There's this friend, whom I will call John Johnston because
that's his name, with whom I share very little in the way of politics, a great
deal in the way of artistic tastes, and kind of a mixed bag on hobbies. It happens one hobby we share is spy-watching;
I'm assuming most of you know that much of what determines humanity's future
happens in little administrative offices and cubicles, or in quiet offices on university campuses or
military bases, or overhead in space, and very occasionally leads to some action
here and there but mostly is just an endless unacknowledged game between all
the nations of the Earth. If there is
going to be genuine autonomy and liberty for the species, ever, it will have to
close down some day, but it seems very unlikely to happen within my lifetime or
even that of my grandchildren.
Most of the time, spy watching is rather like trainspotting,
or bird watching; oh, look, there's one now, talk to your friends about whether
everyone saw it, that's that, no consequences.
Neither John nor I is a particularly keen spywatcher; we both have other
hobbies we give more time to.
But now and then something interesting happens and even more
rarely it comes leaping out onto the front pages, and just as the birdwatching
community wigged out and let everyone know a few years ago when it looked like
the ivory-billed woodpecker might still be with us after all, the spywatchers
get excited enough to talk about something.
This time, for Americans anyway, it might actually be something
important, and since the USA tends to be a pivot point the world swings around,
maybe for the rest of you.
So let me lay it out as I see it. Today's Washington Post revealed that the DNI
-- Director of Naval Intelligence, #1 spy guy in the US Navy's Office of Naval
Intelligence, which for historic reasons tends to be the seniormost and most
influential of the US armed service intelligence agencies -- Ted Branch, has
been suspended and his access to classified information at least temporarily
shut down, due to the rapidly widening corruption and bribery scandal
surrounding Glenn Defense Marine, a Malaysian company that seems to be rather
spectacularly corrupt. Branch's chief
deputy/assistant, Bruce Loveless, director of naval intelligence operations
(the guy who makes sure the DNI's orders are carried out) was suspended at the
same time.
That's the highest the scandal has reached, but that's
plenty high; the DNI reports directly to the head of the DIA and to the
Secretary of the Navy, each of whom report directly to the Secretary of
Defense, and it's a level at which it's not unusual to be asked to testify
before the secret Congressional committees or the Cabinet, or to brief the
President.
Branch and Loveless have not been convicted of anything,
yet, of course, but the Washington Post is doing that ambiguous dance they do
when they know charges are pending but can't quite say so. Other people who have already been charged --
including one from the supposed-to-be-the-watchdog NCIS -- are accused of
having passed on information about ship and submarine movements to Leonard
Glenn Francis, a Malaysian often called "Fat Leonard," who heads up
Glenn Defense Marine. His ostensible
reasons for buying the information is that his company is a major supplier of
services (tugboats, fresh food, etc.) to the US Navy in the Far East, and he
was buying his way to an unfair competitive advantage.
Here's the catch, which gets us spywatchers really
interested: the Malaysian corporate world is absolutely crowded with overseas
Chinese, who in turn have a web of family connections back to the
mainland. What you say to a Malaysian
shipping, harbor services, or other maritime company exec on Tuesday morning is
going to be discussed in Beijing by Tuesday lunch.
Please note I have no kick against any Malaysian or Chinese involved in this. They have their interests and purposes, they're pursuing them, international politics is not a game of Candyland, and they're doing what any cunning businessperson or smart spy would do for his or her company or nation.
But I do have a kick with their American suppliers. Because the information they were selling was not just about getting towing and
salvage contracts for an ambitious foreign company; it's about the movements of the Seventh Fleet (and probably
the Third and Fifth as well), and if things go bad in the Pacific, that could make an enormous difference.
And although the Navy is saying, right now, that Branch and
Loveless broke the rules back before their present appointments ... well. You don't go to DNIO and DNI straight from
aircraft maintenance, or the Seabees.
Anyone in either office has been a spy or a spymaster most of his
career. The dangers of sharing any
information with a Malaysian business has to have been screamingly obvious;
there's no way this was unwitting.
Nor do I suggest that Branch and Loveless were directly working for Chinese intelligence. I'm perfectly willing to believe they simply sold information to a leaky third party for the
money. Money is historically the most
common motivation for American traitors.
Ooh. Ugly word. Should I be saying that word?
But look, folks, here's what's right there in public: two admirals who must have spent most of their careers in naval intelligence (whether
openly or not) are being investigated for having taken money from a foreign
company that, if it is not actively
aiding Chinese intelligence at the corporate level, is surely so penetrated as
to make no difference, and they can hardly have avoided knowing it. It was their business to know it, for most of their careers. And the information shared included ship and
fleet movements -- the very core of what are usually considered defense
secrets.
Just on the face of it, what they did is far more prosecutable
than anything Snowden did. Ethel
Rosenberg went to the electric chair for less.
Now, there's a constitutional argument about whether or not
"giving aid and comfort to the enemy" is a separate requirement for
treason from "adhering to the enemy," and it's relevant because these
guys very likely committed the former but not the latter (assuming they haven't
been framed or there aren't other mitigating circumstances as yet unknown to
the public). There's another argument
about whether giving intelligence to a third party that you know is going to
leak to what is, after all, a major trading partner and a nation with which we
have fairly good relations, but which would be our most dangerous enemy if
things change, is at all the same thing as doing it with "the
enemy." So maybe a charge of treason is a step too far.
But we were at peace with the USSR when the Rosenbergs were
electrocuted, and we'd been allies with them when they committed their
offense. And Snowden, after all,
distributed the information to the world, trying to put an end to something he
saw as unjust; in no way could he be construed as trying to assist in an attack
on the USA, or even in making it more likely.
If the treason laws can stretch as far as them, it can stretch to these
two admirals.
So here's what I'd like to think might be happening:
President Obama and the leadership of both parties in Congress -- (Boehner and
Pelosi, Reid and McConnell) ought to be having a quiet conversation that will go
something like this: we have, or probably have, deep, dangerous, and pervasive
rot at the top of our professional defense/intelligence community. We must know how far it goes. Just to sift the evidence is going to take
(if this case is typical) at least most of the rest of the Obama
Administration, and prosecutions and trials may well continue till 2020 or
so. So here's the deal: no deals, and
no politicization. Obama and Holder
start the investigations and work them as hard and as long as it takes. Next
administration takes over and continues them.
Whether anyone has a D or an R after his/her name, we keep catching rats
till there are no more rats to catch, and we clean this up.
Because, if you haven't noticed, dear readers, and everyone
else: this is really, really bad. I'm
not a lawyer, but it reeks of treason.
And if our highest ranking officers are let off the hook for it ...
well. the eagerness and ease with which
some high ranking French generals joined Vichy? the movement of so many senior
Army officers into the army of the Confederacy? the German judges who let the
Nazis go free? the speed with which Franco made the army his own?
Pick your analogies where you will. But we've got rats, and they're not
Republican or Democratic rats, they're just rats. You all can fight about guns and abortion and
health care later. Get on the big job, make the deal, and preserve the country. That's what we hired you to do.
