In baseball, one of the most charismatic players ever was Reggie Jackson; he was a great talent, bold and his own man. Always. Jackson was known as "Mr. October" for his ability to always come through in the clutch during playoffs and the World Series. Reggie was also a bit of a self promoter, and once referred to his place on the Yankee team by saying "I’m the straw that stirs the drink".

Well, here at this blog, we have our own favorite Reggie, Judge Reggie Walton of the DC District Court who presided over the Libby trial. While Reggie Walton is by no means a self promoter, quite the polar opposite actually, he is an immensely talented judge, is bold and is his own man. And, yesterday, he stirred things up a bit. In Milwaukee to give a speech on the importance of literacy and education, reporter John Diedrich of the Journal-Sentinel caught up with Walton for a few questions.

"The president has that authority and exercised it, and that has to be respected,"
….
"The downside is there are a lot of people in America who think that justice is determined to a large degree by who you are and that what you have plays a large role in what kind of justice you receive. . . . It is crucial that the American public respect the rule of law, or people won’t follow it."
….
Walton, who said he and his family were threatened after he handed down the sentence, said the time he gave Libby was at the low end of federal sentencing guidelines.

"I believe firmly you apply the law and apply it strictly," Walton said from his chambers in Washington. "I don’t give white-collar criminals a pass."

In so many words, Judge Walton is saying that President Bush directly undermined the rule of law in this country when he erased all responsibility and accountability for Libby from his criminal conduct. Judge Walton is absolutely right. And the worst part is, that by doing so, Bush was shamelessly covering up his, and Vice-President Cheney’s, own crimes. It is important that people not be allowed to forget this concept in the whirlwind of all the other Bush/Cheney blights on our society. Judge Walton has my thanks for making these statements, give him yours.

So there I was, settling into my first pilgrimage glass of wine, when all of a sudden I see that the same folks who were in charge of planning a MI Mulligan had proposed their own compromise to seat MI’s delegation in Denver. So much for relaxing my way into vacation.

Here’s the operative part of the proposal. 

As a result, we recommend that the Michigan Democratic Party request the DNC to seat Michigan’s delegates, and that the pledged delegates be apportioned 69 to Senator Clinton and 59 to Senator Obama. That approach splits the difference between the 73/55 position of the Clinton campaign and the 64/64 position of the Obama campaign, based on our belief that both sides have fair arguments about the Michigan primary.

While we expect that neither candidate will explicitly embrace this approach, we believe that the DNC should adopt it and both candidates should accept it because it is fair and because it would resolve an impasse that with each passing day hurts our chances of carrying Michigan and winning the Presidency. We also believe that the DNC must exercise the leadership to resolve this impasse and not allow it to fester any longer. We urge you to seek the approval of the Executive Committee of the Michigan Democratic Party for this proposal and forward it promptly to the DNC for their consideration.

We also want to express our opposition to the challenge filed by DNC Member Joel Ferguson with the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee regarding Michigan’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Mr. Fergusons’s proposed remedy – seating Michigan’s so-called super-delegates with a full vote, and seating Michigan’s pledged delegates with a half vote – is unacceptable to us on two grounds. First, we cannot agree to a remedy that allows for super-delegates who didn’t run for the position to have a full vote, while pledged delegates selected by the voters have only half a vote. Second, we see no justification for seating Michigan’s delegates with anything less than full voting rights. If Michigan is punished for fighting the DNC’s decision to grant New Hampshire a waiver, it will hurt the Party’s chances of carrying Michigan in November. We will communicate these views to the Rules and Bylaws Committee and request that you ask the Executive Committee of the Michigan Democratic Party to take a similar position.

Sincerely,

Senator Carl Levin
Representative Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger
DNC Member Debbie Dingell

cc: Governor Jennifer Granholm

A couple of thoughts. First, I think it rather likely that at least one member of this committee has seen my Solomon’s Baby proposal and my petition. And most MI politicos watch Tim Skubick’s show closely, so perhaps my little tirade about elections with only one candidate on it got some notice. I don’t know whether that has influenced the Blue Ribbon committee to come up with their own proposal. But I’ll take it, in any case.

I’ll have to do the math at some point when I’m not fresh off a red-eye (actually, "fresh" is not the word for it). But numbers-wise, this works out to be close to what I proposed. There are, of course, two big differences. First, my proposal lets the candidates choose their 14 At Large delegates. I did that for two reasons: first, to incent the campaigns to take this plan. And second, to allow Obama to exercise more control over the delegate selection process, since he was uninvolved in vetting candidates in our district caucuses (and also, I’ve been told, uninvolved in the smoky-room attempts to come up with slates for the caucuses, which only worked in a few districts). This proposal states clearly that MI’s delegates would be split between Obama and Clinton, though, which is not what happened at the district caucuses. Are they suggesting we revote all the delegates?

As an aside, there may be some push to hold a revote for reasons that have nothing to do with Obama. In the aforementioned smoky-room deal-making, some attention was paid to giving UAW and other unions a seat at the table. Reportedly, however, after all sides had agreed on their slates, Hillary’s team pulled most, but not all, of the UAW names off their slate–they didn’t want anyone with divided loyalties in their delegation. Then, though the unions had selected candidates for the Uncommitted side, they only managed to get them elected in 4-5 districts (probably only about 8 of the folks the unions wanted to send got elected). So this may, also, be an attempt to give the unions another bite at the apple. I’m not sure that’s true, but it’s one possibility.

The second big difference between this proposal and mine is that this one seats the supers as supers. When the Blue Ribbon Committee says,

If Michigan is punished for fighting the DNC’s decision to grant New Hampshire a waiver, it will hurt the Party’s chances of carrying Michigan in November.

I’m not sure they’re aware of how angry people are at the Clusterfuck. Frankly, when I asked people attending a party with ties to some really important MI constituencies the other night to sign my petition, the chief draw was that it punished the super-delegates who got us into the Clusterfuck. One person said, for example, "the supers ought to be in jail."

Suffice it to say I have a different understanding of what will sour people on volunteering in the fall than the Blue Ribbon Committee does.

Also note that seating the super-delegates will probably net Hillary more delegates than this 10-point differential would. I’ve long maintained that Hillary is at least as interested in seating the supers as she is in seating the elected delegates. 

Kudos, though, to the Committee for throwing Joel Ferguson and his crappy solution under the bus. This…

First, we cannot agree to a remedy that allows for super-delegates who didn’t run for the position to have a full vote, while pledged delegates selected by the voters have only half a vote.

… is a sentiment I agree with whole-heartedly. And with the names attached to this letter rejecting Ferguson’s proposal, I consider it dead.

I still think my proposal is vastly superior, because it gives the campaigns a reason to support it (the ability to pick some delegates directly), it integrates the results of the April 19 caucuses, and it gives the rest of the country–and the DNC–the feeling that MI has been punished in some manner for breaking the rules.

So sign my petition–and send it to everyone you know in MI.

Woo hoo! I’ve barely left the country, and already we’ve got our first sacking: that of Lurita Doan.

Dear Friends and Colleagues at GSA,

Early this evening I was asked to submit my resignation, and I have just done so. It has been a great privilege to serve with all of you and to serve our nation and a great President.

The past twenty-two months have been filled with accomplishments: together, we have regained our clean audit opinion, restored fiscal discipline, re-tooled our ability to respond to emergencies, rekindled entrepreneurial energies, reduced bureaucratic barriers to small companies to get a GSA Schedule, ignited a building boom at our nation’s ports of entries, boldly led the nation in an aggressive telework initiative, and improved employee morale so that we were selected as one of the best places to work in the Federal government.

These accomplishments are made even more enjoyable by the fact that there were lots of people who told us they could never be done.

Best of luck to all of you, it has been a true honor.

The question is, why now?

As you’ll recall, almost a year ago, Scott Bloch recommended that George Bush fire Doan. Bloch had determined that Doan had violated the Hatch Act, but since Doan is was an agency head, only Bush could fire her.

And given the amount of time that has passed since then, it appears Bush didn’t think the wholesale politicization of the GSA was a firing offense (go figure).  

So if violating the Hatch Act doesn’t merit firing, what does? 

Boy, what a weird news day. Which press conference do you think will get all the coverage on the news? Obama on Wright, or Mr. Irrelevant on the economy?

I’m just about to go fetch mr. emptywheel and set off on my Haggis and Beamish pilgrimage. So I thought I’d leave you with a link to my appearance on MI’s Off the Record last week. Tim Skubick said the calls in response have been mixed–some people find this show wonderfully, um, lively. (And on that note, there’s some debate about how many times I said "pissed." Three? Six? Pissed … it’s the new bitter.) Others found it altogether too lively for PBS.

Please behave nicely for bmaz while I’m on my pilgrimage.

Now, I’m sure the RNC has better reasons to call a press conference and claim this ad is "false and defamatory" than any real belief their hysterics will keep the ad off the air. They’re almost certainly trying to blur this ad with the GOP’s own controversial ads: there’s the DCCC’s two FEC complaints–backed up by documentary evidence–that the NRCC and Freedom’s Watch are coordinating ads, and the race-baiting ad that the strangely impotent John McCain could not prevent the NC GOP from airing. In other words, the GOP is likely trying to water-down any focus on their own (in the NRCC-Freedom’s Watch case) illegal ads. Perhaps, too, they’re testing the mettle of the cable networks, to see if similar complaints will work as we get closer to the election.

But they can’t really be ignorant enough to believe that such an attack won’t attract more attention to the ad–and to McCain’s vision of a century in Iraq?

What I most like about their attack, though, is the way their argument has reduced their babbling lawyer to utter unintelligibility.

This is a complaint about the facts that are being misrepresented in the ad, and this being a deliberate falsehood, that we are saying, stations have an obligation to protect the public from airing a deliberate falsehood.

First, as the GOP must recognize well from having pioneered this kind of ad, there really aren’t facts that are being misrepresented. Consider the content:

• A questioner asks McCain: President Bush has talked about staying in Iraq for 50 years.

Now to be fair, Tony Snow tried mightily to deny the one thing everyone understood as soon as Bush started saying Iraq would be "like" Korea. That we’d be there for a "like" amount of time, 50 years. But to make the assertion that Bush wants troops in Iraq for 50 years and McCain wants them there for a century, this ad relies solely on this video showing McCain responding to a question about Bush’s 50 year statements in Derry NH. The question and answer happened–it is not an assertion, it is just a video clip.

• McCain suggests–speaking of a long-term deployment and mentioning Korea specifically–"maybe a hundred."

• 5 years, $500 billion, over 4000 dead.

Gosh–we could have been hardnosed! We didn’t even mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead.

• If all he offers is more of the same, is John McCain the right choice, is John McCain the right choice for America’s future.

In point of fact, since both McCain and Bush are referring to a Korea-model for our engagement in Iraq, his proposed policy is more of the same.

And that schmoozy hug at the end? Not a photoshop.

So, back to the RNC lawyer’s babbling: first, no "facts misrepresented in the ad." There’s really no central logical assertion at all, in fact. Rather, any argument the ad makes is just associational–implying that McCain’s willingness to keep troops stationed in Iraq for a century means more of the dollars and death lost in Iraq. And–as Max Cleland would be thrilled to explain to the RNC–that doesn’t mean the facts are misrepresented. In fact, as Max Cleland would be thrilled to explain to the RNC, this as associational claim–that McCain’s stance will lead to more ugly violence–is a heck of a lot more sound than some other associational ads that Max Cleland can think of.

Then babbling RNC lawyer tries to equate "facts misrepresented in the ad" with "deliberate falsehood." "This is a complaint about the facts that are being misrepresented in the ad, and this being a deliberate falsehood." But does he succeed? What the RNC would like you think is "this complaint asserts that the ad misrepresents the facts, which means that the ad is a deliberate falsehood." But that’s not what babbling RNC lawyer says. After all, what’s the antecedent for "this" in the second clause? The complaint? Or the assertion that facts are being misrepresented? Or "the facts that are being misrepresented"? My vote is for "the complaint." But even if "this" doesn’t refer to "the complaint," it still refers to the facts that are being misrepresented … meaning: "the facts that are being misrepresented are a deliberate falsehood." I’d buy that too, I guess.

So let’s continue.

This is a complaint about the facts that are being misrepresented in the ad, and this being a deliberate falsehood, that we are saying, stations have an obligation to protect the public from airing a deliberate falsehood.

Again, I’m sure the RNC intends to say that "this complaint asserts that the ad misrepresents the facts, which means that the ad is a deliberate falsehood which the stations have an obligation to protect the public from seeing." But boy, with that babbling, you wouldn’t know it. "This complaint about the facts [passive construction hiding the agent misrepresenting], [run-on and unclear antecedent making it unclear what is the misrepresentation], [huh? phatic?], stations have an obligation to protect the public from airing a deliberate falsehood."

Perhaps I’m over-reading. But I would advise cable stations not to report on the GOP complaint. Because the babbling RNC lawyer believes stations should not report on deliberate falsehoods.

As you’ll recall from the Plame case, Michael Isikoff helped Karl Rove stay out of jail in at least three ways:

• After the WaPo published the damaging 1X2X6 article, Isikoff published an article appearing to–but not entirely–refuting it (Isikoff tried again in Hubris, claiming that the 1X2X6 story only got printed due to an editorial error, an attempt that Swopa quickly shredded).
• When he called Luskin for comment on the fact that Rove was Matt Cooper’s source for Plame’s identity, Isikoff (by his own admission) read Luskin the entire email from Cooper to his editor, alerting Rove’s lawyer to everything that appeared in one of the main pieces of documentary evidence that incriminated Rove.
• Just before the inquiry, Rove someone at the White House prodded Isikoff to ask Woodward about his "bombshell," probably forcing Woodward to come clean that Armitage had leaked Plame’s identity to him in June 2003, thereby ruining what little value Armitage would have had in a perjury case against Rove.

Laundering information through journalists is a common Rove tactic. For example, someone conveniently launched a false campaign insinuating Ari Fleischer was one of the Novak’s for Plame’s identity; by coincidence (ha!) that campaign was launched the day that Luskin attempted to manage the revelation that Rove was one of Novak’s sources. Even going way back to his days in Texas Rove laundered leaks through the press to attack Jim Hightower and Ronnie Earle.

But in recent years–certainly during the CIA Leak case–Isikoff has been one of Rove’s key information conduits.

In the last couple of months, Rove seems to have been attempting–with no apparent success–to goad reporters covering the Siegelman case to serve as similar information conduits. His surrogates in the AL GOP tried to demand information from CBS and MSNBC about what evidence there is implicating Karl, all while refusing to give up their own information. More recently, Rove has launched a pissing contest with Dan Abrams, attacking Abrams’ journalism, apparently in an attempt to force him to reveal information about evidence against him. Yet with Rove out of the White House, his ability to use journalists to his own ends seems to have diminished.

Except, perhaps, with Isikoff.

The other day, I noted that the news that the revelation of Bob Kjellander’s discussions about firing Patrick Fitzgerald with Rove was an unsurprising move from Fitzgerald. By introducing it in court, it made the information publicly available for others–like John Conyers–to use it for other purposes.

Fitzgerald’s office (though not Fitzgerald personally) has just said to John Conyers, "Hey, I see you’re still looking into politicized prosecutions. Well, here’s a witness who can testify that a Rove crony was working with Rove to get Fitzgerald fired–just before Fitzgerald almost got fired." This adds another witness–like Dana Jill Simpson–who is willing to testify that Rove got personally involved in prosecutions affecting his political allies. But it also brings someone from the requesting side to the fore–someone who (unlike the GOP cronies in Washington who got John McKay fired and unlike the GOP cronies in NM who got Iglesias fired) is apparently willing (and presumably has already signed an affidavit to the effect) to testify that Karl Rove entertained these demands for firing seriously. Conyers will, undoubtedly, take a few days to respond (he’s not so quick as Henry Waxman), but I imagine he will respond.

Sure enough, Isikoff reports today that Conyers is going to follow up on the tidbit coming out of the Rezko trial.

The House Judiciary Committee "intends to investigate the facts and circumstances alleged in this testimony," panel chairman Rep. John Conyers of Michigan said in a statement to NEWSWEEK.

Yup, Conyers was right on schedule with his three-days-longer-than-it-takes-Waxman schedule. Since all of this is so unsurprising, let me add another completely predictable detail. Isikoff includes in his story a description of precisely the kind of evidence Ata has against Rove.

A source familiar with Ata’s testimony (who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters) said that Ata was meeting regularly with Rezko that fall. The two men shared a concern about Fitzgerald’s ongoing probe of Illinois public officials. In one of those conversations, the developer allegedly told Ata that Bob Kjellander, a prominent GOP state lobbyist, was talking to Rove about getting rid of Fitzgerald. The reason: to "get a new U.S. attorney" who would not pursue the Illinois corruption probe, the source said. Ata, who has pleaded guilty to corruption-related charges and is now cooperating with the Feds, has no evidence that the conversation took place other than what Rezko allegedly told him, the source says.

I swear, somewhere on Isikoff’s computer there’s a file called "KeepRoveOutOfThePokey.dot." It reads something like this:

A source familiar with [insert name of witness against Rove in the current scandal]’s testimony (who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters) said that [insert summary of witness testimony]. [insert all details described in any legal documents; when possible, quote the pertinent phrases verbatim]. [insert clear description of whether or not witness has any direct evidence that implicates Rove].

I mean, Isikoff must have a template for this stuff, right? Otherwise, how would he be able to replicate these helpful leaks so precisely time and time again?

One more thing. I wonder why Isikoff quoted that bit from Conyers: "intends to investigate the facts and circumstances alleged in this testimony"? Was Isikoff probing for more specific information there, too, such as whether Conyers already had some kind of evidence from Ata, or whether Conyers planned to bring Ata to testify?

Update: very very basic grammar fixed per danps.

(While I have been trying to find a resolution to MI’s DNC delegation in the last few days, the Admin put on their nukes in Syria dog and pony show. Partly because I didn’t have the time to do the Syria presentation justice, and partly because Professor Foland–whom you know from his great comments–has a lot more expertise on this area than I, I asked him to do a post assessing the presentation. Thanks for the really informative post, Prof! -ew)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the course of this Administration, it’s that if Dana Perino one day announces that the sky is blue, I will be forced to assume that an alien invasion has commenced with the total ionization of Earth’s upper atmosphere.

With that in mind, there’s an awful lot of cognitive dissonance for me in analyzing the evidence on the raid (apparently named "Operation Orchard" by the Israelis) on a Syrian desert site (apparently named "Al-Kibar"). Having started my own blog motivated by "the incredible amount of lies & hyperbole on the Iran situation of early 2006", I don’t find it easy to accept anything this Administration puts forth as evidence. I’m having all this difficulty because the pictures they showed last Thursday are clearly pictures of a nuclear reactor.

In what follows, I will lay out the history of what we’ve known about Operation Orchard and al-Kibar, what the latest photographs show, and what questions we should probably be asking.

A little bit about what I know. My training is in the experimental science of particle and nuclear physics; post-moniker-choice I left academia for more recent experience in applied device engineering in the field. This means I am not a detailed expert on the engineering design of nuclear reactors or weapons, but I do have basic familiarity with the field. I’m not an image analyst, so I’m not going to comment very much on whether the shadows in the pictures all line up the way they should. (Of course, if something very technically wrong appeared in the pictures, I’d certainly be posting "zOMG those aren’t dilithium crystals!".)

It should also be said that any sort of technical look at the images and videos presupposes that the images are what they are purported to be–taken on the ground at the site in Syria. I’ll return to the question towards the end; but in the meantime, for the sake of argument the provenance is granted.

Finally, I’m trying to be careful to distinguish evidence that is conclusive from evidence or reasoning that is suggestive or even powerful. I do have an opinion on whether this was part of a weapons program; but I don’t feel my opinion was compelled by the available evidence.

What We Knew Before Thursday

1. Israeli jets flew over Syria on Sept. 6 ("Operation Orchard")
2. Syria lodged no particularly strong protests
3. No radioactivity was released as a result of the overflight (I could find no news stories to this effect–but that’s precisely the point. Within a few hours of Chernobyl, radioactivity readings were going nuts in Europe.)
4. There was a 47 meter x 47 meter x 24 meter structure ("Box on the Euphrates") erected a few hundred meters from the Euphrates River at 35d42m28s(N), 39d49m59s(E).
5. This structure was destroyed between August and October
6. A new building, 60 meters x60 meters x 15 meters was erected on top of the old site between October and January
7. An apparent water-treatment facility 5 km to the northeast was built prior to August, and connected by pipe to the rebuilt site after October
8. American intelligence had noticed the buildup at the site in 2003 but did not conclude it was threatening.
9. American officials were exchanging intelligence with Israel in advance of the Sept. 6 strike

Note I’m trying here to be as precise as possible about what was known. For instance, it’s pretty clear that 1,4, and 5, taken together, add up to "Israeli jets destroyed the structure." But the site coordinates given here were (highly informed and ultimately correct) speculation on the part of the folks at the independent institute ISIS, who spent many hours in the yeoman’s work of poring over 2000 square kilometers of satellite images to find the likely site of (4). Neither the US, Israel, nor Syria ever provided or confirmed the location of the site before Thursday.

I’m being careful about this because for a while there was considerable confusion about the location of the strike. There are two other largish buildings and an airfield in the vicinity; and there have been reports that the Israeli jets also overflew Turkish airspace. (According to Defensetech, the Turkish border is where Syrian air defenses were weaker, and Israeli jets chose to enter Syrian airspace there.) There were early reports of a strike on an agricultural phosphorus facility or even a port facility; and even speculation that the raid had strick nothing or had failed in its mission.

What The Video Shows

The CIA briefing video now clearly confirms the ISIS location; the imagery there is of the same canyon. The "Box on the Euphrates" is in fact "Al-Kibar". The animated video segments are virtual reality; they are relatively accurate concerning the local geography (a canyon off of the Euphrates) and size of the building, but they are a model and should not be taken as primary evidence in any way.

Here was the question posed in the comments at armscontrolwonk back on October 26, 2007:

Finally, let’s assume for a minute that there was a large , round, reinforced concrete cylinder inside that building. Are there any alternatives for such a facility besides a reactor?

Nobody produced an alternative. Note that the pressures on the interior of the reactor vessel are equivalent to a water depth of about 400 m.

There are four significant stills, all purported to be taken at the Syrian site:

1. A degraded satellite photo taken soon after the raid showing a large circular structure in the center of the building
2. A still taken during construction, outside and under tarps, of components of what appear to be a steel reactor pressure vessel for a reactor
3. A still taken from inside the main building, showing the rebar structure of a large cylindrical tank. nb swimming pools are made with a single layer of rebar, and even diving wells are only 5 m deep
4. A still taken from inside the main building, showing the rod heads. (Note: the height of the facility must include sufficient headroom for removal of fuel rods and control rods).

Taken together and granting provenance, to me these stills are conclusory: that’s what a nuclear reactor looks like. Alternatives must provide a good engineering reason to have a cylindrical multiply-ported steel-lined concrete vessel, at least 16" thick and 5m deep, quadruply reinforced with rebar, topped by a geometrically regular pattern of rod ports.

Some Other Notables from the Video

• A satellite picture showing early structure stages which were later covered by a "curtain wall" that gave rise to the final Box-on-the-Euphrates shape
• A ground-level photo showing the "inside building" under the curtain wall, looking much like Yongbyon
• A picture showing two people standing for a picture, one of whom also attended US-North Korean Nuclear Talks. Did you hear Mohammed Atta met Czech intelligence?

What We Can Reasonably Assume

If the provenance is granted, then it is safe to assume that the Syrians were building, but not yet operating, a nuclear reactor capable of plutonium production at the site of the Box on the Euphrates, and that they have rebuilt a second structure atop the destroyed remains of that reactor. It is safe to assume no radiological traces will be present to damn the Syrians. One may safely assume that absent extremely intrusive IAEA inspections (which I suspect are unlikely), the reactor core components will never be physically recovered. The reactor components are broadly consistent with being a magnox reactor similar to such reactors built by the UK, France, and North Korea. One may also assume that US officials made no substantial attempt to dissuade the Israelis from the strike.

Is It A Weapons Program?

So, with the provenance caveat, this was a nuclear program. Was it a research program, an energy program, or a weapons program? The evidence we have to date is that the reactor could have served any of the purposes–remember, it may not have been complete. Magnox designs have in the past been used to produce weaponizable plutonium. They have also been used for research, and for power. Nothing in the presented evidence is conclusive to me, one way or another.

There does not seem to be any hint so far of a plutonium reprocessing facility. If the intent is to produce plutonium, the uranium fuel rods, after being in the reactor for some time, must be removed. Some of the uranium will have transmuted into plutonium. The rods need to be dissolved, the plutonium removed, then the untransmuted uranium recovered for reinstallation into the reactor. No building has been identified that might serve as a reprocessing center. Magnox reactors in particular have some special problems, so that reprocessing facilities tend to be located nearby.

The CIA’s Three Conclusions

The CIA video begins and ends with three "key conclusions." The conclusions are in italics, followed by my take.

Syria was building a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor that was nearing operational capability in August 2007. The reactor would have been capapble of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, was not configured to produce electricity, and was ill-suited for research.

If you grant the photo provenance, the construction of a nuclear facility is very well attested by the evidence presented, and certainly consistent with magnox. Magnox designs are gas-cooled and graphite-moderated. I don’t know enough to say conclusively that it is consistent solely with a magnox design. The operational capability in August 2007 is a reasonable inference if the only purpose was for plutonium production, but is not specifically attested to by any presented evidence. The facility would have been capable of producing plutonium for a weapon. No evidence presented leapt out to me as "ill-suited for research". The electrical-configuration question is attested by an apparent lack of local power lines, but logically this may be related to the operational capability question. (i.e. perhaps it was an unfinished facility.) Note that the briefing does not present a conclusion that this was for a weapons program–because there’s no evidence on that question one way or the other.

The reactor was destroyed in early September 2007 before it was loaded with nuclear fuel or operated

That the site was destroyed before nuclear reactions were initiated is well-attested in the public evidence.

We are convinced, based on a variety of information, that North Korea assisted Syria’s covert nuclear activities,both before and after the reactor was destroyed. Only North Korea has built this type of reactor in the past 35 years.

I find this conclusion very weak; nothing presented made this seem any stronger than a simple assertion. It was asserted that there is considerable evidence; none was presented. The North Korean Yongbyon complex is said to be the precursor design for the Syrian al-Kibar reactor. The statement "only North Korea has built this type of reactor in the last 35 years" is a little bit misleading; the time period of 35 years was chosen because 40 years ago the UK built them. In fact the North Korean Yongbyon design is actually copied in turn from a British design (specifically, Calder Hall). The UK still operates several of this magnox design even today. A country with little technical ability and scant resources will find much to like in the magnox design: it requires unenriched uranium, low input power, modest technical requirements (mainly in graphite purification), and relative ease of operation. The design is also very thoroughly described in the literature, being relatively obsolete. Finally, as Cheryl Rofer has noted, the detailed design of the control rod and fuel rod ports is actually different in the photos of al-Kibar than in existing photos of the 25 MWt reactor at Yongbyon.

Provenance

If the pictures are of the site, then Syria was building an undeclared nuclear facility. So–were they of the site?

Now we’re in the world of shadows, angles, oblique transformations, Photoshop, etc. I can’t tell you the answer.

I’ll just make a few observations on the subject:

• A number of colleagues have expressed a surprising level of skepticism concerning the provenance. Not specific "for reasons X and Y I think these photos were taken somewhere else", but basic variants of "you’ve seen how these people operate, why should we believe these photos are real?" This was surprising even to yours truly, who thinks Dana Perino would lie about meteorology.
• A scientific experiment that is gunning for a big result generally leaves a trail of less remarkable results first, which establish that the experiment is capable of measuring other things that it ought to be able to measure and which have been previously established. That’s because scientists expect others to be very skeptical–so they build in a reinforcing chain, back to what’s already known, in their arguments from the beginning. In the case at hand, knowing there would be skepticism about the provenance (especially given the history), if I’d been the briefing officer, what would I have done? I would have found and presented a series of photographs that put together a traceable chain of features from the local terrain down into the reactor core. That’s because the local terrain is easily independently verified, by commercial satellites and even Russian/Chinese satellites. One way (but not the only way) would be to have a series of photographs from outside, in the door, along the halls, into the main hall. They claim to have a very large volume of photographs of which only a few are shown. It troubles me nobody thought it important to put together that chain, because it would have reduced the space of skepticism to "it’s a photoshop world". Instead, there are only a few photos, all tightly cropped. (Source protection seems inane here. The steel liner image, and the interior rebar image, can already likely be dated to within a week or so by the relevant Syrian authorities.)
• To me, the difference wrt the Powell Iraq presentation, is that in that case, a lot of inconclusive images were shown as "illustrations" to go along with bald assertions about what unshown intelligence concluded. Here, the conclusions can be drawn directly from the photos–to the extent they are genuine.
• The satellite still photo, described as still photo #1 in "What the Video Shows", is particularly key to the provenance. I’m willing to bet that airspace (spacespace?) over the al-Kabir sight was crowded with reconnaissance satellites for several weeks after the strike. If the satellite image were flatly inconsistent with, say, Russian images, I imagine the Russians would take great joy in exposing an American forgery.
• The use of a forgery in making a case for WMD’s is not unknown in this administration.

And with those, pass along an observation from a colleague:

We’re outsourcing our intelligence-gathering to agencies (e.g., the Israeli government) that clearly have an institutional bias, so we cannot be certain of whether the raw intelligence can be trusted or not. It’s bad enough that we cherry-picked intelligence to go to war in Iraq, but we’re at risk here of having those cherries picked by others and delivered to us…

There are some convincing satellite images of the cylindrical vessel, and there is generally wide availability of third-party satellite images that could likely falsify what’s shown. So given the lack of specific contrary evidence, and despite significant reservations, if you put a gun to my head and said I had to pick, on "preponderance of evidence" I’d go with a genuine provenance. It’s not even close to "beyond a reasonable doubt".

IAEA, NPT, and the UN

One of the many tragedies of the Iraq war is that the formation of UNMOVIC in the run-up seemed like a possible model for a more intrusive anti-proliferation regime. Could it have provided a path to a more effective set of additional protocols to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)? We’ll never know.

Mohammed El-Baradei has censured the US and Israel for providing their information only now at such a late date. (Please note, he has not censured them for the truth or falisty of the information.) The IAEA can only barely demand access now to the site; Syria is not going to grant access; and even with access, the relevant evidence has been demolished and buried under a building. Had IAEA been notified instead of scrambling the F-16’s, the IAEA might have had a chance to prove its relevance. And a successful proof of relevance would have been good for the world, thought perhaps not for UN-haters centered in Washington, DC. (In fairness, one should also weight that with the possibility of an unsuccessful proof of relevance…)

In the comments on Friday, klynn provided a nice timeline of UN and IAEA related actions since the strike.

The US administration, having been pre-warned by the Israelis, made a policy choice not to notify the IAEA. One can speculate why, but really it’s incumbent upon the administration to explain to Americans why they made that choice.

Rhetorical Links to Iran

I feel confident that we are going to be hearing a lot more of this sort of thing (Adm. Mike Mullen):

It should serve as a reminder to us all of the very real dangers of proliferation and need to rededicate ourselves to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, particularly into the hands of a state or a group with terrorist connections.

In case that was too subtle for you, the SAO at the CIA press briefing was a little less coy in spelling it out:

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:With respect to Iran, the Syrian episode reminds us of the ability of states to obtain nuclear capability covertly and how destabilizing the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East would be.

(Emphasis mine.) Iran was also mentioned in this briefing as "potentially interrelated", "the same kind of cooperation between North Korea and Iran", and "But is there something going on there that resembles this program that we we’re talking about in Syrian, in Iran?" It would be irresponsible not to speculate, don’t you think?

In the same Syria briefing, Iran also was mentioned in the context of the declassified NIE:

But our unfortunate choice of words in our NIE caused you all in the press to misrepresent what we were trying to explain. Three parts of the program; they halted one narrow piece of it, which was a secret program – weapons-head design. They continue with fissile material; they continue with ballistic missile systems for delivery. So we don’t know where it is at the moment.

(Emphasis mine.) This made me nearly choke on my breakfast. Are they really using this Syria episode to retract the crystal-clear statements in the Iran NIE?

Steinn Sigurdsson at Catdynamics has some thoughts on what the Israeli willingness to strike al-Kibar might signal for the upcoming planned turn-on of the Iranian Arak facility.

Learning More

The original source for much of the information about the al-Kibar site has been the Institute for Science and International Security. There has also been very credible analysis by the posters and commenters at armscontrolwonk, and in a series of posts by Cheryl Rofer at whirledview. There have also been some very interesting threads at moonofalabama, but I simply have not followed the commentary there long enough to have any idea how reliable it is relative to the others I know well. The Federation of American Scientists has a 735-page tome of pretty much every press report, image, satellite photo, or commentary that has related to the al-Kibar site. The FAS is an outstanding site in general for technical security information. Globalsecurity provided a very complete and credible analysis back in November. And I provide occasional commentary on matters nuclear at my own place, nuclearmangos.

Summing Up

The CIA has published pictures that clearly show interior, unplaceable shots of the steel and reinforced concrete components of a nuclear reactor pressure vessel, an interior and unplaceable shot of a nearly completed reactor core, and a placeable satellite image of the damaged al-Kibar structure showing a large round structure in the center of the building. To me it is not conclusive, but more likely than not, that the provenance is genuine and the images indeed show an undeclared nuclear facility at the Syrian site of al-Kibar.

Questions We Need To Be Asking

The nuclear situation in the Middle East is going to get more complicated as a result of actions on all sides of this–Syrian, American, and Israeli. American servicemen and women most of all, but all of us ultimately, will surely in the coming months be bearing greater risks than we did before.

• We deserve an answer to why American policy makers made the policy choice to pursue this through means other than the IAEA.
• We deserve an answer to the question what impact bypassing and undermining the IAEA was was expected to have in our difficult situation with respect to Iran.
• Reporters need to be asking "pull on the thread" type questions, even where there’s no specific reason for doubt. Some of this went on in the CIA briefing (i.e. "were American capabilities involved in the Sept. 6 raid?") but reading the transcript you can practically hear the reporters turning to one another and saying, "These are not the droids we are looking for."
• We deserve an answer to the question of what national technical means of verification the US can make available to the IAEA to settle the question once and for all should access to the site be gained.
• We deserve to know how, why, and when the first agnostic American assessment of the nature of the site was changed to an assessment that it was a nuclear reactor.
• And finally, we deserve better than having to guess whether these images have an indisputable provenance. Given what’s at stake, and the history of our village with wolves, this administration owes it to us to prove it.

I’m fascinated by this op-ed by David Rivkind and Lee Casey, arguing that we’re all beating up on poor little John Yoo because we believe international law should trump US law.

In truth, the critics’ fundamental complaint is that the Bush administration’s lawyers measured international law against the U.S. Constitution and domestic statutes. They interpreted the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Convention forbidding torture, and customary international law, in ways that were often at odds with the prevailing view of international law professors and various activist groups. In doing so, however, they did no more than assert the right of this nation – as is the right of any sovereign nation – to interpret its own international obligations.

[snip]

That is why these administration attorneys have become the particular subjects of attack.

The central thrust of the op-ed is, of course, one giant shiny object. The role of international law has absolutely nothing to do with calls for Yoo to be held liable for his egregious opinions authorizing torture and warrantless wiretap. As I have pointed out, Looseheadprop has pointed out, and apparently Jack Goldsmith and other lawyers have pointed out, the problem was rather that Yoo ignored the key precedent in US law when he formulated his opinions. From Lichtblau’s book:

When Goldsmith and other Justice Department lawyers dusted off the early legal opinions on the NSA program, they were shocked to find that Yoo had not even factored into his legal analysis a seminal Supreme Court precedent on presidential power: the Youngstown steel case.

If I, a non-lawyer, can poke giant holes in Yoo’s legal opinions with a 30 second PDF search, then those opinions should clearly not be relied upon as valid. The question, though, is why the opinions were so shoddy: deliberate intent or incompetence? Using Rivkin and Casey’s assertion that Yoo is one of "the country’s finest legal minds," I have to conclude that the opinions are so shitty because Yoo could only authorize the things he did by ignoring US law–and that his effort to sidestep US law was indeed, an ethically and perhaps legally problematic act. The fact that Jack Goldsmith agrees with me about the shoddiness of these opinions–someone who fully agrees with Yoo about the appropriate role of international law in the US–proves that our complaints have nothing to do with international law.

So Rivkind and Casey are clearly trying to misrepresent to the WSJ’s readers what’s at issue here. They’re trying to distract from the fundamental shoddiness of Yoo’s (and others’) opinions.

Why? And why now?

I would assume that Rivkind and Casey–the Bush Administration’s primary legal apologists for the Administration’s abuses of power–have been sent out to start muddying the issues surrounding the legal opinions underlying the key actions in the Bush GWOT. That is, I would assume this op-ed reflects a real concern on the part of the Administration that the debate over the role of lawyers justifying their legally suspect programs is about to become more politically charged. And the fact that Rivkind and Casey published in the WSJ suggests the Administration is even worried about the public opinion of the WSJ’s conservative readers.

I can’t help but think of something that Scott Horton wrote shortly before he hung up his blogging keyboard (but which I can’t seem to find this morning Update: thanks to William Ockham for finding the link): the role that Yoo and Haynes and others came to play in our regime of torture may be about to break open in a public way.

In response to this “legal uprising,” David Addington and Alberto Gonzales decided to task John Yoo to prepare memoranda. These memoranda were commissioned with two purposes in mind. First, to protect the policymakers who had authorized torture techniques from future criminal liability (something which Gonzales had identified as early as January 2002 as a serious prospect). And second, to wield the Attorney General’s opinion powers to silence lawyers who had correctly evaluated the legal framework.

Both of these purposes were wrongful, and inconsistent with the proper use of the Attorney General’s opinion power. Criminal investigators may well conclude that this act joined John Yoo in a joint criminal enterprise with the persons who devised and pushed implementation of the torture policies.

Indeed, this is not entirely a speculative matter. We will shortly learn in the mass media that some prosecutors have already reached that conclusion and that the preparation of a criminal case is underway.

If they’re already sending Rivkin and Casey out to confuse the issues, I suspect the Administration is rather worried about what’s to come.

Via mediabistro. 

I will be departing on Tuesday for a one-week pilgrimage in search of Haggis and Beamish.

Use this thread to predict what major event will happen while I’m dancing with my husband in his kilt.

POGO has a review of the Senate bill passed Wednesday that will strengthen the independence of the nation’s Inspectors Generals. As it describes, John Kyl was able to water down some of the key provisions of the bill, but it does make some improvements. As someone who has struggled to find IG reports buried in DHS’ and DOD’s websites, for example, I’m particularly fond of this one:

All IG websites must be clearly and directly accessible from their agencies’ home pages, and IG reports must be posted within 3 working days of release.

No longer can agencies hide bad news by making the IG reports inaccessible.

I’m particularly intrigued, however, by one of the provisions that Kyl struck from the bill–a move to give DOJ’s IG authority to investigate the lawyers at DOJ.

Finally, Kyl’s amendment did away with Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine’s most cherished desire: that he be granted authority to investigate Justice lawyers accused of engaging in professional misconduct. Such allegations–as distinct from questions of fraud or abuse–are currently handled by the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), and Kyl, in a masterpiece of faint praise, announced that "there is no evidence that this Office’s reviews are anything less than adequate."

I’ve done posts on this here and here. The issue is important because, when Alberto Gonzales was attempting to spike any real investigation into the OLC authorization of the warrantless wiretap program and of the USA purge, he attempted to give OPR–and not OIG–the exclusive investigative authority. Recently, too, OIG had to refuse to investigate Yoo’s torture memos because it doesn’t have the mandate to conduct such investigations. As Glenn Fine explained the problem in testimony before the Senate:

Unlike all other OIGs throughout the federal government who can investigate misconduct within their entire agencies, the DOJ OIG does not have complete jurisdiction throughout the DOJ. Rather, the DOJ OIG can investigate misconduct throughout DOJ with one notable exception: the OIG does not have the authority to investigate allegations against DOJ attorneys acting in their capacity as lawyers – litigating, investigating, and providing legal advice – including such allegations against the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, and other senior Department lawyers. Instead, the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has been assigned jurisdiction to investigate such allegations.

Effectively, in all other agencies, the agency lawyer can be investigated by the agency’s OIG. But in DOJ–where the lawyers are inventing specious justifications for torture and domestic surveillance–they are protected from such an investigation. And John Kyl wants it to stay that way.

One more note. The bill also requires that each OIG relies on the advice of an independent legal counsel, rather than the General Counsel of that agency. But John Kyl limited that provision, too.

Sen. Kyl also clarified that although IGs must seek advice from their own counsel, the agency’s general counsel will remain the chief legal authority within the agency.

Consider what this means for the OIG investigation of CIA’s interrogation methods, in which the John Helgerson determined that the interrogation methods used by the CIA amounted to cruel and in humane treatment. Once this bill becomes law, Helgerson will still be able to consult his own lawyers on the meaning of torture. But if CIA’s General Counsel says that cruel and inhumane treatment isn’t torture (relying, as it happened in fact, on an opinion written by a lawyer at DOJ’s OLC, the process of which could not be investigated by the independent DOJ OIG), then the CIA’s General Counsel’s view holds sway.

See how Kyl’s rollbacks work? The John Yoos and Steven Bradburys of the world remain immune from independent oversight at DOJ. And they can write opinions that the General Counsels of other agencies can use to tell their own IGs to fuck off.