"Let men be wise by instinct if they can, but when this fails be wise by good advice." -Sophocles

Friday, September 14, 2007

Hillary-Hsu Photo Flap Smears Security Crew

In their eagerness to contend that Hillary Clinton knew about Norman Hsu's status as a fugitive evading a warrant for grand theft in California before accepting $850,000 he collected through fundraising efforts, conservatives and Democratic opponents are unfairly and inaccurately maligning the work of the United States Secret Service.

In a Cybercast News Service article today titled, "Clinton Campaign Denies Secret Service Vetting of Fugitive," writer Fred Lucas argued that Hillary Clinton must have known about Hsu's fugitive status for one simple reason: the Secret Service performs background checks of everyone who comes in contact with the former first lady. CNS interviewed law enforcement "experts" who made several statements that, if true, would establish a Clinton conspiracy in which Hillary's campaign staff or Hillary herself were ordering the Secret Service to ignore an outstanding criminal warrant to protect Senator Clinton from embarrassment. The CNS article contained a number of factual errors put forth by the so-called experts who contributed to the story.

The article opened by stating the contention that since Norman Hsu has been seen in news photographs standing next to Hillary at fundraising events, he must have been "vetted" by the Secret Service. According to the first "expert" cited by CNS:
"I would absolutely be shocked if the protective intelligence division of the Secret Service was not fully aware of Mr. Hsu's status as a fugitive," Carl Rowan, a federal agent with both the FBI and the U.S. Marshalls for a decade, said in an interview. Rowan, now president of Securitas, a private security firm, said he has worked closely with the U.S. Secret Service in the past.

"It is standard operating procedure to run the names and Social Security numbers of anyone who will be close to the protectee," Rowan continued. "Besides the safety concerns, the Secret Service works hard to avoid embarrassing situations for the protectee."

Rowan claimed to have worked closely with the Secret Service during his ten year federal career split between two agencies, but his contention that the Secret Service "works hard to avoid embarrassing situations for the protectee" was overstated and not applicable to the Hsu donations debacle.

The Secret Service provides physical security by employing a number of protective measures, all of which are designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, thus allowing a protectee to go about their business in a safe environment. Of course, unobtrusive becomes unrealistic when it comes to the security surrounding a sitting president or vice president, but even in that high threat environment a protectee still retains ample opportunity for embarrassing himself or herself. Rowan's contention is simply false from an operational perspective. The Secret Service is there to provide a secure environment but allows a protectee to engage in personal or political behavior that could be embarrassing as long as that behavior does not compromise the safety of the protectee.

The media criticized the Secret Service years ago when President Bush's twin daughters were caught by local police in Texas while drinking underage and using fake identification when ordering drinks. The criticisms then, as now, were focused on the perception that agents failed to protect the daughters from drinking underage and the ensuing embarrassment to the president and first lady. However, the Secret Service fulfilled its role in providing a secure environment and safely transporting the daughters home after their escapade to face the ire of their father and a media firestorm. The family suffered ample embarrassment due to the daughters' behavior, and it was not the Secret Service's duty to prevent the daughters from doing something that could lead to embarrassment.

Likewise, if the Secret Service was mandated to help a protectee avoid potential embarrassment, agents never would have allowed candidate Michael Dukakis to be photographed in a tank, or John Kerry to ski with news photographers in Idaho, where he promptly fell and berated his security detail with ample profanity for getting in his way. The Secret Service would surely never have allowed then-President Bill Clinton to "entertain" Monica Lewinsky anywhere, especially not in the Oval Office. The Secret Service does its job remarkably well, and the result is that protectees operate in an environment where they are perfectly safe enough to occasionally make fools of themselves.

CNS next cited another "expert":
"There are all kinds of levels of background checks that would make law enforcement raise their eyebrows," said Ted Deeds, chief operating officer of the Law Enforcement Alliance of America.

"I'm sure the Secret Service knew he was a wanted felon fugitive. What a scandal it would be if they didn't warn a president or first lady they were standing next to a convicted felon," he added.

It's standard operating procedure to check the Social Security number and date of birth of anyone who is going to be in a room with the president or first lady, Deeds said.

"If the Secret Service did not do the basic due-diligence check, then the questions are even more pointed," said Deeds. "Who ordered them not to do it and why? Was the Clinton campaign, and by extension the Democrat fundraising machine, so focused on money that they would violate basic security protocol?"

Deeds, like Rowan, may have some association with law enforcement, but apparently insufficient to have obtained accurate information about the Secret Service. It is entirely possible that the Secret Service had no idea that Hsu was a fugitive in a financial crime case, and it is also possible that a high level donor such as Hsu could be photographed next to Hillary Clinton without having been name checked. Since those two possibilities are separate issues, we will address them individually.

First we will tackle Deeds' inaccurate statement that the Social Security and date of birth of everyone who will be in the room with Hillary Clinton is checked. Imagine this scenario: Hillary Clinton will make a campaign appearance at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The arena seats approximately 18,000, and Hillary's campaign staff estimates that 8,000 free tickets have been distributed for the event. Hillary will, as Deeds contended, "be in a room" with this crowd of 8,000, but did her campaign staff record the name, date of birth, and social security number of every person who received a free ticket to the Staples Center event? No, because the event was free and open to anyone who wanted a ticket. Without that information, can the Secret Service perform name checks for everyone who will "be in a room" with Hillary during that event? The answer is obvious.

It is precisely because such name checks cannot be conducted for large crowds that those wishing to attend must pass through metal detectors and purse/bag screening before they can "be in a room" with Hillary. The environment for the protectee is safe of weapons and the Secret Service can provide close personal protection. As Hillary shakes hands with the crowd, photographs are routinely taken, thus on any given day her picture is taken with many voters or donors without providing their personal identifying information. Hillary is safe, but certainly unaware of the criminal records of the 8,000 in attendance.

The second inaccuracy set forth by Deeds and further supported by another "expert" quoted by CNS was the notion that Hillary's staff could have ordered the Secret Service not to perform a name check on Hsu (or anyone else), and that the more likely explanation was that the Secret Service knew Hsu was a fugitive but Hillary's staff told agents to ignore the outstanding warrant. This, according to CNS and the "experts" cited, is the only conceivable way that a fugitive who donated $850,000 could be photographed standing next to Hillary. This is how CNS's third expert stated it:
Clinton critic Gary Aldrich - an FBI agent for 26 years who was assigned from 1990 to 1995 to the White House during both the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations to conduct background checks - thinks the Secret Service must have told someone on the campaign staff about the shady past of certain donors.

"Fundraising events, you don't want to be melees, so the guest list is carefully scrutinized," Aldrich told Cybercast News Service.

"It's likely the Secret Service would see there was a warrant for someone's arrest, and go to the point person. They may have been told to disregard the warrant. The Secret Service wouldn't tell the candidate, but the handlers, so she (Clinton) would have plausible deniability," he added.

Aldrich clearly knows very little about the Secret Service despite his assignment at the White House in the 1990's. Many people volunteer to work for political campaigns, usually as local volunteers. When their volunteer duties might bring them in proximity to a protectee like Hillary, perhaps as a driver of a staff car in a motorcade, the Secret Service demands personal identifying information and performs standard name checks. If a volunteer is found to have a criminal history that suggests a potential security risk, that volunteer is rejected and the Secret Service advises the permanent political staff to find another volunteer. The political staff cannot override the rejection.

The same principle applies to donors or celebrities who will be in close contact, such as meeting in small groups, with Hillary. If the Secret Service, in performing name checks for such meetings discovered that a potential guest was the subject of an outstanding criminal warrant, the agency would contact the jurisdiction that issued the warrant, verify that it is a currently valid warrant, and notify that jurisdiction of the subject's location. Aldrich, a known Clinton critic, also ignored the possibility that the state of California may have been unwilling to extradite Hsu. It is possible, if a name check was performed for Hsu, that the Secret Service contacted California officials, established that the warrant for Hsu was valid, but also learned that California would not extradite Hsu for a financial crime as opposed to a violent crime.

Not all local law enforcement agencies have the resources or legal authority to extradite fugitives, especially non-violent fugitives, from other states or Washington, DC. In that circumstance, the Secret Service would only be concerned with whether Hsu posed a safety risk to Hillary, which he clearly did not, and allow him access as requested by her staff. Unless California was willing to extradite, the Secret Service could not request that local police take Hsu into custody.

Conservative Clinton critics have seized upon the photos of Hsu standing with Hillary as proof positive that either she or the Secret Service, or both, knew about his warrant and did nothing about it either out of greed for campaign donations or a desire to avoid embarrassing a protectee. In the Hsu donation situation, however, there are more than enough plausible explanations to establish reasonable doubt that Hillary, her staff, or the Secret Service were aware of the outstanding warrant for Hsu. Best-selling fiction author Vince Flynn and the Clint Eastwood action thriller In the Line of Fire both offered plausible scenarios in which wealthy campaign donors get close to a protectee without raising red flags with the political staff or security detail. Political staff members have far too much freedom to personally vouch for visitors, which under some circumstances can bypass the Secret Service altogether. That was the weak link in security that Vince Flynn captured effectively in his novel Transfer of Power. A similar tactic is employed by John Malkovich's character in the film In the Line of Fire.

Rather than launching an opportunistic attack on Hillary Clinton by maligning the integrity and professionalism of the Secret Service, CNS should have more thoroughly researched the working relationships between a protectee's staff and security detail and the very different roles each plays. A political staff concerns itself with avoiding embarrassment, and Hillary's staff has vowed to be more proactive in checking the backgrounds of significant donors. The security detail concerns itself with keeping a protectee safe from harm, not embarrassment. Not surprisingly, the Secret Service declined to comment to CNS on the Hsu situation, as it is a political rather than security matter.

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Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Morris' Outrageous Outrage at ex-Lobbyist Thompson

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a clever phrase that is often true, but when it comes to Hillary-hater Dick Morris, conservatives have accepted the phrase far too trustingly. Because Morris so vehemently and convincingly attacks the Clintons, and Hillary in particular, conservatives tend to laud him as a shrewd political genius who confirms the worst opinions of Hillary with insights only an insider could offer. Sean Hannity and Dick Morris may differ in political party affiliation, yet both are working almost in tandem to "derail the Hillary Express" and thwart her campaign for the presidency. Listening to both men on Fox News programming, there is little that distinguishes one from the other when it comes to their near obsession with defeating Hillary. The political differences between the two remain intact, but are suppressed in the service of a higher cause.

There is no doubt that Morris is an accomplished political adviser who knew the ins and outs of the Clinton White House, but for conservatives there is the potential for great folly in taking the entire spectrum of Morris' political views at face value. Political pitfalls await conservatives who subscribe to Morris' general political predictions and theories simply because he despises Hillary Clinton as much as or more than they do.

Morris has made a lucrative living by stoking the fires of anti-Clinton sentiment, authoring bestselling books, writing columns for The Hill and other publications, and appearing on Fox News as a political analyst. His writings and television appearances are embraced warmly by conservatives seeking for validation of their Clinton suspicions from a Democrat who worked closely with the Clintons and learned to loathe them.

Yet, in the glee over finding such a bitterly avowed enemy of their enemy coming to their aid, conservatives tend to lose sight of an important fact: Morris will do anything to prevent another Clinton presidency, but his loyalties remain squarely in the liberal camp, and thus his books, columns, and commentary on other political figures, especially conservatives, should be viewed with a far more critical eye than his views on the Clintons.

Morris has deep-seated and understandable motives for his anti-Clinton crusade, but he still considers conservatives to be political infidels. He likewise has motives for his attacks on conservative politicians and presidential candidates. If looked at from the proper perspective, the motives for his verbal and written criticisms of conservative figures are no different than Hillary's; both are working to defeat conservatives, conservatism, and to elect Democrats who champion liberal causes.

Morris' latest diatribe against a conservative presidential candidate appeared in his regular FoxNews.com column, "Fred Thompson: First Lobbyist for President." When reading the following excerpts, your blood may start boiling about lobbyists, greed, and Fred Thompson's cozy embrace of lobbyists who have joined his campaign staff. After the initial "Outrage" subsides, we will look more closely at Morris' argument and at the messenger himself:
We’ve already seen the first woman candidate, Hillary Clinton and the first African American with widespread support and a serious chance at winning the presidency.

But now there’s another groundbreaker: the first lobbyist candidate — Fred Thompson.

...Now Fred’s campaign is attracting other lobbyists, who are bundlers and donors to the Thompson campaign.

Most Americans feel strongly that a presidential candidate should not accept any money from lobbyists. According to a recent Gallup Poll, 75 percent of Americans find it unacceptable for candidates to finance their campaigns with contributions from lobbyists — and 80 percent want candidates to return any contributions they do receive from lobbyists.

But Fred definitely doesn’t agree with them. His promising campaign is positively overflowing with advisers and donors who are lobbyists, former lobbyists or employees of lobbying firms.

...So the "Fred Thompson for President" campaign — based on his promises to shake up Washington — is being run by and paid for by corporate insider lobbyists.

Do you think Fred will make any big changes if he’s elected?

It is no secret that Fred Thompson worked as a paid lobbyist for various organizations and corporations prior to and after his service in the Senate. It is likewise no secret that Morris' most recent book Outrage presents a fairly damning case against lobbyists and political influence peddling in the nation's capital. Clearly, lobbyist influence is a legitimate issue of concern, but Morris' newly found aversion to lobbying and politicians who accept soft money from lobbyists seems more than just a little contrived.

During the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, the Clinton's made an art form out of accepting lobbyist donations, brazenly taking money from a wide variety of shady shell corporations. Later, the Clinton-Gore White House accepted campaign donations very clearly traceable back to foreign governments, specifically China. Taking this soft money from the seediest of lobbyists was bad enough, but the Clintons demonstrated their appreciation for these donations by providing China with military technologies that significantly reduced the technology gap between the U.S. and Chinese armed forces. Where was Morris' "Outrage" over lobbyist donations and influence during his former employers' terms in the White House?

Here Morris is performing at his shrewdest level, smearing Thompson with the tainted label of lobbyist and thus implying that Thompson is not presidential material. Are we expected to forget that when given the opportunity to strut the halls of the White House, Morris was perfectly comfortable affiliating himself with the Clintons and considering Bill Clinton worthy of the presidency despite his campaign war chests overflowing with lobbyist donations? Having read "Outrage" we know that Morris now considers the American Trial Lawyers Association to be a powerful and overly influential political lobbying group, but we're still researching to find one instance where Morris spoke out against the Trial Lawyers' donations to the Clintons while Morris worked for and with them or urged the Clintons to give the money back to the lawyers. Somehow we think that search will be a long and fruitless one.

Apparently, in Morris' view being a former lobbyist or accepting lobbyist money should disqualify only a Republican candidate like Thompson for the presidency, while such corrupting influences in no way affected Bill Clinton's loyalties and agenda as a candidate or as president. Morris is right to point out the lobbyist corruption saturating both parties in his book "Outrage" but his well researched arguments might carry more weight if he had not proven so willing to overlook the corruption when speaking out about it might have hurt his career as a political adviser. Morris was silent on the issue until his falling out with the Clintons and subsequent celebrity status as a Fox News political expert and prolific author.

Morris has attacked presidential candidate Mitt Romney by characterizing him as a "flip-flopper" on certain issues, and now assails Thompson for his former employment as a lobbyist. Yet it is Morris who has "flip-flopped" on the entire issue of lobbying and lobbyist donations, having once turned a blind eye to them but now wielding the issue like a crusader's sword against the newly declared and potentially formidable presidential candidate Thompson.

Conservatives should continue to enjoy Morris' personal quest to defeat Hillary in 2008 while keeping in mind that his expertise on the Clintons does not also signal general expertise as a political analyst. Rather than viewing Morris only in context of the phrase "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," conservatives should adopt an added slogan: "the conservative Morris attacks most is he whom liberals fear most."

Based on Morris's opening salvo against Fred Thompson's candidacy, containing as it did name lists of known lobbyists who have donated to or work for the Thompson campaign and portrayals of Thompson as an unsavory character beholden to special interest groups, the liberal fear factor Thompson induces feels almost palpable. Morris only attacks those who pose a risk to his personal or political interests. Hillary Clinton and Fred Thompson, respectively, appear to pose the greatest risks for Morris in each category.

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Tuesday, September 11, 2007

German Cop Sacrificed to Government Gods

It is a cardinal rule of law enforcement that if something unplanned occurs that is detrimental to an ongoing investigation or surveillance, the lowliest agent or officer will be the sacrificial lamb. His career is slaughtered to appease the angry gods of government, who demand a sacrifice when embarrassments or liabilities arise from an operation gone bad.

In America, when terrorism investigations are compromised, federal agencies move swiftly to blame the state and local agencies they have been partnered with for leaking information or lacking sufficient experience to investigate suspects effectively. The finger of blame is never pointed inward. Likewise, when state-level criminal investigations are conducted jointly with city police departments or county sheriffs' offices and an informant is burned or the target of a surveillance is lost, it is always the "localest yokel" who is blamed for the operation's failure. The good news is that America is not alone in fostering this phenomenon among the ranks of federal and local law enforcement; unfortunately, that is also the bad news, as one of our key allies in the War on Terror demonstrated recently.

Media coverage of the arrests of three Islamic terrorists plotting to hit American targets, including Ramstein Air Base and Frankfurt Airport in Germany last week has achieved global saturation levels. What drew my attention for further scrutiny was Monday's revelation of a possible "blunder" by a German traffic police officer, who, according to reports, allegedly tipped off the three terror suspects prior to their eventual arrests that they were on a German government watch list. Of course, if the story were that simple, the traffic cop could rightly be castigated for an incident of incompetence that might have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Americans at the hands of these potential terrorist bombers. However, there is more to this story than alleged negligent bungling by an excited traffic officer.

Let's look first at CNN's description of what occurred prior to the arrests of the three terror suspects in Germany last week:
The three terror suspects arrested last week in Germany may have sped up their bombing plot after a loud-talking police officer inadvertently alerted them that they were on a federal watch list, an unnamed source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN.

The men were stopped by a traffic officer in the weeks prior to their arrest last Tuesday. The traffic stop was described by the head of Germany's Federal Criminal Investigation Office, Joerg Ziercke, as "a setback for the group."

But it may have also been a boon for the suspects, who had been under surveillance for over six months.

Federal investigators had bugged the vehicle carrying the suspects during the traffic stop and could hear one of the police officers loudly exclaim that the men were on a federal watch list, the source said.

Days later, the men were observed mixing a massive amount of explosive materials that German authorities said could have resulted in a stronger explosion than the terror attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005.

At that point, investigators moved in and arrested the men at a rental house in west-central Germany.

Even readers with law enforcement backgrounds likely cringed when reading this account of the "loudmouth" police officer notifying the suspects of their inclusion on the German watch list. Yet readers with experience planning and conducting complex surveillance operations should be asking themselves how a routine traffic stop ever occurred during a classified surveillance operation. The terror suspects were under surveillance by Germany's equivalent of the FBI, the Federal Criminal Investigation Office, which, according to CNN's report, had installed listening devices in the terrorists' vehicle because American intelligence had warned German authorities of their identities and plans.

Having planned and participated in many such surveillance operations, I found it unthinkable that Federal Criminal Investigation Office officials had not collaborated sufficiently with the local German police department to avoid even the possibility of the terror suspects having contact with any police entities throughout the duration of the surveillance. It is a routine practice to advise local police departments when state or federal agencies will be conducting surveillance within their jurisdictions for one simple reason: to avoid "blue on blue" incidents in which officers and agents are in real danger of mistakenly using lethal force on each other, neither recognizing each other as law enforcement until it is too late.

Surveillance planners are expected to ensure that local police officials are aware of an ongoing surveillance, even if the specific identities of the suspects remains unknown to them due to classification clearances. Local officials do not need to know who is under surveillance, but for officer safety they do need to know when it is occurring, what vehicles are involved, and what their instructions are in relation to the surveillance.

This is where the breakdown occurred in Germany, and although the unfortunate traffic officer is bearing the brunt of criticism for mentioning the watch list around the suspects, he is far less culpable than the Federal Criminal Investigation Office agents who clearly failed adequately brief the local traffic officers that under no circumstances should the suspects' vehicle be followed, approached, or stopped by any law enforcement vehicles.

This suspects had been under surveillance for six months, and apparently no German federal agent thought it necessary or wise to provide local traffic officers with instructions regarding the importance of avoiding the suspects, doing nothing to alarm them or make them suspect greater law enforcement presence, and above all to avoid direct confrontation with them unless requested otherwise by federal officials.

An effective surveillance is done without the suspects ever seeing a vehicle that even remotely resembles styles commonly used by law enforcement. To this end, law enforcement agencies purchase sports cars, SUVs, and other vehicles that fit into any neighborhood and bear no tell-tale signs of law enforcement presence, such as visible antennas, grill lights, visible radios in the cabin, and others. The surveillance team wants suspects to go about their daily business, visiting their associates, shopping for bomb-making supplies, going to their bomb-making facility if it is not in one of their homes, such as a storage rental unit or relatives' home.

It is the daily routine that allows the surveillance team to understand what is normal and what is not in their behavior, and this cannot be achieved if the suspects routinely encounter law enforcement vehicles. Such encounters, even if not traffic stop occurs, tend to spook the suspects and encourage them to alter their itineraries, change travel routes, and to be more aware of their surroundings, looking for possible surveillance.

While the "loudmouth" traffic officer in Germany certainly should not have mentioned the government watch list in such close proximity to the suspects, and his actions apparently did prompt them to hasten their production of bombs for the intended strike on American civilian and military targets, he was placed in position to blunder by a significantly graver goof.

The local traffic officer never would have stopped the suspects' vehicle if clear and unmistakable rules of engagement had been provided to the local police department by German federal officials running the surveillance. Unfortunately, this effort by Germany's federal agents to keep its local police in the dark has placed the traffic officer's slip-up under glaring media light. A mistake by one who should know better was a blunder. A mistake by those who should have known best of all was inexcusable.

Thankfully, these suspects merely sped up their bomb production and were still captured rather than disappearing to reemerge elsewhere and strike other, unsuspecting, targets. We should all hope that Germany's federal agents, and their international counterparts, learned a valuable lesson on proper surveillance planning and information sharing. More likely than not, when agencies hold their cards too close to the vest, they later learn they have dealt themselves a very bad hand.

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