Time constraints prevented me yesterday from writing about Dianne Feinstein's comments concerning torture in yesterday's New York Times, in which the California Senator -- who will replace Jay Rockefeller as Chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- rather clearly backtracked on what had been her repeated, unequivocal insistence throughout the year that the CIA should be required to comply with the Army Field Manual when interrogating detainees.  But Time's Michael Scherer picked up on the same backtracking and did a very good job of highlighting what appears to be Feinstein's (as well as Ron Wyden's) conspicuous, and rather disturbing, reversals.

But it's actually somewhat worse even than Scherer suggests.  According to Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, who wrote the article, Feinstein and Wyden are just two of the "senior Democratic lawmakers" who have "seemed reluctant in recent interviews to commit the new administration to following the Army Field Manual in all cases" -- despite the fact that both Feinstein and Wyden said throughout the year that they emphatically favored such a measure and even co-sponsored legislation requiring it.

From the Times article:  "in an interview on Tuesday, Mrs. Feinstein indicated that extreme cases might call for flexibility."  And:  "'I think that you have to use the noncoercive standard to the greatest extent possible,' she said, raising the possibility that an imminent terrorist threat might require special measures."  Wyden's comments were even worse:  

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, another top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he would consult with the C.I.A. and approve interrogation techniques that went beyond the Army Field Manual as long as they were “legal, humane and noncoercive.”  But Mr. Wyden declined to say whether C.I.A. techniques ought to be made public.

What makes this so notable is that, for the last year, Feinstein and Wyden were both insistent that the only way to end torture and restore America's standing in the world was to require CIA compliance with the Army Field Manual -- period.  But as long as George Bush was President, it was cheap and easy for Feinstein and Wyden to argue that, because they knew there was no chance it would ever happen.  As they well knew, they lacked the votes to override Bush's inevitable veto of any such legislation.  So as long as Bush was President, it was all just posturing, strutting around demanding absolute anti-torture legislation they knew would never pass.  

But that has all changed now.  Although Obama's top intelligence adviser, John Brennan, has questioned whether it was necessary or wise to do so, Obama himself said repeatedly and unequivocally during the campaign that he supports legislation to compel CIA compliance with the Army Field Manual, making it virtually impossible for him to veto any such legislation if Congress passes it.  Thus, Senate Democrats now know that if they pass the law they claimed so vehemently to support, it would actually get enacted.

So now, suddenly, Feinstein and Wyden are sending at least preliminary signals that they are far more "flexible" on the issue -- I believe the all-justifying catchword in vogue now is "pragmatic" -- than they ever were before.  What had been an unequivocal principle has instantly transformed into caveat-riddled buzzphrases.  I'm sure we'll be hearing shortly -- from many precincts -- that those of us who insist that Democrats fulfill their commitment to compel the CIA's compliance in all cases with the extant Army Field Manual (not some brand new, more permissive set of guidelines written and issued in secret and which provides for exceptions), are guilty of being dreaded "ideologues," purity trolls and civil liberties extremists.  

Just to get a flavor for how unequivocal Democrats had been on this issue, here is a statement Feinstein herself issued on October 15 -- less than two months ago:

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today denounced the Bush Administration's secret approval of torture methods used by the CIA during interrogations, and renewed her call for all U.S. intelligence agencies to be required to follow the Army Field Manual's rules on interrogations. . . . "To me, this further demonstrates why a single standard for interrogations across all branches of the government - including the CIA - is necessary," Senator Feinstein said. "I believe it is very dangerous not to set this standard across the board, and the only document that does this is the revised Army Field Manual. The abuses we've seen at Guantanamo, at Abu Ghraib, and in Afghanistan clearly show the spillover results of allowing the CIA to engage in coercive interrogations.

Let's repeat what Feinstein said:  "the only document that does this is the revised Army Field Manual." 

In an Op-Ed she co-wrote last February with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse for The San Diego Union-Tribune, urging the President to sign their bill to compel the CIA's compliance with the Army Field Manual (co-sponsored by Sen. Wyden), Feinstein was just as emphatic:

Here's why this is so important: It is the right thing to do. . . . Our intelligence agencies would be able to effectively interrogate detainees – by using 19 techniques that are today used with success by the military . . . . The Army Field Manual has been in use for decades. It was updated in 2006 to reflect lessons learned from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. . . . The 19 interrogation techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual come with strict protocols for their use. Most of these techniques involve psychological approaches – for example, making a prisoner believe cooperation could save his country by ending a war more quickly.  Military commanders say these methods produce good intelligence.

And listen to the unequivocal vow Feinstein made, as reported by CQ on April 28, 2008:

“The CIA has heard the message that a majority in both houses of Congress want the uniform standard provided by the Army field manual,” [Feinstein] said the day before Bush vetoed the 2008 bill in March. “We will not stop until it becomes law.” After the House failed to override the veto, Feinstein said, “We’ll just keep sending it back, and he can keep vetoing it.” 

"We will not stop until it becomes law."

Wyden has been just as emphatic, giving a speech on the Senate floor in supporting Feinstein's no-exceptions bill (which he himself co-sponsored) back in February in which he said: 

With respect to the role of the military, they already abide by interrogation rules that are flexible and effective. They have been used by professional military interrogators with many years of experience and they are clearly effective . . . The Army Field Manual actually makes it quite clear which techniques are authorized for all service members and which require special permission. So there it is, the need for this legislation - just on the basis of the developments of the last few weeks - is even more important than it was.

There was no talk whatsoever by either of them of the need for "flexibility" in "extreme cases" or using noncoercive measures only "to the greatest extent possible" or the need for "special measures" in times of heightened threat environments or "approv[ing] interrogation techniques that went beyond the Army Field Manual" or the need to have the interrogation laws be kept secret -- all the things which Feinstein and Wyden are suddenly telling The New York Times they are now considering.  What changed?

What is needed in order to put an end to the Bush torture regime are absolute, unequivocal, and transparent legal prohibitions governing interrogations, ones that are devoid of ambiguity, flexibility and secrecy.  Feinstein and Wyden certainly purported to recognize exactly that all year long when, as they well knew, they weren't in a position to do anything about it.  Now that they are, they ought to follow through on what they repeatedly said they intended to do.

Obviously, the CIA can and should develop specific interrogation tactics that are classified, but only within the parameters of unambiguous and fully disclosed laws.  As Feinstein and Wyden have argued -- correctly -- all year long, the Army Field Manual authorizes robust and effective interrogation techniques, and there is no reason to re-write it for the CIA or to carve out exceptions to it.  

Anyone who doubts that should just read this Washington Post Op-Ed from the military interrogator who used those techniques in Iraq to find Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and who wrote that they were far more effective than techniques that go beyond the Field Manual.  And, as Mazzetti and Shane reported:  "a dozen retired generals and admirals are to meet with senior Obama advisers to urge him to stand firm against any deviation from the military’s noncoercive interrogation rules."

Several members of Congress, such as Rush Holt, have called on Obama not to wait for Congress to act and, instead, to immediately issue an Executive Order compelling government-wide compliance with the Army Field Manual.  Obama should do that.  But, as Holt recognizes, this is really an area where Congress can and must legislate. 

For that to happen, Feinstein and Wyden need to return to the clear, principled position they claimed to believe in throughout the year.  All this sudden talk of exceptions and "special measures" and new, secret guidelines do nothing but cloud an issue where absolute clarity is most needed.  That's exactly the wrong message to be sending -- both about the authenticity of the Democrats' pledge to end torture and about the country's intent to cleanse itself of the abuses of the last eight years.

(updated below)

Bill Clinton yesterday was forced to deny speculation that he would be appointed to replace his wife in the U.S. Senate.  Leading candidates for that seat still include John F. Kennedy's daughter (Caroline), Robert Kennedy's son (RFK, Jr.), and Mario Cuomo's son (Andrew).  In Illinois, a leading contender to replace Barack Obama in the Senate is Jesse Jackson's son (Jesse, Jr.).  In Delaware, it was widely speculated that Joe Biden would be replaced by his son, Beau, and after Beau took his name out of the running because he's now serving in Iraq, the naming of the actual replacement -- lone-time (Joe) Biden aide Ted Kaufmann -- "upset local Democrats who believe the move was a ham-handed attempt to engineer the election of Biden’s son, Beau, to the Senate in 2010."

Meanwhile, in Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, who was appointed by her father to take his seat in the U.S. Senate when he became Governor, yesterday warned Sarah Palin not to challenge her in a 2010 primary, a by-product of tension between those two as a result of Palin's defeat of Lisa's dad for Governor.  In Florida, Mel Martinez's announcement that he won't seek re-election in 2010 immediately led to reports that the current President's brother, Jeb, might run for that seat.  And all of that's just from the last couple of weeks.

The Senate alone -- to say nothing of the House -- is literally filled with people whose fathers or other close relatives previously held their seat or similar high office (those links identify at least 15 current U.S. Senators -- 15 -- with immediate family members who previously occupied high elected office).  And, of course, the current President on his way out was the son of a former President and grandson of a former U.S. Senator.

Isn't this all a bit much?  It's true that our political/media class in general is intensely incestuous and nepotistic.  Virtually the entire neoconservative "intelligentsia" (using that term as loosely as it can possibly be used) is one big paean to nepotistic succession -- the Kristols, the Kagans, the Podhoretzes, Lucinanne Goldberg and her boy.  Upon Tim Russert's death, NBC News excitedly hired his son, Luke.  Mike Wallace's son hosts Fox's Sunday show.  The most influential political opinion space in the country, The New York Times Op-Ed page, is, like the Times itself, teeming with family successions and connections.  Inter-marriages between and among media stars and political figures -- and lobbyists, operatives and powerful political officials -- are now more common than arranged royal marriages were among 16th Century European monarchs.

But this fixation on parent-child, sibling and spousal succession for elected office is particularly problematic.  It's certainly true that one can find, in individual cases, instances of self-sufficiency and merit even among those benefiting from nepotism and family names.  But the fact that it is now so commonplace -- almost presumptively expected -- for political power to be passed along to close family members is quite anti-democratic.  The number of families possessing some sort of aristocratic-like claim to elected office is clearly increasing.  By definition, that diminishes the role of merit and the need for democratic persuasion in how elected leaders are chosen.  And this dynamic, in turn, fuels how insular, incestuous, unaccountable and bloated with entitlement the Beltway culture is.

There are numerous factors that account for this artistocratization of our politics.  Viewing political officials through the combined prism of royalty and celebrity naturally generates interest in, and affection for, their family members.  The same deeply sad mentality that makes it worthwhile for celebrity magazines to pay many millions of dollars for celebrities' baby photos is part of what makes so many people eager to vote for the sons, wives, and brothers of their favorite political star.  Independently, a rapid worsening of America's rich-poor gap stratifies the society in terms of opportunities and access and breeds a merit-deprived aristocratic culture.

Beyond that, the massive structural advantages of incumbency easily allow resources and other favors to be heaped on chosen family members for succession, and for loyalties and affections to be transferred for no reason other than family connection.  Then there is the  large number of uninformed voters -- working in tandem with our vapid, gossip-obsessed political media -- that place a huge premium on family name recognition and even generates some voter confusion that further aids family succession (how many voters who cast a ballot for Bob Casey and John Sununu in their Senate races -- or elected Harold Ford, Dan Boren, Connie Mack and Bill Schuster to the House -- mistakenly thought they were voting for their elected-official dads who had the same or very similar names?).

Family succession is hardly unheard of in U.S. political history, but what was once quite rare has now become pervasive.  As The Washington Post's Dana Milbank put it in 2005:

With at least 18 senators, dozens of House members and several administration officials boosted by family legacies, modern-day Washington sometimes resembles the court of Louis XIV without the powdered wigs.

Illustrating that radical change, here's a revealing 1929 article from Time Magazine expressing some mild disapproval for what was, back then, the rare occurrence of a son who was elected to succeed his father in a Minnesota Congressional seat after the father was killed in a tragic fire (the new son-Congressman, the article noted, was "an engaging young man, thoroughly Nordic in appearance").  About this single familial succession, Time sternly intoned:  "Primogeniture and hereditary public office have no place in U. S. tradition."

That is clearly no longer true.  One of the most encouraging aspects of Barack Obama's success -- and, for that matter, the ascension of someone like Sarah Palin or Bill Clinton -- is the pure self-sufficiency and lack of family connection behind it.  But even pointing that out demonstrates how meritocratic self-sufficiency has almost become the exception rather than the rule.  That we now treat Presidents like Kings and expect them to exercise similar powers is consistent with the broader trend whereby we are ruled by a Versailles on the Potomac, with all the bloated, decadent insularity that implies.

UPDATE:  In the comment section, Brenton Williams -- a Professor of American Constitutional & Legal History at DePaul University -- details one of the most egregiously undemocratic cases of nepotistic succession:  Democratic Blue Dog Rep. Dan Lipinski:

His father, Bill, the long-time incumbent ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004 and won easily.  A few weeks before the general election he withdrew and the Illinois Democratic Committee met with him for 15 minutes, late at night, behind closed doors before emerging with their new nominee, his son, then residing in central Tennessee where he was an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee. . . . Still worse, a family friend [Ryan Chlada] with no funding ran as the Republican in 2004 to help insure that Dan faced no more than token resistance.

As Professor Williams notes, the Lipinski son, ever since, has been vigorously supported by the Democratic establishment, particularly Rahm Emanuel, in order to defeat progressive (and meritocratic) primary challengers.  He was simply handed the seat by his dad.

(updated below)

When The Army Times, in September, reported that for "the first time an active [U.S. Army] unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities," those of us who raised questions and concerns about that deployment were told that this was but one little brigade -- just 4,500 combat troops -- and nothing meaningful could be done with such a deployment.  

That was never the point, of course; the issue was the precedent of allowing the President to command permanently deployed, war-trained Army brigades inside the U.S., in order -- as The Army Times put it -- "to help with civil unrest and crowd control," as well as long-standing legal prohibitions on using the military for such purposes domestically. 

Yesterday, The Washington Post reported on a much-expanded plan:  "The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011."  Like most expansions of government power, it was the Terrorist Threat that was invoked to "justify" this radical shift in policy:  

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response -- a nearly sevenfold increase in five years -- "would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable," Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

My guest today on Salon Radio to discuss this new Pentagon plan is Gene Healy, Vice President at the Cato Institute and author of the genuinely excellent book, released earlier this year, entitled:  The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power.   The Post article yesterday noted that those objecting to this domestic deployment plan include those "in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians," and quotes both the ACLU and Healy as expressing serious concerns about the dangers.  I discuss those objections with Healy, as well his relative optimism about what an Obama presidency might mean for executive power abuses.

The discussion is roughly 25 minutes and the transcript is here -- link fixed (I previously interviewed the ACLU's Jonathan Hafetz about this matter, here).

One programming note:  effective immediately, we have decided to scale back Salon Radio from three broadcasts a week to two per week, and they will now be posted every Tuesday and Friday at 2:00 p.m. EST.  The prior schedule was simply too burdensome to maintain in light of other obligations.

UPDATE:  As a reminder, and in response to several recent inquiries:  all podcasts are available as MP3's (here) and iTunes (here).  Permanent links to those pages can be found at the top right-hand corner of this page (under "Glenn Greenwald Radio").

Glenn Greenwald: My guest today is Gene Healy, who is a vice-president at the Cato Institute and the author of the truly excellent book released earlier this year, entitled The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power. Gene, thanks very much for joining me today.

Gene Healy: Thanks Glenn, and thanks for the compliments about the book. Appreciate it.

GG: My Pleasure. I want to begin by asking you about this story that was published this morning in the Washington Post, which in its first paragraph reported "the US military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011, trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe," according to Pentagon officials.

Now, I first wrote about this story six or eight weeks ago, as a result of an article in the Army Times that reported that there was going to be a single brigade of 4500 troops coming from Iraq, which would for the first time be permanently deployed inside the United States. At the time I wrote about some of the dangers of this precedent and a lot of people angrily responded, including some liberals and people across the spectrum, saying that, "look, this is just one brigade, it's only 4500 troops, what damage could possibly be done, this is anti-military hysteria that's fueling this controversy." And now it turns out that the plan actually calls for 20,000 uniformed troops to be deployed inside the United States.

Talk about, if you can, what we know about this new plan. Has there been a change in the plan? What is it that we know about the impetus behind it and the rationale that's being offered?

GH: Well, I wish knew a lot more, and I know that the ACLU has filed a Freedom of Information Act request trying to get more information on the initial deployment of the 3rd Infantry Division's first brigade combat team, which was the 4500 troops that you mentioned from the Army Times article back in October. But, as for the rationale, I think there's been a tendency toward creeping militarization, particularly in the Bush administration, and I think it stems from the idea that because the army is good at its appointed task in most cases, that it's this panacea for every high-profile event, whether it's a potential security threat, the threat of disease, or a hurricane.

So we've seen a lot of disturbing proposals about using the military come out of the administration from very early on. Right after 9/11 there was the Transportation Secretary at the time, Norm Mineta, wanted to put Delta Force soldiers on domestic flights to guard against hijacking. And you had a number of memos from John Yoo suggesting, among other things, that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply in domestic military operations and the Posse Comitatus Act may be a dead letter.

So there's been this thrust toward greater use of the military domestically throughout the Bush administration, at least since 9/11, and I wish I could say I knew the policy rationale for it; unfortunately I think it's just intends to be a reflection of the power grab.

GG: Let me ask you about the argument -- and you're quoted in the Washington Post as articulating it as you did when I asked you that first question -- that there's something concerning or even dangerous about this trend. What's your response to the following argument: we already have the National Guard which is, by design, trained to engage in some of these functions domestically inside the United States.

What really is the difference? Is there a meaningful difference between relying on the National Guard for these tasks, and deploying US combat brigades, or army brigades inside the United States to perform them?

GH: Well, ideally, the way they should go is the military is a last resort; it's not a first responder. And you have ascending levels as the incident becomes more serious, as the threat becomes more serious; you want your first responders, your people on the ground, your state and local officials to handle any incident. If they're overwhelmed, you want National Guardsmen under the command of state governors, and only as an extraordinary last resort -- which is the way it has been in American law -- do you want to have active duty, combat-trained federal troops who are under the command of the president. That's sort of the nuclear option in domestic disaster response.

And I think there are any number of reasons that we ought to try to maintain that line. One is that soldiers are trained as warriors, which is how they should be trained. But they're not trained as cops, and they're not trained in the sort of crowd control and civil disturbances -- the sort of training that the National Guard gets more frequently and has gotten more frequently, particularly since Kent State.

Now, can we imagine scenarios where a federal response with active duty military might be appropriate? Yeah, I think we can all imagine scenarios where that might happen. But what the thrust of the administration's is that you're going to have, by 2011, 20,000 troops that are permanently dedicated to this sort of [combat] mission. And I think one of the dangers there is if you remember the line from Colin Powell's autobiography recently, where he's talking about an exchange he had with Madeleine Albright; she says, what's the point of having this wonderful military you're always talking about if we never get to use it? I think there's a fear that there will be increasing mission creep when you have 20,000 troops dedicated to homeland security functions. And I don't think it's remotely necessary.

GG: Right. One of the things that I found notable and bothersome about the Army Times article was that article actually purported to detail the training that these troops -- when they were redeployed from Iraq where they had spent the last three years in a combat mission -- were to receive upon being redeployed to the United States, and it was things like, as you alluded to earlier, crowd control, the use of non-lethal force such as tasers.

Do you think there is a danger of taking, as you say, trained warriors out of a war zone after three years, and sticking them into a domestic situation with a couple of months of training and telling them that part of their duties are things like crowd control and keeping the peace? Is there a unique danger in trying to train brigades that were just recently, and for quite a long time, engaged in a war mission in a foreign country, and asking them to perform tasks inside the United States?

GH: Yeah, absolutely. I think the danger goes two ways. You've got the danger of collateral damage to American life and liberty, you've had -- a good example of that was 1997, the Esequiel Hernandez incident, where an American high school student was killed on the Texas-Mexico border because he ran into a Marine Corps anti-drug patrol. So, you can train around that, and you can take folks like the First Brigade combat team who are first-rate warriors, and give them training so they interact better with civilians, but then from what I understand the same unit is going to be redeployed into Iraq in about a year.

You're training soldiers for two fundamentally different functions, and functions that we really don't want to blur. You're training them for combat, and you're training them for interacting with citizens at home who have constitutional rights and where the rules of engagement do not have you responding with overwhelming force. So I think it's dangerous in terms of domestic militarization, in terms of the interaction with citizens, but I also think it's dangerous because when you have to retrain soldiers so they're capable of performing these functions, you're also undermining military readiness at the same time.

GG: I want to ask you about this remark that you made that's quoted in the Washington Post article, where it first cites the fact that the ACLU, their national security project, is objecting to this deployment on the grounds that it might be the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority. I actually the ACLU back when the Army Times article came out about their Freedom of Information Act where they're at least attempting to get some information about what the purpose of this deployment is, because needless to say, like most things that our government does, it's being kept secret.

The Post article goes on to quote you as saying, that you were concerned about

". . .a creeping militarization. There's a notion that whenever there's an important problem, the thing to do is to call the boys in green," Healy said. "And that's at odds with our long-standing tradition of being wary of the use of standing armies to keep the peace."

Talk a little bit about that tradition of wanting to avoid the use of standing armies to keep the peace. How was that tradition expressed?  How is it reflected, and why should be care about that tradition?

GH: Well, I think it goes back to the American Revolution, the Boston massacre, even before that, the very intense hostility that the colonists had to standing armies because they could be used as a tool of executive repression. So with the Posse Comitatus Act, we get the civil war, but some of the folks who voted for it saw it as enshrining a principle that was already in the Constitution, that the army is more or less designed to play war games, and it should not be turned inward because there are huge dangers with that.

Now, whenever you have a story like this, various corners of the Web people will spin some scenarios that may not be realistic. I see the danger less that this the first step to martial law, and more that it really puts us on the path of weakening democracy in this sense: When you have that reflex that, oh, if it's something very important, if it's hurricane response, or a public health emergency, the drug problem in America's inner cities, it becomes easy to reach for the military option just as we've reached for it too much abroad. The same problem and the same dynamic can occur at home where there's this notion that civilian institutions are weak and messy, and if you're really serious about a problem, you have to get the military involved in some way. I think that is something that's fundamentally at odds with the way we have always done things and fundamentally at odds with the principles of free society.

GG: Let me ask you about that idea in the context of executive power, which is the topic of your book, and it's actually quite a related theme, related to the one you just described, which is that increasingly the United States has turned, in terms of every problem that we have, to the prospect that the solution lies in something that the president can do. That every time there's a problem, we think about how we can further empower the president to solve that problem, and that's part of what has led to the wild expansion of executive power. That it's not just a formal expansion in terms of the authority we're investing in that office, but a more conceptual expansion in terms of the expectation that we have from this person who was designed originally be a limited functionary executing laws into this all-purpose national leader, who guides us and leads us in almost unlimited ways, hence your title, The Cult of the Presidency.

What do you think are the prospects for reining some of that in, if any, under this new president, who has at least paid lip service in the past to reversing some of the excesses of the last eight years (at least), even though, as you document, these excesses go back a lot longer than just eight years. But he's at least acknowledged and demonstrated that he has an understanding of these basic issues and the need to reverse them. What do you think are the prospects for that, and what kinds of things are you going to be looking for?

GH: Well, I think some of the early signs are quite promising. I do think that he's sincere on some of these issues. Of course, as you documented, he did flip-flop on the warrantless wiretapping issue. As the campaign heated up, as he got closer to actually becoming president, that some of his statements that he's made since the election -- as you point out, the devil's in the details, but he does seem sincere about ending torture and closing Guantanamo.

I think there's a really interesting tension with Obama, though, because on the one hand, his public positions on executive power are as sound as you might expect a successful candidate's to be in 21st-century America, but he's also raised expectations about the office to an insanely high degree, and they were already insanely high. In other words, the idea that the president is this national guardian angel who can heal the economy and teach your children well and save the world -- I don't know of anybody in the last 30 years who has raised expectations for what the office is capable of as much as Obama has. I think that will be interesting to watch how it plays out, because I think one of the reasons we have failed presidencies is because no one can provide the goods and services that the modern president is expected to provide.

So there's the tension where he is talking about restraining his own powers, backing off some of the extravagant claims about executive power that the administration has made; at the same time he's stoking expectation for the benefits and miracles the office can provide. The other factor that I think is going to be something to watch is I think it's very difficult for a president who is vulnerable to the charge of being quote-unquote "soft on terror" -- whatever that means -- it will be very difficult for a president in the position that Obama is going to be in to down-size his own powers.

I think that's one of the things that Jack Goldsmith, the former OLC official, who wrote The Terror Presidency, that his book is really insightful on, that: yes, the growth of executive power in the Bush years was in large part driven by ideologues who were independently dedicated to a strong presidency, but there was also a notion that the president is responsible for anything big that happens in the country. If there's a bomb that goes off in a subway car, he's politically liable for that in some sense.

That dynamic, particularly for a president in Obama's position, is going to make the president reluctant to give up surveillance authority, reluctant to in any way tie his hands in advance. And that goes into the dynamic I talk about in the book, which is great responsibility leads to great power. The fact that the president is expected to save us from hurricanes and provide perfect protection from any possible terror threat, is one of the factors that makes presidents seek more and more power. And until we reduce our expectations and have more modest, humble, and business-like expectations of what this figure is supposed to provide, I think that dynamic will continue to go on.

GG: Let me just explore that a little bit, because there's no question that Obama ran on a platform of extraordinary amounts of government activism. There were all kinds of promises about all sorts of sectors of our society from the military to our foreign policy and probably most aggressively our economy that he vowed to revitalize using the powers of his office. And there's a perception at least that there are severe crises in all of these realms, most particularly the economy, where, as you just alluded to, there's an expectation not just among his supporters, but I think across the political spectrum. Certainly the media and the citizenry at large, that the responsibility given all those promises now lies with him.

A president go about exercising great power in one of two ways. One ways is to do what the Bush administration did, which is just to seize these powers unilaterally without the cooperation or participation of any of the other branches of government. The other way, though, is to go to Congress, and have Congress authorize, or rubber-stamp, or agree to whatever it is the president wants to do, and of course one of the criticisms of the Bush administration from Jack Goldsmith and others, was that most of what they did, they could have gotten Congressional approval for, because Congress was so compliant, especially after 9/11 and through most of the Bush presidency.

They could easily have gotten Congress to sign on to most of what they wanted to do, as I suspect will Obama be to get a grateful Democratic Congress signing on to whatever this president wants to do, given he is much more politically powerful and popular than they are. Does it really make a difference from the perspective of reining in executive power if Obama does all these extremely activist measures to interfere and intervene in all parts of the economy and foreign policy, if he does it with a compliant Congress just rubber-stamping what he wants to as opposed to doing it all unilaterally?

GH: Well, I suppose it would be better if rather than conduct the warrantless wiretapping program in secret for several years, and unilaterally, that George Bush went to a compliant Congress and got it authorized, but then on the other hand, we're in the same position with the substantive policy that we think is a problem.

GG: Right. Just along those lines, Bush began detaining people without process and interrogating them beyond previous limits and spying Americans without warrants. He began by doing that in secret and in violation of congressional statute. Once it was revealed, Congress ended up endorsing it, both retroactively and prospectively, both Republicans and Democrats. Certainly, that's symbolically better, but it is meaningfully and substantively better?

GH: No, not in any substantive sense. It's right that the administration may have come at us with more power had they pursued that strategy, but I think from a civil libertarian and a constitutionalist perspective, it's not your preferred outcome. I think if Obama does feel that he needs more power, being more politically savvy than Bush, and probably more respectful of procedural niceties, I think he will seek power from Congress and get most of what he wants.

One of the interesting things about the Bush years, though, is there's always this adage, I think from Richard Neustadt, that presidential power is the power of persuasion, and once you've spent your political capital you don't get any more powerful. And the last couple of years under Bush really gave the lie to that adage, because he, with his popularity plummeting, continued to get more powers from Congress.

In October, there was the Military Commissions Act; you got at the same time the changes to the Insurrection Act after Katrina that were in effect for about two years where the president could essentially become military commander in any disaster area regardless of the objections of the state governors. And as he's going out of office with historically low popularity, you've got a treasury secretary with nearly carte blanche to remake the commanding heights of finance. So you're left with an extraordinarily powerful executive that got more powerful even as most of the country had decided that this was a president who couldn't be trusted with power and would not wield it wisely. So, it really is a dilemma, and good intentions coincide. I don't know how any one president can get us out of this.

GG: That's really why I asked, what you just pointed to, that series of episodes with an incomparably weak president nonetheless getting everything he wants from the Congress really underscores the fact what we have is just an inherently dysfunctional Congress, and an extreme imbalance of power, where Congress has willingly acceded all of its responsibilities and any meaningful role that it plays in our system of government. Maybe it's because they'd rather not have the burden of having to govern as the Constitution requires them to do.

Maybe there's just something inherent about how we elect people to Congress now that makes them so impotent and eager to cede power to the president, but in order to restore, at least from a constitutional perspective, this balance of power to limit the president - that's why it seems to like it's good enough for Obama to simply get Congress to sign on to whatever he wants to do. Bush was able to do that, and did that in the last few years.

It's not even so much what Obama needs to do or can do, it's really Congress that needs to reassert its authority and the role it's designed to play in our system of government to serve as a check and a limit on presidential power. Symbolic votes where Obama gets everything he wants, is, as I said, symbolically preferable, but doesn't seem to me that it would do very much to truly restoring the constitutional balance. You really need Congress to decide that that's important and to do that.

GH: Yeah, and I do think it does come back even one step further: in order for that to happen, you need people who are willing to vote for or against their congressman based on whether they're willing to be held accountable for large issues like war. There's a good reason the Iraq War resolution, in 2002, took the shape that it did. Because it was a lot more effective for Congress to punt the final decision about war to the president, and then support the war if it looks like it's going well, criticize the war effort if it looks like it's going bad.

So you had a resolution that was structured in such a way that it gave the president all the power to use all necessary and appropriate force when he determined that it was worthwhile to do so, which he did some six months later, and then you have virtually everyone who voted for the resolution denying that they voted to give the president the power to go to war. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and down the line, all saying they were for it before they were against it, or vice versa. And the reason that happens is, in part, because nobody suffers any political punishment for it, and it becomes a rational for congressmen to delegate their most important responsibilities and to pass out the pork.

So I think, yeah, there needs to be a sense of institutional responsibility in Congress, and one way we have to reinstill that, is that people have to take it seriously and exact a price when their representatives duck issues like war and peace.

GG: Absolutely. Alright, Gene, thanks very much. The book, again, is The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power. It was released earlier this year, but I think it has particular relevance and resonance now as we head into a new administration, and you can also read various publications that Gene writes at the Cato site, and his own site, which I'll provide a link to, and his criticism of the new military appointment is included today in the article in the Washington Post. Gene, thanks very much for taking the time, I appreciate it.

GH: Thanks, Glenn.

[Transcript courtesy of Thames Valley Transcribe]

(updated below - Update II)

Two weeks ago, in a largely positive assessment about Obama's likely Attorney General nominee -- entitled "Preliminary facts and thoughts about Eric Holder" -- I wrote:

Holder's involvement in the sleazy Marc Rich pardon is definitely a blemish, though, given his peripheral role, it's a relatively minor one.

Since then, The New York Times has published two pieces -- an Op-Ed by George Lardner and this article today by Eric Lichtblau and David Johnston -- which make conclusively clear that the word "peripheral" is inaccurate.  Though Holder wasn't the driving force behind the Rich pardon, the assembled facts nonetheless demonstrate that his involvement in that process was substantial, continuous, and concerted:  much, much more than "peripheral."

Everyone can decide for themselves how much weight to assign to that eight-year-old episode.  It doesn't substantially alter my view of Holder's nomination, which I still view as being, on balance, a positive step.  The reasons for that conclusion raise some points that are well worth examining -- not so much about Eric Holder, but about the Washington establishment.

What is most striking -- and revealing -- about Holder's involvement in the Rich case is that, at the time, he was the number 2 person in the Justice Department, the Deputy Attorney General.  Despite that, as the NYT reports today, "Mr. Holder had more than a half-dozen contacts with Mr. Rich’s lawyers over 15 months, including phone calls, e-mail and memorandums."  

Why would such a high-ranking DOJ official be so interested in the outcome of a single prosecution of a single defendant?  Do you think that the average criminal defense attorney, representing some common criminal, even one facing massive jail time, could get the Deputy Attorney General to take a single call about the case in order to voice complaints about an overly zealous prosecution, let alone induce the DAG to devote repeated and intense attention to the defendant's plight?  To ask the question is to answer it.

So what made Holder care so much about one defendant, Marc Rich?  It's because, at a 1998 corporate dinner, a "public-relations executive" sat next to Holder, raised Marc Rich's "plight" with him, asked Holder what Rich should do, and Holder -- as the NYT today detailed -- told the executive:  "'hire a lawyer who knows the process, he comes to me, we work it out.'  Mr. Holder pointed to a former White House counsel sitting nearby. 'There’s Jack Quinn,' he said. 'He’s a perfect example.'"  Rich then followed Holder's advice and hired Quinn as his lead lawyer, and then everything magically happened for him.

Jack Quinn was Legal Counsel to Al Gore -- who, during most of Holder's work on the Rich case, looked to be the likely next President.  After his work with Gore, Quinn became Clinton's White House counsel.  He left the Clinton administration in 1996 to form a lobbying firm with Republican Ed Gillespie -- Quinn Gillespie & Associates -- one of the early pioneers of the now-common, sleazy, bipartisan influence-peddling rings that dominate how the Beltway functions.  Eric Holder swung his doors wide open for Marc Rich because Jack Quinn was a highly influential power-broker in Democratic Party circles and was a former and quite possibly future colleague of Holder's.  It's just as simple as that.  

In a very uncharacteristically -- one could even say shockingly -- cogent column this morning, The Washington Post's Richard Cohen observes:  

[The Rich pardon] suggests that Holder, whatever his other qualifications, could not say no to power. . . . Holder was involved, passively or not, in just the sort of inside-the-Beltway influence peddling that Barack Obama was elected to end.  He is not one of Obama's loathed lobbyists; he was merely their instrument.

An inability, or an unwillingness, to "say no to power" is not exactly a desired trait in an Attorney General, to put that mildly.

* * * * *

Having said all of that, why doesn't Holder's involvement in the Rich pardon make him unqualified to be Attorney General?  Aside from the vital fact that there are many other factors that must be taken into account -- principally, the likelihood that Holder can and will reverse the extreme Justice Department abuses of the last eight years, which I think is relatively high (though he should renounce his disturbing 2002 pro-Rumsfeld statements about Guantanamo and the Geneva Conventions) -- it's because none of these sins are unique to Holder.  

This is vintage Washington.  This is the filthy, venal sleaze on which both political parties feed.  It's what fuels how the Beltway operates.  It's the leading cause of why it functions as a corrupt, dysfunctional, bloated, incestuous royal court.  That's what Washington is.  For that reason, it would be next to impossible to find people who have been a part of this system who haven't been infected -- or more accurately:  who haven't infected themselves -- at one point or another with this disease.

More than anything else, Obama's endless invocation of the "change" mantra was not about promises of sharp ideological or even policy shifts -- as needed as those may be -- but instead, was about changing this core Beltway dynamic, delousing the Washington culture.  A consensus has emerged, which I more or less share, that condemning the not-yet-inaugurated Obama presidency based merely on his appointments of establishment re-treads and war supporters is premature, irrational and unfair. 

Obama has repeatedly said that his appointees are there to implement and carry out his agenda.  There are reasons to believe Obama can and will carry through on his "change" commitments, and there are also ample, reasonable grounds for doubting that he will.  Either way, though it's constructive to express views on his high-level appointments, it makes sense to wait to see what Obama himself actually does as President before assessing whether his commitments are illusory.

But -- as the Holder nomination perfectly illustrates -- one thing that has become quite tiresome, and irrational in the extreme, are those people who, on the one hand, insist that criticisms of Obama based on his appointments are premature and unfair, but on the other hand, are falling all over themselves with praise for Obama based on his supposedly ingenuous appointments.  If Obama critics are well-advised to withhold criticism until Obama is actually in office and begins to do things (as I think is true), then Obama loyalists are equally well-advised to wait before joyously celebrating the smashing success of his presidency. 

Despite that, it is now commonplace among giddy establishment pundits and Obama-reverent bloggers (two increasingly indistinguishable groups) to righteously announce that "the adults are back in charge."  David Ignatius pronounced that Robert Gates is "the most reassuring figure of all, as a reminder that the adults will be in charge here."  Fred Hiatt this morning is celebrating Obama's appointments as a "Team of Centrists" who are "proven pragmatists and team players."  One limitlessly Obama-enamored blogger adopted Beltway Seriousness lingo to gush that Obama "has effectively sidelined critics of his foreign policy vision [which includes war opponents such as Dennis Kucinich] to the kiddie table over there in the corner" and "they will all continue to screech now and then, and the adults [Obama's team of mostly establishment figures and war supporters] will look over condescendingly and tell them to pipe down or there's no dessert."  

* * * * *

The harmonious celebration of these appointments is mystifying indeed.  The Washington establishment has ruined everything it's touched over the last decade.  The Republicans have wielded more power and thus led the way, but Beltway Democrats -- including many of these appointees who are being heralded as our New Magnanimous Serious Adult Guardians -- have been acquiescent to virtually all of it, complicit in most of it, and beneficiaries of the system that spawned it all.  They're everything but crusading reformists.

It's true that these appointments, standing alone, don't prove that Obama will change nothing meaningful and that his campaign commitments were illusory.  That will be determined by him, not by them.

But it's at least just as true that these appointments don't demonstrate that joyous and transformative change and Benevolent Adult Leadership has arrived.  How could they?  These are all the same people -- Tom Daschle, Bob Gates, Greg Craig, Joe Biden, Eric Holder, Larry Summers, Hillary Clinton, to say nothing of the armies of recycled allies and underlings they'll bring with them -- who have been wielding plenty of power in Washington for years and years, who are leading pillars in the Washington establishment, who have been feeding off of the very system that Obama himself has repeatedly identified as the root of most of our problems, the system that led to Marc Rich's pardon and countless other, far more significant transgressions.

By all means, wait to judge Obama based on his decisions and policies, not who he appoints to administer them.  But that should be true for both praise and criticism.  Heaping praise and gratitude on the very same people who have been integral parts of the broken, dirty Washington system -- thank God that Tom Daschle, Bob Gates, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are in charge! -- borders on the masochistic, particularly without seeing evidence that they will do things differently than what they've done in the past.  Will Eric Holder operate by different rules than what guided him in the Rich pardon?  One won't know until he begins operating, but skepticism (i.e., demanding evidence before issuing praise of political officials) is far more constructive than giddy, unearned optimism.

If you're someone who basically thinks that the Washington political system works fine and has been run by the Good, Serious Adults who rule over the rabble for their own good -- in other words, if you're Fred Hiatt or David Ignatius -- it makes perfect sense to celebrate these appointments.  For anyone else, skepticism is warranted -- how could it not be? -- and praise and gratitude and celebratory Change parades make sense if and when they're actually warranted by actions.  The closer one's proximity has been to the bipartisan Washington establishment, the less entitled they are -- not the more -- to a presumption of Magnanimous, Serious, Adult, Transformative leadership.

UPDATE:  Some past highlights from the "thankfully-the-adults-are-in-charge-again" platitude:

* Al Hunt, Wall St. Journal, 4/19/2001: "When the Bush national security team was formed, many Washington insiders were ecstatic, claiming the 'adults' were back in charge."

* Robert Kagan/Bill Kristol, The Weekly Standard, May 14, 2001: "During last year's presidential campaign, we were assured that George W. Bush's foreign policy team would be far superior in skill and experience to the much derided Clintonites. When Bush came to power, the 'adults' would be in charge."

* Chicago Tribune, December 30, 2000: "[Ken] Ruberg said Bush also wisely opted for experience in naming such figures as Colin Powell for secretary of state and Donald Rumsfeld for defense secretary. Along with Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, who was defense secretary in the Bush administration, and Condoleezza Rice, the new national security adviser, he said they give strength in the two areas the president-elect is least experienced: foreign policy and national security."

* David Ignatius, today: "I remember, too, the enthusiasm that initially greeted President George W. Bush’s all-star team -- the veterans Colin Powell at State, Don Rumsfeld at the Pentagon and, as a special bonus, Dick Cheney as vice president. They were certified foreign-policy superstars and, what's more, they had all worked together before."

And, as Ignatius notes, the same cliché was hauled out to christen Reagan's "all-star" team of Capser Weinberger, George Schultz and Richard Allen as the Return of the Adults. The establishment loves its own and, when the parties swap power, typically praise the new/old officials as The Return of the Adults.  Like most establishment pronouncements, the track record of that platitude isn't really promising and merits a healthy dose of wait-and-see skepticism.

UPDATE II:  Chris Bowers was on Hardball last night and -- despite saying today that he's normally too shy to do television appearances -- did a really good job of articulating the issues here in a balanced, substantive, reasoned way:

(updated below - Update II)

Following up on yesterday's post regarding NBC News' suppression of the "military analyst" scandal and its ongoing reliance on the deeply conflicted Barry McCaffrey:  I have obtained, from a very trustworthy source, emails sent last week between NBC News executives and McCaffrey (which cc:d Brian Williams), reflecting the extensive collaboration between NBC and McCaffrey to formulate a coordinated response to David Barstow's story.  The emails are re-printed here.  

Rather than honestly investigate the numerous facts which Barstow uncovered about McCaffery's severe conflicts, NBC instead is clearly in self-protective mode, working in tandem with McCaffrey to create justifications for what they have done.  As these emails reflect, both this weekend's story about McCaffrey and the earlier NYT story in April have caused NBC News to expend substantial amounts of time, effort and resources trying to manage the P.R. aspects of this story. 

But remarkably, this "news organization" has still not uttered a peep to its viewers about these stories; has not reported on any of the indisputably newsworthy events surrounding the Pentagon's "military analyst" program; and continues to present McCaffrey to its viewers as an objective source without disclosing any of the multiple connections and interests he has that would lead any reasonable person to question his objectivity.

Perhaps most notable of all is how plainly dishonest the NBC response to Barstow is -- a response which, unsurprisingly (given their coordination) is tracked by the response posted on McCaffrey's website and by his hired P.R. agent, Robert Weiner, who is pasting a defense of McCaffrey in various places on the Internet (including my comment section yesterday) without identifying himself as such.  As their only defense to these accusations, both NBC and McCaffrey are repeatedly emphasizing that McCaffrey criticized the Bush administration and Donald Rumsfeld's prosecution of the Iraq War, as though that proves that McCaffrey's NBC commentary was independent and honest and not influenced by his numerous business connections to defense contractors.

Both NBC and McCaffrey are either incapable of understanding, or are deliberately ignoring, the central point:  in those instances where McCaffrey criticized Rumsfeld for his war strategy, it was to criticize him for spending insufficient amounts of money on the war, or for refusing to pursue strategies that would have directly benefited the numerous companies with which McCaffrey is associated. 

McCaffrey's criticism of Bush's war management doesn't disprove accusations that he was deeply conflicted when appearing as an NBC "analyst"; to the contrary, the criticisms he voiced constitute some of the most compelling evidence proving that McCaffrey should never have been on NBC -- and still should not be.  As I documented back in late April about McCaffrey's supposed status as a "war critic":

It's true, as [Brian] Williams points out as though it is exculpatory, that -- like Bill Kristol and plenty of other hard-core war supporters -- McCaffrey wanted more U.S. troops in Iraq. He even signed a 2005 letter from PNAC -- along with the likes of Kristol, the mighty Kagan Brothers, Max Boot, Frank Gaffney, Michael O'Hanlon and Peter Beinart -- demanding that more troops be deployed to Iraq (the Kagans, O'Hanlon and Beinart -- despite their relative youth -- were all unavailable for duty). It really ought to go without saying by now that advocating more troops for the War hardly made one a "war critic" nor did it demonstrate independence from the Bush administration's propaganda campaign for the War. To the contrary, the fact that both McCaffrey and Downing had financial ties to the defense industry which would stand to profit from policies entailing more defense spending further calls into question their independence, rather than resolves those questions.

The April, 2003 Nation article -- which long ago put NBC News on specific notice about the glaring conflicts precluding McCaffrey's objectivity -- made this point explicitly:

McCaffrey has recently emerged as the most outspoken military critic of Rumsfeld's approach to the war, but his primary complaint is that "armor and artillery don't count" enough. In McCaffrey's recent MSNBC commentary, he exclaimed enthusiastically, "Thank God for the Abrams tank and . . . the Bradley fighting vehicle," and added for good measure that the "war isn't over until we've got a tank sitting on top of Saddam's bunker." In March alone, IDT [on whose Board of Directors McCaffrey sat] received more than $14 million worth of contracts relating to Abrams and Bradley machinery parts and support hardware.

Is it even possible for there to be more incriminating evidence than this?  Just compare NBC News' appallingly false email statement that "We've yet to see concrete proof of a correlation between any of his outside business interests and his statements made on our air" with the fact that McCaffrey used NBC to "criticize Rumsfeld" by gushing praise for the very tanks from which IDT greatly profits but which Rumsfeld was failing to sufficiently appreciate.  How dishonest do you have to be to deny that that constitutes a serious journalistic conflict?  And that's to say nothing of the endless support McCaffrey expressed on NBC for the War in Iraq and the greater "War on Terror" while he had all sorts of extensive ties to defense contractors that profited greatly from increased spending on both, and while he participated in the Pentagon's propaganda program.

Note, especially, that none of the responses -- from NBC, McCaffrey or his P.R. firm -- even pretend to address, let alone dispute, any of the ample facts that have been set forth in the case against NBC and McCaffrey.  Instead, NBC points to the numerous shiny medals on McCaffrey's chest in order to imply that it is simply wrong and offensive to question the propriety of such a great and credentialed man ("General McCaffrey is a retired Four Star General, a two-time recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest award for valor . . . He is a true American hero").  That's the same "defense" on which its anchor, Brian Williams, relied when assuring us in April that he had formed a "close friendship" with McCaffrey and knew him to be a "passionate patriot," and therefore it was outrageous for anyone to dare suggest that there might be wrongdoing here.  

Can one even imagine a supposed news organization exhibiting a more unhealthy and more unquestioning reverence for a General than this?  Is that the same credential-revering, authority-worshiping mentality that drives NBC's coverage of Pentagon officials and war Generals? (yes, that's a rhetorical question, though this mini-profile of Brian Williams answers it).  Amazingly, the executive who submitted NBC's formal reply to Barstow, Allison Gollust, actually wrote this:

Our relationship with General McCaffrey is based on trust, a basic tenant [sic] of journalism.

Actually, basic tenets of journalism include investigation, skepticism and disclosure of facts -- all the things missing from NBC News' conduct.  But blindly trusting government officials and their military medals are not basic tenets of journalism, at least not in theory -- and at least not outside of establishment news outlets such as NBC News.  Is that the NBC News motto engraved on its letterhead and wall plaques:  We trust in government officials and military leaders -- a basic tenant of journalism.

In his emails to NBC executives, McCaffrey -- undoubtedly aware that the biggest blow to his reputation would come from having NBC News finally address, in a forthright manner, its years-long reliance on such a hopelessly conflicted "analyst" -- heaps sycophantic praise on them for their defense of McCaffrey to Barstow:

Very balanced, objective response. Underscores my view of NBC as an enterprise based on journalistics [sic] ethics --- and courage. Proud to be associated with this team of professionals.

Describing NBC as an organization of "journalistic ethics" and "courage" here is almost as ludicrous as NBC's claim in those emails that its "viewers have been, and will continue to be, well served by [McCaffrey's] incisive and thoughtful comments."  One can scarcely imagine cowardice and unethical behavior as brazen as this.  But NBC News knows full well that few people turn to it for those attributes, and -- even after two massive, abundantly documented front-page NYT exposés -- it thus obviously lacks even the slightest interest in addressing, let alone rectifying, what it has done here.

* * * * * 

One last point:  I do hope none of this ruins my chances of succeeding Tim Russert on Meet the Press.

UPDATE:  In the Columbia Journalism Review, Charles Kaiser asks -- rhetorically:  "Is there any limit to the shamelessness of NBC News?" and then explains:

It turns out that McCaffrey is the living embodiment of all the worst aspects of entrenched Washington corruption—a man who shares with scores of other retired officers a huge financial interest in having America conduct its wars for as long as possible.

He adds:  "And yet, to this day, NBC News has never once disclosed any of McCaffrey’s multiple conflicts of interest on the air — and as recently as last Thursday Williams was still using the retired general on Nightly News to opine about Afghanistan." 

Someone apparently forgot to tell the Columbia Journalism Review that Brian Williams developed a "close friendship" with McCaffrey and knows him to be a "passionate patriot" and that NBC's "relationship with General McCaffrey is based on trust, a basic tenant of journalism."  That changes everything.  

UPDATE II:  This superb comment astutely points out the numerous parallels between the behavior of NBC News here and Bush/Cheney circa 2003.

----- Original Message -----

From: McCormick, David (NBC Universal)

To: Melissa Henson ; [Barry R. McCaffrey]

Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 11:47 AM

Subject: FW: From NBC News

Hi Barry...

Here is the email to Barstow (with the revisions we just discussed).

Thanks for your additions.

Let's talk tomorrow about a weekend strategy and our telephone contacts.

Best,

David

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Gollust, Allison (NBC Universal)

Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 11:35 AM

To: [David Barstow]

Cc: Capus, Steve (NBC Universal); McCormick, David (NBC Universal)

Subject: From NBC News

Dear Mr. Barstow:

Here is our on the record response to your request.

Before we address the issues you have raised with your current article, it bears repeating that we remain very concerned about your first article. We believe it left your readers with an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the NBC News military analysts. It ignored the criticism expressed by our analysts of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon strategy in Iraq. Further, it suggested that every military analyst listed or pictured in the NY Times article became a conduit for unfiltered propaganda.

This is a gross distortion of the truth as it relates to the NBC News analysts.

With regard to General Barry McCaffrey, it was evident you were aware of his critical remarks because you acknowledged them in your emails to the General even before the article was published. Yet, you left this important contextual information out of your article. Our lingering concerns have only been reinforced by your most recent email to us with questions regarding General McCaffrey, some of which are based on false assumptions.

The basic premise that General McCaffrey profited from his on-air appearances defies logic given the critical tone of the General’s repeated comments regarding Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon.

We've yet to see concrete proof of a correlation between any of his outside business interests and his statements made on our air. Truly, the opposite appears to be the case. General McCaffrey put himself at odds with the Pentagon decision makers time and time again -- not only on NBC's air, but in his public appearances and many writings. In fact, he has lost potential outside opportunities precisely because he had made an ethical decision to be objective and make critical comments when warranted.

Our relationship with General McCaffrey is based on trust, a basic tenant of journalism. He has provided us with periodic, detailed reports on his outside activities and meetings. He has assured us that he is not directly incentivized in any of his outside business relationships. We have agreed that he would either recuse himself from any discussion where a conflict might exist or disclose a relationship should that be necessary.

General McCaffrey is a retired Four Star General, a two-time recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest award for valor. He is one of the foremost experts on defense matters and has earned a reputation for his independent thinking.

We are proud to have General Barry McCaffrey as a member of the NBC News organization, where he provides objective and non-partisan analysis. He is a true American hero who is not afraid to speak his mind even if it sometimes ruffles some feathers in Washington. We believe our viewers have been, and will continue to be, well served by his incisive and thoughtful comments.

__________________________________

----- Original Message -----

From: BARRY MCCAFFREY

To: McCormick, David (NBC Universal)

Cc: Brian NBC-Williams ; Elena NBC-Nachmanoff ; Steve NBC-Capus

Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 12:01 AM

Subject: Re: From NBC News

David,

Very balanced, objective response.

Underscores my view of NBC as an enterprise based on journalistics ethics--- and courage.

Proud to be associated with this team of professionals.

Barry

(updated below - Update II)

The New York Times's David Barstow, whose excellent and aggressive journalism led to the uncovering last April of the Pentagon's domestic propaganda program involving network "military analysts," today returns to this topic with another lengthy front-page exposé.  Barstow focuses today on the numerous, undisclosed conflicts of interest of Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who continues to be featured frequently by NBC News as an objective analyst as he opines about war policies in which he has a substantial (and concealed) financial stake.

Some of the key facts which Barstow reports concerning the improper behavior of McCaffrey and NBC News were documented all the way back in April, 2003, in this excellent article from The Nation, which Barstow probably should have credited today.  That article -- entitled "TV's Conflicted Experts" -- detailed the numerous defense contractors to which McCaffrey had a substantial connection -- including Mitretek, Veritas and Integrated Defense Technologies, all featured by Barstow today -- and highlighted how the policies and viewpoints McCaffrey was advocating as a "military analyst" on NBC directly benefited those companies.   

Because those conflicts were brought to light by the anti-war Nation, and because that article was published in April, 2003, as the country was drowning in a war-crazed frenzy, NBC was able to blithely dismiss these concerns, unbelievably telling The Nation that its military analysts' business interests were "not their concern."  Unsurprisingly, the Nation article generated little attention and controversy. Few people were interested back then in challenging war-praising retired Generals and the networks which were glorifying the invasion.  NBC continued without objection to feature McCaffrey, and the similarly-conflicted retired Gen. Wayne Downing, as objective "military analysts."

Still, what was -- and remains -- most incredible about Barstow's April, 2008 exposé was that, to this day, the networks which featured these highly conflicted "analysts" have never uttered a word about the controversy over the Pentagon's program, despite the fact that it was the subject of an enormous front-page NYT story; members of Congress accused the Pentagon -- rightfully so -- of operating a potentially illegal propaganda operation and demanded information directly from the networks; both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spoke out against the Pentagon's program; and even the Pentagon felt compelled to terminate the program in the wake of the controversy.  None of that merited a mention by any of the networks, despite (more accurately: because of) the fact that their own reporting was so directly implicated by the controversy.

As I documented at length at the time, using the thousands of documents Barstow had obtained, the propaganda that the networks broadcast as a result of this "military analyst" program -- about Iraq, Guantanamo and a host of other related issues -- was very coordinated and, by design, implanted falsehoods in virtually every aspect of their "reporting".

The active suppression of this story by the networks -- their decision to conceal from their own viewers the fact that, for years, they presented as "independent" analysts individuals who were working in tandem on "message amplification" with the Pentagon and who had significant business interests in their analysis -- was so severe, so remarkable, that even establishment defenders such as Howie Kurtz and The Politico emphatically protested the networks' silence.  Clocks were even created to count the number of days the networks blackballed Barstow's story -- and it currently stands at 223 days, and counting. 

Last April, in the wake of Barstow's front-page story, I documented at length numerous other facts featured in today's Barstow article -- including the countless times McCaffrey went on NBC News shows to advocate war policies that directly benefited his undisclosed business interests, as well as the completely deceitful way NBC presented McCaffrey as an independent and objective analyst without ever mentioning any of his multiple activities that clearly called into question his objectivity as an "analyst."

A couple of weeks after Barstow's story was published in April, I noted that Brian Williams had taken the time on his blog to write about and mock multiple, trivial NYT stories from that week, yet had never once mentioned -- either on his network news show or even on his blog -- the extremely incriminating story in the NYT about his repeated reliance over the years on retired Generals -- such as McCaffrey and Downing -- who were active participants in the Pentagon's propaganda program and who were burdened with all sorts of economic ties that created clear though undisclosed conflicts of interests.

In response, Williams finally addressed Barstow's story on his blog (but not on his network news broadcast), yet did so only by ignoring all of the specific, substantive issues that were raised, instead offering a patronizing little lecture about how Williams himself had developed what he called "a close friendship" with both McCaffrey and Downing, and could therefore assure us that "these men are passionate patriots" who would never offer anything but the most honest and forthright assessments.  That was the full extent of NBC and Williams' response to this story.

Not only has NBC and Williams suppressed this story, but -- more amazingly still -- they continue to feature McCaffrey as an "analyst" on American war policies still without disclosing or even alluding to his participation in the Pentagon program and/or his still-extant business stakes in the policies he's being asked to assess.  Just this past Thursday night -- 3 days ago -- Williams featured McCaffrey on his NBC Nightly News program to opine about American policy in Afghanistan, and McCaffrey was identified only as a Retired General and NBC Military Analyst.

Earlier that same day, McCaffrey was on a different NBC News show to opine about our occupation of Iraq.  Williams also featured McCaffrey on September 6 to opine about Iraq, and on September 9, McCaffrey was featured on MSNBC as having just returned from Afghanistan, and was then asked to analyze American policy in both Afghanistan and Iraq while being identified only as an "NBC military analyst."

All of this took place after the publication of Barstow's April story on the military analysts program which featured McCaffrey, years after The Nation highlighted McCaffrey's numerous business conflicts, and after ample documentation -- including in this space -- of how McCaffrey used his NBC platform repeatedly over the years to advocate pro-war policies that advanced his undisclosed financial interests.  Brian Williams and NBC just ignored all of that.  Indeed, to Bartsow last April, NBC arrogantly "declined to discuss its procedures for hiring and monitoring military analysts," instead issuing this purposely vague -- and obviously false -- statement:

We have clear policies in place to assure that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of interest

Even after that statement was issued, they continued to feature McCaffrey as an analyst to speak about exactly the wars in which -- as Barstow documents even more conclusively today -- he has an overwhelming financial stake.

Just as was true for the media's own complicity in the Bush administration's false pre-war claims (which no network television show, to date, has addressed), as well as for the direct involvement of numerous media stars in the Lewis Libby crimes (which they reported on while pretending that they had no involvement), here is yet another case where major media outlets simply suppress stories that severely indict the integrity of their own "journalism." 

Worse than mere suppression, NBC and Brian Williams have just outright ignored this scandal, continuing to use McCaffrey as an analyst without requiring that he sever -- or even disclose -- his numerous conflicts, allowing him to continue to use NBC News to propagandize for the military policies from which his affiliated companies benefit.  Now that Barstow has added substantially to the set of incriminating facts, it remains to be seen whether NBC will finally be forced to tell its viewers about what happened with its own involvement in the Pentagon's program and/or to take corrective action.

UPDATE:  As several commenters observe, and as I've noted before, there is an irony to this story:  namely, few companies benefit more from massive military spending and wars than NBC's own parent company, General Electric.  Still, the GE/NBC relationship is publicly known and, therefore, everyone can decide for themselves how reliable, if at all, NBC's reporting is on issues that directly affect the company which owns it.  By important contrast, the conflicts of McCaffrey (and other analysts) have been largely undisclosed, thus deceiving viewers when these networks present them as independent analysts of America's war policies.

UPDATE II:  Matt Yglesias:

Barstow published a piece on this back in April. None of the TV networks addressed the issue he raised in anything resembling a serious manner. And, again, we now have NBC News caught flat-out in the midst of corruption, deceiving their viewers. And NBC News isn’t sorry. They’re not apologizing. They’re not ashamed. Because they’re beyond shame. They never had a reputation for honor, so they don’t even see this sort of thing as damaging.

I really don't see how any of that can be denied.  Nonetheless, the damage they caused, and continue to cause, has been immense.

With a new administration ascending to power in a matter of weeks, witnessing Beltway denizens desperately scampering to re-write their role in the last eight years is nothing short of dizzying:

Tom Friedman, New York Times, today:

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect Iraq to have relations with Israel anytime soon, but the fact that it may be developing an independent judiciary is good news. It’s a reminder of the most important reason for the Iraq war: to try to collaborate with Iraqis to build progressive politics and rule of law in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, a region that stands out for its lack of consensual politics and independent judiciaries.

Tom Friedman, The Charlie Rose Show, May 30, 2003 (as part of the #1 museum video exhibit illustrating America's political class during the Bush Era):

ROSE:  Now that the war is over, and there's some difficulty with the peace, was it worth doing? FRIEDMAN:  I think it was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie.  I think that, looking back, I now certainly feel I understand more what the war was about . . . . What we needed to do was go over to that part of the world, I'm afraid, and burst that bubble. We needed to go over there basically, and take out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world, and burst that bubble. . . . And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going from house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: which part of this sentence do you understand?  You don't think we care about our open society? . . . . Well, Suck. On. This.  That, Charlie, was what this war was about.   We could have hit Saudi Arabia.  It was part of that bubble.  Could have hit Pakistan.  We hit Iraq because we could.  That's the real truth.

Tom Freidman, NPR's Talk of the Nation, September 23, 2003:

What we had to do, I believe at some point, was to go into the very heart of that world and burst that bubble. And the message was, "Ladies and gentlemen, which part of this sentence don't you understand?" . . . . And that's what I believe ultimately this war was about. And guess what? People there got the message, OK, in the neighborhood. This is a rough neighborhood, and sometimes it takes a 2-by-4 across the side of the head to get that message. But they got the message and the message was, "You will now be held accountable" . . . .

From the deranged desire to force Iraqi civilians from Basra to Baghdad to "suck on" his imaginary "very big stick" -- "pound them across the side of their heads" with his "2-by-4" -- to his magnanimous goal of "collaborating with them" to "build progressive politics," Freidman's justification for the invasion radically changes without notice or acknowledgment. 

Even as recently as May of this year, Friedman was arguing that the "real umbrella story in the Middle East today" is the "Cold War" between what he called -- with typical adolescent, banner-waving simplicity --"Team America" and Iran, and he confessed that everything we're doing in the Middle East is about our our "struggle for influence across the region."  In November of last year, Friedman was again beating his little chest while instructing Barack Obama that -- in order to deal with Iran -- he would need "Tony Soprano by your side, not Big Bird" and would require "a Dick Cheney standing over his right shoulder, quietly pounding a baseball bat [another big stick] into his palm."  Yet today, Friedman seamlessly hauls out the self-glorifying claim that the "most important reason" for the invasion of Iraq is that we wanted to teach them the joys of Freedom.

In 2006 and 2007, our political class was openly flirting with involuntary regret -- and even admissions of wrongdoing -- for its almost unanimous support for the attack on Iraq.  That the war was a disaster was so undeniably clear that support for it was coming to be seen as a source of shame, and some of the most prominent supporters of the war were even resorting to outright falsehoods in order to pretend that they had opposed it from the start.

All of that is changing again.  Even as Americans still overwhelmingly view the war itself as a mistake, we're back to the conventional wisdom among our political class that the invasion was not only justified and wise, but also noble in spirit and motive.  The only problem was Bush's mismanagement of our benevolent quest to free the oppressed.  As Friedman puts it today:

In 2003, the United States, under President Bush, invaded Iraq to change the regime. Terrible postwar execution and unrelenting attempts by Al Qaeda to provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war turned the Iraqi geopolitical space into a different problem -- a maelstrom of violence for four years, with U.S. troops caught in the middle. A huge price was paid by Iraqis and Americans. This was the Iraq that Barack Obama ran against.

Freidman's ideological soulmate, The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt, similarly editorializes today that what destroyed Bush's presidency was not the war itself or the fact that it was launched based on purely false pretenses and was illegitimate and wrong, but instead, was merely Bush's "mismanagement of the war." 

The war itself was fine and right.  Only its execution was flawed.  We just need better war managers next time.  That's the consensus that has re-emerged.  And much of the palpable establishment excitement over the Obama administration is grounded not in the expectation that he will change this core mentality -- they clearly think, rightly or wrongly, that he won't -- but only that he'll execute and manage it more competently.

For a short while, it appeared that the one silver lining in the carnage and devastation wreaked by the U.S. attack on Iraq would be a palliative effect on the war-loving pathology among our political establishment.  As Vietnam did for some short period of time, Iraq could have re-taught both the evil and stupidity of commencing optional wars against countries that haven't attacked us and couldn't do so, and more generally, could have underscored the grave error in viewing the battle against Muslim extremism through the glorious prism of "War."  

But with this intense Friedmanesque revisionism well underway -- whereby war cheerleaders like Friedman were Right and Good all along and it was only the incompetent Bush and Rumsfeld who ruined everything with their "bumbling" -- it seems increasingly likely that the opposite lesson will be learned.  Attacking, invading and occupying other countries in order to change their governments to ones we prefer is the smart, wise and just thing to do.  Friedman's term for it today is "collaborating with them to build progressive politics."  Especially if there is another terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- but even if there isn't -- the only lesson being drawn from the Iraq debacle in these precincts is that from now on, we just need to plan and execute it better, so that the Good and Just people who cheer these wars on have their noble schemes vindicated a lot sooner and a lot more proficiently.

The New York Times Editorial Page, today, on poor U.S./Latin American relations:

[T]he Bush administration did enormous damage to American credibility throughout much of the region when it blessed what turned out to be a failed coup against Mr. Chávez.

Indeed it did.  But what the Times fails to mention, and is apparently eager to erase, is that "the Bush administration" was far from alone in blessing that coup attempt:

The New York Times Editorial Page, April 13, 2002 -- one day after the coup:

With yesterday's resignation of President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chávez, a ruinous demagogue, stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona. . . . Early yesterday [Chávez] was compelled to resign by military commanders unwilling to order their troops to fire on fellow Venezuelans to keep him in power. He is being held at a military base and may face charges in Thursday's killings. New presidential elections should be held this year, perhaps at the same time the new Congress is chosen. Some time is needed for plausible national leaders to emerge and parties to reorganize. But Venezuela urgently needs a leader with a strong democratic mandate to clean up the mess, encourage entrepreneurial freedom and slim down and professionalize the bureaucracy.

That was one of the most Orwellian editorials written in the last decade.  The Times -- in the very first line -- mimicked the claim of the Bush administration that Chavez "resigned," even though, several paragraphs later, they expressly acknowledged that Chavez "was compelled to resign by military commanders" (the definition of a "coup").  Further mimicking the administration, the Times perversely celebrated the coup as safeguarding "Venezuelan democracy" ("Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator"), even though the coup deposed someone whom the Times Editorial itself said "was elected president in 1998" and -- again using the Times' own language -- "handed power to" an unelected, pro-American "respected business leader, Pedro Carmona," who quickly proceeded to dissolve the democratically elected National Assembly, the Supreme Court and other key institutions.

Worse still, the Times Editorial mindlessly spouted the administration's claim that "Washington never publicly demonized Mr. Chávez" and "his removal was a purely Venezuelan affair."  Yet less than a week later, the Times itself was compelled to report that the Bush administration "acknowledged today that a senior administration official [Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich] was in contact with Mr. Chávez's successor on the very day he took over"' -- a disclosure which, as the Times put it with great understatement, "raised questions as to whether Reich or other officials were stage-managing the takeover by Mr. Carmona."  

Four days after its pro-coup Editorial, the Times -- once Chavez was returned to power in the wake of Carmona's anti-democratic moves -- returned to the topic of Venezuela, once again echoing the official line from Bush officials, who took to condemning the now-failed coup attempt.  The Times, while justifying pro-coup sentiments as understandable, proceeded to denounce that reaction without really apologizing for its own role in endorsing it:

In his three years in office, Mr. Chávez has been such a divisive and demagogic leader that his forced departure last week drew applause at home and in Washington. That reaction, which we shared, overlooked the undemocratic manner in which he was removed. Forcibly unseating a democratically elected leader, no matter how badly he has performed, is never something to cheer.

Despite that, the Times still expressed optimism about the coup, righteously intoning in the first paragraph:  "we hope Mr. Chávez will act as a more responsible and moderate leader now that he seems to realize the anger he stirred."

And the Times was hardly alone.  As FAIR documented that week -- in a reported entitled "U.S. Papers Hail Venezuelan Coup as Pro-Democracy Move" -- "the editorial boards of several major U.S. newspapers followed the U.S. government's lead and greeted the news with enthusiasm."

* * * * *

It's nice that the Times -- with a disgraced George Bush on his way out the door -- has come to view the Venezuelan military coup as the destructive, anti-democratic event which, by definition, it was.  And it's also nice that the Times is now willing to assign blame for anti-U.S. sentiments in Latin America at least partially to the actions of the U.S. Government itself.  But it's important that the Times not be allowed to delete its own involvement in those events.  Just as was true for Joe Klein's very similar self-serving revisionism on Wednesday, the point here goes far beyond merely illustrating the dishonesty that lies at the heart of this re-writing of history.  

The Times' propagandistic cheer-leading for the military coup in Venezuela is an important illustrative event which should be regretted, but not erased.  There are vital lessons from the last eight years that get obscured when influential outlets such as the Times Editorial Page try to erase their own responsibility for events and heap all blame on "the Bush administration" -- which was able to do what it did only because it enjoyed the acquiescence, complicity and often blind support from so many of our leading political a