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February 11, 2006
Behind the Scenes
Earlier this week President Bush announced that we had stopped a 2002 plot by al Qaeda to fly an airliner into a skyscraper in Los Angeles. CNN reports on the President's speech:
He said that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks who was captured in 2003, had already begun planning the West Coast operation in October, just after the September 11, 2001, attacks. One of Mohammed's key planners was Hambali, the alleged operations chief of the al Qaeda related terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. Instead of recruiting Arab hijackers, Hambali found Southeast Asian men who would be less likely to arouse suspicion and who were sent to meet with Osama bin Laden, Bush said.Under the plot, the hijackers were to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door of a commercial jetliner, take control of the plane and crash it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, since renamed the US Bank Tower, Bush said.
The only details that we learned from the President was when he said that
"subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations" after the arrest of the unnamed operative led to information about the plot, and to the capture of other ringleaders and operatives involved in it. Hambali, for instance, was captured in Thailand in 2003 and handed over to the United States."It took the combined efforts of several countries to break up this plot," the president said. "By working together, we took dangerous terrorists off the streets. By working together, we stopped a catastrophic attack on our homeland."
The only surprise is that anyone would be surprised by this. Of course we're foiling terrorist attacks, and in the process capturing or killing the bad guys. Unfortunately some people in this country seem to need to be reminded of this occasionally, like when they think that the road to political glory is to attack the president over methods of gathering intelligence.
Anyone who wants to learn more about what we've done need only read Richard Miniter's excellent book Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush is Winning the War on Terror.
However, my purpose here is not to relate stories of our successes. What I'd like to do is take a peek behind the scenes at some events that occured during the Cold War that are relevant to what is happening today.
The Media Darling
In 1949 the FBI arrested Judith Coplon on charges of espionage, specifically of spying for the Soviet Union. Coplon had been employed at the Foreign Agents Registration section of the Department of Justice, where she had access to classified information. Suspicious agents planted bogus documents for her, which she tried to pass to Valentin Gubitchev, a KGB agent. The FBI arrested her as she met Gubitchev and tried to pass him the documents.
At her trial the government would not say exactly how they first discovered that she was a spy, only that their information came from a "confidential informant". In 1950 she was tried and convicted in two trials, one for espionage and the other for conspiracy. However, both were overturned on technicalities.
She was never retried, althogh no serious person then or how has doubt about her guilt.
The entire affair turned into a something of a circus. Coplon was young and attractive, which no doubt garnered her some sympathy in the press. Her attorney used a number of antics to string out the trial and try and embarass the government. The government was accused of any number of illegalities. In the end, however, the evidence against her was overwhelming. She had, after all, been caught in the act of passing documents to a KGB agent.
What Really Happened?
The reality is that the FBI found out that Coplon was a spy because from 1942 - 1945 we had partially broken the Soviet diplomatic code ahnd were reading parts of some of the messages that they sent from their embassy in Washington DC to the Soviet Union.
It was called the Venona project. During Venona we decripted all of parts of some 3000 messages. In one of them the Soviets identified Coplon as one of their agents. They did not use her name directly, but like with everyone else, used code names. Sometimes we could match a code name with a person ("Agent Cardinal is a one armed man who works at the Department of the Treasury"), and sometimes we could not.
The govenment did not want to reveal at Coplon's trial that they had leared she was a spy because we had broken the Soviet diplomatic code. Had they done so her guilt would have been even more apparent.
Likewise with other Soviet agents. We now know that Julius Rosenberg and Alger Hiss were first identified as Soviet Spies because of Venona intercepts. However, at the time the government kept this secret, not wanting to reveal our code-breaking abilities.
Venona was kept a secret until 1995 when it was made public. The Cold War was over, and the rational for secrecy no longer existed.
Do I Have to Spell it Out?
Most all of you reading this will be know the lesson, but for any leftie trolls who happen along here it is:
There is a heck of a lot going on behind the scenes that you don't know about and shouldn't know about that is helping us win the War on Terror. So stop your carping, whining, moaning and complaining!
Yes we are stopping terrorist plots, and yes we are arresting and killing terrorists. Do you think that just because it doesn't appear in the paper it's not happening?
And other things we are doing behind the scenes, such as intercepting telephone calls between al Qaeda suspects in the United States and people abroad, let's keep the secret, ok? How about not blowing them wide open on the front page of the paper just so you can sell a few books or try and make the president look bad? Is that too much to ask?
Thank you for your attention that is all.
Posted by Tom at February 11, 2006 10:24 PM
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Comments
You have said what I believed to be true from the get go. I was having a discussion with one of my more liberal friends and we got on the topic of NSA. He quickly went on with the democratic talking points and almost quoted to the verse how our intel listening has not done any good because those who stepped forward said so.
I quickly countered that we do not know what successes have been accomplished and a low level leaker probably does not really know what is going on. Afer serving in the military for 30 years, I had the privlege to know some things about history that are not in the history books. I ran down some unclassied things that I have known about in the past and deflected the democratic talking points.
I am anxious to see what legistators leaked some sensitive national security information on programs the press should not have been told about. And, I would like to see those legisators sacked asap.
Great blog and great analogy. Have a good evening. R/ Bos'un
Posted by: Bos'un at February 12, 2006 11:05 PM
