Althouse: "[A] single senior officer, who is still in a position of high authority over counterterrorism at the C.I.A.... appears to have been a source of years’ worth of terrible judgment..."

December 19, 2014

"[A] single senior officer, who is still in a position of high authority over counterterrorism at the C.I.A.... appears to have been a source of years’ worth of terrible judgment..."

"... with tragic consequences for the United States. Her story runs through the entire report. She dropped the ball when the C.I.A. was given information that might very well have prevented the 9/11 attacks; she gleefully participated in torture sessions afterward; she misinterpreted intelligence in such a way that it sent the C.I.A. on an absurd chase for Al Qaeda sleeper cells in Montana. And then she falsely told congressional overseers that the torture worked.... [S]he has been promoted to the rank of a general in the military... [T]his woman... had supervision over an underling at the agency who failed to share with the F.B.I. the news that two of the future 9/11 hijackers had entered the United States prior to the terrorist attacks...."

From "The Unidentified Queen of Torture," by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker.

ADDED: I wonder what the basis is for using the word "gleefully."

67 comments:

Anonymous said...: This, once again, reminds me of the phenomenon of believing what we read when we don't already know the details.

Surely there needs to be a word created for this? I've seen it written about many times.

This is an article about an article about a report done by biased Democrats in Washington.

If you find what is written here to be factual and based off of actual investigative reporting then you probably also believe "Jackie" was raped.; 12/19/14, 2:16 PM
Unknown said...: Off with her head.

Reading this article generates a large amount of skepticism.

Looking at the body of work this person has generated suggests that she is extremely partisan.; 12/19/14, 2:19 PM
MayBee said...: Is her name Jamie Gorelick?; 12/19/14, 2:22 PM
traditionalguy said...: Cherchez la Femme. And this time its a woman behind a woman herself.

I will believe it when her name leaks. Stay tuned.; 12/19/14, 2:23 PM
traditionalguy said...: Her cover name is Monadnoc and the Professor has been passing her blog post secret messages.

It is a Wisconsin sounding story. It's like Garage's friend's evidence on Scott Walker and Joe Mccarthy's lists.; 12/19/14, 2:32 PM
Hagar said...: "I don't think that word means what you think it means."

Isn't The New Yorker supposed to proofread articles before printing them?; 12/19/14, 2:32 PM
Larry J said...: As for that point about not sharing intelligence data with the FBI, it was prohibited at that time due to the Wall erected by Jamie Gorelick. That's an inconvient little detail that makes me doubt the rest of the article.; 12/19/14, 2:33 PM
Big Mike said...: I wonder what the basis is for using the word "gleefully."

The entire article is a hatchet job. Does the word need any further basis than that?; 12/19/14, 2:34 PM
mccullough said...: So anonymous souces in intelligence are telling a reporter that an anonymous CIA officer fucked up multiple times and the reporter protecting her anonymous sources is complaining that the Senate report doesn't get to use a pseudonym because it makes it hard for non-Senators to deduce the CIA officer's identity, even though the reporter knows the officer's identity?; 12/19/14, 2:38 PM
Drago said...: eric: "Surely there needs to be a word created for this? I've seen it written about many times."

Gell-Mann effect.

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

― Michael Crichton; 12/19/14, 2:39 PM
eddie willers said...: This, once again, reminds me of the phenomenon of believing what we read when we don't already know the details.

Surely there needs to be a word created for this? I've seen it written about many times.

The late, great Michael Crichton called it the:

Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows.

You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories.

Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect; 12/19/14, 2:40 PM
Drago said...: Oh, and once I saw it was Jane Mayer I knew I could very safely ignore both the article and it's conclusions.; 12/19/14, 2:40 PM
Abdul Abulbul Amir said...: Is her name "Jackie"?; 12/19/14, 2:41 PM
eddie willers said...: "Jinx...you owe me a Coke"; 12/19/14, 2:42 PM
BarrySanders20 said...: Sounds like the CIA has its own version of Florida Man.; 12/19/14, 2:44 PM
Rae said...: From the article:

Readers can speculate on how the pieces fit together, and who the personalities behind this program are.

But isn't it YOUR JOB to fill in the blanks? Reading that article, I am no more informed on the subject than before.; 12/19/14, 2:54 PM
n.n said...: Questioning her competence, her merit, really? A sadistic streak? Perhaps she's pro-choice. It's a veritable war on women.; 12/19/14, 2:59 PM
Edmund said...: Here is how to find out. The number of army generals is fixed by law. Promotion to general has to be approved by Congress, IIRC. Check the Congressional Record for promotion votes.; 12/19/14, 2:59 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/19/14, 3:03 PM
lgv said...: I'm confused. When was she promoted to general? Wouldn't that help identify her? When does a general take a job as a CIA officer? When does a CIA officer become a general? Which came first?; 12/19/14, 3:06 PM
Anonymous said...: This Gawker article from 2011 identifies the woman, listing the same complaints identified in this new article. The reporter either should have noted the earlier article (because the information isn't really new), or explained that the Gawker article was wrong.; 12/19/14, 3:07 PM
Anonymous said...: The Washington Post also identified her in an article from last January.; 12/19/14, 3:14 PM
Anonymous said...: The picks by Obama for his entire national security team have been a joke since nearly day one. All have been stunningly unqualified. This one looks to predate even Bush though. Don't get me started on Donilon or Ben Rhodes, once Obama's telepromppter guy and now a Deputy National Security Advisor.

My topic is Avril Haines, who just got named as another Deputy National Security Advisor.

Ms Haines Bio and national security / intel credentials are:

Deputy Director @ CIA Aug 2013-Present
Deputy Asst WH Counsel 2010-2013
State Dept Treat Advisor 2008-2010
Senate Foreign Relations Staff (a Biden Buddy) 2007-2008
State Dept Treaties 2003-2006
Clerked 2002
The Hague 2001

repeating. 13 years out of Law school, not a day in intel, till she became the number 2 person at the CIA, where politely, she was Brennan's commissar and overseer.

per WaPo: At the CIA, Haines has been regarded as an insightful executive with strong ties to the White House and solid political instincts. But she had scant background in intelligence work and was less involved than many of her predecessors in the day-to-day management of the agency and its operations.

Normally in Washington, the Top guy is the face of the agency and the deputy runs the day to day ops. Apparently at CIA the roles were reversed.; 12/19/14, 3:25 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/19/14, 3:33 PM
J. Farmer said...: This should not come as a surprise to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the history of that agency. They have a long ignoble history of blunders and failures from Bay of Pigs, the Iranian revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, India's nuclear test, Iraqi WMD, and right up to participating in the kidnapping of a completely innocent man to be whisked away to Afghanistan for months of torture before being set free with an, "Oops, we thought you were someone else." Actually, they just dumped him on a street in Albania without explanation.; 12/19/14, 3:33 PM
Jaq said...: That's why liberals hate old people, we remember inconvenient stuff, like Gorelick's "wall."; 12/19/14, 3:39 PM
holdfast said...: "Is her name Jamie Gorelick?"

My first thought that must be her daughter, niece or younger sister.

My second thought is that this is some sort of composite/apocryphal character like Obama's race-obsessed girlfriend in his "memoir".

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/299092/composite-americans-mark-steyn; 12/19/14, 3:40 PM
khesanh0802 said...: But it's a woman!!! She could not possibly have done anything as base as the "writer" describes. Must have been a guy in drag.; 12/19/14, 3:56 PM
Big Mike said...: Jane Mayer is playing coy. The woman she declined to identify is actually the subject of a lengthy article in Wiki.; 12/19/14, 4:06 PM
mccullough said...: Big Mike,

How about a link?; 12/19/14, 4:18 PM
paminwi said...: The article says"it is exceedingly hard to connect the dots" and " it is almost impossible to piecectogethercthevpuzzle". Wow, this Matthew Cole guy and this Jane Mayer must be the smartest reporters in the biz. She sure wants to pat herself and Matthew on the back. I hope she doesn't hurt herself.; 12/19/14, 4:40 PM
madAsHell said...: Why is the CIA chasing spooks in Montana?
I think the story falls apart here.; 12/19/14, 4:47 PM
David said...: She's not going to be very hard to identify with all that (surely accurate) information.

And brought low by a woman! One with terrible judgment. I have to say that one of the first questions in my mind was whether the men dared to tell her she was full of shit. Might there have been an impediment to that? What could it be?; 12/19/14, 4:51 PM
The Godfather said...: Yes, what everybody else said.

Plus: Someone screws up so badly that she failed to stop the 9/11 attacks when she could have, and what the New Yorker highlights is that she's the "queen of torture"? What kind of value system do these people have?; 12/19/14, 4:59 PM
George Leroy Tirebiter said...: Likely this broad (per extensive Wikipedia article): Alfreda Frances Bikowsky

Although a subordinate, another dame, has her own history of incompetence re: 9/11 hijackers: Michael Anne Casey; 12/19/14, 5:08 PM
David said...: A quick web search reveals that none of this is new information. (Though I must admit it was new to me.)

So why is this being featured now? Whose interest is served, and what did Jane Meyer (who first reported these facts years ago) get in order to bring it back to the surface?; 12/19/14, 5:41 PM
Skeptical Voter said...: Eric said that a word needed to be created for this sort of thinking.

How about "Rolling Stone Journalism".

And Larry J has it right. The author of this piece talks about the "failure" of the "Torture Queen's" subordinate in the CIA who did not share a piece of information with the CIA.

Can we talk about the Democrat Darling Diva Jamie Gorelick who erected the wall that prevented such sharing.

This twit er "author" can't have it both ways. If the "Torture Queen's" subordinate had shared the info with the FBI the subordinate, male or female, would be in hot water for piercing Gorelick's wall.

Ah well forget it Jake, it's the New Yorker, they're always full of feces.; 12/19/14, 5:59 PM
DavidD said...: This seems of a piece with something I think I saw here earlier about a woman having to be the fall-guy....; 12/19/14, 6:01 PM
Michael K said...: "Surely there needs to be a word created for this? I've seen it written about many times."

It's called The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect:

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

— Michael Crichton

Jane Mayer has been untrustworthy since her hit pieces on Clarence Thomas.; 12/19/14, 6:02 PM
Michael K said...: "Is her name Jamie Gorelick?"

It is but Mayer won't tell on her.; 12/19/14, 6:03 PM
mccullough said...: I'm going to guess that she is now Deputy Chief of Clandestine Services, if she has the equivalent to a general's rank.

I'd certainly like to hear her side of the story. I'd also like to know the names of the anonymous intelligence sources so I can assess their credibility and motive.

I'm going to guess that one of the sources lost out to her for Deputy Chief of Clandestine Services.

Let's not forget that Mark Felt was not concerned about government abuse of civil rights or illegal surveillance of citizens. He hated Nixon because Nixon brought the FBI under presidential control after Hoover died in 1972. Felt was a fascist who thought the FBI should remain its own de facto branch of government unaccountable to Congress, the President, or the Constitution.

These are the type of people who leak and reporters know it.; 12/19/14, 6:09 PM
mccullough said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/19/14, 6:09 PM
kcom said...: Yeah, whatever grain of truth might be at the center, it sounds like a big pile of hooey. You'll get fat on the hooey before you ingest anything nutritionally useful.; 12/19/14, 6:53 PM
RecChief said...: they're kidding right? why it was just one person who fed all that bad intelligence to two presidents!

War on Women indeed; 12/19/14, 6:57 PM
Michael said...: I got as far as the first sentence of Talk of the Town, where Mayer speaks of the report revealing "unthinkable cruelty." If she thinks this is unthinkable cruelty, clearly she can't think very hard. How about the death of 1000 cuts in Manchu China? Or any number of other historical examples? At some point a difference in degree amounts to a difference in kind, and using the same word to cover both ends of the range is simply dishonest.; 12/19/14, 7:10 PM
Bob Boyd said...: You can still book the Al Qaeda sleeper cells in Montana on Air B&B.
They're nothing fancy, but for hikers and skiers on a budget....; 12/19/14, 7:22 PM
Eeyore Rifkin said...: Just as the essence of torture is to render the body both subject and object of its own misery, to the point where it is despised and death would be welcome, Queen Jane, operating out of a black site in Manhattan, perverts and disorients the mind by her refusal to use the word whom.; 12/19/14, 7:51 PM
Paul said...: This article has GRUBER written all over it.; 12/19/14, 7:59 PM
John henry said...: Gorelick did not create the cia fbi wall. She did strengthen it, on clintons instruction but she didn't create it.
the wall was erected by congress and signed into law by carter.

this came about as the result of the Church committee hearings.

it was widely viewed as a good thing at the time.

john henry; 12/19/14, 7:59 PM
Robert Cook said...: It stands to reason that anyone who would participate or oversee torture at all must be gleeful about it. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it at all.; 12/19/14, 8:08 PM
jr565 said...: What information was the CIA given that would have prevented 9/11? The memo that they were determined to attack us?
And how did the CIA get that info? Maybe by Interogating people? Would the author be happy if the CIA did connect the dots and prevented 9/11 but had to get the info using not perfect means?sounds like someone wants all the perks of perfect information and intelligence wihout having to do any of the work to get it.
Shut up.; 12/19/14, 8:14 PM
jr565 said...: As for her gleefully going for torture let's not forget that chuck shumer and other dems at the time were demanding we do MORE. So again, shut up.; 12/19/14, 8:16 PM
jr565 said...: Robert cook wrote:
It stands to reason that anyone who would participate or oversee torture at all must be gleeful about it. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it at all.

those guys that water boarded these journalists must be twirling their mustaches right about now. EVIL!; 12/19/14, 8:46 PM
gbarto said...: This makes me think of the rogue IRS agents in Cincinnati. Clinton had the peace dividend, W had 9/11 and Obama turned into W II, but it's all the responsibility of a few rogue bureaucrats further down the chain. Why bother to elect a President and Congress if all it ever comes down to is our wonderful politicians not realizing what's going on?; 12/19/14, 8:59 PM
Michael K said...: "Let's not forget that Mark Felt was not concerned about government abuse of civil rights "

Felt was behind "Watergate" and the well known reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, were stenographers.

An old story but successfully ignored for 40 years.; 12/19/14, 9:37 PM
sean said...: Wow, the editing has just collapsed at the New Yorker, hasn't it? "[A] woman who he does not name"? "[P]rinciple domestic authority"? When I encounter writing that slovenly, I stop reading.; 12/19/14, 9:47 PM
lonetown said...: She still has a long way to go to match the damage Jamie Gorelick caused.; 12/19/14, 10:58 PM
chickelit said...: eric said...
This, once again, reminds me of the phenomenon of believing what we read when we don't already know the details.

Surely there needs to be a word created for this? I've seen it written about many times.

Many here have credited the so-called "Murray Gell-Mann Effect." An earlier version is called "Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy:"

'Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.' (1982); 12/19/14, 11:56 PM
Emil Blatz said...: It conjured up an image of Martha Raye in uniform. Before she had the legs lopped off.; 12/19/14, 11:58 PM
Achilles said...: "Murray Gell-Mann Effect"

When a nurse reads an article about nursing/healthcare that screws everything up they get exasperated. My wife thinks it is funny.

When soldiers and operators read stories like this it is different. We don't think it is funny.; 12/20/14, 1:35 AM
sinz52 said...: The use of the term "gleefully" seems to come from this statement of the woman's, as reported by NBC:

"i love the Black American Muslim at AQ camps in Afghanuistan (sic). ... Mukie (KSM) is going to be hatin' life on this one."

"Gleefully" is a little strong.

"Breezily" might be more appropriate.; 12/20/14, 6:29 AM
sdharms said...: Ann If you read the article you would know the reason for the characterization of "gleefully". That Mayer article is about the most GUTLESS thing I have ever read. If you don't have the name, then why the article?; 12/20/14, 6:47 AM
chillblaine said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/20/14, 7:44 AM
Achilles said...: Robert Cook said...
"It stands to reason that anyone who would participate or oversee torture at all must be gleeful about it. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it at all."

Which goes to show how ignorant you truly are.; 12/20/14, 10:31 AM
Big Mike said...: @jr565, there is a hard boundary between what the CIA can do and where the FBI's responsibility begins. In the case of this woman, she and her team knew that a person on the watch list was in the US -- so the CIA no longer had jurisdiction and was barred by law from continuing surveillance on him, but at the explicit direction of her or her direct report the information was not passed to the FBI to pick up the surveillance.

3000 people died in large part because of a petty effort to snub the FBI.; 12/20/14, 11:37 AM
buck smith said...: I think it unlikely the harsh interrogation were ineffective. When used to penetrate an enemy intelligence network, it is going to be effective because the key pieces of information are usually easily and quickly verifiable. Just the pattern of what information is given and which is held or lied about is pretty powerful to a good intelligence officer. If anyone wants to learn more about this from someone who has run intelligence networks against a dictatorial regime, I recommend reading Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club.; 12/20/14, 12:10 PM
J.R. said...: It's the NY Times, the intensifier is ubiquitous to maintain the leftie slant. There is no need for a sound basis.; 12/20/14, 1:07 PM