said. "I talked to the Americans as an elder of the area. 'If there is anything I can do, please let me know.'"
At the gate, as he was leaving the meeting, he and nearly a dozen others were detained and taken to Bagram air field. Within days, only he and Sabar Lal, his military commander, remained in custody. After seven months, he and Lal were transferred to Guantanamo, where for the next six years the tribal leader was known as detainee 798. Lal was released in October 2007, Wakil in April 2008.
"I told them I am a supporter of this government. Why am I detained?" Wakil said. "I said everyone in my province will fight for my release all the way up to the president. They told me no one will fight for you because you are a bad person."
His uncle had formed Jama'at-ud-Da'wah Pakistan, a Sunni Muslim-based group created in the 1980s to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The State Department considered it a terrorist organization. While Wakil admits that he was a member of the group, he said he was never a fighter, that his group promoted a certain thread of Islam, not terrorism.
According to Defense Department documents from Wakil's Combatant Status Review Board hearing at Guantanamo, the United States charged that Wakil helped members of al Qaida escape from Kunar into neighboring Pakistan. The U.S. also charged that he obtained weapons that were used in a rocket attack on the main military base in Kunar.
The charges, the documents say, were based on a source.
In response, Wakil told the review panel he thought that a political enemy, whom he didn't identify, had set him up. He denied working on behalf of al Qaida; instead, he said he suspected that an al Qaida operative had assassinated his uncle.
Mohammed Roze, who directs the Afghan government's peace and reconciliation commission in Kunar, said he thought that Malik Zarin, who was then the head of the rival Mushwani tribe, had turned Wakil in because the Mushwani tribe opposed a poppy-eradication program that Wakil had begun in Kunar around the time of his arrest. Zarin had built close ties with American forces in Kunar, Roze said. He said that Wakil was never a threat to American troops.
Our national leaders and the American people need to have an informed discourse and have it now in order to resolve one of the greatest sources of continued anti-American sentiment, the status of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. To have such a discussion, it must be based upon substantive information such as that contained in the McClathcy article. It cannot be based upon simple assertions. Indiscriminate classification of sources will continue to cause exceptionally grave damage to our national security. Reform in the area of the classification of intelligence sources must be an essential element of any revisions to how the Executive branch classifies information.
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