Brennan
There is no question that John Brennan, who seems to have the inside track to be named CIA Director or even DNI, was a strong supporter of the new FISA legislation including telecom immunity. Brennan also appears to have some reasonable views on engaging Iran. What do you want to bet that the former will be cited as proof of his qualifications for the job and the latter will be used in the campaign to try to derail his confirmation?
More troubling is the evidence that suggests he seems to have had at best a very, er, flexible definition of what passes for torture in the past. Saying “the dark side has its limits” is a bit like saying, “Well, the ends don’t always justify the means.” However, there is some small reassurance to be found in this short profile of Brennan in yesterday’s NYT:
As a senior adviser to Mr. Tenet in 2002, Mr. Brennan was present at the creation of the C.I.A.’s controversial detention and interrogation program, which Mr. Obama has strongly criticized. But Mr. Brennan has distanced himself from the program, and told The Washington Times last month that interrogation methods like waterboarding are “not going to be allowed under an Obama presidency.”
All these efforts to read the tea leaves of various Obama advisors’ histories to discern what his policies will be seem rather premature and almost useless. What do you think of Obama’s simple statement on 60 minutes last night that his administration will “make sure we don’t torture” as “part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.”? Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it?
It would be straightforward, except that Mr. Bush also publicly affirmed that “we don’t torture” when, in fact, the government had authorized doing exactly that. I don’t assume that Obama is engaging in the same twisting of definitions when he makes his statements on this, but this is something that I will believe when I see action and not before.
His appointments or likely appointments tell us something about what his priorities are. Obviously, he’s going to be in charge and he will tell them what they’re going to do, but if he appoints Brennan to either of these posts you do have to assume that Obama has no serious interest in revisiting the FISA debate. I am less concerned that Obama will backtrack on interrogation procedures. If Brennan were not his top intelligence advisor in the campaign, I wouldn’t be very concerned.