As a long time Obama supporter I was appalled when he appointed Larry Summers to his finance post last month. Since them I have had to watch in horror as Obama has put in a whole slew of centrists, Clintonistas and holdover from the Bush junta. It’s one thing to be bipartisan and reach across the isle to your rivals—it’s another to completely sell out and appoint foxes to guard the henhouse. I fear Obama has done the later.

I am more than a little surprised at the lack of outrage here at the possibility of Hayden's continuation. Yes, it is just a rumor, and not as likely as earlier ones, but this is Hayden we are discussing! For me, his appointment in the middle of 2006 was the final act in bringing the CIA over to Uncle Dick's side. How could one possibly keep such a person on? The symbolism alone is enough to destroy any promise of change, never mind what he might actually do. He is not someone Obama can control, or even exert any influence over at all if he "appoints" him in this way.

If this turns out to be true, I would have to reassess my evaluation of the PE's intelligence. This appointment would just be a disaster for him, kind of like branding an upper case "W" on his cheek.

If Barack Obama picks someone (possibly Hayden, who defended waterboarding in front of the Senate under oath) who just might be liable in a criminal prosecution. As follows: If the Obama Administration wants to project a firm stance against torture to the world, they must vote that way in the Security Council. So if, say, a Muslim country like Libya or Bourkina Faso tables a motion to remand the U.S. behavior to the ICC, then either a yes vote or an abstention by the U.S. sends the investigation to the ICC with rights to indict and issue arrest warrants. A no vote takes a strong stand in favor of protecting torturers, making his administration into international hypocrites. If, among those investigated, the ICC were to demand information on a currently serving member of the Obama Administration, then what happens?

A similar scenario happens if the Afghans elect anyone less tolerant of U.S. practices, since they can also give the ICC jurisdiction to prosecute. (Anyone interested in what gives them jurisdiction, the short answer is here:

http://humanityagainstcrimes.blogspot.com/2008/11/response-from-international-criminal.html )

I would think the Obama team have a vested interest in somebody squeaky clean.

The WSJ explains the FISA problem in the WSJ's typical honest, fact-based, and calmly reasoned way.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122809496589168013.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

DECEMBER 1, 2008
Let's Move Intelligence Out of the 1970s
By L. GORDON CROVITZ

[...] In the 1970s, when FISA first limited executive-branch discretion on surveillance, eavesdropping meant listening in on known people who used land-line telephones for point-to-point calls or sent telexes to known addresses. The wiretap laws thus focus on known terrorists when the real challenge is to discover them. FISA, as Judge Richard Posner says, "requires that surveillance be conducted pursuant to warrants based on probable cause to believe that the target of surveillance is a terrorist, when the desperate need is to find out who is a terrorist." [...] it's absurd that preventing domestic terrorism is still regulated as if technology had stood still for the past several decades.

- - Gordon Crovitz is [...] former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, executive vice president of Dow Jones [...] Earlier in his career, Gordon wrote the "Rule of Law" column for the Journal [...] He graduated from the University of Chicago and has law degrees from Wadham College, Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes scholar, and Yale Law School.

* * * * *

That was a week ago.

And today, covering most of the (dead tree) WSJ's editorial page:

* * * * *

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122869749565086829.html

DECEMBER 8, 2008
Ray Kelly's Wiretap Alarm
New York's police chief v. the lawyers on antiterror warrants

[...] the anti-antiterror lobby has exploited that complacency to assail and constrain critical Bush Administration intelligence programs, making it harder to intercept terrorists before they strike. As a consequence innocent Americans may be killed.

[...] NYC Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly [...] says that Justice's FISA policies are "unduly constraining" his high-priority "international terrorism investigations in the greater New York area."

Two city applications for electronic surveillance, one in June and the other in September, got quashed -- not by the FISA court, but by Justice's own legal team. As a municipal outfit, the police intelligence division cannot appeal directly to the special FISA panel of rotating judges but must instead work through DOJ. Both cases are classified.

Mr. Kelly was furious and let Mr. Mukasey know it in a searing critique. [...]

The real problem is FISA itself.

The Attorney General is only allowed to pursue threats up to certain legalistic edges [...] FISA was passed before the advent of disposable cell phones, encrypted emails and high-speed fiber optic networks. [...] What Democrats have done, in essence, is to insert an unelected judiciary into the wartime chain of command. [...] Ray Kelly is warning that it can still happen here, and that it is more likely to happen if we let lawyers make decisions that our chief security officials should make.

- - Editorial, Wall Street Journal, Monday, December 8, 2008

This is really the point, I think. Nowhere is it written that events have to align themselves to our elections.

We're up to our asses in two wars and facing down a global depression and financial meltdown. By all accounts, al Qaeda has certainly regrouped. Changes in administrations are big windows of vulnerability, as everyone will recall.

Obama has no choice but to get things done. Many big things. At the same time. Fundamental, crucial shit.

The people he needs are insiders. People everyone knows, people everyone can work with, people who can get shit done. They won't all pass ideological muster on the left. But guys like Gates are if, nothing else, 'good soldiers'. If they can't follow new orders and rules, I believe they'd resign. They don't have to stay.

I understand both the objections and their counterarguments. It's not a cause for outrage, I don't think.

Some continuity at Defense and Intelligence could be warranted by so many factors that it seems almost silly to be surprised by it.