A Black Mark on Mitt's Choices for Advisors

I read a quickie-read book the past couple of days, called How to Get Away With Murder in America, that left me a little rocked.  The jarring part started in telling the central character's story, and reached a crescendo as it detailed the arc of his career and the people who helped him along.

The main character is a child of Cuban refugees who rose to become a senior-ranking member of the CIA, before taking a vice-presidency at Blackwater, specializing in political assassinations in Iraq and Afghanistan on orders of the CIA.  The book names him, and you can look for it if you like.  I'm not, because he's not the focus of this blog.

I love and respect a man in a uniform, but the thing is this particular man, prior to joining the CIA, worked as a bodyguard and criminal enforcer for a childhood friend, convicted cocaine trafficker Alberto San Pedro - one of the 'Cocaine Cowboys' of Miami in the 1970's.  Federal RICO investigations were initiated from information gathered by Metro-Dade investigative work on local murders and bad drug deals, which supported the case enough to convene grand juries to examine the evidence; Yet with no reason, the CIA defended this man from being questioned by a grand jury.

Now, for those jumping to call this a chop piece or fabrication, I suggest you re-review the sourcing before you call B.S.  There a great many pieces that line up and Evan Wright (author of this piece, and also of Generation Kill which was adapted for HBO) documents his own skepticism in the journey to identify people, places, etcetera.  

Perhaps, as the author offers, this man was trying to escape La Vida Coca when he entered the CIA.  Whatever.  There does not appear to be any evidence that his life in the CIA, once established, maintained a high degree of exposure to his prior life, and I would be the last person to fault him.  The fact that the man was successful at re-creating himself to promote the country's safety as a federal employee is for me, all good and I wish him no ill will.  In fact, as the author notes, he provided services in getting the CIA's Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) organized following 9/11 so far outside the CIA group think that we probably responded more quickly to terrorist threats thanks to his work.

It was another figure in the story, another CIA guy, named J. C0fer Blaack (sic) who helped the former 'Hard Guy' via promotions at the CIA and later, a good job at Blackwater, running their under-the-covers hit squad.  Black now has speaking engagements at places like the Aspen Security Forum with colleagues John Negroponte, Dennis Blair, Keith Alexander and others from the Intelligence community.  He is now also a military advisor to Mitt Romney and could end up in Mr. Romney's cabinet.

Why does this concern me?  After all, this was the guy who alerted the CTC to Al Qaeda in the late 1990's.  He was the guy who put the extraordinary rendition program on the front burner.  He was the guy who put the 'Hard Guy' mentioned above in charge of a team to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden - in 1996.

He was also the guy in charge in 2000, when his group received intelligence that two known Al Qaeda militants were en route to Malaysia for a meeting with others there.  CTC promptly sent officers who surveilled the meeting, photographed the participants, and promptly lost the militants.  Thai intelligence advised the CTC a few weeks later, that the two had boarded a flight to LAX, using their real names, and had landed and disappeared.  When notified, CTC checked some references to look for them, but did not alert the FBI or other law enforcement agencies of their presence in the U.S.

The two men later enrolled in flight school.  And later, still using their own names, boarded AA 77 as part of the 9/11 hijack team who rode that plane into the Pentagon.

No one will ever know whether the plot might have been foiled by investigators.  One hopes that it would have been.  

Mr. Black denied under oath testifying before the 9/11 commission that CTC had kept this information to themselves, and blamed the FBI whom he said had been advised.  In its summation, the commission concluded he had not alerted anyone.  

Black was not relieved of his duties until May of 2002, and not before he sold President George W. Bush on the CIA's ability to send paramilitaries into Afghanistan to rally the rebel forces and help (through massive amounts of air power) overcome the Taliban.  In just a few weeks or months.  Black  also sold President Bush on the rendition and torture policies the CIA adopted in Afghanistan (and later, Iraq).  Evans goes further, and asserts Black's efforts ultimately helped give POTUS (then, and now) a layer or two of distance from responsibility for actions taken on the ground by CIA or other armed forces personnel, by removing Justice Department oversight of renditions and removing POTUS approval for assassinations.

On the one hand, Mr. Black was not convincing in his testimony; on the other, his counsel to President Bush strengthened the power in Bush's office while diminishing rights of due process and personal freedoms.  One might argue that '...in wartime....' but such powers given a man will never be given back.  If by some miracle the spectre of terrorism faded tomorrow, another reason would arise to justify the need of keeping these powers.  Taking those powers out of the box was wrong on many levels.

If the GOP's candidate is successful this election, Mr. Black may find a cabinet spot.  By his lack of honesty shown to the 9/11 commission alone, I find this possibility execrable.  I do not want to even think what might happen should he find himself present, at yet another moment of presidential weakness.