Staunch US Intelligence Community defender Dian Feinstein comes to her senses.

[40hz]

Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif), who has (till now) publicly defended and attempted to justify the DHS, CIA and NSA at every opportunity, has since had a change of heart. Amazing how her thinking changed once some of the government abuses she previously argued for got turned and used on her and her committee.



Here's Senator Feinstein in her own words:

Mar 11 2014
Statement on Intel Committee’s CIA Detention, Interrogation Report

Washington—Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding the committee’s study on the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program:

“Over the past week, there have been numerous press articles written about the Intelligence Committee’s oversight review of the Detention and Interrogation Program of the CIA, specifically press attention has focused on the CIA’s intrusion and search of the Senate Select Committee’s computers as well as the committee’s acquisition of a certain internal CIA document known as the Panetta Review.

I rise today to set the record straight and to provide a full accounting of the facts and history.

Let me say up front that I come to the Senate Floor reluctantly. Since January 15, 2014, when I was informed of the CIA’s search of this committee’s network, I have been trying to resolve this dispute in a discreet and respectful way. I have not commented in response to media requests for additional information on this matter. However, the increasing amount of inaccurate information circulating now cannot be allowed to stand unanswered...

<more>

When a bad situation becomes so egregious that even the most wilfully blind are forced to see, you know the the danger is both real and present.

[Vurbal]

I'll take this as a sign she's learned something as soon as she applies the same standard to my privacy as her own. After all, some animals are more equal than others.

[Stoic Joker]

I'll take this as a sign she's learned something as soon as she applies the same standard to my privacy as her own. After all, some animals are more equal than others.

-Vurbal (March 11, 2014, 02:08 PM)

Ouch!! (Now that's a really sharp stick)  But you are indeed right.

I just hope congress can put down their golf and yachting magazines long enough to get the ball rolling and push her report through declassification. We need a head - actually a bunch of them - on a stick to put this to bed with.

[TaoPhoenix]

I'll take this as a sign she's learned something as soon as she applies the same standard to my privacy as her own. After all, some animals are more equal than others.

-Vurbal (March 11, 2014, 02:08 PM)

Some thoughts:

- Fair point Vurbal, but it looks to me like at least a step (of many needed) to eventually do something. Congress operates on momentum, and whether one side can sustain it and the other side can dissipate it. So there's still lots more to do, but since this is sitting at "www.feinstein.senate.gov/public", it's there to stay, as opposed to the extra smokescreens if it were some newspaper story that then later vanishes. So while nothing may happen yet, it needs this step *to* happen at all.

- "We have no way to determine who made the Internal Panetta Review documents available to the committee. Further, we don’t know whether the documents were provided intentionally by the CIA, unintentionally by the CIA, or intentionally by a whistle-blower."

I like DC because we get to analyze news from the IT angle. This statement looks like a "save someone's honor compromise". How do you not know where the documents came from, at least partially? From any of twelve angles - ip/other addresses, document signatures, maybe even upload logs? (It's a super ultra top secret database, and it doesn't stamp when someone uploads something into it?! So are we talking a security breach?! Nah, I'm going with my other theory here.)

- By reversing her position from "for" to "against" this stuff, other junior senators might decide to follow her lead. Even, if we had a "privacy candidate" in the 2016 election, even as a "1-topic-joke", it might raise the issue in people's minds.

[Vurbal]

I'll take this as a sign she's learned something as soon as she applies the same standard to my privacy as her own. After all, some animals are more equal than others.

-Vurbal (March 11, 2014, 02:08 PM)

Some thoughts:

- Fair point Vurbal, but it looks to me like at least a step (of many needed) to eventually do something. Congress operates on momentum, and whether one side can sustain it and the other side can dissipate it. So there's still lots more to do, but since this is sitting at "www.feinstein.senate.gov/public", it's there to stay, as opposed to the extra smokescreens if it were some newspaper story that then later vanishes. So while nothing may happen yet, it needs this step *to* happen at all.

- "We have no way to determine who made the Internal Panetta Review documents available to the committee. Further, we don’t know whether the documents were provided intentionally by the CIA, unintentionally by the CIA, or intentionally by a whistle-blower."

I like DC because we get to analyze news from the IT angle. This statement looks like a "save someone's honor compromise". How do you not know where the documents came from, at least partially? From any of twelve angles - ip/other addresses, document signatures, maybe even upload logs? (It's a super ultra top secret database, and it doesn't stamp when someone uploads something into it?! So are we talking a security breach?! Nah, I'm going with my other theory here.)

- By reversing her position from "for" to "against" this stuff, other junior senators might decide to follow her lead. Even, if we had a "privacy candidate" in the 2016 election, even as a "1-topic-joke", it might raise the issue in people's minds.

-TaoPhoenix (March 11, 2014, 02:54 PM)

I don't disagree with any of that. I've argued all along that the correction for all this abuse of power is a natural and normal process of societal correction. I don't believe Diane Feinstein appreciates the irony of the situation or her own culpability in enabling it.

However I do see it as yet another stepping stone toward public recognition of the very real crisis we face. The more people like her complain about their rights being violated, the less weight her defense of the same violations against the public carry. As painfully slow as the beginning of this process is, at some point there will be a monumental shift in public opinion that seems to come out of nowhere.

Until then all we can do is continue drawing attention to it. As unlikely a solution as it seems, that's what has gotten us this far.

[IainB]

...When a bad situation becomes so egregious that even the most wilfully blind are forced to see, you know the the danger is both real and present. :tellme
__________________________

-40hz (March 11, 2014, 01:29 PM)

I would suggest that the more appropriate term for "wilfully blind" should be "wilfully ignorant". There is nothing wrong in being ignorant - we all are, and it's part of what's called "the human condition". The trick is to do something remedial about it, and to develop our reasoning skills so as to search out truth/knowledge. The "wrong" thing is persisting in one's ignorance.
Just because she got knocked off her ass on the road to Damascus and had an epiphany, or something, it does not abrogate her from the responsibility now, as a Senator, for reviewing her past ignorant statements/assertions and coming clean about them. Either she was wilfully ignorant due to a self-inflicted ignorance/stupidity, or because of a concealed political bias/motivation.
If she is unable to be honest and open about this, then she cannot be trusted to be honest/reliable, QED.

[40hz]

^She strikes me as the sort that was raised and truly believes the old bromide: "My country, may she always be right, but my country - right or wrong." And IMHO she's a total idiot that shouldn't be in office. But that's how it works here.

Not to excuse her, but what's going on here has been such an absolute shock to most Americans, and their image of this country, that the majority of the population is still in denial and doing its best not to see the elephant in  the room. Very similar to what happened during the McCarthy Era and the Red Scare. And like then, public opinion is finally starting to swing around.

Read the first third of Sinclair Lewis's story It Can't Happen Here to get a feel for how America acts whenever it discovers its institutions can't be trusted. It's a work of fiction. But that doesn't make it any less accurate or true.
 

[TaoPhoenix]

...
Not to excuse her, but what's going on here has been such an absolute shock to most Americans, and their image of this country, that the majority of the population is still in denial and doing its best not to see the elephant in  the room. Very similar to what happened during the McCarthy Era and the Red Scare. And like then, public opinion is finally starting to swing around.
...

-40hz (March 11, 2014, 04:23 PM)

I dunno if I would quite call it an "absolute shock" - I'm fishing for a slight change in nuance here. Because for example in "private spaces" for forty years people have "grumbled about it". But I think there's been an underestimating of exactly how bad it is, combined with little previous hope of cracking their armor.

I think the following snip shows that we have indeed found a crack in the armor. If only for the Legal Drama finish with the thrilling music! (Slight formatting by me.)

"Staff approached the CIA personnel at the offsite location...
- who initially denied that documents had been removed.

- CIA personnel then blamed information technology personnel, who were almost all contractors, for removing the documents themselves without direction or authority.

- And then the CIA stated that the removal of the documents was ordered by the White House.

(Coda)When the committee approached the White House, the White House denied giving the CIA any such order."

(Side show for the "Silly Jokes Thread"! Casting Calls, anyone, for the Lead Counsel for the People? )

[Vurbal]

Not to excuse her, but what's going on here has been such an absolute shock to most Americans, and their image of this country, that the majority of the population is still in denial and doing its best not to see the elephant in  the room. Very similar to what happened during the McCarthy Era and the Red Scare. And like then, public opinion is finally starting to swing around.

-40hz (March 11, 2014, 04:23 PM)

I think it's much simpler than that and entirely expected and predictable for anyone who operates in the kind of power bubble we've cultivated in the US over the last 3+ decades. And in fact that bubble is entirely normal within the context of a nation as powerful as the US. It's not fundamentally different than Britain in the 1700s or any number of other singular super powers at the peak of their dominance.

She's incapable of comprehending the real effects of giving the NSA unchecked surveillance power or the entertainment industry their own federal enforcement agents because she doesn't feel them directly. The unconscionable becomes trivial when you're targeting "the people" because to you they really aren't people. In the words of David Wong, we're outside her monkeysphere. I actually find his reasoning a touch too simplistic but I agree with the general principle.

[IainB]

...And IMHO she's a total idiot that shouldn't be in office. ...
____________________________

-40hz (March 11, 2014, 04:23 PM)

It's easy to say such things. I would always suggest giving people the benefit of the doubt.
In an egalitarian society, the chances would probably be roughly 50/50 that someone elected to public office would have an IQ of less than 100, or more than 100.
More doesn't necessarily mean better. Arguably many people with an apparently low IQ and holding public office would seem to have been able to demonstrate that they could function very responsibly in their roles in society and not seem to behave or think stupidly. However, many with an apparently high IQ would seem to have been able to demonstrate that they can get away with being totally misguided and acting like complete idiots - a classic example possibly being the UK PM Chamberlain in wanting to appease Hitler, but then he died of cancer six months after leaving the premiership, and in my experience people with cancer can start to exhibit muddled thinking some considerable time before their cancer is diagnosed. In other words, people's ability to think straight could be affected by their state of health, just as (say) by their level of alcohol consumption.

From experience, whenever I have seen people behave out of character or irrationally, there has generally been something apparently wrong with them, physically or psychologically. So Senator Diane Feinstein could, for example, actually be ill and unable to reason properly or even reflect on her own past actions sufficiently objectively to be able to be honest and open about this - in which event, she could not be relied upon to be honest/reliable. But this would not necessarily be because she is a bad or stupid person, but possibly because she is or has been unwell.
The other things that give rise to apparent irrationality could typically include, for example, being trapped in a belief in a particular religio-political ideology, or committed to some criminal intent, but I would presume neither of these would apply in Feinstein's case.

Of course, if, despite the above, it turns out that she has in fact always been just a complete idiot, then one would need to examine how her appointment to public office came about in the first place. "You get the government you vote for."

In any event, God spare us from a technocracy or elitist ideology ruling our lives, or an idiocracy...

[40hz]

It's easy to say such things. I would always suggest giving people the benefit of the doubt.

-IainB (March 11, 2014, 05:48 PM)

No. It's gone too far-  for far too long - to grant any additional benefit of the doubt IMO.  I'm of the "Fool me once - shame on you. Fool me twice - shame on me" school.

For her to pretend she is totally surprised by any of this is beyond belief. And it is unconscionable for a person in her position if she in fact were. From my perspective, up until now, she either (a) was deceived; (b) intended to deceive; or (c) is criminally incompetent. And any of those makes her derelict in the fulfilment of her oath of office.

Of course, if, despite the above, it turns out that she has in fact always been just a complete idiot, then one would need to examine how her appointment to public office came about in the first place. "You get the government you vote for."

-IainB (March 11, 2014, 05:48 PM)

Unfortunately, it's less of that, and far more that the USA currently "has the best government money can buy." Something which has already cost us dear and continues to cost us dearly.

If I sound harsh or extremely angry, I apologize. I'm only speaking like this because I am.

[TaoPhoenix]

...
 From my perspective, up until now, she either (a) was deceived; ...
And any of those makes her derelict in the fulfilment of her oath of office.
...

-40hz (March 11, 2014, 08:44 PM)

She "Was deceived". When you're in Congress you "pick" what you "believe" in order to get into the right circles.

But she apparently banked on "certain things not happening". Pick your adjectives, most of them justified, but the tone of her big speech was "I was deceived".

And she/staff did put a lot of work into it, before broadcasting it. It's clear it's been brewing in her mind for a while. You can tell it's not a fluff piece written on a four day deadline.

[IainB]

...No. It's gone too far-  for far too long - to grant any additional benefit of the doubt IMO. ...
________________________

-40hz (March 11, 2014, 08:44 PM)

...Unfortunately, it's less of that, and far more that the USA currently "has the best government money can buy." ...
________________________

-40hz (March 11, 2014, 08:44 PM)

Well, I am just an ignorant and bemused onlooker. I confess I hadn't realised the politicians somehow bought their seats. The whole thing seems nonsensical to me and I have no real interest in American politics anyway.
You would doubtless be the better judge than I.
Send her to the guillotine.

[TaoPhoenix]

Unfortunately, it's less of that, and far more that the USA currently "has the best government money can buy."

-40hz (March 11, 2014, 08:44 PM)

Naw, I dispute this.

We have the government money *has* bought, and it's far from the best!!

I get that it "isn't Ross Perot's 1992" anymore.

But I think one of those billionaires with a year left to live could really shake up US Politics as a "last legacy" if he/she wanted to.

But (your quote here) a President with zero backing in Congress doesn't get far either - the down side of "checks and balances". So maybe the formula is "Buy Presidency and thirteen congress seats"!

[TaoPhoenix]

...
I confess I hadn't realised the politicians somehow bought their seats. The whole thing seems nonsensical to me
...

-IainB (March 12, 2014, 01:24 AM)

Nah Iain, Buying Political Appointments is a big game in the US. A few fellas are gunning for it as early as High School!

[40hz]

...
I confess I hadn't realised the politicians somehow bought their seats. The whole thing seems nonsensical to me
...

-IainB (March 12, 2014, 01:24 AM)

Nah Iain, Buying Political Appointments is a big game in the US. A few fellas are gunning for it as early as High School!

-TaoPhoenix (March 12, 2014, 02:00 AM)

Not so much bought their seats as had them paid for. Such is the beauty of US campaign financing law.

[40hz]

Some more good follow-up articles worth reading:

CIA Director Tries To Release His Side Of The Senate Spying Scandal; Actually Confirms Feinstein's Accusations

And the media falls for yet more CIA nuanced responses and strawman arguments:

Reporters Fall For CIA Director Brennan's Non-Denial Denial Over Senate Spying Scandal

Unfortunately, Ms. Feinstein hasn't exactly come clean in her own narrative. Which shows why the single most important thing on a politician's reference bookshelf isn't a copy of The Constitution, or even some holy scripture - it's a decent Thesaurus.


Why Won't Senator Feinstein Call Torture Torture?

Hint: The USA does not torture people - therefore what was done to some detainees cannot be called 'torture.' QED.