Department of Self Awareness Department

From today's report from the Department of Self-Awareness Department, Stephen Hayes, on why captured Iraqi documents haven't been released to the public:

The main worry, says DiRita, is that the mainstream press might cherry-pick documents and mischaracterize their meaning. "There is always the concern that people would be chasing a lot of information good or bad, and when the Times or the Post splashes a headline about some sensational-sounding document that would seem to 'prove' that sanctions were working, or that Saddam was just a misunderstood patriot, or some other nonsense, we'd spend a lot of time chasing around after it."

This is a view many officials attributed to Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Steve Cambone.

Yes, Steve Cambone was worried about cherry-picking of documents to mischaracterize their meaning.   You could see how that might be a problem Steve Cambone would be familiar with, you know what I'm saying? 

It's clearly a legitimate fear.  If those documents were made public, you might start seeing articles like this:

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq....The photographs and documents on Iraqi training camps come from a collection of some 2 million "exploitable items" captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan.

And nobody would want to see journalists cherry picking a few documents out of 2 million "exploitable items" in order to create a misleading impression, now, would they?

To be serious for a moment, I actually agree with Bill Kristol on this:

Let us--all of us--read the mass of documents captured after the fall of the Saddam regime. Stephen Hayes's reporting, including his article in this issue, suggests to us that these documents would confirm the argument for a terror connection. But let everyone make up his own mind, based on his own reading of the documents.

So: The U.S. government should release the documents. It should authenticate documents where  possible, and then release them promptly, as they are authenticated. Or, if that is too onerous a process--and lots of time has already gone a-wasting--it should simply release all the documents, perhaps with whatever is known about their provenance and likely authenticity, and let news organizations, experts, and others make their own judgments.

Of course, they're in Arabic, so translation issues arise.  But overall, that would be great. 

I don't think Kristol is really serious -   he pretends to think that this would support Hayes's reporting about links between Iraq and al-Qaeda because it makes a nice rhetorical point and makes that reporting seem stronger than it really is.  What I think he and Hayes really want is privileged access to a nice, steady stream of carefully selected documents which bolster their case:  as long as Hayes gets his fix of leaks, I suspect that "full public release" will not be a high priority for the Weekly Standard.   

But who knows what people "really" think?  Not me.  I say take Kristol at his word:  give all researchers access to the documents, with appropriate FOIA and intelligence safeguards.  It would give cherry-picking opportunites galore for partisans on both sides, sure, but so what?  They do that anyway.  I would much rather that everyone has equal access to the documents than leave it the way it is - where Stephen Hayes and others sympathetic to the neo-conservatives at the Pentagon get privileged access to documents that help them out, and nobody else does.  Access to those documents would level the playing field, and make it easier to discover the truth, whatever that might be.  Selfishly (on behalf of my profession), it would be an unbelievable windfall for scholars, and for everyone who wants to understand how a mukhabarat state worked and works. 

Who would it hurt?  Well, other than hurting Hayes and his crowd, because it would end their monopoly on the leaks, it might hurt American counter-insurgency efforts if the documents were made public (as opposed to exploited internally), and it would almost certainly prove very damaging to lots of individual Iraqis compromised by information in the files.   How should such concerns matter compared to the urgent need to score domestic political points?  Ask the Weekly Standard. 

Comments

[Anon]

DiRita actually said that the Times and Post would publish articles saying that Saddam was just a misunderstood patriot? Seriously? I mean...really? That's...insane. Literally insane. (And, yes, I know what the word "literally" means and was using it literally.)

If the Pentagon thinks that the Times and the Post are actually pro-Saddam then maybe this stuff about spying on journalists is very plausible after all.

[KCinDC]

Yes, that "misunderstood patriot" crack was the sort of thing I expect from Limbaugh or O'Reilly or Coulter or various right-wing blogs, but it's still surprising to have it coming out of the mouth of the official spokesman for the Pentagon. Things are farther gone than I thought. If they actually believe that sort of thing at the Pentagon, then it would be not only natural but practically required for them to be interfering with, spying on, and suppressing journalists at every turn.

[Robert McDougall]

Er, wouldn't those documents be the property of the new, democratic, Shia Islamist / Kurdish separatist government of Iraq?

[hank]

> from a collection of some 2 million "exploitable
> items" captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan

We can guess what they're looking for -- because it was more important than securing munitions, or antiquities, or even public records, all of which were ignored after the invasion for long enough that they got cleaned out.

What could have been more important? Maybe finding his paperwork? Lack of evidence of transactions is not evidence of lack of transactions, but when you can't find the stuff, finding the paper trail is all that's left as possible proof.

Nada? Yeah, worth opening the docs to historians.
With the originals there, the translations will be open to review, and if there's anything, it'll be turned up eventually.

[lukery]

interestingly, Kristol only refers to "documents captured *after* the fall of the Saddam regime."

i'm interested in SAddam's 12,000 page 'Weapons Declaration' from before the invasion - the one with 8000 redacted pages. (i've filed an FOIA for it)

[ali]

Hayes lost all credibility when he regurgitated the Feith memo; a laughably slanted amateur reading of raw intelligence. Saddam's Iraq was way at the back in the queue of dubious regimes with terrorist links.

As no intelligence analyst who wants to retain the respect of his peers will support the idea that Saddam was a terrorist mastermind let alone behind 9-11 I doubt the Iraqi papers have much more to reveal than how paranoid Saddam was about Islamist radicals.

What they've got on Saudi, Pakistan and Egypt would make more interesting reading.

[Rai]

I think the main arguement touted by the Bush administration was of proliferation and the nexus of terrorists and state sponsors. Al Queda was only one of a hundred terror groups that wanted to bring harm to the US. So I wouldnt worry about strong connections with Al Queda but that Saddam taunted the UN Resolutions which called for him to stop playing host to international terrorists. I would be just as concerned if Saddam sponsored terrorism that only posed a regional threat. I for one feel for anyone that gets killed in a terrorist attack, not just an American. And who knows where those terrorists would have gone after they have recieved thier training. There are things one has to consider, not just jump to conclusions that this is another neo-con attempt to bolster the Saddam is Hitler image.
I feel many in here are simply shrugging this off and asking; so what? Well thats the typical respone I would assume to hear from people who want empirical proof of threat posed to the US. Saddam could have a thousand trained nihlists ready for action against Israel, yet it wouldnt phase a single on of you because it posed no threat to America. Since when has the left been so isolationist?

[Rai]

"i'm interested in SAddam's 12,000 page 'Weapons Declaration' from before the invasion - the one with 8000 redacted pages. (i've filed an FOIA for it)"

Hmm, I thought the decision to remove 8000 pgs. was approved of with the consent of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council.