Sic Semper Tyrannis 2008

Transcript- The Situation Room, 28 February, 2007

"Now, with two U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups in the region, is there a growing chance the United States could find itself at war with Iran? Joining us now, retired U.S. Army Colonel Pat Lang, former chief of Middle East intelligence at the Pentagon.

Pat, thanks for coming in.

COL. PATRICK LANG, U.S. ARMY (RET.): My pleasure.

BLITZER: Take us behind the scenes right now, all of the saber rattling. The leaks we're also seeing -- the Seymour Hersh article in "The New Yorker" magazine.

What's going on, in your assessment, behind the scenes?

LANG: Well, a lot of this, of course, is intended to reach the ears of the Iranians. You know, it's -- it's quite a good idea, in a lot of ways, to make sure the Iranians know the United States is very serious about the concerns about them and if they aren't careful, they could end up in big trouble with us.

At the same time, I think that you have to understand that there is intensive planning for how you would execute an operation against the Iranians going on in the military, in response to direction by the president.

These are contingency plans and when they say -- when the White House says that we do not plan to attack Iran, what they really mean is that they haven't made a decision.

Newshour Transcript - 5 July, 2006

I was on the Newshour last night.  Here is the transcript.  Judy Woodruff was the interviewer.  pl 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june07/iraq_01-05.html

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CNN Situation Room 20 July, 2006

"And joining us now to talk a little bit about Israel's military strategy is retired U.S. Army Colonel Pat Lang. He was headed a key Pentagon intelligence service and was the top DIA officer dealing with the Middle East for seven years.

Pat, thanks very much for coming in.

Can this Israeli military strategy of trying to deliver a knockout punch to Hezbollah work?

COL. PAT LANG, U.S. ARMY (RET.): It doesn't make any sense to me. As you know, I've worked in all of these countries and with the IDF a lot, and studied it forever. And this just doesn't make any sense to me what they're doing, because as this Israeli air force major said, it's impossible to go around in a kind of hunt for all of these rocket launchers everywhere.

Hezbollah is a numerous, well organized, disciplined guerrilla army. They have reserves in depth of people among the Shia people of Lebanon.

They've been organizing this ground for five or six years. There are all kinds of tank traps and ambush positions. All kinds of things like this.

It's a murderous place to go fight. And the idea that you can root people like that out who are Islamic zealots and cause them to quit and run away with air power and artillery and some small- scale operations, it's just -- it's just not on.

BLITZER: So what do you see the Israeli military strategy -- I mean, I assume they appreciate the same factors that you appreciate.

LANG: I don't understand it. I can't understand it. The only way you can stop Hezbollah from shooting into north Lebanon is to move...

BLITZER: Into north Israel.

LANG: Into north Israel is to move their gun line back to the north far enough so that, in fact, they can't reach you.

The only way to do that, in my opinion, is with ground troops. Now, I know the IDF does not want to occupy part of Lebanon again, but they've somehow gotten themselves in a position in which there may be no other choice. And from what I understand, they're mobilizing large numbers of people and they're probably thinking it over.

The other part of their strategy...

BLITZER: Because they tried that invasion for, what, 18 years, and it turned out to not such a great experience.

LANG: It was a terrible experience. The Lebanese lined up to fight them all over the place. It was a continual dribble of casualties all the time which finally politically caused Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon.

And the other part of this, which is to -- to cause the Lebanese government to be something that it is not, a unified government that has an army that's a real army, instead of symbol of national unity who will act against Hezbollah, that's just not on. The Lebanese don't have that in them to do it.

BLITZER: The brigadier general, Alon Friedman, of the IDF, the Israeli defense forces, was quoted yesterday as saying, "Israeli strikes have destroyed about 50 percent of Hezbollah's arsenal. It will take us time to destroy what is left."

Does that sound credible, that half of the rockets, half of the arsenal over the past nine days has been destroyed?

LANG: Well, there's no way for me to know and there's no way for them to know either, in any way. I mean, you know, I've fought this kind of war against guerillas in various places before, and you never really know until you get to talk to the people who were defeated afterwards to find out how many people you actually bagged.

The only way you know how much you have worn them down by attrition is when the fire that comes into northern Israel starts to fall off and you run into less resistance when you go in on the ground.

BLITZER: I don't think he meant that they killed half of Hezbollah. I think what he said -- he meant they destroyed half of their rockets, let's say.

LANG: I don't think there's any way to know that. As I said, the only way you can know if those deep bunkers of rockets all over southern Lebanon have been emptied is if the fire into northern Israel starts to diminish. That's the only way you'll know.

BLITZER: All right. So put on your advice cap. You used to give advice to defense secretaries and top U.S. officials.

If you were advising the Israeli government right now, the Israeli military, they've got rockets coming in from south Lebanon, they've got Hezbollah crossing the border, killing and kidnapping Israeli soldiers, this is a U.N. recognized border, what would you do if you were the Israeli military?

COL. PAT LANG, FORMER PENTAGON MIDEAST INTEL. CHIEF: I would have advised them to take specific punitive action on the people who hurt them with the death of these soldiers and to negotiate an outcome with that.

BLITZER: What does that mean exactly, spell it out?

LANG: Well they've done this before. They've worked with the Germans and other people for the return of captured soldiers, things of that kind.

BLITZER: To do a prisoner swap?

LANG: That kind of thing.

BLITZER: But doesn't that encourage further terrorism down the road?

LANG: Well in this, as in many situations in war and politics, in fact you often have to choose between two bad alternatives. Now having done what they have done now, they are now in a position in which in four, five, six days, a week, two weeks, whatever it is, they're going to decide that they have no choice but to put a large force into southern Lebanon. And that's going to hurt them badly for a long time. In a lot of these things, once you start down the road, having made a bad decision, you're just stuck.

BLITZER: Pat Lang, U.S. Army colonel, retired. Thanks very much for coming in.

LANG: Good to see you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Thank you Pat.

"Countdown" Transcript Monday, 7 November, 2000

"Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, the guy was not only making it up, but by February of 2002, the government knew he was making it up.  Al-Libi was the first al Qaeda big get, arrested in Afghanistan back in November 2001.

Under interrogation, he reportedly told agents that al Qaeda was training in Iraq.  In 2004, he recanted.  He admitted he had made that up.  But far earlier, the Defense Intelligence Agency had already figured out that his information was bogus, two years before his confession.

According to a newly declassified document, the DIA warned that the fact al-Libi didn‘t share any specifics about al Qaeda in Iraq had to have meant one of two things.  Quote, “It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers.  Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.”

That‘s called telling them what you think they want you to hear.  The document goes on to note that Saddam Hussein‘s regime was wary of extremist Islamic groups, and that his government was, quote, “unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.”

The DIA assessment was made available to several agencies, including the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House.

Yet eight months later, in October 2002, the president used al-Libi‘s information to lay out an al Qaeda link in his speech at Cincinnati, and five months after that, February 2003, the information was still being treated as credible, most notably by then-secretary of state Colin Powell, when he made his case for war to the U.N.

We‘ll examine the politics of this with the assistant managing editor of “TIME” magazine, Michael Duffy, in a moment.

First, the spycraft.  Let‘s bring in Colonel Patrick Lang, the head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency during the first Gulf War.

Colonel Lang, thanks for your time tonight.

COL. PATRICK LANG (RET.), U.S. ARMY:  Hello, Keith.

OLBERMANN:  How likely is all this to have been a mistake, a good-faith misinterpretation, even a different viewpoint between different intelligence organizations?

LANG:  Well, I think you know that it‘s not at all unusual that DIA would have taken a skeptical look at this guy and drawn the obvious conclusions from the data and decided that he was bogus.  And this report would have gone to a couple of hundred different people by message and hard copy around town and across the world.

The fact that DIA had a different opinion from CIA in this is not unusual.  Different people can look at material and come to a different conclusion, at least for a while.

But I think it‘s an interesting coincidence that right after this, the Office of Special Plans was set up in the Office of the Secretary of Defense to look at the same data, and they came to radically different conclusions.

OLBERMANN:  The two newspaper stories, the ones in “The New York Times” and “The Los Angeles Times,” and Senator Carl Levin, who had released part of that DIA declassified memo, says, or the headlines do, the administration would have gotten a report about al-Libi and his dubiousness.  One headline had it as, the Bush team would have gotten it.

But nowhere does it say specifically who or what offices in the White House.  Who would have read this?  Who would have said, No, no, this is not true, this guy is the real deal, anyway?

LANG:  Well, I was the authorizing authority for issuance of all documents in this area of knowledge in DIA for many years.  And this document would have had a distribution list around town that would have listed 50, 60 different offices in each of a number of large places like the State Department, the White House, the National Security Council, the Office of the Vice President, and all over the Pentagon.

So it went to lots and lots of people.  This is not a really extremely compartmented kind of document.  A lot of people would have gotten it.

OLBERMANN:  What, under those circumstances, has to happen, either deliberately or due to incompetence, or due to turf wars, or due simply to honest disagreement, for the following scenario to play out with this?  The DIA sends a memo out on February of 2002 saying this guy is probably making this up.  And in February 2003, a full year later, the secretary of state is virtually quoting the same man to the U.N. Security Council to justify a war.

LANG:  Yes.  Well, I think what happened there is that after this information got massaged around in various places in Washington, it was interpreted in a different kind of way, one which was more amenable to the picture of the world that the Bush administration had.  And by the time it got to Secretary Powell, it was presented as a matter of fact.  I think that‘s the way he received this information.

OLBERMANN:  The final point, I guess, here is that there‘s been so much scattershot questioning about the prewar intelligence.  Between this news about al-Libi and what we already knew about the guy called Curveball, who gave all the sour information about biological weapons labs on wheels, to say nothing of Ahmed Chalabi, is it now time to look at the intelligence on which this country went to war, and to stop asking what part of it was wrong, and instead, to start asking, was any of it right?

LANG:  Yes, I think you ought to do that.  You ought to start over from scratch and ask, Was any of this correct?  The right question is, after the raw information got run through the mill of everybody‘s opinions and preconceptions of things, was any of it right?  And to what extent were policy considerations the driving force?

OLBERMANN:  The former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Colonel Patrick Lang.  Great thanks for your insight, great thanks for your time tonight.

LANG:  My pleasure."

CNN Transcript - 27 October, 2005

BLITZER: Turning now to our security council. Tomorrow the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is expected to make an announcement on whether or not there will be indictments in the CIA leak case. But how much damage was actually done to U.S. intelligence by the outing of the CIA operative Valerie Plame?

Joining us now, retired U.S. Army Colonel Pat Lang, a former chief analyst for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency and head of the Defense HUMINT Service, and our own national security correspondent David Ensor. Two guys who know this subject well.

How much damage do you believe was actually done as a result of her name being released?

COL. WALTER "PAT" LANG, U.S. ARMY (RET): I think quite a lot. She actually was functioning in a covered status in which she remained covered so that when she went overseas to meet people in conjunction, the operation would be secure. And the things that she was running were blown away by this disclosure.

But, I think the larger issue is that the very fact that the U.S. government seems to have in fact disclosed the identity of one of its covert officers would cause people around the world to think that we have no credibility and that we could not be trusted to protect their identities if they cooperated with us.

BLITZER: We're seeing some pictures, by the way, as we speak, of the president down in south Florida. He's touring some of the areas damaged and devastated, if you will, some of the people suffering as a result of Hurricane Wilma. We'll show those pictures from time to time as they are available. Some members of the staff there with the president.

As far as you know, David, there was no postmortem official that was document submitted to the Senate or House Intelligence Committee outlining what they believe was the damage?

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, that's right. There will be once all of the judicial matters -- all the trials or plea bargains or whatever we're going have next are over with. There will be a complete damage assessment done.

But there was a quick, first, sort of operations check. And as Pat said, there clearly was damage. Her past career, any sources she may have drawn, the current career, those people who were in real trouble. Any future work she might have been able to do as a 20-year veteran, very experienced, is lost. Plus, and most importantly, all around the world anybody who is thinking of working for U.S. intelligence as a spy now sees that from time to time, at least, the U.S. hurts the home team and that's not good.

BLITZER: Her husband is the former U.S. ambassador Joe Wilson who wrote about his trip on behalf of the CIA to Niger to check out these reports whether or not enriched uranium -- Iraqis under Saddam Hussein are trying to buy enriched uranium. There are his critics -- and you know Pat, there are a lot of critics of Joe Wilson out there who support the president and his stance on the war who say you know what? He's really responsible for outing his wife, because he wrote this article saying he made a trip on behalf of the CIA.

And if you go to his who's who biographical file, it'll say he's married to Valerie Plame. And if he were working for the CIA, that that could have compromised her identity right there.

LANG: That's true, but it's a fairly extended set of circumstances in that case. It's not as specific and destructive, as it would be if, in fact, officials of the United States government used their facilities and the power of the state to disclose the identity of this person.

This is something which would not be understood anywhere as David said.  People would look at that and say, well, my God if they did that to one of their own people, why should I entrust my safety to these people? Will they be able to protect my identity?

BLITZER: We might know tomorrow whether any of the individuals who talked about her to reporters, whether Bob Novak, or anyone else, actually knew she was under cover, that she was what they call a NOC, a non-official cover and clandestine operative.

LANG: Actually, it wouldn't make any difference if she were a NOC or if she were simply undercover in a fairly shallow cover. In either case, she would be a covered person in the meaning of the law. You don't have to be a NOC to be that. In fact, any undercover person's has to be protected.

ENSOR: I would like to say, in defense of those who are saying this is not such a bad thing -- it is fair to argue, I think, that by marrying Joe Wilson, a fairly public figure, a former ambassador, she probably made herself a bit less useful to the CIA.

She put herself, at least married to a very public figure and probably could not have gone, for example, undercover with a false name and so forth.

So, her usefulness was still very much there and a law appears to have been broken. But it isn't quite the same loss to U.S. intelligence as it if would have been if she had no connection with anybody as public as Joe Wilson.

BLITZER: Her usefulness as an analyst in the CIA, of course remains. She still works at the CIA. But, her usefulness as an uncover officer was completely destroyed when she decided to pose publicly for a picture for Vanity Fair. Then all of the sudden, not just the name Valerie Plame is known around the world, but the face is known as well.

LANG: The chain of circumstances that led to that is an unfortunate thing. It in fact ruined the possibility of ever using her as a field operative again, that's absolutely true.

I think the particulars of this have to be established by the special prosecutor in this case. We're going to find out tomorrow.

BLITZER: One of the things that's very worrisome that we heard from Larry Johnson, who is a former CIA officer, a state department counterterrorism official as well -- he said that he had heard that there had been death threats to her as result of all of this from al- Qaida. Have you ever heard that.

ENSOR: I have not.

BLITZER: Pat, have you heard that?

LANG: No, I have not heard that.

BLITZER: Because if there were death threats, I assume she'd want protection from the government. She still is employed by the CIA at this point. Pat, button this up. What do you suspect will happen tomorrow?

LANG: I think Mr. Fitzgerald is a kind of person who does not see things in relative terms in any way. He sees things as being either correct or not correct.

And all his past seems to indicate that he will press the cases very hard. In fact, his use of some laws may seem to be quite creative to many people.

BLITZER: The president now back on the ground touring South Florida. Just got off Marine One over there. We're going to continue to watch what he's up to.

Pat Lang, as usual, thanks very much for joining us. David Ensor, thanks to you as well."