Incompetence, National Security, & Whether HIGs Have Wings

The Administration's deft handling of the Wikileaks boondoggle reminds me of HIG. You remember, the High Priority Interrogation Group that the Administration decided, last year, would replace Bush's interrogation apparatus? HIG is supposed to be an elite team prepared to question "high priority" suspects and detainees whose information may be critical to stopping the next terrorist attack. Suppose you capture a member of a terrorist cell who knows where the anthrax bomb is hidden. Bring in the A Team.

After the Christmas Day Bomber failed to light up a Northwest Airlines Flight, it turned out that HIG wasn't quite shovel ready. From CBS last May:

The White House was furious when it found the HIG had not been officially formed in time to question Christmas Day bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab despite a direct order from the president last fall, according to one current and one former senior counterterrorist official. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to speak to the news media.

HIG sounds like the kind of thing we might need. We didn't have it when we needed it last Yuletide. Do we have it yet? CBS has more:

The unit as it exists now is run by the FBI and headed by an FBI employee with two deputies - one from the CIA and one from the Defense Department, the officials said. Its three regional teams - their locations have not been disclosed - will be staffed by a full-time team of experts, including everything from linguists to terrorist analysts to professional interrogators.

Notice the future tense: "Its three regional teams will be staffed by a full-time team of experts." I take it that, as of May of this year, a year after the Administration decided to form the team and five months after the team forfeited the Christmas Day bombing try out, HIG still wasn't staffed. The locations of the regional teams are "undisclosed," I suspect, for the simple reason that it is difficult to locate something that doesn't exist. So far as one can tell from the article, there are as many agents in HIG as there are letters in the acronym.

Should these permanent teams ever be staffed, what would the staff be expected to do?

The permanent teams will be supplemented by other government specialists, depending on the suspect. The teams' duties include everything from questioning suspects to researching the best ways to get the most information out of them.

The HIG's mobile teams also won't necessarily be the first investigators on the scene, the officials say. Inside the U.S., it might be the FBI or an existing Joint Terrorism Task Force unit that responds first. The HIG's teams would then be deployed on a case-by-case basis to supplement those efforts stateside or overseas at military bases or foreign detention centers if the suspect is held by a willing U.S. ally.

Senior administration officials say while the HIG's teams were not designed to gather evidence for prosecution, they'll work to preserve evidence that might be needed in court.

Did you get all that? HIG will question suspects and research the best ways to get information out of suspects. Hey, they can kill two birds with one water board by doing both at the same time! If he sings, Joey, write it down.

But they won't be the first investigators on the scene. They'll "supplement the FBI or an existing Joint Terrorism Task Force," and "be supplemented by other government specialists." They're a kind of bureaucratic interrogation sandwich! I am not sure if exposing a terrorist suspect to all these layers of bureaucracy doesn't count as torture. But at least the FBI really exists. Doesn't it?

The HIG teams "aren't designed to gather evidence for prosecution, but they will work to preserve evidence." So while they are waiting to supplement and be supplemented by all these other diligent public servants, at least they can pull on some plastic gloves and put cigarette butts into test tubes.

There are two possible interpretations of this story. One is the Administration concluded that the HIG was a bad idea and decided that relying on existing agencies was the best thing. They just didn't have the honesty or courage to admit it. The other is that these people couldn't find their own ass if both hands were duct taped to it. I wish I knew which it was.

Comments

[George Mason]

I find it appropriate that Maxwell Smart is the face of this article. Perhaps the the Obama administrations idea of transparency is allowing the lowest ranking clerks in the DOD access to sensitive military and diplomatic communications. In charge of our security today is the gang that can neither shoot nor talk straight.

[KB]

Actually, I think that that is the most defensible part of the story though it had the most serious consequences. After 9/11 there was concern that the various Federal agencies didn't properly communicate with one another. Making it easier to communicate made it easier for someone to snatch some documents.

What is alarming is the apparent inability of the Administration to make any final decisions about what they are doing.

[Jimi]

Dr. Blanchard says, "What is alarming is the apparent inability of the Administration to make any final decisions about what they are doing."

That's because at the end of the day, this country elected a group of people into power who were not even remotely qualified and who believed their own rhetoric about the previous administrations, which is becoming clear that all the rhetoric was not accurate. Not much difference between the new Democrats and the old Democrats......they prefer to just bitch about everything instead of actually taking responsibility for their decisions.

[S. Dakotan]

I like how the o administrations is constantly reinventing the wheel but calling it something other than wheel. And we're paying them all for these duplications. That's depressing given that we've paid start up costs for these functions already. They'll probably close Gitmo and re-open under some new banner and maybe a new menu for the 'residents' just so they can say they closed Gitmo. Of course the new name change will cost the taxpayers as did the entire circuitous route by which they arrived at the conclusion that Gitmo works. But they are the ones they've been waiting for.

Please note the use of 'wheel' fits with Obama's car analogies.

[Donald Pay]

First, you have mislabeled the HIG. Second, the HIG was created to deal with non-US citizens. Third, it was extended to deal with US citizens after the Christmas day bombing. Fourth, your source indicates the HIG was used to interrogate a suspect in May. I'm not sure what point you have here, other than when you leave out facts it is easy to twist a story.

[George Mason]

KB; Increasing communications between agencies certainly increases the possibility of leaks. However it is also possible to contain the communications within those who need to know and to limit the total scope of who gets what. That a person at the rank of clerk/typist could acquire the volume information that has been released indicates an almost willful disregard for the use or even acquisition of any type of secure system of communications.

[A.I.]

If there was anything genuine in any of the HIG criticism leveled here beyond pure partisan politics, then KB, George, etal would have called for George Bush's impeachment for gross incompetence after 911. Instead my recollection is that KB at least was busy defending the use of water boarding.

Donald, you get it right. At least one HIG team is operational and there are legitimate reasons why they play a small or no role in some interrogations as documented here: http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/2010/05/17/special-interrogation-unit-plays-limited-role-in-times-square-investigation.html

KB, you once again attempt mole-hill-to-mountain transformation while omitting important facts. You try to present posts like this as legitimate policy discussion. In fact, they look more like auditions for a job with the opposition research arm of the RNC.

Whoa, maybe I'm on to something here. You often decry government involvement in any endeavor that might also be handled by private enterprise because government efforts are always inferior to those of the private sector. There are many private colleges and universities, yet you work for a state-supported school which by logical extension must be inferior to any private endeavor be it a school or a political party. So, to avoid a state you alluded to in an earlier post--I believe it was cognitive dissonance--it is logical you might aspire to a job with a privately-funded organization such as the RNC. To do otherwise would be to live with the knowledge you are wasting your working years in support of an inferior institution that should not exist because private enterprise could and would do better if only the government would get out of the way.

[Jimi]

A.I.

The point of the post was to point out the incompetence in National Security. The article you provided supports that claim in terms of the (HIG)....so it is unclear where you are coming from?

Obama criticized the approach of the Bush Administration even though it was effective, and he decided to do something different, but he actually hasn't accomplished anything different yet with the exception of not water baording, but like Bush is still operating under the Army Field Manual...just said that he was going to do something different....to some of us, this is a sign of incompetence, as listed in the title of the post, because his attempt to treat an enemy combatants as a civilian criminals is more dangerous for the American public.

[A.I.]

Jimi:

KB's post points out no incompetence if facts he omits are included. And, please explain how the article I cite supports any claim of incompetence.

Maybe you should read the article again. Then, explain why having a team on hand that can tell interrogators if a detainee is lying is not a good thing. Explain why efforts to collect evidence that is admissible in court--as opposed to that achieved through torture--is not a good thing. Do you really want to return to practices that leave us in a situation where people we know committed terrorist acts can not be prosecuted in court because the evidence was collected by means of torture--so instead, they are held in America's version of a Soviet era gulag at Guantanamo Bay.

[KB]

A.I.: perhaps the CBS story got it wrong. I have looked for better descriptions of the HIG and so far I have found none. From the CBS story it is impossible to determine if HIG really exists. Having someone question the Times Square Bomber and calling that someone, if he really exists, a member of HIG, doesn't mean much.

From the CBS story, it is impossible to determine what HIG is supposed to be or to do. They, or he, or whoever, aren't the first responders. They don't gather evidence for prosecution, though apparently they preserve the evidence. They supplement and are supplemented by other government agents. That is a vanishing middle.

The Newsweek Article you cite confirms my suspicions. "A special counterterrorism unit created by the Obama administration to replace the Bush administration's controversial CIA detention and interrogation program is playing only a limited role in the investigation of the attempted May 1 car bombing of New York's Times Square"

What is that "limited role," exactly?

"The four U.S. officials who spoke to Declassified all said that "elements" of the HIG, which reports to the Justice Department but is also supervised by a subcommittee of the National Security Council at the White House, are participating in the interrogation of Shahzad himself. However, two of the officials said that their understanding was that what HIG personnel are doing in the Shahzad investigation is providing "intelligence support" to FBI agents who are doing the actual questioning of Shahzad and who are not part of the HIG."

Note the scare quotes around "element" of the HIG. These "elements" are "participating" in the interrogation of Shahzad. Except that they aren't. They are only providing "intelligence support", whatever that is.

HIG is a joke. If it exists at all, it isn't doing anything. There is no reason to conclude, from the evidence you present, that even one HIG team has been formed. There is no reason to believe that HIG personnel have done anything at all.

It's okay if HIG turned out to be a bad idea, or just wasn't worth implementing. The Administration might have confessed that, but Administrations usually don't confess such things. It might have been partisan of me to point out the truth, but that is how the system works.

[Donald Pay]

Please refer to KB's discussion under "Wikileaks Very Bad 4 All." One thing that I've notice about KB and other righties is a certain dishonesty in argument. If someone leaked the information to you about what the HIG was doing your intestines would be all knotted up (at least you would SAY they were all knotted up) about how terrible the Administration was for not being able to keep a secret. I expect YOU are not privy to anything the HIG is doing, so you can wonder about it all you want. Does it disappoint you that you don't know what the HIG is doing? Would you like Wikileaks to try to find this information out for you, or would you prefer the Administration keep the HIG's activities secret? I think you need to choose.

[William]

Donald,

Are you postulating that releasing the fact "the White House was furious when it found the HIG had not been officially formed in time to question Christmas Day bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab despite a direct order from the president last fall" (which is what we know PUBLICLY about HIG) is evidence of a disinformation campaign directed by the White House to conceal from the public what a "bang up job" the HIG is secretly doing?

What color is the sky in your world?

[Donald Pay]

See, William, the CBS pieces SAYS the White House "was furious," but there is no source for that statement. Maybe the White House was furious, or maybe that source said the White House was furious for one or two or three of any number of good reasons when it actually wasn't furious. Or maybe that source was furious, and was projecting his/her emotion onto everyone else in the White Hourse. Or maybe the HIG did question the Christmas Day bombing suspect and they just wanted it to appear as if the HIG didn't question the suspect, so they had this guy leak something about the White House being furious. William, I can think of far more scenarios which are just as true as yours.

[KB]

Donald: what is at issue here is not what HIG may be doing without our knowledge. It is what the Administration says it is doing. What it says is utterly incoherent. A.I. gives us the Newsweek article to show that "at least one HIG tea was in business because it did interrogate the Times Square would-be Bomber. Then I read that the HIG did and did not participate in the interrogation. So far, all I can see that any HIG personal have accomplished is to be denied access to people in Pakistan.

The Administration can't get its story story straight. I just pointed that out.

[Donald Pay]

Say, KB, do you think you are reading various versions of the truth from various articles becasue various people with various versions of the truth are leaking to various journalists various versions of what they think they may know, and may be embellishing based on their own version of what they would want the reaction of others to be? You say it's "the Administration" saying these things, but it's really some unsourced person. For all we know no one has said anything.

[William]

Donald,

I guess the "wonderful thing" about conspiracy theories is, you can pick whatever "truth" you want to believe, as any inconsistencies are just a part of the conspiracy - lol I'm sure you can imagine any truth you want to, you certainly have quite an imagination.

[Donald Pay]

William, it's not a conspiracy. It's the way the world works, and KB is not providing any context. If you lay it out without the context it looks like KB's befuddlement. When you understand that there are differenct articles at different times with different unnamed sources having different agendas you start to realize that KB has fabricated a story where there isn't one.