Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington

by Sharyl Attkisson

  Even if we could assume 100 percent altruistic motives on the part of the government now and forevermore, there are still serious questions to consider. Wyden is getting at the heart of them with his inquiries. I’ll illustrate them with an analogy.

  What if your local police were to claim that they can prevent crime in the community if they mount twenty-four-hour surveillance cameras on every public street corner? You might say okay. What if they say they can prevent more crime if they monitor every resident’s emails and phone calls? That’s a little tougher. You might have some questions. How much crime would be prevented? Where’s the proof? Have the police tried less intrusive methods? What independent body will monitor for abuse? Okay, now let’s ratchet it up another notch. What if the police decide, in secret, that they can theoretically prevent one murder a year if they mount hidden surveillance cameras inside every room inside every family’s private home? Shouldn’t anyone who’s innocent of breaking the law be willing to sacrifice his family’s privacy to save a human life?

  (Why the pregnant pause?)

  Apply the analogy to today’s ethical and privacy questions.

  How many terrorist acts would have to be thwarted to justify what level of intrusion in our privacy or on our civil liberties? The calculus is entirely theoretical since there are no accurate predictive models. Nobody can say for sure how many supposedly prevented plots would have been carried out or how many lives would have been lost but for the privacy invasion. Is bulk collection of data solely to credit in examples of foiled terrorist acts? Were less broad, less intrusive methods tried and proven ineffective before each more intrusive effort was launched? If so, are the more intrusive methods providing measurably better results? What independent controls and audits are in place to guarantee protection of private information from abuse by those with political or criminal motivations? Can the public trust the government officials who want to use the secret techniques to provide accurate and honest assessments of these questions—even when the same officials have provided false information in the past? Should the public be excluded from policy debates about these issues?

  A real-world example provides additional reasons to question the merit of mass data collection.

  On March 4, 2011, U.S. officials were alerted to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the future Boston Marathon bomber. The tip didn’t come from NSA collection of metadata, the tracing of cell phone calls, or the tracking of Internet activity: it came from Russia, which sent a notice to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow requesting the FBI look into Tsarnaev, who was living in America. The FBI later said it did all it could to investigate and even interviewed Tsarnaev but found nothing suspicious. Six months later, in September 2011, Russia sent another alert about Tsarnaev, this time to the CIA. But like the FBI, the CIA also found nothing of concern. Off the official radar, Tsarnaev went on to murder three people and injure an estimated 264 in the April 15, 2013, bombing attack at the Boston Marathon. He was killed in a shootout with the police. His brother is awaiting trial.

  In the end, U.S. officials pretty much blamed the Russians in public news reports. They said the Russians should have provided more explicit detail about why they’d been so suspicious of Tsarnaev back in 2011. It’s an embarrassing admission: our best U.S. intelligence officials were handed a future terrorist but couldn’t detect the threat because, they say, Russia should have helped us more?

  Is it reasonable to believe this same U.S. intelligence structure has the skill, then, to cull through hundreds of millions of phone call records for subtle leads and then connect the dots to terrorist plots? Or is the government simply expanding its own bureaucracy: building an unwieldy, expensive database ripe for misuse that will require an increasing army of manpower to maintain, store, and guard it?

  Answers aren’t easy. Like a lot of people, I place great value on the intelligence community’s role in protecting the public. Many skilled and devoted agents and officers often do a tremendous job. But I believe it’s possible to give the public a role in the discussion in a way that doesn’t divulge crucial secrets to the enemy.

  As a footnote to the Tsarnaev story, I can’t help but think about how the government found no cause to monitor this future terrorist at the very same time it aggressively targeted leakers as well as American journalists who had committed no crimes.

  | THE TURNAROUND

  Now mired in the bad press about Clapper, AP, FOX, and Snowden, the Obama administration is working overtime to try to turn it all around—not the government’s behavior, mind you, just the public’s perception of it. That translates into tightening the noose around government secrets and those who hold them.

  One of my sources is called into a group meeting at a government agency.

  “If you speak to reporters, we’ll fuck you up, put you in a box,” they’re told.

  The message: don’t view the current whistleblower environment as an opportunity to join in on revealing the federal government’s possible misdeeds. Federal supervisors circulate internal emails reminding the line staff and field guys, in so many words, that this administration has prosecuted more leakers than all previous administrations combined.

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned through years of dealing with federal whistleblowers, it’s that they’re terrified of losing their jobs and eventual retirements. I guess most people would be. But federal workers have pretty sweet retirement deals and the threat of that evaporating usually convinces them to keep their mouths shut about suspected ethical and even criminal violations by their bosses and agencies. It’s effective. (“We’ll fuck you up,” is pretty effective, too.)

  On June 21, 2013, the Justice Department unseals a criminal complaint charging Snowden under the Espionage Act.

  The Big Chill is on.

  Many sources, including congressmen, become more wary of communicating the ordinary way. One evening, I’m talking with a member of Congress on my regular mobile phone about a somewhat sensitive news matter. He’s avoiding giving straight answers. I keep pressing. Finally, sounding exasperated, he blurts out, “Sharyl, your phone’s bugged!” I can’t argue the point. We decide to meet in person and work out alternate ways to communicate. It’s the new reality in a society where journalists and politicians suspect their government is listening in.

  Beyond its move to privately contain and even threaten some federal employees, the Obama administration must also try to recapture the hearts and minds of the public and the press. How? One strategy is to convince the public to view Snowden as the villain. This might not fly if too many people decide he’s a hero. But if enough people buy the argument that he put American lives at risk, it just might turn things around for the Obama White House.

  Thus begins Operation Where’s Waldo. Only it’s Where’s Snowden. Attention is diverted from the questions that Senator Wyden and Snowden have raised. It turns away from Obama’s War on Leaks. It’s redirected from the targeting of journalists. Instead, we’re consumed by the imponderable question of Snowden’s whereabouts. What country is he in? What plane is he boarding next? Is it the 2:30 p.m. nonstop to Moscow? Or the 4:45 p.m. to Cuba? Who will grant him asylum?

  Where’s Snowden dominates the White House briefings and the news headlines.

  Before long, the quest branches out into a full-blown news media obsession with all things Snowden. Everything except the editorial content of what he revealed. How many documents did he get? How did he get access? Who passed his background checks? Did he graduate from high school? And what about rumors of a questionable discharge from the army? Looking into Snowden’s background is certainly a legitimate and reasonable area of inquiry. But it seems as though disproportionate media attention is being devoted to dissecting his character rather than also looking into the merits of the issues he raised.

  “How much did Snowden steal?” screams a July 18, 2013, subheading on a news wire service. Unidentified sources are quoted in the article a
s saying Snowden took “tens of thousands” of documents. Nowhere does the article represent Snowden’s side of the story or that of those who view him as a whistleblower.

  If Snowden leaks, it’s a crime. But if the administration leaks to implicate Snowden, it’s a virtue? In other words, government leaks are okay as long as the leaks flow in the right direction.

  Snowden’s story isn’t black-and-white. He may have indeed violated national security rules and hurt the country. At the same time, he may have believed himself a patriot and also done an important service in exposing potentially improper and overreaching behavior by the U.S. government. The scenarios aren’t mutually exclusive. Surely Snowden doesn’t see himself as a traitor. To date, there’s no evidence that he peddled information to enemies of the United States or anyone else. There’s no evidence that he stole the information for personal financial gain. Quite the opposite: he gave it to the public, free of charge, at great personal peril, as if he has incredible conviction and belief in the importance of what he’s revealing.

  “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong you’re being watched and recorded,” Snowden said in an interview with the Guardian. “The public needs to decide whether these programs or policies are right or wrong.” Snowden has given up a comfortable life in Hawaii and a six-figure salary. “I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

  Many in Congress assist the administration’s diversionary plan. They don’t treat Snowden’s revelations as deserving of scrutiny. Instead, it’s how did a guy like Snowden get his hands on all those secrets? Senator Feinstein announces a proposed legislative fix to prevent contractors like Snowden from handling highly classified technical data.

  Meantime, no sanctions are proposed against Clapper for his misleading testimony. And nobody seems to think it’s odd that he’s trusted to spearhead efforts to address concerns over the very programs about which he misled Congress. The AP reports that Clapper’s new plans include “a sweeping system of electronic monitoring that would tap into government, financial and other databases to scan the behavior of many of the 5 million federal employees with secret clearances, current and former officials.” Nobody seems to notice that, if anything, the administration is ramping up, not tamping down, its controversial War on Leaks.

  Allowing Clapper and other government officials to be in charge of solving their own surveillance controversies is like inviting the fox to guard the henhouse. Except the fox is also getting the keys to the henhouse and the recipe for chicken fricassee.

  In a fictitious world, one can imagine a meeting in which any member of Congress calling for Clapper’s head gets a closed-door visit from Clapper or his team. They slide a file bearing the name of the member of Congress or someone close to him across the desk, J. Edgar Hoover–style. The file contains materials surreptitiously gathered under the auspices of a government leak investigation or surveillance program. The member of Congress opens the file. Perhaps his eyes flicker. Maybe his face becomes white. The materials are very . . . personal. The imaginary Clapper rubs his forehead with his four fingers. No words are spoken because none are necessary. The file is closed and Clapper drags it back across the desk, never to be spoken of again. Unless necessary. Suddenly the member of Congress is no longer out for Clapper’s head.

  Or here’s another fictitious premise. CIA director Petraeus deviates from the Obama administration’s official line on Benghazi. Somewhere in a private room, a small group of government operatives culls through data to find out who Petraeus has been emailing and calling. Any skeletons in that closet? A review of his file reveals some unseemly contacts with his former biographer. That information could come in very handy.

  Now, I remind you that those are wholly fanciful scenarios. The stuff of imagination. The government would never misuse its authority or information, right? Still, the fact that these notions can be conjured up, even if chimerical, illustrates why it’s so important to have public discussion and oversight.

  | OTHER REPORTERS WEIGH IN

  In late June 2013, I’m flying back from the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in San Antonio, Texas, and am seated next to another journalist: Len Downie. Downie is former executive editor of the Washington Post and had spoken at the conference on the very topic at hand.

  “The Obama administration’s War on Leaks is by far the most aggressive that I’ve seen since the Nixon administration, and I go back that far,” Downie told the audience of investigative journalists.

  As we strike up a chat shoulder to shoulder on the plane, I bring up the subject of Snowden. I ask Downie if it doesn’t seem as though more attention should be focused on the content of Snowden’s claims instead of where he’s hiding or whether he graduated from high school. Downie agrees.

  Four months later, Downie would publish a definitive report for the Committee to Protect Journalists. It establishes the Obama administration as the news media’s top choice for Least Transparent American Presidency in Modern Times. When you think of all the transparency promises, it’s stunning to read the actual experiences of national news reporters, not those working at conservative outlets but journalists from the New York Times and the Washington Post.

  David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent of the Times, says, “This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered.”

  Times public editor Margaret Sullivan: “It’s turning out to be the administration of unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press.”

  Financial Times correspondent Richard McGregor: “Covering this White House is pretty miserable in terms of getting anything of substance to report on in what should be a much more open system.”

  ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton: “He’s the least transparent of the seven presidents I’ve covered in terms of how he does his daily business.”

  Josh Gerstein of Politico: “If the story is basically one that they don’t want to come out, they won’t even give you the basic facts.”

  Washington correspondent Josh Meyer: “There is across-the-board hostility to the media. . . . They don’t return repeated phone calls and e-mails. They feel entitled to and expect supportive media coverage.”

  Post managing editor Kevin Merida describes what he sees as the White House’s hypersensitivity, saying that officials often call reporters and editors to complain about something on Twitter or a headline on a website.

  I have a slightly different interpretation of the administration’s sensitivities. It’s not that they’re really so sensitive. They’re simply executing a well-thought-out strategy to harass reporters and editors at the slightest air of negativity so as to impact the next news decisions. To provide so much unpleasant static and interference that we may subconsciously alter the way we report stories. To consume so much of our time explaining and justifying what we’ve reported, that we begin to self-censor in the future. They accuse us of “piling on,” when all we’re doing is accurately covering their actions and the outcome of their decisions. But what human being doesn’t instinctively learn to avoid negative, unpleasant feedback?

  Let’s not use that phrase in our story. Yes, it’s accurate, but the White House will go nuts over it. Maybe if we soften it a little, we can avoid some headaches. We don’t want to appear to be—piling on.

  What we don’t seem to realize is that our never-ending pursuit to avoid the static is a fool’s errand. Their relentless objections are not because they want accurate reporting; their goal is to spin and stop negative reporting. When we allow them to wrap us up in their game, it furthers their propaganda goals. We risk inadvertently giving them inappropriate influence over our reporting, of becoming their tool rather than their watchdog.

  On July
8, 2014, the Society of Professional Journalists directs a letter to President Obama objecting to what it calls the “politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies.” The esteemed group of journalists uses strongly worded phrases to make its point.

  “We consider these restrictions a form of censorship.”

  “The problem is getting worse throughout the nation.”

  “It has not always been this way.”

  I’m all too familiar with the pre-story stonewall. The post-story harassment. The ignored requests for interviews and public information. But the Obama administration has aggressively employed the additional PR strategy: controversializing potentially damaging stories, reporters, and opponents to undermine them. It can be a highly effective tactic—unless the public learns to recognize it. Just how does one take a fact-based, solid story with sourced opinions and turn it into a controversy to therefore be questioned by an unsuspecting public? By putting into motion a well-oiled machine that launches post-story complaint calls and emails; comments to other reporters (often not for attribution); bloggers who circulate manufactured outrage and counterspin; and personal attacks against the journalist. Pretty soon, the administration has controversialized an entire line of reporting. Not because it is controversial, but because their machine has made it appear to be. They can point to blogs and articles that say so. Even Wikipedia says so, so it must be true!

  Journalist Michael Hastings once discussed this phenomenon. Hastings had authored the award-winning Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley McChrystal that led to McChrystal’s resignation. He spoke of the “insidious response . . . when you piss off the powerful. They come after your career; they try to come after your credibility. They do cocktail party whisper campaigns. They try to make you ‘controversial.’ Sadly, the Powers That Be are often aided by other journalists.”