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RuppRoge Fake Dragnet Fix Requires Intel Community to Update 30 Year Old EO 12333 Procedures

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One good aspect of the RuppRoge Fake Dragnet Fix is its measure requiring all elements of the Intelligence Community to comply with the EO that governs them.

At issue is this clause in EO 12333 requiring that any element of the Intelligence Community collecting data on US persons have Attorney General approved procedures for handling that data.

2.3 Collection of information. Elements of the Intelligence Community are authorized to collect, retain, or disseminate information concerning United States persons only in accordance with procedures established by the head of the Intelligence Community element concerned or by the head of a department containing such element and approved by the Attorney General, consistent with the authorities provided by Part 1 of this Order, after consultation with the Director.

This is something PCLOB asked Eric Holder and James Clapper to make sure got done back in August. In their letter, they disclosed some agencies in the IC have been stalling on these updates almost 3 decades.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board just sent a letter to Eric Holder and James Clapper requesting that they have all the Intelligence Committee agencies update what are minimization procedures (though the letter doesn’t call them that), “to take into account new developments including technological developments.”

As you know, Executive Order 12333 establishes the overall framework for the conduct of intelligence activities by U.S. intelligence agencies. Under section 2.3 of the Executive Order, intelligence agencies can only collect, retain, and disseminate information about U.S. persons if the information fits within one of the enumerated categories under the Order and if it is permitted under that agency’s implementing guidelines approved by the Attorney General after consultation with the Director of National Intelligence.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has learned that key procedures that form the guidelines to protect “information concerning United States person” have not comprehensively been updated, in some cases in almost three decades, despite dramatic changes in information use and technology. [my update]

In other words, these procedures haven’t been updated, in some cases, since not long after Ronald Reagan issued this EO in 1981.

RuppRoge aims to require the IC elements to comply.

(1) REQUIREMENT FOR IMMEDIATE REVIEW.–Each head of an element of the intelligence community that has not obtained the approval of the Attorney General for the procedures, in their entirety, required by section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333 (50 U.S.C. 3001 note) within 5 years prior to the data of the enactment of the End Bulk Collection Act of 2014, shall initiate, not later than 180 days after such enactment, a review of the procedures for such element.

Mind you, asking agencies to initiate a review 6 months after passage of a bill to update procedures that are 30 years old isn’t exactly lighting a fire under IC arse. But then, the delay probably stems from some agencies hoarding agency records on US persons that are even older than the EO.

A Key Part of RuppRoge’s Fake Dragnet Fix Reform: Pay the Telecoms

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Here’s an interesting “reform” in the RuppRoge’s Fake Dragnet Fix. It pays the telecoms.

COMPENSATION AND ASSISTANCE.–The Government shall compensate, at the prevailing rate, an electronic communications service provider for providing records in accordance with directives issued pursuant to [their bill].

Section 215 does not include such a payment provision. And while the first two phone dragnet orders included provision for such payments, that was probably illegal.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure the government has found some way to pay the telecoms, either through added payments for AT&T’s Hemisphere program or gifts in kind. (Though given the timing of DOJ’s suit against Sprint for over-billing, I do wonder whether the government is retaliating for something.) Telecoms don’t spy for free, so I’m sure they’ve been getting paid, illegally, for the last 8 years of dragnet spying they’ve been doing.

But the lack of such provision in Section 215 should have limited the scope of the dragnet. It should have required that requests be so narrow no telecom was going to send big bills to the government every month. And it presumably made the telecoms (well, except for AT&T, which never met a spying request it didn’t love) less willing to interpret orders from the government expansively.

The inclusion of such a compensation clause in the RuppRoge “reform” makes it even more likely this dragnet will expand with the now well-oiled willingness of the telecoms to go above and beyond the letter of the request.

Which is presumably just how the NSA wants it to be.

NSA Bids to Expand Spying in Guise of “Fixing” Phone Dragnet

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Dutch Ruppersberger has provided Siobhan Gorman with details of his plan to “fix” the dragnet — including repeating the laughable claim that the “dragnet” (which she again doesn’t distinguish as solely the Section 215 data that makes up a small part of the larger dragnet) doesn’t include cell data.

Only, predictably, it’s not a “fix” of the phone dragnet at all, except insofar as NSA appears to be bidding to use it to do all the things they want to do with domestic dragnets but haven’t been able to do legally. Rather, it appears to be an attempt to outsource to telecoms some of the things the NSA hasn’t been able to do legally since 2009.

For example, there’s the alert system that Reggie Walton shut down in 2009.

As I reported back in February, the NSA reportedly has never succeeded in replacing that alert system, either for technical or legal reasons or both.

NSA reportedly can’t get its automated chaining program to work. In the motion to amend, footnote 12 — which modifies part of some entirely redacted paragraphs describing its new automated alert approved back in 2012 — reads:

The Court understands that to date NSA has not implemented, and for the duration of this authorization will not as a technical matter be in a position to implement, the automated query process authorized by prior orders of this Court for analytical purposes. Accordingly, this amendment to the Primary Order authorizes the use of this automated query process for development and testing purposes only. No query results from such testing shall be made available for analytic purposes. Use of this automated query process for analytical purposes requires further order of this Court.

PCLOB describes this automated alert this way.

In 2012, the FISA court approved a new and automated method of performing queries, one that is associated with a new infrastructure implemented by the NSA to process its calling records.68 The essence of this new process is that, instead of waiting for individual analysts to perform manual queries of particular selection terms that have been RAS approved, the NSA’s database periodically performs queries on all RAS-approved seed terms, up to three hops away from the approved seeds. The database places the results of these queries together in a repository called the “corporate store.”

It has been 15 months since FISC approved this alert, but NSA still can’t get it working.

I suspect this is the root of the stories claiming NSA can only access 30% of US phone records.

As described by WSJ, this automated system will be built into the orders NSA provides telecoms; once a selector has been provided to the telecoms, they will keep automatically alerting on it.

Under the new bill, a phone company would search its databases for a phone number under an individual “directive” it would receive from the government. It would send the NSA a list of numbers called from that phone number, and possibly lists of phone numbers those numbers had called. A directive also could order a phone company to search its database for such calls as future records come in. [my emphasis]

This would, presumably, mean NSA still ends up with a corporate store, a collection of people against whom the NSA has absolutely not a shred of non-contact evidence, against whom they can use all their analytical toys, including searching of content.

Note, too, that this program uses the word “directive,” not query. Directive comes from the PRISM program, where the NSA gives providers generalized descriptions and from there have broad leeway to add new selectors. Until I hear differently, I’ll assume the same is true here: that this actually involves less individualized review before engaging in 2 degrees of Osama bin Laden.

The legislation seems ripe for inclusion of querying of Internet data (another area where the NSA could never do what it wanted to legally after 2009), given that it ties this program to “banning” (US collection of, but Gorman doesn’t say that either, maintaining her consistency in totally ignoring that EO 12333 collection makes up the greater part of bulk programs) Internet bulk data collection.

The bill from Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) and his Democratic counterpart, Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D., Md.), would ban so-called bulk collection of phone, email and Internet records by the government, according to congressional aides familiar with the negotiations. [my emphasis]

Call me crazy, but I’m betting there’s a way they’ll spin this to add in Internet chaining with this “fix.”

Note, too, Gorman makes no mention of location data, in spite of having tied that to her claims that NSA only collects 20% of data. Particularly given that AT&T’s Hemisphere program provides location data, we should assume this program could too, which would present a very broad expansion on the status quo.

And finally, note that neither the passage I quoted above on directives to providers, nor this passage specifies what kind of investigations this would be tied to (though they are honest that they want to do away with the fig leaf of this being tied to investigations at all).

The House intelligence committee bill doesn’t require a request be part of an ongoing investigation, Mr. Ruppersberger said, because intelligence probes aim to uncover what should be investigated, not what already is under investigation.

Again, the word “directive” in the PRISM context also provides the government the ability to secretly pass new areas of queries — having expanded at least from counterterrorism to counterproliferation and cybersecurity uses. So absent some very restrictive language, I would assume that’s what would happen here: NSA would pass it in the name of terrorism, but then use it primarily for cybersecurity and counterintelligence, which the NSA considers bigger threats these days.

And that last suspicion? That’s precisely what Keith Alexander said he planned to do with this “fix,” presumably during the period when he was crafting this “fix” with NSA’s local Congressman: throw civil libertarians a sop but getting instead an expansion of his cybersecurity authorities.

Update: Here’s Spencer on HPSCI, confirming it’s as shitty as I expected.

And here’s Charlie Savage on Obama’s alternative.

It would:

  • Keep Section 215 in place, though perhaps with limits on whether it can be used in this narrow application
  • Enact the same alert-based system and feed into the corporate store, just as the HPSCI proposal would
  • Include judicial review like they have now (presumably including automatic approval for FISA targets)

Obama’s is far better than HPSCI (though this seems to be part of a bad cop-good cop plan, and the devil remains in the details). But there are still some very serious concerns.

Obama Approves Releasing Classified Information to Attack Snowden for Leaking Classified Information

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Kudos to Shane Harris who, unlike a number of other reporters, brought the appropriate skepticism to Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger’s attempt to fearmonger Edward Snowden’s leaks. Not only did Harris use the correct verb tense — “could” as opposed to “has” — to describe documents describing the activities of the Armed Services that have not yet been released (and note, implicitly Rogers and Rupp are saying the risk is to forces in the field but not within the domestic US). But he repeatedly noted Rogers and Rupp’s complete failure to provide any evidence:

But the lawmakers — who are working in coordination with the Obama administration and are trying to counter the narrative that Snowden is a heroic whistleblower — offered no specific examples to substantiate their claims.

[snip]

The lawmakers cited no articles or specific documents to support that claim.

[snip]

But the spokesman did not say what, if any, conclusions the task force had reached about actual damage caused by documents Snowden took, regardless of whether they’ve been disclosed or not.

My favorite part of Harris’ piece, however, is the way he makes clear that Rogers and Rupp are selectively releasing classified information — with the Administration’s approval — to complain about Snowden releasing classified information.

A congressional staffer who is familiar with the report’s findings said that the lawmakers chose to make some of its contents public in order to counter what they see as a false impression of Snowden as a principled whistleblower who disclosed abuses of power.

“Snowden has been made out by some people to be a hero. What we need to do is really look at the effect of his leaks and see that what he’s done is really harm our country and put citizens at risk. The purpose [of releasing some findings] is to clear the record and show that he’s not a hero,” the staffer told Foreign Policy.

The staffer said that the administration approved the information that the lawmakers disclosed in advance.

Because some leaky pigs are more equal than other leaky pigs.

Keith Alexander: The One General Obama Didn’t Fire

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Obama has developed a reputation for firing Generals (so much so the wingnuts have developed some conspiracy theories about it).

Most famously, of course, he fired Stanley McChrystal for insubordination. He ousted CENTCOM Commander James Mattis early because of dissent on Iran policy (what on retrospect, with the distance and this AP report, might have been opposition to the back channel discussions that led to this weekend’s interim nuclear deal). A slew of Generals have been fired for offenses including drinking, fucking (including sexual abuse), swearing, and cheating at poker, as well as abusing their positions (Hamm, Gaouette, Baker, Roberts, Sinclair, Giardina, Carry, Huntoon). Obama accepted then CIA Director David Petraeus’s resignation, ostensibly for fucking, too, but even before that kept refusing Petraeus the promotions he thought he deserved. Generals Gurganus and Sturdevant got fired for not sufficiently defending a big base in Afghanistan.

It’s that background that makes the premise of this WSJ piece on NSA so unconvincing. It presents the fact that General Keith Alexander offered — but Obama did not accept — his resignation as proof of how significantly the Snowden leaks have affected NSA.

Shortly after former government contractor Edward Snowden revealed himself in June as the source of leaked National Security Agency documents, the agency’s director, Gen. Keith Alexander, offered to resign, according to a senior U.S. official.

The offer, which hasn’t previously been reported, was declined by the Obama administration. But it shows the degree to which Mr. Snowden’s revelations have shaken the NSA’s foundations—unlike any event in its six-decade history, including the blowback against domestic spying in the 1970s.

[snip]

When the leaks began, some top administration officials found their confidence in Gen. Alexander shaken because he presided over a grave security lapse, a former senior defense official said. But the officials also didn’t think his resignation would solve the security problem and were concerned that letting him leave would wrongly hand Mr. Snowden a win, the former defense official said.

Even before Edward Snowden started working for the NSA via Booz, Alexander had presided over — by his own provably exaggerated admission — the plunder of America via cybertheft.

Then, on top of that purportedly catastrophic failure, Snowden served to demonstrate how easy it was to walk away with details on some of NSA’s most sensitive ops.

And yet the guy who left the entire US Internet as well as NSA’s codebreaking exposed — as compared to a single base in Afghanistan — did not get fired for his failures.

Because that might wrongly hand Snowden a win, apparently.

That’s the real tell. The article provides new details on an effort to weigh the value of wiretapping elite targets. But the rest of the article quotes hawks like Dutch Ruppersberger and Mike Rogers complaining about the risk of big new controls that might end the Golden Age of SIGINT while — again — focusing almost exclusively on the wiretapping of elites (the article includes one paragraph predicting a compromise on the dragnet programs, not noting, of course, how much of the dragnet has already moved overseas).

Broad new controls, though, run the risk of overcorrecting, leaving the agency unable to respond to a future crisis, critics of the expected changes warn.

[snip]

Another change under consideration is placing a civilian in charge of the NSA for the first time after Gen. Alexander leaves next spring, as he has been planning to do. Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is advocating internally for the change, according to current and former officials. Mr. Carter declined to comment.

“We’re getting clobbered, and we want a better story to tell than: ‘It’s under review, and everybody does it,’ ” the senior administration official said, speaking of the U.S. belief that other governments routinely electronic eavesdrop on foreign leaders.

There’s one more odd part of this story. It claims that after 9/11, the NSA was pilloried for its lapses leading up to the attack.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the NSA was pilloried for missing clues of the plot. It reinvented itself as a terrorist-hunting machine, channeling its computing power to zero in on suspects any time they communicated.

That’s not what happened. The National Security establishment has repeatedly, falsely portrayed NSA’s failure to realize Khalid al-Mihdhar was calling an Al Qaeda line in Yemen and CIA’s failure to share information about Mihdhar’s travel. And none of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations address NSA (by the time of the report, the “wall” between intelligence and FBI, which otherwise would have been a recommendation, had been down for almost 3 years). But beyond that, no one has scrutinized NSA’s collections (in part because they include damning intercepts implicating the Saudis).

Moreover, the claim that this dragnet exists solely to “zero in on suspects any time they communicated” ignores the shift from terrorism to cybersecurity.

In short, while WSJ’s sources seem to be claiming catastrophe, the story they’re telling is business as usual.

Obama has fired Generals for failure to protect a single base, not to mention cheating at poker. He seems intent on keeping Alexander — at least to get through this scandal — precisely because he’s so good at cheating at (metaphorical) poker.

Shorter Rupp: We Inform Members at Briefings They Can’t Attend Because They’re Too Busy

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Since it became clear Mike Rogers had chosen not to pass on the Administration’s notice of phone dragnet problems, I’ve been wondering if he did the same with any notice about the FISA Amendments Act upstream problems.

In response to a query from Politico, Rogers and his counterpart Dutch Ruppersberger seem to suggest they did not pass on the notice.

Moreover, the House leaders who held the keys to the report did not loudly broadcast its existence to the rest of the chamber. The chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Rogers, and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, declined to say whether they even had sent a letter in 2012 informing members there had been a critical document to view. Hill sources say they don’t recall anything of the sort.

More telling still, though, is Rupp’s justification for providing briefings instead of the actual white paper.

Party leaders did hold unclassified and classified briefings on FISA, but they occurred just days before the House’s September 2012 vote to reauthorize the law. The Republican briefing, for example, occurred only two days before the House approved the FISA Amendments Act, according to an invite obtained by POLITICO. Yet nowhere in the message, sent Sept. 7, 2012, is any mention of the White House white paper on FISA oversight — the document that detailed how the agency had erred in collecting U.S. communications.

Committee leaders, though, stress they acted appropriately. “Members were notified of the contents of the white paper through the briefing,” Ruppersberger told POLITICO. “We felt that a briefing was an appropriate way to notify members of this important issue so that they would have the opportunity to get all of their questions answered immediately.”

The congressman continued: “Some members chose to take advantage of a briefing and some did not. We thought offering a briefing shortly before the vote was held would work best with members’ busy schedules and keep the issue fresh in their minds as they cast their vote.” [my emphasis]

In his explanation, Rupp explains that members have busy schedules.

And his accommodation for those busy schedules was to require members who want to be informed on issues they didn’t receive notice of adjust their busy schedule to show up at one of two briefings, rather than go to a SCIF to read a document during whatever time is most convenient for them. Indeed, I’ve heard from members that that’s part of the problem with briefings — they require people to drop all their other important issues and cater to Rogers’ and Rupp’s schedules, instead. All to learn about issues not identified in the meeting notice.

I’d add two points to the Politico piece. First, while it notes that the notice pitched the 2011 compliance problems as an example of functional oversight, there’s another problem with it. It doesn’t appear to reveal that some agency (probably FBI) already did, and the NSA newly started searching on incidentally collected US person data. Thus, it left out one of the most crucial aspects of the 2011 opinion, that it permitted the access to US person communications without a warrant.

And then a persnickety issue. Politico makes this claim.

The Washington Post first revealed that lapse in PATRIOT Act oversight in August, which at the time Rogers acknowledged “very few members” had taken advantage of any related briefing opportunities.

As the reporter admitted he knew, the WaPo did not, in fact, “first” reveal the earlier failure to pass on the notice. The WaPo reporting followed my own and the Guardian’s, as well as several other sites. The whole issue of “first” is stupid, but why use it, particularly if you know it is factually inaccurate?

NSA Bids to Expand Power Domestically to Track Chinese (!?) Terrorists

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While all sane people are trying to rein in NSA’s authority, the Gang of Four plans to use today’s parade of liars to expand NSA’s authority.

In explaining the need for this expanded authority, Dianne Feinstein and Mike Rogers claimed to the AP this is about terrorists.

The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told The Associated Press that her committee is drafting a bill that would amend the law’s Section 702 provision, which authorizes targeting non-Americans outside the U.S., to allow uninterrupted spying on a suspect for “a limited period of time after the NSA learns the target has traveled to the United States, so the government may obtain a court order based on probable cause.”

“Logically, someone under NSA surveillance, such as a terrorist, may present more interest to the government if they are inside the United States,” but the surveillance can be temporarily stopped while the NSA or FBI builds its case to permit uninterrupted spying, Feinstein said.

[snip]

“I call it the terrorist lottery loophole,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, D-Mich., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “If you can find your way from a foreign country where we have reasonable suspicion that you are … a terrorist … and get to the United States, under a current rule, they need to turn it off and do a complicated handoff” to the FBI.

But further down, Rogers make it clear that this measure is designed to address the roamer problem that was revealed in an internal NSA audit earlier this year.

“It’s a foreign phone, it’s pinging off foreign networks,” Rogers said. “The suspect may turn it off. The suspect gets here. Now all of the sudden, the next thing they know, they (the NSA) are picking it up, but it’s in Brooklyn. … But they’ve been listening to it for two days. They have to turn it off, and then report it as an incident.”

We know from that audit report that this roamer problem actually declined during the period in question (though it did rise for Section 702 authority), contrary to NSA attempts to attribute the rise in violations to it. In addition, at least at that time, the problem primarily arose from Chinese targets entering the US, not Middle Eastern terrorists (the breakdown of violations from NSA’s geographical focus areas seems to support this). Indeed, the NSA made the embarrassingly false claim that the increase (which was actually a decrease) of roaming incidents was just about Chinese New Year.

The increase [sic] in incidents reported for 1QCY12 was due to an increase in the number of reported Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) roamer1 incidents, which may be attributed to an increase in Chinese travel to visit friends and family for the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday.

So apparently we’re now beset by hordes of Chinese terrorists visiting the US for Chinese New Year we knew nothing about.

There’s one more problem with the claim that they will allow the NSA (or maybe the FBI) to track GSM phones without a warrant domestically. The Gang of Four claims the amended law would allow the NSA to continue tracking that GSM phone for “a limited period of time after the NSA learns the target has traveled to the United States.”

But the entire reason the roamer problem exists is because NSA only gets updates on location quarterly, so unless they learn about these Chinese terrorists’ travel by some content data, they don’t even know the phone is in the US. Read more →

Wyden: We Proved that “Unique” and “Vital” Information Wasn’t in 2011

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I should have some analysis on the documents James Clapper released yesterday.

But it’s worth pointing to Ron Wyden’s analysis. He notes that the two documents on bulk collection programs — one from 2009 and one from 2011, both of which covered the Internet and phone metadata programs — both boasted of how unique and valuable the information was.

The briefing documents that were provided to Congress in December 2009 and February 2011 clearly stated that both the bulk email records and bulk phone records collection programs were “unique in that they can produce intelligence not otherwise available to NSA.” The 2009 briefing document went on to state that the two programs “provide a vital capability to the Intelligence Community,” and the 2011 briefing document stated that they provided “an important capability.”

The problem is, by the end of 2011, Wyden and Mark Udall had been able to prove that the Intelligence Community had oversold the value of the Internet metadata program, which led to its termination.

Senator Mark Udall and I have long been concerned about the impact of bulk collection on Americans’ privacy and civil liberties, and we spent a significant portion of 2011 pressing the Intelligence Community to provide evidence to support the claims that they had made about the bulk email records program. They were unable to do so, and the program was shut down due to a lack of operational value, as senior intelligence officials have now publicly confirmed.

This experience demonstrated that intelligence agencies’ assessments of the usefulness of particular collection programs – even significant ones – are not always accurate.

So while the government thought these documents would prove how controlled these programs are (aspects of them don’t), Wyden demonstrates that they show the IC lies about the usefulness of programs when they talk to Congress about them.

Which is, Patrick Leahy suggested in yesterday’s hearing, what the IC appears to be doing when invoking 54 plots to justify the 215 phone dragnet, which has only been tied to 12 plots.

Which is an interesting dynamic to proceed today’s meeting between Obama, Wyden, Udall, Dianne Feinstein, Saxby Chambliss, Bob Goodlatte, James Sensenbrenner, Dutch Ruppersberger, and Mike Rogers.

The presence of Sensenbrenner is key: to the extent they still exist, he’s a mainstream Republican. And he’s furious about the 215 program that he himself shepherded through Congress in 2006. So I would assume today’s meeting is an effort to develop the White House’s plan to phase out the dragnet.

All that said, Obama has clearly gamed the results, by inviting more of the surveillance champions than he did critics (and apparently House Democrats don’t count anymore).

Obama probably won’t see this through his bubble, but the day before this meeting Wyden demonstrated that the basis for the rosy tales DiFi and the other Gang of Four members are telling are claims from the IC that have since been discredited.

House Intelligence Parrot: These Programs Are Not Secret…

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… but it’s a grave danger for you to know about them.

Bob Minehart, a staffer for Democrats (presumably Dutch Ruppersberger) on the House Intelligence Committee, has put together a pair of talking point documents for members of the House to talk about the programs revealed by the Guardian last week. (I found out Minehart is the author by checking the documents’ metadata.) The talking points largely track what James Clapper released, though with a few differences that may come from Mike Rogers which I may return to.

The talking points claim the reporting on the programs have inaccuracies.

The articles referenced above contain numerous inaccuracies that imply the United States Government is spying on Americans. That is just plain false.

But the documents include a number of claims that are meaningless, given the underlying standards involved.

The FISA Court authorizes intelligence collection only after the Intelligence Community has proven its case, based on underlying facts and investigations.

The most pathetic part of these talking points, however, is the claim that these are not secret programs. Not the Section 215 dragnet of every Americans’ call data.

There is no secret program involved here – it is strictly authorized by a U.S. statute.

And not the direct access to Internet companies data with just a 51% certainty that the data collected is foreign.

There is no secret program involved – it is strictly authorized by a U.S. statute.

But in spite of this claim that massive dragnets deceitfully denied in Congressional hearings are not secret, the PRISM-related set still warns about what grave danger the leak of the information created.

The unauthorized disclosure of information about this critical legal tool puts our national security in grave danger, puts Americans at risk of terrorist and cyber attacks, and puts our military intelligence resources in danger of being revealed to our adversaries.

These are not secret programs, Dutch Ruppersberger wants you to know. But revealing them will kill us all.

Petraeus’ Coffee

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Remember Jim’s question whether David Petraeus was withholding intelligence last year? And remember my observation that Dick Cheney’s propagandist had resuscitated Petraeus’ gripes about talking points? And remember my focus on the way the Intelligence Committees had become mere spokespeople for the Intelligence Community?

The WaPo adds to that thread. First, by pointing out that Petraeus responded to Dutch Ruppersberger’s (allegedly unsolicited) request for talking points by trying to include intelligence he hadn’t in his briefing.

“We had some new members on the committee, and we knew the press would be very aggressive on this, so we didn’t want any of them to make mistakes,” Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger III (Md.) said last week of his request in an account supported by Republican participants. “We didn’t want to jeopardize sources and methods, and we didn’t want to tip off the bad guys. That’s all.”

What Petraeus decided to do with that request is the pivotal moment in the controversy over the administration’s Benghazi talking points. It was from his initial input that all else flowed, resulting in 48 hours of intensive editing that congressional Republicans cite as evidence of a White House coverup.

A close reading of recently released government e-mails that were sent during the editing process, and interviews with senior officials from several government agencies, reveal Petraeus’s early role and ambitions in going well beyond the committee’s request, apparently to produce a set of talking points favorable to his image and his agency.

The information Petraeus ordered up when he returned to his Langley office that morning included far more than the minimalist version that Ruppersberger had requested. It included early classified intelligence assessments of who might be responsible for the attack and an account of prior CIA warnings — information that put Petraeus at odds with the State Department, the FBI and senior officials within his own agency.

And by claiming that the minimal talking points the NatSec establishment came up with didn’t meet Ruppersberger’s needs.

Morell responded with concern about whether Petraeus would approve the document, even after other agencies had signed off.

“Please run the points by the Director, then get them to HPSCI,” he wrote soon after. “I spoke to the Director earlier about State’s deep concerns about mentioning the warnings and the other work done on this, but you will want to reemphasize in your note to DCIA.”

Morell was right to be worried.

In an e-mail sent two hours later to Morell and others inside the agency, Petraeus wrote, “No mention of the cable to Cairo, either? Frankly, I’d just as soon not use this, then. . . [National Security Council] call, to be sure; however, this is certainly not what Vice Chairman Ruppersberger was hoping to get for unclas use.”

Asked about Petraeus’s warning, Ruppersberger said, “I’m not sure what he meant. I had no expectations.”

It appears, then, that Petraeus tried to use Ruppersberger’s request (which, I suspect, we’ll one day learn wasn’t all that spontaneous) as an opportunity to introduce new issues into the discussion, basically to save his own ass.

It sure looks like Petraeus was more involved in creating the opportunity for the talking points controversy than we have thus far confirmed.